Holy Cow!

Holy Cow! That was my reaction today at Katie's speech where she's taking a speech/articulation summer camp taught by 2 graduate students. It's just Katie and Will, a little 4 year old boy with loads of energy and a form of autism. I get the fun of sitting behind a 1-way mirror in a tiny room and observing the proceedings for an hour and 15 minutes. Today's session started off with Katie saying............nothing. Would not speak or utter a sound. These 2 poor graduate students had no clue what to do. I sat there for about 10 minutes to see if they'd be able to get Katie pulled out of her shell and to interact. No such luck. Finally, I went in there and told Katie in nice, yet no uncertain terms, that she was there to work so that mommy and everyone else could understand what she is saying. She looked at me and with the sweetest face said "Ok mommy, I work now". During this time, Will was starting to get his gears cranking and figuring out how he was going to work the therapists today. He was pretty much all over the place and between him hitting himself in the forehead with his fist and walking in circles, it was a bit of a 3 ring circus. Close to the end of the session was snack time. Well, today they had grapes - yummy for both kids. Will crammed all of his in his mouth at once. The therapist reminded him to chew 1 at a time and he glared at her. When he finally was able to swallow those down, he started looking around for more. The therapist asked him if he'd like more and he shook his head in the affirmative. She reminded him he needed to use his words and ask for more. This is when he got a big sneer on his face, lifted up his fist so that all could see it and proceeded to slowly raise his middle finger! Yep, 4 years old and flipped her the bird!!! I started laughing so hard I was crying and almost fell out of the chair! I think the best word to describe both therapist's reaction would be flabbergasted. 3 hours later writing this, I'm still laughing so hard I'm crying. And I thought Zachary misspelling a word into a cuss-word was embarrassing!!!

The past 2 weeks have been just nuts. We listed our house for sale, decided on a builder for our new "ranch" style house (i.e. 1-story), decided on a lot and are in the waiting status for the lot to be transferred to our builder. The cleaning nutcase (that would be me) has been going through the house like a whirling dervish picking up stuff, taking down photographs to depersonalize our home (so someone can envision their pile of crud here), and doing paint touch-ups and the 1000 other miscellaneous things you do when you sell your home.

Zach is doing quite well with baseball. He's really learning to catch the most of the balls thrown at him and last night during practice they practiced throwing the baseball at a 5 gallon bucket while trying to make it in. Well, lo and behold, he hit the bucket 3 times - so his aim is really getting good. Which, of course, means I will not be playing catch with him as I don't want "Official Ball for Pee-Wee T-Ball" emblazoned between my eyeballs! He finally got to practice hitting the ball off the t-ball stand last night. He hit the ball pretty good and immediately chased it down, picked it up and ran to first base...............and he thought he'd won........oops! He was quite deflated when they told him he got himself out - although it was pretty dog-gone funny. Bright side of that - over 1/2 of the kids that hit the ball did the same thing. Nothing like being a trend-setter! The photos above are from Monday's practice. They were teaching the kids how to run the bases and paired them up and made it a race. The girls got a 5 second head start. My long-legged son has finally grown into his legs and lordy, I've never seen the kid run that fast before in my life........even for dessert! He passed up the girl he was racing between first base and 2nd base and turned on the after-burners and just blew around those bases. As you can see from the blurred photo I couldn't get a clear shot of him cause he was running so darn fast. This past weekend he was running races with a neighbor's niece, who is a junior high school track star. She gave him a few "pointers" she said when they were racing and before the end of the night, he was beating her at the races. We thought she was just being sweet and letting him win - now we know better. That boy is just fast.

I met with the Nutrionist yesterday and learned all about carbs, dieting, exercising and in general, learned more than I really ever wanted to know about food. Whatever happened to just "watch your portion sizes and exercise" as advice? Well, I guess with the advancement of McDonald's and every other fast food restaurant serving us all "biggie" sizes, we have lost sight of what a real portion size is supposed to look like. I learned it yesterday with the funky, rubbery play food they use to show you how your plate should look when you put the food on it. In essence, a child-size portion of meat and starchy vegetables to barely fill 1/2 a plate but enough broccoli and other vegetables to make me walk "lightly" on my toes from the ever-present "emissions" I will be releasing. I was also given my daily "recommendation" for my total carbohydrate intake, as well as calories. Oh, and just as we were wrapping things up, she read her notes from the referring physician and then told me that he wants me exercising 5 days a week and is expecting at least a 10 pound weight loss at my next check-up in October. Of course, that's when she also told me that I would be seeing her at that appointment in addition to the physician. Nothing like a little pressure about losing some weight - or 32 pounds to be exact. UGH........ Bright side of all that was, I got loads of information for Mike as well, and the nutrionist will be wanting to know what his weight is when I go in for my follow-up appointment. I got all the carbs and calories for Mike and sprung those on him this morning. He wasn't too thrilled when I told him that I asked about his "bagel day" at work, where they bring in bagels for everyone from Panera Bread. He always eats a cheese bagel..........but not anymore! Discovered those are 100+ gram of carbs and over 400 calories and considering that he's now on a 200 carb a day diet and 2500 calories, he's going to have to go with the plain old boring bagel at 40 grams of carbs. He was pretty shocked at the amount of carbs and calories that had - and what he's allowed. Think from his expression though that he might really start getting into losing weight since I'm going to have to be a food-nazi for a while. He's only got about 55 pounds to lose to my 32 pounds - I'm sure being a man he'll lose it in a month while it will take me a year to lose 10 pounds.