Eventually, right?

I ought to be at Sensational Kids with Matthew right now, but I had to call in and ask for a later appointment. Matthew is um... in the middle of his business, and when you wait five days to DO your business, it becomes a time-consuming and uncomfortable process. He'll get it eventually, right?

Christopher is at school. He's doing very well there, aside from being teased by the other boys. His teacher seems to have a handle on it, and Chris is doing SO very well at controlling himself when it happens. I'm pretty darn proud of him. He's no longer going to Sensational Kids, because the school is giving him OT, PT and speech. Nice to know that our taxes are going to SAVE us money in at least one department!

Matthew's birthday is Saturday. Hard to believe he's going to be four! He's really starting to shoot up in inches. He put on a pair of last year's long pants yesterday and sported the "high water" look for awhile.

I'm working hard at work. My current count is 13 kids. 8 on Mondays, 4 on Thursdays and 1 on Fridays. It's pretty fun work. I have a range in ages from 5 to 17, so each half hour is something different.

I also have a lot going on, knitwise. Working on a few potential Christmas gifts, and some socks. I made a circle vest out of some lovely Noro Taiyo. I hate it. I'm going to frog it eventually when I'm not so mad at it anymore. It's a "Wow, check out her ass!" sort of a fit...

I'm taking a sweater class with Jared Flood tomorrow at the Gourmet Yarn CO. Very excited about that! It sounds like this will help with designing sweaters and knitting them seamlessly, which is always a good thing, since my finishing leaves a lot to be desired.

Oh, I'm also excited because I ordered a Scooba from iRobot this week! I love my Roomba so much and have wanted a Scooba for a long time. I saw that HSC.com had the basic model for $212 and had to get it. It should be here sometime next week, and I can't wait to get it charged up and mopping my floors!

I need to get back into the blogging habit, so maybe I can blog instead of writing these mundane Christmas card letters.

Negligence

Yeah, I've been negligent in posting a blog. Sorry, faithful reader(s).

Summer is nearly over, and to blog about everything will take too many pages, so here's the more succinct version:

• CME graduated from Kindy and also got his official autism diagnosis. The process is underway to get him into public school for first grade. He's also started piano lessons.
  

• Matty has started therapy at the same place as CME. We're hoping to grow a little impulse control soon.

• We went to Alaska. More on that another time. I might have to do a blog series on it!

• We survived 85 kids at VBS.
  

• We celebrated 13 years of marriage on the 6th of July. 3 more years and I'll be as old as Mark was on our wedding day!

• My favorite yarn store moved to a new bigger location. Lovin' it. Not a lot of knitting happening right now, but I have a lot of projects in store.

• CME and Matty have both gotten the hang of swimming with their swim vests on. Matty loves jumping in and both boys can do the lazy river by themselves now. This is much easier on Momma than trying to float with two clinging monkeys pulling her swimsuit down.
  

• I've started jogging. Go ahead and laugh, but I've lost 8 pounds using the Couch to 5k program. My calves hate me, though.
  

• CME's summer program is finished and Matthew's ends this week, so we'll just be counting the days until school starts again. (28!)
  

That's the summer in a nutshell. I promise to elaborate on the Alaska experience soon. It was beyond awesome, and I doubt anything I write or any pictures I post will really do it justice.

Later...

Two weeks

Two weeks from today, Mark and I will be in Vancouver, boarding a boat heading to freakin' Alaska. Kind of hard to visualize. I'm looking forward to it. My life doesn't have much adventure to it, and, well, here's a chance. We'll be Jeeping up a mountain, hiking along a glacier, canoeing a lake, exploring a rainforest, frisbee golfing by the ocean, and of course, hunting for musk ox wool.

Between now and then, there are a million things to do. My oldest baby is going to be graduating from Kindergarten on Thursday. Back in October, I'd have sworn he was going to be the first ever Kindergarten drop-out, but he's really blossomed. Today is confirmation at church, and their preschool graduation. Funeral on Tuesday. BIL's are visiting this next weekend. Matthew has an evaluation with our OTs. Maybe the school will call about CME's enrollment. That's doubtful.

And somewhere in there we have to figure out what to pack, and what to pack it all in. I'm planning on lots of layers. What's worrying me is what yarn to take, and whether my needles will be confiscated in the airport. TSA says they're fine, but security people don't always see logic when faced with such formidable villains as Mark and myself.

Love all!

The Truman Show

I'm starting to feel like Truman Burbank. Every week of my life is just like the one before it and the one after it. I take kids to school and do housework, shop, surf or knit while they're gone. I watch TV and play games and read books while they're here. I go to church and do the same things with the same people; I go to work and do the same things with the same people.

And the same things happen over and over again. There's a kid in the neighborhood who is ALWAYS walking around the block. It doesn't matter what time of day. I can hear the director saying, "Erica is leaving the house now. Cue Chubby iPod Kid." Then comes, "Wranglers, cue the Neighbor's Lab," in my yard. And as I'm driving away, "Cue traffic on 2nd street."

I think the directors like to throw a few things in here and there for comedic effect. Like the neighbor's baby, who cries are so important they take up BOTH channels of our baby monitor. That must be good entertainment for the late-night watchers. And, I bet this explains Matthew's lack of toilet training. He's really a child actor being paid to tinkle on the floor to give the show some laughs. They throw in some drama: marriage, work, kids with problems. You know, to keep women 18-35 watching.

I bet our upcoming cruise will be a logistical nightmare for the producers. New cast members, new locations, travel costs for the crew. It's probably a ratings stunt. May sweeps, no less!

I'd say we need some explosions and gun fights, but I think we should keep this a chick flick, okay, producers?

Monkeys in a Car

Yes, my blog title is "Monkeys in a Car." And no, I don't mean MY children.

I'm tucking CME in to bed tonight, and rather than going into his usual monologue about Halo Wars, or his imaginary friend, Roginox's, latest escapades, he starts telling me what a crazy day he had. How he saw monkeys in a car.

I did some questioning, thinking he'd seen something on TV, but he insisted it was real, and that his Dad had seen them too.

While I was at work tonight, our friend Major Mark came over to get my Mark's advice on a new HDTV purchase. They took the kids to Ultimate Electronics to do some comparison shopping.

On the way home, they were stuck in traffic on Sante Fe. Major Mark noticed something with a funny tail in a blue Prius a few cars ahead. They pulled up closer, and saw a Capuchin monkey, wearing an orange shirt, sitting in the back window of the car looking back at them. As they pulled up, they saw another monkey sitting in the lap of the woman driving, with its hands on the steering wheel. This made an impression on my kids.

I'm not sure what the city regulations are concerning driving around with monkeys in your vehicle, or letting them have the steering wheel. But I'm going to be on the lookout for a blue Prius. Nice to know there's someone out there with goofier monkeys than mine!

You can leave now, Mommy.

I dozed off while snuggling with CME at bedtime. He was telling me a "story" about his favorite game, Halo Wars, while we shared his big comfy pillow. I guess I must have tuned him out because next thing I know, he's shaking my belly, saying, "Mommy?... Mommy?... You can leave now Mommy... Time for bed... Go now..."

Today was a good day. It was quiet. There has been lots of battling between the two boys lately, but today was pretty peaceful. We're getting Matty evaluated next month with Sensational Kids. He's starting to show some sensory seeking behaviors, and he's definitely having impulse control problems. CME had a rough day at school, but only because he didn't want to do his phonics. Other than that, he was fine. It was his first red card in a month, so I can't complain too much.

I've got all the paperwork back to the dev. ped. and am expecting a diagnosis soon. She did say she'd call before our June appointment, but I'll give her a week and call the office to double check. I'm getting impatient. It will either be Aspergers, High-Functioning Autism or PDD-NOS. My money's on Asperger's. I'm also waiting for the schools to get back to me with the next step for getting him in 1st grade.

Not much else to report. I've been working on a knock-off version of the Circle Vest, but I don't like how my makeshift edging is looking, so I'll probably frog it back to the arm holes. It's a nice yarn to knit with, so I won't mind doing it again.

Things are really feeling very monotonous lately. I'm not sure if the upcoming summer break is going to be an improvement, but at least it'll be different.

I'm not worried

I've been getting to know the features of Ravelry a little better the past week or so. I've used it to peruse patterns and chat with friends, but hadn't paid much attention to all of its bells and whistles.


This morning, I listed some my stash yarn. You can list your yarns, and Ravelry can find patterns to fit the yarn you already have. I went through my shelves box by box and bag by bag. Sock yarns, lace weights, and all of my "nice" yarn went into the database. I did NOT add the 20 or so little skeins of cheap cotton for dishcloths, or the 12 or so skeins of Caron's Simply Soft I keep for baby hats, or the countless skeins of Cascade 220 I use for felting bags. Nor did I add in any partial skeins and leftover balls, of which I have an entire two shelves. And I also didn't add in any yarns which are currently being knitted in one of my 14 works-in-progress.


It's fair to say I listed just over half of my total yarn stash. Then I added the number of yards up...


Let's just say I'm no longer worried about the state of the economy. I'll survive.