So I've done a web site change.  I've changed the Life as Mommy site to Creative Motherhood.

Why?

Well, when we started Life as Mommy, it was a bit on a whim, and I had little kids and babies at the time.  It made a little sense.  Except that none of my kids ever called me "mommy", except Miriam on a rare occasion.  I'm "Mom" or "Mama". 

Also, I've never been the "mommy" type.  Yes, I have what some people consider a herd of children.  We do the usual soccer, dance class, school run type things.  But while other mommy types were flashing cards to teach their child Spanish by age two, I was letting mine play in dirt.  And while other mommy types felt forced to listen to kiddie music in the car, I got my children hooked on Canadian Celtic rock. 

A few months ago, I realized that the Life as Mommy name just didn't suit me anymore.  So I thought, harassed friends about what they thought, spent too much time on Go Daddy's site seeing what domain names were free. 

In the end, I chose Creative Motherhood.  Why?  Because I'm still a mother.  And I am a creative person who does creative things.  It's a name that I feel I won't outgrow as my children grow.  Because as we all know, we're mothers for life. 

But that doesn't mean I have to regulate myself to the khaki pants and polo look.  Which never suited me anyway.

Sunday, February 15, 2009 5:48:04 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0] 

I just get a feeling that this year is going to be one of those more interesting ones.  Either that, or we're getting all our "fun" stuff over at the beginning of the year.  However, I don't hold my breath on that. 

I spent January running from doctor to specialist to pharmacist.  Miriam's had a couple different bladder infections, so we're covering all bases.  This meant a trip to the urologist, an ultrasound, and we go back for a reflux test.  Reflux, it's not just after breakfast anymore!

In the meantime, Maura had a seizure at school, which was deemed a "breath holding spell" after a trip that afternoon to the neurologist.  Her pediatrician researched this some more, and read about a correlation between these spells and low iron, so Maura started taking iron supplments. 

And then Miriam caught a virus, ended up with a headache and fever, promptly passed it to Maura, who had a cough and fever.  Maura almost got over it when it reared its ugly head again.  So I called the pediatrician again.  They saw her and deemed that she was in the beginning stages of pneumonia, here's your RX.  Of course, being on this medication meant we had to stop the iron supplement, as they crossed each other out. 

We'll ignore the multiple times we've taken Maura's glasses in to be repaired. 

There were other things we've done in the meantime - like shovel snow and stay warm - but those other things are for other posts. 

Sunday, February 08, 2009 6:53:09 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0] 

My kids do say interesting things.  Today was not an exception.

Mim and I went errand running, and ended up at a Starbucks for a break and hot chocolate and chai. The subject of college came up, so I was telling her all the gory details about finals and credits and at the end of it, how you have to write this big long paper called a thesis.

Miriam asked "What did you write your thesis about?"

Me - "The female villains in Shakespeare's plays."

Mim - "I'll write me thesis on princesses!"

Yes, I giggled.

Later on at home, we were sitting around watching television, and the word "renaissance" was used.  Collin asked what it meant, and Sean pipes up with "It's a French word meaning "rebirth"."

While correct, not what I expected to come out of my ten year old's mouth.

Saturday, January 03, 2009 9:17:22 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1] 

Collin has always been one of those quirky kids who got more than he should have at a young age.  My mother once said "He's intense, like that kid from "The Sixth Sense", only without the whole "I see dead people" thing."

When he was four and a half, we were in the car driving to brunch after Mass one Sunday.  Collin and Sean were making happy kid noises in the back seat, and in the front, Josh and I were discussing his uncle's tire tread separation case.  We got to the restaurant, ate, and an hour later, left to go home.  We told Collin to get in the car and he stopped dead at the curb and refused to get into the car. 

This wasn't normal behavior for him, so I bent down and asked him why he didn't want to get into the car.  He looked up at me and said "Mom, do we have the good tires or the bad tires?"

Yes, at age four, he picked up enough of our conversation to know that if we had the bad tires, something bad could happen.  Ironically, we had Goodyear tires (which are good tires) and told him we had good tires - so good, they had the word right in their name.  He did this "Oh, okay" thing and hopped right into the car without a care or worry.

It was quite the surprise to us as parents.  We knew he was a pretty smart kid, but the fact that he could take and process what we were saying, come to an immediate conclusion like that and worry over which tires we had and if we would be safe driving with them - well, that's just a lot for a four year old to suddenly throw at his unsuspecting parents.

We got used to it, and actually sheltered him from the Big Bad World a little bit more because, well, let's face it, the world is a scary enough place for adults to figure out.  Imagine what would have gone through Collin's bright little mind, not having the emotional maturity to handle these truths that were so apparent to him.

But, being a child, he has managed to surprise us once again.

While Josh and I were vacationing in Ireland, his mother came to watch the kids. And with all the election talk going on at the time, my children were asking her questions about it.  The subject of abortion came up and they asked what that was, so she explained as ungraphically as possible - that in situations where the mother didn't want to continue the pregnancy, they would end it early, which resulted in the death of the baby.  They asked what kind of situations, and she said that one of them was if there was something wrong with the baby, causing the baby to have some sort of retardation.

Collin thought about this for a moment and then said "So those people would want Maura dead."

Yes.  My twelve year old figured out in an instant that there are people who, if told they'd have a child who would have delays and seizures and handicaps, would decide to end the pregnancy.  That they wouldn't want a child like Maura in their life.

What can you say to that? "Oh no dear, anyone would want Maura." ?  No - that would be lying to him.  He is old enough to handle the truth.  I just wish he didn't ever have to know it, if that makes sense.  I wish I didn't have to know it.

The ironic part to me is how quickly he equated the random general statement into his own personal life.  People who wouldn't want a baby with handicaps equaled instantly to people wouldn't want a child like Maura.  And yet, all around me, adults have conversations in front of me about how if faced with such a choice in some mythical pregnancy, they would terminate the pregnancy, and they don't even remotely get that what I hear is "I wouldn't want a child like yours."  How can my twelve year old understand and not them? 

I have no answers for that, but I do know that my son's insightfulness will make him a kinder, more compassionate human being.  He's going to be a very interesting adult someday. 

Saturday, December 06, 2008 12:32:45 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0] 

Today, after her AVB therapy session, I learned that Maura was using three new signs.  Trying to be less of a slacker parent, I decided to try out one of the new signs, the one for "movie".

So out in the parking lot, I asked her "Did you watch a movie?" while using the sign for movie.

She said "I wah Boo!"  Interpretation - "I watched Boots!"  meaning she watched the Dora the Explorer video.

A definite, genuine, two way conversation.  One that didn't require a "yes" or "no" response, or start with "What's that?". It was an interactive, I asked a question, she gave me an informative answer. This is a Very Big Deal in our neck of the woods. 

Only took five years, 7 months.  But that is okay.  We're seeing verbal development.  The words are beginning to come out of her head and we can't wait to finally find out all that goes on inside there.  Because the way she makes herself giggle so much, inside Maura's head seems to be a very fun place to hang out.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 8:08:05 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0] 

A very interesting read - 

Brain waves are window into autism language woes - Yahoo! News

CHICAGO - Unique brain wave patterns, spotted for the first time in autistic children, may help explain why they have so much trouble communicating.

Using an imaging helmet that resembles a big salon hair dryer, researchers discovered what they believe are "signatures of autism" that show a delay in processing individual sounds.

That delay is only a fraction of a second, but when it's for every sound, the lag time can cascade into a major obstacle in speaking and understanding people, the researchers said.

Imagine if it took a tiny bit longer than normal to understand each syllable. By the end of a whole sentence, you'd be pretty confused.

The study authors believe that's what happens with autistic children, based on the brain wave patterns detected in school-age children in their study.

The preliminary results need to be confirmed in younger children, but the researchers hope this technique could be used to help diagnose autism in children as young as age 1. That's at least a year earlier than usual, and it could mean behavior treatment much sooner.

Andrew Papanicolaou, director of the clinical neurosciences center at University of Texas's Houston campus, said the study makes a major contribution to autism research.

"It gives us a window through which we get a picture of some of the neurological conditions responsible for the peculiar behaviors in autism," said Papanicolaou, who was not involved in the research.

Dr. James McPartland, a Yale University autism researcher who also wasn't involved in the study, called the results "preliminary, with promise." Whether the patterns found in the study exist in all autistic children is uncertain, but they're worthy of more study, he said.

Study results were prepared for release Monday at the Radiological Society of North America meeting in Chicago.

Finding biomarkers - like the brain waves - that could enable earlier diagnosis and treatment is the "holy grail" for autism scientists, McPartland said. Now, doctors typically diagnose autism through parents' reports and by observing behaviors that often don't emerge until at least age 2, he said.

The brain wave study used noninvasive technology called magnetoencephalography, MEG for short. It measures magnetic fields generated by electrical currents in brain nerve cells, and records brain activity in real time.

Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia had 64 autistic children ages 6 to 15 listen through headphones to a series of rapid beeps while under the helmet-like device, which recorded the brain's response to the sounds. Those brain waves, shown as highlighted areas on an imaging screen, were compared with responses in a group of non-autistic children.

In autistic children, response to each sound was delayed by one-fiftieth of a second.

"We tend to speak at four syllables per second," said Timothy Roberts, the study's lead author and the hospital's vice chairman of research. If an autistic brain "is slow in processing a change in a syllable ... it could easily get to the point of being overloaded."

Experts say one in 150 U.S. children have autism, a disorder involving poor verbal communication, repetitive behaviors such as head-banging, and avoidance of physical or eye contact.

There is no cure but behavior treatment and sometimes medication can lessen symptoms.

Among those in the study was Parker Leiby, a 9-year-old Mount Laurel, N.J., boy with mild autism and sometimes hard-to-understand speech. He said he felt like an astronaut wearing that big helmet, and called the whole experience "cool."

Parker was diagnosed at age 2. Since then he's had extensive treatment including speech therapy. He's in a regular third-grade class, loves cross-country running and hopes to become an engineer.

Before participating in the study last year, "we didn't have an answer" about his language difficulties, said Parker's mother, Kim. "It helped shed a lot of light."

Roberts, the study author, said the findings fit with a leading theory that suggests autism is "a disorder of connectivity in the brain."

MEG technology also has been used to map brain tumors and to evaluate epilepsy. McPartland said a few previous studies have used MEG and related technology to study other aspects of autism, but with inconsistent results.

___

On the Net:

Autism: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/autism.html

Radiological Society: http://www.rsna.org

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 8:01:38 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1] 

As many of you know, we've been trying to find a diagnosis for Maura that explains the low muscle tone, delays, crossed eyes, blah blah, yadda yadda, and everything else.

Today, someone asked why I don't get her an autism diagnosis.  This isn't the first time this has been asked, and I thought "Hmm..I wonder just how many people wonder this?"

So, why don't I get Maura an autism diagnosis?

Well, first and foremost, she doesn't fit the criteria. Not even PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder - none other specified.)  To quote Wikipedia's entry on PDD -

Some clinicians use PDD-NOS as a "temporary" diagnosis for children under the age of 5, when for whatever reason there is a reluctance to diagnose autism. There are several justifications for this: very young children have limited social interaction and communication skills to begin with, therefore it can be tricky to diagnose milder cases of autism in toddlerhood. The unspoken assumption is that by the age of 5, unusual behaviors will either resolve or develop into diagnosable autism. However, some parents view the PDD label as no more than a euphemism for autism spectrum disorders, problematic because this label makes it more difficult to receive aid for Early Childhood Intervention.

For those of you unfamiliar with symptoms of PDD (I had to look it up, don't feel bad), they are - and again, quoting from the Wiki entry -

• Difficulty using and understanding language
• Difficulty relating to people, objects, and events
• Unusual play with toys and other objects
• Difficulty with changes in routine or familiar surroundings
• Repetitive body movements or behavior patterns

Now, Maura does have difficulty using and understanding language.  However, the other four criteria doesn't really fit her.  She plays with toys pretty normally, she is social, flexible, and the only repetitive body movement is thumb sucking, which I don't think really counts. 

She actually was evaluated for autism and came back with a "not autistic" diagnosis.  None of her doctors, teachers, or therapists have ever mentioned autism to me.  I've even had her tested for Rett Syndrome, which for the moment is considered on the autism spectrum.

Despite all that, I could actually go to some doctor and probably get some autism spectrum diagnosis.  There's one near us who is notorious for giving them to everyone. 

So why don't I?  Wouldn't it open more doors?  Couldn't I receive more therapies?

Yes and no.

Right now, Maura does qualify for occupational, physical and speech therapies just the way she is.  Many autism therapies are behavioral and social therapies.  Maura doesn't have behavioral or social issues.  She is a happy social girl who will look you in the eye, say "Hi!", and try to join in with what the other kids are doing.  If you showed up at her dance class and tried to pick her out, you wouldn't be able to, because she is sitting nicely with the others, following along well, not causing a commotion. 

And it might open more doors, an autism diagnosis, but it may also close a lot as well.  I worry that if we slap an autism label on her, it may cause a future doctor to not look as closely at her to find out what is really truly going on with her, and write it all off as autism. 

Which brings me to the final reason.  And that is basically, I don't want a diagnosis that isn't true.  I don't want to lie my way into therapies or extra aide.  We manage just fine.  What if by taking that spot on false pretenses, we take it away from a family that really needs it? 

Not to mention that we teach our kids that lying is wrong.  How can we teach them this and then get a doctor to basically lie for us? 

Now, if Maura is actually truly diagnosed with autism someday, I wouldn't have a problem with it.  But right now, to get one under false pretenses just to have some sort of label - well, I just can't do that.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 5:49:36 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0] 

I hoard towels.

When I use towels, I take them and hang them up on the post of my bed's footboard.  This way, if I need a clean towel, I just grab those.

(Okay, I know some of you feel that once a towel has been used, it should be washed.  My theory is, I'm using it on my freshly washed self, therefore, I can get a couple uses out of them, especially for wrapping up my wet hair.)

The problem is, I tend to hoard the towels.  So instead of grabbing said towels off the bedpost, I get new ones.

Case in point - there are five towels stacked up, one upon another, on my bedpost.

Oops.

This stems from when I was a teenager, living in a household of six people, two of whom were little children.  When my brother was a kid, he couldn't take a bath without giving a shower to the whole bathroom. And it seemed that within a day or two, every clean towel was used up, and sometimes there was a big pile of wet towels on the floor that were your only option.

So I took to keeping two towels in my room.  Maybe it was preparation for college life.  More likely the fact that I didn't want to have my only towel options be either the hand towel or some damp, slightly stinky one off the floor.

Now?  Well..maybe there is still some self-preservation involved.  The need for a clean towel or two.  My children seemed to have inherited my brother's tendency of showering the entire room while bathing.  Heck, I've been known to throw a towel over myself while bathing Miss "Splashy Splash" Maura. 

But five towels?  Hmm. Maybe my poor husband does have a right to complain that I "steal" all the towels.  Apparently, I do. 

Monday, December 01, 2008 9:47:17 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2] 

The four weeks before Christmas are always busy, especially what with a small herd of children to get presents and outfits for, the extra time it takes to just get through a regular shopping trip through Target, trying to get decorations up, figure out what to get the rest of the large families we both hail from, etc, etc.

This year, to add to the hectic fun, Maura has been signed up for a special four week therapy, Applied Verbal Behavior, which is at the Kaufman Center.  We're lucky enough to live about an hour and fifteen minutes from this nationally known speech therapy center, it would be a shame not to take whatever advantage of it that we could.

Of course, it means driving an hour and fifteen minutes each way every day.  It also meant that winter weather blew in just in time for me to drive through it all.  I've packed a small bag for in case we get stuck in that town, which hopefully I never need to use.

The good news is that gas prices have gone down a lot.  Enough to not make it hurt to drive the Suburban there and back.  I got all giddy the other day, filling up the tank at $1.54 a gallon - cost just under forty dollars to fill up.  Woohoo!

It's too soon to tell if any of this is taking affect with Maura, though her preschool teachers said on Wednesday that she was very chatty and verbal and whatever we were doing, to keep it up.

In the meantime, we also are getting to deal with a stomach bug, pink eye, and a poor bruised up Maura who fell down the stairs yesterday.  She's sporting a nice lump on her forehead and a bruised knee.  And then woke up with pink eye today, which Miriam was nice enough to share with her.  Poor kid. 

Which leads me to a Handy Tip - when Miriam showed us her pink eye earlier this week, I picked up this item, with the hopes that it would help a little until I could call the doctor the next morning.  I didn't need to.  This took care of the pink eye all by itself!  Oh, neither girl has enjoyed getting the eye drops, but they work.  Saved me a couple trips here and there.  Of course, I'm not a doctor, I've not played one on tv, so feel free to consult an actual doctor for advice on pink eye relief :)

Saturday, November 29, 2008 7:12:18 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]