A few more September photos

Enjoy!

If you wanna kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel

Holy cow, September came and went. Just as I got ready to sit down and write about the first day of school, something came up. I'll recap the month's events in chronological order to help myself make sense of all of it: the happy, the less happy, and the indifferent.

School started, and I shake my head in amazement as I look at the three photos below. We've made it through three first days of school. This success bolsters me on days when I look forward to being in my 40s cause Rose will hopefully be out of the house. Or on the days I have to remind Rose we are all faking it until we make it.

6th Grade First Day Photo, August 2012

5th Grade First Day Photo, August 2011

4th Grade First Day Photo, January 2011

Minneapolis starts school before Memorial Day. The long weekend provided a much-needed break after a terrible first week of school. Rose ended up having to call home the first day. This ominous sign pushed me over the edge, and I took the next two days off determined to find a better school fit. Then I realized there really isn't a better place. Good charter schools with smaller class sizes have a pretty big waiting list. Private schools can't support Rose's needs, and going to another big public school compounds the same issues.

I visited a few bad charter schools where the special education staff had so many hats I couldn't imagine them managing Rose's needs.  At the same time, I learned a mom who makes multiple calls into the district results in new resources popping out of the woodwork. So rather than move Rose, we decided to enroll Rose in a half day treatment program to help her develop her social skills.

The district supported the idea, which means she would be able to go to therapy half day and return to school of the other half, allowing her to practice the skills she was learning. Plus, she'll keep the fabulous network of support at the current school.  Cause most of her school troubles are peer related.

Feeling good about our decision, we took a trip to The State Fair over the holiday weekend, and we had a great time. The butterfly house was a huge hit, and Rose got to take her first ride on a tilta whirl.

Rose feeding the butterflies with sugar I am certain was also laced with a butterfly drug.
I've never seen butterflies act so crazy.

The first week of school brought the wonderful arrival of our new nephew, Kenneth Charles Schulte, or Kenny.

The same week, we also traded in my Mustang for a Jeep, which is more family and dog friendly and is really a fun car. Rose loves it. So do I.

See what I mean? All of that happened in one week! I'm exhausted just trying to write about it. The second week of school went alright, we got calls frequently, but the staff was very patient as we tried to get appointments with treatment facilities.

At the conclusion of week 2, we visited an apple orchard to celebrate the start of fall. We went to Minnetonka Orchards, which has a small cover charge well worth it for the freshly made apple cinnamon doughnuts.

Queen of the hill!

Sheer delight is an accomplishment for a moody Tween.

The third week of school, though, resulted in Rose having to go into full time treatment in Duluth after she said she had been hiding pills in her room with the intent of killing herself.  When she made the omission I was at bowling. As soon as I got the call, I rushed to the hospital where I stayed until 5 a.m. while arrangements were made. Mike had a terrible cold so I sent him home at around midnight, and had the delight of listening to someone die just a few doors over.

In fact, the intensity of the drama traumatized me more than having Rose there. I had figured she'd probably have this happen at some point, I just didn't think it'd happen at such a young age. Since I'd seen my own sister receive help at 16 and on for her bipoloar disorder, this process wasn't new to me. We would rather she had been admitted to a program closer to the cities, but there weren't any beds open.

Rose left for Duluth Thursday morning, and Saturday we drove up to visit her for the weekend. The five hours of driving to and from seemed almost ridiculous for the 2.5 hours of visiting time we got for it, but we had to visit. As we were making the trip, I started to experience some pretty horrific pain in my left leg. I brushed it off. I didn't have time for it. Rose's treatment in Duluth was only a week, which meant she'd be coming home Wednesday. We had arrangements to make, and fast.

We called the school, and let them know we were going to have Rose enrolled in a full time day treatment program. That means she receives school half of the day and therapy the other half. The school was in complete support, and the district actually provides the schooling and a bus for us.  So between Monday and Wednesday we were busy arranging appointments with the treatment program.

At the same time, my left leg was getting worse. So bad that both Monday and Tuesday I had to pull over on my way to work at least four times. On Tuesday, by the time I made it to a Brueggars parking lot, the pain gripping my leg was so severe, I couldn't walk once I out got out of my car. Instead, I started sobbing. I'm not a public crier. Thankfully no one said anything to me. Once I was able recover, I booked an appointment with my doctor the next day.

Long story short, the doctor reported I'd lost a significant amount of muscle strength in a very short amount of time. I was prescribed physical therapy and an MRI. The MRI revealed two herniated discs, likely from the car accident, one is crushing the nerve running down my left leg. So right when Rose got home from the hospital, I was pretty sad thinking of how I wouldn't be able to run possibly forever. I was even more angry that I'd stayed fit so I'd be a great mom who can keep up with my kid, and now I'm suddenly not.

And that brings us to the last week. Rose has been in her program for one whole week, and she likes it. The attention she gets from the staff is beyond our expectation. Her behaviors at home are even getting less tense as a result.

I'm getting over the shock of feeling so disabled all of a sudden, and the physical therapy seems to be helping, which means I might not need surgery. In the meantime, my coworkers have been very understanding when I need to stand up and walk around meeting rooms.

Lord only knows what October will bring, but after the past month. I just I hope it's fairly uneventful so we can focus on Halloween fun. If you read this, pray for a month of calm for us.

Buying happiness

I never thought i would buy my kid the overly expensive, name brand things.

My mom didn't. She couldn't afford to. And although we can technically afford to, philosophically I am not on board with designer kids stuff for many reasons. Mostly, you don't need a bunch of name brand, expensive things to be liked. I used to judge parents in malls buying their kids such things.

That was until I got a kid, and I wanted that kid to be liked, and all my attempts at buying less expensive "cool" shoes have back fired. Proving that a 34-year-old has no real sense of what is cool to 11-year-olds.

So behold Rose in shoes more expensive than any I owned until I was 27. Will they automatically make her popular? Nope. Did they make her so happy that she's been up since seven today wearing them around the house? Yep.

So that is probably worth the cost, my loss of personal conviction, and the people who were walking by the shoe store judging me.

Organized Chaos?

I have had a pretty big struggle the past few weeks. Note I didn't say Rose had a struggle. I said me.

My struggles have been in realizing how much Rose has been lying and defying us. That alone doesn't bug me. Kids will push boundaries. I want her to. It's her response to being caught that kills me. Kills me.

She will admit to whatever it is sometimes but then argue about why she was  right to break whatever rule has been offended. It feels like there's no getting through to her. More over, my worry amps up thinking about the dangers she'll encounter as she gets older.

I want her to be able admit to those mistakes to us. I want her to know that if she ends up in trouble as a teen, we can help. And  I want to be able to help without me shaking in anger after listening to Rose explain why she decided staying out until 2 a.m. was ok. Or whatever.

Last night, I was awake almost all night mulling this over. I was also mulling over my smashed-up Mustang, our kitchen currently being repaired and painted, and surprisingly those worries pushed all thoughts of work out of my mind. Woot.

Here's my poor first ever brand new, my dream car after rear ending a Dodge Durango.

Around four a.m. this morning I reset my alarm as I decided to skip boot camp at 5 a.m. I did just finish a half marathon Saturday and felt a little entitled. My muscles are still a bit sore, and after no more than 2 hours of solid sleep enduring another hour of vigorous exercise hardly seemed wise.

This morning, Rose was defiant, bordering on emotional abusive, as always lately. I weathered the storm pretty well. Then I dropped her off, I noticed the brake light in my sister's truck was blinking. It's a 26-year-old truck she can't use right dow due to herniated discs in her neck. So I have no confidence the light is just an old truck bein quirky or if it's real. I'm lucky she can lend it to me while my car is repaired. But I'm not willing to risk my life getting to work in it.

Rather than hitting the free way, I decided to come home because my sis wasn't answering her phone and couldn't confirm that my commute to the office wouldn't end in a fiery crash. I had to take care of insurance paperwork anyway, and I took a personal day. After dealing with my insurance stuff, I began to think about Rose again.

That's when I realized half of the lies she was trying to cover up revolved around the total and utter mess her room was in. It's easy to hide things in a room that's a pig sty. I decided to spend about two hours of my personal day deep cleaning her room. I figured the act might make her happy because she might be overwhelmed by the chaos. Or, she might be angry about how much stuff I purged. I was willing to take the risk

When she walked in and saw the work I'd done she was thrilled. Yay. She's hugged me, twice. As I figured, most of the stuff I threw she didn't even remember shoving into drawers. I left a pile of stuff on her table for her to organize. I explained how I'd emptied and sorted her bins--assigning clear tasks for each.

I wonder if maybe part of Rose's sass the past week was resulting from the utter chaos her room was in. I know I feel off kilter when my car, office, or bedroom is messy but I am a little "type a" that way. Then I realize maybe part of my heightened frustration toward Rose's behaviors lately revolve around the chaos in my own life (the kitchen in disrepair, the intense training, the broken car). Who knows.

Here are some after pics of Rose's room. Yes, it's still pink.

(Wish I had realized the chaos of my life and her room would lend themselves to a blog post so I'd thought to take a pre pic.)

Another Family First