Three

She woke on her birthday, excited, hair a tangled mess. She pranced about in her purple footed jammies, tearing open pink paper and bows. Jabbering, laughing, pretending.

She was a month early. She was tiny. She was covered in lanugo that had yet to fall out. She was colicky. She had jaundice. She had a hard time nursing. She never slept. She insisted that she lay safely in my arms at all times. She threw fits. 

(Correction: she THROWS fits)

She is beautiful, full of fire and life. She is determined, incredibly smart. She loves to be loved upon, kissed and cuddled. She potty trained herself. She loves the color purple and wears a tutu over her jeans, along with mismatching rain boots.  She has a birthmark on her belly, and a freckle on her ankle. She makes me laugh, makes me cry, and makes me think that perfection can exist in a 25 pound ball of feistiness. She is mine.

She is three....

....and off to school she went. Quiet, contemplative, leaving behind a Mommy who was not ready, and sad to see her go. She loved it. She loved all of it, and when we were driving home, she asked me if we could go back.

Sort

There is a folder on my desktop that waits for me.  It is patient, understanding, full of unlocked potential. It grows from time to time, occasionally bursting at the seams. Within this folder, little treasures await, like this one....

This folder is called "Sort". It's full of the images that I will get to, that should be first upon my list. The ones I love are hiding within this folder, the ones I cherish the most. This year, I will sort first, and work second. Backing up a bit, here's Christmas. Christmas was a house full of love, naturally-flavored-no-artificiallly-colored-jelly beans, excited children, and tension. My parents are divorcing, and everyone was at my house Christmas morning. It's tough. It will continue to be tough. We'll all come out of the other side, and we'll be better for it. We did have a few quiet, coffee drinking, fresh fruit and vegetable juicing goodness before the madness happened.

More from Sort to come. 

PS Pardon my dust as I learn about Photobucket and images......apparently I selected the wrong size when resizing my vertical images, and there are two sleeping beauties in my house that need to arise from their slumber. Momma doesn't have time to fix this. Images+Blogger=ridiculously ridiculous and nowhere near as cool as Wordpress.

Robotic Woman

Hello, I'm a Mac. A MacBook Pro to be exact. Macs have a host of cool features that PCs don't, like the Robotic Woman. Every hour, on the hour, she quietly tells me, "It's 3 o'clock", "It's 4 o'clock" ECT.  At first, I thought she was pleasant, helpful, keeping me on track. Isn't it surprisingly kind that someone would care enough to give me the time and I didn't even have to ask?

Now that the holidays are here, now that I'm so busy with work that I'm drowning in it, now that my eyes are burning at night from exhaustion, she taunts me. "It's 9 o'clock" she just whispered, reminding me that it's getting late, and I'm still editing. "It's 9 o'clock" she calls out, reminding me that I haven't folded the clothes, and that they're quickly wrinkling in the hamper. "It's 9 o'clock" she screams, torturing me with a million things that I intended to do today, but didn't.

Guess what?! It's 9 o'clock and today I dragged my butt out of bed at 6:00am to make myself look decent, I lead worship at two SCC services, went to lunch with my family, cuddled in bed and read with my kids for an hour while the slight drizzle and chilly air kept us inside, finished editing a session, started another one, put in three print orders, picked up the house, called my Grandma June, bathed two wiggly kiddos, read in bed again, and sent my Husband happily off to poker night.

Booya, Robotic Woman.

While I Edit....

I'm editing.

Every night.

It's beginning to exhaust me.

My image files are huge, so while they take 2 minutes (each) to save, I'll write. Last weekend I sat around a huge table and listened to 7 other Moms (and a few Dads!) share about their Autistic children. Aden is about to start receiving in home ABA therapy, and we (we-meaning whichever one of us can make it) have to attend three Saturdays of parents training. The training was incredibly mind numbing (I basically consider myself an Autism expert at this point) but the stories were riveting, heart breaking. I've made it a bit of a habit to cry in front of total strangers. Long gone are the days when I could pretend everything was perfect, or even fine. Nothing is perfect, and some days aren't fine, some days are horrible.

I did a lot of listening on this particular Saturday. A year ago, Aden was a different child. Today, he is very high functioning. He's extremely verbal, and he expresses love. These parents have children who do not speak. 12 year olds that do not speak. 5 year olds in diapers. They use double barrel locks on all of their doors to keep their kids inside. One little girl will try to rip your shirt off if it's blue. Blue is her favorite color. She will drag a chair out into the yard and spin on it, staring at the sky for hours. Another little boy will eat anything. Anything. Leaves, paper, toys, clothes. These parents talked about the years that it took for them to convince their pediatrician that they needed a referral for testing. These parents are dying inside because they can't help their children.

Autism is not a Developmental Disorder (shame on you, school districts). It is not a Psychological Disorder (shame on you, Psychologists).

Autism is a NEUROLOGICAL Disorder. Specifically, a NEUROTOXIC Disorder. Our children's brains have been poisoned, and each child's poison is manifested differently, with varying levels of severity. Some children are born with a weakened immune system. When we are pregnant, we expose out babies to toxins. We have ultrasounds, and a flu shot, or take medication to stop our pre-term labor. There is no way to know your child's immune strength in advance. Then we immunize them when they are born. Then we spray for bugs, then we put delicious smelling lotion on their bodies, then we feed them baby food from a jar instead of making or own with organic produce, then we microwave their bottle, then we immunize them again, then we brush their teeth with toothpaste full of fluoride, then we clean the house with chemical cleaners, then we give them an antibiotic because they have another ear ache, then we see a rash, then we put more delicious smelling lotion on, then they have diarrhea, then the DR says, "it's from the antibiotics" because the DR is ignorant and doesn't see that the rash is caused by an over growth of yeast in your baby's gut that is caused by too many antibiotics. The your baby slowly become pale because the yeast is eating holes in his gut and he is leaking out all of his nutrients. Then you immunize him again, and you think that he may die from it because he's so ill that he can't lift his little blond head up. Then you take him to urgent care twice and back to the DR twice and beg them to make him better. Then NO ONE will write in his chart that he is having a reaction to his MMR and you want to SCREAM. Then you think he is getting better because he is running around and playing once more, but he isn't getting better. The poison is spreading. He starts repeating your words, obsessively. He is obsessed with his routines and the way things look. He opens and closes doors until you force him to stop. He stares at lights and out windows. His body is still with you but he is gone, somewhere far away. You clap your hands to bring him back. He lines up his cars. He lines up his blocks. He lines up his animals. He lines up his entire life because he can't tell you that his brain is falling apart. You have no idea. Then someone slaps a label on him. Then you ask your pediatrician what you can do medically that will help him and he says, "NOTHING". Then you...

Then you...

Then you...

Then you...

Then you....want to die....because someone has told you that you can't help your son.

This is Autism.

Then you pick yourself back up and fight. It's a long road, but a year later, it was the right road to follow.

Much to Catch Up On...Not enough Coffee To Get It All Out

Yes, yes, yes....I'm a bad blogger. I'm supposed to be writing about "Every Little Thing" in an effort to document my family's life. The truth is, business is booming and if I'm on the computer, I'm editing, or Facebooking client's images, or blogging about them here. I assume that in January, this madness will end, and blogging will resume.

I'm beginning to love parent/teacher conferences. Aden's teacher made me cry yesterday as she went on and on about how smart, sweet and loving he is. Of course as his mother, I already know all of this, but it's nice to hear that other people agree with me (as they should). She's going to start supplementing him with kindergarten materials, she said that she has nothing left to teach him. He's supposed to repeat pre-k again next year so that his age will line up with the other children's age. (he's very young for pre-k). We'll see how well pre-k year 2 goes.

"The only thing we need to work on is his eye contact and interaction with his friends, which is greatly improving".

Ya...eye contact shmy contact. 

I used to worry about things like eye contact. I used to have an internal freak out when he would talk to me and stare at my shoes. Last year at this time, he would repeat everything I said. Now he says things like, "Wow, that sure is sour!" and "Daddy, how was your day today?" and...

"Mommy, I love you so much, you're my best friend."

Ya...eye contact shmy contact.

This is why I love living in the desert. My sometimes-assistant (otherwise known as my little brother) and I were setting up for a shoot in the middle of nowhere this weekend, and we turn around to see the sky like this. Within 5 minutes, the magic was gone, but for a short while, we got to bask in the glory of something amazing, something so much bigger than ourselves, God rocked the sky.

My little girl is almost 3. She's potty trained. She's feisty. She's beautiful. She deserves her own post....coming soon.

Twitch...twitch....twitch twitch twitch....

Wednesdays are good. Wednesdays are soul-filling, help you get through the end of the week kind of good. I have Mom2Mom at church, and the housekeeper comes. 2 blessed hours of uninterrupted Mommy bonding, coffee drinking, speaker hearing sweetness, and when we come home, the blessed housekeeper is gone. Clean, organized, oh-how-I-love-you Wednesdays! On this particular Wednesday (yesterday) I opened my exhausted eyes, and felt a little twitch. In the shower, another twitch. All through Mom2Mom my left eye kept twitching. It's been over 24 hours and my eye is consistently twitching. I decided to research this irritation and here are the causes taken from www.EyeCareBasics.com....

• Fatigue or lack of sleep (check)
• Over consumption of caffeine (check)
• Physical or emotional stress (check)
• Anxiety or phobias (umm bees, anyone?!)
• Brain damage or other neurological disorders (nope)
• Associated with temper tantrums (especially in children) (<---------my daughter, anyone?!)
• Eye stress associated with extended viewing of the computer screen (editing for hours, anyone?!)
• Epilepsy (nope)

So basically I need to sleep more, drink less coffee, stop stressing about work, get over my fear of ANYTHING that flies, get my daughter to stop throwing hour long fits and stop staring at the computer....

I had better get used to this twitch...

The Last Frame

Here it is. Not focused, unaware, unassuming, unprepared for what was to happen, the second our shoot changed. The last frame.

I don't want to see it, but I can't stop staring at it. Some times, when it's quiet and I actually have a moment to think, I think that I should have known. I should have been more careful. I'm not superwoman, things can hurt me, hurt the people I love. Things can go wrong. I should have known.