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I've realized something that I've subconsciously noticed but never thought through.  For a mom like me, with two children with FOD's it was really interesting and exciting. 

Yesterday, for the first time, I took my 4 and 2 year olds to our library's story hour.   I scheduled the trip so that the boys had had a snack right before we left the house.

•  My 4 year old in particular is loving it.  He sings and claps along in rapt attention.  They do the crafts.
• Fun. Excitement.  My 4 year old writes his name on his craft.  By himself, while I am helping the 2 year old.  Evidently he's learned to print by osmosis.
• Time passes.  I help my 8 and 11 year old children find some books.  I check the clock.  It's been two hours since the boy's snack.  Two hours of fun and excitement. 
• We need to leave.  I've been monitoring the 4 year old.  Normally he can go as long as three hours without eating.
• He's not falling apart.  However, he's also no longer reading or looking at things.  He wanders after me making his teeth snap together.  Loud clicking sounds. No one else notices.  
• Suddenly I realize that he's using his mandibular joint to self-calm.

At home when his sugars drop he typically falls apart and/or starts arguing or fighting.  He has a weird high-pitched cry that everyone in the family both hates and instantly can recognize as a blood sugar "alarm."

But he's 4 now.  Public embarrassment is suddenly an issue for him, something he'd rather avoid.  He's trying not to fall apart in public.  He is "centering" himself with his jaw.

Isn't that remarkable?

It wasn't a crisis. We left and had a high-carb + protein snack and he was fine. Evidently story time is very exciting- and exciting, for a FOD'er like my son, means burning lots of energy.

This is the beauty of blogging, it helps me organize the puzzle-pieces of FOD's yet it is impossible to bore acquaintances (unless they are masochists or don't know about the back-button) with extraneous health info.  I can write and write... evidently, I process information through my fingertips.

Coping through typing. Coping through mandibular joint compression...

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Time is suddenly in short supply.  School has started again for my older children and my 4 year old is healthy.

School is an obvious time sucker, home schooling mom or not, but good health?

Healthy 4 year old's need to go to the park to run off extra energy.  Healthy 4 year old's need to be watched every moment and kept busy - especially if said 4 year old has a 2 year old brother with whom to plot mischief.

My 4 year old has never had such a long run of health and energy.  His last hospitalization was the end of April.  Coming on 4 months now of not just the absence of crisis but 4 months of glowing cheeks, growing body, almost normal energy levels. 

Wow.

I remember when he was younger, before his diagnosis, he would sit for hours playing with matchbox cars while I studied with my older children.  I could teach the whole morning with barely a peep.  He was the "easiest" 2 year old around- but only because he was slowly dying and we didn't know it.

Now.

Now, I am constantly being interrupted, my teaching schedule constantly challenged by restlessness.  My writing time ever shrinking.

I'm o.k. with this. I'm more than o.k. I'm in awe.  I'm ridiculously happy in that I-feel-compelled-to-do-a-silly-dance-and-embarrass-my-teens sort of way.  I'm in hope. Hope that this stage will last.

I love being annoyed that he's running around like a lunatic.  Not so much in love that he and the 2 year old took all the sheets, blankets, and pillows off all 4 of the boys beds... 

Hope is a delicious thing when you finally make peace with it.  Hope is not a prayerful demand. It's the antithesis of worry.

I've been afraid of hope.  Afraid of a broken heart.  But to learn to truly have hope that my son will be well enables me to smile and love and trust God- and to enjoy the today that I have.

Perhaps for people like me- people who don't like to be wrong- hope is especially difficult. It's ridiculously humbling.

We've been told that children like my 4 year old often have a stretch without crisis from age 4 or 5 until the growth spurt at puberty.  I thought that sounded wonderful- so hopeful.  My husband said, "Well I'm going to hope for no crises even during puberty."  Hope comes easier to him.

With time I'd like to be able to think that way too. 

With time.

Time is suddenly in short supply right now- because right now I have time with my son- with all my children.

Because of hope- I don't have to waste that time.

I do however have to go put the blankets back on all the beds.... grrr...

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 In college I had a great pottery professor.  He was young and uber-talented with a young wife who oozed confidence and competence. While driving a small motorcycle, David was hit when a pick-up ran a stop-sign.  Patti and I talked on the phone in the first day or so after David's accident.  Patti told me to go hug and love my husband (and to let go of pettiness) because I could never know how much time we had to be together.

Her husband had a long, long road to recovery, but he made it- they made it.

Over the years, I've often thought of that conversation.  That conversation was a gift for my attitude and for my marriage.  I'm sure she's never known how many people watched her during that time period and how many were blessed by her strength and faith in the midst of their personal trial. 

About two years ago my husband tracked down David and Patti in order to surprise me with one of David's porcelain platters as an anniversary gift.  I love, love, love, David's artwork.

Patti was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.  Pray for her. Visit her "shiny new" blog, Someone Wake Me Up.

Laugh with her- this great post with the t-shirt photo almost did me in!  This photo captures perfectly the idea of enjoying the moment at hand.  (Pun intended.)

It seems to me that during this new trial, Patti's already blessing people again. 

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Life is not fair.  I know this because my 18 year old son had no cavities today yet my 16 year old daughter had several.  Guess which one of them has, from the earliest age,  been meticulous about brushing teeth?

When you have a million children you don't take them to the dentist all at once.  You stagger.  Which means that the final report card on how good a mother you are can take a whole month.  My report card?  2 cavities out of 7 mouths. 

Do I really think cavities are a reflection of my parenting worth?  No.  Except when I'm sitting with the hygienist and she is explaining that she can tell my 8 year old child has not been brushing well and my child blurts out, "That's because I lost my toothbrush at Grandma's house in May.  Remember Mom?  I kept telling you I needed a new one."  Then I do feel a teensy bit like, the Worst Mother In the World- Grade F.

The dentist's secretary gave my son a sword-shaped balloon and then put a sign on my back that read: Warning this mother failed her children in dental hygiene 101.  

That's o.k. because today's feel good for Feel Good Friday is the immense laugh I had when relating my dental-tale-of-embarrassment to my husband. 

Life really, really, isn't fair.   The 8 year old, despite his almost 2 month brushing hiatus, also had no cavities.

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I just realized something fabulous;  my About Me is completely out-of-date.

Potty training? Check- that's been accomplished for several months.

High school senior with college aplications, FAFSA and scholarship forms? Check- that's been accomplished. 

Breathing through my nose?  I've managed it fairly consistently.

Knitting a sweater?  O.k. so that's on hold.  How about knitting the world's slowest ever pair of socks? I think that counts- 7 months later I'm a rocking 1/3 the way through that.

Progress is my middle name.

Uh, oh.  Now for the rewrite.

Do you think, "Save the clock tower!" is too obscure a movie quote or too far down a convoluted line of thinking from, "Progress is my middle name" to be an About Me. 

Does anyone, besides me,  read other blog About Me's anyway?

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This will be short because I'm too sleepy from successfully completing the following suggestions.

1. Work on German grammar with your 11th grader at 9:45p.m. When she leaves pick up a German novel and read for a while, using your very,very, rusty German reading skills.  These late night activities will ensure that your brain cannot remember how to dream, in any language, thus ensuring garbled sleep and the early morning desire to quote Dr.  Suess. (It's so fun to read in German, but makes my eyebrow get red hot.)
2. At 2:00a.m., after you feed your little one and are getting back into bed, think about the 9 months worth of post-dated checks you had to write for the tutorial program where your two teen-aged daughters will be taking a few high school classes.  Think about all those checks and the amount of money they represent each month...  For spice, throw in thoughts of your son's college expenses.
3. Ask your 18 year old son to get up extra early to do a few things before he goes to work. This will provide the opportunity for you to finally fall asleep about the same time his alarm goes off.  The alarm which, from all the way across the house, wakes you but fails to wake him. Make sure his alarm is playing Billy Joel so that you will get to spend time wondering what decade it is.

Good Morning, and feel free to add to my list.

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I remember vividly thinking, "What was I thinking!!!",  as my husband headed out the door to take my mom back to the airport almost 19 years ago.

I had a body not-so healed from an emergency cesarean,  a new-born-first-born baby, and a strong desire to fling myself flat on the ground in order to hold onto my mother's ankles so she could not walk out the front door.

We made it.  My new-born baby's been house-sitting and working in another town for the past couple of weeks.  He starts college soon, and at least appears to have suffered no permanent damage from being raised by totally clueless parents.

We have more clues now.  Thanks to our firstborn, our guinea pig.

Today's our first full day back to school.  Minus my college son, I have a 3rd, a 5th, a 9th and an 11th grader along with my 2 pre-schoolers. Once again I find myself wondering/silently screaming...

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It's time for the Girl Next Door's Feel Good Friday.  It's also garbage pickup day on our street.

What's the connection?

My oldest son has done the garbage chore for years.  However, suddenly he has a life outside our home.  College. Work. Girlfriend. 

Hopefully in that order- no offense intended, Brittany.

My almost 9 year old son has been in training.  This morning he did the garbage chore without forgetting anything.  Wahoo! 

We have another 10 year garbage run covered and then my current 2 year old can pick up the slack.  Boys... noisy and goofy, but also quite useful.

Which leads me to my second Feel Good.  It's worth at least 4 Feel Goods, bringing my total to the meme's required 5.

My 4 year old son dressed himself for our "formal" family portrait.  He could only reach the 2 year old's Winter clothing.  He made do.

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Early on my husband realized he was the luckiest man alive.  Why?  Because I never could remember the dates of our wedding anniversary/my birthday/his birthday/Valentine's day, therefore, I could never get mad if he forgot any of the above events.

I blame a faulty gene on my parents. I believe that the gene that enables other women to style their hair well must be the same gene that places enough sentimentality on dates to make one able to remember them.

It would explain a lot.

I finally had to have our wedding date engraved inside my wedding ring just so I wouldn't have to call my mother repeatedly during the month of December.

Hey, at least I could remember our wedding month.  I can't really take much credit though, it's hard to miss the poinsettia trees that are in a lot of the wedding pictures.

Recently I panicked and dug out my 8 year old's birth certificate just to make sure I'd been writing his correct birthday on his school forms.

Phew.  Got that right at least.

I'd planned on celebrating my first blogiversary with an incredibly insightful post that would definitely end up going viral.

But I forgot.

My blogiversary came and went without even a hard-drive backup to commemorate the event.   I only remembered when my parents-in-law commented on how grown-up my kids' friends were looking.  It reminded me that my first post had to do with my kids' friends laughing at some of the items I had on hand at an outing.

So one year, 6 weeks and 1 day later, anniversaries come and go.  But mothers, even blogging ones with faulty sentimentality genes, are always prepared.