a ranch filled with bunnies

once again, i'm in the process of figuring out Brooke. she's definitely growing up and showing signs of entering into the next phase of kid-hood. as soon as i think i've got things under control, she up and changes the game and i've got to work out a whole new set of rules.

she had a sleepover recently and the girls who were here brought nail polish. brooke has always shunned nail polish and won't ever cave to my desire to paint her nails, even if i offer her bribes. but guess what - she painted her own nails! granted, it was clear paint that glows in the dark, but still, she painted her nails. that's new territory.

she has decided that i'm no longer free to read her journal. previously she's always welcomed and encouraged me to read it and check out her drawings. no more. i'm pretty sure she's writing mean things about me. that's okay. i wrote mean things about my mom too, and it doesn't at all affect my feelings for her now.

last week i was trying to figure out what top i could wear with a pair of pretty chocolately brown dress pants that i inherited and hemmed so that they fit perfectly. i was struggling because i'm not very good at fashion unless it's really obvious and simple. brooke saw me struggling and decided to help me make an outfit. she went to google and pulled up a picture of a color wheel that included browns and from there decided which colors were most complimentary to my pants. then she went to my closet and made some suggestions, leading me to pick a shirt that looks great with them. who'd have guessed that a clueless fashion girl could help her clueless fashion mom by using the color wheel that i'd taught her about recently during an art class on contrasting colors.

we're also still working on acceptable words. it's hard for me to limit her vocabulary on words that i say. i never swear around her, but the words crap and suck are common place around here. however, some of her friends parents are less than thrilled to have her teaching such words to their own kids. i want to increase her chances of having good friendships, so we're working on that.

i'm also finding myself needing to teach her bad words. she would never use truly bad ones intentionally if she knows they're bad, but she's great at deciphering the right way to say something even if she's not clear on the exact meaning. she told me once, "don't be a pussy, mom." i had to explain that one and she was pretty embarrassed. thankfully she said it only to me and she thought she was just calling me a scaredy cat.

we watched an animal planet show recently that showed some dude who was raising tigers on his property. he was a total dunce who liked to walk them on leashes even when they were too big to be handled and could easily kill him with a quick swipe or bite. he gets famous people who like to live dangerously who come and visit his tigers, including heidi flys (spelled wrong intentionally), the madam who runs the bunny ranch prostitution ring. her name was written on screen and under it the words "Bunny Ranch Owner" and brooke latched right onto that. "ooh, mom, a bunny ranch! that must be such a cool place! i want to work on a bunny ranch someday."

i was left with the dilemma of deciding if i should let it fly right over her head or if i should correct her and set her straight to avoid her possibly telling someone at church (or the grocery store or anywhere else) that someday she wants to work at the bunny ranch. she'd be mortified later if that happened. i don't believe in telling kids not to say or do something without giving them an honest answer for why. i hate the mystery and intrigue that creates and with a kid like Brooke, if i didn't give a satisfactory answer, she's likely to google it and get way more than either of us bargained before.

so of course i told her what the bunny ranch was. yet again i was oversharing with my child in an attempt to save her from potential future embarrassment.

as we cross over into the place in life where there are rarely howling, head-banging, skin-scratching episodes, we've come to a place of too much information and uncomfortable conversations. i don't know if i'm doing it right, but i'm doing the best i can. she made me a christmas present, so i must be doing something right.

super aspie

i've been thinking about this aspergers thing again. actually, i've been thinking about it for the past 6 years, but as brooke gets older, my perspective changes.

i've been trying to decide if i consider her to be "special needs." i've never had a real need to qualify her in that kind of way because she's never been in day care or school. nothing more organized than sunday school or gymnastics class for the most part.

to me, she seems completely "normal" and functional much of the time. when we're home, which we are the vast majority of the time, she's happy and content and generally busy doing things by herself during her free time. we've developed routines to help her deal with the things in life that she hates or doesn't understand and we don't see many freakouts anymore.

when we went on the cruise a couple weeks ago, i was filling out registration forms ahead of time for the carnival camp. it was to allow brooke to do activities on the ship with some other kids and to give chris and i the chance to do something without her. there was a separate form to fill out if your child is "special needs." i hesitated and then didn't fill it out. she'd done so well at camp in ny the previous month that i thought maybe we wouldn't need to tell anyone on the ship that there's anything different about her. i thought maybe she could just be treated like every other kid and be fine rather than being treated with special concern or condescension.

i was wrong. i ended up having to fill out the form after all once an incident in the child care room popped up, resulting in her screaming and crying and insisting that she was never stepping foot back in that stupid place again. a couple days later she was reluctantly willing to try again in order to see a kids only magic show. as she walked sullenly away from me at the entrance, i quietly spoke to the woman in charge of check-in and said, "brooke is.... slightly autistic... and..." but before i could go any further, she said, "the whole staff is aware of brooke and we know ALL about her and her needs."

i swallowed the giant lump in my throat and all the words that wanted to spew out. i resisted the urge to slap her or thank her or snatch brooke right back out of that room. i clenched my teeth and i walked away. i sat on a bench a few feet away where i could see brooke through the window for the whole hour she was in there because she wasn't even willing to go in unless i promised to stay right in that spot. while i sat there, i held back tears. thinking or saying the word "autism" in reference to her makes my heart ache and my eyes leak. i rebel against it.

i want so much for her to like life. i want her to have all the chances to experience everything good and fun. i want her to be treated like all the other kids, but when she is, the result is all too often a fiasco. i want her to feel like she fits in.

but much of the time, she doesn't.

recently i've had some conversations with family members about her having aspergers. i think it's hard to understand. i don't for a moment feel like brooke is broken or defective or disabled. i don't feel like she needs to be "cured" if such a thing was even possible. she is just wired differently in a world where most people are wired more similarly.

i've been trying to think of a way to describe it to someone who hasn't done the research and doesn't want the long answer. i haven't found anything i'm fully satisfied with, but the best thing i can compare it to is being left handed. in a world dominated by righties, there are challenges for those rare lefties. they aren't sick or defective or in need of correction, but they need special scissors and they hold their papers differently. sometimes they'll bang elbows with their rightie neighbors, but if a little bit of care and planning is taken, the differences can be comfortably accommodated without a lot of undo attention.

that's what i try to do in brooke's life. i try to do that bit of planning and accommodating in advance so that things can flow smoothly. i'm trying to teach her how to explain herself and her differences to people in a clear and concise way so that they can understand her unique needs and still respect her as a whole, interesting, articulate little human. i'm also teaching her that just because someone is older than her, it doesn't mean they're right. i think it's really important for her to believe in herself and her own knowledge and opinions because there are so many ignorant, judgmental, rude people, adults included, in the world. she needs to trust that she's okay even if someone tells her she's not.

it seems to be working so far. she considers aspergers to be her own personal superpower. she embraces her differences and feels sorry for those of us who don't see the world from her fabulously interesting perspective. i hope she'll always feel that way about herself, no matter what she encounters in her life. 

so campy

for about a year, brooke has been talking about going to summer camp. she'd read about it in a book and seen some tv episodes about camping and she wanted to give it a try. it made me a little sick to my stomach when i first started considering actually letting her go. she's always been explosive when things got too loud or overwhelming. she likes to know what to expect all the time and she needs time to transition more slowly than most kids from one activity to the next. these are all things that would likely be aggravated by a typical camp environment.

there's a place i went as a kid, every summer, called word of life ranch. it's a wonderful, beautiful place in the adirondack mountains where college students who have done a year at their bible institute work as counselors during the summer. i have tons of happy memories of being there and i felt like, if brooke was going to camp, that's where it would need to be.

i got over my anguishy belly and signed her up for a week. i decided she would only go as a day camper rather than overnight every day for a week so as to have a chance to detox and calm down in my presence if things got too overwhelming for her. i was anticipating at least one SOS call from camp admin asking me to come get her because she was freaking out and inconsolable.

well, as it turns out, brooke was incredibly ready for camp. we drove to new york (15 hr drive) and for a couple nights we just went to the evening camper meetings and walked around the property. she had a chance to absorb the noises and smells and chaos and yelling with me at her side before i dropped her off for a whole day. she met her counselors and the kids who would share her cabin for the week. she was more than ready when i left her at 7:30 monday morning.

all day long, i waited for the phone call of distress. nothing. i enjoyed my day with family and when i picked her up in the evening, she was happy and full of sugary joy.

she got to take a horsemanship class that allowed her to spend a total of six hours with the horses over the course of the week and that was definitely her favorite part.

brooke functioned happily through so many various new things all week long. she had to learn how to go through a food line and pick her own meal choices three times a day. she had to sit still and quiet through bible meetings. she had to always keep track of at least one of her counselors and she had to stay calm even when things got super loud.

each night when i picked her up, she didn't want to sit quietly with me to cool down after a hectic day. she wanted to play and squeal with her cousins and practice her newfound trick of armpit farts.

all in all, it was a fantastical week, better than i'd even dared to hope. she can't wait to go back next year and she wants to sleep over in 2013 now that she knows what to expect.

it's amazing to see my little aspie girl absorbing and applying all the coping skills she's learned so that she can go new places and try new things without becoming overwhelmed or freaking anyone out in the process. my soul is a happy place.

adolescent aspie

my child continues to surprise me. she says and does things that are funny and interesting and often so different from me. i feel like i don't relate to a lot of things about brooke, but that kind of makes her even more intriguing and vaguely mysterious.

i just bought a book about asperger's syndrome in adolescence. it's for parents or teachers of kids between the ages of 10 and 18. everything i've read before was aimed at parents of younger kids, so it's good to be reading about the next phase.

the wiring in aspie brains is different than the wiring of a neuro-typical (NT) person and this becomes even more apparent during puberty. i realize that brooke isn't 10 yet, but she's certainly started puberty and she's already dealing with some of those difficult changes. reading this book is helping me to feel like some of her glitches  have legitimate reasons behind them and they aren't cause for frustration or correction, but rather compassion and calmness.

some things about her please me tremendously. like when she says things about her brain. she's always talked about her brain since she was about 4 and learned what a brain was. just now she told me that her brain is really interesting and it has a unique feature that allows her to play movies in her head of things that happened far back in her past and the movies aren't just from her own perspective, but also from the view of someone else who was watching her. she told me very clearly about something that happened when she was just a couple months past her second birthday. and she got the details right, so it had to be a real memory of her own because the parts she remembered weren't the things i would have recalled about that day.

yesterday she came running inside after playing out in the beautiful spring air for a while and said, "mommy, mommy! this day smells so awesome! it smells just like the library's porch!"

she says strange things to me and laughs openly at me. i'll admit that it's often what would be considered disrespectful to most parents, but i know she's not trying to be rude, she's just calling it how she sees it and she doesn't comprehend that honesty sometimes isn't the best policy. you should see her double over in cackling laughter when i do a workout video. i've been working out with a few "hip hop abs" videos (i know, so dorky, but they make my muscles ache afterwards, so they're clearly working for me) and for her, it's like a great comedy show. i think if i let her, she'd pop a bag of popcorn to munch while watching the hilarious flailing of mommy, sweating and moaning while i stomp, jump and crunch around the room.

aspies are often known for their lack of voice intonation and sometimes sound monotone when they speak. they often don't have very expressive faces, but brooke doesn't have those problems. she's so expressive and has recently mastered voices and accents. for a long time, reading was a really challenging thing for her, but this year, it finally clicked and now she's reading chapter books comfortably. she just read me a couple pages out of a silly book she's been reading called Hank the Cowdog and the Case of the Booby-trapped Pickup. she used different voices for different characters and pronounced all the words so well that i made a little video. it makes my heart happy to see her so fully overcome the reading challenge and actually come to a place where she's obviously enjoying reading.

halitosis

today we were reading a science book for school about bad smells. i know, i've talked a lot lately about stuff we're doing for school, but people, i don't get out much these days. i spend my life at home with a kid so all i've got most of the time to spark my creative juices is the stuff i teach to brooke.

ahem, where was i? ah, yes. stinky things. there was discussion of bad breath and the things that cause it. the word halitosis was mentioned. and that's when i went spiraling back in time. 

about 4 years ago when brooke was 5, she went to the little gym for the gymnastic classes. it's a wonderful place that i highly recommend if your kid is clumsy or nervous and you're not trying to get into a competitive sport. the teachers were all incredibly patient with brooke as she spent her first several classes hiding under equipment crying and avoiding every activity. it was a new atmosphere for her and very structured which she also wasn't used to. she was only 4 when she started, but after a few weeks, she started to like it and eventually she participated in almost everything. 

early on in our little gym experience, brooke was still afraid of the high bar that the kids could use with an adult assistant if they felt up to it. the coaches never pushed them to do anything that scared them, but would give them the chance each week to see if they were ready to try. one day a teacher asked brooke if she could pick her up and let her just touch the high bar with her finger. i didn't see it happen, but brooke told me later that she bit that lady's long leg like she was a hyena and the teacher was her attacker. she said she felt afraid and had to defend herself. the teacher didn't even mention it, so it must not have been a very hard bite, but i was just thankful they still let her come back.

one day after class, the owner/head coach came to me and quietly whispered in my ear, "i was helping brooke with something and she was nervous, so i leaned in close to talk to her about it. she said, 'smells like someone has halitosis today'." i know my head turned several shades of red, but i couldn't help laughing. we'd been doing some great vocabulary lessons and clearly they were sticking!

at the end of each 20 week session there was always an awards show where the parents could come in & observe the kids' skills and watch them get a medal on a ribbon. brooke was called last to go up on the little foam platform to get her medal. each other kid had walked up the steps and received their prize like a little olympian. but not brooke. when she heard her name, she dropped down on her hands and knees and ran/crawled across the floor, up the steps and to the middle of the platform and posed on her knees with her chin held high and one hand/paw up in front of her. we'd been watching the AKC championships and she was posing in poodle style to claim her award.

she went through several award ceremonies and for almost every one she did the crawling doggy thing again. and i heard from some of the teachers that it had spread and some kids even in other classes had started doing it too.

my little aspie trendsetter with her boundless creativity and imagination. she makes my heart happy.

heavy blankie

a while ago i heard about a thing called a weighted blanket. a friend had asked if i had one for brooke. i didn't even know what it was, but it sounded interesting, so i did a little research. apparently, weighted blankets are good for people with lots of kinds of issues, including autism, restless leg syndrome, ADHD, insomnia & many other things. a lot of special ed classrooms use them or other weighted things (like lap pads, vests, or shoulder drapes) to help kids calm the heck down when they're agitated. it's supposed to create pressure on the body that helps relieve tension and release serotonin, causing happy or calm feelings.

i've never seen anything like this in a store, so i couldn't look at one, but when i mentioned it to brooke, she immediately wanted one. for a few months i've been thinking about what this would look like and how i might make one to use during school or any stressful time.

this weekend i finally broke out my sewing machine that's been packed away, brand new and untouched for 7 years. it took a bit of work & stamina and a liberal dose of mom-wisdom, but i got my machine running. for a few hours anyway.

i decided to use dry popcorn kernels for the filling because it's smooth, cheap and won't rot if it gets wet. i bought 2 cheap baby blankets made out of flannel and sewed them together; then we figured out that the best way to make this thing was to do it with little individual pockets to keep the popcorn from falling all down into one side. we used another thin fabric & created 36 little bags and filled them with a half cup of popcorn each. then i chucked one into each space & sewed it all into place.

it took me two days and some help from my mom and her fabulous, fancy sewing machine since mine crapped out on me before i even got to the hard part. but the end result is fantastic. it weighs eight pounds and is pretty heavy for brooke to even lift or carry, but she LOVES it! she named it oatmeal.  she's had it on her in bed each night since i finished it as well as on her lap during school and other times when she's just reading, drawing, or computing.


it doesn't hold heat in, so it's better than covering up with several heavy blankets and it can be used all year round. i'm fairly proud of the way it turned out. plus i only spent $12 to make it as opposed to the $80 or more that it would have cost to purchase. but most of all, i'm happy to have been able to give brooke something that can help her maintain her calm when she really wants to freak the freak out.

i didn't take any pics during the assembly process, but i took a few pictures today. just look at that beautiful stitching!

the morning routine

i'm pretty sure i come from a different planet than brooke does. she comes from the land where feelings have colors and numbers have food.

on planet brooke, red is mad, blue is sad & yellow is happy. those are pretty normal, but there are also combinations of them, and she doesn't feel like explaining what she means because in her mind, no one understands her anyway, so why bother. like sometimes she'll just yell "PURPLE!" there's nothing else, just that loud purple and a ticked off face. i've learned that means she's combining the mad red & sad blue and getting purple. sometimes she'll say, "dark purple," which is even worse than a standard purple because there's some black mixed in & no white in sight.

she also associates numbers with food sometimes. i can't remember them all, but the one she keeps saying lately is "mustard" whenever the answer to a math question is 14. we don't even eat mustard, i'm not sure she's ever tasted it, but for some reason, mustard & 14 are synonymous.

and she's got these little routines that must be followed in order for her day to go right. like when she first wakes up, she goes into the bathroom, whips back the shower curtain & yells "RAAR!" she's always alone in there, but just in case there was a monster, she wants to get a jump on it before it has a chance to get her. she does the same thing when she walks into the kitchen when it's still dark. flips light, bellows out an angry raar.

one day we forgot to fill her little zip bags of cereal before going to bed the night before, so when she came down first thing & went to the fridge to find them, they were no where to be found. the cereal boxes were within her reach & she knows how to pour it into her own little bag, which she did, but then she couldn't just eat it. as she told us later, she filled the bag, put it into the fridge, turned the lights off, went back upstairs & "restarted her day." apparently it's more important for the cereal to be in the fridge when she first comes down than it is to just get the food into her hungry belly. i'm just glad we've gotten to the point where she took care of it herself rather than screaming & howling until we woke up & filled it for her.

she's been mentioning her "morning routine" to us for a while lately & since she generally gets up before us, we didn't really know what the details of the routine were. she was irritated at our ignorance, so she wrote it out for us and included her night routine too. you know, to help us come out of the darkness & into her light. here is the picture of the list.

she might drive me bonkers some days & leave me feeling purple, but most of the time, brooke makes me very yellow.

star school

homeschooling a strong-willed child is a challenge for any parent. homeschooling a strong-willed kid with aspergers is an extra blob of stress and required creativity.

we have many days where brooke is mad about school. she'd much rather spend her days playing with toys, reading her fun books and inventing games in her mind than sitting around working on crap that doesn't mean anything to her. she tells me that school is torture and no amount of explaining or cajoling can convince her that it's worth it to just do the work without complaining.

however, i've found that if i let her keep one of her toys with her & somehow figure out a way to make her assignments pertain to whatever her current obsession is, it's much less painful for both of us. her obsession of the moment is the warriors series about tough cats who live in clans and fight a lot while taking care of their own. our house is filled with words like "tigerstar", "star clan," "ravenpaw," "kitty pet" and "two-leg". she's wearing cat ears & dressed all in gray today & can barely speak a word that isn't about these cats, but we need to get a school day in since i worked a lot and spent a day away from the house, giving all our money to the car repair shop this week.

so, in order to get brooke to engage & participate in math today, we determined that she's in "alpha school" and she hopes to become a clan leader one day, so she has to know how to add numbers so she could supply her omegas with food. now she's got an assignment to write about a sporting event, but since she's never been to a sporting event & we don't watch sports on tv, i changed it to a warrior cat event. this makes the work a million times easier because she has very little trouble coming up with a story about the cats in her head.

for lunch, she ate red squirrel (apple) and a pigeon sandwich (grilled cheese). for culinary class, we're going to make dinner. the menu includes vole intestines with muscle bits and blood sauce (spaghetti squash with chunky tomatoes and a little red sauce) and a desert of fish egg souffle (cadbury eggs).

later we'll work on maps because an alpha can't patrole her territory if she doesn't understand the borders and landmarks. and at some point we'll study squirrels. because it's good for a predator to have a strong understanding about the health and habits of the prey being stalked. tomorrow we're going to an exotic bird fair where she'll learn about foods from around the world. and we're working on a banner for art class that we'll hang up, declaring our kitchen to be "star school". because star = alpha in her world. she also blogged about warrior cats to practice typing. she even did the embedding of the video and put the picture in herself.

i wonder what next week will bring. and what kind of adjustments i'll have to make in order to get the school work done. it's always an adventure for this teacher.

so much happy, so little time

this weekend i've been visiting my family who live 6 hrs away from me and it's been positively delightful. we brought brooke's bike with us so that my dad could teach her how to ride it without training wheels. one fell off last summer & since she's 8, i decided i wasn't going to be replacing it, but rather taking them both off so that she'll have to learn how to ride for real. last summer she wasn't ready or brave enough to even try, but since we've had a warm few days, she's been sitting on her bike in the driveway & mentally preparing herself to learn how to ride it.

yesterday, she got it out while i was walking out front with my sister & she spent half an hour fuddling around on the bike, trying things out until suddenly, she got it! with no help from anyone, she was out there pedaling around the driveway! my dad took her out & put air in the tires & bought her a helmet & now she's quickly becoming a biking pro & wants to spend all her time riding around the driveway & yard. this is extra exciting to me because i've read several stories by adult aspies recently, saying that they never developed the coordination necessary to be able to ride a bike. so, yay, brooke!

then last night i went with my parents to a surprise party for my middle sister who just turned 25. her boyfriend put the whole thing on & he did a great job, cooking a really nice meal & decorating everything to make it all fancy and fun. sarah seems to have been really surprised to walk in & find about 45 people waiting to yell "SURPRISE!" at her. then, after she blew out the candles, she turned to find her boyfriend down on one knee with a ring in hand, asking her to marry him. apparently several people knew it was coming, but i wasn't on that list, though i'd been tipped by my other sister who was guessing earlier in the day. i managed to catch it all on video, and it's so cute to see them at the biggest decision of their lives so far. i'm really glad i was able to be here this weekend so i could be a part of it with them.

tonight i went to visit a friend who i haven't seen since brooke was a tiny baby. she's got a daughter less than a year younger, and we were looking forward to letting our girls meet. they hugged each other immediately upon meeting & then ran straight upstairs to the new friend's room where we could hear them squealing & giggling for the next few hours. it was fun hearing them up there, sounding all happy, all the while far enough away that the moms got a chance to really chat and catch up on 8 years of life. as we got into the car to go back to my parents house tonight, i asked brooke, "did you have a great time with kylie?" "YEAH!" "you sure laughed a lot. she must be really funny!" " she was SOO funny! she kept doing this!" brooke then made a motion of throwing something up into the air & catching it. i asked what kylie was throwing. she said, "well, not just kylie. i tried it too cuz it was really fun and funny!" i asked again, "what were you guys throwing that was so funny?"

"the hamsters."

"the zhu zhu pets?"

"no, the real ones."

"you threw them? into the air?!"

"yeah, you should have seen how they flailed their legs and kicked their little arms so fast! it was hilarious!"

"brooke, don't you realize that they were kicking and flailing because they were terrified and probably thought they were going to die?"

silence.

silence.

"were you guys also throwing them to each other like balls?"

a tiny little voice from the backseat whispered, "i don't want to talk anymore."

and so ended my wonderful, wacky weekend.

shut it, kid

today has been one of those days on the homefront where i shake my head & wonder why it's too late to go back & use some birth control. because my kid is straight up driving me NUTS! the chaos & crying that periodically take over my wee one are enough to make me want to take up smoking & drinking all over again. and perhaps indulgence in some smokable organic substances that shall remain nameless. i haven't used them before, but today seems like it might be the day to start.

we recently studied an indian tribe and we learned that when their babies were born, any time they cried, the parents would pinch the baby's mouth and nose shut so that it couldn't breathe. when it stopped crying, it was allowed to breathe again. their lifestyle of hiding and hunting depended on stealthiness. they didn't leave the kids with granny while they went on their stealthy missions, so the kids had to learn to hold back any and all sounds, even if they got hurt. otherwise, the whole tribe could go hungry or get scalped due to some kid stepping on a thorn with his little bare foot and letting out a yelp or a howl.

this is sounding like a very good idea to me today. do you think it's too late for me to do that to brooke?

be nice, smile for a change!

do you ever go out shopping or to the movies or anywhere in public & see a kid dressed like some wacky thing? it might be a super hero or a furbie or a princess? and maybe that kid seems to you to be too old for wearing costumes out. but you don't know that kid. or that family. and there might be a really good reason to smile at that kid rather than smirk or whisper in a mocking sort of way to your companion. have you ever seen the show parenthood ?  if you have, think of max braverman and his pirate costume.

so when you see this girl, be nice, please! this is brooke. we're pretty sure she has aspergers and costumes make her gloriously happy. they are harmless and fun. they hurt no one and cause no drama except when strangers are rude.

the next time you come across a kid in a costume, smile! maybe even wave. that's a happy kid you're seeing, even if their face doesn't show it.

but if you see this lady, feel free to mock & throw tomatoes. she needs to take that thing off her head.

kicked in the boob

nothing tops off a day of homeschooling hell like getting kicked in the boob at the dinner table by a spastic, scowling child with ice cold feet & then having that same child proceed to vomit out the dinner you just worked on for over an hour. and then, she has the nerve to ask for a cookie.

some days should get a do-over.

worry wart

tomorrow we leave & brooke's starting to get nervous. she's worried about going through security & having to put her stuffed animals & backpack through the scanner & walk through the archway without them. i'm just glad i thought to tell her about it ahead of time so that i could walk her through the process ahead of time. she can usually deal with stuff that's new as long as she knows what to expect. she's planning to put a tiny stuffed animal into her pocket so that she can feel its fur in her hand while walking through the metal detector. here's hoping neither of us sets off any alarms & has to get wanded or they might have a loudly freaking out kid on their hands!

takeoff is troubling her too, but we've been practicing in the kitchen. i've been setting up chairs together & walking her through the steps, including me tipping her chair back slightly & jiggling it just a smidge to imitate what it'll feel like.

we're praying for calmness & humor everywhere we look. oh yeah, and no terrorists please.

i'll be really glad when this first part of the trip is over so that we can both stop fretting and get to the fun part!
now if i can just remember to pack the dramamine & a pack of gum...

laundry fairy

i'm going through my mental list of all the things that need to be done between now & friday morning when we head for the airport -
print out directions to the airport
febreeze the suitcases
check the weather forecast
dig out cold weather clothing & make sure it fits
do the laundry...

and that's where i land and stick. right smack on the laundry. in order to wash the clothes, i need to FIND the clothes & i realize that none of brooke's favorite clothes are in her basket. they're not lying around her room in plain view either. i know she's going to be one ticked off camper if her favorites (meaning clothing in natural animal colors because she can't stand to dress like a girl, but only wants to dress like an animal almost every day) don't make it to new mexico with us. i started digging around in various hidey holes around her room - here's a brown shirt under her top bunk. there's a pair of gray leggings on a shelf under a table. there's a pair of gray camo shorts with real fox tail still attached under an upside down rubbermaid tub. when i got to the dress up box i hit the mother load. there were articles of clothing in there that went missing many months ago and here they were, covered with stains & probably outgrown by now. i plundered through there & dug out many valuable items of booty.

i was feeling vaguely irritated that i had to go looking for her clothes (i'd make her do it herself or too bad for her, but she's out of the house with daddy so that i can have some quiet time to get things done around here) until i started hauling the baskets toward the laundry room. that's when i realized that most of my bras & socks were missing. and my pajamas. i had to go on a hunt to find the places where i'd shucked my bras off when i declared myself to be "boobies free!" then i had to dig around in the vicinity of the couch because i have chronically cold feet, but then periodically my feet become suddenly claustrophobic & must be ripped out of my socks in a rapid & frequently spastic fashion. i even found a pair of socks stuffed into my purse from when i was out wearing my new furry boots & had to peel my socks off right in target or i would have spontaneously combusted, feet first. i found my jammies in the bathroom & also stuffed into a corner beside my bed & another article of sleepwear draped over a kitchen chair.

and that's when i realized that maybe it's not just brooke who needs to be reprimanded by the laundry fairy. she's shaking her judgemental stick at me too.

maybe a loin cloth...

we've developed some problems with pants around here. brooke's got my body type which means that she has short legs & tends to get thick around the middle. and from her daddy she was given the gift of a super long torso. for a while i thought she just had a long butt crack since it was always showing out of the back of her pants, but i think now that it's the whole torso that's long, not just the crack.

so almost all pants are too long. no problem, i can hem. sometimes the waist bands are oddly shaped - no big deal, i can add elastic which solves many problems. but lately, even the shortening & elastic aren't enough. every pair of non leggings (and even some leggings are guilty) either scratches her, squeezes her, gives her wedgies or causes some other form of pain & suffering. today, she went through 5 pairs of pants before we could leave the house. her bedroom floor was like a cemetery for pants. we went to a store & tried on 14 pairs of jeans & sweats to leave with only one pair that's hopefully going to work for more than a minute before causing the twitching & shrieking to begin again. we're about to take a trip to a place that's cold & this child needs to wear something warmer than leggings whether she likes it or not. it's a frustrating situation we find ourselves in here & it's annoying both of us.

after we got home from shopping, brooke went up to her room & came down a few minutes later with several drawings that she wanted to put on her blog showing how she feels about pants. please, click over to her page & have a look at things from her perspective.

art therapy 2

today was one of "those" days. you know the kind - where you wake up & there are grumpy vibes coming from everywhere. the first thing i heard was the cats hissing & snarling at each other. i should rephrase that; the big one was hissing and snarling because the little one was bugging the crap out of her & needed her butt to be properly kicked. my kid was whining, my husband was huffing. i wanted to go back to sleep & try the other side of bed a bit later, but i was going to be responsible & productive & peel myself out from between my fabulous sheets, regardless of the day's beginning.

i tried to play peacemaker to all parties involved; i really gave it the old college try when i was out on the back deck putting out bird seed to feed our abundant wildlife. chris made a silly face through the window, so i dropped my pants & mooned him. nothing brings a spurt of shock & bewildered amusement to a group of people like a totally unexpected, pasty white butt flash.

it seemed as though we'd pulled our emotions up by the bootstraps, but after a few hours of school work, brooke & i were both over it. she'd been put onto yellow on her chart (green means good, yellow is not so good & red is bad. i know, so original) and still had to finish her book report. when it was done, she buried her face in my boobs & started shaking & saying that she just wanted to scream really loud for a long time. so i sent her up to take a shower & told her to scream it all out in there. our duplex neighbor wasn't home, thankfully, so it was the place in the house where it was least likely to annoy the snot out of me or result in cops showing up at our door.

when she came down later, she was wearing a red shirt & had made a little paper sign that she stuck to her stomach. i threw it away eventually, but then took a picture of it in the trash because it's kind of funny.

then she made a bigger sign to hang from herself to make sure it was loud & clear that she was feeling red. she frequently shows & expresses her feelings in colors rather than words & red or burgundy seem to be about the worst. well, black's pretty bad too, but that's a whole different place for her.

i told her it was time for another round of art therapy. time to go get her marker box & draw on the floor. when she's extra frustrated, there's nothing like coloring big, huge things to really purge out the crap that's on the inside so that she can go on with her day. there was some stomping, banging & snarking, but she soon got down to business. here comes the predictable giant head of anger. the angry eyebrows & the huge, toothy frown. she didn't have enough juice in her red markers (another source of pissiness) to fill the whole thing & she riduculed me for my suggestions of red polka dots because, duh, mom, polka dots are for cheerful times! she settled for drawing hearts & then scribbling them out to show her sadness & broken heart. she wrote, "I AM SO SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and then she counted how many exclamation points there were so she could point out to me that there were 19 exclamations points worth of sadness displayed on the floor.

i told her that when i was a kid, i used to write all the bad words i knew on paper or in my diary and it kind of made me feel better. i encouraged her to try it because, 1, i thought it might help her. 2, it would be interesting to see what bad words she knows. and 3, it seemed to me that i might just have some bad words of my own that i'd like to write down after having such a draining day.

she resisted my peer pressure to write down bad stuff. she said it would make her feel too bad, so i got out a marker & started my own list.

it wasn't long before she joined in on the fun & was writing away. i told her that spelling didn't count when you're writing your mad words, so she could spell them any old way she wanted. you can clearly see that she did just that.

i love how she spelled onion & stupid & meany. and she asked me to write plaque & then she drew icky teeth. i tried to draw a tooth of my own on the left, but it ended up looking more like long-crotch tights, so i added feet.

she wrote down "o my god" and "damit" but then asked me to erase them immediately because it made her really nervous to even see those written down. she's so much better than me. she wrote down a couple of the stupid songs that i sing to her to help certain words stick in her head because she hates them since they get lodged in her brain & she can't get them out. (mwahaha! all part of my evil parenting scheme!)

we added another level of fun to our therapy by trying to read all our words backwards as we washed them off the floor. this tickled her little self all the way down into her funny bone. she wanted me to read them out & then filmed me washing & shouting them because it was probably the best part of the day & she's all about documenting her life on video. it's a horrible little video, but you can see how the therapy worked for her through her giggling.

she thought it would be fun to color on her face & i decided to join in on that portion of the fun as well. we started out with war paint (we've been studying sioux indians lately) and then it deteriorated to something involving angry eyebrows & a soul patch. it was very funny, either way & thankfully all washed off before bed.

and so ended another day in the riley household in which art therapy came, saw & conquered our pain.

temple grandin

a few months ago i saw a preview for the movie "temple grandin." it's the true story of an autistic woman raised in the 50's & 60's who pushed through the struggles & hard stuff that goes along with autism & she accomplished great things in her life. i've heard rave reviews from some friends of mine who know that this topic is of interest to me & tonight i finally got to watch it myself.

i couldn't wait to get brooke to bed tonight so that i could make a bag of popcorn, grab some tissues & plop under my fluffy, red couch blankie and watch this movie about an amazing woman. i do love a movie based in truth.

i will be the first to admit that until the past few years, i've never understood autism at all. i'd heard of it & felt sorry for the parents of kids who had it. i could picture kids flapping their hands or rocking with their faces screwed up. i could only picture a severe disability in a child & nothing more. i never gave a thought to their lives as adults or what it must be like to be them.

about 3 years ago i met a lady at a park & brooke had a really good time playing with her son. he's close to her age & the mom told me that he's been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.

a month or two later, i went to a neighborhood block party at a friends' house & brooke spent most of her time playing with a little boy who i was told at the end of the night has asperger's syndrome. i'd never heard of that before.

shortly after that i watched a season of america's next top model & there was a girl on there who, for some reason i couldn't figure out, kept reminding me of brooke. they looked nothing alike, and the girl was about 20 while my kid was 5, but i kept thinking that she was like a grown up brooke. at some point in the season, the girl told her roomates that she has asperger's syndrome.

i went to the school box store where loads of educational supplies & books are sold & there, sitting on a shelf where it didn't belong, was a huge book with the words "ASPERGER'S SYNDROME" in bold on the cover. i picked it up because it occurred to me that since it kept popping up, maybe i needed to learn something about it. i started flipping through it & came across a section that said something along the lines of, "if you're the parent of an aspie child, these are probably things you deal with regularly..." i stood there reading in that store while brooke played with a train set & started bawling my eyes out. it was all i could do to even continue standing up because i felt like someone was writing the story of my life. how could it be possible that my beautiful, perfect, articulate girl could be defective? surely she wasn't one of these sort-of autistic kids the book was talking about. she didn't flap or rock. she spoke clearly; better than clearly, actually!

i went home & started doing some online research. there were definitely some similarities between brooke & the aspie kids i was reading about. i felt confused & sad and... i don't even know what all i felt because my emotions were all swirling like a snow storm inside me. i cried a lot because i felt like if i came to the conclusion that brooke has asperger's syndrome, i was calling her broken. defective. and yet i couldn't stop reading. i started observing her even more closely over the next months & mentally tallying up all the ways that she could be aspie & all the ways that she couldn't. some days i was convinced that she had it & other days it seemed like sheer foolishness to even consider such a preposterous thing.

during the past couple years, i've gone through cycles where i dig myself into the topic full force & can hardly think of anything else. then i have to take a period of stepping away from it so that i can simply absorb & observe. i've learned that it looks different in girls than it does in boys. that might be why it's been only more recently that girls have started to be diagnosed regularly. i've learned that it can be hard to get a diagnosis because many pediatricians are extremely ignorant on the topic. i asked brooke's pediatrician about the topic at her 6 yr old check-up & he basically told me that there's no way she could have it because she's well spoken & isn't a math or science whiz. he said this after asking me no questions about her or her schooling at all & only spending about 5 minutes with her during her check-up. (this was the first time we'd seen this particular doctor) he clearly knew far less about the subject than i did & didn't care to spend the time pursuing the subject. i decided then that i didn't need a diagnosis because there aren't any medications & behavioral therapy is the main plan of action for a kid who is diagnosed. she's not in a school because i teach her at home & i can do the therapy myself.

i was reading look me in the eye last year & it's written by a man who is an aspie. in it he tells his life story & it's great example of a success story. brooke saw me reading it & since there's a funny picture of a boy on the cover, she asked me what it was about. i told her that it's about a guy who has asperger's. she giggled at the name & then asked what it is. i gave a brief explanation & she thought about it & then asked for more. that's pretty unusual since she rarely pays attention to what i'm reading. i told her some more things & she kept asking for even more information. then after she was quiet for a few minutes she said, "that stuff sounds like me. do you think i might be an aspie?" she asked if we could leave the playground & go home to google it so she could learn more.

in the course of my learning about autism & asperger's syndrome, i've finally come to understand that it's not a stamp of defectiveness. there are varying degrees of autism & the aspies are at the end of the spectrum where they have the highest level of "normalcy". i've gotten over the idea that it's a shameful thing or something to be tucked away like a dirty family secret. it's not something to be embarrassed about. people who are autistic, at any point on the spectrum, are absolutely as valuable as everyone else. they all have struggles & challenges as well as strengths & talents. if it weren't for the people on the spectrum, i think that we wouldn't have many of the things in the world that benefit all of us, because they're inventors & designers & creators. they think outside the box & excel at their areas of interest. they're artistic & smart & funny.

i think the movie "temple grandin" is a fabulous example of someone being autistic & leading a wonderfully productive life. it shows very clearly how difficult life is for people who have it, but there's a line in there, spoken by the mom that keeps ringing loudly in my head - "she's different, but equal."

so there it is. we have no diagnosis, but there's something fabulously interesting & unique about my sweet girl. she's difficult & exasperating & hilarious all in one adorable package. whether or not she has asperger's syndrome, i think i will always remember that line & how fitting it seems in relation to brooke. she's different, but equal.

you're my new bff - what's your name?

my sweet, quirky girl went to vbs this past week. it was a 4 night event at a church where she's gone over the past 4 summers, but we don't go to church there & we don't know anyone who does. brooke really looks forward to going every summer & this year it took a bit of arranging since we've only got one car & chris works evenings, but it was worked out because it was the one thing she said when our car died last winter - "does this mean i can't go to vbs next summer?!" funny how, as parents, you're willing to suffer through an awful lot of inconvenience for your kids when there's something they really want or need to do.

so far, every year that brooke has gone, she has latched on to a particular kid on the first night & refused to release them from her friendship until the final night of festivities. as far as i can tell, she bases her choice of a partner solely on appearance. she doesn't know any of them, she doesn't have any sort of interviewing process, she just looks around her group as soon as they all congregate & chooses a girl who's small & looks somewhat like her. she'll push her way through the sea of children to get beside the girl of her choosing & if she has to throw some elbows or yell at someone to get out of her way in the process, she's certainly not too good to do so. watching from afar, it's like she does "eeny, meeny, miny mo. catch a best friend by the toe. if she hollers, don't let go! eeny, meeny, miny mo. my mother said to pick the very best friend & you are IT! ready or not, you're my friend!" and from that moment on, in brooke's mind, that kid is her new bff.

she's pretty much oblivious to social cues, so the kid would have to be blatantly rude to her more than once for her to even consider releasing them from their unsigned friend contract. she wants to hold hands & pick them up & try on their shoes & do back to back to determine who's taller. she wants to trade silly bands & tell them all her deepest secrets while sitting in bible class. she wants to eat off their plate during dinner & whisper that  she sleeps commando except when she's having a sleep over.

sometimes she lands on a friend who is thrilled to be saved the work of finding a friend & embraces the whole package of brooke & her instant love. other times she gets someone who is very uncomfortable with this strange process of friending & doesn't appreciate their choice in the matter being taken away. the girl this year was named cate & i think brooke probably picked her because she was the only kid in their group who was shorter than her. some of those other girls are about 5 feet tall & have already grown boobs, so i don't really blame her for feeling like she needed a partner in little-ness. cate didn't push brooke away, but she didn't embrace her either. brooke came home the first night & told me that cate didn't like to be touched. i'm not sure how that information came out, but i suspect the girl must have told her that flat out because it's not likely she'd have gleaned it based on body language or facial expression. she said she didn't hold her hand, but she couldn't resist picking her up anyway. no wonder the next 2 nights, when brooke came in & squealed cate's name happily, cate avoided eye contact and tried to walk on past.

but brooke is a very determined, if clueless, little girl & by the final night, cate appeared to have been won over. she looked happy to see brooke & she even invited her to cut in line so that they could stand together & chatter & touch each other's hair. they talked about clothes & justin beiber & it made my heart very happy to stand back & watch as cate called out to brooke to come over and sit next to her while they ate their popsicles. to see them comparing mosquito bites and bathing suits.

i'm glad for brooke that she doesn't catch a lot of the social under-currents because as kids get older, most of them aren't very nice. she misses most of the snotty comments & glares and judgemental cliques around her and a lot of the time, she wins out in the end because she got to have her friend of choice. she doesn't suffer from insecurity because she has enough goodness and positive reinforcement in her life that she doesn't need to look around and wonder what anyone thinks about her. she doesn't notice the looks or comments from other kids & sometimes adults and that has to be better. she can go to bed at night and thank God for herself & mean every word of it.

girl of wonder

my daughter, brooke, is 7 now & she's a pretty unique kid. she has a love of animals that's unmatched by anything else in her world. as i've mentioned before, she likes to wear animal costumes every single day, sometimes several costumes per day because she feels a kinship with animals & often feels like God should have made her a lion or dog rather than a little girl. she says that it makes her feel warm & happy on the inside when she wears a costume, especially when i let her wear one in public. she told me this morning when i let her wear her kangaroo suit to panera, that she likes wearing costumes in public for two reasons - one, just because it's cool & two, because it makes people happy when they look at her. i'm so glad that the happy faces are the only ones she notices. i always smile when i see a kid in costume because i know they're happy & creative & feeling pretty good about life that day. apparently however, there are a lot of people who don't share that sentiment with me & they feel free to look haughtily upon my dinosaur-clad kid as if she's got dangling boogers & gum stuck to her forehead.

i can look back now & put my finger onto an exact moment with brooke when i first realized that she's very different from me. from most people, maybe. it was a day when she was 2 or 3 & she had a hamster named bitsy. brooke had always been very careful to keep her bedroom door shut when we weren't around, to prevent our cat from stealthily creeping into her room & killing the hamster through the bars of its cage when we weren't looking. i was pretty impressed that she was thoughtful & responsible enough to bother doing that, even when she was so young.

one day, we went to the mall for a couple hours & when we came home, i found bitsy, dead in her cage. the door had been closed, so she didn't have a cat-induced heart attack or anything; i guess she'd just reached the ripe old hamstery age of 18 months & keeled over. i was standing there, looking into the cage at the dead rodent, trying to think quickly before brooke came into the room about how best to dispose of it.  i didn't relish the thought of picking it up & putting it into a box. i debated going into the kitchen for a spoon, but then i'd have to throw the spoon away because i'd never want to eat off it again, so i chucked that idea. maybe a mini pulley system of some sort... i was standing there, lost in thought when brooke came romping into the room & hopped up on a chair beside me to look at what i was looking at. i told her as gently as i could that bitsy had died while we were shopping & maybe we should bury her. her eyes welled up with tears for a minute & then she looked at me hopefully & said, "can i have her?" i started to tell her that now that she was dead, we wouldn't exactly be keeping her any more, but she interrupted me & said, "no, no! can i hold her & touch her?!" i hesitated because i didn't want dead varmint germs on my hands & i certainly didn't want them on my baby's hands either, but then again... if she picked bitsy's carcass up, then i wouldn't have to figure out how to get it out. so i let brooke reach in & gently lift bitsy's lifeless body out & cradle it in the palm of her tiny little hand. she rubbed the hamster's open eyeballs, spread out its toenails, rubbed the little fingers, petted the belly. i was totally creeped out, but she was just mesmerized by this tiny dead creature's body. she would have rubbed her lips on bitsy's fur, but i had to draw the line there. fingers only, no lips!

we finally put bitsy into a little bitty shoe box on top of a tiny doll blanket. brooke covered her with a tissue & then put a picture of herself into the box so bitsy would always be able to remember her. then i repeatedly washed both our hands in scalding water for good measure. the next day daddy dug a hole in the backyard & we buried her without ceremony.

i think this was a turning point in my perception of my girl. it was a very clear statement of how she has her own individual thoughts & ideas. since then, we've interacted with numerous dead things. we saw a dead armadillo on a road in our neighborhood, which was completely random since they don't really live around here & she begged for a closer look, so when we went past it the next time, i found a parking spot & we walked over to check out the rotting, stinking flesh of an armadillo. i never knew they were so hairy! we went home & googled it to figure out what kind it was & where its natural habitat should be. brooke was in kindergarten at the time, so we turned it into a science lesson.

we had a lovely encounter with a bird that my parents' dog brought over to me after it crashed into a window & died. brooke got a chance to spread out its wings & feel the talons & skinny little legs of that sparrow. she opened & closed the beak & reached in through the feathers to feel the skin underneath. that was when i realized that it wasn't a macabre fascination with dead things that she was experiencing, it was a love of wildlife! she wanted desperately to get close enough to touch & examine & learn about any living critter, but when a wild animal is alive, it won't ever just sit there & let you poke & prod its body. you'll never get to rub the eyeball of a live hamster, so if you wonder what they feel like, you have to get your hands on a dead one.

i stopped being distressed about it after the experience with the bird. she picks up dead fish at beaches, dead bugs from the driveway & yesterday she scooped up a dead mole she found in the yard. she examines & rubs them & learns whatever their bodies will tell her. we even attempted to dissect her pet frog when it died a few months ago. we didn't have the proper tools & a box cutter wasn't exactly the right instrument for delicate cutting, but it was interesting to see how strong the bones of a tiny aquatic frog are, even in death.

now i try to just relish brooke's individuality and the fact that if there weren't people like her out there, we wouldn't know most of what we know about bodies & how they work.

so carry on, little carcass caresser, carry on.

quirky dog-girl

today, as usual, brooke spent her day running around the house in a costume. she was a dog, which usually consists of some odd combination of her own clothes in "natural" dog colors w/ ears, snout & tail strapped on. now that she's 7, i rarely let her leave the house in a full-on costume like that because it's just starting to seem weird. people don't understand why there's a kid running around walmart on all fours barking & growling at them. but i will frequently allow her to wear a piece of the costume, such as ears or tail & i try to remind her to act like a human. i never dreamed i'd be having to tell my 7 yr old offspring that she's a human & to please act like it. she seriously believes that she has some animal DNA in her body. she told me today that it's one of her dreams that one day she'll be riding in the car, wearing her dog ears & snout & sticking her head out the window with her tongue hanging out & some news crew will see & film her & put her on the news as the amazing dog girl. when she's in costume, she really feels like she becomes one with it & it becomes a real part of her. it's like her grasp on reality shifts a bit & she no longer sees herself for who she is.

today at walmart she was scampering around the checkout area (wearing her dog ears, of course) while i was scanning & paying & i saw that she was over at the next register interacting with a lady & a couple other little kids. as usual they were looking at her oddly, as most people do when she's in costume, and then she ran back over to me & told me that she made them laugh. i asked her how she made them laugh & she said it was because she was sniffing them & they liked it. holy crap! who knew that i needed to tell my kid that she can't sniff strangers in public?! i mean, i wasn't watching as closely as i should have been, obviously, but i really hope she was doing a humanish form of sniffing rather than the real doggie deal of going straight for the butt/crotch area!

last weekend we were at the mall & ran across a group of people at a display who were selling sugar gliders which are tiny little marsupials. they like to hang out in your pockets or inside your clothes & will always come back to you if they fall on the ground. brooke, of course, fell truly, madly, deeply in love with these little critters & wanted desperately to take one home. it cost $600 & wasn't an option for us, regardless of how cute it was, but that didn't stop brooke's heart from breaking as i walked her, weeping, out to the car. we had taken a paper handout thing from the sales person & as soon as we got home, brooke cut out some pictures of the gliders & one in particular became her new pet. it was as if it became a real animal when she looked at it and petted it. she even wore a special shirt all the next day so that it would have a comfy pouch to sleep in while she romped about with it.

we went to a deli for lunch & had to stand in line for a while & there was a little girl in front of us. brooke kept holding the paper sugar glider out to the girl. i don't even think she said anything to the kid, just held that thing out with the sweetest, happiest & most expectant look on her face. and the girl just stared at her & the paper critter blankly. she asked someone else if they wanted to pet her glider.

i have a hard time watching those interactions in brooke's life which are entirely too common because it makes my heart ache for her. she sees the world through different eyes than the rest of us boring folks. her world is full of excitement & adventure & possibilities that only she can see. she wants so badly for someone else to be able to join her in her world, but the rest of us just stare blankly at the little paper thing or ears & snout & wonder what she's doing. wonder what she's talking about. wonder what's wrong with her & wish that she'd stop. i don't want to tell her to put the paper glider down because i don't want to be the one to make her sad. but i don't want her to be hurt by the world when some unkind person makes fun of her either. i don't know where the balance is between letting her be herself & be carefree & quirky and when i need to put my foot down & make her act "normal." i only care a little bit about how she's percieved by the world, but there is that piece of me that does care. i want people to like her & find her interesting as much as i do. i want her to act in a way that other kids can understand & relate to. but if i try to make her more like the rest of the world, then if people like her, they're not seeing the real brooke. they're seeing a mushed down version of her.

i wonder if this is something that i'll have to deal with through her whole childhood. or is there a time when she'll mellow out? will there come a time when i won't have to try to think of the different things i need to teach her that seem so obvious to the rest of us? like don't sniff strangers butts. but then again, her version of life is way more colorful & amazing & innocent. i wish i could find it within myself to join her in her adventures. if only i could cut loose & drop all my inhibitions & gallop around barking & growling with her, chasing my tail & howling in the wind. but if i did, we'd probably both end up on the news, only not for the fun reason she had dreamed.