I noticed in my blog stats that people were looking for Marla Baltes. I too was looking for her because my feed reader showed new posts but when I tried to open them it said the blog was gone.
Then I remembered I had her email. So I dropped her a note to check and see how things were and she let me know that she has moved her blog but didn’t know how to get the word out to everyone. If you weren’t aware of the move, here is her new home : http://www.onallthatisdazlious.blogspot.com
If you have her old link in your blog roll please change it to the new one. Go and say hi even if you’ve never read her blog before. I assure you that you will fall in love with Marla and Maize and now Emma, Sally, Mimi and Chris too.
I have been trying for an hour to upload picture from December to facebook. Since it fails the upload after taking forever to process pictures and after multiple tries, I will share a few favorites here.
Little J's first picture with Santa at the deployed family party.
J's first willing encounter with Santa
after the kids helped decorate the tree with grandma
the only family picture we have from this Christmas
Apparently I only made it through 4 days of NaBloPoMo. I did not start reading blogs again and am in fact behind on the few that I did put in my firefox RSS feeder.
I started Medical Assisting school the week of Thanksgiving. So far we are only in the “Career Prep” classes which is basic info, much of which is a review for people who may not have been in school in a while. Its BORING! I try not to say that out loud too many times since J is always reluctant about school.
I got a call from the inclusion specialist this week to tell me he’d had a rough time getting back into routine after the 2 week break? Ya think? I could have promised her that no matter how bad it was at school, it was worse at home. But I didn’t. I just told her she would have to be patient because it usually took a proportionate amount of time to readjust.
And that’s all I got for now. No promises for future, but I’ll be back.
this was from our fall festival:
and from a trunk or treat:
and from a costume party:
Little J and his friend Little T
Actual Halloween Trick or Treat pictures tomorrow.
I’d like to officially introduce you to Luna and BoJo:
Bojo and Luna
Remember when we started fostering puppies? Well Tucson finally got cleared health wise and we traded him for Luna (he got a home better suited for his size and energy). She was the runt of the litter and started at about 4lbs at 2 months. She is now 8.5 months old and 27 lbs. She had a couple issues with mites both regular and ear as well as mange. Once we got it cleared up she started growing normally. However, because of the mange she missed her spay appointment and I am now dealing with a dog in heat . 
All during the summer it was on my heart that our beloved Sable would have to leave us soon. She has been snapping at kids for over a year and progressed to actual biting over the summer. We could not rehome her due to her erratic behavior and so we made the difficult decision to have a humane euthanasia. She had been with us 10 years and this has been very hard on me.
Saying goodbye 9-5-09
Just before we made the final decision, my school friend who I have reconnected with on facebook began to foster BoJo. I fell in love with his pictures and her stories and it wasn’t long before I committed to adopting him. We had to wait until our school fall break to pick him up since they were in TX. We were already contemplating a trip to TX to visit some family so this sealed it. He is not a replacement but he is a wonderful addition to our family. They both are.
Luna is Little J’s puppy:
And BoJo is mine:
J doesn’t pay much attention to them, but he doesn’t hate them and that is a step in the right direction.
I haven’t been here in a while. Did you notice? No? that’s okay.
Not only have I not written anything but I also stopped looking at my stats. I knew they would dwindle when I stopped writing so it was pointless. I may have mentioned a time or two but I am a “numbers girl.” I like math, I like things to add up and I like seeing all the stats wordpress has to offer. some of the best stats though have nothing to do with numbers. Like the Search Engine Terms stats. What did people plug into their google/yahoo/ask/msn etc. to land on my page. Sometimes I just like to see if there is a particular subject that people are interested in, maybe I need to write more of it. I know there are others who have done search posts before but honestly there has never been anything funny, weird, or gross for me to make the post interesting…..until I looked last night. Oh and sometimes I google them myself to see what page they had to scroll through to get to me.
Here are some of the popular searches (using the All Time stats):
Pink Pancakes
Tighty Whities
He broke my heart
epic shoes
Amanda Sanders Blog (really Amanda, its been searched and landed on me 9 times since I started blogging)
Master Manipulator
How to wear your clothes
and not so popular but most recent and what sparked this post:
Do Backyardigans cause Autism found on page two of google linking to all of February 08.
I almost didn’t provide links to all those posts, but when I went back to reminisce I realized that they sum up our story quite well. So if you are new here feel free to click away. If you know me but have only recently started reading my stuff, there is some very funny stuff in those posts and some sad stuff too. And just a word of caution to those clicking links, Amanda currently has a pooping zebra art piece on the top blog, just so you know. 
4 of the 5 boys from the backyardigans post the day before 2 of them moved away
Its national blog posting month. the time of year when we challenge ourselves to write a post every day for a month. I did it two years ago which is really what jump started me into blogging. Then I skipped last year.
I have been so lax on not only writing my blog but on reading the ones I had in my RSS feeder. I switched from IE to FireFox and have yet to switch all my blogs over. I parred down to about 18 and those were all ones that post less than once a day so that I didn’t get bogged down reading. Maybe if I get back into writing, I can also find time for reading.
So this month, I will post. And it might even be every day. and there will be pictures.
Little J has quite an imagination. Lately it mostly revolves around his dad. Hubby was gone all of March and April for training and then left for Korea in June. Now every time we go someplace that he likes, he makes up a story about “when I was little my daddy took me there.” or “when I was a baby my daddy took me.” or “when daddy gets home he is going to bring me..” And now, the past 2 times we have seen or heard an airplane he asks if daddy is on that plane. With all this imagining you would think that he would want to talk to him on video chat when he got a chance, but this morning he flat out refused to talk to him. I thought we would have a few more months before we reached that anger directed at the deployed parent, but here we are and we are only at the 2 month point.
I guess I need to get out the workbooks and stories for kids that we got at the family readiness center.
Today we did the homework packet that we put off all last week. Today was a day off from school so we could get away with it. It was an “All about me” book.
When we got to the page that had boxes for him to draw “people who live in my house,” he drew Little J first, then me. When we got to the next box and he decided to draw daddy (I wasn’t sure if he would draw him since he hasn’t been here in 2 months) I sniffed my itchy nose. He looked at me sharply and demanded “Why are you sniffling?!?” I said, “I had an itch so I sniffed and then scratched it.” He turned and looked at me with those honest eyes and said matter of factly, “sometimes I sniffle and cry because I miss my daddy when he’s not here.” And then he finished drawing dad’s face and moved on.
Back in the day before diagnosis, J would have crying jags. They were always of the angry variety and I often had to bear hug him and sing him out of it. Although sometimes he was so angry that he would yell at me to stop singing. Since he has been on medication and in school we rarely have those occur.
Tonight was different. He had a 20+ minute crying jag but it had nothing to do with anger. This was all sadness and indecision. We were sitting together in our big chair and debating dinner. We couldn’t decide on something we would all want to eat. It had been a long day and I decided to start offering up comfort foods like chicken nuggets or hotdogs and he was still turning me down. Then his lip started to quiver and I asked him what was wrong. “I don’t have anything to do. I don’t want to watch TV” Well this was a shock to me, I am usually pulling him away from a TV or computer. So I saw the water works were coming. I went to lay down and let him cuddle me. He left to go get a blanket. Once he got settled he just let it all go. Complete and utter sadness. He said a couple of times between sobs “I don’t have anything to do and I don’t have anything to eat.” Several times I went over his choices of activities and dinners. It was like he couldn’t even hear me. So I sang to him and tried to hold back my own tears.
I finally asked him if he was sad about something or missed someone. I fully expected him to say his dad. He’s been in Korea since June 7th. Its been 2 weeks since J has gotten to skype video chat with him. Nope. He said he missed Aunt Melody who had stayed with us for the past 2 weeks. She is my husband’s 19 year old sister. She left on a plane early this morning and he got to video chat with her about a 1/2 hour before the crying.
However, when little J came in 5 minutes later and J was still laying on me sniffling, he asked “Why is he crying?” I told him that J was a little sad and needed to cry. J said, “and because I have nothing to do or eat.” ummm ok
He finally calmed down and decided on chicken nuggets and honey. As he sat down to the table his lip started quivering again. Thankfully Little J did something silly and there were no more tears.
