Whew....

NaBloPoMo - I posted every day in November!

I'll be back to my regularly infrequent posting again soon. Tonight I'm burning the midnight oil trying to make a 3am deadline to get photo books done and submitted so I still get the discount.

Monday, Monday

I woke up this morning covered in little boy pee. Damn diaper failure. At least it wasn't my own though!

The bus was early, but she waited for us. The bonus was I had a few extra minutes to myself before I had to leave for work.

Too bad I didn't take that time to remember to put my laptop in my briefcase, because as soon as I arrived at work and turned on my desktop I realized that the project I was working on was saved on my laptop.

Fortunately, I'm only about 12 minutes away at that time of day, so I was home, project retrieved, and back at work in less than 35 minutes.

Unfortunately, on my way back to work I drove by a police officer standing on the line in the middle of the road, shooting an injured deer on the side of the road.* I mean I literally drove by as he was aiming the rifle. He waited until I had just passed him to pull the trigger but I heard the crack of the shot. What made it even worse was that the deer was laying down on all four legs, but her head and shoulders were up and she was obviously conscious. She was gorgeous. I know there wasn't anything else that could have been done, but it was still shocking to witness. Of course I started crying and sobbed the rest of the way to work. Just because I grew up a country girl doesn't mean I want anything to do with hunting, even if I understand the practical need for it. I could only think of two things:  that she probably had her own babies that would miss her (I don't care of that is probably romanticizing deer family life) and worse, what if I had had Noah with me and he had witnessed it. He has enough confusing thoughts and nightmares without having to see something like that. Thankfully it was just me.

Work went fine and the day flew by. I even managed to score a couple Pillow Pets at Kohls for $16 a piece with free shipping. Whoo hoo!

Noah got off the bus this afternoon and I could tell his body and mind were moving fast. It took him almost twenty minutes to change into his karate uniform. He spent five minutes of that time running around the house naked. Every part of him is on hyper-drive when he's like that. He talked non-stop to and from karate and during vision exercises, homework and dinner. It continued until his night time meds kicked in and slowed him down enough he could go to sleep. This is his second "manic" period in less than a week. I think it is safe to say that he needs the mood stabilizer we are trying to take him off. He has been off it for ten days and in that time he has had two of these manic episodes and eight out of the ten days he has had major meltdowns in the evening. It sucks that the only way to know for sure if he needs something is to try and take him off of it.

Right now Kiel is in the middle of a bedtime strike and is attempting to charm his way out of the bedroom and down to the couch. Good luck kid.

Better day tomorrow right?

*I live in the 'burbs in an area that was once only farms, fields and woods. It still has plenty of all of that interspersed in the developments that have been built in the last 10 or 15 years. This was a very wooded area.

Cats Playing Patty-cake, what they were saying...

I nabbed this from Dooce.

It made me laugh.

After the tears we finally got this!

He's graduated to the serious stylists!

Both boys were in desperate need of a haircut, so Rich and I each took one with us while running errands this morning with the plan of meeting at the kids haircut place at some point. They don't take appointments there, and I wasn't going to be anywhere near there, so I took a chance and called my stylist to see if they could fit Noah in. 

His hair has changed so much in the last few months that I figured he could use a good cut and I could use someone to tell me how best to work with it. We were in luck and within an hour of calling he was in the chair. 

 This is the gal with the magic fingers! Noah thought getting his hair washed was pretty cool.

I know I'm totally biased, but I think he is so handsome! And looking so grownup in these pictures.

We had a great time and Noah was just eating up the attention. He thought it was awesome I was taking pictures and making such a big deal out of his "man" haircut. It's wonderful to see him happy like this, it doesn't happen as often as it should. Damn but I love this kid!

Happy Thanksgiving from the MNT boys!

Happy Fall Colors Fall

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View the entire collection of cards.

Despite their outward lack of excitement, all of us in the MNT family wish you a happy holiday season.

It's not Thanksgiving without Pumpkin Pie!

Tara at Feels Like Home shared her favorite pumpkin pie recipe with me a few years ago. I made it the first time and haven't used any other recipe since. 

Gourmet Pumpkin Pie

• 1 (9 inch) unbaked pie shell (see recipe below)  

• 3 2/3 cups pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 14 ounces sweetened condensed milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• ½ tsp ground cloves

topping

• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. Blend the egg, pumpkin and condensed milk. Add sugar and spices to pumpkin. Pour mixture into the unbaked pie shell.
3. (topping) Combine the brown sugar, flour, chopped pecans, butter and cinnamon with a fork until crumbly. Sprinkle crumb mixture on top of pumpkin mixture.
4. Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 50 to 55 minutes or until a knife inserted in near the center comes out clean. Let pie cool before serving. 

A couple comments on the recipe:

I typically skip the topping, although it is to die for. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to pumpkin pie. I also find I need to bake it longer than 50 to 55 minutes.

I also use quality spices, which I think makes a big difference. I typically get mine from Penzeys. 

And if one of your kids sticks their fingers in the finished pie and you don't realize it until after it has arrived at your nephews house for dinner and his wife unwraps it? Well, just consider it extra yummy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, I've tried a number of pie crust recipes over the year. At one point I gave up and just used Pillsbury's refrigerated pie crust. But then, I found this recipe on allrecipes.com and it changed my pie baking life.

Butter Flaky Pie Crust

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, frozen
• 1/4 cup ice water

A good pie crust is all about technique. 

1. Combine the flour and salt. Then grate the butter into the flour with a cheese grater. 

Freezing, then grating the butter, is the key. The little bits of frozen butter are what makes the crust so flaky. After grating in the butter work quickly, because you don't want the butter to get soft.

2. Add the ice water a tablespoonful at a time and mix in until the mixture forms a ball. 

3. If you've worked fast enough and the butter is still frozen you can roll out the crust now. If not, refrigerate it for a couple hours. I've heard refrigerating it helps prevent shrinkage, but I can't say that has always been true for me. 

Try not to overwork the dough when you roll it out. I roll mine out on parchment paper so it's easy to move it to the pie pan. 

The magic ingredient in my pie crust is my great-grandmothers rolling pin. And since I'm not giving that up, I can't exactly guarantee your crust will turn out as awesome as mine. I still bet it will be pretty darn good though! 

Two out of Three

Noah doesn't have school this week so Rich and I are taking turns staying home.

He had two awesome days this week, yesterday with me and Monday with Rich. Today he had a horrible afternoon with Rich. Like he was a completely different kid than he was yesterday.

Maybe there were some warning signs yesterday. Or maybe there is no warning and it just is, like a switch is flipped. To the right = awesome; to the left = hell.

After his vision therapy appointment yesterday afternoon we went to the market to grab a few things, which of course turned into a full cart. Noah was so awesome. He was happy. He was helpful and fun and accepting. A joy to be with. Except he was going at 1.5 times normal speed. He didn't stop talking the entire time. Everything was just fast. Not bad fast, just fast. Not-normal fast.

It's so bizarre to watch.

And absolutely heartbreaking when it turns into a day like today, a day where he is definitely not happy.

No socks were harmed in the taking of these pictures.

Is he failing second grade? Or is second grade failing him?

Tonight was Noah's parent-teacher conference.

Not surprisingly Noah is struggling academically and behaviorally. Two years ago we thought his problems were only behavioral, that academically he was strong.

It's hard not to feel discouraged after meetings like this.

My discouragement is shifting though. Instead of all of it focusing on Noah and his struggles, some of it falls on the educational system and how it is failing him.

Very simply, Noah's brain was not given what it needed to grow properly in his first six months of life, possibly even before he was born. 

It's like the foundations of his brain was built on sand, instead of on rock. And the wiring was done by a plumber on crack instead of an electrician. 

If the foundation is not secure, and the wiring is fucked up, how can you expect to successfully build on it?

The educational system we are in is trying to build on a foundation that is failing. So they throw a few sandbags around it and try to add another floor. More cracks form, so they try to patch them, and then build another room.

I admire Noah's teacher. She has more patience in her little finger than I will ever have in my entire lifetime. I know she wants Noah to succeed. I know she works very hard!

Yet, as we sat there and listened to her describe how Noah isn't at grade level in reading, and listened to her explain the different tests they do to determine that, and then listened to her tell us that although we both know he knows his math fact, he struggles to show that in timed tests, well, I started to get frustrated. And when Rich asked her how you can test a child like Noah using the same tests you use for a "normal" child I could tell he was getting frustrated too.

Then she showed us a reading comprehension test that Noah had failed miserably, and said they repeat it in the spring, and hopefully he will show improvement. And I sat back and told her flat out that "No, I don't think he will show improvement." 

If he doesn't have the foundation to build on, how is he going to show improvement? And I don't mean that he wasn't taught the basic facts. I know he was taught all of that. But his brain is so disorganized that at a certain point I think he reached overload and now he struggles to access what he does know. 

I know he is a smart kid, but if we don't figure out how to untangle that mess of wires in his brain, and strengthen the foundation, he is going to continue to struggle. And as he matures and begins to understand more, he's going to think he is a failure. But it isn't Noah that is a failure, it is all of us that are failing him.


I don't think the school system knows what a child like Noah needs. Hell, I know Noah better than anyone and I still don't know what he needs.


I do know that what the school is doing for him is not working. How can they continue to offer him the same programs yet see him falling further behind and think that is OK?


Noah needs an educational program that not only teaches him the academics, but one that helps retrain his brain. And it needs to be a program that can let go of this idea that he is on the autism spectrum and recognize and understand what attachment disorder is and how it ties in to a brain like Noah's. 


Does a program like that exist? How do I find it if it does?


How do I create it if it doesn't exist? 

Where do I start?