Thursday, June 9, 2011

The Roller Coaster!


As I contemplated what to write about this week, I scrolled through our photos from the past week on the computer. I am trying to grasp some sort of inspiration before I head off to pick up the kids in five minutes. As I looked at all of the thumbnails across the screen I almost laughed out loud. The images appear like an old comic film with no sound. We are always trying to capture that million dollar smile from one of the kids or get that perfect shot of them hugging so we just snap away under the false pretense that we will delete the 'bad' photos later. There is a succession of emotions from each series of pictures. It would be a great tool for an acting class. I may actually print some of them out and laminate them to teach the kids about different emotions. Anyways, the faces go from happy, to frustrated/confused, to angry, to peaceful, and so on. Which is a really good example of our lives these days. They will both go from happy to complete meltdown in about 10 seconds. My goal is to figure out why. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. This week Cruz had a major breakthrough in therapy. Saying the "O" sound has been one of his hardest tasks. A couple of weeks ago he would start with a small mouth and end up big, so it sounded more like 'wahhh'. We finally got him to go from big mouth to little mouth to make that "O" sound. We all sit around like a pack of wolves howling at the moon as the sound takes a good 10 to 15 seconds to make. Wren looks at all of us like we are crazy. Maybe we are. There are days were I think I might be going coo coo. I'm not pretending like I have this mothering thing down perfect. If anything I probably tend to beat myself up more often than not. We just ride this roller coaster of extreme emotion repeatedly. I am still trying to figure out exactly what to do when they are both having a fit. This week Cruz has been really aggressive towards Wren and me. When he gets frustrated he will walk up to one of us and hit us. So, we are trying to iron out some of this aggression. But we are all strapped into this ride and unlike the theme park, there isn't a chicken exit to back out. We have to ride it out. My one hope that I am holding onto is that as sure as the roller coaster bottoms out, it does rise back up. I have to be looking for the positive and looking for where it takes a turn for the better. I just take a gamble every time we leave the house with just me, Wren, and Cruz. In public, he is distracted enough that he usually behaves pretty well. The car is a different story. Nine out of ten times he screams at the top of his lungs. Day to day, I wake up just praying for an overall good day. Everyone has been on good roller coasters and bad roller coasters. They all have the highs and lows, just some are a lot jerkier and rough and sometimes painful. Others don't seem to have much thrill. So, we just try to coast as often as possible and not hit the extreme highs and lows. We just have to try to do something fun everyday. When I lay my head down at night I want to make sure that on a pass/fail system that each day is a pass, even if they aren't perfect.










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