I talk a lot about how it's the little things that I notice with Vicki. The little things that have the biggest impact. The little things that show me just how far Vicki has come. Let me give you another example of this in action tonight. So my husband comes home from work tonight and tells me that he's going to Borders- to pick up the shelving he bought at their store closing sale. Bear with me, I do have a point, at some point. :) (And this is how my mind works... especially at 1 in the morning... I know what the phrase 'bear with me' means, but it's kinda funny when I think about it... I don't want a bear with me. Had that when we were hiking a few years ago. And it was quite scary. Anyway....) So, he and a friend go to the store and pick up the bookshelves. We don't have a place cleared for them yet in the basement, so he decides to put them in our 2 car garage, which has been a 'my car garage, + a side filled with projects that we need to finish for the house'. Such as... a few sheets of drywall, and a new vanity and cabinet that are supposed to be for our master bathroom project, that we, on a whim, ripped up, almost 5, yes... f-i-v-e years ago. 5 people, 1 bath, 5 years... We've also had an old bar sitting in the garage that my pappy had when he owned a bar in our hometown. When my grandma passed away a few years ago, we got it so we could refurbish it and put it in our dining room. It's been a great storage spot for random garage items for years...Anyway... here's the point. He decided to move the drywall into our ripped up master bath upstairs tonight, and the unfinished bar into our dining room so he can 'finish' it. The bar is 8 ft long so we had to move a lot of furniture around to get it in the house. And since the furniture is all moved around, I think I'll clean, tomorrow..., and we're going to rearrange some stuff... As we were heading up to bed, (we always say, 'bedtime, bedtime, bedtime... yay bedtime!' before we go upstairs), Vicki noticed that our house was in complete disarray. (The kids had been watching Pocahontas in the living room). And I just told her it was 'different' tonight. She looked around a little bit, and then she accepted it and moved on. Wow!!!
You see... when things change in our house, it's not always a good thing for Vicki. I really notice it when we change decorations for different holidays and seasons... I think it was 2 Christmases ago, I had taken the Christmas decorations down one day while the kids were at school. And when she came home and saw that things were different, she was not happy. Not just an 'oh, I am sad, because it always looks so barren after the Christmas decorations get taken down. And I really liked Christmas, so now I feel let down. No. There was lots of screaming involved, and it lasted well over 2 hours. I've since learned to stretch out holidays a bit more, put things away little by little and try to keep some of her favorites out until I can get a new favorite out for the next holiday. I also show her when I take things down and I talk about how great the next holiday will be and all the fun things we will do. So, for her to see the whole downstairs in such disarray and just accept it. Well, that's pretty cool. :)
Also, along those lines, daddy was not home when it was bedtime, he was finishing up at the store. So I took the kids up to bed myself. This used to be extremely traumatic for Vicki, if we weren't altogether at bedtime. She has actually adapted quite well. When Joey goes to sleepovers now, or is at a camp out, she doesn't freak out anymore. And if my husband is working late or out of town on business she does pretty well. When she was having trouble I would put a picture of daddy on a Popsicle stick and when daddy would call to say goodnight, I would hold up the stick with daddy's face on it for her to see. Vicki still has trouble sometimes when we drop Joey off at a friends house...She'll keep saying, 'Joey car. Joey car.' after we drop him off. I remember one time, we had taken one of our cars into the shop to get worked on. We all went to the shop in one car, but I took the girls home in one car, and daddy took Joey home in the other. It was not a fun 40 minute ride home for the girls. But tonight I just told Vicki that daddy was at the store and she didn't object to bed. Little things. Big difference.
Now let me touch on Big Things. Big Differences. I haven't really mentioned everything that goes on 'behind the scenes' to make Vicki's life easier, our other children's lives easier, or mine and my husband's life easier. I don't even know what to say when I talk about the girls we have hired over the years to work at home with Vicki. I get a lump in my throat every time I think of them. These girls have no idea the full impact they have had on not just Vicki's life, but on our family's life as a whole. Some of these girls have never worked with a child with autism before, others have brought a wealth of experience with them. They are willing to come into our home and learn all about Vicki and our family. They learn strategies to help Vicki learn new things, to help Vicki communicate, to help Vicki socialize, to help Vicki play, to help Vicki help herself. To help Vicki grow and become the wonderful young person that she is. And I owe so much to these girls. It's just like when I talk about Vicki's teachers. These girls choose to come here. They choose Vicki. They choose our family. They choose to open their hearts to Vicki and they choose to love her. And Vicki loves each one of them. And we love each one of them. They are a part of our family and always will be. They are responsible for enriching Vicki's life, enriching our family's lives more than words could ever express.
I love them for wanting to come into our crazy house and be there for after school meltdowns. I love them for coming back day after day. Especially the hard days. And I love them for loving Vicki long after they have left our nest and moved on. Everyone grows up and gets thrown into the 'real world'. And it sucks. Because not only does Vicki love them and depend on them, but so do Joey and Ally and so do I. And then we have to start all over and hope we find someone else who will want to come back day after day. It's hard to have someone be a part of your family life for a few years and then graduate and move on. And it's hard to open ourselves up to someone new, and for me to relive all of the things that have gotten us to the point we are at today, the good, the bad, the scary, the sad, the happy, the mad. (Stop rhyming. I mean it. Does anyone want a peanut? Anyone, anyone? One of my favorite all time movies!) And these girls see our family at our absolute worst and hopefully at our absolute best. They see us in our jammies on a Saturday morning. Before coffee (Yikes!) They have allowed our family to do so much that we couldn't do without them. Especially in the summer. Because of these girls we can go to the playground. We can go to the pool. We can go and ride bikes. If I didn't have one of those girls with me, I couldn't do it by myself. I remember before I was lucky enough to have these girls... I went to the pool by myself with my kids. And that day at the pool, I ended up spending $170 on a new cell phone for a stranger, because of my lightening fast reflexes. I was in one of those slow motion action sequences, and I could see something shiny, and I could hear it plop into the baby pool, I just couldn't get it. Another time I walked Joey over to the big pool for swim lessons and Vicki was playing happily in the baby pool with a fence around it. In the 30 seconds that I walked Joey over, Vicki had pooped in her diaper and had gotten naked and threw her diaper in the baby pool. Yep. I was that mom. Responsible for all of the little ones yells of protest because they had to get out of the baby pool for, i think at least a half an hour while they got it cleaned up. And then Vicki didn't understand why she had to get out, so there I was with a screaming, tantrom throwing, naked 4 year old. Yep. I need these girls more than they ever will know. Last year at Vicki's very first dance recital ever, I was able to sit in the audience and watch both of my girls perform in the same show. When Vicki came out with the adaptive class and her teacher, I was holding the video camera, crying and shaking. I knew Vicki would be okay, because behind the curtains on both sides of the stage were 2 girls, and there was another one sitting in the seat beside me calming me down. To be able to experience that moment was unbelievable and I was able to fully experience it because of these girls. When Vicki got sick last May and was in the hospital, my husband was in Arizona for work. These wonderful girls, they came to the hospital with me.They stayed with me through test after test. They held my hand and wiped away my tears. They brought me a cup of coffee in the morning. They helped with Joey and Ally and tried to keep things normal for them. They came to visit from grad school for the afternoon in the pouring rain to sit in the hospital room and color with Vicki. They texted me and listened to me as I cried on the phone. They came to visit while Vicki was sedated and in an MRI and brought my husband and I lunch and then sat with Vicki as she woke up. They helped me get Vicki ready to go home. These girls truely are the wind beneath my wings. Don't ever underestimate what each one of you has brought into our lives. Thank you, thank you, thank God for you, the wind beneath my wings. xoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment