I am shocked and horrified by my own behavior...
Does it matter that he stole my car??? No....who retaliates???
Anywho...his car doesn't even stink...
Back to planning Disney people!!!
don't worry... i think most of us have a retaliation "bone" in our body... i know i do!!! Even as a "grown woman"!!!
Hugs to you all who have supported me in my time of need...
My son is turning 11 on June 11th.What should I do to celebrate his passing into his tween years? WDW of course! I began planning last fall for a b-day trip for Jon. I was so excited.
We were going back to the world! I shared my joy with my very BF in the whole wide world, Tera (meeskamouska to you people). Dont you hate it when people invite themselves on your vacation???
Let me introduce our Cast Members in my words, since Tera (AKA: meeskamouska) has done so for you above (she lies, dont believe anything she says about me)!
Me:Goofyluver (or Jennifer as Im known to my family)! Single mommy to the best boy in the world! Im a speech therapist who works with elementary kiddos and an all around strong woman. If I had to describe myself in one word, that word would be OCD! I am a planner, a strategizer, a clean-freak (thanks mom!), a worry-wart, and germaphobe! Nuff about my psychosis for right now. Im sure my craziness will come up several times in this TR!
DS: Jon! 10-year-old boys boy! (turning 11 while we are at the world!)Loves all things soccer and video games. And, after his 2006 New Years WDW trip, loves loves loves Disney! I call Jon the enforcer. He knows all and lets everyone know it. He is the keeper of the rules and the keeper of all information that you would never want passed along. Jon has OCD too hmmmm, it must be genetic.
DBF: Tera (AKA: meeskamouska)! My very BF. Tera and I have known each other since birth. Our mommies were friends while we were in the tummies! Tera is the perfect mom, and she knows it. She is the mom that everyone wants to be. One word to describe Tera? Uhhh can I have a few words? How about empty pit of needless information. Tera can sing any song that has come out since the 80s. Name it, shell sing it. She recites commercials and movie lines for no reason at all. She is stronger than any woman her age should be. And, I luvz her! We grew up together. We are sistas from 2 different mothas!
Teras DH: Damian (AKA: Dam)! Damian is perfect for Tera and I love him too. (Dont tell him I said that ) He once walked in on me taking a pee and he consoled me afterward. Damian got dragged into this trip by Tera, but were going on Star Wars Weekend people! And, Dam looooooooves Star Wars.Computer nerd and movie nerd who loves Transformers (yes, transformers) about sums up Dam. He thinks Tera and I are absolutely nuts about this trip. But, what he doesnt know is that he is benefiting from our crazy planning and he should be thankful!
Tera and Dams DD: Kaia (AKA: Genius Girl)! Kaia will be 4 in May. She is the smartest kiddo I have ever met. She used to paint standing on one leg when she was only 18 months old. Her identity changes on a daily basis. Some days she is Kaia, others she is Dora, or any other endless list of characters. She is sooooo creative. She once hit on a guy at Red Lobster, when she was 16 months, calling the waiter the boy she liked.
So, these are the crazies, errrr, people I am traveling with. All in one suite for 8 days. Please pray for me people I may not survive!
***Side note about this TR*** Tera and I are going to do this one together. Teras words will all be in red, mine will be in blue. Yea, we like to confuse people. Hope you enjoy our crazy TR!!! And, dont judge people! Its not nice to make fun of the crazies!
Up Next: Haven of the Nude Dude (Post #23)
I guess it is time to really get to know us. Dont ya want a little more than a blurb!!!
So, I have known Jennifer my whole life. One of my earliest memories of her is being at her parents office and our mothers talking about how to keep a bun for ballet class in place with Dippity Do?! She was being snobby and I was being shy .I am so glad that I grew out of the shyness .Jennifer, well, what can I say!
I wanted to be just like Jennifer when we were kids.
So, needless to say as tweens we were together all the time. Some of the greatest memories I have are at The Daycare. Her mother owned it; my mother ran it .and we were always stuck there!! We camped out in this little back room and discussed all the wonders of life! At that age it was mostly about boys and memorizing all the lyrics to the Cooleyhighharmony album of Boys II Men. Stop, rewind, play, stop, rewind, fast forward, play that poor tape player was put threw the ringer!! She complains about my abilities to recall useless information, but in our youth she fed this obsession!!
This was the summer Jennifer ran away. Yes, walked all the way across town, in the middle of the night, to make a point. What was that point? I dont remember (although I am sure she does). Guess what her punishment was... well, guess. She got to stay at my house for a week!!! I think it was actually for her safety, because her parents wanted to kill her!
One time, on Daycare business, we went to Lubbock to get supplies with the moms. We went to this Chinese restaurant and thought that the tea they served was saki. Hey, dont laugh we were young maybe 12! We thought it made us drunk and acted the fool!Needless to say if fake saki can get us drunk we were in big trouble when the real alcohol came into play!
Jennifer was a control freak in our youth and she talked in her sleep oh, that was funny. There were occasions were she would get angry at me and force me to sing in the middle of the night to Help her sleep. If I didnt do what she asked (in her SLEEP) she would hit me.So, I would sing myself to sleep and hope I wouldnt wake up the entire house with my laughter every time she smacked me!!! She is still extremely demanding. I just play along like she is always right and then do what I want anyways, shell get over it!!!
Heres a question for ya, have you ever stayed over at someones house and you had to do chores?
So, we got older, we went through the teen years. We had a very typical teenage girl relationship: we loved each other one minute and hated each other the next. We let boys get in the way, yet we were always there to help with the broken heart. We treated each other like dirt and then like a precious jewel. Girls can be the cruelest and then the kindest creature on the planet thank goodness we were able to survive all of that idiocy.
(I'm not a teacher...I'm a speech therapist...it does not matter that I work for the schools)
speech therapists!!!! DS13 - the DJ - had an absolutely fabulous one that we were assigned by the school district when he was first diagnosed with Non-Verbal Learning Disorder. She knew what it was, she knew what would help. We hired her over the summer to continue to work with him.
)
Loving it!!!
Hi Red and Dippy!!!
I thought when you said Kaia used to paint standing on one leg, I thought it said pee...
Wow...Dippy hit you and you remained friends?
You must really love each other...
Red really fits you now more...everytime dippy smacked you, she probably left you with a red mark...
Like cheese
I
The best thing she said to us was "Every one is a bit NLD, and ADHD and ADD and autistic and (she went on to list a bunch of neurological/behavioral learning disorders). We all have it in us to some extent. It's when one is in ascendency that those traits become a diagnosis." I know this doesn't sound really reassuring, but for The DJ, it was. It meant he wasn't weird or abnormal.
Mer
(I need to figure out how to link my pre-trip report to my signature, any idea where to look?)
Love the cheese story he deserved it! 
OMG you can tell the chatty GC's have found this TR
With your siggie do as Jen said but click the insert link button (globe) and paste your link, whilst it is blue (don't touch any buttons!) type click here or what ever and you will get those words as your link KWIM? Hope it works
Thanks Jo...
OMG you can tell the chatty GC's have found this TR
With your siggie do as Jen said but click the insert link button (globe) and paste your link, whilst it is blue (don't touch any buttons!) type click here or what ever and you will get those words as your link KWIM? Hope it works
Wow...Dippy hit you and you remained friends?
You must really love each other...
Red really fits you now more...everytime dippy smacked you, she probably left you with a red mark...
OMG you can tell the chatty GC's have found this TR
With your siggie do as Jen said but click the insert link button (globe) and paste your link, whilst it is blue (don't touch any buttons!) type click here or what ever and you will get those words as your link KWIM? Hope it works
Okay so Tera and I are obsessive planners.O-oh, girls just wanna have fu-un! (I was singin there did ya like it? Luvz me some Cindy Lauper yes I do!)
Theres another reason that Tera and I want this trip to be perfect and I think we should share it with you. Im not gonna write for Tera, shell add her explanation on her baby genius.But, youll see that we bond on many different levels:
Tera and I are both parents of very special children. Extraordinary children, dawlings! Both Tera and I have special needs children. They have different needs, but both have medical bizness goin on! We try to keep positivity at all times but we both know how hard it is to parent these kiddos.
My son, Jon, was born almost 11 years ago. 5 days after he was born I knew something was wrong. I knew it felt it in my bones. Jon was severely developmentally delayed. He couldnt hold his head up until he was 4 months old. He didnt crawl until after a year, etc., etc. He has been in Speech, Occupational Therapy, and Physical Therapy since the age of 2 months. I searched for years for a cause. I got my answer when Jon was 4 years old, after years of doctors, tests, pokes, and prods.
Jon was diagnosed with Agenesis of the Rostrum of the Corpus Callosum (ACC). ACC is a malformation of the portion of the brain that transmits information between the two hemispheres of the brain. Therefore, any message transmitted between the two hemispheres is affected, either transmitting slower than normal or not being transmitted at all. In addition, Jon has been diagnosed with Static Encephalopathy (a neurologic condition meaning that neurologic functioning is impacted), Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Hypotonia, depressed immune system, slowed growth, asthma, and allergies. He also has orthopedic needs he was in leg and foot braces for years. However, they didnt help and made it difficult for him to walk and run, and we decided a year ago to forgo the braces. In addition, Jon has speech and language delays, fine motor, and gross motor delays. We were told a bit over a year ago that Jons disorder (ACC) places him most probably somewhere on the Autism Spectrum. However, I have chosen to stick with the medical diagnosis that we have, and not pursue a diagnosis of Autism. Hey doesnt the kid have enough labels? Quite a lot for a teeny, tiny 10-year-old, huh?
ACC is the same diagnosis that the real-life Rain Man suffers from. ACC affects all persons differently. There is a wide spectrum of symptoms and manifestations of this condition. Jon lies somewhere in the mild to moderate section of the spectrum. Jon is 10 and is in the 5th grade.However, Jon is functioning in the 1st to 2nd grade academic curriculum. He recently tested on a mid-1st grade math level and a mid-2nd grade reading level. Jon is impacted academically, cognitively, and socially. He functions about on a 6-7 year old level cognitively. He struggles with academics things that came so easy to me as a child, take Jon years to comprehend. Jon has many friends and kids seem to enjoy him. But, he is not on the same level as his age-peers.
Jon has struggled his entire life. He was very sick for many years, due to his depressed immune system. He was in the hospital and at the doctor constantly when he was younger. He still gets sick far more often than most children, but he is nowhere as ill as he was as a young child. His asthma and allergies also make infection a constant risk. He has recently been diagnosed with depressed growth. We will have to make a decision in the near future about growth hormones, depending on how much he has grown by the time he goes to the next appointment.
A lot to handle? Absolutely.
But, Jon is amazing. He is amazingly sweet and amazingly funny.
I think parenting is the most difficult J-O-B in the world.Being the parent of a special needs child magnifies the difficulty of being a parent in general. But, the gifts far outweigh the negatives. Jon has taught me that we must relish the small things in life. Things like taking a trip to Disney may be just a good time for some, but for us, its a life experience. Its something to bring a smile to our kiddos faces!
Over Jons lifetime, we have been told what he will never be able to do, or what he cant do by several doctors. Heres a short list:
1. Jon will never walk and if he does walk, he wont run and if he does run, hell fall down all the time (guess who is a speed demon now!)
2. Jon will never read (guess whos a great reader?)
3. Jon will never write his fine motor skills wont allow him to do so (guess who has gorgeous handwriting?)
4. Jon will have to use a computer to communicate because his speech will be limited as well his written abilities (Jon uses a computer all right to play video games!)
I have never listened to the He cants or he wonts!
So, you see, when you think Im a psycho planner lady remember, in the back of your mind, that Im doing it all for him.
Here is the enforcer at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta!
