Oh, the Horror

A toddler with a spoon and a loaded bowl of cereal.

Terrifying for any parent.

Carrie's First Day of Work

It started with puke.

Shane's allergies have been acting up. He's been a regular snot faucet.

This morning, you could tell it had been pooling overnight. Shane coughed as I got him ready. The flavor was audible.

It must have been tangible, too. Shane coughed, swallowed wrong, and flash-urped on the floor. There was another cough, but the training potty caught round two.

I checked Shane for fever, gave him a sip of juice, and couldn't find anything wrong with him. Carrie and I swapped his socks, and continued getting ready.

Next, Shane threw up on his car seat. It was another, cough, cough, urk, blegh. One paper towel scooped up all the chunks, but Shane managed to get his jacket with the dribble this time around.

It was an auspicious way to start Carrie's first day of work!

Mother's Day 2013

I thought Carrie was going to be gone for Mother's Day weekend. She surprised Shane and I at church.

One moment, I'm singing a song and the next a beautiful woman throws herself at me and gives me a kiss. I was so surprised, I pulled back to double-check that it was my wife! Carrie's excitability and passion are two of the things I love about her!

We got to surprise her, too!

Shane and I spent the whole weekend cleaning the house from top to bottom (he wasn't much help). Before church, we went to Wegman's and grabbed Mommy a fruit tart treat!

There's a lot of history (and flavor) behind those tarts. Carrie and I used to visit the same Wegman's when we were dating. I'd never discovered a grocery store I could call awesome before and Carrie wanted to fill me in. It became a tradition that Carrie got a fruit tart whenever we went to buy groceries.

After we got hitched and moved to Centreville, there was still a Wegman's within a reasonable distance. Sometimes I would try to surprise Carrie with a fruit tart or something else from the bakery. That all stopped when we moved to Chantilly and Carrie wanted to eat healtheir, but Mother's Day is a good excuse for something sweet.

Shane and I love you, Carrie! You're a great mother and great mothers deserve the best fruit tart your boys can find!

FitFest

On Saturday, Shane and I went to our gym/church's FitFest. It was a fun adventure while Mommy was out of town!

There were swimming pools full of Legos...

...including some train pieces!

Then came not one, but two moon bounces!

Shane was a wild child! He ran and bounced all over!

Other times he would lay down so that the bouncing of other kids would buck him around.

And, of course, Shane had to go in both bounce houses to get the full experience.

It was a lot harder to get pictures of him in the tunnels! 

Outside, we got to sit in a fire truck...

..and then an ambulance.

To cap it off, Shane saw a monster hill. It begged to be climbed.

So we did!  

Shane wore himself out and I got some pictures. Mission Accomplished!

My only regret was the giant mud puddle. The boy went straight for it. 

It only took a second for Shane's foot to take a plunge.

Shane, What is Best in Life?

Elevators.

Kick-Started

I caved and supported a Kickstarter campaign.

The idea of crowd-funding always intrigued me, and this campaign managed to hit several of my nerd and nostalgia buttons all at once. 

It's for a Robotech Tactical Table-top game. 

I remember loving Robotech back when I was five. It was my gateway to animation, science-fiction, robots, and role-playing games. 

Yes, role-playing games. 

Palladium books made a Robotech RPG that I saw a book for when I was in sixth grade. I bought it out of sheer "THAT'S ROBOTECH!!!!" I remember Bill and I played it after hours at church camp at Camp Highroad the summer after 6th grade.

So...yeah. I decided to throw in some cash to support a game that I don't know how much time I will ever have for. A part of me is kicking myself, but I figure if I call off Christmas it will even out. The game would ship around then anyway!

It would be fun if Shane were to show an interest when he's older, but I'm not going to push it. Shane will be Shane. I want to encourage him to be the best he can be, but I'm not going to be one of 'those' parents who assumes that their children are going to like everything they like. 

It would be super cool to play something like this with my son, though...

A Worry and Hope

Shane does not play nicely with children his age. The day-care people have mentioned that he doesn't really interact with the other children. He has a tendency to scream, screech, or cry if another toddler or preschooler comes too close or tries to use the same playground equipment he's using. There was a girl on the playground near Carrie's parents when we visited. Shane would throw an absolute fit whenever she tried to come within ten feet of him or interact with Carrie or I.

It doesn't help that our therapist through the county wanted to make sure they tested Shane for autism. She thought that his intense/borderline-obsessive interest in certain things might be an indicator that he was on the spectrum.

The specialists concerns did not concern me at first. Shane's fixating on his interests comes directly from me. Nana coined it 'what I liked, I REALLY liked." An addictive personality. My brother, Patrick, was similar. There was a span of time he refused to wear or drink out of anything that wasn't green. 

The lack of interest in his peers does pull at me. Originally, I was going to write about my concerns and use how nice he is with Baby Cole as a counterpoint. I've seen Shane interact, but his current screaming and raging around peers definitely caught my attention. The specialist's mention of autism keeps creeping back.

I don't think there's a lot of substance to it, though. I think Shane is more spoiled with attention and not needing to share than anything (the perks of being the only child, I suppose). I've seen him interact very nicely with younger and older kids.

Yesterday, Yordy and Kirby visited Nana and Pop to celebrate Kirby's birthday. Shane asks about the boys whenever Nana takes him to watch the school bus at the bus stop. He remembers them.

When Yordy and Kirby first hopped out of the car, Shane began to go into tantrum mode. I told him to "be nice! Nice boys are happy and friendly!" 

Thankfully, he recovered.

It was an absolute blast to watch all of the boys play with Pop-Pop on the trampoline. Shane charged around saying "I gonna get choo!" Kirby and Yordy laughed and stayed just out of reach or turned the tables and started chasing Shane! 

There were some pics on Nana's camera, but here's what my crappy phone captured:

Shane's in the dark blue shirt. He's dive-bombing Pop in the second photo!

I was an outside observer through the festivities. The trampoline's weight capacity was already close to maxed so I just sat and guarded the entrance. Indy kept me busy by begging me to throw her nasty tennis ball! 

If only Shane didn't say "Daddy go away?" it would've been perfect! Somewhere along the way I picked up the rep as the "Taking Care of Business" parent. I'm sure he was partly afraid I was going to make him leave party-land before he wanted! One day the toot will be old enough to realize I revel in watching him cackling, hyper, and enjoying himself.

The IEP for Shane is set for next week on Friday. I don't think they're going to find him on the spectrum, and I'll be relieved to hear that confirmed. Even if they do say Shane has some form of autism, I think he'd be super high functioning and it'd be more something I'd define as "quirky."

Quirky just means you're more interesting, because you're not cut out of the normal mold. 

You know, like Shane's old man!

Babysitter

It's taken two and a half years, but someone has passed the Carrie-Test.

We've found a babysitter.

Meghan is a 17-year old in our neighborhood. Carrie invited her over for a trial run last Sunday. My wife and Megan talked while Shane played with them (I went out to mow).

Carrie wants Shane to get more used to Meghan before she is willing to leave him with her. My wife just called to let me know she's scheduled another 'mother's helper' visit for tonight! I've got to scramble and get cash so I can pay up!

I'm glad my wife called to warn me. Shane and I are planning on going to a 'FitFest' after he wakes up from his nap. There's going to be a moonbounce! We can hit up Harris Teeter on the way back and buy something small so I can grab some cash from the credit card. I'm bad about carrying lots of change and plastic, but not much greenery.

Speaking of greenery: It looks like I'll be mowing again tonight!

Erratta

Tonight was more of an "Catch up on some random Mike stuff" rather than a "tell a fun story" sort of night.

Shane and I did have a great time at Nana and Pop's that I need to write about, but that will have to wait for tomorrow. I didn't feel like I had the focus required to write a good Shane post.

Tutoring

Did I mention I'm tutoring again?

My tutor family asked me to help their boy get through the 4th quarter. I really like the kid and the family, so I would've done it for free.They insist on paying me and it's good gas money, so who am I to argue?

The kid has basically pulled himself together since I've shown up. He likes me, but he doesn't want to need a tutor. I told him that there were no hard feelings if he wanted to get rid of me. I told him to "get his act together, pull his grades up, and prove he didn't need me."

He's taken the motivation and seems to be running with it!

I'll probably only need to show up a couple of more times this year. It's a little bittersweet I want to see him succeed, but I'll miss the side income and the making a difference when he doesn't need me anymore!

I will also miss the connection to this family. I taught the daughter's math class my first year at my school. I made an impression then without knowing it! Both of the boys were on the same team as me in 7th grade, and I've bumped into the mom at school on parent nights and the like. Outside of school, the mom and daughter watched Shane when Carrie and I had the home inspection of our house that was not to be.

Moving forward, I'm not sure how much longer I'll have this job, but I'm glad I had the chance to do it.