Finish the Sentence Friday: When I was younger, I wanted to

This week's sentence to finish is:

When I was younger, I wanted to... 

become a vet. You know, like all the other little girl do. Oh, what a great vet I would become! I would help and cure all the injured and sick animals. I knew it. This was going to be epic and I would be the best vet ever! :-)

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Some time later, the dream of becoming a vet faded and was replaced by something much more exciting. I wanted to become either an actress or a singer. Or even both. Either way I would be a star! I knew it and I was sure about that. I practiced singing and dancing at home. Well, turns out I was not, um, really talented for any of those things and after some time the bubble burst.

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Then, in my teenage years, I finally found what I thought was my calling! I wanted to become an astronomer! I have always been very interested in the stars, the space, planets, nebulas, and comets, all that stuff. I dreamed of working at a space observatory, looking through huge telescopes and discovering new stars or solar systems. Maybe one of my discoveries would even be named after me! I dreamed of this:

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However, as I grew older I found out that astronomers are normally astrophysicists and that in order to do what I dreamed of I also needed to understand things like this:

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And there was NO WAY I would EVER understand physics!! Sad but true.


So this girl decided to get herself an office job and lived happily everafter! ;-)


Thank you to Kate of Can I Get Another Bottle of Whine…, Janine of Janine’s Confessions of a Mommyaholic, Stephanie of Mommy, for Real and Dawn of Dawn's Disaster for hosting Finish the Sentence Friday!

PS: Sunny will now be home for two weeks because of the Whitsun/Pentecost holidays. We will see how blogging goes during this time. 

Five Minute Friday: Song

Today I'm linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for Five Minute Friday again. 


Song...

GO

My almost nonverbal son has a favourite song. To be honest, he has a lot of favourite songs because he loves music. But the song that he loves most of all is the sound of the birds singing. The first thing he requests in the morning is that I get up, get him out of bed and open the window. The fresh, crisp air enters the room and with it the songs of the birds singing their morning serenade to us.

He will step on the stool near the window, still in his pyjamas, his adorable bed hair going all places, lean outside and take it all in. As soon as he hears the birds he laughs blissfully, with his mouth and with his eyes. I can see how happy he is and that makes my heart jump and my stomach cramp for a tiny second. He imitates the songs of the birds, communicating with them and singing back and forth in a special kind of conversation. There is no need for words because music - regardless of who sings those sweet tunes - is a universal language. 

STOP

The sweet and the sour

Today was a kind of Yin and Yang day. It included both the sweet and the sour.

The sweet:
This morning I dropped Sunny off at kindergarten after our PT session. His teacher found a few minutes to talk to me since there were only two kids (including Sunny) and an intern was there to look after them. She told me that they had been to a nearby playground with the kids on Tuesday and she marvelled about how impressed she was to see how good Sunny had been at "boarding" the climbing tower on the playground. She explained how steady he was while he climbed the flat-angled ladder, how securely he used the slide, how he was able to use the climbing net with only little help, how he explored the tower by himself and how he mastered the long, vertical ladder leading up to the platform with no help at all. She told me that when he uses the wall bars in kindergarten he usually climbs up and then just lets go, trusting that there will be someone to catch his fall. On the playground he was much more focused and concentrated, exploring while being fully able to move around on the climbing tower all by himself (with the exception of the climbing net which was too difficult for him to do it alone). She was so impressed with the great progress he has made and I was so happy about all this.

The sour:
Within the last weeks there was an examination of Sunny with regard to his transition to school. Some of you already know that I have a hard time accepting that he already has to attend school after the summer holidays. But there is nothing we can do to prevent that so we just have to deal with the situation. A teacher went to kindergarten several times and assessed him. This is a regular process in order to find the right school for each child. We had a meeting with her after the evaluation process and today the report of our meeting came in the mail. As usual, it was hard to read about all the difficulties Sunny faces in various areas of his life written in black and white. Being told is one thing, reading it is another. It is always much more difficult for me.

But what really got to me was the handwritten note of the teacher that we also need to file an application for a personal aide for school. She wrote that she had forgotten to talk to us about that during our meeting and that she would call me today or tomorrow. Sunny will be attending a special education class with maximum six children. There will be two teachers and even an intern for a certain amount of hours. And Sunny will need a personal aide for himself nevertheless? I just cannot believe that. I read her note and asked myself whether I live in a parallel universe or whether I wear blinders the size of garage doors. I never spent a single thought on the fact that Sunny might need an aide for himself. Is he really that dependent and needy that even two teachers and an intern cannot fulfil his needs without additional help? Until today this thought was totally devious for me.

I cannot wrap my head around it and, once again, I questioned myself what other people really see when they see him. Because obviously it is totally different from what I see. I know he needs a lot of help but it was not clear to me to what extent. That probably sounds totally weird because I care for him every day and you should think I know the facts but since he is an only child I have no comparison on what is really "normal". And, therefore, I am of course well aware that I have to do more for him than for a NT child his age but I always feel like it is not that much more. This is my normal and, therefore, I do not perceive it to be extraordinary. But maybe it is.    

I thought about all that since I read the teacher's letter this afternoon. Tonight, after a long and good telephone conversation with one of my best friends who has a SN child as well I finally came to the conclusion that I do not want to know what strangers see when they see him anymore because it would probably hurt too much.

Picture perfect

There is one event that I look forward to the whole year: I treat myself with a professional photo shoot each year. Sunny and I have our pictures taken by a wonderful photographer who turned into a friend over the years. My husband sadly does not come with us as he absolutely dislikes having pictures of him taken. But since I am the photographer in our family he is on many more pictures than I am, so this is one of the reasons why I do this every year. These pictures are very important to me. I think there can never be too many pictures of us.

There is another thing that is really important to me when it comes to the photo shoot. I always say that it is my kind of therapy. First of all I look forward to it for months. It makes me happy just thinking about it. I ponder about the outfits we are going to wear, the accessories we will bring along to our shoot and the fun we are going to have. Very often when I have to do non-fun stuff like telephone calls with the insurance company or other unpleasant things I can distract myself with the thought and the pleasant anticipation of the photo shoot and it makes me light up and take things a little easier (at least sometimes).

Then, on the day of the shoot, we both dress up and I put on some make-up, make my hair, put on my jewellery and a gorgeous outfit and feel really beautiful for one day (it is not that I walk around in a bag all year but I do not spend that much time on my appearance in everyday life like when we go to the shoot). I feel strong and powerful and self-confident and I cannot wait to spend time with my friend, have a lot of fun and hear how much Sunny has grown and how cute and beautiful he is. It is truly an endorphin booster and after the shoot I drive home on a cloud of happiness.

The day when we finally get the pictures is my absolute highlight of it all. The pictures are always wrapped up beautifully and unwrapping the parcel is something I really celebrate and enjoy. There are layers and layers in there including the pics on CD, some printed photos and small yet thoughtful presents. It is like Christmas in summer. I just love it.

Seeing the pictures gives me a feeling of normal. This might sound totally weird but I look at the pictures and see happiness, carefreeness, fun, joy. Of course these are all things that are a large part of our everyday life. We are happy, carefree, have fun and enjoy stuff. But these emotions are sometimes clouded by other things like sadness, worries, discontentedness and the like. The pictures, however, show me what I love about our life and whenever I feel sad or down I just need to take a look at them and they lift me up again.

The Week In Pictures: calendar week 19/2013

The last week was rather quiet and - apart from the national holiday on Thursday - there was just our normal routine more or less.

Here's to a wonderful new week!

I was gifted with a pair of gorgeous high heels from a friend for no special reason. That totally made my day!

We started the barbecue season on Father's Day regardless of the cold and rainy weather

My American readers will probably LOL now because of the size of our barbecue ;-)

I tried a new recipe for a layered cream cake. It tasted delicious but did not look very appealing

Beautifully blooming syringa

Sunny had his first tick ever. These creatures creep me out because they are so small yet so dangerous.

The inhalator had to work overtime because the cough came back

My beautiful Mother's Day gift

Since our music therapist brought up this theme during our therapy session two weeks ago this is Sunny's favourite music to listen to. It calms him down and makes him happy. He sings it every day.

Mother's Night and Day

After I finished my Mother's Day post of yesterday I went upstairs to check on Sunny. I had heard him crying over the monitor and when I entered his room I found him sitting unhappily in his bed, half awake. His nose was congested and he was breathing quickly and short-winded because his cough from two weeks ago had returned with full force on Saturday. I could hear that he had trouble breathing, so I cleaned his nose thoroughly and let him inhale with the medicine I always give him when he has bronchitis. I checked his temperature because he felt hot and when I saw that he spiked a fewer I gave him some Ibuprofen. Afterwards I hugged him tightly, carressed his hair and kissed his hot, feverish forehead gently while I pulled him on my lap and rocked him back and forth to make him sleepy again. He nuzzled against my chest and when I thought that he was drifting back to sleep I put him in his bed again, turned on his music to sleep to and left his room.

I was tired, too, because I caught a cold last week and my congested nose and the constant pressure on my head make me tired by the end of the day so I was looking forward to lying in my bed, watching a few minutes of TV and falling asleep quickly. But as I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth I heard that Sunny was fully awake now, laughing in his bed, jumping around and obviously not tired anymore at all. I went inside his room again and as the light spilled inside he immediately pointed to the book he had taken to bed with him, happy signing and "telling" me stuff he wanted to show me. It was clear that he would not sleep again anytime soon. He laughed and smiled at me, pulled me in his bed and he was so cute that I decided to take him to our bed for a while. I carried him over in his sleeping bag and he was over the moon.

We rarely get a chance to spend time with him in our bed because he normally does not sleep in our bed. I always have the impression that he thinks being in our bed means fun time and playing, not sleeping. This is why he normally stays in his own bed. But since we were all awake I thought it would be nice to spend some time together in our bed. And we all enjoyed it so very much. Sunny was happy and full of joy. He cuddled with us under our blankets for a few minutes seconds, then got up again to excitedly proclaim something from his book, then came back to cuddle. We watched the last 10 minutes of "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" and he was absolutely fascinated by the lion and the mouse. He either sat or lay there with us, eyes wide open, full of amazement. Sunny rarely watches TV so this is always something really special for him. 

By 23:30 we decided it was time for him to try to sleep again, although Sunny was still full of energy, so we said good night to Sunny's daddy and went over to his room where I put him to bed and lay down on my own bed in his room. It is always ready because Sunny is a bad sleeper and I sleep in his room very often, moving from our bedroom to his room in the middle of the night. Although he was so amped he calmed down soon and we both fell asleep quickly. 

By 4:05 he woke up gasping again, barely able to breathe, so I took him to my bed after I let him inhale and soothed him by stroking his hair and his back and talking softly to him that it's okay. After some time his breathing became a bit slower and we fell asleep again. The night ended at 6:15.

Mother's Day was a sad mixture of awful weather and a sick, unhappy kid. Sunny was short-winded the whole day and feverish and just felt very poorly. He was extra clingy and needed me constantly by his side. I was so sorry for him. We had to inhale very often because he had a hard time breathing. He did not nap very long this afternoon but went to bed early because he was so exhausted from the day. I hope he will have a good night's sleep and recover.

This was Sunny's Mother's Day gift from kindergarten: a beautiful, handcrafted key ring pendant made from felt and wooden pearls and wrapped in a lovely heart-shaped box with cute polka dots and a four leaf clover tag. I love the creativity of our kindergarten, they always think of the most wonderful presents for special occasions like these! <3

Tonight as I write this I am really worn out from the day, with a bad night, Sunny being sick and myself not feeling very well, either. I was just reminded on this Mother's Day what it is all about: caring for the ones that we love, no matter how badly we feel ourselves. Always putting our kids first and trying to ease their pain. I did not have the picture perfect Mother's Day with a lot of presents, a nice getaway and a child that is all smiles. It was more or less the opposite. But I am not sad about that because the day was the perfect Mother's Day, in its own special way.

Happy Mother's Day!

To all you moms out there: you are awesome! You do such a good job every day and if you have a child with special needs there is always still a bit more to do on top of it all.

Photo credits: Facebook

I hope you will get to sleep in tomorrow, I hope what you do for your family will be acknowledged, I hope your family will love you extra tomorrow and if you are a single mom I hope you feel loved and treasured nevertheless. 

I have to keep this short because Sunny got ill today again and I can hear him crying over the monitor. He needs me now and I need to do my job: be the best mama this wonderful child deserves!

This video is for you!