My boy

I'd like to introduce you to my oldest boy, S. He is 7 years old (almost 8, as I am reminded daily), blonde haired, blue-eyed and has PDD-NOS (a Spectrum disorder).
 

But, this is not all he is, he is also the child that leaves me teetering on the edge of sanity every single day.

Here's just a small list of the wonderful "quirks" that make S who he is:

1. He will ask you the same question 500 times in a single day in hopes that your answer will change in some way.

2. He will ask you random questions that no one other than Rain Man would be able to give an answer for.

3. He is wholly and completely obsessed with anything and everything related to or involving WWII, which results in constant conversation, questions, fact spouting, sound effect making and pretend play involving Germans, British, Americans and Russians.

4. He also, has a Selective Eating disorder which causes daily frustration over food (but that is an entirely separate blog there).

5. No matter how nicely or veiled you may be any answer to a request or question that results in a "No" will cause a hail storm of screaming, throwing, crying, door slamming, hitting and stomping.

6.Because of issues with our local public school S is currently being home-schooled, this alone drains me of any patience I may possess.

7. He is a whiz at math and can read to you at a 2nd grade level (he is only in the 1st grade), yet he cannot spell simple words for you, phonics is equal to a foreign language to him and trying to "test" him on math or LA techniques is impossible. He doesn't understand what you are asking of him, but if you re-word it or just hand him the papers 9 times out of 10 he'll get it right.  He just knows it, he just doesn't know how or why.

On and on I could go but I promised a short list so I'll stop there.  With all that being said, this is the child that very rarely shows affection, he was 5 before he said the words "I love you", but when he out of the blue comes to me and wraps his skinny little arms around my neck and tells me "I love you mom", all is forgiven.  I love my little guy more than I could ever hope to express to him, and yes there are days I want to pack his bags and ship him off to his grandmother, but it's those rare and oh so glorious moments when he opens up and lets me in that keep me going. I may not be the best mommy in the world, but I am his mommy and I couldn't be more proud of that fact.

Lazy Momma

So, let me just put this out there. I am a lazy Mom.  Don't get me wrong I love my kids and I provide everything they need, but if it was up to me they could spend the entire day in front of the TV or playing with thier toys in the other room.  As long as they aren't crawling up my butt every two seconds I really don't care what they are doing. Before I became a mom of 4 I loved baking and doing crafts with the kids in my family or those of my friends. Now, my kids are luck if I buy the pre-made cookie dough and throw it into the oven (yes, I know I just recently posted the birthday cake I slaved over for my son, but that's just it, it only happens on birthdays). I love my crafting, but I can no longer handle the chaos, fighting and MESS involved in crafting with my kids.  Maybe once or twice a year they can convince me to do an art project with them, but it usually ends up with me setting everything up (outside preferably) and then quietly sneaking away. I also hate any kind of clutter. I am constantly throwing everyone's stuff away, yet I let my kids destroy my house on a daily basis while I watch. I then spend the good part of the weekend scrubbing everything back to clean. Kids are exhausting, dirty, smelly little creatures.  But, even after all this I know I must be doing something right.  There isn't an hour of the day that goes by that I don't have one or more of them hugging, kissing or just wanting to sit with me.  I might not be the most active parent, but I sure am one of the luckiest momma's out there and I wouldn't give up my noisy, smelly, dirty little brats for the world.

If you sometimes feel like a lazy, messy parent here's a link to a blog I read the other day that had me laughing out loud! Mommy in Law

Moving forward with Dreams, Felt and Dinosaur cakes

Well, not much has changed here. I am still trying everything I can think of to round up the money to get back home to California. BUT, there are somethings that I have started to think about that may bring about some change.  Hopefully, change for the better.  I have decided that if I am to get through the next 9 mths that I need to stop wallowing in self pity and start trying to plan for a future thats just about me and my kids. 1st step: Get back home, 2nd step: Get the kids enrolled in school and readjusted to life, 3rd step: Get off my butt and start working off the 30 lbs I've put back on in the last 6 mths, 4th: Do something I have been dreaming about and putting off for far to long and that something is school.  As soon as the kids are back in school this coming fall I am going to go back to school myself and finally start working towards my degree - hell I might even bump it up a notch and get not only a degree but a Doctoral or PhD. Lol What's another 10 yrs huh. :)

In regards to my crafting escape, I have been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks.  I finished the ABC book along with an adorable play felt mailbox with envelopes, and a felt travel playmat/hotwheels carry case.  I am currently in the process of putting together a new felt book.  This one is another counting book, but it has more of a simple design and is made using some of the softest and prettiest wool felt I have yet to work with.  I would have finished it by now but I took a break from it to plan my youngest son's birthday party.  He's four now (such a big boy, I don't quite know who gave him permission to grow up) and really wanted a dinosaur party with a dinosaur cake made by Mom.  Because of this I started searching Pinterest (another new obsession, if you don't know about Pinterest yet you are totally missing out, lol) and found a cake I thought I could recreate. So, recreate I did. It took me all day and quite a lot of shooing kids out of the kitchen with bribes of frosting, but I did it and I think it turned out pretty good.  It's not as good as the inspiration cake, but heck we can't all be cake decorating wizards now can we. D loves it though and really that's all that matters to me. Here's some blurry iphone pics of the cake.

This shot makes it look as if the top tier is totally lopsided. I promise it's not, I just happened to take the picture at a horrible angle.

 If anyone is interested in seeing the cake I tried to recreate I found it on this blog (which is a great blog, btw). LickThe Bowl Good

As for pictures of the other projects I finished, I'll have to post pictures of them later, right now I am too lazy to go fetch the memory card out of the camera. :)