(no subject)
We've been trying to have more outings as a family during this summer vacation, especially since Curtis' work shift is so long and difficult that it means we pretty much never see him except on his 'weekends' (and we're both so exhausted that we usually spend half of the first day sleeping while the kids play video games). So, on the latter half of his weekends off we've gone out to lots of trails and taken long drives to cool new spots to explore… it's actually been really awesome. I'm blessed with kids who are really into nature - or are at least as into nature as they are into video games (years of being a mother have taught me that it really isn't as much about 'ideal parenting' as you want to think it is… it's innate) - so it's not hard to get them psyched up for a hike through the rainforest or visiting a new beach.
Recently, Tempest has become fascinated with [ arbutus trees ]. If you're not from the coast, you may not have had the fortune to see one of these trees, as they apparently only grow in a handful of temperate or coastal spots around the world. At least this is what I'm often told by people. Anyway, they have bright red bark most of the year that's super thin, rather papery, and peels off in large chunks revealing a smooth, bright green skin underneath. It makes for a pretty [ awesome looking tree ], and there's really nothing else like it in the forests. The last forest we went for a hike in had a massive grove of them, including a huge one deep down the forest trail that had a million carvings all over it (names, hearts, etc), some dating back 15 years or more. That's cool and all but I always feel kind of sad when people carve the ever-loving shit out of lovely old trees; it's like vandalizing nature. Like, was that really necessary?
Aside from gorgeous, vandalized trees… this place was pretty fucking beautiful and the kids have been talking about it non-stop since we left.
Seriously look how gorgeous this place is:
We sat on this bluff and had a picnic. It's the same bluff we visited for a summer picnic when Zephyra was just a few weeks old.
Flashback:
She was so teeny.
Back to the present: Tempest running around on the cliffs, scaring the fuck out of me, just like 10 year olds should.
Xan found this awesome little inlet, you can see him down in the left corner. Shortly after I took this picture we climbed down the cliffside into it so we could search for cool beach finds.
Tempest, king of the castle.
One of the aforementioned cool beach finds.
Xan being all serious and junk.
It's almost impossible to get nice pictures of him without inevitably getting six of these.
Tempest enjoys the view as we head out to the trails.
I would have some cool trail photos, but my camera battery inexplicably went from 95% to 2% at this point, and I didn't bring more than just my lens and my cards because I didn't want to lug my giant bag around. I chalked it up to human error, certain I had simply misread the display (it probably said 5%, not 95%), so I took it home and charged it up so everything would be ready for the wedding I had to shoot that weekend.
Turns out I did not misread it… the battery was fucked. It was working fine at 100% until eight minutes into the outdoor ceremony when it suddenly shut off. Now I haven't been able to run since forever, I just can't physically do it anymore, but you better believe I was going as fast as I fucking could back inside that building for my bag so I could grab my backup battery. This is why professionals bring backups, people: for shit like this. This is also a good example of the difference between that guy on Craigslist you can hire for $500, and a professional.
I got back just in time for the ring exchange and kiss, and fortunately didn't miss anything important. It ended up being a super amazing, awesome wedding and an amazing couple and I'm really pumped about the images… but because anxiety gotta anxiety I spent literally the next eight days waking up hours before I should, stressing about whether or not I said something wrong or inappropriate or my joke wasn't funny. I'm so over this on-and-off anxiety shit right now. So over it.
In other picture and crazy news: on the 7th of this month Tempest turned ten. TENNNNNNNNN. I'm going a bit nuts over that; I can't believe she's in the double-digits already. It feels like an entire decade of my life as a mother went stupidly fast, and I can't even remember the little skinny-limbed, peachy-fuzz baby that made me a mama. Now she's like this lanky pre-teen who is tall, a bit awkward, absolutely gorgeous; and reaching a point in her life where she and I can have actual, real, interesting, conversations about actual, real topics. That sounds kind of bad to say out loud, but I mean sometimes you've had your fill of the 50th conversation that day about Minecraft and what totally not funny video they saw on YouTube that morning.
I've spent years wondering (and kind of worrying) if my kids would ever get to a point in their lives when we could hang-out with them on a regular basis having nice conversations that felt organic and legitimately interesting (in that mature and friendly way, rather than the mom sort of way). I have several friends with much older kids (12-18) who talk about being able to take them out to lunch and hang out in this really comfortable, friendly way and I'd sit there wondering if that was something that could even happen given Tempest's challenges. There were a long few years of her life where I was really worried over her development, and how all of this would work.
ASD kids differ so much from each other, it's impossible to compare one case to another - so I can't use my own experiences and feelings as a source - and she seemed so "stuck" for so long that it made it hard to visualize her maturing past that point. But she's made so many incredible improvements in the last little while, especially this last year or so, and she's really come into her own. Looking at her today, she's not at all the same kid she was at six or seven. She'll always be autistic and struggle with certain ideas, situations, feelings or concepts (in spite of what some therapists in our lives have said, you don't "get over" it simply because you can learn to hold it together enough to appear initially neurotypical as an adult) but she's gained a lot more control over her ability to find and utilize coping skills now, and that alone is huge progress.
Earlier this week at the park she approached this little girl her age (almost 10) to invite her and her brother (who was, coincidentally, also six) to play. I saw their step-mom sitting on the ground, nervously trying to breastfeed a smaller baby while struggling with a nursing cover, and sat down next to her to nurse Z in a quiet act of solidarity. After exchanging pleasantries, she mentioned how happy she was that Tempest had approached her step-daughter to invite her to play… as she's very awkward and tends not to talk to kids, even if she desperately wants to. I wasn't sure if I was picking up on a conscious use of autism code words or not, so I played it safe and told her how awesome that was for her to say that, seeing as Tempest is on the spectrum and has spent years struggling with that herself. We talked for a while about how helpful this "social cues" class for spectrum kids was for her (which we took Tempest to over a course of six weeks, earlier this year - a free service provided in part by researchers) and how this last year of entering that sort of weird almost-puberty phase of life has resulted in the opposite effect I was worrying over; and instead seems to have centred her (at least for now - who knows what'll happen once the hormones really kick in).
Nowadays I can actually see the 'little Tempest' growing into this youth-not-quite-preteen Tempest; finally coming out of that eternal childhood that you worry about as a parent of a spectrum child. It's really cool, a relief, a joy, and kind of weird all at once.
Like the other day I had my laptop in the kitchen with me while preparing dinner, watching [ a really interesting documentary about North Korea ], and Tempest kept coming in and out of the kitchen to complain about how hungry she was and ended up catching a few parts of the film. I didn't think she'd care and kept shooing her away so I could finish cooking (I was frequently flipping tabs to return to the instructions), but to my surprise she kept sneaking back in to try and see more of the film. She was actually really curious about what was going on, and wanted to know more about the situation. I ended up pausing the movie and spent the next 20 minutes talking to her about what's going on and how it effects the people who live there. She was shocked and fascinated. I very rarely see real, spontaneous emotional reactions in her but was surprised to her react in very real shock and dismay as I talked about things like camps and cultural brainwashing. She ended up really wanting to watch the film on her own, and begged me to let her over the next three days. I felt kind of iffy about it, just given the intensity of the subject matter… but eventually I relented and set it up for her during a 'quiet time' period of the day. She only made it half-way through before feeling like it was a bit too complex for her and getting distracted, but I'm pretty fucking amazed and proud of her for that.
Ten.
TEN! This is what a ten year old girl looks like now. This is what having a ten year old is like… it's kind of amazing.
(Though the constant stream of, "omg u do not look old enough to have a ten year old. What were u like 12?" whenever we're out and someone asks me how old my kids are is getting really, really tiresome).
Just a few days before her birthday, she pulled my last childhood dress out of her closet and put it on. It was the last dress my grandmother hand-sewed for me before she died, about a month before my 9th birthday. She used to make me a new dress every year.
The fabric was a little loose and pulled in spots, and one half of the tie was missing, but Tempest was still desperate to put it on. So, I tried to repair it using my sewing machine, and by grace of God I actually managed to improve it's condition considerably. I'm a horrible, horrible seamstress and can barely hem pants so this was a pretty significant event for me.
I tried to take a picture of her with the dress on, but she was insistent it wasn't quite cute enough. She tried adding the cat.
But quickly changed her mind and instead asked if I would put some make-up on her. I took her upstairs into our bathroom where all my makeup and hair things are stored and gave her a little make-over. Being a fair redhead, she has completely invisible eyebrows and eyelashes, so when I put mascara on her it always has a really notable effect. (The day she was born my mother - who is also a fair redhead - held her and said, "I'll buy her so much mascara when she's older", lol). After the makeup I did her hair with a pretty barrette I found, and let her wear my wedding necklace and a pair of matching earrings. She looked at herself in the mirror for a long time afterward, smiling brightly, and said, "I feel like a princess". She asked me to take her photo, so I took her outside in the front yard and brought out my camera. She looks so old and beautiful and mature and it makes me crazy to look at these and try to remember ten whole years all at once. Ten years - TEN YEARS! - she's been growing and maturing and remembering and becoming this whole new person. Sometimes it just sort of hits you all over again, and you look at your kids and think, "Holy zombie Jesus I don't think I understand how this person once existed only on the inside of me".
I MEAN LOOK AT THIS.
I seriously don't know how to take that.
My little tiny, lanky, peach-fuzz-covered baby who was born on a storming summer day, still peacefully enclosed in the caul after 44 hours of hard labour, is now this proper young person who is just about ready to be a teenager. I feel like I'm going to wake up tomorrow and she'll walk out of her room all groggy and 18 years old.
Happy birthday, little one. You're freakin' ten.
Two hours old.
One month.
9 months.
2 years.
4 years.
6 years.
8 years.
And now at ten.
Links of the Day:
The Farm Bill - An intense read, but absolutely worth it. A personal story about how food stamps save lives, and work exactly as they're supposed to… don't change them.
Stand our ground - A gun reform advocacy group is taking aim at Stand Your Ground laws nationwide by pushing a chilling ad reenacting the last moments of Trayvon Martin’s life.
Giygas: a psychoanalysis of evil itself - Having just beat Earthbound for the kids a few days ago, this article is of great interest to me. Seriously though, if you're an Earthbound fan you will not want to miss this, it's a completely fantastic breakdown of Giugue/Giygas' evolution as the best gaming villian ever.
30 examples of Christian privilege - Have a Christian friend who insists they're persecuted because they're a Christian in the states? Try sending them this.
Cosleeping and biological imperatives: why human babies do not and should not sleep alone - This is an incredibly informative and really well written (and non-judgemental) article about cosleeping (room-sharing and bedsharing), breastfeeding, biology and so on.
Webcam hacking goes mainstream - My brother, who really knows his shit about computers, shared this on his Facebook. If you have a teen or know someone who does, SHARE THIS FAR AND WIDE. This is no joke. My brother's advice was: "This is real. This story is not exaggerated or over-sensationalized. Unfortunately our laptops and other digital devices can be easily hacked - Windows or Mac - doesn't matter. Here are some things you can do:
* Keep all your software up to date. These updates close the security flaws that creepers exploit.
* Close your laptop's lid when you're not using it.
* If you don't want to close it, put something opaque over the camera when you're not using it (tape/cloth?).
* Don't keep intimate pictures on it. Better yet for teens, don't take *any* intimate digital pictures of yourself. That's whole other conversation by itself.
* Don't keep your laptop where you undress, like your bedroom or bathroom.
* If a creeper does get to your stuff, GET HELP. Giving in to their demands will only allow them to further exploit you. The only way to take away their power is to come clean and get help.
Please talk to the girls and young women in your life about this. Boys too. They're not usually targets but we need to make sure they know how cruel this can be."
Recently, Tempest has become fascinated with [ arbutus trees ]. If you're not from the coast, you may not have had the fortune to see one of these trees, as they apparently only grow in a handful of temperate or coastal spots around the world. At least this is what I'm often told by people. Anyway, they have bright red bark most of the year that's super thin, rather papery, and peels off in large chunks revealing a smooth, bright green skin underneath. It makes for a pretty [ awesome looking tree ], and there's really nothing else like it in the forests. The last forest we went for a hike in had a massive grove of them, including a huge one deep down the forest trail that had a million carvings all over it (names, hearts, etc), some dating back 15 years or more. That's cool and all but I always feel kind of sad when people carve the ever-loving shit out of lovely old trees; it's like vandalizing nature. Like, was that really necessary?
Aside from gorgeous, vandalized trees… this place was pretty fucking beautiful and the kids have been talking about it non-stop since we left.
Seriously look how gorgeous this place is:
We sat on this bluff and had a picnic. It's the same bluff we visited for a summer picnic when Zephyra was just a few weeks old.
Flashback:
She was so teeny.
Back to the present: Tempest running around on the cliffs, scaring the fuck out of me, just like 10 year olds should.
Xan found this awesome little inlet, you can see him down in the left corner. Shortly after I took this picture we climbed down the cliffside into it so we could search for cool beach finds.
Tempest, king of the castle.
One of the aforementioned cool beach finds.
Xan being all serious and junk.
It's almost impossible to get nice pictures of him without inevitably getting six of these.
Tempest enjoys the view as we head out to the trails.
I would have some cool trail photos, but my camera battery inexplicably went from 95% to 2% at this point, and I didn't bring more than just my lens and my cards because I didn't want to lug my giant bag around. I chalked it up to human error, certain I had simply misread the display (it probably said 5%, not 95%), so I took it home and charged it up so everything would be ready for the wedding I had to shoot that weekend.
Turns out I did not misread it… the battery was fucked. It was working fine at 100% until eight minutes into the outdoor ceremony when it suddenly shut off. Now I haven't been able to run since forever, I just can't physically do it anymore, but you better believe I was going as fast as I fucking could back inside that building for my bag so I could grab my backup battery. This is why professionals bring backups, people: for shit like this. This is also a good example of the difference between that guy on Craigslist you can hire for $500, and a professional.
I got back just in time for the ring exchange and kiss, and fortunately didn't miss anything important. It ended up being a super amazing, awesome wedding and an amazing couple and I'm really pumped about the images… but because anxiety gotta anxiety I spent literally the next eight days waking up hours before I should, stressing about whether or not I said something wrong or inappropriate or my joke wasn't funny. I'm so over this on-and-off anxiety shit right now. So over it.
In other picture and crazy news: on the 7th of this month Tempest turned ten. TENNNNNNNNN. I'm going a bit nuts over that; I can't believe she's in the double-digits already. It feels like an entire decade of my life as a mother went stupidly fast, and I can't even remember the little skinny-limbed, peachy-fuzz baby that made me a mama. Now she's like this lanky pre-teen who is tall, a bit awkward, absolutely gorgeous; and reaching a point in her life where she and I can have actual, real, interesting, conversations about actual, real topics. That sounds kind of bad to say out loud, but I mean sometimes you've had your fill of the 50th conversation that day about Minecraft and what totally not funny video they saw on YouTube that morning.
I've spent years wondering (and kind of worrying) if my kids would ever get to a point in their lives when we could hang-out with them on a regular basis having nice conversations that felt organic and legitimately interesting (in that mature and friendly way, rather than the mom sort of way). I have several friends with much older kids (12-18) who talk about being able to take them out to lunch and hang out in this really comfortable, friendly way and I'd sit there wondering if that was something that could even happen given Tempest's challenges. There were a long few years of her life where I was really worried over her development, and how all of this would work.
ASD kids differ so much from each other, it's impossible to compare one case to another - so I can't use my own experiences and feelings as a source - and she seemed so "stuck" for so long that it made it hard to visualize her maturing past that point. But she's made so many incredible improvements in the last little while, especially this last year or so, and she's really come into her own. Looking at her today, she's not at all the same kid she was at six or seven. She'll always be autistic and struggle with certain ideas, situations, feelings or concepts (in spite of what some therapists in our lives have said, you don't "get over" it simply because you can learn to hold it together enough to appear initially neurotypical as an adult) but she's gained a lot more control over her ability to find and utilize coping skills now, and that alone is huge progress.
Earlier this week at the park she approached this little girl her age (almost 10) to invite her and her brother (who was, coincidentally, also six) to play. I saw their step-mom sitting on the ground, nervously trying to breastfeed a smaller baby while struggling with a nursing cover, and sat down next to her to nurse Z in a quiet act of solidarity. After exchanging pleasantries, she mentioned how happy she was that Tempest had approached her step-daughter to invite her to play… as she's very awkward and tends not to talk to kids, even if she desperately wants to. I wasn't sure if I was picking up on a conscious use of autism code words or not, so I played it safe and told her how awesome that was for her to say that, seeing as Tempest is on the spectrum and has spent years struggling with that herself. We talked for a while about how helpful this "social cues" class for spectrum kids was for her (which we took Tempest to over a course of six weeks, earlier this year - a free service provided in part by researchers) and how this last year of entering that sort of weird almost-puberty phase of life has resulted in the opposite effect I was worrying over; and instead seems to have centred her (at least for now - who knows what'll happen once the hormones really kick in).
Nowadays I can actually see the 'little Tempest' growing into this youth-not-quite-preteen Tempest; finally coming out of that eternal childhood that you worry about as a parent of a spectrum child. It's really cool, a relief, a joy, and kind of weird all at once.
Like the other day I had my laptop in the kitchen with me while preparing dinner, watching [ a really interesting documentary about North Korea ], and Tempest kept coming in and out of the kitchen to complain about how hungry she was and ended up catching a few parts of the film. I didn't think she'd care and kept shooing her away so I could finish cooking (I was frequently flipping tabs to return to the instructions), but to my surprise she kept sneaking back in to try and see more of the film. She was actually really curious about what was going on, and wanted to know more about the situation. I ended up pausing the movie and spent the next 20 minutes talking to her about what's going on and how it effects the people who live there. She was shocked and fascinated. I very rarely see real, spontaneous emotional reactions in her but was surprised to her react in very real shock and dismay as I talked about things like camps and cultural brainwashing. She ended up really wanting to watch the film on her own, and begged me to let her over the next three days. I felt kind of iffy about it, just given the intensity of the subject matter… but eventually I relented and set it up for her during a 'quiet time' period of the day. She only made it half-way through before feeling like it was a bit too complex for her and getting distracted, but I'm pretty fucking amazed and proud of her for that.
Ten.
TEN! This is what a ten year old girl looks like now. This is what having a ten year old is like… it's kind of amazing.
(Though the constant stream of, "omg u do not look old enough to have a ten year old. What were u like 12?" whenever we're out and someone asks me how old my kids are is getting really, really tiresome).
Just a few days before her birthday, she pulled my last childhood dress out of her closet and put it on. It was the last dress my grandmother hand-sewed for me before she died, about a month before my 9th birthday. She used to make me a new dress every year.
The fabric was a little loose and pulled in spots, and one half of the tie was missing, but Tempest was still desperate to put it on. So, I tried to repair it using my sewing machine, and by grace of God I actually managed to improve it's condition considerably. I'm a horrible, horrible seamstress and can barely hem pants so this was a pretty significant event for me.
I tried to take a picture of her with the dress on, but she was insistent it wasn't quite cute enough. She tried adding the cat.
But quickly changed her mind and instead asked if I would put some make-up on her. I took her upstairs into our bathroom where all my makeup and hair things are stored and gave her a little make-over. Being a fair redhead, she has completely invisible eyebrows and eyelashes, so when I put mascara on her it always has a really notable effect. (The day she was born my mother - who is also a fair redhead - held her and said, "I'll buy her so much mascara when she's older", lol). After the makeup I did her hair with a pretty barrette I found, and let her wear my wedding necklace and a pair of matching earrings. She looked at herself in the mirror for a long time afterward, smiling brightly, and said, "I feel like a princess". She asked me to take her photo, so I took her outside in the front yard and brought out my camera. She looks so old and beautiful and mature and it makes me crazy to look at these and try to remember ten whole years all at once. Ten years - TEN YEARS! - she's been growing and maturing and remembering and becoming this whole new person. Sometimes it just sort of hits you all over again, and you look at your kids and think, "Holy zombie Jesus I don't think I understand how this person once existed only on the inside of me".
I MEAN LOOK AT THIS.
I seriously don't know how to take that.
My little tiny, lanky, peach-fuzz-covered baby who was born on a storming summer day, still peacefully enclosed in the caul after 44 hours of hard labour, is now this proper young person who is just about ready to be a teenager. I feel like I'm going to wake up tomorrow and she'll walk out of her room all groggy and 18 years old.
Happy birthday, little one. You're freakin' ten.
Two hours old.
One month.
9 months.
2 years.
4 years.
6 years.
8 years.
And now at ten.
Links of the Day:
The Farm Bill - An intense read, but absolutely worth it. A personal story about how food stamps save lives, and work exactly as they're supposed to… don't change them.
Stand our ground - A gun reform advocacy group is taking aim at Stand Your Ground laws nationwide by pushing a chilling ad reenacting the last moments of Trayvon Martin’s life.
Giygas: a psychoanalysis of evil itself - Having just beat Earthbound for the kids a few days ago, this article is of great interest to me. Seriously though, if you're an Earthbound fan you will not want to miss this, it's a completely fantastic breakdown of Giugue/Giygas' evolution as the best gaming villian ever.
30 examples of Christian privilege - Have a Christian friend who insists they're persecuted because they're a Christian in the states? Try sending them this.
Cosleeping and biological imperatives: why human babies do not and should not sleep alone - This is an incredibly informative and really well written (and non-judgemental) article about cosleeping (room-sharing and bedsharing), breastfeeding, biology and so on.
Webcam hacking goes mainstream - My brother, who really knows his shit about computers, shared this on his Facebook. If you have a teen or know someone who does, SHARE THIS FAR AND WIDE. This is no joke. My brother's advice was: "This is real. This story is not exaggerated or over-sensationalized. Unfortunately our laptops and other digital devices can be easily hacked - Windows or Mac - doesn't matter. Here are some things you can do:
* Keep all your software up to date. These updates close the security flaws that creepers exploit.
* Close your laptop's lid when you're not using it.
* If you don't want to close it, put something opaque over the camera when you're not using it (tape/cloth?).
* Don't keep intimate pictures on it. Better yet for teens, don't take *any* intimate digital pictures of yourself. That's whole other conversation by itself.
* Don't keep your laptop where you undress, like your bedroom or bathroom.
* If a creeper does get to your stuff, GET HELP. Giving in to their demands will only allow them to further exploit you. The only way to take away their power is to come clean and get help.
Please talk to the girls and young women in your life about this. Boys too. They're not usually targets but we need to make sure they know how cruel this can be."