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Happy Gotcha Day to Us :)

Its hard to believe that its been nine years.I still wake up each morning and thank God for the gift that I've been given.I am truly blessed!

I'm In Here - Autism Awareness

Today's Thankful Ten

I have sort of lost track of my blog again.  I do feel so much better when I get a few words down each day and I want to try to refocus and use this blog again.  I'm hoping to find a few minutes each morning to keep "Today's Thankful Ten" going as well as 3 to 5 times a week to write about other things.  So here goes for today's list...

1. For Button and Zipper.  Zipper is getting her first haircut later this morning and I'm sure she will be ever so cute.  They are such fun, loving, energetic puppies.
2. For the health of all my students.  We have just finished going through a rough health stretch and all of them seem to be getting back to feeling "normal" and its just so nice to actually have all of them at the school.
3. Next week is education week and the school that I'm in celebrates the arts during that week.  For all the presenters and activities that will be going on that make life that much more fun and interesting for all of our students.
4. For the school that Mikey attends.  The way they nurture Mikey is so conductive to him reaching his maximum potential.  They are truly an amazing group of professionals all around!
5. For family.  Mikey is so enjoying having my parents back from their winter time in Arizona.
6. For spring... even though there is snow on the ground right now, I know that spring will come sometime and its worth being thankful for :).
7. For the house that I live in.  It is so well suited to Mikey and I and I'm thankful we found the perfect house when I chose to move here because I had to leave behind another house that had worked so well for us.
8. For the people who work in my classroom.  They are such wonderful people, hard workers and very fun to work with.
9. For my online friends and the little communities I belong to. Its so nice to have these communities as a special education teacher, a single mother by choice and a mother to a child with Down syndrome.  I don't know how people did it before the Internet.
10. For weekends - its so wonderful to have the downtime to rejuvinate and to spend time with Mr. Mikey.

Today's Thankful Ten

1. That its Friday.  I'm looking forward to a much needed quiet weekend.
2. For all of the students in my class.  We had a scare this week with one of them getting very ill.  He is now in stable condition and I'm thankful for his health and the health of all the other students in my room.
3. That I'm back to feeling better.  I didn't go to work yesterday because of some flu-like symptoms.  This morning I seem to be feeling quite a bit better.
4. For leap years... because it gives us an extra day to be!
5. For Mikey - the light of my world.  For his helping hands, his messy hands, his mishevious hands, his kind hands and even his bratty hands.  For all the parts of him that make him uniquely himself.  I am so very blessed to be his mom.
6. For quiet time in the morning to write on the computer and read my message boards.
7. Because I was able to almost finish up my alphabet bags for school this week.  I'm hoping to get them done tonight and start using them on Monday.
8. Its warming up here!  Yesterday was plus 7 and today should be about the same.  The snow is melting and I'm hoping to get Mikey and the dogs out for a walk.  I love spring when the cold winter days start to fade in to memories.
9. We have an amazing director of student services for our division.  She always has both Mikey's and my students needs in mind when she is making decisions on what to do with her limited budget.  I appreciate the time and passion that she puts in to her job - both as a teacher and as a parent.
10. Mikey helped me do laundry for the first time last night.  He was so very deligent in taking the laundry out, putting it in the basket and then moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer and then so proud of himself when he was finished.  It reminded me of how thankful I am for the little things in life and for all that we can accomplish day to day.  He is such a gem!  Who would have thought doing laundry could be so much fun.

A Mikey Funny

Mikey loves those Fisher Price little people.  In the past few months, he has taken to carrying one of them around almost all the time.  They have tea parties together (the little people look ridiculous sitting on the table and chairs that is the right size for Mikey), they sleep together (there is always at least one little people on Mikey's pillow beside him and some days I go in to my room at night to see a whole line of them on my pillows too), and then Mikey just plays with them all the time.  His room is full of little people - the house, the barn, the airplane, the bus, a couple of different trains, all the circus stuff, the grocery store, the pet shop...etc.  Its a little people town!

On Friday, Mikey want to hang out with my friend and her family.  He brought his little person with him.  At one point, they needed to run to the store to get a few groceries.  Mikey is constantly trying to put things he wants in the cart when we go to the store.  On Friday, apparently the little person put some soda in to the cart.  My friend says that Mikey promptly took the little person, made it face him, said "look" (which means look me in the eye - something we do with Mikey as he finds it hard to make eye contact) and then proceeded to give the little person what for.  He started with a pretty loud "no-no-no-no" and proceeded to say "put-back-now".  At which point, he hand over handed the little person to put the soda back on the shelf.  And with that crisis solved, they moved on down the aisle. 

Will this kid never stop amusing me?  He is way too cute.

Today's Thankful Ten

1. Back to school today after a week off last week (other than teacher's convention on Thursday and Friday).  I'm thankful that I have a job that I love to go to.
2. For Miss T (Tarenne), who is celebrating her 8th birthday today.  I'm sure she has taught many lessons to others in those 8 short years.
3. My new neighbor and my old.  The person living beside me decided to return and live closer to family a few months back and has been trying to sell his house for some time.  He finally sold and the new person moved in this past weekend.
4. For my parents.  Mikey has been asking constantly to go and see them this past week.  Unfortunately, it will be another 4 weeks until we do as they are wintering in Arizona. 
5. For the fact that I don't have to go to my staff meeting after school today.  The principal I work didn't give any notice for this staff meeting and I had already booked a working session with one the therapists that comes to my room for after school today.  Principal gave notice at about 10 p.m. last night so there is no way I could juggle this pre-booked appointment.  I don't like staff meetings and I'm thankful I have a reason not to go :).
6. For diet coke... as I'm so tired I'm going to need one to get through this morning!
7. For the fact that I did get a lot of things accoplished this past week.  I have the ball rolling on so many of the things that I've been putting off for a while (adoption, respite care, taxes, home improvement loan to develop the basement...etc.).
8. For Mikey who is so very excited to be going back to school today.  His zest for life always reminds me to be thankful for what we have.
9. For my telephone and the friends that I talk to on it.  They keep me sane. 
10. For my home.  I feel so blessed to have found the perfect home for us.

Today's Thankful Ten!

This past Thursday and Friday, I attended yet another teacher's convention.  The ending keynote speaker was a man name Doon Willkens.  I really enjoyed him... not because he really gave me a whole not new but more because he affirmed some of the things that I believe in.  One of the things he talked about was journaling.  He talked about how he gets up each morning and writes down 10 things that he is thankful for that day and I got to thinking what a great way that would be to start the day. Now I don't know if I will be able to do this every morning but I'm going to try.  And really... even if I can't do it every day, I'm sure it will be great to do it on the days I can.  So here we go...

1. I'm thankful that we are just finishing up a week off of work.  Its nice to have this time in the cold of winter to rejuvinate and get things done that have needed doing for some time.
2. I'm always thankful for Mikey.  Today though, I'm thankful that after he got up at 5 a.m. that he went downstairs and entertained himself for 2 hours while I slept a bit longer.
3. For my brother Mike and my friend Stacy who helped me out on Thursday and Friday by watching Mikey while I went to teacher's convention.
4. For my job, the amazing people I have working with me in the classroom and the great kids I get to work with everyday!
5. For laughter and being surrounded by people who don't always have to take everything seriously.
6. For my puppies.  Zipper has fit in to our family so well and its wonderful to watch the two of them play together.
7. For my new computer - espcially the 22 inch monitor part of it :).
8. For the new Creative Memories Storybook Creator program that I got. I think this will work to get me back in to scrapbooking.
9. For the fact that we will be 4.5 more years with a contract and that I feel secure enough to move ahead with my life plans.
10. For the mist and the frost outside... it looks like a beautiful winter wonderland when you look out our windows this morning :)

Joy-Joy

I've been tagged by Betsy (Bits of Betsy) to share my story of the first person that I knew with Down syndrome.  Betsy's started this me-me herself after sharing a wonderful story about Jake.  Here is my story...

I grew up in a small town.  There were a couple of kids who I would see around town whose names were Suzy and James.  Suzy was much older and she used to come to the swimming pool when we were little kids.  Later, when I was a teenager, there was this cute little blonde boy who just seemed to be roaming.  He was a very independent little boy but would wonder in to places that we all knew one shouldn't wonder in.  Once there was a teacher who had bought a whole bunch of little bags of chips for the school store.  She left them in the backseat of the car through the morning with plans to go and get them at lunch time.  When she went out at lunch time, there was James sitting in the backseat with about half of the bags open munching away on the chips. None of us never got to really know either of these children as they didn't appear to attend school and once they got a bit earlier they simply disappeared out of our town.  I learned years later, after adopting Mikey that both had eventually went to live in group homes.  I am not goign to write about these people for my me-me as I never really knew them... I only knew of them.  I could not tell you much about them except that Suzy liked to swim and James like potato chips.  Instead, I will fast forward several years and tell you about Joy-Joy... the girl who changed my life.

When I was 23 years old, I moved to Kelowna, B.C. for my first fulltime teaching job.  I got the job about 4 days before I was supposed to start teaching and I frantically threw everything that I could fit in to my car and off I drove to my new life.  I was an extremely niave little town girl and knew no one in Kelowna but I was so excited to be facting this new part of my life.  Upon arriving in Kelowna, I stayed a couple of nights in a hotel while checking out "roommate wanted" advertisements.  By the time, I started teaching,  I was sort of settled in the place that I was going to live in.  Our first day of work was with just the staff and I quickly got to know a few of the people.

Within days of working there, I heard the story of how one of the men on staff had lost his son just that past April.  His son had Down syndrome and had died before his first birthday of heart complications.  I didn't think much more of it until just around Christmas, he announced to everyone that they were going to be adopting another child and this one would also have Down syndrome.  Eventually, some of the staff members put together a baby shower and we all congregated at their house.  This is when I met little Joy.  She was about the cutest little girl I had ever seen.  My first thought was related to her radiating sunshine.  As she was getting passed around all over the place, I didn't get to know her very well. 

The next time I remember being around her was our year end party in June.  We had it out at the beach and a bunch of the guys bought boats.  Joy's mom and dad wanted to go out on the boat and I offered to watch their kids while they did.  I ended up with just Joy as the other children went out with them.  Joy was eating a banana and we had our first interaction.  She reeled me in, hook, line and sinker!

That fall, I had to deal with something that involves someone else and is very private so I will not share the details here except to say that it threw me into a place of depression that I have never been in before.  The people involved in this situation were well known to both me and the family of Joy.  I was hundreds of miles from my family and it seemed that things progressed to the point that I turned to his family to be my suragate family in these times.  And they welcomed me with open arms. 

As I began to spend time with them, I got to know Joy much better.  She was an imp of a girl who made me smile when nothing else in the world would.  I would often watch her in my darkest times and be reminded that it was important to live in the moment and let things go.  There were days that I would get out of bed only after thinking about this tiny little girl.  It quickly became evident to me that I had much to learn from this little girl who many in society would deem as insignificant. 

Once Joy was old enough to swim, I would head over there at least once a week and pack Joy in my car and off we would go to the swimming pool for a swim.  Although for much of the week, I was in a state of depression, these times at the pool would heal and energize me and give me the power to keep moving through things.

A couple of years after having this family become my family in my heart, they adopted another child with Down syndrome - Christopher.  He also very quickly moved in to my heart.

It was this same family that first suggested to me that I should adopt a child with Down syndrome.  Its amazing how people move into your life at the moments that they are meant to.  And its amazing how one tiny little girl had such an impact on the path of my life.  Her name - Joy - is perfectly suited as that is what she brought to me in a time when I didn't know any other joy.

And so the journey begins...

For some time now, I've been thinking that we might need one more child before our family is considered complete. I've been haunting the Alberta adoption profiles that are posted online and imagining some of these children in our home.

Before Christmas, I decided that I needed to explore this whole thing a bit more and went to meet with a social worker.  We spent some time talking about my desire to adopt an older child (3-6 years old) and the impact that this may have on Mikey.  The social worker explained the process to me and also talked about what type of child they would and would not place with me given that Mikey was already in the home.  I left the meeting feeling secure that adopting a second child would not end up being harmful in anyway to Mikey.  And with the hurdle of the impact it would have on Mikey behind me, I needed to move on to the other hurdles that were within me.

People often ask me about Mikey's adoption and I always feel ridiculous saying to them that the process just sort of happened around me.  Really though, at each step, I just kept moving forward thinking that we would see where it went and if it went somewhere great and if not then it wasn't meant to be.  Don't get me wrong, I would have been disappointed but it just seemed like I was taking each successive step not 100% convinced that it would happen.  I remember two days before I was going to fly out to get Mikey still thinking along the same lines... although at that point I also spent moments being completely excited and other moments wondering what on earth I had done!  Its funny now as I see some of the process repeating itself.  When I handed over my application today I was thinking that we would just do this and see where it all led to. 

Today, I started testing out saying the words to other people.  I was at teacher's convention and told a couple of people that I was considering this and the response was great. I find it funny the complete confidence that others have in my ability to do this.  Do they not know that there are moments right now where I am just barely hanging on?  Do they not know of all the mistakes I've made as Mikey's mommy through the years?  And then I'm back to wondering what on earth I'm doing.

Yet... its there again... something inside me just taking over and moving forward despite the fact that the rational brain in me is talking.  And then I look at the things in my life that have been guided by that something inside me (or probably more accurately Something outside me) and figure that perhaps it is again time to just let go and throw myself over the next cliff. 

And I always said I would never bungie-jump!

Introducing Zipper

Finally got some pictures of our new puppy.  We got her about 4 weeks ago and she is a complete joy.  Button is adoring her too.  The first picture is of Button and Zipper (the new one) waiting patiently to get in the house.  The other two are a couple of pictures of little Zipper.