Easter

I stopped in at Target today to return a few things and decided to check out the $1 aisle before I left.  Normally, the $1 aisle is a teachers paradise because you can stock up on tons of little classroom knick-knacks for next-to-nothing.  Not today.  Nope!  Today, as I stood in the $1 aisle looking over all the Easter goodies it suddenly dawned on me that this Easter will be the 10 anniversary of my "spontaneous abortion".  That's what my medical chart calls the ectopic pregnancy that I had to have surgically removed.  I hate the name.  It implies that I had a choice.  I didn't have a choice.  And I don't know why it suddenly hit me today at Target.  I know that I was standing there looking at Easter socks and it hit me that this year makes 10 years.  Without warning, I broke into a sweat and found it very difficult to breathe.  I bolted to my car as fast as I could and for the next 15 minutes I was the lunatic in the Target parking lot with tears streaming down her face while gasping for air.  I can only imagine what people must have thought.  I was thinking "Oh, no.  Not again".  This wasn't my first panic attack.  I've had them before.  And they all started with that pregnancy.  Brad and I were thrilled to find out that we were pregnant.  We had a few signs that something might be wrong so we had blood tests done.  On Friday, we got a call that those blood tests were good.  On Sunday, we were in the emergency room being prepped for an emergency laparoscopy.  Needless to say, I didn't deal with any of this very well.  Eventually, my inability to "deal with it" led me to start having panic attacks.  I've had a few of them over the past 10 years, but today was the worst.  And now that it's over I find myself once again being consumed by all of those questions that I asked 10 years ago and never got answered.  Why did this happen?  What could I have done differently?  With all the advances in modern medicine, why couldn't they just remove the pregnancy from my tube and implant it in my uterus where it should be?  Boy or girl?  It seems crazy.  I now have two amazing children.  I have no doubt that I was put on this Earth so that I could be their mom.  But every now and then, I catch myself playing the "what if" game when it comes to that pregnancy.   Today was apparently one of those days.

Potty Training

Ughhhhhhhhhh.........I HATE potty training! We have no idea what we're doing.  We've tried everything and we still have a very stubborn 4 year old running around in diapers.  Again, I find myself wondering if it's his stubbornness or his autism or a combination of both, but whatever it is I'm ready for it to end.  He's ready.  He'll tell us when he's dirty.  He can take down his pants and pull off his diaper.  He will stop what he's doing and focus on urinating.  He's ready!  We've read books.  We've scoured the internet looking for ideas.  We've offered candy.  We've had him run around naked.  We've made visual cue cards.  I don't know what else to do.  He'll sit on the potty for several minutes and nothing.  And then as soon as the diaper is back on he'll fill it to the brim.  In all of our attempts, we have NEVER gotten him to urinate while sitting on the potty.  Thinking that maybe the problem was sitting on the potty, we've also tried the standing up approach.  This hasn't worked either.  We are at a loss.  Anybody have suggestions?  If we don't have some sort of breakthrough in the next few weeks, our son is going to be running around naked all summer while we try to get him used to life without diapers.  Neighbors - consider this your warning!!