Creative Casey

I'm feeling the need to give a little "air time" to dear Casey.  All summer, before her recent fascination in food service, she told me her dream was to become a published author one day.  Girlfriend has the imagination and creativity to do it, I'm certain.  And I'm pretty sure she could be her own illustrator as well.  Every day she creates a new piece of art and each one just makes me smile.  I took a picture of a few of her recent creations, you know, because I don't scrapbook them :)

 

Yesterday, she handed me this piece of paper:

 

Yes, that would be a step by step instruction guide on how to draw her own new unique eye style for her portraits.  Then also provided a how-to for drawing smiles and hair as well.  I thought this was absolutely hilarious!  My bossy big girl has utilized her in-chargeness for instructional purposes to teach me how to draw like her :)  I often wonder if this will in some way be Casey's true calling one day - being in charge of....something... anything.  When I think of Casey's future, I really do look forward to seeing who this creative creature will become!!  I find myself, daily, trying to find the right balance between tempering her bossiness and argumentativeness, yet not suppressing it either.  Because while other 8 year olds may not want to put up with her brand of leadership, it is something that will serve her well when she's older and I don't want to strip that away.  I hope I don't screw up trying to help her find this balance.    

I recently was texting a couple of friends about school rules and they both commented that their third grade daughters were such rule followers.  I had to laugh myself thinking of Casey.  She's not a rule breaker in that she's looking to rebel or defy authority at all, she just genuinely thinks her way is better.  Period.  And she will try to negotiate her point of view with anyone.  She has some serious ingrained negotiating skills.  And she's outspoken about it.  I affectionately tease her that she could negotiate the paint off the walls.  Sister has skills in negotiating to get what she wants.  I like to believe we aren't pushovers as parents, in fact I find myself wondering sometimes if we are too strict, but either way Casey has been strong-willed since she was a baby.  Hurricane Casey has been our nickname for her since she was 3 months old.

 

I've talked to all of her teachers about this in parent-teacher conferences over the years and we've all end up chuckling about it.  Since pre-school, each of her teachers have told me that if they were off track on time or organizing what was going to be done next, Casey is the kid in their classes that will tell them they should be doing.  That's my Casey.  Thankfully, all of her teachers have been good humored about being bossed around by a student at times.  They've never faulted her for her being on top of things and organized, but she has gotten busted quite a few times for talking out in class.  But I can't give her too hard of a time about it, because I got "C's" in conduct all through grade school and Sister Rita even taped my mouth shut in the second grade one day,  (I guess that's the whole apple-and-tree thing, huh?) and I turned out okay, didn't I?  :)

My creative, artistic, bossy, funny, chatty, enthusiastic big girl.  I'm so blessed to have been given a girl with such spunk and I cannot wait to find out what she does with all these talents.  I mean find out what she's going to do with them beyond her 8 year old art masterpieces that I am awarded.  And this gem of a note she left me last weekend when we were butting heads a lot:

 

This, and locking me out of her room once, is the closest she's come to expressing how mad she has been at me.  She'll be 9 in November and I've yet to hear a "I hate you" or anything along those lines.  (Emily on the other hand will often tell me in anger "Don't worry about me!"  But that is for another post.)  From what I hear from other moms, that angry mother-kid drama has long started with other kids so I am enjoying the days of her anger being expressed in a note that I think is cute and sweet.  For all that I write about Emily's development and the unique experiences raising her, I never want to seem that I'm not as in awe with dear Casey.  I love this girl who needs me to tell her each night before bedtime what we are doing "for all these days" as she puts it.  I think it makes life seem safe and manageable for her, just as she likes it.  So she can wake up the next morning and an be in charge and create life to her design.

           

Drive By and Thru

I remember exactly where I was when it hit me that Emily would probably never drive a car.  It's probably been almost 2 years ago and I was sitting on the couch by myself when I saw one of the dozens of cars that drive by our house each day drive by.  I liken the feeling that day to suddenly being thrown a 20 pound bag of potatoes.  It kind of knocks your breath out and you (figuratively) stumble back a bit in order to gain control of what you've just caught. 

As Emily grows older, the differences between my two girls show up at various times and is met with varying degrees of emotional impact for me.  The fact that Emily will not be capable of learning nearly as much as Casey has always been a constant.  It's now a fact that runs like a weak current through me; one that I don't pay too much attention to most of the time.  Then sometimes something else just dawns on me, and emotion washes over me like a shower of sadness.  Like the time I 'realized' that Emily will not be invited to parties and play dates like her sister.  My reaction to that, kind of spread from my heart to my fingertips with a kind of gentle sadness.  I then realized that that was now something I hold of value and not Emily; she is so genuinely happy with her little life and I was able to make peace with that one.  And then other times I never know when something is going to hit me so hard I can't stand it.  Like randomly seeing a car and knowing just then that that particular privilege and independence is something my daughter will likely never know. 

So there I sat on my couch, caught glance of a car and suddenly couldn't breathe.  This realization was swift; I never saw it coming.  I was thrown a 20 pound sack of potatoes and had the wind knocked out of me.  To say I didn't know this would be false.  In fact, I remember having a brief conversation with my friend Jenn years ago about why people with cognitive disabilities typically do not get issued drivers licenses even if their cognitive disabilities are less severe.  So this is information I knew in my head but I guess my heart hadn't processed it yet.  I called up Mandy from the couch that particular day with tissues in hand and 'processed' it to her patient ear.  She listened, she offered compassion, and then I was done with that realization.

These realizations vary in the what, when and how, but, thankfully, they all have ended in acceptance for me. They get filed into the part of me that accumulates what I know about Emily and that is that....  But it's not like we're ever just gonna' throw in the towel here, pat her on the head and be like we're all happy with you just like you are.... hell no.  She's five now.  She's walkin', she's talkin' and it's time to start little tyke's driver's ed around here :)

Casey is a great driving instructor :) 

That's right. Last week started Emily's official crash (*snort*) course in driving.  The Cadillac has been out of commission for a few months because basically I have been too cheap to buy a new battery for it.  We got the Cadillac almost 4 years ago as something the two girls could do together outside, honestly, at the time, not knowing how much Emily would be able to do as far as play with Casey. (How we underestimated her!).  Teaching Emily to drive will be a challenge for all of us, but I'm determined that she get the opportunity, so fingers crossed!  I'm sure a good story or two will come of this before it's all said and done.  If the first lesson is any indicator, little sister has some serious problems keeping her eyes on the road.  She'd much rather just push the gas pedal and drive by waving at neighbors like a homecoming queen on a float.  And, really, she could pull off the drive by smile-and-wave thing, but I'm excited for Emily to have a thing that's typical kid stuff and all hers :)   

Emily hangin' with the neighborhood crew.  Watch out kids! - we haven't practiced with the cones yet!

And then there is dear Casey.  Dear, dear Casey.  Who still aspires to work in food service.  Dear Lord.

 

Upon a recent trip through the McDonald's drive thru, she announced that she would one day like to work the drive through window.  "I mean how cool would that be to wear the headset and take people's orders, mom?!"  I'm not joking here.  We've got to be doing something wrong in the parenting department.  Maybe the feed-our-kids-homemade-dinners thing is backfiring on us.  Maybe by avoiding fast food joints, we are doing the kids a disservice?  Maybe if they saw the annoyed faces of the people who not-so-patiently wait for me to check to make sure our order is correct while still sitting in the drive thru, they would see that it's not such a fun job to gun for.      

So now we've gone from waitress to drive thru worker.  There's still time, right?!  Our hopes and dreams of her going to college aren't dead at the age of 8 are they?  Even though other kids her age speak of wanting to be teachers, nurses, and doctors?  And, really, what happened to wanting to be a rock star/princess/fashion designer??  Last year it sounded a bit silly, but I'm thinking now if she wants to spend her life working at Disney World, who am I to stop her.

Of course, I'm being silly here - I'm her mom and I'll support her in whatever she aspires to be.  Her dad on the other hand.... (*snort*) (that's the second snort in this post) ... yes, we'll leave that heart-to-heart discussion on her future aspirations to daddy.   

In other related news...

From all the pictures posted on Facebook, it's evident that most kids are back in school now.  The shared emotions of the moms range from emotional and nostalgic (um....me) to relief and joy.  As far as first day pics, ours are always on our porch sans anything but maybe a backpack.  Thanks to Pinterest taking one or two over-achieving moms' crafty ideas viral, now some parents even to go the effort of making a cute little sign for the child to hold land marking the date and the grade in school.  Yeah, we don't do that.

I turned on the flash and this is what I get.  Priceless.  (or worthless) Take that crafty Pinterest moms!

Randomly a day or two before school started the other week, we were eating dinner and Casey asked me what I wanted her to be when she grew up.  I told her I wanted her to do whatever made her happy and Tom added, whatever made her a decent amount of money.  But Casey wanted specifics so I told her I would like her to go into a field like engineering or computer programming but I think she's way too creative and spunky for those and might more likely be an attorney or designer of some sort.  Then I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up.  Her answer:  "I think I'd like to work in a restaurant serving people."  Awesome.  For a minute I thought I was going to have to do the Heimlich maneuver on Tom.  It's probably a good thing we don't stage a crafty little sign on the front porch, after all.  Otherwise it might look something like this:

In other school-related news, I've cancelled the morning bus for Emily.  She'll still ride the bus home with the ladies and we'll consider that my baby steps' effort to relinquish control this year.  As soon as I called transportation to cancel the bus with the dudes I felt so much less stressed about school.  She had a great first week and I'm ready to settle down and just see how we do (yes, I just typed we and not she).  Baby steps.

In other related Emily news, I realized I completely forgot to include Emily's urology follow up appointment in the last post!  Emily's first kidney infection was when she was 7 weeks old and her second was when she was 10 weeks old.  Both times she was hospitalized and came home with a PICC line so that I could administer her IV antibiotics for a few weeks.  She's been followed closely by her urologist every 3 to 6 months since.  She took 2 antibiotics every day for 3 years before she had surgery to correct her kidney reflux in October of 2011.  When we saw Dr. Alam (her urologist) back in January, he said he really needed her to be potty trained to assess how her kidney health was doing.  We were very proud to show up at Children's 2 weeks ago and be able to give him a high five for being having checked this one off our list.  Her ultrasound showed her kidneys have shrunk back to a normal size and appear healthy.  Basically, we've reached the point we have been striving for for the past 5 years.  Good, good news.  She won't have to be seen now for another 18 months!!  He did tell us he and his wife were moving back to the east coast, so we'll be seen by someone else, but I'm okay with that now that her kidneys are stable.  Not to jinx anything, but her kidneys are her last medical complications as far as we know, and now that we are on the path to being discharged in the foreseeable future (which is still probably 2 years away but without tests, appointments, or antibiotics) we are doing a pretty sassy happy dance here.  So much so, that as soon as the girls and I left the hospital, we went straight to Graeters to celebrate with some ice cream at 9:30 in the morning.

Little sista' had some sass today.

In other related ice cream news, (You see what I'm doing here?  I think I'm pretty clever...)  letting Emily eat ice cream was a bit of an experiment.  Since we cut out dairy 90% out of her diet back in May, we've very rarely had the extreme tempers and behaviors.  We've also been doing acupressure to rid her of her dairy sensitivity.  While we have no intentions of adding dairy back into her daily diet (the increased attention and focus benefits have been too great), I decided to see how her behavior would result since doing the acupressure.  I have to say, I was really impressed.  I did notice her acting out a bit more but nothing erratic or out of control.  It's nice to know that an occasional treat may be okay to manage.  And she really deserved that ice cream treat after all her little body has gone through these past 5 years. 

And Casey deserved the treat, too!  Girlfriend has had to sit through many, many hours of appointments and tests at the hospital for Emily's kidney issues.  And we're not even touching on the number of hours she's sat through all of Emily's other doctor appointments and therapies.  Casey has certainly logged some time having to sit quietly (as quiet as Casey can get :) far more than the typical sibling, so ice cream for all!

I think I've run out of relevant related news items for now, which is probably best because this could get old fast.....  But really quick, in other related getting older news, Casey has started her birthday wish list (birthday in November) and if I added it up we're in the ballpark of about $600 now.  Stay tuned for some serious life lessons in disappointment in the next couple of months.  I'm finished now.  I promise :)