I am not trained to be a waitress!

And this plate is getting VERY heavy.

We are trying to find a new babysitter for Dillon. It is stressful.

My sister is about to have a baby, and that is stressful to me in that I can't be there for it. She is going to bring my new niece into the world on Monday, and I am going to be four hours away!

Daniel's grandmother passed away yesterday. Sad, and stressful because now we will be traveling this weekend.

Tonight is Open House at school. Stressful because I have to stay at school till 8 o'clock and won't even see Dillon today. And I am assigned "babysitting duty" for all the young siblings who can't sit still for the movie and popcorn during the Parent's Lecture Hour.

I haven't written a single thank you note for Dillon's birthday, and it was two weeks ago. I hate having things like that to do, and no time to do it!

So when I take care of a few of these things, I will be back with a smile and a better attitude. Maybe I will even have a nice tip in my pocket.

Clothes make the Amanda

It has finally cooled down a little outside so that I am not dripping in sweat by the time I get to school in the morning. There are very few precious days out of the year when I can sleep with my bedroom windows wide open, and they are here!

The downside of this weather is that I don't know what to wear. My functional skills go out the open window and I stand in my closet for cumulative minutes each morning, puzzling over my clothes:

"It is cool, but it will be warm later. So I shouldn't wear long sleeves. What about 3/4 length? Or sleeveless? Is it too cool for sleeveless? It will be in the 90s this afternoon. So what fabric? Not sweater-ish material. Or heavy knits. Maybe a light jacket with something short sleeved. Will I look silly? Will I feel uncomfortable? Pants or a skirt? And what shoes? I can't wear those wedge ones again - they killed my toes. I would love to wear sandals, but is it getting too late in the season for that? It is too hot still for boots..."

By the time I emerge, I am wearing a brown skirt with two shirts, one on each half of my torso. I have a boot pulled up to my knee, and a flip-flop on the other foot. Since I have been flinging clothes out of the closet during my monologue, I have to wade through piles to get to the door.

At this point, I wake up Daniel to help me. God bless him. He suggests that I buy some scrubs.

A birthday mashup

What a year! I cannot believe that it went so fast. Here are some highlights:

Soon this little guy is gonna come see us! I am really excited that today is going to be Dillon's birthday. Dillon took his first breath at 11:53 pm on September 14, 2005. I have watched video of Daniel carrying our son to the waiting room to greet the world, and I see that his feet do not touch the ground. There was a lot of hard work involved in getting him here. His daddy and I have had to learn a lot over the past couple of weeks. The one thing we didn't have to learn was how to love him. That part comes easy. He laughed. And he laughed. Tiny little whimper laughs, complete with a big gummy smile. Guess who is one month old?? Happy day, little guy! Leaving one side of the diaper unattached is about as effective as putting a Taco Bell napkin in Dillon's pajamas and putting him to bed. By morning time, he will be virtually swimming in wet clothes and crib sheets, with the disabled diaper wrapped snuggly around one ankle. Poor baby Dillon has eczema. The doc says it is pretty severe and he will be surprised if we don't have to battle it for a long time. When Dillon wakes up from a nap in his swing, he looks around for a second. He blinks and opens his eyes wide. His chin puckers and his mouth stretches out into an exaggerated "sad face." If he had tears, they would well up, but he doesn't, so they don't. He opens his mouth and lets out a little lamb bleat. We are VERY CAUTIOUSLY clapping our hands because Dillon's eczema seems to have cleared up. He shouts "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!" for no particular reason, except that he can, and it gets him a little attention in the middle of the night. What can I say? The boy loves his cereal. How is this even possible? Raise your hand if you feel like I just had this baby last week! He is so big - growing and learning so much every day. Most people say he looks like Daniel, but I think he is coming around to his mama's side of the family! Dillon won't crawl. From sitting, he will stretch his little body out to the limit - arms straining, legs bent, hiney off the ground - but no forward movement. Silly boy. This is the first time he tried spaghetti. He tolerated the taste, but then gagged dramatically on the texture of the meat. Then he stuck his finger in a socket and made his hair stand up all over his head. He likes to lick Tux in the mouth. Hm... I am pretty sure I won't be able to turn that into a party that is fun for anyone but him. I don't want him to have a baby-boy mullet, so we are going to visit the barbershop and see if we can trim it up. He is on the move! It took over ten months, but that fat baby has figured out how to crawl. I am going to miss this baby so much during the day! He is my sidekick! He goes everywhere with me. The second he sees me, he takes off toward me, choking back his excitement. He curls up in my arms and puts his head on my shoulder. He kicks his legs to scoot in closer to me, cause we just can't get close enough. One chubby hand is on my neck. The other arm wraps around my shoulder. Just like I have done to him a thousand times before, he lifts his hand and pats me on the back. "It's okay, Momma! I missed you so much but now we are together again and we can play!" That is the sweetest thing to see his little head on a big man pillow, with every limb wrapped around his beloved Dohg.

Happy Birthday to the light of my life. I am so grateful for your sweet smile every day. I pray that you would grow up to be a man of integrity and wisdom, and I pray that God would give me the tools to guide you. This has been a wonderful year, and I am so proud to be your Mama.

An argument

I have a pretty valid argument for large cell phones. (Think of the phone Zack carried in his backpack on Saved By the Bell. You know, the one that took the place of his books cause it was so large.)

I took my friend Brandi to the airport this morning. My advice is to never offer to do this for someone. Just be busy. Find something else to do. Pluck nose hairs or something more fun.

Brandi misplaced her new phone and realized it as we were leaving the hotel to catch her flight. So we looked through her bags. All seven of them.

Her phone is tiny and silver. It looks like any number of other things. Like miniature eyeshadow compacts. Or the small case that her camera's memory card goes in. Her daughter's "play" phone. It looks like about a million other things, and Brandi had all of those other million things crammed into her many bags.

We looked for about thirty minutes. We drug the bags and the babies to the car, and I started tossing stuff out of suitcases all over the parking lot. She was running around trying hard to use nice language, since she is a preacher's wife. At one point, I located her deodorant, which she had also lost the night before. "Brandi! I found your deodorant!" is not what one wants to hear when one is looking for something so much more significant than deodorant. She told me that with her eyes.

Finally, Brandi went back up to our room and found the phone under the covers of my bed. That is where she hid it so her daughter wouldn't find it and play with it. That makes sense. Thank goodness the baby didn't find the phone and play with it! Heaven forbid.

If her phone had been big like Zack's, we probably would not have had this problem. We would have been on time to the airport, so we would not have driven the wrong way down a one-way incline spiral in the parking garage and almost gotten killed. I would not have had to shove her and the baby out of the car and throw her bags frantically toward her check-in gate, so I would not have a sore shoulder. She would not have had to run like a madwoman through the airport with her baby, her bags and her phone in tow, so she would have had an easier time at security, I am sure.

That is my argument. Cingular? Sprint? Verizon? Can you hear me now???

What's next?

So this is the fourth week of school. That means things should be calming down, and we should be settled into a routine.

Except that we aren't.

Our routine is simply the lack of predictable routine. That does not bode well for three autistic children and a child who depends on others for assistance with life-sustaining activities, like eating.

The frustration does bring positive results at times.

Today as we moved in a painfully slow herd from one school day event to another, my sweet little red-headed, non-speaking kiddo raced ahead to the end of the hall, threw her hands up, tossed her head back and said "LESHHHH GO! Come on!"

Small victories, right?

Life is a highway...

...and this is my soundtrack.

We put him in this carseat that we got from a friend because he has totally outgrown his baby seat. He hates it. He waited till a four-hour road trip to let me know that, even though he has ridden in this seat for over a week on short jaunts around town. After about three hours of this chorus, I included myself in the picture, just for some comic relief from the mind-numbing hollerin'.

All aflutter

I am visiting my sister in Fort Worth this Labor Day weekend. It is a much needed get away for Dillon and I (things have been hectic, don't you know?), and it is the last time I will see Jenn before baby Ava arrives next month.

My niece Bella and I have been having some special time this visit. She is growing up so fast. She can do so much that I am sure no other two-year-old can do.

For instance, Bella leaned her head over at dinner last night and said, "AnAmana? I loh yew."

OH. Bestill my heart.