ace’s blog

The last few weeks have been a very difficult time for everybody in my family. Meri and I have decided not to get a divorce, at least not yet.

My mom lives in Jacksonville, which is about 2 hours away. We just recently star started speaking again, after a 3 year hiatus. So since I don’t have a support system down here in Orlando, Meri really wants to take the boys to Massachusetts. She is from there and has a lot of family around that would help with child care if one of us needed it.

My parents were divorced. my brother and I stayed with my mom and since my dad was in the Navy, he was all over the place. He was mostly in California and we were in Florida. I know all too well what it is like to grow up without a father around. I don’t want that for my boys. I don’t want to be several states away. I don’t want to be an occasional phone call and a random card in the mail. I don’t want to be that kind of dad.
I’ve discussed my situation with my IT Director at work and asked if I could work out of the Massachusetts branch. He told me that it was no problem at all and that I won’t really need to go into the branch at all and that I could just work from home. That was a major relief!! I didn’t really want to have to find another job up there.

We’ve decided that we aren’t going to get a divorce right away. We are going to get separated and see how that “works” for us, for approximately a year or so. If both of us feel that we want to remain together, then we’ll get a divorce. We are going to live in separate places. The boys will stay with both of us half of the time. We aren’t going to be so rigid about that schedule – we won’t force the kids to go to either place if they won’t want to.

We don’t want to jump right into getting divorced. Neither of us can say that we are 100% sure that we don’t want to be together.

This weekend, we’re going to list our house on the market as a short sale. We have a realtor friend that is going to discuss the ramifications of short selling our home, on our individual credit reports and on us financially.

I’m already feeling very sad that my family is going to be broken up. Hopefully, after our separation period, we’ll both decide that we really want to remain together and we can stay married.

Here is Eli speaking in his own gibberish speak. He likes to come up to Meri or I and have a conversation with us like this.

Here is a video of Eli walking. This was taken about 2weeks after Aaron’s 5th birthday.

Over the last 5 or 6 months, the boys and I have had major ear issues! We spent approximately $700 on office visits and medicine during November 2007 alone, with health insurance!

I’m on either my fourth or fifth ear issue, either a lot of fluid on behind my ear drum or an infection. I’ve been to my ENT’s office so many times over the past few months that I might as well put in an application there! Aaron and Eli have been just as bad as me.

Eli is on his fourth double ear infection and Aaron has had three. I’m not sure if it’s some sort of environmental issue with either at our house or at my job or at their schools. I’m thinking that if it is environmental, then it has to be at our house somewhere.

It’s truly maddening. I haven’t suffered from ear-related issues since I was a little kid. I had to have tubes in my ears three or four times back then. Skip ahead 20+ years and here I am again.

I’m facing the possibility of having tubes put back in my ears. We aren’t sure what routes we should even consider with the boys. Eli is going to see his pediatrician today around 3pm and Aaron will have a similar visit (although we’re hopeful that the doc will just look him over today at Eli’s appointment).

The last few months have been horrendous though. I can’t wait until we can figure out what the issue is.

So I’ve had this blog post idea in my head since about noon today so I figured I’d go ahead and write it, read it and most likely delete it, so here it goes.  Keep in mind though, I’m a programmer by trade and I don’t have much creativity.  The only creativity I have only came to light within the past four years (WehadababyItsaboy).

Is there a more perfect sandwich than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?  The only thing better than a PB&J sandwich is two of them and the only thing better than two PB&J sandwiches is three of them.  You get the general idea, right?  I don’t need to keep going.  Here is a Google image search of PB&J.  Yummy.

Someone emailed me the other day* asking me how you could spice up your PB&J sandwich.  What the hell?  Isn’t that obvious?  Four words – peanut butter, jelly and cheese!  Seriously (well, as serious as this post can/should be) though, why would a PB&J sandwich need to be spiced up?  It is the perfect sandwich dammit, leave it alone.  I guess you could switch between jelly and jam or change what flavor of jelly you use or you could not use jelly at all, but that would just be weird, amirite?

While I’m making my PB&J sandwich, I pull out three pieces of bread, peanut butter and some jelly.  Instantaneously, I grab one piece of bread, spread peanut butter over 1/2 of it and then jelly over the other half, fold it in half and then eat that mini-PB&J while I continue to make the normal-sized PB&J.  It’s as if the whole PB&J sandwich is much too time consuming to make and I need a smaller PB&J sandwich to tide over my need/desire for, I’m going to type it again, a PB&J sandwich.

I’ve got that Google image search of PB&J up in the another window on my screen and I think I’m going to have to make myself another one when I’m finished.

Finally, I leave you with the following video.

* That’s a damn lie, nobody emailed me – about this or anything else.

Aaron and I had a fun day. We played the beach ball game in the house a couple times, we went to the pool, we watched T.V. together and we did about 4 or 5 puzzles together. Aaron had his final soccer game of the season last Thursday (6/5/08).

The coaches had a party for both teams and all of the kids got a trophy for playing. They had all kinds of great stuff for the kids, pizza, cupcakes, fruit and veggie platters, soccer tattoos, a trampoline, a tire swing and a cool tree house. At the end of the party, all of the kids got a cool trophy.

We came back from Aaron’s soccer party tonight and started the bedtime routine about 45 minutes late because of the party. We came into Aaron’s room and I put some water into his fish tank since it keeps losing water somehow. Meri came in with Eli and was looking at the tank and I said “I put extra water in it” and she said “that’s not why I’m looking at it”. It turns out that one of Aaron’s fish, named Orange (see picture below) died. R.I.P. Orange, Aaron will miss you very much!

We bought Aaron a fish tank as a reward for behaving so well for a long time. He loved it. Here are a couple of pictures of Aaron’s fish tank and his final surviving fish, Grapey.

We got back from our trip to mass. on Tuesday. The trip was like our
normal trips, some fighting, some fun, more uncomfortable than anything
really. We had Aaron’s birthday party on sunday, in mass. He had a lot
of fun and got quite a few gifts. We had to mail ourselves a box full of presents even after we filled up the extra bag that we brought to fly some presents back with us! When we got home, we gave Aaron the presents that we got for him: a slushy maker and a fish tank! Meri took him to the pet store and got him a couple of small fish. He named them “grapey” and “orange”. He gets really excited when it’s time to feed them.

We got back Tuesday and I went to the 2008 LANSA User Conference here in Orlando. I got to talk to a few people I worked with at Terminix and attended some of the WAM sessions. Those were great! I found the AJAX lab to be a bit lacking and the speaker wasn’t that good in my opinion.

I worked from home yesterday and now it is Friday and I am back at the office. I haven’t been here for a week! I must’ve saved a ton of money on gas (well, like $60). Now I’m on-call for the weekend.

Yesterday, when I was working from home, I took a break for lunch (which is unusual for me), I sat with Eli for a bit and I was playing with him on the couch. I started making some weird noises and poking around his mouth to try and get him to smile at me. Normally, it’s difficult for me to get him to smile but he smiled at me for about 20 minutes! It was awesome! I loved it when Aaron first started smiling at me and I love it now that Eli is doing the same. I can’t wait until Eli is walking and talking as well.

Aaron has been on a tear lately, since Monday (4/14/08) of this week. As of yesterday, 4/17/08, I have come home 3 of the last 4 days to him screaming at my wife. If you heard his screaming from out on the street (and you probably could), you would think this kid was completely out of control and he must have terrible parents. This is absolutely not the case. 95% of the time, Aaron is you typical happy child. He’s very fun to be around when he’s like this. He shows how smart he really is and how funny he can be. Sometimes though, seemingly from nowhere, his temper shows itself
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This past week has been about 100 times worse than it has ever been. Now, when he gets upset, his anger would be better described as a rage. He is out of control. Monday, Meri went grocery shopping with him and Eli. They walked by an area where Meri bought him some colored sand the last time they were shopping but this time, there wasn’t any sand there. Aaron flipped out!! He started yelling and screaming about the sand and how he wanted it and where was it and why wasn’t it there. Typically, when Aaron starts acting like that, I would say that he was over-tired and desperately needs to get home to either take a nap or just sit on the couch and relax to some Noggin. This shopping trip ended with Aaron screaming and yelling at Meri, pulling her hair, punching her, slapping her, and for the first time ever, biting her! He bit her three times – once on her cheek and that left a mark for about a day. When they got home, he decided that he would flip over Eli’s car seat – with Eli in it.

When they got in the car, Meri called me at work and asked me to come home. On my end of the phone, I hear my wife crying, asking me to come home, Aaron screaming/raging in the background and Eli was crying. So I picked up all my shit, told my team lead I had to leave and booked it out of here. It took me about 30 or 40 minutes to get home. I finally got there and, to my surprise, Aaron was STILL raging. This episode has been going on for over 90 minutes at this point.

This was been the single worst day with Aaron, ever. I hope that it remains the worst day in his childhood, forever. Since Monday, I’ve come home to Aaron screaming and raging at my wife two other times, every time with her and Eli being hit.

I worked from home the rest of Monday and Tuesday is my weekly work from home day. Meri and I talked about what we should do and how we should handle it and neither of us has a clue. Something has changed Aaron’s behaving dramatically in the past week. On Tuesday, I made an appointment to see a child psychiatrist! We are supposed to go next Wednesday, 4/23.

Meri and I have been thinking about what could cause such a degradation in Aaron’s attitude. The only thing that we can think of is the major increase in cow’s milk and casein in Aaron’s diet. Since we’ve discovered that Aaron is no longer allergic to milk and egg, we’ve been letting him try any- and everything he wants that he could never have before. He’s loved it. When he eats something that he could not eat before, he says “I’m not allergic anymore so I can have this”. It has been wonderful to let Aaron eat things that he couldn’t have before. He really seemed to love it. But now, we have decided to take out most of the milk from his diet. Our reason for this line of thinking revolves around the autism-diet.

Autistic kids should be on a very strict gluten- and casein-free diet. Casein is a protein found in milk and products containing milk, such as cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream, whey and even some brands of margarine. It also may be added to non-milk products such as soy cheese and hot dogs in the form of caseinate. When the diet is followed correctly, an article that I just found says:

Some parents, doctors and researchers say that children have shown mild to dramatic improvements in speech and/or behavior after these substances were removed from their diet.

We are firm believers in how a child’s diet effects their attitude and behavior. We’re taking all of the casein out of his diet again and let his body “detox” for a while. We’ll re-introduce the casein at a very gradual pace this time. I don’t know if we’ll keep the appointment or not.

Meri’s dilated 1.5cm and is about 60% effaced.

If you are like me and have no clue what effacement is: Effacement is the process by which the cervix prepares for delivery. After the baby has engaged in the pelvis, it gradually drops closer to the cervix; the cervix gradually softens, shortens and becomes thinner. You may hear phrases like “ripens,” or “cervical thinning” which refer to effacement. (source).

w00t! Eli’s on his way out and I’m on my way to sleepless nights and a whole lot of happiness!

Merry Christmas! (says acedanger a day late…)

Christmas at our house was very fun, and very busy, as most parents can probably say. Aaron had a ton of presents. He had so many presents that he actually got bored opening them! We took a five hour break and saved some presents for him to open later that night.

He got too many things to name. Our big present to him was his own digital camera (which is kiddie-proof). The resolution of the pictures resembles that of a cell phone, around 640×480 pixels if I remember correctly. He loves it though.

We got him a couple of board games, Candyland, Don’t break the ice, Cootie, and Memory. We played all of them. He won the Candyland game, didn’t have a clue of the objective of Don’t break the ice, he and I tied in Memory, and he lost at Cootie while showing us his very competitive nature which Meri says he gets that from me.

Christmas this year was a ton of fun since Aaron was so excited about it.

Eli even got a present; he got a blanket from his Auntie Annette.

Tags: Christmas, Aaron, Eli, family