Monthly Archives: February 2009

On Monday I was feeling like total crap after catching some kind of bug at the party we did a photo shot at on Saturday. But the weather was nice, ( above freezing) and though DD was sick as well, we NEEDED wood, and we had to just suck it up and go do it.

So, we went off to a friend’s house ( said friend who sold us the wood stove in fact) and chopped up some dead fall behind her garage and used a  sled to drag it over to the car over the snow in the side yard, and fill the back of the van with wood.

It didn’t take too long , but it totally sucked the energy out of me to do it. The last round of cutting with the chain saw, hubby took the saw and carved our initials in a block of wood. It seems so stupid and silly, but that to me, is better then a dozen roses or chocolates

I smiled and told him that now I would not be able to burn that log, I’d have to keep it and varnish it, to preserve it. He asked me why, and said it wasn’t even the best he could do, he was just fooling around. But, I didn’t care. It was spontaneous, and I loved it.

I told him that I would keep it and when I’m 92 and the great grandkids are visiting me and he’s dead and gone, that I’d tell them about their great grandfather and how sweet he was, and how he had carved that for me the first winter we were in this house, and that he did it with that old fashioned tool called the chain saw…lol.

Then of course, being the man that I love and adore… started to joke around in an old man voice saying stuff like we heard our grandparents say… ” back in the day, we had to chop and haul our own wood, we didn’t have it as good as you kids have it today, where you just plant a tree and press a button and it falls to the ground already dried and cut and split ready to burn!”

I laughed so hard it brought tears to my eyes LOL…

here’s a pic of the wood

( today is the 10th anniversary of our private commitment ceremony too. just coincidently)

son to bed & SLEEPING-gave melatonin 50 min before bed time-He was in much better mood 2day!
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So, I mentioned a few posts back that I’m reading some books on ADHD  to refresh my memory, and to apply it to the kids and their hyper ways, scatterbrain issues, and the whole non compliance issues we are having with 2 adhd (plus) kids, and a ADHD mommy who forgets to be consistent in the routine department and consequences to keep them in a routine ( which is how ADHD kids cope best)

Some of the techniques have been things we did before, but me and my ADHD ways, I forget, stop doing them, and things go back to the chaos.But the last two days have been decent when I started the “1,2,3 magic” over again, and I’ve been able to nip unwanted behaviour in the bud by usually the calm but firm count of two.

One of the biggest issues of ADHD kids is night insomnia…and their inability to “shut off their brain” and get to sleep, they just keep going and going and going, and even when they are totally exhausted and totally crabby and bawling on a puddle on the floor from frustration, they still have a hard time some days falling asleep. it is completely physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for all involved, and everyone ends up short tempered when lack of decent sleep sets in.

Last night hubby and I were laying in bed chatting and reading the books and comparing notes, and for like the 6th night in a  row, our 8 year old daughter who has been having ever increasing issues falling asleep due to her compulsive worrying and anxieties, comes in unable to sleep again, very frustrated with herself, and upset…I mention to hubby that the book I’m reading mentioned melatonin, and it was something I’d forgotten about. He reminded me that he had some he stopped using because the doctors recommended it for his CFS, but it gave him adverse side effects due to his strange and complex system functioning. So he took out the bottle, read it to see recommendations, weighed our daughter, determined a safe dose and gave it to her for a try. She took it after much convincing and crushing the small pill, and went back to bed, and nothing more was said. She seemed to fall asleep, but we were not sure how long she laid and read or watched a dvd to do so.

Then, she slept in until noon!!! And we had to get up and out the door for a party. she was SOOOO crabby…Yesterday we went to a birthday party for some friend’s youngest daughter ( first bday), and we were there for a good 4 hours since I was hired to do photography for the party for them, and since I was busy flitting about the room, my kids filled up on pop and chips and other  hyper inducing foods with very little substance…we got home and once again our children were too hyper at even midnight to sleep ( usual bedtimes is 8:30 and 10 pm) they were fighting and jumping around, watching dvd’s trying to “settle” in the kid den, and I was so mentally exhausted i didn’t care if they did or did not sleep, I was just at LEAST hoping for a hyper focus on their parts of a movie they liked so I could have some silence and hear myself think after being at a party with over 35 people!

So, forward to today, they had finally fell asleep at like 3 ish AM, and we were heading to bed at like 4 am, because we NEED some no kid, alone time that doesn’t involve sleeping side by side….they slept until about 11 am, and got up, and were their usual busy, energetic selves, running all over the house and just going totally full throttle all day.

I was so not in any position today to hear their fighting and arguments, and trying to explain personal space to a wiggling 4 year old…I’m feeling like I am getting some stomach bug of some kind, and my plans to do anything productive to make up for my total lack of housework the last 3 days was  foiled…i did a few dishes and cleaned up after the stuff they did today, so as not to have a COMPLETE disaster to clean up tomorrow or whenever I feel better, and I was mentally drained and in no mood to deal with kids again until 3 am!  

Hubby reminded me to try them both on melatonin tonight, so I broke up the doses and put it in their drinks at the table for their evening lunch ( snack really, but in Cape Breton the  food and tea consumed between the large evening meal and bedtime is called lunch)

Within 35 minutes, my son who ate his lunch licking his milk from a bowl to “play puppy” while he danced standing on the chair while eating his food, yelling and singing at the top of his lungs to annoy the pants off his sister, was laying over the computer chair in the living room, starting to look TIRED!!! and my daughter, who during her lunch at the table being pestered by her little brother ans was whining in piercing tones to tell me to make him stop bugging her and SCREAMING at him while she swung her leg from the chair in a  rhythmic motion to keep moving, was sitting easily without figitting beside hubby looking at the latest video going around on twitter ( david after the dentist!) and was giggling, not LAUGHING so loud that she was shreaking and getting wound up!!!! I looked at them and almost wondered where my children were and who replaced them with these reasonable replicas!! I then said to hubby..”I gave them the melatonin at lunch eh?” and he said, ” you mean just now?” ( he still cannot understand why we east coaster call it lunch) and I said Ya.. he looked at Bupba and was in shock! ” he’s actually TIRED!!!”

Usually bedtime is an hour fight to get them upstairs and requires me to be with them for 4 to 5 story books, dark rooms, and whispering and keeping them in their rooms. Tonight I said ” time for bed I think” and told them to head on up, and they pretty much went without arguing with ME or each other!!!!!!!!!!!!

I went up to check on them and found them laying on the floor in the den camped out watching fox and the hound being very interested and quiet and NOT climbing the shelves, jumping off the desks etc….so I just left them….then I went back and checked again… in less then 20 minutes of them tucking THEMSELVES in ( albeit on the floor in the den with fox and the hound playing on the TV but who am I to be a stickler at THIS point!), they were both asleep!!!!!!

I almost began to cry from relief!!!… it is ALMOST 2 am here, and hubby and I have had about an hour and a half of alone time already!!! I hope this is NOT an anomaly and that this will continue!!!!

Tomorrow night, I’ll give them the melatonin with a snack   half hour before their respective set bedtimes and see where it takes us…lets hope we’ve hit on something to help them regulate their sleeping issues.

Now for the crappy part…..hubby is trying to convince ME to take melatonin too, so maybe I’ll get to bed before 5 am and sleep better in the night….and I’m resisted the urge to argue about it, because 2 am is when I do my best hyper focusing on stuff like getting my website updated, or chat with my friend on gmail, or tweet, or blogging…. etc… LOL…

So, I mentioned in my last blog post that I’m reading some books on ADHD to refresh my memory, and to apply it to the kids and their hyper ways, scatterbrain issues, and the whole non compliance issues we are having with 2 adhd (plus) kids, and a ADD mommy who forgets to be consistent in the routine department and consequences to keep them in a routine ( which is how ADHD kids cope best)

Some of the techniques have been things we did before, but me and my ADD ways, I forget, stop doing them, and things go back to the chaos.But the last two days have been decent when I started the “1,2,3 magic” over again, and I’ve been able to nip unwanted behavior in the bud by usually the calm but firm count of two.

One of the biggest issues of ADHD kids is night insomnia…and their inability to “shut off their brain” and get to sleep, they just keep going and going and going, and even when they are totally exhausted and totally crabby and bawling in a puddle of thier own tears on the floor from frustration, they still have a hard time some days falling asleep. It is completely physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for all involved, and everyone ends up short tempered when lack of decent sleep sets in.

Last night hubby and I were laying in bed chatting and reading the books and comparing notes, and for like the 6th night in a row, our 8 year old daughter who has been having ever increasing issues falling asleep due to her general compulsive worrying and anxieties, comes in unable to sleep again, very frustrated with herself, and upset…I mention to hubby that the book I’m reading mentioned melatonin, and it was something I’d forgotten about. He reminded me that he had some he stopped using because the doctors recommended it for his CFS, but it gave him adverse side effects due to his strange and complex system functioning. So he took out the bottle, read it to see recommendations, weighed our daughter, determined a safe dose and gave it to her for a try. She took it after much convincing and crushing the small pill, and went back to bed, and nothing more was said. She seemed to fall asleep, but we were not sure how long she laid and read or watched a dvd to do so.

Then, she slept in until noon!!! And we had to get up and out the door for a party. she was SOOOO crabby…Yesterday we went to a birthday party for some friend’s youngest daughter ( first bday), and we were there for a good 4 hours since I was hired to do photography for the party for them, and since I was busy flitting about the room, my kids filled up on pop and chips and other hyper inducing foods with very little substance…we got home and once again our children were too hyper at even midnight to sleep ( usual bedtimes is 8:30 and 10 pm) they were fighting and jumping around, watching dvd’s trying to “settle” in the kid den, and I was so mentally exhausted i didn’t care if they did or did not sleep, I was just at LEAST hoping for a hyper focus on their parts of a movie they liked so I could have some silence and hear myself think after being at a party with over 35 people!

So, forward to today, they had finally fell asleep at like 3 ish AM, and we were heading to bed at like 4 am, because we NEED some no kid, alone time that doesn’t involve sleeping side by side….they slept until about 11 am, and got up, and were their usual busy, energetic selves, running all over the house and just going totally full throttle all day.

I was so not in any position today to hear their fighting and arguments, and trying to explain personal space to a wiggling 4 year old…I’m feeling like I am getting some stomach bug of some kind, and my plans to do anything productive to make up for my total lack of housework the last 3 days was foiled…i did a few dishes and cleaned up after the stuff they did today, so as not to have a COMPLETE disaster to clean up tomorrow or whenever I feel better, and I was mentally drained and in no mood to deal with kids again until 3 am!

Hubby reminded me to try them both on melatonin tonight, so I broke up the doses and put it in their drinks at the table for their evening lunch ( snack really, but in Cape Breton the food and tea consumed between the large evening meal and bedtime is called lunch)

Within 35 minutes, my son who ate his lunch licking his milk from a bowl to “play puppy” while he danced standing on the chair while eating his food, yelling and singing at the top of his lungs to annoy the pants off his sister, was laying over the computer chair in the living room, starting to look TIRED!!! and my daughter, who during her lunch at the table being pestered by her little brother and was whining in piercing tones to tell me to make him stop bugging her and SCREAMING at him while she swung her leg from the chair in a rhythmic motion to keep moving, was sitting easily without figitting beside hubby looking at the latest video going around on twitter ( david after the dentist!) and was giggling, not LAUGHING so loud that she was shreaking and getting wound up!!!!

I looked at them and almost wondered where my children were and who replaced them with these reasonable replicas!! I then said to hubby..”I gave them the melatonin at lunch eh?” and he said, ” you mean just now?” ( he still cannot understand why we east coasters call it lunch) and I said Ya.. he looked at Bupba and was in shock! ” he’s actually TIRED!!!” he mouthed to me…we’ve never really seen what tired looked like on our 4 year old son before!

Usually bedtime is an hour fight to get them upstairs and requires me to be with them for 4 to 5 story books, dark rooms, and whispering and keeping them in their rooms. Tonight I said ” time for bed I think” and told them to head on up, and they pretty much went without arguing with ME or each other!!!!!!!!!!!!

I went up to check on them and found them laying on the floor in the den camped out watching fox and the hound being very interested and quiet and NOT trying to climb the shelves, jumping off the desks etc….so I just left them….then I went back and checked again, paranoid, and because I so very often am NOT comfortable with silence from MY ADD children…. in less then 20 minutes of them tucking THEMSELVES in ( albeit on the floor in the den with fox and the hound playing on the TV but who am I to be a stickler at THIS point!), they were both asleep!!!!!!

I almost began to cry from relief on the way down the stairs. I was literally choking back tears and had a lump in my throat!!! it is ALMOST 2 am here, and hubby and I have had about an hour and a half of alone time already!!! I hope this is NOT an anomaly and that this will continue!!!!

Tomorrow night, I’ll give them the melatonin with a snack half hour before their respective set bedtimes and see where it takes us…lets hope we’ve hit on something to help them regulate their sleeping issues.

Now for the crappy part…..hubby is trying to convince ME to take melatonin too, so maybe I’ll get to bed before 5 am and sleep better in the night….and I’m resisted the urge to argue about it, because 2 am is when I do my best hyper focusing on stuff like getting my website updated, or chat with my friend on gmail, or tweeting, or blogging…. etc… LOL…

is there such a thing?

Develop the mind of equilibrium.
You will always be getting praise and blame,
but do not let either affect the poise of the mind:
follow the calmness, the absence of pride.

So…some people don’t get this “personal” on their blogs and I always wonder where the line might be, but I’ve decided recently that I’m not going to censor myself this way…and besides there are only about 4 or 5 of you who read this on any regular basis, and we are all human, and I write this to be “me”.. so if I reveal a real part of me….that’s ok. I’ve been working on accepting that not everyone in the world will like me and that it is OK to not be liked by everyone and it is not necessary to feel anxiety of someone doesn’t like me for any reason, be it a legitimate reason, or one they perceive that is just not true.

I, as a lot of people… have emotional baggage, I’m sure my baggage is just baggage to many, and to others it would be the kind of baggage, that makes you thankful for your own baggage. But… being a child who grew up with ADD and learning disabilities unknown to anyone, including themselves.. and being a kid who grew up in a family of drinkers, I have a LOT of emotional baggage.. like huge LUGGAGE that needs to be checked in to be carried around. Over the years I have been able to find peace in my life and work out some emotional stuff, to be able to downsize my emotional Baggage to just a few carry on pieces. But they are always still there, reminding me, making it hard to walk down the narrow aisles of life, smacking other passengers in the shoulder, and leaving me full of anxiety, upset, sadness, frustration, and much more wishing I could be a minimalist and just throw out the carry on bags and be done with it.

Anyway.. I tell you all of that to tell you this…The largest article in my carry on baggage is anxiety about most social situations & the relationships I have with people in my life….my spouse, my children, my neighbors, acquaintances, extended family etc… I worry constantly about how people look at me ( opinions) how I behave in situations etc.. you know a basic need (addiction) for approval by people… to the point that lack of obvious signs of approval from people, makes me think they don’t like me, I made them mad and that’s why they don’t call, so then I avoid them. fear of saying the wrong thing, not being “cool, nice, important, funny etc” enough to be their friend etc.

this has caused me to be a “people pleaser” all of my life, and led me to job in the caregiver field being a personal care worker for people with disabilities.

Anyway…It is something that drives me NUTS, and something I wish I could change in myself without taking anxiety drugs prescribed by a doctor, and without coping with alcohol as I did in my early 20′s.

This whole thing, I’ve known for some time, stems from my basic relationship with my mother as a child. the person as a baby/child trusted the most, looked to for my needs to be met. The issue was that my mother was 16,and practically a baby herself emotionally with the MASSIVE check in luggage she started her adult life with, and therefore she was literally incapable of providing me with the solid foundations I needed to foster relationships and nurture them in a positive way in my life.
AS a result of being an ADD child with learning disabilities I was no doubt a challenge to parent growing up. There was a lot of “emotional abuse” in my life growing up, and I’ve known for a long time that it colored the way I act, react, and come at the relationships in my life with people.

this could end up turning into a book, but I’ll save that, and just touch the points as best I can…at 30 years old and during the pregnancy of my second child my hidden ADD got bad.. to the point of putting me in mental inertia, and I felt like I was going in circles with one foot nailed to the floor. I was a complete mental wreck from the raging pregnancy hormones playing with my brain chemistry. So much so, I sought help from a counselor, who recommended me to an ADD Doctor because she thought that was the issue. I was diagnosed shortly after my son’s birth in 2005. I started to read some books about ADD as much as I could to grasp as much as I could about it to try and make positive changes in my life, to learn to manage the ADD and not let it manage me. It was bad enough that is made my marriage have times of serious stress, and my husband and I fought and argued a lot….there were times when I could not take the stress and thought… a LOT that i should just leave the relationship, because it didn’t matter what I did, I was just not able to make it work.

I’d been trying to tell my husband for the last 4 years or so since my diagnosis, that even given his very high level of patience for my daily mess ups, and slip ups, forgetfulness, disorganization, and ease with which I can create chaos that he didn’t understand where I was coming from because he could not possibly understand what it is like to have ADD and personally live with being a flake so much.

I have terrible self esteem as it is, and I beat myself up emotionally as was done to me as a child every time I mess up. by the time he sees the mess up and starts getting upset at me( even when it is totally within reason that he SHOULD be upset about it) I’ve already been chastising myself about it, and that little chastiser in my brain suddenly gets defensive and snaps back at him because he is stepping on her territory…it was the best way I could describe it, because that it what happens when he expresses his disappointment and frustration sadness, or even anger at something my ADD is responsible for. ( this can occur a lot, because well…I mess up a lot, and we argue every time it does because I tell him, he needs to not complain so much, and he tells me I have no idea how much he holds back and doesn’t say.)

So recently, with the kids being completely out of hand with the routines and hyperness and ADD qualities I seem to have passed onto them, I put some books on hold at the library to read about ADHD parenting. I figured a little reeducation on ideas for myself, as well as for things to do with the kids to make things less chaotic in the home would be a benefit to everyone.

I ordered a book that is brand new in the stores, and our library bought it and we were the first to put a hold on it and get it in. While I was reading Daredevils and DayDreamers, my husband started reading the new one, called “SuperParenting for ADD”.

After he read the first chapter he had an epiphany, and we had what I think is a significant turning point in our relationship regarding my ADD, and if that is the ONLY thing that book was good for then it has done good by me…(but I have a feeling it will be even better as each page is read, for us as parents of kids with ADD)

so, he reads the first chapter and then once the kids were in bed, started a conversation with ” so, when I get mad at you, and you feel like you’re “getting in trouble” as you call it..tell me how you feel… tell me what you’re thinking in those moments.”

So I started to rhyme off some stuff, not getting deep about it.. and he kept asking me to think more….and I was getting annoyed…I just wanted to relax, not get all philosophical and deep. But he pressed gently/firmly and said he was curious and wanted to know, and didn’t want to give me any leads. He wanted to hear from ME what I felt…. so I thought about it, and talked about it, and I told him that I don’t feel like he loves me anymore when he gets upset with me, or is disappointed in me…I started to get emotional…damn I hate when he makes me cry cause he makes me go deep in the luggage to find crap. ( but at the same time I love him for it.. he is my biggest supporter, best friend, and one of the biggest reasons I’ve come this far emotionally).

So we started talking and I told him that I don’t feel loved, and that I hate disappointing him, because I just want him to be happy all the time and never be disappointed in me, or upset, or sad or hurt by something I’ve done. I told him I can’t handle when people are mad at me, and it bothers me deeply. Then he asked me “but don’t you know that it is just you’re behavior, or the consequences we endure due to your ADD moments that I’m not happy with and that I still love you no matter what?” to which I promptly started cry and told him, in fact no I don’t know that he still loves me at all. One of the biggest things that always hurts me so much when he gets upset with me, is that he can seem to walk away from it to cool off and does cool off and then never touches on it again, and I am left there still full of anxiety and resentment and fear and sadness feeling totally unloved like a complete failure, because of just how much I often do mess up ( daily, hourly sometimes even…there are days I should have never gotten out of bed because my brain chemistry is just not gonna allow me to function in any decent way at all)

He was surprised and said he really didn’t think of it that way, and that it just occurred to him as he read the book because it explained how kids with ADD treated negatively emotionally by their parents can often end up having that color the way they have relationships for the rest of their lives.

I was never jealous of it, but he is always very good at letting the kids know that he was disappointed in their behavior but that he still loves them no matter what etc, and would hug them, wink, or give a pat on the head, and they would go off smiling and happy again. He said that it had never even occurred to him that I never got that kind of treatment as a child, and even thought we’ve talked about it, he didn’t think about the fact that perhaps I was never told the behavior was negative, but i w as still loved.

I confirmed, while crying my eyes out, that yes, that is the case, and that knowing after I burn his roastbeef for the millionth time in ten years, or forget something, or break something, that he still loves me, would go a long way in making me feel less of a failure, and help me know that he still loves me. (I did take the moment to point out too, that with my learning disability, if I can’t learn to consistently and properly cook a roast in the 10 years we’ve been together, perhaps the beef dinners would be best left to him, and we’d all be happy. LOL )

It’s been a few days since that talk now, and he’s been his ever patient self, we’re working on communication…me being more open instead of getting defensive right away, and him listening… and he’s been being more attentive in the way I need him to be attentive.. not with flowers and crap, but with changing the way he approaches the way he guides me when we cook together, and being sure that he lets me know that he loves me…lovey and even sexy text messages in the midst of being upset with me, is helping me know that he is not taking away his love just because I messed up yet again and he has no clean socks to wear out of the house and I forgot to vacuum the living room floor AGAIN today like I said I was trying to get to, etc etc.

in a way it sucks that I have to mother the ADD child in me that never got the foundation she needed to be a better emotional functioning adult…. and it sucks that my husband is in essence paying the emotional debt left by others in my love bank, but we’re getting there… and hopefully in time to be the kind of supportive positive mother my children need with their ADD in order to give them a fighting chance at managing their ADD traits in adulthood better.

Last night we cooked a dinner together and managed to get through it without arguing and actually smiling and enjoying ourselves by the time it got to the table, rather then me feeling upset, and misunderstood, and resentful and defensive walking away to try and gather myself again. It was nice. the food was really good. the best roast beef I’ve had in a Long time ( because I didn’t cook it… LOL)… and I want it to continue.

anyway.. I’m off to bed, cause this took me over an hour to write out with the interruptions and it’s late and hubby’s patiently (?) waiting for me to finish this.

So there ya have it…. confessions of “ADDgirl” as my hubby fondly calls me ( and I actually don’t mind)

The following was a letter I wrote to a person who decided they could not be involved in our lives because they felt my disabled husband was disrespectful and rude calling me ADDgirl. I decided to share it (with some tweaks) because it hopefully gives a good insight into our world, and because I’m sick of justifying “why I’m married to a “jerk”.

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Uggg-this inner healing stuff really makes for intense crying spells to release the toxic C.R.A.P.
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Today my son turned 4 yeas old.

On friday he declared while cuddling in bed with hubby and I in the morning, that he wanted an outside birthday. With his Bday being on a weekday it was going to be hard to plan anything in such short notice, but some friends have kids who were not in school today so they came sledding with us for his bday.

the weather was PERFECT and we had a BLAST, hotchocolate and cupcakes were enjoyed and everyone had a good time… though my tooshie is VERY sore now!!!!

here are some pics from the day’s events

Hubby took most of the pictures, and decorated the cake this year too