Happy Ninth Birthday Leelo!

Happy birthday beautiful boy!

I am thrilled about what Nine Years Old means for Leo. Our happy, well-adjusted boy has helped us be happy and well-adjusted, too. One year ago I would not have believed such gladness was possible. This is a precious time.

I love that he was excited yet conflicted about going to camp this past weekend. He wanted to go, but he didn't want to be apart from his family -- both positives. He also may have been worried that this was a week-long rather than a weekend-only camp, even though I reassured him that it was the latter. He had a great time, with a great aide, and greeted me at pickup with Spiderman-worthy leaps of joy that ended in a bear hug. He was voted Sweetest Scarecrow during the Harvest Carnival.

I can't wait to greet him when he wakes up, because we got him a new stuffed Catbus for his birthday. I thought was going to be the size of a Chihuahua but no -- more like a portly Jack Russell terrier.  It's huge, and really well made. Leo is going to go out of his mind when he sees it.

I am saddened that Leo's birthday day carrot cake is a pathetic-looking, non-CakeWrecks-worthy fail. I give up on gel decorating tubes! They are sploogy and gush liquid half the time. His cake may be covered in wee rainbow puddles, but it will be delicious and I'm hoping his classmates only care about that. I promise to make a better one for his birthday party, which I am really looking forward to (as I wrote on BlogHer last week). I hope he is too.

There will be green straw snatching runs and naan bread for dinner tonight!

Camp Irony

As I've noted before, signing Leelo up for camp can really suck. There is no reason parents of kids with special needs -- parents who deal with enough challenges already -- should be put through the indignity of having to wait, overnight, outside an office building, so that their child can go to the one local camp that accommodates kids who need full-time aides. The overnight cage match signup also means families who can't spare a parent for the sixteen-hour overnight vigil are out of luck.

My friend and I agreed that signups were sucky and unfair, so I wrote to the camp's administration. I suggested they implement a lottery system so that parents only have to show up for an hour or two during the morning. I cc'd my parent friends on the email. Those friends then replied all, and told the camp staff that they backed up a lottery option, even if it meant some of our kids might not get in. Then we straightened our ties and went back to parenting our children.

The Fall camp registration packed arrived three days ago. And, even though it acknowledged that administrators received suggestions from parents regarding how to ensmoothen the process, they didn't change a damn thing -- except to expressly warn people that they might have to wait overnight, and that we should try to keep our tempers. Awesome.

And you know what caps off that awesomeness? I can't go to the registration -- it's during Seymour's Jackson Hole business trip. When I wrote that email asking for a lottery, I was unknowingly advocating for my own family.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, camp administration people! Why wouldn't you try to make the process easier for yourselves as well as for the families you serve? Do you use the stories of the desperate way parents and caregivers brave near-freezing overnight temperatures to line up for camp to bolster your fundraising, as was suggested by a cynical friend of mine after three beers? Because in case this hasn't come through clearly enough, the overnight signup process not only sucks, but it's completely unfair to families who can't participate. I'm not thinking of us so much (though I am bummed, and Leo's going to be sad) but of families who are constantly excluded from camp because of sign up absurdity. You are amazing people in all other ways; please reconsider, and please don't do this to your campers' families again.

Leo Camp Dispatches

We are not supposed to call Leo's camp under any circumstances except emergencies. So you can imagine the intensity with which my chest exploded each time the phone rang with the camp's caller ID. KA-BOOM! POW!

Thankfully neither call was about an actual emergency, the kind that would require us to remove our extremely lazy selves from this mountaintop.

One was a question: What the hell does your kid eat? My answer: since there's an anaphylactic peanut allergy at camp and he mostly eats PB&J sandwiches, not a hell of a lot. I told them that it would be okay if he spent six days surviving on bread, bananas, apples, and the yogurt I sent in to be mixed with his meds. It's camp. Now that I know the camp does food allergies lockdowns, I'll send extra food (veggie booty, extra yogurt etc.) just in case, for next time.

The second call was to let me know Leo got bitten by another camper. No broken skin, and Leo's fine. But he'll have a mark. My reaction: I had to stop myself from laughing. Not that it wasn't serious, but -- they're calling me for that? There's no way his injury could be worse than the bite marks & black eyes from a recent Lucy/Mali brawl. He's likely forgotten about it already. Seymour and I think Leo probably tried to swipe someone else's food.

I can't wait to find out what else transpired at camp when we talk to his aide during Friday's pickup.

Meanwhile, Seymour and I have two plans for today: 1) Truckin' down the Truckee & 2) Dinner & libations with Jennyalice's wonderful sister Demanda & her pastorly partner. Mmm, vacation!

New BlogHer Post: Choosing to Parent a Child With Special Needs

I might be holed up in a cute little studio at an off-season ski resort with vertigo-inducing views of the Carson Valley while my handsome husband mountain bikes the Tahoe Ridge Trail; I might be cursing extortionate internet access rates while praising my mother's timeshare sorcery in getting us this place for $35/night, but damn it, it's still a BlogHer Tuesday for me -- and that means a new post.

Today's foray is about choosing to parent, live, love, and work with our kids with special needs.

Mostly, I'm grateful for and humbled by the people who do it by choice, not because of some celestial travel agent's decision to send them to Holland instead of Italy. Not that we don't appreciate Holland. Pot is legal, after all, and I enjoy talking with Holland's denizens about why they are content, and have nothing against Italy, but it's not relevant to them.

The bulk of the BlogHer post is an interview with the foster parent of a Deaf teen who has oppositional-defiant disorder and other labels. That dad -- a friend from college -- is an amazing man, and reading what he has to say is worth your time.

I also talk about dropping Leo off at week-long sleepaway camp, and the palpable positive energy of the counselors there. I didn't talk about how I held it together, didn't cry until I heard a radio commentator describe Euna Lee's reunion with her daughter while I drove away from my son. I'm choosing to tell you that here, now, in my personal blog.