Things that I accomplished yesterday:
- I mistakenly bought a purse from a third party vendor on Amazon. I sent five e-mails fighting with them about the return. They wanted to charge a 40% restocking fee!
- I sent five e-mails between Ian’s camp and the school district. The school district first said they would help pay for the camp, because it’s also a summer school academic program. Then they said they wouldn’t. Still, no resolution here.
- I strong armed the school district into providing a special ed bus for Ian for next year. Three e-mails.
- I exchanged a backpack that Jonah got as a gift for another one in a different color. I didn’t have a gift receipt. Long wait, but ultimately successful.
- I picked up Jonah early from school, because it’s finals week.
- I got an e-mail from Ian’s teacher saying that she needed old school photographs for Ian immediately. They were needed for his graduation ceremony next week. There was a miscommunication from the schools, so I never got the memo for this request.
- I proof read Jonah’s final history essay.
- I mended Jonah’s sore wrist and bloody knee. He wiped out in front of the house mid-afternoon. His wrist grew more puffy and painful as the evening went on. We debated whether or not we should go to the emergency room.
- I sent e-mails to the school notifying them that he would need modifications on his finals, because he couldn’t type or write.
- I made reservations for 16 at a restaurant in New York City for this Saturday.
- No time to cook dinner. Pizza.
It’s 9am. Things that I accomplished today:
- I helped Jonah print out his essay.
- I sent two e-mails and two phone calls to his school, because I have to take him to the emergency room, after he turns in his history paper.
- I arranged for two make-up exams.
- I drove him to school.
- I packed up Ian for field day.
- I scanned his school photographs and sent them to his school.
- I sent an e-mail to his camp.
- I sent two e-mails to his teacher.
- I explained that we need to change our socks every day, and that re-wearing socks is gross.
- I sun screened him.
- I got him on his bus.
- I showered. We’re out of toothpaste, so it’s a double rinse of mouthwash sort of morning.
- And now, I’m waiting for Jonah’s text message to come pick him up and drive him to the emergency room.
- Because this will be our family’s second trip to the emergency room this month and potentially our second broken bone, I’m bracing for a call from Child Protective Services.
Apt. 11d 
Our kids have been out of school for 3+ weeks now, so all of that stuff about “school” and “teacher” and “essay” sounds like a foreign language.
Daughter dearest has the sock thing down. Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite have the put-dirty-socks-in-laundry thing down quite as well. I find dirty white socks in the weirdest places. She’s starting to occasionally bathe without reminders. O frabjous day!
We may or may not have left scheduling her birthday skate/laser tag party so late that we may just need to do something else.
My birthday has also arrived, and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted. (This is normally NOT a problem.) “How about a trip to IKEA?” says my husband. Yay!
Oh, and daughter dearest baked crescent rolls (some with chocolate filling!) from store dough for my birthday.
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“I explained that we need to change our socks every day, and that re-wearing socks is gross.”
I did that one yesterday, too.
And, when the kids get injured, I seriously consider just letting them stay inside and watch TV all the time. I guess the problem with that is that it just pushes the health risk beyond the point where I am responsible for their health (which is probably really bad parenting). We had a stint there earlier this year, where we went to urgent care so frequently that the little one thought he should start collecting hospital bracelets.
I also picked up 2 kids, at different times, from summer time activities. This is my first summer without the grandparents here to help. I have somehow not understood the concept that when there are two children, there has to be a plan for getting both of them with only one driver (spouse is helping, so this is not always strictly true, but it is sometimes, which makes it harder, in some respects, because what do you do when there is one day when it doesn’t work?). I still don’t know what the pickup plan is this afternoon, though my backup is that older has to just hang around until I get there.
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The camp driving schedule has been kind of ferocious here, too.
Right now there’s a morning class and an afternoon class and my husband is teaching in both camp sessions, with at certain points each participating individual (C, D and husband) needing to be in a different place all at the same time. This morning, for instance, we all five had to be in the car to drop off husband for his class and then to drop off C for her class. D, Baby T and I then went off to burn some time at Barnes and Noble before doing pick up 90 minutes later. We do lunch, have a few minutes free time at home, then we all drive back and I drop husband and the two big kids off for their afternoon classes. Then I drive home, put Baby T down for what’s going to be a pathetically abbreviated nap and have a little down time (now) before picking up the big kids and then meeting husband at his class location.
I had a couple days where my husband took the car because he was doing drop-off and I spaced on the fact that I didn’t have the car and should have left 15 minutes earlier, so Baby T and I needed to trot 20 minutes across campus in 90+ degree temperatures (one of the times the kids were in the holding pen where they keep Children With Unpunctual Parents). If it were 70 or 80 degrees, it might almost be pleasant, but it’s not.
My husband isn’t teaching camp next week, so he’ll be able to do more drop-offs and pick-ups, but this week is killing me. He is getting major brownie points and about $40 an hour for the 90 minute classes, so it’s worth the pain. (He’s teaching one-week computer game design courses to middle schoolers and high schoolers.)
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It’s slightly easier in that at this age the kids don’t have to be walked door-to-door everywhere, but we still need to pick them up on site.
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Days like that are kind of like being nibbled to death by ants. Lots of things that need to be done, but not a lot that you want to do.
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And he broke his growth plate in his wrist. No swimming or skate boarding for six months. There is much sadness in this house.
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Ouch. My sympathies to him. And you for having to deal with a kid for a whole summer without being able to take him to a pool.
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I’m so sorry! Getting an injury at the beginning of summer is the absolute worst. When I was six I cut through my pinky toe and bone and couldn’t walk the whole summer. It stands out in my mind as the summer I watched everyone else swim, bike, run, jump, and do everything else I couldn’t do. Can he still run?
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Oh my, so sorry.
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oops six weeks. weeks.
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Now I don’t feel so bad – just kidding of course! Six weeks is a lonnnnnggggg time for someone active to be less active. Big bummer all around.
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Well, that sounds better. But, I guess only because it was framed with 6 mo. My kiddo spent 4 weeks in March with a putative concussion. There were lots of tears.
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OMG, better, though still hard. Poor Jonah and poor you. 😦
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Half the summer. Bummer.
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so sorry about the wrist. please treat it well. my handwriting improved greatly when i broke mine.
salt and baking soda both work perfectly well as toothpaste.
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I think the types of days you described are particularly hard for Aspie kids. My kids function much better when we have a pretty rigid structure and they can anticipate in advance exactly what activities are going to occur. (I.E. Every Friday we have piano lessons and then we order pizza for dinner. In the evening we do laundry. We get to stay up late because we can sleep in on Saturday.)
Everybody gets really tense when you have lots of random activities added to the schedule suddenly — particularly something as traumatic as an injury. Unfortunately, the list of activities which you have described — no two days the same — has been the shape of our entire summer, and it’s really hard on everyone.
Is there a particular TV series you could let your child binge watch over the next six weeks — some set of books he’s been wanting to read? I think I would try hard to find some sort of alternate activity/consolation prize that sounded good — maybe a weekly movie outing or something. Otherwise, you’re just looking at a difficult summer all around.
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Because this will be our family’s second trip to the emergency room this month and potentially our second broken bone, I’m bracing for a call from Child Protective Services.
When I was a kid, my family has a sort of supplemental accident insurance that paid out set amounts for different sorts of injuries, independent of medical expenses (though the claims did have to be certified by a doctor.) I believe it paid something like $200 for a 2nd-degree burn. Eventually that coverage, in particular, was removed because of too many families ending up w/ a suspiciously high number of 2nd-degree burns.
(I imagined a father saying, “okay, kids, whose turn is it to touch the stove this week?”)
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Our older son broke his wrist in 6th grade during summer swim camp (!) – someone stepped on him during a breaktime soccer scrum. The *only* saving grace was that the cast came off before school started. When he broke two fingers the following spring playing baseball I started to worry, but the pediatrician said broken bones are much less problematic when they’re growing, as opposed to adult fractures. Nothing broken since then, I’m happy to say. But I feel for both of you.
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Wow, insanity indeed! I’m so sorry about the broken wrist & 6 week w/o swimming! 😦 You truly accomplished a lot on those two days!!
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