So much for 3rd Grade. He's got bigger and better plans.

R.I.P. Freddie

So when we were down in Coronado I got a frantic, early Saturday morning phone call from our friend who was housesitting and watching our dogs.

"Steph...I don't know what happened...I let the dogs out last night...and then this morning...I think Freddie was attacked last night.  Maybe coyotes.  I don't know.  Half of his skin is gone.  He's just lying there.  I don't know.  What do you want me to do?  What should I do?  Should I call 911?"

Not the phone call I had ever expected to receive.  The boys and I were a good 3 hours away at the beach and the Golfer was 1300 miles away.   

"Don't call 911.  Give me a second.  Just hang on.  Let me...I don't know what.  Just let me call you back."

So I hung up.  I didn't even have that much info about what had happened.  The obvious first thought for most people would be to call the vet.  Instead, I called my husband.

"Honey, something's happened with Freddie.  He's been attacked somehow.  I can't deal.  I can't handle this.  Call him.  Find out what's going on and call me back."

Have you ever wondered how you would react in an emergency or an emergency like your pet getting eaten by wild animals?  Would you panic?  Would you freeze?  Would you know what to do?  Would you choose not to deal and let your spouse deal with it?

Yeah, me too.

Long, long story short, it seems that a pack of coyotes got into our yard sometime in the night.  Our other dog was in her doghouse, but our Freddie, well sweet Freddie would just sleep where ever.  Of course we'll never know exactly what happened, but we have lots of bunnies in our yard, so we have a feeling that the coyotes were looking for a late night snack and stubbled upon our dear Freddie.

Unfortunately, Freddie didn't make it.  There was too much damage to his little body and he was too old to survive the surgery.  We had adopted Freddie when we moved to California so we had 5 great years with him.  To give too much thought to how he died is just that...too much.  Heartbreaking is a good word for it.

Obviously we did not tell the boys what happened.  The Cheese would never step outside again if we told him the truth.  Instead, I simply told them that Freddie had passed away in his sleep, which I like to believe that he did.

"Mom?  Can we go adopt another dog?  Can we give another dog a good home?" the Cheese asked through a sniffle.

Every bone in my body wanted to say,  "Yes, sweetie.  Of course we can.  Get your shoes.  Let's go right now."

Instead I said, "No, sweetie.  Not right now.  Let's just love on the ones we still have."

Absent from the web. Not my life.

Have you been missing me?  Somehow I doubt it.

May was a little crazy.  Just to quickly fill you in, here's the month in reverse order.

The Golfer was gone for Regionals (which they won!) and then the National Championship (which they didn't).  They might not have come home with the trophy, but did manage to have this cool pic taken by Golfweek.

Before that, the Big Cheese had his Big Performance: Third Grade Play--"Vacation to Mars"

He was one of Saturn's rings.

 Before that we headed down to Coronado for some sun, a little sand...

...and some fun.  (And plenty of Cheez-Its by the pool.)

Because before that my best friend, whom my children affectionally call "God Christie" came for a special 2 week visit.

But before that was Mother's Day and I awoke to these lovely pancakes.

And before that was the Mother's Day Tea at school (which is where I left you last.)

So I haven't been neglecting you on purpose.  I've just been very...occupied.  And now, we head back to  my "hotter than hell" hometown of Norman, Oklahoma for my 20 year reunion this coming weekend.  Don't count on my posts occurring on a regular basis until my return.  Wish me luck!

Mama's Senior Pic, circa 1991

paying attention part 5: ferrari brain

:: photo found here ::

It's kinda hard to take a kid to a doctors appointment without telling him why he's going.  Especially a bright kid.  Especially a bright kid who knows he's not sick.

That's when we had the Ferrari Brain conversation.

We had talked to the Cheese before about his struggles concentrating.  He had even sat in on the first parent/teacher conference where his inability to concentrate and focus on his school work was the main topic of conversation.  So a little bit of ground work had already been laid.

The Golfer and I weren't looking forward to having to tell the Cheese that he needed to see a doctor about his troubles paying attention.  Remember, he's our sensitive child.  He's our worrier.  He's our child who can quickly and easily make a mountain out of a pile of LEGOS.

Luckily, I found the answer we were looking for in the book, Superparenting for ADD: An Innovative Approach to Raising Your Distracted Child by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. and Peter S. Jensen, M.D.  These two authors gave me the PERFECT script to follow.  And I did.  Almost word for word.

"Buddy, you know how we've been talking a lot lately about your struggles concentrating?  Well, it's because you have a Ferrari Brain.  Do you know what a Ferrari is?  Yeah, of course you do.  You know how cool a Ferrari is.  It is special and expensive and wins a lot of races.  And the reason they win a lot of races is because Ferraris are really, really fast.  You have a Ferrari brain that is really, really fast.  Do you know how lucky you are to have a Ferrari for a brain?  (The Cheese smiles as he shakes his head.)  You are so, so lucky to have such a special brain!

"But the trouble is you have bicycle brakes.  And your bicycle breaks aren't strong enough to help you stop your Ferrari brain.  So you have trouble slowing down when you need to and you sometimes crash even when you really don't mean to.  Does that make sense?  So what we're going to do is take you to a break specialist--a doctor down at UCLA that's going to help you with your breaks.  He just wants to visit with you.  No shots.  No tests.  Just talking.  He wants to learns about how special your Ferrari brain is.  Okay?"

The Cheese smiled,  and told me he got it.  He asked me a question or two: what's the doctor's name, when's the appointment, etc.  He then smiled some more, gave me the hug that I had requested before heading upstairs to play.  It was clear that he LOVED the idea of having such a special brain.  And in realizing this, something dawned on me.  Throughout the whole school year we had been on his back: pay attention!, why aren't you done with your homework?, are you listening?, pay attention!  We had been on him, his teacher had been on him and he had clearly been feeling and internalizing the pressure more than I had realized.

I actually watched is body language relax throughout our Ferrari conversation.  It was a relief for him to hear my words and now that we were telling him about his Ferrari Brain, well, it was the first time in a long time that he felt special.  The first time in a while that he felt good about himself.  Here we were totally stressing about having this conversation about going to the doctor, and clearly it was the conversation that our child had needed to hear.

Maybe this process is going to be easier than I thought.

Maybe.