Just when I thought I had it up to my eyeballs.Parenting a child with special needs is a daily, emotional, daunting, exhausting experience. Some days, even weeks go by without skipping a beat and I do all the things without thinking. Others weeks? Not so much. The past few weeks have been a roller coaster for sure. I have hung on desperately while being hurled upside down and turned inside out. By Sunday I was convinced that not a single person on the entire universe around me knew or cared. I was feeling vastly overwhelmed, unseen and forgotten as a...
Keep calm…Benny on! Special needs parenting is hard. I thought I would mention that just in case no one already knew this just by observing the brightly lit chaos surrounding our everyday life. Most people that venture into our home, and notice the ever ready on-demand coffee made, acknowledge immediately that, indeed, we, the Benny people, depend heavily on the brew made from beans. Keeping calm…Benny-ing on is harder than it looks. I realized on one especially exhausting day that we could not keep going without getting Benny on some kind of calming meds. Something to slow him down in his over...
If I could do one thing to help special needs parents, I would magically change the medical supply company frustrations from our lives. I will be bravely honest and admit that I have clenched my teeth, let out a loud oomph now and then, had a complete meltdown or two, and cried bitter, frustrated tears at the injustices served to me by these companies.I have spent hours on hold in the last few months. This is not stretching the truth by one iota, it is actually being generous. Just last week I spent exactly 46 minutes on hold to explain...
Nobody told me. Nobody let me know on that hot, humid July day in 2003, that my life was soon to be a roller coaster ride of oxymorons like bittersweet. Or synonyms and antonyms like joy and sorrow, acceptance and denial, grief and gladness, happiness and sadness, and the list goes on. When that faint cry of a newborn was heard throughout our home, no one, not even God, announced the dramatic change about to bring us down to earth in an awakening so astounding that nothing could have prepared us for. Joy and Sorrow. When we heard the joyful...
“He Ain’t Heavy, he’s my Bubby!” I, as Benny’s mom, may be the nurse, the advocate, the lioness and the mother bear that roars at the slightest infraction against my Bubby. I may be the one that changes 50 million diapers a day, okay, not quite that many. I may be the one that has run tube feed after tube feed, through Benny’s hungry tummy daily. I fetch for Benny 24/7. I do laundry, ironing, cooking; I chauffer, clean, and keep up the bookwork for our business. I may or may not have earned my very own medical degree just by being...
We have a winner for Benny’s Mothers Day giveaway! The winner is…Marilyn Erb! I can’t think of anyone more deserving of a little extra! Marilyn is a busy mom of 5, the youngest of whom are the most beautiful ten-month-old twin girls. Congratulations, Marilyn! I will be by sometime this week with your prize! Stay tuned for the next giveaway in July! Benny will celebrate his 15th birthday on July 8 and will be hosting something special for my subscribers! See you then!
Good Morning! Today is a good day for a giveaway! As a thank you to all my subscribers and in honor of all mother hearts everywhere, I will be hosting a giveaway from my shop! Featured in this delightful package is a 12 x 12 handpainted wall hanging, Today is a Good Day for a Good Day, a succulent plant wrapped in burlap (no, the plant is not live!), and a “For The Love of Benny” book! How to enter. To win, subscribe to my blog. Go to the subscribe button on the right side of my page and fill in your email. ...
Who is Blaze? Blaze is a horse Benny met a while back on a therapy exercise. The following is a story I wrote as through Benny’s eyes and heart about this harmonious experience on top a horse! Although Benny’s face is turned away in the picture, I love the expressions on everyone else’s faces! Benny was so wild and boisterously laughing that he had us all laughing with him. This is the way of special needs children. This ability to make others happy is a part of their beautiful life! My name is Benjamin, but everyone calls me Benny. “Come,...
The picture above is of our Benny’s signature shiver. (Also, note the amazing crop of hair! 🙂 ) He does this shiver in anticipation of just about everything in life. It has caused me to acquire ants in my pants and to jump up and down on the inside with pent up energy when I am trying to move on with my day, and he takes his good old time to shiver. Shame on me. Every single time he gets a glass of milk he shivers. Whenever he glimpses a tube feed coming; shiver. Oh boy, a bath; biggest shiver...
I’m pretty sure that if you’re a special needs mom, you already know it. And you don’t need to read this to figure it out! But just in case, here it comes. This started out as a Facebook post. But then about ten sentences into writing, I came to the brilliant conclusion to not write a whole chapter on Facebook. Because sometimes when I hit the read more button on a post and it is as long as Santa’s naughty list, and in order to read the whole thing I would need a bowl of popcorn, I just keep on...
