I love your brain

I love to dance. While I’ve taken the random dance classes here and there, most of my dancing days and nights are the kind of dancing you do at parties and night clubs, dancing with abandon for hours and hours. I used to dance in my room and around the house, and even made up dances to entertain my parents and their friends when I was little. Dancing makes me happy and brings me joy. I think it’s what kept me in relatively great shape when I was in my teens and twenties. If I could dance, I was happy.

I went to clubs most nights and danced. Usually as part of a pack, we’d descend the dance floor, mark our space, and dance. Together, alone, sometimes with strangers. It didn’t much matter as long as the music was good. Punk rock, glam rock, new wave…definitely a product of late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s! Late I learned some salsa dancing and took a stab at swing and spent lots of nights at the King King where they had live ska and big band music, dancing.

I find now that I imagine dancing to songs when I drive and will even cop to doing some stationary dancing in my seat while driving…I find it hard to keep my body still when I hear music. I dance around the house with Cole or around Cole sometimes and when I’m alone I groove around the kitchen or bedroom while I’m getting dressed or cleaning. I haven’t been club dancing in ages.

A group of us forty something moms did go to a trendy club a couple of years ago and were treated to a night of fun in the VIP room of the club where upon realizing that we were among the oldest people there, and that we were not there to meet boys, and that we didn’t so much care about what other people thought, danced and danced and danced until we were hot and a sweaty and utterly gleeful.

This morning left my heart in pieces…

Cole and I have had a week of togetherness, with a few more days to go, whilst my husband is traveling on business. While I know he misses his dad terribly, he also relishes the time alone with me. He enjoys knowing that I’m the one who is solely responsible for him, mostly because when we are a threesome, his dad does more of the heavy lifting because he handles the driving to and from school, homework, often dinner, before I get home from work.

With him away, much of that falls to me, though I am blessed to have someone who can do the driving since I work in the complete opposite direction of his school. Otherwise, homework, dinner, bath, and all of the in between is me, and he loves having me at his beckon call. If I am to be honest, I love having the special time with him too.

I stopped working when he was born so I could devote my time and efforts to caring for him. We did a lot of early intervention therapies and started a co-op infant/toddler program when he was just a year old. When he started pre-school, we continued with therapies in the afternoons and I chauffeured him to and from school and therapies. It wasn’t until he started elementary school that I felt I could return to work and for the first couple of years it was consulting work so I had time to be on campus, and still was the main chauffer and homework helper.

Had things been different, my plan had to return to my career a couple of months following his birth, however life had a different plan for our family. In retrospect, having had so much time with him and the opportunity to be a full time mother was something I’d never trade. So now that I’m working full time and not the primary parent during the week, I cherish our little pockets of “mom & Cole” time. Even today when my heart broke…

He stayed home sick yesterday…He’s been stuffy and running a slight fever on and off for over a week. Despite a pretty restful weekend, he woke early and was just not himself so we both stayed home. He rested and I nurtured. So this morning he woke, happy and seemingly content. I ran around getting his gear ready for school, showered and got myself ready for work, and when it came time to get him dressed, he burst into tears. Tears that continued through dressing, transferring to the wheelchair, rolling outside to greet his ride, rolling into the van, and apparently all the way to the freeway. I know he’s well enough for school. I know he had good sleep. I know he will have a good day once he settles into it.

But I also know that he cried because he just wanted to spend another day with me…

Every now and then I catch Cole looking at me most adoringly. It’s disarming and unexpected, but melts my heart when I catch him. He usually grins a little crooked grin and looks away when I do catch his eye. It’s the closest we really come to “I love you, Mom”. Once he uttered it in phrasing that was clear that it was what was he was saying, but otherwise, I’m bound to these little glances.

As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes it makes me really sad that he’s never going to really say he loves me, or throw his arms around me in big hug, or shower me with little kisses. All the little gestures of affection that most moms, parents, take for granted, are all unattainable in my world. They’re such simple, uncomplicated signs of love and ones that I adorn Cole with as frequently as possible. He’s definitely a child who knows he is well loved.

I am well loved by him too. It sounds so selfish to want him to kiss me or hug me, knowing those are things he can’t really do, and that he possibly feels frustrated that he can’t wrap his arms around my neck and whisper I love you, mom, to me. Or maybe just a little kiss…

Cole and I joined my husband’s company for a 5K this past weekend. The race benefited Homeboy Industries, a non-profit that began in Los Angeles, that successfully provides former gang members with education, counseling, training, opportunity and support. It’s a pretty remarkable organization. I’ve been to events where the “homeboys” and “homegirls” have shared their life stories and reform. They’re amazing people who inspire and serve as an example of what can happen when people take care to support and invest in each other.

We’ve done several 5K’s with Cole. It’s a great way to start a weekend and a pretty effortless way to support local non-profits. We’ve done a little volunteer work through the years as well and we feel it’s important for Cole to understand the value of helping others in whatever way we can. He helps pack up outgrown toys and clothes for donation each year. He understands that despite the challenges he faces in his life fortunate we are to have good health, family and friends who we love and who love us, a roof over our heads and food in our bellies.

It would be easy to let him off the hook on charity but it’s important that we all recognize that we can contribute to bettering the world in small ways as well as with grand gesture.

A running theme in my life is a lack of sleep. It’s expected when you have children but at a point everyone starts to sleep again. I’m thirteen years in and I still don’t get a solid night of sleep. I average maybe four straight hours, and then the rest of the night/early morning is spent waking and dozing in few minute segments, which is utterly unsatisfying. There are times when the average consecutive sleep is a mere two hours. Those days are unbearable, but more frequent than I like to admit.

The restless sleep is the doing of my son. He too sleeps well for a period of time but then routinely will wake a certain times and have difficulty falling back asleep. I spend countless times readjusting his small frame in the bed or curling up around him, spooning which helps sometimes. He will often drift back to sleep for bits of times but I’ve been up and moving which makes it harder for me to fall back asleep, and often when I finally do, he wakes up again. It’s an endless cycle that’s been going on for years.

I see the effect of our unstable sleep on both myself and on Cole. I worry about the long terms effects of poor sleep. I find myself dreaming about spending nights alone in a hotel room and just sleeping as if two solid days of sleep can remedy my weary body and brain.

We’ve tried all different ways to extend his sleep. Everything from melatonin to creating a bedtime routine to, yes, I admit in desperation, dosing him with Benadryl. Nothing works. The difficulty is that he falls asleep fairly easily and sleeps soundly for the first hours, but that’s not enough sleep for a growing child. I know it’s typical for kids with neurological issues to have sleep issues as well but I feel like there has to be a way to help him sleep better and for longer periods of time. Which, selfishly, would make my life much sweeter…

A girl can dream, right?

My husband is traveling. He’s leaving Cole and I to our own devices for nine days. It’s rare that we two have a weekend on our own. The business travel is usually relegated to just weekdays but this is a long trip so we Cole and I have two full days to cause trouble together.

I’ve worked an adult night out into Friday, much to his delight. His school has an annual Casino Night event and sponsor a big group kid watching in the school auditorium whilst the parents gamble, wine taste and peruse the silent auction goodies at a nearby country club. For some reason I’ve gone by myself for several years now. It always seems to hit when my husband’s traveling. It’s a fun excuse to get dolled up and visit with friends. Fortunately Cole loves the group kid watching scenario so it’s win-win for us. By Friday we’ll be in need of a little break from each other and then we have the whole weekend to play.

He’s already contemplating a list of things he would like to include in the weekend…I’m sure it will change by Saturday morning but as of now he wants to:

• Do some cooking
• Invite Grandma over for lunch or dinner (to indulge in the aforementioned cooking)
• Go to the movies
• Make art
• See friends
• Decorate the porch for Halloween
• Take Luna for walks
• Go to the Farmer’s Market
• Watch a lot of TV (hopefully we’ll avoid this one by checking off all of the other items)

I find his list pretty satisfying. There are a few things I’d like to do as well so we’ll see how they all meld. I love having our special time together, just the two of us. In the chaos of the work/school week, it’s nice to be able to share a weekend with him where we don’t have to do anything, but have the luxury of doing everything.

Cole really enjoys music. Perhaps better said, Cole really enjoys music when it’s the music he enjoys. This can change on any given day, and when he’s in need of comfort, it reverts to the treasures of his toddler years like Laurie Berkner, Ralph’s World, and god forbid, Songs from the Street (the Street being Sesame). As soon as the weather cools slightly, the favored music becomes holiday music. It can be months of non-stop holiday tunes. There’s diversity in the holiday playlist, which now includes the awesome Bad Religion holiday album and Michael Buble’s too.

When driving alone with me he’s willing to experiment more with what he’ll listen to. He’s a fan of bands like Weezer, Green Day, One Republic, Foster the People, Coldplay, and They Might Be Giants. Keeping his more age appropriate likes in mind, I snap shots of my car radio display when driving so I can introduce him to new songs and artists on the weekends in hope of expanding our somewhat fixed (and often tedious) playlists. I thought I’d share the recent selection and turn it into my first ever recurring topic. Not all of the selections are hits but I’m honing my skills and more are hits than misses, especially if it’s just the two of us! For some reason he tortures his dad with only kiddie music and a strange unwillingness to bend.

If you have any recommendations…I welcome them! So here are the recent tries:

1. Benjamin Booker – Violent Shiver
2. George Ezra – Budapest
3. St. Paul & The Catholics – Call Me
4. Boy & Bear – Southern Sun (loves!)
5. Ben Folds – Song for the Dumped (listened to Ben for an hour!)
6. Nick Waterhouse – Say I Wanna Know (likes the whole album)
7. Andrew McMahon – Cecilla And The Satellite
8. Squeeze – Tempted
9. Lana Del Rey – Young & Beautiful (sometimes)
10. Joe Cuba – Bang Bang