Saturday, January 13, 2018

rolling with it...

I thought life was crazy during my last update. wow.

If life has taught me anything over the last several months it is that you must find a way to adapt, improvise, and overcome no matter what gets thrown at you. Our little family has certainly become skilled at rolling with the punches.

This summer brought our first family vacation to Disney. A trip which will hold a special place in my heart for the rest of my life, but brought some confusing challenges we did not anticipate. We learned the hard way that our old habits with Disney don't work with our new family and we had to adjust. We also learned that amusement parks are overwhelming for our kiddos. Like, toddler style meltdowns in line kind of overwhelming.

I turned 30 in Animal Kingdom. It was a weird day. My son insisted on wearing his birthday button (despite his birthday being weeks after mine) that he received from the check-in host at our hotel after saying our trip was to celebrate his birthday (it wasn't). This meant that everyone we met that day wished him happy birthday. Maybe I'm selfish, but I feel like if someone was going to be told "Happy Birthday" on my 30th birthday, it should have been me.

In July Miguel had what we refer to as "the explosion" and spent a week in in-patient care at a mental health facility. It was a seriously scary time for our family. Scary and dark.

However, when we called him that first night to wish him goodnight he did tell me he loved me. It's still the only time he has ever said that to me.

Things did not get better right away. I spent months living with constant death threats and explosive anger episodes. We had to pull him out of football. We did finally get some medical intervention though and thorough testing which revealed some important information.

Miguel suffers from a few conditions which essentially made it so that none of the strategies he had learned for coping with his emotions could be applied. His brain simply wouldn't let him. I am the last person to support medicating a 10 year old, but since he started taking his medication I feel like I have my son back. The sweet smiling boy we first met 19 months ago who wanted nothing more than to play at the park. He seems much happier too.

In September I became a vegan. Hurricane Irma came through, trapping us all in our homes for the better part of a week, and I dove down the rabbit hole of Netflix documentaries. I also stumbled across one not on Netflix called Earthlings.

I ugly cried my way through the entire thing. From that moment on I decided I couldn't benefit from that kind of corruption and suffering any longer. Not on my plate, not in my clothing, not in my beauty products, or anywhere else.

You can see some of my food adventures on my new blog, Intentionally Vegan. Right now it's just starting out and only has two recipes posted, but I hope to post more in the future. I'm hoping for something new every Saturday.

This fall Yasmin turned 13 and began her cheerleading season. She loved it! She has been developing that lovely teen angst and attitude I've heard so much about, but I'm actually happy about that. It's so freaking normal. She deserves to have normalcy in her life. I'd love if the attitude wasn't directed at me, but beggars can't be choosers I guess.

I'm not sure how often I will post here anymore. Then again, I don't really post much lately anyway. I guess time will tell?

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