A Smeddling Kiss

In Which I Share Some Art I Am Working On

After school started last fall and I got hit with the FREEDOM!!! Stick, I  went a little crazy with plans for all my wide-open hours. One of the biggest downers in my life is the lack of time for creative pursuits - I used to make jewelry and sew and paint and constantly make stuff - and I determined that this year I would make different use of my free time (i.e. not spend all of my days volunteering in the schools) and do some stuff just for me. 

In typical Velma fashion, I have managed some spotty success. I tend to stop and start most of my projects, and while I can legitimately blame some of that on family life most of it is just how I'm built. Cough cough *ADD much?* cough. One of the things I picked up last fall, in addition to my Curves membership and a renewed dedication to household organization, was a beginners encaustic painting kit, because it just seemed so different from all the other painting I've tried. 

Long story short, I love it. I love the smell of the beeswax, the brilliant colors, and the immediacy of the painting. In a strange way it reminds me of the silversmithing I did long ago - something about the process of manipulating the medium through heat, I suppose. I love the opportunities for texture and color and mixed media, and I love the way the paintings feel after I buff the wax - smooth and thick and substantial.

I love the way you can turn on your heated pallet and be ready to paint in 15 minutes, and if the phone rings you can just turn off the heat and walk away. If you forget about it for a couple days (or in my case, weeks) it doesn't matter. No open paint tins to dry out, no brushes ruined by not cleaning them in time. You just turn the heat back on and the wax re-melts. Most of all, I love the way the beeswax hardens within seconds of application - no waiting for paint to dry, no taking forever to build up layers.

So, this is a detail of one of the paintings I'm working on:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an autumn landscape I've been working on for a while... like, since last fall when the changing leaves inspired me. Knowing me, it won't be done until next fall, but I think keeping at it is an important reminder for me to enjoy the process more than the results.

Labeled With Love

When you become a parent you join a club. You bring home your first child and you spend your first moments marveling at the wonder of OMG!!! this is MY child, and then the panic sets in. It's not like you didn't know you were having (or adopting) a child, it's just that it was all so birth and/or arrival focused that you lost sight of the whole "after the big day" scenario. 

You settle in at home, thrilled and excited and sometimes in lots of pain, and then you are watching your baby breath in and out and suddenly 3 hours have passed. You get a flash of comprehension and a glimpse of the utter mind-wrenching task you have set yourself, and you begin that terrifying journey with the certain knowledge that you don't know what the hell you are doing. And then you multiply that feeling by the number of seconds in a day and then you realize you'll be doing that every day for the rest of your life... and ta da! 

Welcome to the club!

Start from there. We are all terrified and don't know what we are doing, and that is a big part of why we are so quick to judge other parents. If that person is doing something wrong, and I am not doing THAT wrong thing, then... I must be doing it RIGHT! Yay, me! 

I certainly had my moments with Pepper. My Judgey McJudge-A-Lot moments. The times that I felt like I must be doing this parenting gig so right to have such a well-behaved, perfect, brilliant child. I admit it freely - I didn't get a lot of the chatter about "difficult" babies, because Pepper was simply delightful. 

But then I learned that when you have a baby that is atypical, it takes a lot more to feel like you are doing it right. When we first started searching for some answers to why Peanut was such an odd little duck, I read a lot of blogs written by other parents going through the same thing I was. There were often discussions by parents about how they didn't want to "label" their kids, which I both understood and didn't. For me, I actually found relief in being able to name various problems, even though it was also scary to slap a one-size-fits-many label on my beautiful, perfect boy. 

Peanut: 

• 35-Week Preemie 
• Torticullis 
• Positional Plagiocephaly 
• Recurrent Ear Infections 
• Peanut Allergy 
• Eczema 
• Environmental Allergies 
• Sensory Integration Disorder 
• Speech Delay 
• PDD-NOS 
• Educational Diagnosis: Autism 
• Educational Diagnosis: Gifted

... and now, please give a warm welcome to the reason for this post and our most recent addition to the family corral: ADHD! 

Woo hoo! Give it up for the latest diagnosis for the boy! 

Here's the thing, though: after Peanut's recent ADHD diagnosis, I realized I've officially hit the point where the labels just bounce off me. They don't make an impact anymore. When the kids were younger, every diagnosis was weighted with fear and expectation. Every label held out the hope of an answer, and of a concrete plan, and eventually of more heartbreak when things didn't go according to that plan. 

I know I've been posting quite sparsely these days. I've temporarily lost my taste for blogging, because so much is happening so fast and there are only so many hours in the day. I'm overwhelmed with the actual events of the day and have no time or energy left to turn them over in my mind and examine them and polish and chronicle them. 

January was filled with doctor's appointments and the fun roller coaster of trying out some ADHD medication. We are still plugging away, and I am hopeful we will see some progress. I don't love the labels, but if they get my child the services he needs, then label away. After years of this I have come to the understanding that these things are not the measure of my child. Those labels just add to the picture. They bring might change the view other people get of him, but for me? 

Another label is just another brushstroke that makes up the gorgeousness of my boy.

Labels: Abby Normal, kids