Gotta Keep On Running

We just gotta keep running, that is all.  Now people are terrorizing one of our most beloved events, the Boston Marathon!  This is the ultimate running event.  People, regular people who work forty hour weeks, spend hours of preparation time to train for marathons.  Most are not paid athletes, they are just people with a dream, who do it for the pure high that only comes from running.  I have dreamed of running the Kauai Marathon.  From what I've read, it will take about three years to train for it, properly.  My family will have to make sacrifices.  They will support me, give me encouragement.  They may even show up at the finish line.  No, there's no may, Javy will be at the finish line.  So I can only imagine those last seconds as the runners came down the stretch toward the finish line, their families waiting and cheering.  They had just run 26 miles and then......

I've been dealing with terrorist for the past 16 years.  My first personal bout with a terrorist was Eric Rudolph.  He bombed the abortion clinic in Birmingham in 1998.  I was annoyed because the radio stations weren't playing music as I drove to work.  They were talking about an incident near UAB, a possible explosion.  As I drove over Red Mountain, I could see some smoke over in that area.  Little did I know that it would completely turn my naive little world around.  People would actually call our tip hotline and say things like they were glad that the police officer got killed.  One guy even said that he wished "we" had gotten blown up.  I would work 16 hour shifts, only to go home and have nightmares about it.

I do know is that life has to go on.  On September 11, 2001, I was at a seminar in Quantico, Virginia.  It was a beautiful, crisp, blue sky, kind of a day.  Sometime that morning, someone interrupted our seminar and we turned the televisions on and watched with horror.  I was terrified, about five months pregnant, I don't think I've ever been so scared and I was hundreds of miles away from my family.  Later, that afternoon, a supervisor who had a car drove us off of the base and we drove around the beltway, saw the tail of the plane sticking out of the Pentagon with smoke billowing out of it.  It was very surreal, as the bustling capital was completely silent.  We drove down to the National Mall, the National Guard trucks were everywhere.  But there was one thing that I found extremely comforting and the thought still comforts me.  There was a runner, running around the Mall, like nothing had ever happened.  A runner has got to run.  

I am Javy!

In one of my earlier posts, "The magical iPad!", I related how I hoped the ipad would be a tool to help tell Javy's story.  Today, I want to share with you, a story that me and Javy put together with an app called Pictello.  You'll have to come visit us to get the full effect of the app and actually have Javy tell you the story.  But I am able to export it to a PDF file and you can view the pictures and the words. We did not write the words,  however, a dear friend wrote the words for us.  I think they embody who Javy is and his capabilities.  Thank you, Kevin!  Hopefully, this story will inspire.  I know it inspires me, when I see the picture of Javy in the middle of the ocean, doing something that I would absolutely be terrified to do.  All I can do is be proud and awestruck.  In fact, it melts away any worries or fears that I have, they seem really small when I look at Javy's story.

I Can Surf!

I Can Smile!

I Can Be Different!

I Can Live!

I Can Love!

I Can Be Javy!

Where the boy is.....

This week was Javy's Spring Break.  I'm still lame so we had to be kind of creative with new things to do.  We played with his iPad, we danced to Pandora, did yard work, mostly playing with the hose and his grandma bought him a new toy.

I'm not sure what it's called but he loves it.  The only problem is that it rubbed the skin on his feet raw, even with socks on.  Its a great way to get him on the floor without having to worry about getting him back up.

One blessing that has come out of me not being able to just pick him up, is that we've been able to transition him without picking him up.  It takes some patience, but he will bear his weight and stand up when we need him to.  We only lost him a couple of times to the floor when he decided to let his knees give.  It's tough but I just leave him there, until he decides to get up on his knees and try, again.  Tonight, I got him into his big wheelchair, alone, without picking him up.  My plan is that we will no longer pick him up, even after the doctor releases me from any weight restrictions and I can pick him up.

One of my greatest personal fears is that people will underestimate him.  I didn't realize how potent this fear was, until I was talking to his doctor at his 11 year old check-up.  I asked the doctor if there was any way to test his brain and its understanding.  IQ tests are insufficient and I don't think any value should be placed on them.  He's going to start middle school next year and I don't want to make the same mistakes that I've made in the past when I expected other people to just discover on their own what he is actually able to do.  So the wise Dr. Raelson asked me if I had ever considered getting him a power wheelchair and I'm like, okay, this is off topic.  But I told him no, he couldn't do a power wheelchair with it's little controller.  His hands are too spastic.  Besides he can push his wheelchair, just fine.  Dr. Raelson got all contemplative and said so you're tell me, he'll push his wheelchair, deliberately, from Point A to Point B.   Yeah, if he wants something.  Then why can't he utilize a power chair and if he can use a power chair then he can expand his world to all the technology that comes with a power chair.  Then he'll have more capabilities to show that he can understand.  Oh crap, I was underestimating Javy.  That conversation kind of gave me a jolt.  The iPad is great for giving him an outlet and I've stared looking at it as a way to open up his thinking that communication is the way to express to himself.   But if he can pick up one small piece of Kix cereal off the table, which I've seen him do, then he can do more with his fine motor skills.

Javy's week ended on a most excellent high note.  He got to go surf with his buddy, Kevin.  The weather had been pretty crappy but it cleared up long enough for us to enjoy the north shore.  I don't Kevin will mind if I tell this story, but I probably can't tell it as well as he did.  The turtles, who normally scatter when the surfers come, did not scatter when Javy came.  They just poked their heads out of the water to get a good look at him. Javy is very peaceful and they saw no threat in Javy.  To quote Kevin, "He is one special boy." This time, Kevin was along for the ride.

Javy and Kevin

Dirty blonde ambition!

Just want to give a quick update and share a couple of great recipes I found.  First of all, Javy had his 11 year old check up.  Everything is good and he's all healthy.  But he only gained 2 pounds.  They weren't too concerned about it.  He did grow in height, quite a bit, almost a foot.  He's doing good on his seizure meds.

Life is kind of crazy, in this moment of our life.  I just started a new position at work so my nice safe routine life is a bit in limbo.  And its Spring Break for Javy.  So on my one day off, Saturday, mom was saying that we needed food and easy food that Javy would eat, since she would be at home all week with him.  Not wanting to go all the way to Costco, I got a little overly ambitious and pretty much cooked all day, using what we had left in the house.  (I did have to make one trip to the Big Save.)

The first thing I made, just for Javy, is Ranch Style Beans.  If your from Texas then you know what these are and you know its actually a brand of canned beans.  These are a staple of Javy's.  I have actually seen them in the stores here, but not lately.  But if I read the label, I probably wouldn't buy them now.  But I found this great blog, The Homesick Texan and I actually think her recipe is better than the canned ones.  Here's the link:  http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/2010/03/ranch-style-beans-recipe.html  Check out her blog, she even has King Ranch Chicken.  I doubled the recipe and then I put portions in the small Ziploc's to freeze.

The second thing I made was a homemade chicken pot pie.  The filling of my pie, I pretty much just made up.  boiled some chicken with a bay leaf and garlic in the water.  Then boiled the vegetables in the chicken broth, adding salt and thyme and added the chicken back when it was all cooked.  But the pie crust was from a recipe I found on Pinterest.  And it was pretty damn good.  The secret ingredient is vodka and yes, I keep a vodka on hand, you know, just in case.  Here's the link for the recipe: http://www.littlebcooks.blogspot.com/2012/08/perfect-pie-dough.html

And one last thing, the pie crust is not calorie friendly.  I calculated that one serving of just crust was about 361 calories.

Hope y'all have a good Spring Break!

Hey, Good Lookin!

I'm not sure if I'm the only person who has gone through this.  I certainly don't presume to be, but I found myself going back to my old hobbies and loves.  For whatever reason, when I reached adulthood, I kind of put certain things aside.  Like old movies, I was always an old movie buff, ever since I was a teenager.  I went through an independent movie phase and then once Javy was born, a no movie phase (except the latest Pixar or Disney movie).  Now I'm returning to my original love of black and white flicks, even broadening my horizons into the 60's an 70's classics.

The same goes for cooking.  I started cooking when I was in my early teens when it was just me and mom, living in a tiny studio apartment in Manassas, VA.  I always had a warm meal waiting for her, after her two hour commute home.  I used to love making grand, over the top meals for the rest of my family, served on the best china, of course.  I lost interest somewhere in my twenties, only busting out anything experimental, occasionally.  

Over the last year, I've returned to this passion.  I started baking Javy's snacks for school, instead of buying the variety packs from Costco.  I even began baking our own breads and I've experimented, a little, with homemade cakes.  Honestly, this was a little bit out of necessity.  One big bag of flour is about $8 at Costco.  I'm only on my second bag, since September 2012.  Also, it's really not that hard to bake homemade cookies and I can control what I put in them.  I don't put all those unknown things that you read on the ingredients list of a pack of cookies.  

So I've come to love Pinterest and food blogs, love food blogs.  The good thing about food blogs are that you get good writing, I mean, the whole story about how they cooked this fantastic meal.  And there's also feedback, some little comment about how a reader tried the recipe and tweaked it, this way or that.  You can also ask the writer questions about the recipe.  I'm going to try and share some of the gems that I find with my readers.

So far every search has resulted in a yummy recipe.  For example, I found a recipe for oatmeal carrot cookies.  It all came about when I had plenty of oatmeal and plenty of carrots so I searched oatmeal carrot cookies.  And there it was, from a food blogger, "Nutrition Nut on the Run".  http://www.nutritionnutontherun.com/recipes-2/recipage/?recipe_id=6011462#.UTf6MKViitc

So as far as the taste, I thought they were awesome.  They have two of my favorite things: real maple syrup (Canadian, of course, worth the splurge) and fresh ginger.   I plugged the recipe into the Myfitnesspal app and it's about 176 calories per cookie and yields about 12 cookies.  A little high for a snack for me, but I think it would make an excellent high energy snack for hikes.  As for Javy, well, he'll get used to it.

Javy eyeing me suspiciously as he tries the "new" snack!

But as wonderful as all this new technology is, I don't think I'll ever replace books- good solid books that you can hold in your hand.  And today, my friends, I scored big time at the local bookstore.  I found a copy of my favorite cookbook, the one that taught me how to cook.  Now I will master the art of baking cakes.  A couple of weeks ago, I baked a cake,  using a box cake.  I was so riddled with guilt that I went into the backyard, right around sunset.  I groveled on the ground until I found some radishes.  I held them up into the air and I swore, "As God as my witness, I will never bake a box cake, again."  (I'll bake a cake for the first person who gets that classic reference).  My guilt comes from the fact that I made the mistake/right decision to read the ingredients on the box.  I mean, it has Yellow 5 for God's sake.  Hopefully, I will have time to blog about my future endeavors.

Awesome Talk Story Bookstore Finds!

I'm a pain in the neck!

So I had this little surgery on my neck to fix a herniated disk that has limited my abilities for a few weeks now. The most important is that I can't lift over 20 pounds, meaning I can't lift Javy. I've been living with this issue for almost two years now. You can refer back to my previous post "Heavy" for more info. I don't really want to talk abut my issues now, Lord only knows I have plenty.

I want to address why it was necessary to do this now. Because it was now or never. I have to prepare for the next phase of Javy's life- being an awkward gangly teenager. For me that means making my back stronger, well, my whole body stronger. So a short time of suffering, that has been eased with the help of a great many friends, is worth it in the long run. 

As I type this, I just realized that may be the answer to another questionI've been asked a lot, lately. How come you've been able to be successful now, losing so much weight. I kind of scratch my head at this one, too. I've had 39 years of failure, why now?  The motivation, seemingly came out of nowhere without too much pain. I don't believe it's a motivation of fear- fear of turning forty and missing out on the rest of my life. Fear never works as a motivator, at least for me. But life has always had a way of working out for us, with everything falling into place when necessary with very little effort coming from me. (My ancestors must've been really good for me to be so blessed). Maybe that's all it is, everything just working out, making way for the next phase of our life. Hours wasted worrying for nothing, because its all under control. 

Inevitable Valentine's Day Post

I know all single people hate this day, but I have a hard time hating a holiday that's all about love.  Being the almost insanely obsessed person that I am about positivity, I think it's an awesome time to teach kids about sharing love and kindness. So I did the mommy thing last night and made homemade double chocolate chunk cookies and made them into Valentine's for Javy's class.  I did this for a variety of reasons. First there's the social aspect. Javy will look cool to his friends and its a way for him to express friendship. But in reality, the kids know Javy didn't make them.  Javy may not be able to express love verbally but he does it in other ways. I know the kids feel that. More importantly to me, it's a way for me to show my love to kids who are my son's friends.

My Funny Valentine

Notice he looks up for grandma