open letters

To the driver behind me,
I know your natural instinct might be to assume the slow driver in front of you is either A. old, B. drunk, C. texting or D. all of the above. In reality, I am a sober, relatively youthful, cellphone-on-the-floor driver with an autistic daughter who happens to be freaking the hell out at the moment. I am slowing down so I can try to pull over before my daughter vomits. Most likely, I won't make it, and will rush to get most of puke off before it soaks into the car seat and floor; also likely is a swift kick to my face in the process.

Please lay off your horn, and try to keep your middle finger unextended. Give a fellow driver the benefit of the doubt instead of making her say even more curse words even louder than she would anyway. Patience is contagious, dear driver.

kindly, Aimee


To the woman behind me at Target,

Yes, I do know that a three year old is too old for a child to have a baba, and I'm thoroughly impressed that your junior went right from "the boob to a sippy cup". However, I'm kind of busy right now teaching my daughter to use words, communicate with others, not run into the street, stop digging grooves into her face with her fingernails and to only eat four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a day instead of 6. If the baba helps me do some grocery shopping for a half hour, I'm ridiculously cool with that.

Unless that was an offer to shop for me?

Kisses,
Aimee

Dear idiot staring at me at the Y,

Yes, dude, this is what a tantruming child looks like. This is, sometimes, what autism looks like. Put your freaking eyes back in your head and go ogle some lady on the stairmaster.

-A


and finally,

Dear other patrons at Starbucks,

Yes, I know it LOOKS like I'm spoiling my child, thus meriting your THREE eye rolls at me from your table. However, sometimes with autistic children things need to be a certain way, in a certain order. While I'm working on lessening the need for this, I'm pretty sure Starbucks isn't the place to do. Therefore, when my daughter's straw falls into her vanilla milk, and she throws herself on the ground sobbing, it's just the right move for me to simply buy her a new one, with straw intact.

You should be thanking me- do you have any idea what her tantrum would've done to your morning latte (see vomit and kicking, above letter)?

Caffeinatedly yours,
Aimee

days in the life

Oliver and a buddy: keystone cops!?

Ollie in the toys' tub! Fun.

Finally! A use for Mama's retired string bikini. A saddle, of course!

A face Violet made with play-dough. Seriously exciting. She said "eyes", and put them on; "mouth", and put it on; and "ear" and put that on. LOVE when she does amazing things out of the blue.

This is what happens, sometimes, on a rainy afternoon, on a limited budget, with two very energetic kids. Sometimes, you just go to Walmart and try out the scooters. Sometimes you just try out all of the fishing gear. Sometimes you go and choose which fabrics you'd like your superhero capes made out of.

we were lucky enough to get chosen to be part of the Littlest Heroes project! a photographer came to our house on a rainy day and took some great amazing pictures of our sweet twins.

we went to Sesame Place! Here's Ollie and Daddy on the water slide! so brave....

sweet girl had such a great day! she LOVES snuggling with her cousin Ava.

and what's a fun summer without some new friends? here our are new golfin friends. Finally taking up residence in our home after being discounted to $2.99 each.

BFFs

ahh...nice scalp massage during the nightly baba..

um, wait...WHAT'S in my hair?

hee hee! Sissy did it!

A quick update here- the babies are feeling much better! I finally took them to the pediatrician on Thursday - BY MYSELF!! YAY mommy!- and they were both diagnosed with ear infections. POOR babies!!! Anyhow, they were actually very good at the appointment (mostly due to the ridiculous bag o' treats I brought with me; by the time the doctor came into the room, the floor was covered in play dough, cheese curls and the contents of my purse). The hard part was letting the doctor look into their ears, nose and mouth. Here's where the BFF (best friends forever) part comes in.
First, I held Violet while the pedi looked at her ears; Oliver stood watching her sob her little heart out, as if the doctor was removing her ears instead of examining them. Then, I consoled her with more cheese puffs and the special yogurt drink I brought for post- exam. She calmed down, and I held Ollie while he was examined. He, of course, immediately cried hysterically as well. Violet dropped her hard-earned sippy cup, started crying again and reached both hands out to Oliver on my lap, trying to hug and help him! He grabbed her hands, as if aiding her to get him down!
UNREAL!!
The doctor (who has triplets!) and I were both struck by the cuteness. And really, she has no idea of Violet's usual demeanor of nonchalance. So, even with two wailing, ear-infected babies, my heart was bursting with love for them and their beautiful sibling bond. So, so lucky!!

quarantined

poor sick babies!

still busy when they can be!

another short update from the sick, sick house of Sheaffer. YUCK! As both babies seemed to be improving on Thursday night, I woke up early Friday morning VERY sick. I vomited all that morning and missed opening night of Turandot (VERY sad). Ben missed work to stay home with the babies, and my glorious mom came in to help with EVERYTHING!
By Sunday, things seemed better for all three of us, and we thought the bug might pass Ben by...but he called as I was at my matinee, and Oliver was throwing up again! I was so upset- not knowing if he'd re-caught the same bug, gotten something new, or simply was getting too many solids too quickly. Ben called the pediatrician, who said she was "on the fence" about bringing Ollie into CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia- one of the top five in the nation). Ugh. So, as of now, we're watching him like a hawk, counting wet diapers, measuring pedialyte like crazy...and praying. Poor little puppy.

Backing up a bit, as we were putting everyone to bed last night, VIOLET starting vomiting again! I thought I would lose my mind. Poor baby. She seems a bit better this morning, and only threw up once last night, so, again, we're keeping our fingers crossed.

To top everything off- who can guess where this is going??- BEN woke up during the night, sick as a dog. As of now, 9:50 am, he is still vomiting, and I'm seriously hoping to stay well, if only to take care of my family, sanitize my house, and not miss any more performances. I feel as though I have puke seeping from my pores at this point, and plan on cloroxing my house from top to bottom, as soon as my nursing duties are on hiatus.




I'm adding some "sick photos". Really, how can they still be so cute when they feel so rotten? The video is Oliver eating a "Pedialyte popsicle". He usually isn't a fan of icy things, so I think he wasn't sure what to do....
(oh yeah- and I put it in a sock. Genius mommy!)

almost Halloween!

We took a fun drive to the Poconos this past weekend to visit with Uncle Mike, Aunt Denise and little Ben (although he is almost my height, he is doomed to always be "little" next to tall and elder Ben). We went to a great pumpkin patch, and then had a delicious dinner at their house. It was the first time we took a full day trip anywhere, and the babies did beautifully! They slept the whole two hour drive up, and had a wonderful time running around the pumpkins, playing with the dogs, eating yummy Halloween-y things and playing with their cousins.
Little Ben was our ring bearer 5 years ago (and 10 days!), along with Ava who was our flower girl. I thought it'd be fun to compare how much they've grown up!

awwww...still hugging!!

Lastly- the two big piece of news in our house.
1. Peanut was reading this little Halloween book I got her, where there is a little "peek-a-boo" flap on every page. She sits alone and reads her books a lot, but this time, she sat there, turning every page saying "peek...BOO! peek...BOO!" and opening and closing the flaps! SO CUTE!!!! My mom and I tried to get it on video, but she only did it for a few seconds at the beginning (that's Ollie in the background playing with the pots and pans):




2. Our new ball pit. An awesome find by the big deal-finder! The babies LOVE it- and I think it's the one toy they can play with together and have no grabbing or someone seeing that the other's toy looks better!

October fun

Violet and Oliver with Mom and Dad stand-ins...

Cousin Ruby loves her spaghetti!

Happy Birthday, Uncle Tud!

Baby girl sooooo sleepy!

Violet's new favorite "soldier" pose.

Books with Grammy (check out the major boo-boo on Oliver's chin!).

The food is always tastier on the other tray...

FUNNY cousin Ava!

cute hats from Auntie Miss! slightly large, but we'll make them work!

Oliver about to take a swan dive into the computer...

fun times with Omi!

I apologize for the infrequency of the posts lately! Not only have I been so busy with company and the opera, the website has been giving us (and others) so much trouble, I needed to work on fixing that before I updated anything else. Hopefully, it will work now- please let me know details if you have any issues!
First of all, we had a great visit with Omi last week! She is officially the best story-reader of all time. Oliver would actually carry books over to her and climb on her lap! Both babies had a wonderful time with her, and she was a huge help for Ben and I during a very busy week. Then Leigh-Anne and Steve came to visit- one of mommy's BEST friends and her husband (who Aimee set up, for the record....). The babies posed on their laps for a few photos, and it's so cute that I think we may need to use it as our Christmas card...hope LAC and Steve don't mind impersonating us on a few holiday greetings.
We also celebrated Uncle Tug's 28th birthday at Grammy's house- lots of eating pictures to share!

Some other quick funny things:

* Violet is officially obsessed with the "big" slide at the playground. There are FOUR sizes there, and I (insanely) took her with me on the big one one afternoon- now it's all she wants to do! She laughs hysterically not just sliding down, but walking over to the thing you must climb up on to slide down- too funny! Unfortunately, this doesn't work well when I'm at the park alone with the babies. Today the three of us tried to go down together- bad idea. Violet ended up with a mouthful of gravel, and Oliver thought he'd be ok until I landed on top of him. We all cried.

*Oliver is now into getting me my slippers ( with no training whatsoever! ). While I don't have many nice things anymore (not to echo my own parents too much....), my slippers are Land's End, fur lined- amazing clog-like things. Anytime Oliver sees them off of my feet he picks them up, finds me and replaces them immediately.

All for now- it's been a long morning, and I need a quick nap while the babes nap!

One last (but far from least) thing I want to write about:

Today would've been my dad's 64th birthday. He died 10 years ago next week. It's amazing- sometimes it feels I've lived another lifetime since he's been gone; other times, I look at photos and can still remember the sound of his whistling or see him in his maroon robe like it was yesterday. We usually go out as a family every year for Chinese Food (his favorite) to "celebrate" him. This year, I'm trying hard to get a book about him finished to give the babies. It's actually been really wonderful to work on it, and try my best to help him live on for his grandchildren.

Happy birthday, Dad. Wish you were here with us still.