by Tim on September 13, 2009
I wish I had some brief, non-whiny-ass way of talking about this, but it’s just going to be what it is. This is a subject many of us avoid because we don’t want others to think we’re weak or talking negatively about our life as parents. But tonight I feel like being honest about it.
Someone once gave me the most appropriate term that I think exists for how I’ve felt the last few days.
I am bone-weary.
It’s a good thing I recently read an absolutely brilliant blog post by Rachel Coleman (aka Rachel of Signing Time!, also aka J-Man’s Secret Crush) called Strong Enough to be Your Mom. I highly recommend you go and read her moving story.
The day after the J-Man’s annual pediatrician’s visit about two weeks ago – where I had to carry him around for an hour and do some awkward holds during the exam – I started to feel a building pain in my low back. And it just got worse and worse. Within hours of when it started, it got to where I couldn’t bend more than a few degrees from vertical in any direction. I couldn’t sit and I certainly couldn’t sleep. I took some ‘real’ pain pills (which I only do when it’s really, really bad), and I might as well have been eating candy.
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by Tim on October 11, 2008
[Update - Somebody asked if I knew where to find the official results online for the race. I didn't wear the chip to get an official time - would be too depressing! - but I did find where the results are supposedly going to be if they were online yet. Go to Active.com and search for the race.]
Well, we finished! Don’t ask the time. Honestly, I don’t even know. It was well over 30 minutes even adjusting for the massive, human traffic jam at the start line and on for about the first half-mile. That’s a good thing though as it meant they raised a lot of money. It was pretty hairy at first though with runners and big strollers going every which way. I hadn’t been downtown in probably three years so I had no idea about the course layout and was content to take it easy the first half for fear there was some giant hill I didn’t know about. (There was…. right at the half-way turnaround.)
I tried to ignore how out-of-shape and generally creaky my body is and have some fun with it. My hat and shirt certainly got a few looks. (See below.) We got a wonderful speech moment from J-Man at the start line. He thought my hat was hi-larious and reached for it and said “hah!” (hat!) Made my day, I tell ya.
J-Man entertained anybody who would pay attention to him, and anyone who didn’t too. He clapped for everybody as we waited for the race to start. Once we got out of the start-line stampede, he mostly chilled out in the stroller until he saw something or somebody interesting, at which time he’d do his flying arms and laugh. Since we were in the really slow group, no one really got too far ahead or behind and we saw the same people a lot. J-Man would suddenly cackle hysterically and all the near-death runners would perk up and smile. He was like a little cheerleader on wheels. We even meet other stroller parents with arm-flapping kids and had a great time with it.
He wasn’t too jazzed about getting out and walking across the finish line with me. He was quite comfy in the stroller and didn’t particularly want to be out amongst the hoard of runners and fans. I don’t blame him much, but we finished together anyway – with a lot of coaxing.
Picture time!
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by Tim on October 10, 2008
Many of you with toddler and up-aged autistic kids know that they can be physically challenging – to say the least – to get to cooperate or transition from activity to activity. You also know that when they decide they want to do something, they’re going, and they will use all of their formidable strength to do it. You also also know that when a behavioral problem gets acted out in a some very serious way, you often have to throw your body into the fray to prevent something worse from happening.
This means that injuries are an inevitable part of our parenting life. It’s not like our kids mean to harm us; it just happens. That certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working hard to remedy those behaviors, but that can be a long, hard journey. In the meantime, you’re going to absorb some punishment to your body.
At any given time, I’d be a lock to be on an NFL team’s injury report as “Questionable”, probably in more ways than one. At the moment, I have what looks like a sprained thumb joint, definitely a sore wrist, and what feels like a borderline bone bruise on my shin. The former two are mostly from J-Man flopping or going rigid when he’s supposed to transition to something else, which tends to wrench my wrist. The latter is because he flopped down on my leg last night – knee first – when I was trying to get his diaper on. And at 35, these things don’t up and heal overnight. But It’s just life; you play hurt, and you play hard.
So, to commemorate this latest set of injuries, I’m going to participate in the Autism Ribbon Run 5K in the morning. Our state Autism Society holds this as one of its big fundraisers, and I hear it’s quite the social event too with parents of autistic kids getting a chance to get together and hang out for a while.
This has one weird component for me, though. I used to run road races a lot and was reasonably good at it, but it’s been years since I’ve done this. Trying to get my very sorry, out-of-shape butt fit enough to even go three miles has been no small effort. I used to be able to go out on no training at all and run three miles in about 20-21 minutes; my 5K personal best is around 19 minutes. Not any more. Even 30 minutes would be a big feat at the moment even without the injuries. I realized during all this that I’m feeling my age and some wear and tear on my body. It’s been rather disheartening. The good news is that the non-injured parts of me feel better for the exercise, so that’s something to build on. And for reasons I can’t explain, it felt good to be on the road running again.
But I really wanted to do this and I wanted to do it in a special way – I wanted to do it together with the J-Man. So I decided from the outset that I was going to push him in the stroller for the 3.1 miles. We tried this the other day and I realized that going three miles pushing 60+ pounds of kid and stroller is HARD. But we’re going to do it anyway.
And if he cooperates, he and I are going to leave the stroller with grandma and walk the last handful of feet across the finish line together. This is really important to me, so we’ll get there one way or the other.
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