“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.” — Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Sorry to be light on posting the last few days. We’ve all been feeling under it this week. I’m also working on a few improvements to the blog, which I’ll hopefully get done this weekend along with some posting.

In the meantime, here’s another achievement to celebrate! Even though J-Man has felt bad all week, had all sorts of weird sleep patterns, and has decided that this would be a nice time to assume the role of terrible-almost-threes-tantrum-monster, we did have a big positive. He decided to color!!

To make a long back story short, he has never enjoyed using crayons because of his sensory issues and fine motor control problems. It seems like he can’t figure out how to use the crayon, it somehow feels icky in his hand, or both. He tends to hold slender objects (like spoons, crayons, pens, etc.) at the very end with as little finger skin as he can get away with. (see first picture below) This obviously makes it very hard for him to self-feed from a spoon.

I had him ’sign’ a birthday card for my sister the other day with a crayon. Usually if we get a couple of dots and a random line, we’re happy. Even that takes a lot of effort usually. This time, he kept running the crayon back and forth and I had to take it from him so she could still read the card.

Night before last, he took one of his bathtub crayons (easy clean-up!) - very specifically the green one - and colored the edge of the tub for a good ten minutes. He has NEVER done this. He even held it some of the time in a ‘normal’ writing grasp (see second picture). Woo hoo!

After a couple of years of occupational therapy, we have coloring! On the one hand, I guess that could be depressing. But every victory is hard fought, and you gladly take every one of them regardless of cost. As you can tell in the last picture, he’s so proud of himself. That makes EVERYTHING worth it.

In one of those make-my-day moments, during speech therapy J-Man actually fed a bear with an empty spoon after ‘dipping’ the spoon in an empty bowl. So nothing in the bowl or on the spoon, and - shocking newsflash - stuffed bears don’t eat! It’s an abstract, non-literal event! And this is a kid with all manner of feeding issues who is distrustful of most all things culinary. But with some encouragement and direction, he figured out he could pretend to feed the bear without there needing to be literal feeding going on, and he thought it was fun!

If there was one part of the autism evaluation that he basically scored close to zero on, it was pretend play.

He’s never done this before. So….

We now interrupt this news flash for a freak out.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!

W00t! Huzzah! Yay!

We now return you to our regular programming.

—-

Today’s new conversation:

“Who’s the man?”

“I-I muh-muh!” (I’m the man!)

The little bits of grace that sneak up on you. The little cures for what ails ya.

Took this one this morning during the walking around part of his breakfast.

Say Cheese Toast!

God, he looks more and more like Mary.

The J-man is having one of those days. OK, maybe one of those weeks. He does brilliantly at some things (see also: the typing thing!), and then completely loses it with others (see also: speech therapy today. Whew!). I don’t know if he’s still just off his game from being at the grandparents for the weekend, or if he’s going through a growth spurt or some kind of developmental spurt, or what, but it’s been WILD in the old Flashlight house lately.

First off, little man isn’t sleeping a whole lot. He is spending more and more time kicking the side of the crib instead of sleeping. Second, he’s not listening to directions as well - yes, I know we’re talking about a 2-year-old, but there were still things he would respond to. His eating has been pickier than ever - although cheese toast is still a huge hit, the nuggets aren’t as awesome as they used to be. And, the shirt chewing is back. He essentially is a big ball of stress.

On the plus side though, he knows WAY more of the alphabet than we thought. When we sing it to him, he says, or tries to say, many of the letters, and is learning to recognize them on the keyboard, or in his ABC board books, as well. Go little man! He is pointing to and recognizing more pictures in the book Tim reads him every night at bathtime, and there is nothing so cool as watching your kid point out ALL the flowers on the page when asked where the flowers are - especially when we had only previously pointed out the flowers in the ground that Tigger is watering, not the ones Pooh is holding, or the ones by the fence, or the one that Eeyore is admiring.

He’s also really working on saying “I love you” which will just melt your heart. He’s working hard on climbing and going down steps, and is able to do it holding onto the rail and someone’s hand - occasionally taking “big boy steps” which I don’t think we’ve consciously tried to get him to do yet.

Hopefully, we’ll settle back down soon, since he has a hearing test next week, then (dun dun duuun!) the dentist the week after. Can’t wait.

After last week’s wild travel adventures and being so far off our schedules that we might as well have been in a different dimension, we didn’t expect a whole lot on the progress front this week. Our goal this week was just to regroup and get back into the routine.

Our sleep has been erratic (and generally too little of it) and we’ve been racing to catch up with all the undone crap around here. We’ve had to do some extra work on a few things with J-Man to get going again, but on the whole it’s been a really positive week.

Talking started off a bit rough this week; getting him to ask for ‘more’ of anything was a total ordeal. Our usual pattern of withholding something until he asks for it - even if we know what he wants - wasn’t going well, and it was obvious he was less patient and getting way more frustrated than usual.

The last couple of days, though, he seems to have gotten back into it and then some. The fill-in-the-blank speech therapy work we do with stories and songs has gone gangbusters all the sudden. It’s clear he knows a lot more about the words in those stories and songs than we thought. He continues to surprise us every day.

We can’t help but do “Old MacDonald” since he fills in “oh-oh” after “E-I-E-I”, “cow-cow” after “and on his farm he had a…”, and then “muh-muh” for the cow sounds in the right places. The first time he did all that, we all teared up. It still doesn’t get the least bit old.

He surprised us even more by filling in some of the letters and words in the ABCs song and words in Dr. Seuss’s ABC book. If he needs a more obvious hint about what comes next, I’ve found that sometimes I can just mouth the word without saying it and he knows what to say. That was a pleasant shock, too!

So, obviously, the fill-in-the-blank work has been fantastic for his speech development.

The other major achievement of the week was that he fed himself almost an entire bowl of applesauce/puree with his spoon a couple of times! Sure it was pretty messy and he dropped some of it on himself because of the, um, unique way he holds a spoon, but I felt amazed watching him do that by himself. This is such a huge achievement for him that I can hardly put it into words.

He’s also branched out some from cheese toast to eating honey and butter toast as well, which seems to have helped the nagging cough he’s had for the past few days. It’s a small step forward into softer, more sticky and squishy textures, but for him every step forward is a hard-earned one.

I was a bit uneasy when I dropped him off at preschool yesterday because he threw a big crying fit, but I stayed with him in the classroom for a few minutes and he calmed down. He went off and did his thing and did well for the rest of the three hours. His teachers said he had much better focus during both art and circle time than usual. Given how fidgety he is and how un-fun he finds art, this made for a banner day!

I read about half of Stanley Greenspan’s Floortime book while on the various flights and have been experimenting with some of his suggestions. The J-Man has responded well to just some basic, low-key engagement, working with him on whatever he’s chosen to do rather than forcing him to do something. We’ve gotten some good eye contact that way and he’s easier to engage.

I’m not a Floortime convert or anything, but I do think it will form a piece of the whole puzzle of stuff we’re devising for him. The county schools use TEACCH here, so Floortime will compliment both that and some ABA activities we’re planning on doing by providing something more relaxed and free-form for him. He does so well with structure, but it does burn him out after a while, so we need something like Floortime to let him do some self-directed, easier stuff.

For those of you who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, I do have plans to create a vocabulary page at some point.
That’s all from Chez Flashlight for today. Off to rest my strained wrist - my latest fatherhood/lugging around heavy-ass luggage injury.

With some regularity, conversations come up about what ‘autistic stuff’ J-Man does and doesn’t do. I know some of these are stereotypical traits, but many of these come out of evaluations and the various ways we’ve tried to figure out his diagnosis.

So for the benefit of our readers who are wondering whether their kid is similar to ours, here’s a description of him and what he does, kinda does, or doesn’t really do. We’ve been recompiling this for his upcoming (re-)evaluations and preschool/IEP stuff, so we thought we’d share.

Obvious disclaimer: This isn’t a substitute for having your child evaluated. You are parents and you know your child better than anyone. If you suspect there might be a problem, trust your intuition. We are not advising you on how to evaluate your child. Go get them evaluated. Don’t just rely on some random people on the Internet. You’re smarter than that.

Reminder - he’s a bit over 2 1/2 years old. A doctor (psychologist with a bazillion years of experience at evaluating kids) diagnosed him with an autism spectrum disorder. He said that at J-Man’s current age, labeling him with “mild”, “moderate”, or whatever wasn’t terribly useful and likely to be inaccurate. He’s also been diagnosed with sensory processing (or sensory integration, depending on who you talk to) issues, apraxia, and motor planning issues, among other delays.

Significant issues he has:

• Severe speech delay - Obviously, yes. We figure he’s going on 18 months behind. The belief is that he has apraxia, which isn’t at all unusual in autistic kids.
• Communication problems - Struggles to communicate in other ways, too; sign language, etc. isn’t in his repertoire. Unless he can pick it up and bring it to you, he has a very hard time asking for things. He also will use your hands to do stuff rather than his own, which is something we discovered is a characteristic of autism.
• Rarely points at what he wants - That’s pretty self-explanatory. He tends to use much more broad movements, which are very difficult to figure out.
• Hand/arm flapping - Flaps his arms when he gets excited or overstimulated. Primarily he does this in the car (the moving scenery apparently is too much for him to take in) and in places like the store (especially ones like Target that are bright, busy, and red). It’ll also happen if he’s watching some TV show that gets him excited. Interestingly enough, he usually looks happy while he does it. The suspicion is that this is a lot of ’sensory overflow’ and doing this helps him order and calm his system.
• Learning problems - We don’t know cognitively where he is because he’s hard to engage in those sorts of activities, but he definitely does way better at puzzles and things like that when he’s calmer. We suspect he knows a lot more than he’s shown.
• Eye contact - Pretty poor, but it seems to be getting better lately. We can get a few seconds of it with people he knows well, not so much with strangers. He definitely is better with this when he feels pretty balanced sensory-wise.
• Sensory problems - Oh yeah; feeding, vestibular, proprioceptive are the biggies. We’ve known he’s had sensory integration issues since forever, and they still affect him a lot. The last couple of days he’s taken up sucking his shirt to soaking again. Yuck! He still loves exaggerated movement (throw over your head, swinging outside, bouncing on the exercise ball) and seeks out deep pressure (big hugs, firm back pressure). He also sleeps wedged in the corner of his bed and was a total swaddle baby. He finds sticky or slimy stuff on his hands really icky (finger paint = yuck). He dislikes most food textures, and will gag at ones he really hates. He’ll sometimes gag when he’s sensory overloaded regardless of what negative sense it is.
• Seriously picky eater - Eats just about nothing except toast, chicken nuggets, crunchy stuff like chips, and purees. He also has some reflux, but that’s minor at this point so I doubt it affects much here. No other GI issues have been indicated.
• Lack of imaginary play - He doesn’t really engage any of his toys in this way; he can be playful with others but I wouldn’t really call it imaginary, nor would I call his play with his peers consistent or much like what you’d expect for his age. His level of play is very cause-and-effect, meaning he presses some button and the toy does something back at him. It’s a much more literal way of interacting, which is another common autistic trait.
• Social awareness - He usually doesn’t acknowledge other kids in the room, but he’s pretty good with adult women (he’s pretty flirty). At preschool, he’s typically off doing his own thing.
• Joint attention - The fancy term for wanting to share with you something he finds very interesting. Example: Child sees a car, picks it up, shows it to you, and then looks at the car and then at you to make sure you are seeing it with him. J-Man does this very rarely, which is another characteristic of autism.
• Responsivity to order in learning - This isn’t so much an issue as it is a common strategy for autistic kids, but he responds very well to doing his ‘learning work’ in an orderly environment, at his little desk, doing specific tasks, without a lot of distractions. Imposing structure has dramatically helped out with his learning and growth.
• Travel - One or more nights away sucks; in the car is normally fine; he just won’t sleep well at all anywhere else but home - two nights away is pretty much our limit before everyone is sleep-deprived and mental.
• Fine motor issues - He has a very hard time manipulating certain objects; e.g., hard to feed himself with a spoon without a lot of help, though he has made great strides in the last week.
• Motor planning - He has a hard time figuring out how to accomplish many tasks, and only occasionally will successfully do something you ask him to do. If it requires a sequence of more than a couple of steps, he pretty much can’t do it yet. “If you’re happy and you know it stomp your feet, clap your hands, and shout Hooray!” is incredibly frustrating for him. You can see him trying to work out how to do it, but his body won’t comply. Yes, it really pulls at my heart to watch him struggle like that. We’ve wondered whether this has made sign language nearly impossible for him; we’ve been trying for over two years. That said, he has made great strides (literally) in the last week or so in going up and down steps by holding on to a railing or your hand. This is a major leap forward for him.
• Responding to his name - This is sort of borderline to me, but he doesn’t do this that well; it’s not so bad we can’t work with it, though.
• Walks on his toes - Yep, but usually only in short intervals.
• Poor muscle tone in his trunk/core muscles - In his arms and legs, he is as strong as an ox on steroids, speed, and Starbucks, but he ain’t going to be on 8-Minute Abs any time soon. Related stat: I weigh 225 and he has knocked me flat on my butt from standing.
• “Flight Risk” - If you put him down, he’s usually going to take off running. We’d never be able to set him down in a store or a mall. If we did, he’d be off to the races. This happens outside too. It’s exhausting to say the least.

Issues that aren’t too bad:

• Fixation or attachment to a particular object - He was pretty attached to Glo-worm and his Leap Frog caterpillar early on, and now he’s pretty fixated on his piano keyboard and other things that make music, along with some of his books. He can get pretty zoned out on them, but not so bad that you can’t break him away from it with some effort or that he doesn’t get up eventually and go do something else. We do have to sometimes hide whatever it is so we can keep him focused on us enough to do his therapy work when the zoning out gets to be a problem.
• Emotional awareness - He’s pretty good with understanding people’s emotions, especially when people are laughing or are sad.
• Sensitivity to routine - We do keep a routine, but mostly out of habit from back in the days he wouldn’t sleep and because it helps him learn better; we can vary it without any real issues as long as we’re not out of town and as long as we give him some downtime in the afternoon.
• Needing physical order - It’s very important to him to have all the doors closed wherever he is. This is annoying sometimes, but not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I’ve noticed that there are a couple of toys he wants in the ‘right place’, but why these few and not all the others is a mystery to me.
• Sleep issues - Rarely naps anymore but does sleep through the night (12 hours on average); this is SUCH an improvement over the first 18 months when he never slept through and often got up every 2-3 hours.
• Gross motor - He was a very late walker (almost 23 months) so this used to be a real problem, but he’s pretty self-reliant with this now even if he’s still a bit behind. He definitely has his own style, but he rarely falls. Going up and down steps upright (though still with a lot of help) is a recent highlight. There are a lot of steep stairs around, and heights freak him out, so this is a real challenge.

Issues we haven’t really seen:

• Regression - His development has been very slow on various fronts, but he still has steadily improved. We have setback weeks from time to time, but our overall trajectory is toward improvement. He didn’t have a bunch of words and skills and then lose them like some.
• Self-destructive behavior / self-injury - He’s smacked himself in the head a few times, but nothing at all that we’ve worried about. I can’t even remember the last time he did this.
• Uncontrollable tantrums - Never; he does a great job dissipating his frustrations and rarely pitches a fit for more than a couple of minutes. He does some pitiful drama and then we move on.
• Repetitive behaviors - Very little except for the hand/arm flapping.
• Lining stuff up/compulsive organizing - Pretty much never. Our house is often a wreck and he doesn’t seem to care. Like I said before, he has a couple of things that seem to have a ‘right place’, but it’s so minor that it barely registers as anything more than a quirk to us.
• Fixation on orderliness - Doesn’t seem to care if we move stuff around.
• Detachment - He’s very attached to us, loves being with us, and often wants to be held. If you’re familiar to him, he’s very loving. He’s hit or miss about strangers, or even acknowledging that they’re there.
• Aggression - We’ve had it repeated to us several times that an aggressive act is not the same as aggresion. He’s so fidgety sometimes that he can be rough as he rolls all over you rather than sitting still. That said, he hasn’t struck out in anger that I know of.
• As far as we know, his hearing and vision are fine based on previous tests.

Phew. Got all that? We’d love to hear how your child is similar or different from this. They don’t call it a ’spectrum’ for nothing, and there’s so much for all of us to learn. I didn’t even cover a bunch of stuff. If you have questions, feel free to ask!.

Lately J-Man has been trying to stick small objects, particularly little bits of food, into his ears or up his nose. Normally this involves small bits or crumbs of chicken nuggets or toast. I don’t think he’s ever tried to stick anything sharp up there.

Let me just say that pulling a little fragment of chicken nugget out of your kid’s nostril is an experience better left unshared.

Anybody see this in their kid? This came out of nowhere and has stumped us. He doesn’t seem to have an ear problems and he doesn’t otherwise pick at his ears.

Anyone have any insight into this?

Little Man has decided that the WORD for cheese toast is Coco. He can’t say a “t” you understand. He walks over to the counter where the toaster oven sits, and says, “Coco.” That’s right, he SAYS it. Just to make sure I was understanding correctly the first time, I asked him if he could point to the picture of what he wanted… and he ran over to the food pictures posted in our kitchen, and pointed at the toast, with his index finger. Then I fell over into a dead faint and he revived me by sloshing cold tea onto my face and yelling, “COCO!”

For those of you not in the know, index finger pointing is very difficult for the J-Man, and for many autistic kids. They just don’t understand that the finger is pointing towards something. Lately we’ve had index, middle, and thumb pointing. As long as it’s not middle finger pointing at me, I’m for it. I still get him to point at the picture of the cheese toast, just to reinforce that the picture board is another way for him to communicate.

There have been a few days lately where J-Man has had 3 pieces of toast in a day, because I’m so thrilled that he’s asking for something so clearly… and I can’t NOT give it to him. He’s become quite the toast stealer in general – if I have toast for breakfast, I should just go ahead and make an extra piece because I know he’s going to take one of them. Me: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” J-Man: “Coco stealer.” Me: “Getting a head start on it I see…”

And for your listening and viewing pleasure, Heywood Banks and “Toast”:

Already we have had people suggesting that J-man go on a GFCF diet (that’s gluten-free, casein-free for those who don’t know). Well, here’s the thing… if we started such a diet:

1. J-man would have no protein, because the only protein he DOES eat is chicken nuggets twice a day (hence, breading) and his daily cheese toast at breakfast. Gluten? Check. Casein? Check, check.
2. The few vegetables he eats (which are actually soups from the Earth’s Best organic line of baby food) contain both wheat and dairy.
3. I would also have to go completely GFCF as well, since J-man is still nursing. We’ve done dairy-free before (and it’s way harder than you would think to find food that is truly dairy-free). We’ve done soy-free, dairy-free, which makes it even harder. Rice milk anyone? (Only drinkable if it’s extremely cold, and even then it still smells like rice. Insert the blech emoticon here if you wish.)

We did all that dairy/soy-free for 3 months trying to figure out if J-man had some sort of dairy/soy sensitivity, back when the only thing we worried about was his eating habits and reflux. Guess what? Neither helped. They didn’t help his reflux, and didn’t change his behavior.

So, unless someone can find me a chicken nugget without gluten or dairy that also tastes and feels exactly like Tyson… we’re going to go forward without this one. Unless we can find bread that tastes and feels exactly like Nature’s Own Whole Wheat Bread, and cheese that tastes and feels exactly like premium American cheese (NOT the “cheese food,” people, the cheese), well, we’re stuck.

I had a rough night last night. It was one of those cumulative sort of episodes where you stockpile stress and worry and get to the point where you have to empty some of what’s in that bucket to get to the next day. I’m sure that means I need to focus on better ways to deal with that.

Part of this is not paying enough attention to all the positives that happen every day. So before our big appointment today, let me tell you one.

Yesterday, he ate a mouthful of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

This may sound utterly trivial to a lot of parents, but this is the equivalent of me orbiting the earth without a spaceship. There are a number of textures in a PB&J that normally make him gag (the literal, retching kind). He didn’t look terribly excited by what he ate, but he chewed it and swallowed it - no taking it out of his mouth and handing it back to us in a panic.

He earns every triumph, and every one is cause for celebration. I needed to be reminded of that yesterday.

No, I’m not talking about Tim.

J-man seems to be getting some sort of illness. Please let it NOT be the flu. I want him to be as well as possible for Tuesday’s evaluation. Of course, I should be used to this by now – every evaluation he’s ever had was prefaced by some sort of viral attack!

Coughing and whining. Whining and coughing. I’m not hungry. I’m starving! I need to sleep. I don’t ever want to see the inside of my crib again. Hold me and don’t put me down even when you desperately need to pee. I want to sit in my highchair all evening and will cry if you take me out.

Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives.

I went to Whole Paycheck today to stock up on J-man food. I bought 6 bags of Veggie Sticks. Yep, six bags. If WP were a 30 minutes minimum drive from your house, you would play the stock-up-game too. I also bought 459082371526 jars of organic baby food, but not the 2 soups that I was looking for, because they were out. Son, I would like for you to eat real food sometime soon. Like last Thursday.

We went to our friends’ little boy’s first birthday party today. Of course, it was scheduled for almost exactly when we try to the J-man down for his nap (not that he sleeps every day, but we try!). He had a good time running around their open floor plan house, although in the beginning, he felt it necessary to drag me along too.

There were probably 10 other kids there. I would say maybe 2 of them were near J-man’s age. They talked, maybe not clearly, but with actual words. They ate real food. They played with the toys provided, and even to a certain extent with the other kids.

My kid? He walked around and around, and played with the front door and the chair-rail on the wall. Other than that, one of us was holding him. I don’t believe there was any voluntary interaction on his part. Yes, if someone were in J-man’s way on his trips around the downstairs, he would push them out of the way. There was a playroom set up – J-man refused to go in there (although it WAS pretty loud). He ate – nothing. He drank – nothing.

When J-man was 22 ½ months old, he finally started to walk by himself. There wasn’t a physical reason he couldn’t do it before then; he’d been cruising since he was 1. We had to teach him how to fall safely, because it didn’t occur to him to put out his arms to block his fall, and he ended up face-planting the two times he tried letting go. Finally, one evening he just started walking. None of that “take 2 wobbly steps and sit down” stuff for him. The next day, he started running. It was like he had to make the decision to Just Do It.

Sometimes I want to say, “Just talk already! Just eat already!”

To put it simply, this is primarily a blog for parents - particularly of ’special needs’ kids - who feel either stupid, occasionally or perpetually inept at parenting, or, most likely, both. This doesn’t mean you really are stupid or inept, but if you’ve ever been so mental that you’ve made it to the mailbox in your underwear before realizing it, you definitely will start to question everything. If you didn’t realize your ‘garment deficiency’ until your neighbor asked you about it the next day, you’ll really feel at home here.

We’re the proud parents of our 2 1/2-year-old son, who is the bright star at the center of our universe. He has an exuberance that can brighten any room. He also has a great many struggles, but he faces them bravely and with a determination that inspires us. He goes to various therapies during the week, all of which we’ll cover in future entries.

Some of his issues have a fairly clear diagnosis; others do not. The most obvious one is Sensory Integration Disorder. You’ll also see this referred to as Sensory Processing Disorder, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, and a few other things. The idea is essentially the same.

There is a growing sense that he also has apraxia of speech. He uses very few words and the challenge has been to understand why. He also has some issues with coordinating fine motor movements, which is most likely related to his sensory problems. As a result, he can’t really sign either.

He’s also very delayed in his eating skills. He was in feeding therapy for a long time and still is to a lesser degree. He only eats a few foods. It became clear that he’s not ‘picky’ but instead has sensory reactions to many types of food. It’s complicated, but we’ll get more into it later.

The good news is that he seems to understand us quite well and follows instructions as well as most two-year-olds. He’s a social kid and gets along well with most anyone. Thankfully, he has very few tantrums, and when he does they are very short.

The complicating problem is that he also has some other indeterminate developmental delays. Autism has been bandied about, but none of his therapists currently think that’s likely because of his social skills and general ability to tolerate situations and activities that kids with Asperger’s or autism usually cannot.

So, we’re on a quest to help our son decipher the world and grow into his full potential. We know other parents are going through this too, often without support or understanding of what to do. Our hope is to connect with parents who are struggling to understand what is going on and share whatever insights we have with each other.

I guess you could say that this is our way of talking through things in hopes of discovering the answers to our countless parenting questions. If we can find common insight and community with other parents and help each other figure things out, then we’ll have accomplished something here.

You don’t need to have a child working through anything we’ve mentioned above. If your child is having a hard time and you feel clueless or frustrated, you’re in the right place. We know that a lot of parents of special needs kids feel isolated, stupid, and frustrated. Be welcome here! You’re in good company.

This will be a tag team blog. My wife will share her wise and sage-like thoughts, and I’ll do whatever it is I do. We’ll try to keep it light-hearted and fun, but we aren’t bouncy, chipper types so who knows what else will come out of our fingers.

So, here we go!

Oh - in case you’re wondering, it comes from the saying, “He can’t find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight.”