Family Picture

I was looking at the newspaper a few days ago and noticed a small article about a family that had children the same age as our two older children. These children went to the same elementary school as our children. I read the article and looked at the family picture.

As I looked at the picture and read the part about the 17-year-old daughter, who will be graduating this year and going off to college in the fall, I thought about our 17-year-old daughter. I tried to envision what our family picture would look like with a "normal" Kimmie, a Kimmie who would be preparing to graduate from high school and enter college.

This didn't last long. The "normal" Kimmie felt like a stranger in our family and the sense that someone was missing was overwhelming.

Not only did this substitution change the outward appearance of our family, but it changed each member of our family. It felt like we were all different people without our Kimmie.

We'll keep our little Kimmie, just the way she is. She has helped shape each of us into who we are and we wouldn't be the same without her.

--Mom

P.S. We don't actually have too many family pictures. They all come out a little funny looking. Either Kimmie is making faces or some or all of us are looking at Kimmie to see if she is smiling and looking at the camera, which, of course, means we are not looking at the camera.

--Mom

Hmmmmm

Kimmie has always been our quiet child. Being non-verbal, she has not typically made much noise.

Lately, however, she has had her "hmmmmmmmm" going. We sometimes say she has her "motor" running. It is a noise she makes in her throat. Sometimes she can get quite loud.

She can be watching a movie and start "hmmmmmmm"ing. She will get louder and louder as she gets excited about the movie. The competing noise from the movie and the noise of her "hmmmm"ing can become overwhelming.

We often ask her to be quiet and she will shake her head "yes." But when she goes back to what she was doing the "hmmmmm"ing starts up again. It's like she doesn't know what makes it or how to turn it off.

One of the places where she will make this noise is church. No matter how many times I ask her to be quiet, and she agrees, she just can't seem to stop.

She sounds happy when she makes this noise.

What to do, what to do, hmmmm.

--Mom

Tantrums and Sweet Moments

Kimmie's teacher is currently on maternity leave, so Kimmie has a new, long-term substitute teacher. Amazingly enough, the first couple of weeks Kimmie was really good. She came home almost every day with a note that said "Great day." We were like, "WOW!"

It didn't last, though. By the third week the tantrums and grumpies had set in. I offered suggestions to the new teacher and apologized for Kimmie being so much trouble. Her new teacher responded with this comment:

". . . She is a very sweet girl and for every tantrum she throws she has just as many sweet moments. She does a good job balancing them out."

I love the way she describes Kimmie. We always think of Kimmie as being sweet, but sometimes I wonder why when she can be so grumpy and throw hugh tantrums. This new teacher described Kimmie perfectly. It's the sweet moments that we remember.

She's our sweet little Kimmie girl.

--Mom

Soap Dispenser

Our church has recently renovated most of the restrooms in the building. Lots of automation was included in the renovations. All the "hands-free", "no-need-to-touch" stuff including automatic water sensors, automatic soap dispensers and automatic paper towel dispensers.

Taking Kimmie to the restroom has become an adventure! This past Sunday we had extra events going on at church and we made three adventurous trips to the restroom.

Kimmie's favorite accessory is the soap dispenser. She loves to stick her hand under it and be rewarded with a dallop of soapy foam. The sinks are very close to the soap dispensers and it is difficult to move her to the paper towel dispenser without her sticking her hand back under the soap dispenser. So we usually end up washing our hands at least twice before I'm able to maneuver her past the soap to the paper towels and then out the door.

Sometimes I'm able to move her away from the sink quick enough that she doesn't end up with more soap on her hands, but she is usually fast enough to trigger the dispenser. The soap lands on the counter and then I end up trying to clean the counter while keeping Kimmie far enough away that she cannot trigger the soap dispenser again and have us starting this whole process over again.

We have so much fun!

--Mom

Beloved Brown Bear

I think I've written about Brown Bear before. He is a part of our family, usually attached to Kimmie's right arm. He is a worn and balding teddy bear. He is well loved. He sleeps with Kimmie every night. He goes to the doctor and to the hospital with Kimmie. He has been through surgery with her. She carries him to church, to the store, anyplace we will let her take him. We draw the line at school, too much risk of losing him.

I took him to work with me not long ago. I was going to be picking Kimmie up at school and taking her to the dentist. I knew she would want him at the dentist. I felt guilty leaving him in the car in the cold. He looked rather forlorn laying in the back seat all alone.

We often worry about what happens when Brown Bear falls apart. How will Kimmie deal with it.

Last week we were hopeful that she would attach herself to a new bear. She had snatched a brown bear from her sister's room and played with it the rest of the evening. We were hopeful she would take to this new bear, but we were skeptical.

For some bizarre reason Dad got the notion last week that if Brown Bear disappeared for a while, Kimmie would forget about him. Now Kimmie's sister and I looked at Dad like he had grown an extra head, but he persisted.

After Kimmie went to sleep on the couch that night, Dad carried her up to bed and intentionally left Brown Bear in the family room, taking her sister's bear up to bed with Kimmie instead.

A few hours later we were roused from sleep by Kimmie crying. She wanted Brown Bear, so Dad retrieved him from the family room. The next morning, he commented that she only lasted three hours without Brown Bear.

Since then he has made sure Brown Bear goes to bed with Kimmie.

--Mom

Socks

Kimmie has developed an obsession about socks.

Dad tends to always grab white socks at 5:45 am when we are getting Kimmie ready for her school bus, and white socks can get rather boring. Kimmie tends to pick colored socks, not necessarily the color that matches her clothes.

First she was stuck on the pastel blue socks. One weekend she wore these socks for 3 days. Fortunately her feet don't sweat and she didn't have her shoes on much of that time. We did put clean socks on her, but she would hunt for the blue socks and change from the clean socks to her favorite blue ones.

More recently she has found the bolder colors, hot pink, turquoise, black . . . One evening she picked out turquoise socks to wear with lime green pajamas. Her sister came home and told her that her socks didn't match her clothes. Kimmie didn't care.

She has started going to sleep with her socks on, but sometime in the night she usually takes them off. We find these little heaps of socks next to her bed. If we don't get them picked up and in the laundry right away, she grabs them and puts them back on. We have started picking them up while she is asleep and putting them in the laundry so she won't be able to put them back on.

This past Sunday, after we came home from church, she told me she was going upstairs to get some socks. I wondered if she would put the socks on over her tights or if she would take her tights off before putting the socks on. I went upstairs a few minutes later to see what she was doing. She had forgotten about the socks and was playing. When I came in her room she remembered the socks and started hunting for the ones she had worn to bed the night before, the ones we had already put in the laundry. She knew they should be in or around her bed, so she started taking her bedding apart looking for the socks. She was not happy when I told her that the turquoise socks were in the laundry. Eventually she chose to wear black socks, black socks with lavendar clothes.

She protests loudly whenever we take her socks off, you know, for her bath, or to put clean ones on, or to put on ones that match her clothes. . . . She's a mess!

--Mom