What Would Be Your Super Power?

This week at work we were discussing the question of which super power you would pick if you could have any one super power? My response was selective mind reading. 

Now, my boss gave me crap about my response, saying things like that's creepy, perverted, twisted and the like until I stopped him in his tracks with my response:

"I have a 5-year-old son who has never spoken a word. I would pay a tremendous amount of money to know what's going on inside his mind."

As I continued to ponder this question I think I probably need more than one super power to be Teddy's mom:

Selective mind reading: With a non-verbal child, it's so challenging to know even his basic wants and needs. I have no way of knowing how much he understands. Sometimes I don't know if he doesn't understand or simply doesn't want to fulfill my requests. I have no idea of knowing what he's thinking, and I'd give most anything for that ability. Now, I say selective because I really don't want to know what most people are thinking.

Superhuman energy: To keep up with Teddy. He never stops. 

Superhuman strength: To wrestle Teddy, pick him up when he flops and drops and maneuver him where he needs to be, particularly when it's not where he wants to go.

What would be your super power?

Flying with myTEAM TRIUMPH

Anyone who loves planes probably knows about Oshkosh, Wisconsin because of Air Venture. Air Venture is a week-long celebration of planes and all things aviation that takes place here, which turns our tiny airport into the busiest airport in the world and draws a half million people each year. Although we've never went, we certainly enjoy all the cool planes and tricks that we can see while driving around town. (And this year AJ got to spend a whole day there exploring with his uncle.) Part of the festivities include a 5k race, which partners with myTEAM TRIUMPH. 

Team Teddy all smiles before the race.

We decided that since the race was at 7 a.m. that we could sneak in a quick run before heading over for my Grandpa's 96th birthday and dad's retirement party. I'm so glad we did because this was one of the races that I think Teddy enjoyed the most, simply because of the scenery and his awesome angels.

Normally crowds are cheering for all the myTEAM TRIUMPH captains, but there weren't many spectators for this race, even at the finish line. Most of the people we saw seemed a bit confused as to why on earth there were a bunch of people running that early in the morning. That's because we ran right through where people were camped with their planes, so they were waking up to nearly 1,000 people running around them. We got extra perplexed people in the beginning when Teddy's team was leading the race. 

Mindy sprinted ahead to take a few pictures.

See, Teddy had rather fast angels this time around. Our angels included Mindy and John, a mom and son who drove up from Milwaukee and spent the previous night just to do this race with myTEAM TRIUMPH before cross-country season started. How's that for commitment to make a difference? John is a senior, who was reluctant to share his race pace with the group and said he'd be good with 8- or 9-minute miles. My response to that was that I'd prefer closer to 9-minute miles, so I could keep up. His usual race pace? 5:45-minute miles. I think Teddy would love to fly with him at that pace.

I love that John wanted a post-race picture with Teddy.

Our other angels were Hannah and Angie, friends who were taught by the mom of another Captain years ago. They were amazingly sweet ladies who pointed out different planes and other exciting things to Teddy as we ran.

Team Teddy crossing the finish line.

Usually we only have 3 angels per Captain, but Teddy gained a few extra angels because another Captain couldn't make it. He absolutely adored the extra attention and loved all the sights along this race. It's always so amazing to me that people will give up their time to race with Teddy and our other Captains. I loved their curiosity about Teddy, their acceptance and their support. 

Fun memories and medals!

I definitely hope we can catch this race again next year!

Happy 5th Birthday Teddy!

Teddy turned 5 this past Friday and had a fun-filled weekend celebrating with family and friends. His cousins were in town all day Friday, so we met for an afternoon at a place with giant inflatables since it was raining. AJ and Teddy had an absolute blast playing with their cousins. They spent 3 hours straight running around, climbing inflatables and sliding down in a tangled pile of arms and legs. It was one of my absolute favorite memories of the cousins for a couple reasons.

First, everyone had fun. It was something Teddy could do alongside his cousins, even if he was a bit slower with climbing the inflatables or needed a helping hand here or there. It's rare to find a level playing field for cousins ranging from 5 to 9 with a wide range of capabilities, and this was perfect for them all to enjoy.

Second, this was the most I've seen Teddy's cousins play with him, wait for him and help him. I'm not sure if it's because they're getting a bit more mature or if it's because it was his birthday, but his two oldest cousins were constantly helping him and cheering for him. You can see in the video how they both help Teddy (who didn't always need the help they provided, but that was half the entertainment). 

Last, but not least, the amount of skills Teddy demonstrated shows how much he's grown in the past year. Progress with Teddy is slow but steady, so sometimes it's not obvious until you see him:

• Climb up bouncy, wiggly inflatables that are 20-feet high
• Focus his attention to keep climbing even when there are other children behind him
• Run around for 3 hours - the stamina and effort
• Play appropriately with peers (aside from when he was hungry and tried to eat someone else's food)

It was a perfect afternoon that left my children perfectly exhausted. We followed that up with dinner at Red Robin, where Teddy had a quivering bottom lip while they sang him Happy Birthday. But it was worth that minor trauma for the ice cream he shared with AJ. (It's so hard to gauge whether something will fascinate or terrify Teddy.)

Saturday was a mildly construction-themed birthday party filled with fun times with family and friends. Teddy loves my Grandpa's walker and hopped on immediately for a ride. Then he proceeded to make my Grandpa sit down and attempted to push him around. Teddy made himself at home in one of his best friend's laps to open his gifts and devoured his cake. A happy birthday indeed!

Here, Great Grandpa, I'll help you push this!

Our Kids Really Miss Us While We're Working

I've talked before about childcare and how blessed we've been to have fantastic providers for the boys the past three years. We've had three providers during that time (not counting the one who only lasted for two weeks). Two have graduated into full-time nursing positions (one in pediatrics and the other in neurology, oddly enough). Our current has graduated but is staying on through the summer before moving into the human services field on a full-time basis. 

The past few weeks Brianna has taken the boys to her family's lake house. First, I'm grateful that her family is willing to let my boys enjoy their lake house and open their arms to my kiddos. We met Brianna's family at her graduation celebration dinner, and they were all very welcoming and understanding of Teddy. Second, I appreciate the initiative to pack the boys up for an hour drive to the lake (and all the supplies and effort that entails).

Judging from the pictures and the stories, the kids could not have more fun there. It's just not possible. They've been for pontoon rides, played on the pontoon boat while it's docked, played with kayaks and other small boats, went swimming, played with slides that go into the water and smooshed their faces into plenty of windows. (OK, I think that was just Teddy.)

Can't you tell how much they miss us? 

I love his smoosh faces!

No idea why he's wearing underwear. Weirdo.

Captain Teddy in his happy place, "driving" a vehicle.

Toothless AJ.

One of my favorites. Bri always has a nice smile. AJ, not so much.

I love this picture. Such happiness.

This sums up my kids pretty darn well.

Accessibility: Things You Don't Notice Before You Need Them

Having a child with a disability opens your eyes to many things, one of which is how accessible the world is to them and others in similar situations. We're still at the point with Teddy where he's small enough that we don't always take advantage of things like accessible parking or other things that we probably should because they'd make our life easier.

Case in point: we got the the trailhead in Rocky Mountain and weren't going to use the accessible parking pass because there was other parking available. As we were preparing for our hike (up the side of the mountain to visit waterfalls), we overhead the ranger tell other folks that the trailhead was still a mile up the road. Umm, what? Carry Teddy 2 extra miles, especially when we just got into the mountain altitude? We asked if there was accessible parking still available, explained why we had the pass and proceeded to drive the mile to the trailhead. Thank goodness because otherwise we never would have reached the cascades.

This picture of the cascades made possible by accessible parking.

There's other instances where we didn't take advantage yet still appreciated the options available. At Great Sand Dunes, both a pediatric and adult wheelchair are available to borrow to go into the dunes since a regular wheelchair is useless on sand. We carried Teddy in a backpack, but this is still such a great option that we might need to use in the future. We also noticed a wheelchair available to borrow at Florrisant Fossil Beds to explore their trails, which again we didn't use since Teddy's Kruze is pretty sturdy.

There's Canyonlands, which I felt did a great job with accessible camp sites that are only available to individuals with a disability. Other places offer this as well, but it was prominent at Canyonlands.

We even found a backcountry accessible camping sight about 1/4-mile off the trail at Sprague Lake. That means we could take Teddy to camp in the backcountry without having to hike and carry in all the gear, which would make it impossible. We could push his chair and carry our stuff, plus it's close enough to the parking area that we could get help if needed for a medical emergency. That's incredible!

This was such a neat thing to discover. 

There's cases where folks didn't know we needed the accommodation, like the ranger who did the evening program at the top amphitheater in Canyonlands. She asked if we needed to move the program to the lower area, but that was after we carried up Teddy and his chair. We were perfectly fine since we were already there and didn't feel the least bit slighted that the program was there because it was much better views. 

Then there was the ranger who switched our tour tickets at Mesa Verde once we realized that Teddy could be in a backpack on a tour despite having to climb ladders. He happily accommodated us by swapping our tickets and getting us all together on the same tour. Now, mind you, on that tour I overheard one American asking a couple from Australia whether they were so over the top with accessibility to the "ridiculous" extent we are in the United States. I couldn't help myself. I chimed in to say that although the laws might be a pain, they sure make life a lot easier for our family and allow us to have these types of experiences.

Accessibility sometimes looks like me carrying 50 pounds.

Yet, somehow despite that lady 's complaints, there's hotels that don't have elevators, which seems a bit odd to me simply because we're the type of (lazy) culture that expects them everywhere. We passed up an upgrade at one hotel that was offered because a first-floor room made life much easier than a cushier second-floor room.

And the thing is that I wouldn't have noticed most of this 5 years ago. Well, except maybe the elevator thing because I was really pregnant then and climbing even a flight of stairs made me winded.

Vacation Recap 2018

We survived vacation! It's far too soon to ask us what we'll contemplate as our next vacation as we need some time between the challenges of the last few weeks and whatever we do in the future. We need some time to dull the memories of the challenges (the early mornings, the whining, the crying, the complaints and the feeling of "Why does everything have to be so hard with Teddy?").

With that said, we managed to turn things around once AJ recovered from his hiking injuries and Teddy permitted us to sleep through the night (only to be awakened by children kicking us in the face, which is perfectly normal when you're a parent).

We revisited some of our favorite places for at least the third time: Rocky Mountain National Park, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. We relived the memories of our first trip to Colorado with Great Sand Dunes and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Parks. We explored a few new places like Dinosaur National Monument, which was really awesome, and Hovenweep and Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monuments, which were both interesting in their own rights and neat places to explore.

We used to pick a park and thoroughly explore it, capturing most of the highlights, so we didn't feel like we had that much unfinished business there. Our style with children has become much more of hit the highlights, do what we can reasonably and accept that there will always be more we want to see and do in most of our parks.

One of the highlights from this trip include the hike to Gem Lake, despite it being the hike that broke AJ. It was someplace in Rocky Mountain where we hadn't explored and was a really pretty, fun hike.

Gem Lake. In the rain. Not pictured: the hail or the miserable children.

Another highlight was our time in Great Sand Dunes. We spent the hot afternoon exploring Zapata Falls, which was new to us. It was a short 1/2-mile hike up a hillside and then a brief walk through a creek to a beautiful canyon waterfall. Absolutely stunning for the relative ease of the hike, although the road in to the trailhead is quite bumpy. We replenished at the same brewery and restaurant where we ate 11 years ago with delicious food and great service before heading back to play in the sand dunes. The boys absolutely loved the sand dunes!

This is actually in Arches, but you can tell how popular sand is with the boys!

One highlight yet reality check was the Fiery Furnace in Arches, which is a restricted use area that requires a permit or a ranger-guided hike. We reached out back in January to inquire about Teddy being carried on the hike and worked with a great ranger who explained the hazards yet granted us permission to do so. We were all set to hike until Dave made (probably the really wise) decision to remain behind with Teddy because Teddy woke up crabby that morning. A ranger-guided hike meant we needed to remain with the group, so there would be no escaping or appeasing an unhappy Teddy. Dave graciously stayed behind with Teddy despite really wanting to do this hike, so that AJ and I could ramble scramble through the rocks. Dave and Teddy made the most of their time exploring some 4-wheel drive roads through different parts of the park. I'm hopeful that in the future we could get permits to go explore on our own as Teddy gets a bit steadier on his feet ... or before he's too big for us to carry.

Family photo at Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

We're not sure what future vacations will hold for us. This trip reinforced the reality that our vacations of years past will not be possible for the future, so we'll need to figure out how to make the most to create family times together that are fun memories.