Locked and Loaded

 Just had elder call and confirm all paperwork was received.  I am trying to convince him that he needs to send a follow up email, because I am all about the paper trail.

I heard from someone else who can help, so perhaps I need to let this play out. He's had plenty of scaffolding up to this point, and at some point, he's going to fly on his own. He's doing the things, but he still needs a little direction on the things that need to be done. He will get there. 

We pick up the younger guy's tux this afternoon. I just had a conversation with elder about setting younger up for his first Lyft ride, and thus, he edges closer to that adulting thing.

So, once upon a time, I was told not to expect much. Both guys have their own sets of challenges; I never thought I'd be equal to the task of parenting, let alone parenting children with extra. But, this story is still being written, and rewritten, and many things that have come to pass in the last four years alone were not even ON that list of expectations that came with dx and subsequent years of therapies, correctives, alignments, adjustments...whatever you want to call any of it. My name for my primary therapy was Real Life Immersion Therapy wherein we do the things the peers are doing and learn how to people.

I won't lie, it's been brutal at times. I was a bit of a shrinking violet until necessity compelled me to be a mama bear and become the mom my boys needed. I became someone my pre-mom self would never even recognize.

If I'm honest, that's a good thing. 

More importantly, my boys have made it a point to let the world know they are people first--not a dx. 

They are doing this because they watched me do it first.

I can't get tied up with the fact that there are young folk who have the same labels but managed to come into adulthood relatively unscathed. Comparisons are pretty pointless, anyway. But I do see how others are making out and sometimes I wish my guys had it better.

I wish it weren't so hard for them. 

But all things being equal, the will appreciate every damn thing they earn, because they will have earned it. 

And that's something.