What Randa Doesn't Sniff

I've talked about Randa many times before. She's my soon-to-be 16 yr old daughter. She is tall and beautiful and hilarious. She's also been diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Delays with Autistic Tendencies. She's overcome a lot of her challenges/issues. Some are still giving her a hard time. On the speech front, though, she has made remarkable progress.

Most of her dialog comes from memorized movie/tv scenes. But she'll switch up words to fit whatever situation she's in.  She once watched an episode of that ridiculous show Drake and Josh from Nickelodeon where the two boys were stuck babysitting and they needed to check if the baby needed to be changed and one says to the other, "I do not sniff baby butt!" Randa laughed for about an hour after this. She also added it to her repertoire of smart alecky things to say to her siblings. So here is the list of things that Randa will not sniff:

"I do not sniff Samiya feet!"

"I do not sniff Ismail armpits!"

"I do not sniff Mohamed stinky mouth!"

"I do not sniff Aiman fart!"

"I do not sniff Mommy shoes!"

"I do not sniff stinky shirts!"

"I do not sniff horrible ugly beasts!"

"I do not sniff Baba socks!"

"I do not sniff Randa hair. It's got flies! Outta my face, Clown!"

"I do not sniff stinky cheese!"

Re-post: How Do YOU Spell Relief?

Due to my busy schedule of oversleeping and not getting my kids
to school on time and then fighting them to study along with my 
writing schedule for my new novel, I've kind of blown off my blog.
And that's just not cool. SO, I thought I'd re-post some of my "best
of" posts from a previous blog just to keep you entertained while I
settle into my new ridiculous schedule.  Here's something that some
of you (probably very few of you) didn't know about me: I fart.


And what's with this green
font, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. I'm quite gassy....and I am feeling a 
little on the green side.
Yeah, ewwww gross! Well, there's no reason to pretend here. I come
from a long line of farters. I'll omit their names to protect the (not-so)
innocent. BUT I inherited the fart-gene, baby....from BOTH sides of 
the family. Now I've not yet inherited the gaseous genetic trait where
I race to the bathroom with lower cheeks pinched tightly leaving a "pop-
pop-pop-pop" sound trail behind me. (Our family has actually named
this trait after one of the family elders, however, since I'm attempting to
protect the family fart tree, I guess I'll have to omit that too.)
Anyway, we've got 'em all in our family: the loud, the louder, the machine
gun, the "oh, hell, who stepped on the dog", the not-so smelly, the smelly,
the s.b.d. and the "WHAT crawled up your ass and died". ANY type of 
fart ever known to man can be claimed by anyone (or several) in my family.
My brother recently chewed me out on facebook for discussing his "rancid
ass" on the internet. Hmmmmmm. Truth be told, HE brought it up when he
reminded me of a fart he "dropped in my ear" during a trip we took together
to Arizona. My husband has been known to hear my bom-booferous,
window shakers from over two window unit air-conditioners (with about 8
spoons shoved inside each....THAT is another story that I'll call Why My
Kids and Spoons Caused Me to Declare Bankruptcy), a ceiling fan, a 
snoring congested 1 year old and the movie DIE HARD cranked up on the
tv. I lied in my room laughing for 15 minutes after my own fart only to finally
think, "He must not have heard me. Maybe it wasn't as loud as I thought."
Only to have him poke his head in the bedroom door about 30 seconds later
and ask, "Are you okay? Did the roof fall on you?" DAMN. How embarrassing.
Well...THAT was nothing.
TODAY I was peeling potatoes for dinner and the washing machine was 
making it's usual jet engine noises in the spin cycle and I had a CD playing 
in the kitchen. I looked around to make sure my husband wasn't around (kids
are fair game...I'll fart around them just to get even for them walking in on me
in the bathroom or only peeing on MY side of the bed!) and I let 'er rip.
Well, I don't know what a ripped spleen or ruptured small intestine actually 
feel like but I imagined it today. OH MY WORD! I doubled over and cried 
against the sink it hurt my abdomen so bad. I must have shrieked without 
realizing it because Hamo and my husband came running in thinking that I must
have cut myself. Then through the tears I started laughing. My husband asked
what happened and I told him he didn't want to know. He looked puzzled. So
somewhat embarrassed I told him, "I farted so hard I hurt my intestines."
He just rolled his eyes and muttered something in Arabic about "giving him 
strength." 
At least my son felt for me. He hugged me and said, "I'm sorry your farts are 
so strong they fight back." Little snot. He snickered as he walked out. Laugh
if they must. But I may be the first person in history to ever end up in traction
due to bad gas!

My Life's Work

Raising children has got to be the most rewarding, difficult job that doesn't involve hazard pay. It's loud and screamy and a little head-achy and sometimes poopy and vomity. But a lot of the time it isn't. A lot of the time it's funny and laughing and giggly and loving. Today is one of those really good days where I feel like I've succeeded at the "mom gig."

While I'm nowhere near finished with my "job," I know that I'm on the right track. There are some members of my extended family who have criticized my kids and the way I raise them. Do I care about those opinions? Not enough to change what I'm doing. Did those opinions hurt? Hell yes. But here's the thing. I. know. that. I. have. great. kids. Not good. GREAT!

Yes, they fight. There are FIVE of them and they are all extremely close in age and in a less than 1000 square foot 3-bedroom apartment. They have 5 extremely different personalities and interests and tolerance levels. They are all pretty vocal and equal on the teasing playing field. They all have great senses of humor complete with sarcastic rapier wit. They fight over the t.v., the computer and whose turn it is to do dishes. What kids don't? Do they fist fight? Yes. Do I allow it? No. Do they do it anyway? Yes. But I break it up and hand out punishments by taking away privileges.

For whatever fighting, teasing or tattling that they do, they are also extraordinarily helpful. My kids are the ones that see a woman struggling with bags of groceries and walk up and take the bags from her hands so that she can get out her keys to open the front door. They won't carry the groceries upstairs to her apartment because they aren't allowed to. But they will set them inside the door of the building. Unless it's someone that we know or unless they yell up to our balcony and let me know what they're doing first. My kids help with dishes...some of them without being told. Others help on the threat of no computer time. One actually gets bored and cleans out closets. Another will clean the stove top (a job that I abhor.) And one got sick of the handprints in the hallway and actually scrubbed down the walls for me 2 nights ago.

I still have to yell to get anyone to get the dirty laundry INTO the hamper as opposed to under the beds, but I never said they were perfect. My youngest buys me little things that he thinks I might like. If he gets 5 pounds spending money from his father, he immediately asks one of his older brothers to take him to the corner shop to "buy stuff." He almost always comes back with a can of diet soda or a  piece of gum or a package of ramen noodles for me. I don't have the heart to tell him that I cannot stand the thought of ramen noodles after living on them for nearly two semesters of college. I get love notes from them. My 13-yr old leaves me "I'm sorry" and "I love you" notes when I'm having a bad day. My oldest likes to text his love notes to me...usually after we have one of those "teenage angst" days together. My younger daughter will just go make my bed or wash a load of dishes if she's attempting to apologize. And my youngest is just a big hugger. My older daughter will tell me "Sorry, Mommy. Give me a hug." For an autistic kid, she's starting to learn empathy.

I know that I have put a lot on here about the OMG they're running me nuts times....but I guess that's because I use this blog as a sort of creative outlet to my own stress to keep from having an aneurysm or ripping out all of my eyebrows which are both inconvenient and terribly unattractive....especially when I get that nervous twitch in my face. But all in all, I have great kids who are learning to deal with other personality types in small spaces on a daily basis. And if they fight well, they make up better. And that's something that a lot of adults STILL need to learn how to do. Clearly, I'm doing something right.

Bright Spots in My Day Today 2

Isn't she pretty? This is Randa. She's my first daughter, second-born. And she is extremely bright. She was diagnosed with Autism when she was 3 years old and all the professionals, doctors, experts, special-ed teachers discouraged me from teaching her Arabic and insisted I only teach her English so as not to confuse her. Idiots. Fortunately, I not only make it a habit to question authority, I usually defy it. You know, provided I'm not going to do any jail time as a result. We spoke to her in both English and Arabic just as we did her brothers and sister. I mean, how was she supposed to communicate with her father, for crying out loud?! He didn't speak much English at the time she was born, although NOW he's pretty proficient. At any rate, we figured she's got developmental delays in speech anyway. What difference will it make? We didn't know if she'd ever become verbal. Well, guess what! Randa is now 14 years old and she speaks, reads and writes in both Arabic and English. She is by no means at a 14-year-old proficiency level in either language. But she definitely knows how to get her point across. To be honest, she watches a lot of t.v. and uses the internet frequently. About three years ago, some guy across the street from us built this monstrosity of an apartment building that totally blocked out access to the satellite dish signal. So we went for a whole summer with no t.v. While the fighting levels went down, I noticed Randa spent a lot of time in my room laughing her head off. After a couple of days, I figured out why but chose not to share her secret. Everytime she would laugh loudly and attract the attention of her siblings to the point they'd open the door and go in, Randa would slap off the monitor and say, "Get out!"
Well, the child had seen me google a couple of times on-line and, being the genius that she is,
she started doing searches for YouTube uploads of Tom and Jerry cartoons. She knew that if the other kids knew what she was up to, they'd have me enforce the "everybody gets a 15-minute turn" rule and her cartoon time would be cut by four-fifths.
Randa's speech is primarily picked up by repetetion in films, cartoons, remarks that her family members make, songs and books. She even surprises us by the appropriate insertion of some bizarre one-liners. Remarkably they're also delivered with just the right amount of inherited "smart ass" from my side of the family. Here are some of her "sitcom moments:"
1. In Dallas, while visiting my sister's home, Randa walked into the kitchen while my brother-in-law, David was busy at the stove. He said hello to her and she responded with, "Hey, Baby! Are you a fallen angel?"
2. While my mom was visiting us in Egypt last year, Randa caught her in the kitchen and with all seriousness said, "Hey, Toots. What's for dinner?"
3. Ismail was teasing Randa mercilessly one day and Mohamed and I fussed at him several times. Finally I asked him point blank, "WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?" Randa answered for him, "Ismail's JACK ASS!" Mohamed sprayed coffee out his nose.
4. This past summer, I was taking the kids from our home by the beach into downtown Alexandria to visit their cousins and Randa was extremely tired and started to cry. We were on the bus and people kept staring at us and asking what's wrong. Finally, after 15 minutes I turned to her and asked, frustrated, "Do you think you can stop crying sometime today?" And she sniffled and then patted my hand like I'm a moron and said, "Maybe later, Dear."
5. About four nights ago, I was falling asleep when I heard Randa yell, "Oh, man!" So I asked her what was wrong and she said, "Stupid computer." So I asked if she would like me to fix it for her and she deepened her voice a bit and replied, "Why, yes, my juicy dream girl!" Oh, the incontinence due to laughter! (No, really.)
Randa has taught me so much over the years....patience, love, tolerance, the ability to ignore rude people and lots of laughter and lightheartedness! She brightens my life daily.