One Year Later...

It has been a year since I last update this blog. A long year indeed, and where does one start to rehash an entire year? I guess, I suppose, we should start off where we last left off, but really? Who wants to rehash a year's worth of details? No I.

We returned to Georgia after leaving Korea, which reading through my blogs here, I never really explained HOW we ended up in Korea (the one blog, I left off on the day Mr. Kon left for Korea). Well, three months later we flew on a big airplane to Korea. There, we had a baby, Smoochies, and now, we're back from Korea. Caught up? Fantastic. The intricate details are elsewhere, recorded in every pain-staking detail, every drop of blood, sweat in tears.

We saw family in Georgia, but didn't take many pictures. Part of me wishes that I had. 2 months after leaving Georgia, Mr. Kon was back... burying his baby brother. The poor boy died in a horrific and gruesome motorcycle accident that would callously lend to the jokes of Nearly Headless Nick. *cough* Not that I would be so crass to say it out loud... more than once.

Sometimes I wonder if I have impulsiveness control. I can't believe it actually came out of my mouth!

I guess the three biggest changes are 1) we moved to the belly-button of the US. Seriously. It's 18 hours to everything (well, okay... 18 hours to home... 18 hours to Cali). 2) Mr. Kon is training for a not-so-distant future deployment to an area that's toted to having a lot of sand. AND 3) William.

Yes, my middle child William is a big change. He went from the child who I cried over and I truly believed would end up in a hospital setting, taking tons of meds and going to tons of therapy, to the boy I have now, who actually expresses positive and negative feelings without going off the deep end. He's off his meds and out of therapy. He does still go to special education, and is still in a contained classes (with a 'safe' room... that looks like a padded cell), but we're still moving forwards and we've been told that we're looking at mainstreaming him.

Of all the things that we wanted, this is what we want most.

Not Normal

Every parent that has kids wants their children to grow up to be normal people that contribute to society. They dream of the college that their child will go to, getting married, and maybe one day them having kids of their own. They worry if their daughters will be cheerleaders or into the drama, their sons football players or gamers.

My biggest concern is none of these. At this point, I can't look that far ahead for my children. My biggest goal right now is to get my seven year old son through this out of school suspension without him getting anymore farther behind his same-aged peers.

I have five children, all boys except for my five year old. Right now, I have three of them home with me. My five year old is sitting on the floor, wrapping wipes around her hand and then throwing them up. I wish I knew why, but there are no easy answers. My seven year old has been suspended from second grade until the 18th of January (he's been out since last Friday). And the baby, well, he's just a baby and is crawling around the floor looking at these two people who aren't here usually.

It's 'PE' time. It's too cold to go outside and let them run off some energy (and the baby has a nasty cold) so instead they are punching the punching bag. For my seven year old, it's the best thing. He needs a 'safe' place to be angry. And he's angry a lot.

William, my seven year old, is angry a lot. I remember being seven. I got my baby brother when I was seven. I don't remember being angry a lot. But he is, and so right now he's punching the punching bag. He suffers from ADHD (which is fairly common now-a-days), depression (though I can't even imagine what he has to be depressed about), and ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) which is rather rare in his age group.

I'm happy that we have a diagnosis, really I am. Before I thought he was a bad kid. Really bad. Like bad-bad-bad kid. He's incredibly impulsive, verbally and physically. It's why he's on suspension right now. Impulsiveness after an accident (he accidentally touched another child and then freaked out, he doesn't have very good coping skills). The other child forgave him but the parent did not.

Where we live, it's all about rank (we're overseas in the military) and dirt outranks our family. And bird poop, I'd bet. The other parent... I understand where they're coming from, I do. The two kids have a history of issues. I don't understand why they continue to let them be near each other.

Sometimes, my son says things. Okay, to be truthful... its' stuff we'd all think but have enough politeness and manners not to say. That voice inside of us that says- Hey, this isn't something we say aloud... he doesn't have that filter. A man gave us a ride home one day and William turned to me as we were getting out of the van and told me that they needed to clean up their van.

In truth, they did. There were food wrappers, clothes, trash, and toys everywhere in the van. But you don't say stuff like that in front of that person. Especially the man who helped save your Daddy's life when he nearly bled to death. I know it's a lot for a seven year old to think about, but at the very least, keep it to yourself until we get inside the house. Certainly don't say it in front of the person.

If the man heard, he never let on, but still.

It's always things like that. And he's so literal. If you tell him sit down, he'll sit (if he's going to at all) right there where he's standing. Part of me is angry that the first grade teacher downplayed this last year because we could have been a whole year further into his treatment.

It took him threatening to kill everyone on his school bus on the last day of school in first grade. And bringing chemicals onto the bus with him. Had we had the resources here, I'd have had him institutionalized.

It's not a decision I would have made lightly, but I would have made it none the less. I don't honestly know if he will ever gain enough control over himself that he can be out and about among 'normal' people. And that scares me. Part of having kids is knowing that one day that they will become self-sufficient contributing members of society. I don't know if he will ever be.

And that's just my seven year old.