Metal Mommy

Last weekend Sullivan was invited to spend the night at a classmate’s house. This was definitely a rite of passage, and I do believe Vivian was also eight when we allowed the first slumber party for her as well. With Sullivan though I have to say it means even more to me. As any of you know with kids on the spectrum, social graces are not usually their thing. Sullivan loves playing with other kids but doesn’t seem to always really ‘connect’ with them on a deeper level. When kids come over to play he often wants to spend the entire time showing them his coin collection or reading them facts out of the Guinness Book of World Records. As you can imagine, other eight year old boys (and many girls!) only have so much of an attention span for these things! Making real and lasting friends is probably the one thing with Sullivan that I worry about the most…there is nothing worse than thinking of your child feeling lonely. So the sleepover was definitely a victory for both son and mother. It went very well, according to him and the parents—other than the boys getting a car stuck inside the foosball table and they had to completely take it apart to get it out. (!) Sullivan had drawn a cartoon of what he and Charlie would do on their sleepover together….one of the things was “get into mischief”…well, I guess they did that!

October 9th the Coreman and I celebrated our 16th anniversary. 16 years! Hard to believe. On one hand that doesn’t seem like very long at all in the grand scheme of things, but then it feels like it’s been a lifetime. We had SUCH a fun day, it was very much like the old times. J Cory took the day off of work and we just played. We drove out to Lindstrom to hit an antique sale, it was a nice drive. Back in the single days, especially when we were living in Montana, we would just hop in the car and drive in any direction, just to see what we could see. Of course there we would end up in the mountains, which was always amazing…we even came across a grizzly one time! (needless to say, we stayed IN the car.!) After picking up a little shelf for our entry way (we seem to often buy a piece of furniture for our anniversary, which I think is a cool tradition) we drove back and had an impromptu lunch at Ciao Bella. Yum. Nothing like some delicious mini-burgers, fries and amazing tomato basil soup to warm the heart and soul on a chilly day! By accident we ended up having a romantic dinner for two at home, as both kids were invited to friends’ houses. It was just the perfect day! For 16 years that man has put up with excessive amounts of hand sanitizer, me calling him frantically for directions and my neuroses. He should get a medal.

The weekend found me at the Mall of America at the World’s Biggest Baby Shower! Honestly there are many places I’d rather be than the MOA on a Saturday, but this was actually quite fun. The MomsLikeMe web site that I work for threw this for Lynsee, the woman who bravely is having her baby LIVE on the site in November! We’ve been following her pregnancy since about 6 weeks along. She has definitely become a part of our family on there and we’re so excited for the birth! (to be honest tho, I’m not sure I’ll actually watch it. It may be a miracle and all, but I remember from experience that it is not for the squeamish. !) The ‘shower’ was basically a big get-together at the rotunda complete with fashion shows, shower games and lots of information about Lynsee. The shower ‘gifts’ were collected donations for a crisis center called Families Moving Forward, so that was really cool. It was just really great to be a part of that and to hang with my fun MLM peeps once again. Those ladies have such a warm place in my heart—and they are a hoot! It’s amazing to me how you can get a group of people from all walks of life together and as moms, we just have so much in common. Very cool.

This week—just a whole lotta work at Hot Mama. Vivian is the only one who had anything fun planned over the holiday weekend—she’ll be getting back from a Confirmation camp overnight today. We’ll just spend the weekend trying to avoid the H1N1 that seems to be everywhere! Yikes.