So here’s the button should you want to vote for me. Should you NOT want to vote, I dig that too. It’s a simple process, hand to God.

I am also up for the other two Bloggers Choice Awards displayed so kindly on my sidebar, and should you want to go through the annoying registration, I would be most thrilled. If only so that I could beat Dooce, who wins everything.

I also wanted to let you know that–should you want to be bored stiff–I am on Facebook as I am a lemming. A stupid, stupid lemming. My full name is at the bottom of your screen. We should SO be BFF.

I am also on Flickr AND Twitter. Because of the aforementioned lemmingness.

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Okay, so that top shit was written this morning when I was anxiously awaiting the Early Intervention people.

Dave and I handle adverse situations differently. While I am busy wringing my hands and preparing myself for the worst possible outcome, he calmly expects the best of any given situation. I’m not exactly Chicken Little, instead I’m his cousin, Aunt Chicken The-Sky-Might-Fall-Soon-Better-Prepare-Now and while I do appreciate Daver’s rose colored glasses, honestly my way has proved to be more useful for me.

Neither way is either wrong or right.

Amelia had her meeting with the therapists this afternoon, and all week I’ve had a sort of heavy-rock-in-my-guts type feeling. Not because, you see, I was terribly concerned about what they would find–shocking, I know–but because, I guess, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Which to me is worse than the bad outcomes. Dave, on the other hand, was optimistic and unconcerned.

Today, I have to eat my words (with a side of fava beans): Amelia, it has been determined, is (so far) normal. Completely meeting her milestones, ripping ass and taking names. The therapists will be back in a couple months to reevaluate, because her diagnosis is an automatic qualifier for the program, but so far, she’s spectacularly…normal.

I’m so beyond thrilled that I’m in shock. Tonight, the champagne will flow freely, but today, I will simply gape, slack-jawed at my daughter. My principessa.

I’m not worthy.

I’m in the running for Funniest Blog and while I won’t win, I will hassle you to vote for me. Because you can vote daily and that rules the school.

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As part of the requirement to get into nursing school (other requirements at my school included: a general bad attitude and the disregard for others), I had to enroll–and pass–Anatomy and Physiology I and II. And as part of A & P I and II, we had a weekly lab practicum. In addition to a nifty cadaver and an actual skeleton (now they are often made of hard plastic), my professor had somehow acquired a brain.

Now and again, he’d pull it out and leave it on the front lab bench. It would float there in it’s glass house, suspended in a clear yellow liquid almost as though it were another member of the class, nodding along. Because my professor had a great sense of humor, he’d labeled it years before with a fading sticker that read: “Abby Matter.”

It was a nerdy Young Frankenstein joke, he explained when I asked, wondering if the name was of the brain’s previous owner.

So to pay tribute to him, I have begun the process of labeling all the entries that involve me whining about Amelia’s encephalocele “Abby Matter.”

In a valiant effort to distract myself from myself, I tried my daughter on solids this morning now that she is the same age as my son’s were when they tried solids for the first time. I was sad to note that the formula, unlike breast milk, does not digest those simple carbohydrates the same way, so the longer it sat, the more it stayed the same.

Amelia was…not thrilled by the idea. Maybe she was picking up on the grimace I was no doubt making as I tried to feed her the paste-like rice cereal, maybe she just has better sensibilities than her brothers, but she was less than thrilled by the entire experience.

What I have not been talking about, though, is that Amelia’s Early Intervention interview with the therapists begins on Friday afternoon. I am less than thrilled by this idea, even though I keep reminding myself over and over than so many kids have problems so much greater than hers and that I should just shut the fuck up.

The marked rigidity of her limbs could just be a further sign of her awesomeness and her readiness to take on the world, but I’ll admit to you, Internet, that my heart breaks a little every time I see the strange Frankenstein way she uses her arms sometimes. Is this something? Is this nothing?

I’m just not sure.

I’m just not sure.

When my eldest child was 2, he was referred by an Asshole Pediatrician (do I sense a common theme among my doctors or what?) to Early Interventions for speech therapy.

He wasn’t talking, you see, and that coupled with his incredible love for the planets–which, I should add, the MD didn’t know about–made for a strange child. It took a couple months for a case worker to be assigned and ages after that to get the initial evaluations done, because like any state program, the need is greater than the ability to provide services.

When he was finally tentatively diagnosed with autism, I will be completely honest, I was relieved. It sounds weird, to be thankful my child has a disability, but it was the first thing about him that made sense to me.

My son had been rejecting me since he was born and my heart was not only broken, it was smashed to bits by his second birthday. He loved my mother, yes, but not me. If I never came back home, I promise you, he’d not have cared.

Ben and Mommy (colon) It’s Complicated.

He didn’t care for me, and while I’d like to say that it was because he sensed that I was an asshole, his brother certainly (still) cannot get enough of me. At some point I finally realized that it’s him, not me, that has the problem. But parents, of course, always blame themselves and it took years for me to be able to see that.

Ben was in therapy for years, many times a week, both speech and occupational, and it helped. My life isn’t a Lifetime Movie, where I’m played by Tori Spelling and Ben is played by that cute kid that I kinda wanted to strangle from Jerry Maguire, so you know that things still aren’t exactly normal, but they’re more…manageable.

Ben and Mom (Colon) It’s Still Complicated.

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Today I owned up to my old demons and pushed the fucking denial aside and called to set up a caseworker for Amelia for Early Interventions.

I did it because it’s the right thing to do. Like it or not.

Maybe, like some of you suggested, her extra brain matter was just her Awesomeness being uncontainable in her skull. A sign of high intelligence. I like that explanation best, I think.

It’s the right thing to do. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.