try, try again. This would be my special needs parenting motto number two. See here for my other parenting motto.
Our first attempt at apple picking and pumpkin choosing did not go so well. Neither Duhdee nor I seem capable of admitting that life gets in the way of “traditions” sometimes so we’ve been rather stubbornly holding on to the need to do these things despite Monkey’s anxiety and Duhdee’s inability to walk for more than a few minutes without losing sensation in his leg. I guess the thinking is that if we skip a year we, what, fail? Lose our “MOST AMAZING PARENTS EVER” award, though I don’t recall even getting nominated…I don’t know. I don’t know why we put so much pressure on ourselves sometimes to do these sorts of things. It seems rather silly, at times, but…
Part of it is that Duhdee and I really want Monkey to understand that these things…apples, pumpkins, Christmas trees…all come from someplace and that someplace isn’t a grocery store. This is part of the reason we have a vegetable garden. Monkey knows that potatoes come from the ground. He knows tomatoes and cucumbers and the beans ((he won’t eat)) all come from plants in the backyard. Duhdee buys our eggs from a local farm so Monkey know eggs come from chickens and that chicken…it also comes from chickens, lol. These are things that matter to us. Living in the city as we do it’s very easy for kids to grow up thinking that food comes from a grocery store and never ever realize where it came from before that. So there is that bit but skipping a year of apple picking shouldn’t throw the entire world into chaos, right?
To prove that we are not entirely inflexible (though, we are on Christmas trees, Duhdee has force-marched us through knee deep snow, biting winds and veritable oceans of mud for the perfect tree…here’s hoping he’s fully recovered by then) we’ve decided that we’ll go to a local nursery where we can buy local apples (Honeycrisp, yum) and local pumpkins. It’s going to have to be good enough since Duhdee refuses to consider the wheelchair option. He even laughs as if I’m such kidder when I bring it up! Of course, I am just kidding…
Yes, that is definitely one motto – but your adaptability is great as well. We did well with apple picking this year – beat the crowds and then Saul was fine out among the trees – he picked an apple for the first time and even took a bunch of bites once we bit the skin of for him (we usually serve him tiny peeled apple slices). But Topsfield Fair today was almost a disaster. Way too crowded and he’s in a running off phase and there was no place to safely let him run around. Oh well. We figure one out of 2 ain’t so bad.