Life in HyperSpace is finally Out!!

The book that’s taken twenty plus years and a lot of hard knocks to write is finally complete and edited. If you have ADD/ADHD kids of your own and are in need of a laugh or maybe a little help, check this one out...

Christmas Eve, I finally launched the book about our life at home with four ADD/ADHD kids.This is packed full of laughs and advice from parents who have been there in the trenches.

Here’s the back cover blurb:

Spraypainting the cat? What was he thinking?

With four year college degrees under our belts and a dab of training in Child Psychology, my wife and I thought we were ready for anything when it came to this parenting gig.

We had no idea we would be outnumbered and outgunned. From diet to riot, meds to charts, we’ve tried it all, to train up our kids in the way they should grow.

From the Home School of Hard Knocks, our four ADD and ADHD kids have taught us more about coping and planning ahead than any four year college degree could have, especially when it comes to understanding what goes on in the mind of a five year old in a Buzz Lightyear costume flying on a treadmill. To Infinity, and Beyond.

Links are available on my author website at www.lynvia.com.

Video Game Addictions

Video Games are an addictive pastime, and there are several generations of 'kids' now addicted to them. The fast-moving digital media can be unhealthy, too, because overexposure to it can reprogram the brain for rapid-fire, rather than cognitive thinking. See this article on it...

I for one have many that I've enjoyed over the years, on many platforms including the Commodore 64, the Atari 2600, the PC, the Playstation 1 and 2, the GameBoy Advance, and Nintendo DS. I'm even currently working through level 150 of ToyBlast on my iPhone. (A very addictive little game).

In our loving madhouse, we sign off from Electronics on Sunday, from morning until after evening services, to focus on God and unplug for a bit. Maybe do some healthy brain activity like read a book. Like, maybe, the Bible! Or work puzzles.

But little Johnny doesn't quite get it. Could be the ADHD, perhaps he wasn't paying attention. Since we confiscate his Nintendo 3DS for the day, he's leveraged the Color printer and a roll of Scotch Tape to create one we WON'T confiscate.

Believe it or not, what you are seeing here is the OUTSIDE cover of a Three-Dimensional, realistic, PAPER Nintendo 3DS. I'll open it up for you so you can see the inside...

Please forgive the rotated nature of the pictures, my iPhone created the pictures in landscape, and I'm having trouble rotating them back. Notice how John has a PacMan game going on his PaperCraft Nintendo 3DS. He's also got all the controller buttons, and along the sides of the unit, he has all the connectors to plug in power (a big no-no during no electronics) or an audio cable.

I gotta say, his PaperCraft Nintendo 3DS is so realistic, it's fooled several people in the family, and even visitors, and I've even managed to fool John himself with this expertly taped together game system.

It's certainly 'street legal' during our electronics fasts, but the only game that will probably play on it, other than PacMan, would be Paper Mario.

Focus, Dishes, Tea, and ACTS Praying Revisited

Ever tried to force an ADHD kid to have focus to complete a task?

So last night, it was John's turn to do the dishes. Actually, we have chores on rotation, so each week we rotate, with Justin (20) doing one chore, Rachel (17) doing another, and John (10) doing a third. Mom and Dad picking up the slack.

The three chores we rotate through are (1) Dishes, (2) Laundry, and (3) Sweeper.
The prized job is Sweeper, because we rarely force whoever is sweeping to actually sweep. It is usually just feed the animals (no cows and chickens, just Cats and Dog). Oh, and take out the trash. And maybe scoop the cat litter. Slack = scoop cat litter for the kids, and put a liner in the can for those who forgot. BEFORE you throw trash in the can and discover there's no liner!

Laundry is is a no-brainer. One load, make sure the washer has nothing molding overnight.

Dishes ought to be a no-brainer, but when the dishwasher went south shortly before Christmas, rather than buy a new one, we decided to hold off and wash by hand. We're still holding off, partly to make sure Rachel finishes funding for a Mission Trip, and kids have college. But we have one picked out, I think...

Anyway, whatever chore John is on is a sharing chore, because, well, he's ten. And ADD. And Hyperactive. And all boy. A wicked combo, especially when he's wrapped around the axle from too much video gaming.
I usually give the assist in the evenings, and don't mind dishes. My mom would die of shock, I used to hate hate hate hand dishes. So, I wash, and John dries and puts away. But what occurred last night was, I washed, and John played his game. When the dish racks were fully loaded, therefore, since John was on his game when he was supposed to be helping, I sent him to completely empty the rack while I finished reading The Ghost Box by Mike Duran. :-)

I had to break away from reading seven times to send John back in to dry. First, he couldn't find a hand towel, so he just chased the cat around the house. So, I got him a dishtowel, and sent him back (he knew where these were!) Then, he chased the cat with the dishrag. Trying to pop him, I think. So I sent him back. Then, he marched around the house with a towel and a glass.

You get the picture. He was so hyper he did a flying tackle on the cat, snagging him with the towel. It's a wonder we weren't back at the ER for a broken bone or Cat Scratch Fever. Or at the vet for a crushed rib...

I had to get a chair, and block exit from the kitchen, while reading my book, until he was completely done drying and putting away. Funny how being trapped in a five-foot by five-foot kitchen will give you focus.

After chores came the usual ACTS praying.


ACTS Praying is a thing our family does in the evening to wind down, focus on God, and get our hearts ready for sleep. It's an acronym for (A)doration, (C)onfession, (T)hanksgiving, and (S)upplication.

(A)doration is where we praise God for one of His attributes, like 'You are Holy'. Or one of the other Nine Billion Names of God.

(C)onfession is where we confess something we did wrong to God, try to make it right with each other if it's an offense against another family member. This one can be hard to draw out, or to nail down, especially with John. But, he's ten.

(T)hanksgiving - should be obvious, except when you're tire, you might end up saying Grace for a meal you've already eaten...

(S)upplication - 2 rounds. One for others, and a second round to pray for yourself.

John was still wound up tight, even after 10PM, so when we got to Thanksgiving, he just said, for Tea. I told him that the Tea in the fridge had been there too long, and was probably fermented. Thankfully, he didn't ask what that meant or we'd have been exploring beer and other fermentation.

But he said he meant T. As in, the letter T. I never really thought about thanking God for a letter before, but T is not a bad one, as it's used in so many things. It's even used four times in this sentence.

So, flashback to Sesame Street: Today's ACTS Praying time was brought to you by the Letter T.

We all got a big laugh out of that. You would too, especially if you were a Vols fan.

Life In Hyperspace, revisited...

Life In Hyperspace is a book I've been meaning to write on these misadventures with my family, and I'm finally getting traction on it.

Some of the chapters in the book will reflect stories you can find on the pages of this blog, and some of them you have never heard. Unless you lived them, with my family.

I've shared some of these laughs with coworkers and extended family, and they've all said I should put this in a book. Or a Movie. Or a reality TV show.

Well, I couldn't possibly let TV cameras into the home. Besides the fact that we have the usual ADD clutter issues we don't want to share on TV, I couldn't cover the liability to their cameras, laptops and sanity as my kids bounce off the walls around them.

But putting it in a book is safe enough.

Just for fun, I'll put the lead-in here to whet some appetites:


Only in Our House…
“What do you mean, is Clear Coat poisonous?”
My wife paused. “You left the spray can out after you were done with the Grand Prix car.”
I took a deep breath. “And?”
“And, well, John spraypainted the cat.”
I gripped the steering wheel. “He what?”
“You mentioned this morning that his coat looked dull. He was just trying to help.”
“The can was almost empty. Brush his coat to pull off as much as you can.” I hung up and shook my head, staring ahead at the evening rush hour traffic.
Spraypainting the cat? What was he thinking?

After about five minutes, the phone rang again.
“Hey honey. Did you get the cat cleaned off?”
“How far out are you?” She sounded troubled.
“About five minutes, I think. Why?”
“Want to meet us at the hospital? Rachel almost cut her finger off in the van door.”
I swallowed. “What?”
Rachel’s voice cut in. “I was looking for the DVD remote like you asked me.”
“In the van?”
Justin called out from the background. “It’s pretty bad, Dad. We’ve stopped the bleeding, but you can see bone!”
My head swam. “Justin, you know how I am about blood. I’m driving on the expressway.”
Rebecca took a deep breath. “I’m taking her to the E.R. Want to meet us there?”
“I’ll be home in three.”

Fast Food and Feingold

Today, boys and girls, we're going to have a word about Fast Food and Feingold.

As parents of ADHD kids, on a budget no less, early on we investigated non-medication methods for treating the wonderful adverse symptoms of... hey, is that a butterfly?

MWHAHAHA... Now that I have lost your attention...
One of the treatments we investigated is diet. Specifically, the Feingold Diet. The principle behind the diet is that we have lots of additives in our food that companies have put in there to make it fresher, brighter, tastier, and, well, many other ERs.

Food companies are in the business of making money. It's what they do, and why they exist, and we shouldn't shame them for it. After all, they employ a LOT of us, including now my oldest son, yay, he got a JOB!

But in order to make money, they need to pull out the sugar, which is kinda expensive, and replace it with Corn Syrup, which is also now kind of expensive, since we run our CARS on it. (go figure...). And they add BHT (Does anybody even know or care what that stands for??) to the packaging so that your cereal will stay fresher longer, meaning more can be on the shelf for you, and it can have a sell-by date many months in the future, rather than, like, next week...

Because you like your food brighter, they add artificial colors, like Red Dye #5. Or Yellow Dye #2. Sort of like Crayola, except you eat this stuff. Really, you DO. Just read the label on the stuff you're eating now while reading this. Those ingredients are just a tad scary.

So, these companies had the bright idea to add all this stuff into the food you eat. Nobody, not even the FDA, had a really good idea what that might do to you over the long haul, but they tested it out on mice and prisoners and some folks from Bug Guts MS, and there were no real ill effects. Right.

So, the basis on the Feingold Diet is to eat fresh food, and avoid all that other stuff you don't really need in you, because believe it or not, it really does seem to affect your brain. That's right, the effects of those chemicals affect your brain.

Anyway, lest I ramble further, we tried the Feingold Diet (There was an entrance fee for their book and subscription to their newsletter and website and some other goodies, and believe it or not, the DIET WORKED. Bringing a verse to mind, Psalm 34:8.

 

Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!

I came into work after two weeks on the diet, and my head was clear for the first time in, like, ever, and I could actually think faster, talk slower, react more calmly, and in general was no fun anymore for my coworkers, who enjoyed my daily rants. One of them actually stopped me outside her office and said, "Ok, who are you, and what have you done with Chris??"

One of my coworkers actually started dropping by my office before staff meetings and giving me a Snickers Bar and a Mountain Dew so I would be good and wound up before our weekly staff meetings.

 

That's right, my coworkers sabotaged the diet, because I was no fun anymore.

Also, though the diet does not seem expensive, it actually is. You see, companies can sell cheaper food, well, cheaper, because fresh, natural, organic food is harder to grow, doesn't stay fresh as long, and therefore, costs more.

So now, we've got all the kids on medication, but one thing the diet DID do for us is give us a hunger for fresh food. So, while we do occasionally stop at McDonalds or Wendys for fast food, when we head to the grocery store, we usually try to pick up organics like apples and salad stuff.

So this weekend Rebecca came home with a bag of apples, intending to put them in a bowl on the table. But by the time she got a bowl out, this was all that was left...

Now, THAT's what I call FAST FOOD.

Late Night Snack??

This morning, when I came down to fix coffee, There was an empty jar of Peter Pan peanut butter (creamy) on the counter, and this mess in front of it...

My first thought was, which of my four kids got up in the middle of the night, to make themselves a sandwich? And why a fork? a Spoon? A bowl??

So, I hollered up at my oldest dear son, asking him what was up with the PB sandwich late at night?

He really had no clue what it was about, and blamed the 4yo.

Hmmm. I couldn't see the 4yo doing this, and the finger smears through the middle of the bowl didn't look like toddler fingers...

Then I went into the bathroom.

It appears that the peanut-butter culprit also wanted some hand lotion. But why in the world? And with peanut butter all over their hands, too! What in the world?

So, then I looked next to the Lubriderm, and there was peanut butter smeared on the gargantuan Sams bottle of hand sanitizer. Looked like whoever the culprit was, they desperately wanted 'clean hands and a pure heart'.


Next to the hand sanitizer, it appeared the water faucet had been turned on by Peter Pan also, and there was also peanut butter under the tap, dripping down into the sink. Yuch. Peter was desperate to get those hands clean.


So, I started asking questions of the kids. Finally, R, the 11yo daughter, admitted it was her. Apparently, she'd gotten some of this stuff called 'Zing' gum. Here's the packet of it, pulled out of the trash.

She decided that if one stick of gum was yummy, then all 15 sticks of gum would be even more yummy. So, she crammed them all in her mouth, and sat up reading a 'Charlie Bone' novel until 2am, when she started to fall asleep in her gum and in her book too.

She knew it wasn't good to go to sleep with gum in your mouth (A baseball-sized wad is such a choking hazard, you know...) so she pulled it out of her mouth. But gum that's been chewed all day and all night tends to gain in stickiness, or at least, that's some of the 'Zing' in 'Zing'. It turned into a goo on the level of taffy, with an adhesive coefficient of tackiness equal to that of Gorilla Glue.

First it stuck to one hand, then the other, as she attempted to get it off the other hand. One finger after another was imprisoned in the wad of goo, until she had a cats cradle between her hands, like a pink spiderweb.

Eventually she managed to get downstairs, open a jar of peanutbutter, and sacrifice all its contents to remove the glue from her hands, her arms, and her face.

The peanut butter worked, but removing slimy peanutbutter from your body at 2am apparently requires liberal application of Lubriderm, Hand Sanitizer, and Cold Water.

Lucky for the rest of us, chemical reactions involving lanolin, alcohol, and peanut oil do not in fact cause fires or spontaneous explosions.

Or so their packages seem to imply. But I think I'm going to write the manufacturers of 'Zing' and 'Peter Pan', requesting that they please add to their verbage on the package, 'Keep out of reach of Children'.

On a side note, R's late-night foray into cleaning up this sticky situation should have turned into a teaching opportunity, because, just as King David found out, trying to cover up your sin, and deal with it yourself, leaves a much bigger mess than getting help and forgiveness.

R should think about this as she attempts to clean the downstairs bathroom before homeschool starts...

Morning Coffee

Well, I'm definitely a person who has to have my morning coffee to get my day started right. Here's a picture of me with a standard cup of coffee...
Needless to say, I'm not fully functional early in the morning without some of this wonderful drink to wake the gray matter up and start the engines.

I've been doing some research on coffee, actually, for a story I'm writing, and discovered that it's not impossible to grow your own coffee, in your own home, for the purpose of starting your day.


Someday, if the price of coffee becomes ridiculous, I may actually try that, just to see how it's done, and if it's a possibility for those of us with a BLACK thumb. But coffee is a priority, and I have to have it each morning or I start having shakes and the world is just NOT a happy place.

So each morning, in order to greet the day, I have a routine, which includes letting the dog out, starting coffee, feeding the cats, and making a cup of coffee (with plenty of milk and sugar) for my wife and I, and maybe my oldest daughter.

This morning, though, I ran into a bit of a hiccup. As I was scooping sugar out, I noticed there was a small orange triangle sitting on the top of the sugar in the canister. Looked like a playing piece for Trivial Pursuit, so I wondered what the kids had been doing with the game, and why they'd stuck the 'Sports' pie in the sugar bowl.

So, I scooped under it, to pull it out and dump it in the sink. But here's what I found...



Needless to say, My little Toddler had been experimenting with hiding things...

You know, I've heard of orange pekoe tea, but I've never heard of orange crayola coffee.

While You Were Frosting

Every New Years, we watch certain movies in our family that remind us of the Christmas and New Years Seasons.

So, last night our 19yo daughter broke out our VHS copy of 'While You Were Sleeping', a romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock.

All of us started out watching the movie, but it couldn't hold the interest of our 13yo son or our 3yo son.

The 13yo went into the other room to play some Star Fox Adventures, and the 3yo started playing quietly with his toys.

And then not so quietly.

After a bit, the movie got to the good part, where Lucy (Sandra Bullock) is revealing the big secret that pervades the whole movie. It's a scene filled with angst and emotion, and we were all sucked into the movie.

Then our 3yo got very noisy, chasing cats back and forth across the upstairs screaming and enjoying himself immensely, so we had to put the movie on pause while we tried to reign him in and get him under control.

We couldn't hear the movie anyway.

So our 19yo daughter took over the little man, while our 10yo daughter tried to calm the kitties, and I went up to our bedroom to dress for bed and get ready for our nighttime routine (reading the kids a story).

When I got to our room, though, I was so shocked I hollered out our 3yo's name.

There must have been some note in my voice that led our son to believe he was going to get smooshed, because he ran to hide in the bathroom downstairs, holding his bottom all the way.

Well, I knew I wasn't going to spank him in anger, so when I got to him, I told him that we were going to go see what he had done before he got his spanking.

So we headed up the stairs to see.

In our bedroom, there was white cream squirted all over the dresser, the floor, my coat (flung haphazardly over a chair), and even the top of our ceiling-height curtains.

There was crumbled gingerbread house all over the floor, mixed in with the cream, and there was a bottle of Oil of Olay covered with cream.

I had a talk with the little man, asking him what he thought he was doing squirting that stuff all over the bedroom.

He said he was 'frosting cookies.'

I felt a cold chill run up and down my spine. After a couple more questions, we determined that he had eaten the cookies.

Bet they didn't taste very good.

So while my wife cleaned up the mess, I called the poison control center.

When I told her what the product was, how old the child was, and then mentioned what he said he was doing, the lady laughed so hard she practically fell out of her chair.

She said that he probably didn't enjoy the taste of that, which explains why there was gingerbread all over the floor.

Thankfully, he didn't need to go to the hospital. She said if he ate a LOT of it he would have a belly ache, and that would be the most that would happen.

But the traumatic event reminded us all of Prov 29:15 - The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

The passage, of course, is describing a child who receives no discipline. Our little guy was left to himself for a short time, but he didn't get away with it...

Dis Mantle

So it all started with the Mantle Clock.

It was (and still is, in some respects) a thing of beauty, the only real thing of value I got from my first 'real' job there at Jostens (other than a good career path!).

The clock was sold in an employee auction because of a slight mar on one foot, a $350 mantle clock that I picked up as the highest bidder for $70.

I was real proud of that clock, and would wind it weekly, to hear its lovely chimes ringing through the house. Letting us know what time it was. Even in the middle of the night.

When we got our second home, because of the ice storm here in the Memphis area, I insisted we get a home with a fireplace, which of course came with a mantle. An excellent place for a mantle clock, wouldn't you agree?

By this time we had two children - a daughter (9) and a son (3) and one on the way.

We already knew that our daughter was ADD, due to a diagnosis when she was in the first grade and struggling a bit. But the jury was out on our son.

Well, life at work had gotten quite hectic, and I was putting in extremely long days and weeks, working weekends and quite worn out, so I forgot to perform my Monday ritual winding of the ever-important mantle clock.

Tuesday came, and my 3yo dear son reminded me to wind the clock. I said I would, but a call from work caused me to rush off without doing so.

A cardinal sin.

Dragging back home at around 7:30pm that night, I went straight to the kitchen and went to the fridge to pour myself a glass of iced tea. Something us southern folks find a necessity down here in the sweltering south.

I stopped in mid pour, with the dawning realization that something was STRUCTURALLY DIFFERENT about the home. No, not just 'I cleaned the Living Room!' or 'I rearranged the furniture, do you like it?' or 'I bought a slipcover for the couch, that's a nice color, don't you think?'

No, this was on the level of a new window, or a new door.

So I put the pitcher down and came back in the living room, looking for the cause of my concern. And suddenly, I saw it. Or rather I didn't see it.

The mantle.

It was GONE. That's right, gone. Not painted, or damaged, just completely and utterly gone. Unpainted drywall was staring me in the face.

I blinked.

It was STILL GONE.

I rubbed my eyes.

The mantle persisted in its gone-ness.

I've heard of people stealing stereos, TVs, even Tickle-Me-Elmos. But a mantle thief??

I said, 'Um, Honey?'

'Yes?' came her bright voice from the other room.

'Where's the MANTLE?' - I tried to sound as sweet as she did, but I was failing miserably.

'Oh, the Mantle?'

'Yes, the MANTLE.' There was a different note in my voice, the 'don't mess with me' voice.

'Oh, it's in the garage.' As if that settled the matter.

'Um, why isn't it on the wall?' Like where it belongs...

'Ask your son...'

Yes. It appears that my sequentially thinking son had decided to wind the clock for poor Daddy, since he forgot. Being athletic (and giftedly so) this little 3yo took a running leap, and caught the mantle. Pulled himself up and got an elbow on top the mantle, and hung there by one hand while he opened the door to the clock and attempted to find the key to wind it.

At this point, physics and gravity took over.

The professional construction crew who built our home probably didn't consider the possibility that we would be hanging toddlers from our mantle. Usually you hang stockings from this piece of furniture, and perhaps put bric-a-brac on it, with nothing much heavier than a mantle clock expected.

So the ten-penny nails began to come out and with a groan and a crash, toddler, clock and mantle came crashing down.

Luckily for our toddler, the clock decided to slide before falling, and went past him, and the rather large, rather disassembled mantle fell in front of him.

When the family came running to find out who had started the war, they all decided to hide the evidence and hope that Daddy wouldn't notice.

Yes, I'm ADHD too. But not so far gone I'd miss a missing mantle. (Well, ok, for more than the time it takes to pour some tea...)

Well, dear son and I had a talk, and he helped me glue the mantle clock back together (yes! It still works and everything!)

And I took a trip to the store to buy a box of heavy duty nails and I rehung the mantle in such a way that I could hang on it myself. (Yes, I tried this).

I'm reminded through all of this, though, that I should not hold too tightly to THINGS. Like Mantle clocks. As beautiful as these things are, everything in this life is passing away. And sometimes God has to use a prybar, or an over-helpful toddler, to open our fingers so he can fill our hands with the good things of lasting value.