Herding Honulas: Allow me to introduce myself ...

Hi, my name is Cristin Baker. I am a typical mom. Well not really typical, my life is just wild. No not the type of wild where I am going to a club or drinking until I passed out, or wondering where my underwear went. Wild in the way that on a daily basis I have something happen to me that is unexpected, unimaginable, and quite entertaining. I have many friends tell me that I should write about my “stories”. I seem to always recover from these daily happenings and my friends are always nail biting by my recoveries. Recently this had made me really think about starting that journey. And the more I thought about the journey the more my fingers started to type.

So before I go any further, Let me introduce myself!

At least my son sticks to coffee ...
hat-tip to manglewood.com

I live in rural Pennsylvania with my husband and five children. We are a blended family; mine, his, and ours. I had worked full time in human services but that ended when the demand of the family was blaring in my ear. So, I work part time on some evenings and the rest of my days are the crazy happenings of my life. If anyone has ever dared to stay home with children, than you know that it is exhausting and challenging. You only wish that you could have coffee breaks and bathroom breaks instead of the constant audience when you are on the toilet and having my four-year-old drink half my coffee.

It seems that at least once a day where I want to scream “leave me alone”. I don’t really mean “leave me alone”, in fact I am very lonely. I crave adult interaction and at times seem very isolated and it seemed worse after my youngest turned two. Our youngest child was diagnosed with autism. Immediately he begun interventions and therapies but by the age of three he still had not improved. Our life before is a sliver of my imagination. We do not go out to eat, we do not attend church, we do not have many outings all because of his impairments. Of course we have tried and keep trying but most of us come home crying.

Lemonade

I am not one for clichés but do you know the saying “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”? Well I try to live this motto with our family. And most of the time it is by using some imagination or participating in a good deed . So this week’s lemons included Jayson breaking a chair and busting my lip at a doctor’s appointment during a melt down; running out of gas; The toilet clogging; and I welcomed shingles.

And the lemonade that I created today was making pink lemonade cookies with the kids. Sometimes it just takes a little sweet cookie to make a week really not that bad.