normal for us

Sometimes day and weeks will go by and I’ll think to myself that all is good and normal and regular. At these times I think I must have been silly to think Z had any issues or problems. And I get mad at myself for making a big deal about something that was obviously nothing. Silly me. Stupid me. Making mountains out of mole hills me.

And that’s where we’ve been lately. Z has been doing well. And this is good news. His anxiety levels are much lower than they had been. He hasn’t been reacting to change in negative ways as much as he had been. He tells me he loves school again (there were a few weeks that he was bored and done with it all). So yes, all is good. All seems “normal”. Yahoo.

But then it hits me that maybe all isn’t as normal as I think.

Z loves football. It’s his “thing”. It’s what he does for every waking moment of every day … if allowed to (we had to set a “no football in school except at recess” rule). I guess I’m so used to this “all football all the time” that I find it normal. It is our normal. But last night I was a tad bit tired of hearing about football so I tried something. I told Z he couldn’t talk about football for one minute. For 60 seconds he must talk about something else. I gave him the subject of school — talk about school for one minute. He couldn’t do it. Well, he did, but it was a struggle. I watched the clock and it was a very long 60 seconds. As soon as Z was allowed to stop talking about school, he went back to football. Non-stop, a million words a minute, full throttle football talk.

Z talks of football constantly. Stats. Names. Scores. Sometimes the NFL, and sometimes the ZFL (his imaginary football league, with its own teams and players and rules).

Z goes to bed talking and thinking about football, and awakes the same way. It’s as though he hits an imaginary Pause button when he falls asleep and hits Play as soon as his eyes open in the morning.

{Sigh}

Maybe not so normal, huh?

And then there’s the issue of the gloves. Z misplaces gloves (as well as most other things) often. We’ve lost a few gloves in the past couple months. Always an odd number are lost, of course, never a complete pair. But I’ve been down this motherhood route before, so I know to purchase more than one pair of the same type of glove. One lost glove? Not a problem … here’s another that matches the one you still have.

But then what happens when another few gloves disappear, and it’s not even the worst of winter yet? Well, I am beyond excited to tell you that I went to my favorite store and stocked up on gloves on clearance. Each 3-pack of those one-size-fits-all gloves was less than $1.50. I bought four sets. That’s 12 pair of gloves (for about only $5 … yahoo!!!!!!). I considered getting more sets, because 12 pair may not be enough. Might have to swing back to the store later this week.

When I told my husband about this purchase, that’s when I realized how unbelievably excited I was! About gloves! About 12 pair of gloves! I was talking with lots of exclamation points! This was a big deal! And a good deal! And how great is this! Wow!

Not normal. But it’s my normal.

So okay, this is my normal. Talking about football. Playing football. Listening to football. Watching football. Discussing football. And buying gloves in bulk.

Maybe it’s not the definition of normal — okay, it is not the definition of normal — but it’s my normal because it is Z’s normal.

I’m not stupid or silly to think all is well. It’s just that I’ve adjusted my definition of “normal”. This is normal for us. And this is okay.

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