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I was born today, in 1964, at that time who would ever had thought of facebook, twitter, Ipad, Ipod, Gmail / email / Wii / XBOX 360 / podcasts / blogs or any of the miriade of "time saving" things that are around us every day.

I tell you that being part of this technical revolution has bees a sobering And inspiring time. Who would have thought that I would have a blog or that I would have 7 great tech savvy kids that do not help me with my "bloggings". Not that I need them, I have tried to keep up with most of the big leaps in the tech world, mostly thanks to my listening to podcasts, The other major benifit has been my increase in my Catholic faith by listening to so many great catholic podcasts, they helped me stay sane & faithFULL at my last job. Now I find myself short on listening time and I need to increase it, I plug my player into my car but there are not alot of 20 minute pod casts. I recently took 6 days to listen to a 54 minute podcast from Catholic Answers on my commute.

Don't worry I will figure this out and I will always be there for those that matter to me the most.

Peace and mercy to all that read this and,

Jesus I trust in you.

Mark

ABORTION

My fellow New Yorkers. S2524 the "Health Reproductive Act" is moving through the NY lesislature. Please contact your legislator and the gov, and strongly oppose this bill. It will basically say that all abortions including partial birth abortions like the ones in Philly are protected by state law. It also undermines conscience laws in place for doctors and other health providers. And it will remove the stipulation that a licenced doctor has to preform the killing of a child by allowing any health "practitioner" the ability (that means to get payment, and that is what it is all about) to kill your child "prior to viability". It will say that it is discriminatory to favor child birth over abortion. So say good bye to Inner city pre natal heath care and any support to "teen pregnancy" birth alternatives. We need to stop this bill NOW so contact Gov Cuomo ( an alleged catholic) and your local representative now.




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Dinner gymnastics

Meal time with Autistic kids can be amazing. Luckily my kids are not allergic to any foods, yes some have a little lactose intolerance inherited from Mom, but for the most part they can eat anything. Not saying they will eat anything but we can hope. Now I would not classify myself as a full on foodie, but I have been known to make some interesting dishes that would challenge any Iron Chef in the neighborhood. I had some real nice venison cutlets that I made into venison parm, and they ate it. Every once in a while I will make what I call "Chicken ala Daddy" And depending on what ingredients I have available that can be anything from a basic chicken & veg dish, pasta dish on the stove top to a stew, or something else. Now Peter has some eclectic food tastes, he will eat a whole cheese pizza, delivered or Digornio, if we could afford it he would eat pizza for every meal, and snack too. Now we have a "sit down" dinner every night, for the majority of the family, and what I mean is we some times have an issue with getting all of the "little guys" staying at the table. This is not a huge issue, and can lead to some fun times and some harder times. One thing that I have done with mostly good success is to pretend to call one of their teachers, this usual results in the boys eating their dinner and me deleting alot of voice mails at work, but it is worth it.
Now that the twins are 7 we are trying to hold them to a little more stringent manners routine, saying God Bless You, and  excuse me for the appropriate bodily function if you know what I mean. Well the other day we were eating dinner and Nate was eating like a champ, he usually does real well, and he started talking with food in his mouth, and being the "good" dad that I am trying to be I said stop talking with food in your mouth. to which he responded to me by looking at me, putting his hands up and signing something to me. Now these kids have learned signing since they were 2 and I am sure he was actually telling me something but I just fell off my chair as did Lynn. We then spent the next 30 minutes trying to determine how much sign language our kids knew and if they were able to talk about us behind out back. The jury is still out on that one.

A day at 2 dentists, plus 1.

I have bad teeth, not Austin Powers bad, but not something to write the tooth fairy about. I dropped a filling mid Autumn and had not been able to schedule a visit to get it filled. Just plain lazy, no excuses. But around Thanksgiving I felt an abscess starting to move in to the neighborhood, and one day it just kind of expanded my face on the left side. I was not able to see my dentist at that time because he was on vacation, so I called my primary doc and got a prescription for an antibiotic, which knocked it out real fast. So Christmas came and went as did New Years . So on MLK day 2 of my older kids had had dentist appointments and I was able to jump in and get a quick xray and he said we can save the tooth with a root canal. I said ok and scheduled it for today, and took the whole day off because Jake also had a dentist appointment in the afternoon for another cap on one of his baby teeth.

So I got tot the dentist office at 10:50 am and went right in, the assistant numbed my gum for the Novocain shots. Now as a kid we never had Novocain for our dental work and actually it really raised my pain tolerance, so even though I have been opting for Novocain for the past 13 years I still use the techniques learned as a kid. Now as I was laying there waiting to be numb I was reflecting to myself that the dentist office really has not changed in the 40 odd years that I have been going. More on that later. When the doctor finally came in I knew the numbing would not last for the balance of the visit, I could feel the adjacent teeth starting to come back to life about 20 minutes in. So I just kept my eyes closed, said some prayers, should have put my mp3 player on, maybe next time and reflected on life.

I got home around 1 pm and we started to get Jake ready for his visit. I made sure I had my Ipod Touch in my pocket for Jake and Lynn and I loaded him in the car and we headed to a pediatric dentist office up the Northway. Now Jake is autistic ans is mainly non verbal and when we pulled into the parking lot he started his "all done" mantra, which lasted until we left. Now we went through check in and "pre op" with the nurse in a private room, we opted for sedation with him since he would be uncooperative to say the least, we attempted to get him to drink the meds which he immediately spit out all over himself, Lynn and me. The doc came back in about 20 minutes later and administered the med through poor Jake's nose. Well he did not like that but it worked and about 5- 1 minutes later we were ready. So off we went to the room where he would get his work done. In this room we had 3 nurses and the doc, we laid Jake on the chair an they put him in a big blue velcro cocoon, to immobilize him for the procedure, the deep pressure helps to keep him calm along with the meds. After about 15 minutes they had sealed his teeth, and were about to cap his bad tooth, through out the procedure Jake was alternately crying and laughing, scrape squirt cry, drill drill laugh. Also they placed a rubber suction plate in his mouth that not only did the suction it also kept his mouth open with out too much extra assistance, my jaw is still a little sore from this mornings oral gymnastics. It seemed like it could have been a dentist office on the Enterprise, shiny, gleaming instruments, nurses in color coordinated uniforms, the doc in a polo shirt with his name on it, fancy head gear and tools. Beam me up. Now earlier this month I took our youngest Nate up there for some small cavities, he is also on the spectrum (PDD-NOS) but he did not need the restraints and used laughing gas for his procedure. His big thing was he needed to look at the instrument before the doc could use it on him, and he giggled through the entire visit as well.  And when he was finished he said, this is a direct quote from Nate, "Thanks Dr Awesome!!" And that was that.

I know many people my age don't like going to the dentist but I wonder... if we went to a pediatric dentist when we were their age would things be different?  And were there many pediatric dentists around in the 70's? And where were they???