It's all in a Name

You may be wondering, what the heck’s a Rinnagade?  Let me explain.

See, the clock ticks a little bit different in our home.  Our typical is atypical.  Our normal is different.  I sound vaguely scary on paper. Ok, maybe not horror movie scary but living in the south I do get the "bless your heart, you've got your hands full" comment and look nearly every time I’m in public with my kids.  Being from the Detroit area, I find this doubly amusing.
Here’s why: I have three boys - not that intimidating, right? Three kids is an American family average but all boys? Maybe a little intense. Then people start to ask questions and with each answer their eyes get a little bigger.

"Yes, they're twins."
“How old, you ask? The twins are five and my youngest is four.”
(I'll do the math; this means my kids are one minute and sixteen months apart and appear to be triplets).

That alone will get me “the look" at a grocery store, but then toss in the fact that I home school.

I usually get an eyebrow raise and some sort of inflected “mmmhh” noise at this point unless the person is home school friendly in which case, the conversation will reroute exclusively to home school and they may never hear the rest of our description.

The twins both have Autism.
And by nature, our youngest has a strong spirit and he's endlessly competing for attention.  

Some would say I’m essentially running a special needs preschool.

Did I mention ADHD runs in my husband’s family?  Combine all these factors and that leads us to my kitchen.  We follow a special diet which requires us to limit our sugar, eat no additives of any kind (and there are MANY), as well as eating as low of toxin levels as possible (i.e. expensive…er, I mean, …organic).  I say “our” when it’s really the boys but this means my husband gets dragged into eating healthy as well.  And just for fun, I have Celiac disease.  Grocery shopping is awesome.

I have a friend who has told me on more than one occasion: “I should really pray for you more.”

Why do I say all this?  Believe me, it’s not to get sympathy and certainly not to get some type of award for valor but to give you a snapshot of this blog – and my life, really. 
I mean, we’re already misplaced Yankees, we figured we’d stand out down here, so it’s no surprise that we’ve gotten good at being the odd balls.  Two and a half years into diagnosis, I can say confidently that I’ve actually grown to like it – embraced it fully.  It used to bother me; standing out in general, I mean. The looks I got from people who didn't understand my children.  I just wanted to fit in.  Have a nice little family, in a safe little town, and live peaceful little routine lives.  Well it turns out God had another plan for us and I’ve figured out by now that His plans always end up working out better than mine.

So in a nutshell, that’s life as a Rinnagade.