Not Like Everybody Else

Every once and a while Bart will turn to Dominyk and say, "Dominyk, you're not like everybody else." And at that point Dominyk never argues.

For this reason, his birthday was not like everyone else's. His birthday is actually tomorrow, but Bart is leaving first thing in the morning so we decided to celebrate it today by going out to eat. We went to Dominyk's favorite place and after a few conversations this morning that had made me particularly crabby, I really wasn't in the mood to sit and wait. However, Bart had a meeting I didn't know about and so he stayed at the church. With Rand and Leon. And everyone else came with me, except Salinda and Gabby as Salinda had chosen to take a nap instead of eating out with us.

We got to the restaurant a little after 11 and intense obnoxiousness prevailed for 30 full minutes until Bart finally got there. The combination of teenage giddiness, testosterone, and mental health issues pushed me near to the edge while waiting for him. Dominyk lost it towards the end and suggested he was not going to participate in his own birthday dinner because his siblings were "tormenting" him. I felt similarly tormented, but was keeping my mouth shut.

We convinced him to come inside after which he declared, before ordering, that his stomach hurt and he didn't feel like eating. He finally decided he would order, and we waited a while for our food. He left and spent a long time in the bathroom. When the food came he then proceeded to complain about how much his stomach hurt and how he didn't want to eat. He decided not to have them sing to him and give him a free dessert as he did the past couple years, instead he wanted a to-go box for his food (which he most likely will never finish) and spent the remainder of the meal time in the van waiting for us to be done.

Before he left the restaurant however, he convinced Bart to agree to take him to the store to spend his birthday money. Bart told him he would take him at 3:00.

Well, if you know that Dominyk has ADHD and OCD, you can imagine how 12:30 o 3 went. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. They are now off shopping and I'm sitting here thinking "we coulda had that much fun for free."

We have kids that aren't like everyone else. Thus our family is not like everyone else. And birthday celebrations are not like everyone else's either. I guess the picture above shows that even the photograph of the birthday boy isn't like everyone else (this is the best of the 10 I took).

But we will keep doing it.... Keep making memories, keep trying to make birthdays happy, and t we promised to do... even if we aren't like everyone else.