Cinder-ange's fairy godtherapists

I love professionals - counselors, social workers, occupational therapists, doctors, teachers, behavioural consultants - I love them all! Maybe a little too much...

As some of you may know, I can get a tad needy at times. It's no wonder. Caring for a son with special needs, a daughter with an attitude, a husband with health concerns, a home, a yard, and a dirty little hamster, while starting a writing and teaching career isn't exactly a walk in the park. (It's more like a run through waste-deep water, over slippery rocks, dodging sharks and piranas, all while cooking dinner.)

But as a caregiver, I love to give. So I don't want to be needy with my friends, I want to give them encouragement, support, hugs, and the occassional cheesy joke.

That's where my professionals come in. Like Paris Hilton and her team of hair-stylists and dog-walkers, Ange the superstar homemaker needs her support team. I get to be super needy with them so that I can keep giving everywhere else.

This week we met with our social worker to plan our family goals. (Nathan's kind of like our fairy godmother. We name our wishes; he helps us make them happen. But don't tell him I called him that.)

Here are some of the goals we came up with:
1. To have more fun as a family, with more activities at home and more outings.
2. For Ange to relax and and have more time to herself for important tasks such as shoe shopping, biking, and sushi dates with Deborah.
3. For Tony and Ange to parent more as a team instead of tag-teaming.
4. To combat parental fatique. (I fear this will mean giving up some 11:00 PM episodes of CSI.)
5. To improve the family's bedtime routine.
6. To crank up the romance.

Not a bad list, huh? More fun than your typical New Year's Eve "lose weight, save money, drink less, and declutter the filing cabinet" list, anyway. No, the Schellenbergs are going to eat more, spend more and let the messes lie - all in the name of fatigue-busting, team-building, stress-reducing family and marital FUN. Ha!

And in the process of implementing these goals, I suspect we will realize we made most of the changes on our own without fairy godmother's wand. But it sure is nice to have the support people around to get us started in the right direction. (If only Brittney Spears was so lucky.)