Joel Joel Joel

Let me just explain my middle son to those of you who aren't familiar with him. He is 10 years old with the soul of about a 35-40 year old professor with an anger management problem.

He's unbelievably intelligent and unbelievably loud. He goes here and there and all around the globe in the scope of one conversation to the point that you feel like your head is knotted and twisted like the roots of an old oak tree.

He is funny but doesn't mean to be; he is amazingly intuitive; his heart is the size of the Pacific Ocean, and he can be the most helpful, nurturing person in the world. Except when he's not.

He was diagnosed with a mood disorder this past spring, and we are in the beginning stages of learning to navigate these often tumultuous waters. It feels like when Seth was first diagnosed with autism. We're back to researching, trial and error, frustration and sometimes triumph.

Bedtime is the worst time of the day even though we have established a routine that he himself developed. I won't go into the ugly details, but just know that almost every night we have to clench our teeth and fists to control our urges to sign him up to be the first minor to do a tour of duty at the International Space Station.

Are you pickin' up what I'm puttin' down here? He's exhausting.

Today I have my first appointment with the school counselor to get the ball rolling on writing his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) to make his school day flow well with the issues he has. There are three issues to deal with: he has a mood disorder, he has ADD, and his IQ is in the superior range.

So basically, he approaches things with higher intelligence than most around him, and jumps into an activity impulsively before thinking it through (danger be damned), but has problems sticking with a concept long enough to process it through to the end before moving on to something else (gets bored with it), and goes from extremely amicable and easy to deal with to someone you want to toss on the turnip truck driving out of town and back again with little warning for the rest of us. He can't keep up with the speed of his own brain, jumps from concept to concept before finishing the last one, and lacks the emotional stability to handle it all.

It is SO FUN around our house.

Stick all of that with the autism of the 5-year-old, and you've got yourself one crazy family. The dictionary defines crazy as: unusual, bizarre; having an unusual, unexpected, random quality, behavior or pattern; mentally deranged, demented, insane.

Yeah. That's about right.

Keep me in your prayers today. This is an important meeting.