We almost lost Thumper

What happened was, Thumper and I had made the trek to the cake decorating store in Berkeley for the special cupcake papers for NSSDs 40th birthday party on Saturday. They ended up not having the papers I wanted so it was an almost wasted trip, but I picked up some sprinkles and a pastry box big enough to transport 75 cupcakes and was on my way out the door when the unwieldy piece of cardboard wrapped itself around a string of jingle bells hanging from the door handle. I turned to free myself and the box from the door and when I turned back around Thumper and his stroller were nowhere to be seen. After frantically glancing up and down the street, I finally spotted the bright green Bob overturned in the middle of University Avenue. There was no movement or crying, and instantly I knew that the it had been struck by a car and that Thumper was dead or, at the very least, suffering from a severe head trauma. I darted over and righted the stroller to reveal Thumper, securely strapped in, unscathed, and completely unaffected by it all. In reality, it was fortunate that the stroller had capsized as it went over the curb since it had kept him from proceeding far enough out into the street to be in any real danger. A few more feet and he would have been a goner.

After I had rescued him from the wayward stroller, showered him with kisses, and checked and rechecked his carseat before heading off to the next errand, I started to think about a story I had heard a few years ago about an incident that was captured on a security camera. A woman was running to beat a train at the crossing while carrying her baby in a car carrier. At the last minute she decided she wouldn't make it and stopped, however the carrier kept moving forward from momentum and swung out in front of the train just as it passed. I didn't see the video myself, and the story is horrendous enough that I would like to believe that it is an urban myth. It doesn't matter, though, the image that I have conjured up in my head is stuck there forever and whenever I think about it my heart hurts as if it was my baby, and my moment to wish I could take back. None of us is impervious to mistakes or moments of sheer stupidity. I am acutely aware of all of the times I forgot to buckle Bear's seatbelt or turned my back for a minute too long, and I shudder to think of what could have happened. Life is full of almosts and near misses. Luckily for me almost doesn't count.

We headed on to the grocery store for cake mixes, and as we left the checker asked me if I needed any help out. For a moment I imagined Thumper in the grocery cart, careening down the steep parking lot and spilling out onto Redwood Road, perhaps gaining enough forward momentum to make it all the way to Taco Bell. I took a deep breath. "No thanks" I said, taking a firm grip on the cart. "I can handle it."

A bang up job.

My hairdresser left me. True, he was only my stylist for a year, and it was at least 12 years ago that he moved to New York, but the pain is real and I have never really gotten past it and moved on with my life. Oh, I have had other hairdressers since then, some of them reasonably good, but none have made it past the second cut. No one has been able to take the place of Glen. None have had that magical way of delivering the perfect, stylish, maintenance-free haircut that he did.

For the past 12+ years, I have been looking for that perfect hairstyle that will change my life. The problem has been that I won't trust a new hairstylist with a major change, and I haven't stuck with any stylist long enough to trust her. Instead, I put off getting a cut until the situation becomes an emergency, then head off to whomever I managed to find that can cut my hair on a Saturday on short notice, ending up with another mediocre cut.

I am not sure what got into me a couple of weeks ago when I decided to use the occasion of visiting my parents to get a cut at the walk-in place at the local mall. I am also not sure what I was thinking when I asked for a complicated, layered style with bangs (which I haven't had since the hairstylist in Italy who thought he would do the uncultured american a favor and send me home with hair an inch long.) I should have known better when she looked at the picture I showed her and frowned for several seconds. When she said "I'll be right back" and disappeared into the back room for over 5 minutes, I should have run for the hills. I don't know why I have such a hard time trusting my instincts. Instead, I stayed, naively and optimistically believing that what I would get would be somewhat similar to what I had asked for. After all, this woman was trained to cut hair, was she not? How bad could it be?

I will tell you how bad it could be: First, she cut the back of my hair to the correct length, while cutting the front an inch too short on one side and 2 inches too short on the other. Then, instead of soft, blended layers, she cut a thick, blunt, choppy shelf 2/3 of the way around my head. It was a comical, exaggerated, sitcom version of a bad haircut. It looked like a practical joke. And here is the best part: when I went back to complain to the manager, the woman who had cut it came over to defend herself, telling me I had the wrong kind of hair for that style.

After a week of wearing my hair in a ponytail, I finally got up the courage to have it fixed. I tracked down a highly recommended salon and managed to get a next-day appointment. A perfectly nice person named Amber did what she could with what was left of my hair. She managed to blend the layers so I don't look like I had had an accident with farming equipment. She did what she could do even up the sides. She had a lot to work with, and in the end I think it is just going to have to grow out for a couple of month before it will look decent again. So it is back in a pony tail for the forseeable future. Lesson learned - no more mall cuts.

The bangs do look cute, though.

Nothing a few M&Ms can't fix

Every year around Mother's Day, Salary.com has been releasing a study of how much stay-at-home-moms should be paid based on the various jobs they perform. Among the duties listed in our job description are cook, nurse, daycare provider, janitor, teacher, etc. The one job missing from the list is hazardous materials specialist.

It has been another poopy week for us. It all started about 2 weeks ago when, to my best guess, Bear was a wee bit constipated, had a painful poop, and decided he was not going to be doing that again. Thus began the proclamations of "My tummy hurts, I have to poop - NO, I don't have to poop!" Despite our best efforts, we just could not coax him into pooping and after a couple of days he would not even consider sitting on the potty. 5 poopless days later we went to the doctor, who assured us that this is normal behavior for this age and sent us on our way with a suggestion of adding Miralax to his juice until the situation resolved itself. Lo and behold, an hour after finishing his laxative-laced apple juice, Bear did indeed sit down on the potty and produce approximately 5 days worth of poop. Problem solved. Or not. Bear, who has been writing new scripts for himself like crazy, had already decided that the potty is really optional. It was another 2 days before we saw any more movement, and then nothing again for nearly a week.

Funny thing about poop, you can only hold it for so long before it starts coming out on its own. At first we started to see evidence of an impending poop in his underwear, then little bits in the bathtub. Then the floodgates really opened. Skid marks turned into mudslides at a rate of 2 or 3 a day, each accident taking a half hour of clean up time and requiring a full wardrobe change. At one point Bear said "I don't feel good. There is something in my bottom." "That's poop" said I "and it needs to come out. Poop goes in the potty. If you don't sit on the potty, it will come out in your pants." "Then it's going to come out in my pants." said he. And sure enough, out it came at school an hour later. He came home with 2 plastic bags - one full of clothes, one full of poopy underwear - and a report from his teacher that she found him hiding under a pile of pillows. Bear may not care about the uncomfortable load in his underwear or smelling like skid row, but at least he has the good since to not want other people to know about it.

The fix was so simple I am ashamed that I didn't think of it earlier. M&Ms. The same bribe we used to potty train him in the first place. All it took was 2 M&Ms to get him back on track and then he seemed to get right back into the swing of things. Of course I have thought that before.

How Did I Get Here?

The boys and I are on our own again this week. NSSD is in Nashville on business. Now, it is a well-documented fact that I am a big old neurotic scaredy-cat who should never be left home alone at night. Every night, no matter how exhausted I am and how much I swear to myself that tonight I will be going to bed early, it is practically unheard of for me to hit the hay before midnight when I am alone. Oh, I will start off to bed at 10, but somehow what with all of the checking and rechecking of doors and windows, even getting back out of bed once or twice to make sure I didn't leave my house keys hanging in the front door, pretty soon 10 turns into 12 and there I am still being creeped-out by the overzealous motion detector light on our back porch and repositioning the phone on my nightstand to be within an easy arms reach.

Just before he left, NSSD, in all earnestness, asked me if I ever wondered to myself how we ended up here. (What? You mean crammed into an 1100 sq. ft. house not far from one of the scariest neighborhoods in one of the most crime-infested cities, an hour and a half commute from your office? You mean that?) It is funny that he brought it up as if he had just thought of it, when it is in fact a dialogue we have probably had 50 times in the past year. I know how we got here, and it actually made sense at the time. What I don't know, and am wondering now, is what are we still doing here?

We have been incredibly fortunate this year to have happened to be where we are, just half a mile from what has turned out to be an excellent school for Bear. But know, as we are nearing his next IEP, which will decide his fate for next year, it is looking more and more like we are about to be stuck paying for a year of private preschool in order to avoid pushing him into kindergarten before he is ready - a preschool that is a half-hour away. So once again I am asking myself "what are we still doing here?" and I guess the answer is we just don't know what else to do.

I should have put him in bed with me

It was bound to happen. The flashlight has become and issue. Bear now feels that anytime he wakes up at night, he must start over with his flashlight ritual to fall asleep again. He also feels he must involve me in the process, so in addition to Thumper waking at all hours, now Bear is calling me out of bed to come help him find his flashlight, or just to point out that he has it. I know the flashlight has to go, but it is so hard to start that struggle at 2 a.m. knowing the screaming and banging on doors that are sure to ensue. I can't even imagine what new ritual will take its place.

No Leisure Suits

No Rest for the Mommy

Bear woke up calling for me before 6 the other morning, an hour and a half before usual. I went to his room expecting to find him sick, but instead was greeted with "I can't sleep. I want to sleep with you." God, that was hard. First of all, when you have had to wait nearly 4 years to hear your child express his needs to you, it is very hard not to give him exactly what he wants. And second, I would have loved to put him in my bed and snuggle with him. When Bear was younger, I used to secretly love it when he was sick, because it gave me an excuse to bring him to our bed to sleep. It seemed like no matter how sick he was or how much his emerging teeth were bothering him, once he was snuggled up next to me he would sleep contentedly through the night. Lately, though, he is so hell-bent on writing new scenes into his "script," that I know letting him into my bed once could spell disaster for months. One night several months ago, he asked me to sing "Bear Necessities" to him before bed, which I gladly complied with. Thus began a nightly ritual of song, which evolved over time to be accompanied by increasingly complex choreography involving a lot of spinning, which quite frankly made me nauseous and became a real problem when babysitting grandparents didn't know the lyrics or dance steps. I finally was able to ease out of the "Bear Necessities" phase a few weeks ago, only to have it replaced by "Puff the Magic Dragon" and a flashlight. So we will not be instituting a predawn snuggle session anytime soon. 

Now Thumper is sick with a virus that his dad brought home. He is coughing and stuffed up and, to add insult to injury, has 2 molars coming in to boot. He is generally miserable and waking up several times a night. Putting him in bed with me is not an option either. Thumper never learned how to snuggle up and go to sleep next to his mom. He will toss and turn, roll around on top of me and pinch my neck (which he for some reason finds comforting) until it is covered in tiny blue bruises. When he finally settles down to sleep it will be on his stomach, face down, with his nostrils hovering just millimeters above the mattress, so that my only options are to spend the rest of the night awake to monitor his breathing, or turn him onto his back thus awakening him and starting the process over. No, Thumper, too, will sleep in his own bed and I will be climbing out of my warm bed into the chill of the night to answer to my boys needs for the foreseeable future. 

Walking

Thumper is walking. He has been taking steps for some time - first 2 or 3, then 3 or 4, slowly working his way up. Now that he can get himself across a room on foot unassisted I think he can officially be labeled a walker. And because I am a neurotic, crazy mom I can't help but worry about the one stiff leg and slightly turned out ankle. I know I should give it some time to work itself out, but I am calculating how long I can wait before asking for a referral for an assessment. Clearly, now is too early and too easy to be dismissed as "neurotic mom" syndrome, particulary since I have already rung the alarm bells when he wasn't babbling by his 9 month appointment (he did it a week later) and again when he wasn't saying "mama" at his 12 month appointment (again, he did it a week later.) Wait too long and I will be entering "neglectful mother" territory. Somewhere in there is the "responsible, conscientious mother" sweet spot. I'm thinking 6 weeks should be about right. 

Update: It looks like it may be the shoes that are askew and not his ankles after all. And this is why we have adopted the "neurotic mom waiting period."

Valentine's Day

I am the room mother in Bear's preschool class. I signed up at the beginning of the year, and was really the obvious choice since I am the only stay at home mom of one of the few kids returning for his second year. The primary description of room mother is as follows:

1. Help plan class parties. 

This is really right up my alley. I thought it would be an appropriate outlet for my Martha Stewart impulses. It took me only minutes to have a mental plan in place for every holiday in the school year. There would be cupcakes, cookies, decorations, craft projects.... sigh. 

In October, I badgered Bear's teacher about Halloween party plans, which she seemed to already have under control but did accept my offer to bring sugar cookies for the kids to decorate. On Halloween, I showed up at class, Thumper in tow, with a box of homemade sugar cookies in bat and jack o' lantern shapes, 3 tubs of homemade icing in garish purple, green and orange, and bags of m&ms,  candy corn, and black and orange sprinkles. To my great chagrin, I found that nearly every parent in the room had put together goody bags for the kids. Because they each needed 8 goody bags. What's more, they seemed to be in cahoots with each other. My position as room mother had clearly been usurped. 

For the Christmas party I got tired. I was busy. And I was a little resentful that my party-planning prowess was not being fully appreciated or utilized. So while all of the other families were busily providing 8 4-year olds with an international smorgasbord, one mother even making time in her busy day to arrange a visit from Santa, I was scuttling the frosty the snowman cupcakes that I had been planning since, oh, July in favor of store bought baguettes and spreads. I still feel pangs of guilt every time I open my cupboard and see the lonely bag of marshmallows that would have formed the snowmen's heads.  

A week ago, this email went out to all of the parents from Bear's teacher regarding Valentine's Day:

...For those of you who have asked, we will just be having a miniature valentine's party in our class that day. You are welcome to send any cards or treats and we will be sure to have the kids pass them out to each other.

Meaning, parents had been clamoring to plan yet another hours-long food-filled festivity. (Did I mention that I am the room mother? I am. Me.) Now they were surely focusing those efforts into Valentine's Day "treats" to pass out among the kids. I spent days pondering whether I should be directing my attentions towards home made cards (fun for the first 2 or 3, then pulling teeth for the subsequent 5, possibly resulting in me trying to put together cards that look like they could have been decorated by Bear.) or heart-shaped cookies (just how much sugar can we cram into their little bodies?) until finally running out the clock and dashing to Long's the afternoon before to pick out store-bought invitations, telling Bear in the parking lot that he could pick out whatever valentines he wanted. 

"OK, I will pick out valentines cupcakes."

God, it was hard for me to hold back. Not only was this child, who could barely speak last year, actually coming up with his own idea and asking me for something, but he had tapped into the very thing I had been longing for. To make cupcakes for the class with my boy. And yet, I could imagine this scene playing out with every other child in the class. I imagined a backpack full of treats coming home. I'm competitive, but not that competitive. 

We picked out a box of good, old-fashioned card stock valentines with dum-dums to attach. I filled in all of the names, while Bear picked out stickers to attach and made scribbles on them. The first 3 were fun, the last 3 were like pulling teeth. I resisted the urge to make my own scribbles and pass them off as his. 

As expected, he returned home with a deluge of candy, stickers, pencils and stickers. I am still feeling a little bad about it. I could have won this round with a cupcake or even a heart shaped cookie. I could have won back the title of room mother. I could have been a contender. Sadly, it is just not as much fun to be an over-the-top mom in a room full of over-the-top moms. Although, I just thought of a way to make easter cupcakes out of those marshmallows... 

So, Bear started his social language group on Friday and it was at least a moderate success. He seemed to catch on quickly and participated in a make-believe jungle safari, even contributing an imaginary tiger sighting (of course. Bear loves tigers. He was a tiger for halloween and he plays tigers at school every week, so this tiger safari thing was right up his alley.) At the end he had enough points for staying with the group that got to pick out a prize - a cheap, plastic, made-in-china-and-probably-covered-in-lead-paint toy cell phone. He ran out waving it excitedly, calling out "Mom, look what I got!" 

Before we left, the therapist mentioned how well he did and what a great imagination he has. It's true, his imagination is getting better all the time. He puts on his fire hat and rain boots (which look like cowboy boots, but he has now has decided will serve as fireman's boots because the boots are a very integral part of the costume, so therefore from now on he will only wear his old 2 sizes too small cowboy boots when he wears the cowboy hat - the new cowboy boots now being fireman boots, remember), and says "What's the problem, Mom?", to which I have to come up with an imaginary fire to put out or cat in a tree to rescue. He hangs a slinky off the back of his brother's pants and calls him a lion. In the past week, my kitchen broom has served as a dragon, a scarecrow, a snorkel, and a statue with a plastic cup on top serving as a top hat. 

So he held the toy phone all the way home and sat with it at the kitchen table while he had his snack. The moment his dad came home from work he went and got it to show him, with the same enthusiasm he had after he picked it out. He held it in the car all the way up to my parents house and back this weekend, and showed it to his grandparents. And for all that imagination he has, it never once occurred to him to pretend to make a phone call on it. One more toy for the "things I am attached to and carry around the house but never actually play with" pile. 

What's Missing

I don't mean to harp on the autism thing. Really, I don't. I know it sounds like I am whining, when actually we are very lucky to be making such great progress. Still, we have been perplexed from time to time over the past year by some of the reactions of people around us. So, here goes:

Imagine if you will falling in love. Like truly, madly, deeply, desperately in love. A star-crossed, soul-mate sort of thing. Now imagine one day after a few years of blissful happiness together you wake up to find somebody else beside you. Someone who looks very much like the person you fell in love with, but with an entirely different personality. Cranky, unpredictable, less verbal, harder to reach. What's more, you find that this has been happening at an alarming rate to people all over the country and nobody knows why. You are confused, frightened and sad. Yet people all around you, people who get to keep living their own lives as normal, keep saying things to you like "look on the bright side," "be grateful for what you have," "how can you tell?", and "he seems fine to me." 

Maybe this person next to you is a great person - someone you could easily fall in love with, even. That's not the point. The point is it's not the same person. No matter how much you love this new person in his place, wouldn't you still be a little sad about the person you lost? Wouldn't you still want to know what happened? Wouldn't you still look for him?

Now, imagine this is your child. 

Quaker Oats

I am an oatmeal-making idiot. It is not entirely my fault, though. Have you read the directions on the side of the Quaker oatmeal box lately? 

Hmm, interesting... So for 2 servings of oatmeal, we double the oats, but don't double the water. Am I the only one that gets tripped up by this? Hey, Quaker geniuses, if you are going to mess with our heads like this, how about filling in the rest of the chart? What if we are making oatmeal for a family of 4? Does the amount of additional water get exponentially smaller with each serving, or is it 3/4 cup per person, or do we just subtract 1/4 cup from the entire batch? If this were a multiple choice test, I would pick c) not enough information. 

I usually am so preoccupied with trying to figure out the water issue, that I end up doubling (or tripling) the wrong side of the chart. This morning, after careful consideration, I settled on 2 3/4 cups of water for 3 servings, to which I added 3 cups of oats. That immediately looked really wrong. I checked the box again. Hmm, 1 cup of oats times three....but no, wait, that is 1 cup of oats for 2 servings.  Ack! More water, STAT! 

Voila! Oatmeal for 6, anyone?

New Shoes

I bought myself some new shoes the other day. Bought isn't really the right word for it though, as I was using the credit from a return, otherwise known as Catch and Release Shopping. The shoes are Converse low tops, and the are electric blue. Actually, they are kind of turquoise-y. Electric turquoise-y blue. A color that is usually reserved for Muppets or children's clothes. Even as I was buying them, I knew I was dating myself. It is nearly as inadvisable to for a 35 year-old to wear the same style shoes she wore in high school as it is to wear the same hairstyle or lipstick. Although, I did wear the same lipstick from high school up until it was discontinued 2 years ago. It was Rum Raisin and I still have a nearly empty tube somewhere in case I ever am at one of those custom-color blending cosmetic places. Anyway, I don't care. The shoes make me happy. 

When should I have known?

Over the course of the last year, I have been watching Thumper like a hawk. It is nowhere nearly as blissful and rewarding as the days when I had nothing but time on my hands to play with Bear and watch him grow, with the self-satisfied confidence that I was raising the world's most perfect child. With Thumper it is more of a consistent mild state of panic, constantly comparing each new achievement or lack thereof to his older brother. Thumper crawls just like Bear did, does that mean he is going to be autistic? But look, he is actually figuring out the shape sorter, does that mean he is going to be "OK?" Bear never played cars like that, should I have known then?

'Should I have known then' is actually a big preoccupation of mine. Not so surly dad and I both agreed for a long time that Bear's language and general development seemed to slow down to a virtual standstill somewhere between 2 and 3. Watching Thumper grow, though, I am constantly second guessing myself. I do remember a vague feeling of unease at Bear's second birthday party, but the more I scour my memory, the more I wonder if there were signs of autism even before that. It is an important question, and one that haunts me despite my mother's well-meaning urges not to "beat myself up," because the answer might unlock the riddle. What would make a child who made sustained eye contact on his third day of life, and who many described as the "happiest" and "friendliest" baby they have ever met, suddenly develop autism? If there was an environmental trigger, might I be able to avoid the same heartbreak with Thumper? The problem is, that trigger could be anything from vaccines to the air we breathe to organic pesticides to the floor cleaner I have been using, etc., and more than likely a combination of everything. 

Still, I will continue to rack my brain for clues. I have come up with a series of moments in time that illustrate the denial I was living in, though connecting the moments to a timeline is more difficult. For instance, I can remember wishing at the playground that Bear wouldn't laugh like that for fear that people would think there was something wrong with him. I remember many conversations with NSSD about why Bear wasn't speaking in sentences yet, even though he had an astounding vocabulary of nouns. I usually explained it away with the "children work on one skill at a time" excuse, but couldn't really explain why he didn't seem to be developing any other new skills. I remember telling my mother half jokingly at one point (I think after he ate the car window shade) that we sometimes couldn't really tell if he was a genius or retarded. [Hint: if you ever catch yourself thinking this about your child - GET HELP! (Unless you are the parent of a teenager, in which case it is totally normal.)] I remember being impressed that at such an early age Bear was able to flawlessly pronounce "hippopotamus." Then, one day he could not, which I explained to myself as "well, we haven't talked about hippopotamuses in awhile." Looking back, I think that is the moment when I should have acted. And yet, how seriously would his pediatrician have taken me if I had said to her "I don't know what is wrong, but he used to say hippopotamus and now he doesn't."?

For most of Bear's life, I checked his developmental milestones against those listed in the "What to Expect" books. I also have seen various autism awareness ephemera, listing signs to watch for, and I have to say, even those wouldn't have helped me out. Bear's case was far too subtle. Last week, as I was preparing for Thumper's one year Dr. visit, I found a list of developmental milestones to watch for on the CDC website. They were direct. They were specific. And if I had seen them two years ago, I would have known. I wish that every pediatrician's office would distribute these lists to every parent at the appropriate aged check-ups. Since they don't, in the interest of public service (in case any one ever reads this blog), I am linking to it here. 

Helpful Hints from Surlymom

Before I left my so-called career to become a full-time stay at home mom, I spent an average of 2 hours every week cleaning the house. I am not the best housekeeper in the world, but this included sweeping and mopping all of the floors, vacuuming rugs and furniture, and scrubbing the bathrooms. There was no way, I thought, that I wouldn't have that much time to clean during the week while I was home with the children. I was sure I would have plenty of time to keep up with it all while they napped. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

I somehow was not prepared for the sisyphean task that would stretch ahead of me. I now been fighting the battle of the kitchen for some time, and let me tell you, it is a losing battle. Every day I make 3 meals, and every day 3 meals are strewn about the floor.

Today I tried to get ahead of the laundry. After removing the first load, I noticed some paper particles trickling to the floor. I assumed that a kleenex escaped my notice in somebody's pocket until upon closer inspection I spotted a strange, gel-like substance along with it. Pulverized diaper. Somehow, I had managed to wash one of Bear's pull-ups along with the clothes.

As embarrassing as it is to admit that I threw a paper diaper in the wash, this is actually not the first time I have done it, though thankfully I have managed to escape washing a poopy diaper. At least I have that going for me. As near as I can figure, what happens is that I sort out the laundry onto the floor in Bear's room, then while I have my back turned, a drunken midget "helps" by sorting items out of the trash can into the piles.

Here is how you clean up a pulverized-diaper-in-the-laundry mess: First, remove all laundry from the washing machine and shake excess diaper bits off into the bathtub. Next, remove what you can from the inside of the washing machine and the floor with damp paper towels. Run a cycle in the machine without clothes, then return the clothes for another wash cycle. Remove clean laundry to reveal a hot wheels car hiding at the bottom of the load.

Surlymom Product Review - Glad ClingWrap

Target was completely cleaned out of Saran Wrap. I knew I had been down the ClingWrap road before, but I didn't want to make another stop. I somehow thought that ClingWrap would be better than no wrap. I was wrong.

Glad ClingWrap is CRAP, people. Utter Crap. They should call it Glad ResthalfheartedlyontopofyourfoodWrap. It is a complete waste of money. If you are going to contribute your share ruining the environment with plastic wrap, Saran Wrap is the only way to go.

Best. Joke. Ever.

Were were telling knock knock jokes in the car the other night, teaching Bear when to say "who's there" and "lettuce who?", when he made up this joke of his own:

Bear: "Knock Knock"
Us: "who's there?"
B: "It's me, Bear!"
us "it's me Bear who?"
(pause)
B: "Butter!"

Ok, so it's not the play on words that a knock knock joke is typically comprised of, but it's my new favorite joke.

And here I thought we were doing so well

Bear had an intake evaluation this week to place him in a social language group. The speech therapist called me today to discuss his placement. She is willing to try him out in a small group with 2 other speech-delayed preschoolers, but based on his inability to sit still and have a back and forth conversation in the interview, she is concerned that he may be in need of one-on-one therapy before he could benefit from a group. So basically she is saying that my son does not have the social or language skills to participate in a social language therapy group.

Great.

Faith

When I left my job to become a stay at home mom 4 years ago, I didn't realize how out of touch I would become. Instead of reading the morning paper on the BART train, I scan the headlines while making breakfast. I no longer share a cube with a chatty co-worker, rehashing the latest current events, but spend my entire day talking to 2 little ones with not the best communication skills. During the evening news hour, I am watching Fireman Sam.

Tivo has taken me even further out of the loop. Because I no longer see commercials, I have no idea who is going to be on Oprah this week of what new movies are coming out. I had no idea that Johnny Lee Miller was going to be making a foray into American television, or that the unaired pilot for the show is already causing a big controversy, until I did a google search for autism news today and found the following article by Julie Deardorff, a medical writer for the Chicago Tribune:

Eli Stone: It's not about autism

Unlike officials at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and many pro-vaccination bloggers, I've had a chance to watch the entire pilot episode of ABC's fictional comedy/drama "Eli Stone."

The already controversial program, which debuts Thursday at 9 p.m. and subjects viewers to fanciful scenes involving pop singer George Michael, depicts a lawyer who argues in court that a mercury-based preservative in a flu vaccine made a child autistic.

The AAP, after watching a seven-minute trailer of the show and reading media reports, was so outraged a sacred cow had been attacked that it demanded that ABC cancel the episode. Ironically, the move is drawing even more attention to the show.

While the program includes statements that science has refuted any link between autism and vaccines, the AAP complained that "the episode's conclusion delivers a contrary impression; the jury awards the mother $5.2 million, leaving audiences with the destructive idea that vaccines do cause autism."

I disagree.

For starters, the AAP ought to give television viewers a little more credit. Like most television, it's a show that is meant to be entertainment. Will we, for example, really believe Eli Stone is a prophet who hears songs by George Michael every time he has a vision?

Moreover, the autism in the story line is almost incidental given all the other loopy things that are packed into the pilot. It's not about whether vaccines cause autism. It's about the redemptive powers of faith. What the episode's conclusion really asks is: Which is the greater force in life: science or faith?

If the AAP had watched the whole program (or scanned the Web site), it might have seen that Eli Stone's brother, the doctor who diagnoses Eli's brain aneurysm represents science. Stone's acupuncturist friend, Dr. Chen, embodies faith.

And as Dr. Chen tells Eli,

"Everything has two explanations: scientific and divine. We choose which one to believe."

This is how the autism-vaccine debate is playing out. The majority of parents dutifully vaccinate their children without giving it a second thought. Parents who are concerned about the safety of vaccines have already made up their minds. It won't matter how many studies show there is no link between vaccines and autism. We all believe our own truths.

Vaccines can be life-saving, but like any medical procedure, they carry risks, even if autism is not "officially" one of them. The one-size-fits-all approach means it's up to every individual to get educated on vaccine safety and to consider benefits versus risks.

I applaud ABC for trying to keep the conversation going once the television has been turned off.

Ah, yes, faith. I remember faith. It is what I had in the AMA and the AAP 4 years ago. I had heard horror stories about vaccines causing autism, and they scared me. In the end I decided to have faith in the my doctors and the medical community, held my breath and prayed that it would be ok. I have no idea if vaccines caused Bear's autism. There has been no proof of that. Then again, nobody seems to know what causes autism. There are only a lot of theories.

Thumper has his 1 year appointment coming up, and again I have to weigh the pros and cons of another needle stick. Again, I am being asked to take it on faith that more vaccinations will do more good than harm. I don't know if I have that much faith left in me.

January.

We are 4 weeks into the new year and have had 2 cases of pink eye, 1 roseola, and 1 croup. This is not an indication that we are under the spell of an evil eye. We are not doomed for eternity. They are just viruses. It is winter, people get viruses. There have been zero visits to the emergency room and that itself is better than last year. Our stocks have plummeted, but hey, so have everyone else's. We are all in this together.

Things are going to start looking up soon.

Happy Birthday Thumper

I love birthdays. More specifically other people's birthdays, as my own have an awkward tendency to go awry, and in particular children's birthdays. 

Before I had children of my own, I nosed my way into my niece's birthday parties, transforming ordinary paper party hats into fairy-princess steeple hats and wrestling butterfly and teapot cakes from my sister's well-meaning frosting-covered grasp. 

Having Bear presented me with the opportunity to fully unleash my theme-party planning goddess within. His second birthday was a circus spectacular, featuring a circus tent, carnival games, circus-themed food, circus music, and the infamous 3-dimensional circus train birthday cake which took 8 hours to frost. I immediately realized that I had blown my wad. How would I ever be able to keep up that kind of momentum through 2 children and who knows how many years of birthday parties? Bear's subsequent parties were slightly pared down, although I have always insisted on maintaining a theme throughout the invitations, food, cake, games, and music. What, you don't spend weeks creating mix cds of appropriately themed music before your children's birthday parties? Wimp.

Then I got lazy. 2 weeks before Thumper's 1st birthday, I was just getting around to printing invitations. Even though I had begun to plan out all of the details in my head in July, I had done nothing toward putting my plans into motion. Months I had spent scouring the web for the perfect cupcake sprinkles, only to settle for whatever they had at the party store. The chocolate bunny lollipop favors turned into molded truffle bunnies (due to an inability to find bunny lollipop molds in January), which I then realized were too much chocolate for kids and would have to use as decorations instead. Days before the party I still had no idea what I would serve for food, other than the ginger-carrot tea sandwiches that I was obsessed with more because this would probably be the best opportunity I would ever have to serve carrot-ginger tea sandwiches at a party than because I thought anyone would actually eat them.

Days after the party I began to remember all of the little details that I had let slide, like forgetting to set out blackberries. Blackberries! How can you have a Peter Rabbit birthday party without blackberries? Even though I know that Thumper will never look at pictures of his birthday and wonder where the blackberries were, I will always feel guilty about not putting the same effort into it that I did for his brother. After having the misfortune of being born only 3 weeks before his brother's diagnosis, and patiently taking a backseat to all of Bear's needs during his first year on earth, that was the least he deserved.

Crappy New Year

Thumper was born on January 19th, 2007. After an emergency c-section with Bear and much stress and anxiety over having a VBAC, Thumper's entry into the world turned out to be free of complication and actually rather pleasant (thanks to an excellent epidural.) As expected, his birth was the high point of our year. I just didn't expect it to be the ONLY high point of our year.

2 1/2 weeks after Thumper was born, a psychologist observed Bear for what we thought was a speech delay and posed the question "How much do you know about autism?" I thought she was just making conversation. Turns out, she was talking about Bear.

The rest of 2007 was filled with visits to specialists and emergency rooms. At his 1 month appointment, Thumper was found to have a heart murmer. It was most likely while we were at Children's Hospital getting his EKG that he acquired bronchiolitis, for which he had to be hospitalized. Immediately after he came home, Bear came down with a stomach virus that lasted 10 days. (10 Days of throwing up and diarrhea, during which we learned that stomach acid can bleach mommy's favorite turquoise gap t-shirt white.) In June,Thumper had a stomach virus for which we visited an immediate care clinic, where he picked up an MRSA; Bear had his speech and developmental delays; Not So Surly Dad injured his back playing soccer, then stupidly went and did it again; I myself racked up emergency room points with 2 MRSAs, suffering an acute allergic reaction to the heinous antibiotics required to treat an MRSA. Thumper had a rash-causing food allergy for which I eliminated nearly everything from my diet over the course of 2 months before figuring out that cashews were the culprit. We were audited by the IRS. Through it all, I tried to maintain a sense of humor and perspective - at least we aren't homeless, nobody is dying, things could be worse - but by the time a tree fell on my car in October, I was ready to write off 2007 completely. I drifted through the Christmas season, throwing up decorations the week after Thanksgiving and dragging my family to every Christmas event I could find, all the while never really feeling the Christmas spirit. I invited the families for Christmas, then did all of my shopping online, hired someone to clean my house, ordered Christmas dinner, and when it was over wished I could rewind and do it one more time with feeling.

As New Year's drew near, I became more and more anxious. Although we were invited to my sister's house to celebrate, I just wanted to hide out until it was over. Bring on 2008! Then, the final insult: all 4 of us came down with colds, and Bear with pink eye. Happy New Year!

We went to the party and even though I was worried about drunk drivers the entire night, we all survived 2007. Now, 10 days into 2008, nobody has required a trip to the emergency room. Although a tree did fall on my parent's house, none have fallen on ours. This is already shaping up to be a good year. I'd better go knock on wood.