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.