punchdrunkmom

In which the Punchdrunkmom takes her kids to the zoo

Scott: What are you guys up to?

Me: We’re at the zoo.

Scott: How so?

Me: What?

Scott: You said it was a zoo.

Me: No, we’re at that zoo.

Scott: How is it a zoo?

Me: No, Scott, we are AT THE ZOO.

Scott: Oh. (pause) You seem like you’re in a bad mood.

Nothing puts me in a bad mood like talking to Scott when he’s on a cell phone in New York. This is absolutely not his fault, but rather our cell phone carrier. When he used to be there every week, we had the following conversation about 600 times:

Me: I love you.

Scott: What?

Me: I love you.

Scott: What?

Me: I LOVE YOU.

Scott: You’re breaking up.

Me: (angrily) I said I #*&@ love you!

Scott: Okay! Jesus.

Ah, romance.

Anyway. We were at the zoo. (What?) The ZOO. This was Kai’s idea, and after two days stuck at home, it seemed like a pretty good one.

“What do you want to see at the zoo?” I asked him.

“The zoo.”

Yes. Well, duh. Sorry.

And so, we were at the zoo, moseying toward the sea lions, when a girl with a camera asked if we wanted our picture taken. I said, “no,” before realizing how horrifically awesome the pictures were, doubling back and buying the deluxe package.

As the girl was printing them out, she made a little small talk with me.

“So where are you from?” she asked.

“Here,” I replied.

She looked a little confused. “Here? Like you’re from Chicago?”

“Yes.”

“And you just decided that today you would, you know, come to the zoo?”

Now I was confused. WTF? It was just the zoo. “Um, yes?”

The girl went a little wide-eyed. “Wow.”

She handed me my pictures.

 

And, now that you mention it, the zoo really does look like quite the adventure.

 

In which the boy averts both salmonella and Jello by the narrowest of margins

So we’ve been sick around here for the last day and a half or so. I had a stomach ache that wove its way into my dreams on Monday night, which was a double whammy, as I dreamed that my husband left me for someone named Steve.

Not to go all graphical on you or anything, but the abdominal cramps were bad enough that there was a moment that I wondered if I was actually in in some kind of surprise labor, like one of those women from “OMG! I Can’t Believe I Was Pregnant,” no matter that the likelihood of that is about the same as Scott going to the Manhole tonight with Steve for 2 for 1 vodka lemonades. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

:::

Kai had a bang-up session at occupational therapy yesterday, talking up a storm and following directions and all of that, this on the heels of an awesome group speech session on Monday. (Therapist: Do you have a dog? Kai: Yes. Therapist: What color? Kai: Black and white. Therapist: What’s his name? Kai: Elliott.  OMGOMGOMG!)

On the way home, he got all slumpy in his car seat. I thought it was maybe because of the long drive, but I also heard him tell our OT, Emily, that his “tummies hurt.” Great.

“You okay, Monkeyman?” I asked.

All I got back was a thousand-yard stare.

When we got home, he wanted me to lift him out of the car. I noticed that he felt hot.

102.8 to be exact.

So we spent the afternoon inside, watching Spongebob while Ryan napped. I dozed a little on the couch, while he played Angry Birds. Later, he fell asleep laying on my chest. Around dinner time, I went to check on him and he was burning up.

103.5. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I force fed him some grape flavored Advil and plopped him in the tub and frantically flipped through my “what to do in case of fever” handouts from the pediatrician. Turns out I did exactly the right thing. Yay for me.

After the bath, he perked up enough to get irritated with me for taking his temperature every five seconds, and asked for chicken nuggets and fries.

:::

Appetite notwithstanding, I had obviously allowed him to contract salmonella from the cake batter on Sunday, and had started googling things like “encephaly” when my sister called.

I told her that we had salmonella.

“Do you have bloody diarrhea?” she asked.

“No.”

“Well, if you had salmonella, you’d have bloody diarrhea.”

This was reassuring, since earlier I had spoken with Scott (who had absconded to New York for a giant meeting), informing him of our salmonella outbreak here at the house.

“Wow!” he said. “It’s funny, but you have pictures of the actual moment he contracted it. How crazy is that?”

Anyway.

Working on day two. I still feel like crap. So does Kai, I think, but he’s eating and his fever’s down.

Last night, I made him some Jello so that it would be ready for breakfast this morning.

“What’s this disgusting swime?” he asked, poking it with his finger.

“That’s good talking, Monkeyman,” I said, and ate the Jello myself. Cherry made with lime fizzy water. Not bad.

 

In which the Punchdrunkmom, covered in slime, bakes a cake and navigates her various relationships

Yesterday morning, I picked the kids up from the gym daycare. I was kind of sweaty. You know, because it was the gym and all. Ryan walked to the car, but after some unpleasantness, I was forced to carry Kai, who gave me a once-over.

“Covered in swime,” Kai said.

Wait, I thought. Did he just say—

“I’m covered in slime?”

Kai didn’t answer.

“Can you point to the slime?” I pressed.

He pointed to my face. “It’s right there! Onna face.”

:::

Later, Kai wanted to make a chocolate cake. Well, actually, he wanted some chocolate cake, and the gluten-free, dairy-free diet means that we have to make it at home.

“Kai, should we make a cake?” I asked, after I’d gone to the store and purchased the necessary ingredients.

“Chock-wat cake!” he exclaimed, and leaped up from the couch and joined me in the kitchen. He rooted around in the spice drawer, emerging with a baggie and bursting at the seams with excitement.

“I founded the candles!”

:::

Kai’s fun to bake with. He likes to crack the eggs and add the ingredients and work the mixer, which he gets out and plugs in himself.

And, of course, he likes to lick the batter.

Hello, raw eggs!

But no matter, a little salmonella won’t kill you, right?

Right?

He is also a double dipper, which is less than sanitary. But I found out just how unsanitary he was when I asked him to wash up.  I happened to glance into the bathroom to see him washing his hands in the toilet.

:::

While the cake was baking, he forgot we were making a cake.

“I want cookies,” he said. “Cookies and popcorn.”

“But we’re making a cake, pal,” I said.

“No cake! Cookies!”

:::

Kai finally enjoyed his cake after bath time. He inserted the candles, and we sang happy birthday. To, uh, all the people born on July 24. Way to go, you guys.

After the singing and the blowing out of candles and the procuring of a fork, and amid much taking of pictures (because he’s just so darned cute and I knew this would turn into a blog entry because of the toilet hand washing), I turned around to check on Ryan, who had been playing with her shape sorter. With a jolt, I saw her standing stock still, staring at us saucer-eyed, jaw to the floor.

Her expression was unmistakable, and my heart sank into my belly.

I had hurt my daughter’s feelings.

I hadn't meant to exclude her. It was just that I had been working with Kai on the cake and she doesn't really like cake and when Kai was her age he wouldn't even have noticed what other people were doing in a room and, well, damn.

I wanted to cry. Instead, I plastered a big smile on my face.

“It’s Ryan’s turn!” I said, brightly, picking her up and placing her in her chair. “Are you ready for your cake?”

“Wyan’s turn!” Kai said, happy to start the whole process over again.

I cut Ryan a piece of cake and stuck a candle in it. Kai wanted to hold the match.

I let him try, but he wasn’t steady enough to hold the match near the candle. Twice I had to blow the match out just before it reached his tiny fingers, and then I came to my senses and remembered that this isn’t the 70s and I shouldn’t let a four-year old use matches.

We got the candle lit and sang Happy Birthday to her. Kai proudly served Ryan her cake.

“There you go, Baby!” he said

Ryan eventually threw the cake off of her tray because she doesn’t like cake. But she was glad to be included.

“Happy birthday, little girl,” I crooned into her neck when I lifted her from her chair.

She grinned.

“Okay,” she said.

:::

Later, Kai went outside onto the deck and gave the neighbors a naked kazoo concert. I’m sure that had nothing to do with the cake. Or the ice cream that he had later, followed by a second piece of cake.

The Leiby-shaped hole in the Universe

I feel like all the news has been bad lately. All that stuff about the budget and the debt ceiling is like watching a couple you don’t like fight at a dinner party. Only at the end of the party you lose your house.

The worst news, though, was about that sweet boy who was abducted and murdered in Brooklyn, Leiby Kletzky. There’s no part of that story that isn’t heartbreaking, from the fact that this was the first time he ever walked home alone, to the scratches on that sick bastard’s hands and face that indicated a struggle. It’s hard not to imagine being his mother, waiting for him to meet her at the designated spot, her anxiety ratcheting up with every passing second that doesn’t deliver her boy, longing for that relief she knows will wash over her when she finally sees him.

And then, finding out that what happened to her son was the Worst Possible Thing You Can Imagine.

I will tell you that if that were me, I would dig a hole. I would climb into that hole. And I would never, ever, ever come out.

This, of course, is why every mom in America thinks Casey Anthony is guilty. Somehow I doubt that Mrs. Kletzky will smile again for a long, long time.

:::

Living in the city, we know that bad things can happen. We know to lock our doors. We have a dog, who barks when people come to the door. We look before we cross the street, both ways even if it’s a one-way, even if we have a walk signal. We know that we could be victims and we are vigilant, we are careful not to let our guard down. You hear about bad things happening in some suburb and they always say, “Wow. I can’t believe it could happen here.” Well, we believe it can happen here, and there’s a certain safety in that. When I park my car on the street, the first thing I do when I get out is look around to see who’s coming down the sidewalk, because I don’t ever turn my back to a stranger if I can help it.

This is why Leiby’s murder, in the heart of Brooklyn, has struck a particular chord with me. In a few years, that could be Kai, bargaining for independence, me not wanting to give it to him, but telling myself that all those fears are just paranoia, that you’ve taught him well, that you have to let go.

And here’s the problem. You do. One day, you have to swallow hard and let go. 

:::

I went to a “coffee” at a local posh Montessori school. (They don’t have open houses, they have coffees. With bagels! I remember the bagels. I must have been pregnant.) Anyway, they trotted out the eighth graders to talk about their education.

One thing the kids talked about was pretty cool. Every Friday, they are given a destination in Chicago—a restaurant or a landmark. They’re given no instruction, just a location, and, working in groups, they have to get there. The kids talked about doing research on the Internet, using their CTA passes to get downtown. No one talked about being afraid. They talked about getting lost sometimes, but using problem solving skills to get back on the right track. I was having a hard time not waving my hands in the air and yelling, “YES!”

It was exactly the thing that Scott and I always wanted for our kids, at least theoretically, living in the city. We want to raise competent children, children with bus passes and cell phones who could have the unique and rich experience of growing up in the third largest city in the US. Kids who didn’t drink and drive because they could hail a cab, children who could go to a museum or go shopping in a funky part of town and spend their allowance on an Army Surplus military jacket they picked up on Belmont, children who would be as fiercely independent and Scott and I both are. Kids who are savvy and smart and free.

“How was it?” Scott asked, when I got back.

“Dude. You would have started writing checks,” I answered.

:::

There are times, deep down in places I don’t talk about (because it is selfish and I know it) that I am almost glad that Kai has the issues that he has, that he and I are bound so closely together, that I can't let him out of my sight. Don’t get me wrong, I want him to live an independent life, and he undoubtedly will. There will be a time when he is able to be more independent and that’s my purpose as a parent—I’m supposed to do such a great job that I lose that job. I know all of this. In my head.

My heart, though. Oh, my heart.

My heart is walking around the big city in a pair of kids’ size 9 sneakers. And though I talk about how hard it is to be a mom sometimes, when he’s away from me, I count the seconds until he returns, like Mrs. Kletzky, scanning the passers-by on the sidewalk, waiting for a glimpse of a tousled cowlick, a striped shirt.

“Hi, Mommy!” he chirps.

“Hi, Monkeyman,” I say. I pick him up and hold him close, his arms snaking around my neck and he kisses my cheek. “I missed you so much,” I whisper into his ear.

I have a feeling that I will always miss him so, and I feel like crying a thousand times a day for Leiby’s mom, who will miss her boy forever.

 

uiytufhcghxdtzsghxghhgcfxd

Yesterday morning, Kai wanted popcorn for breakfast, which I made him. Then he wanted a blue popsicle. When I informed him that we didn’t have any blue popsicles, he changed his order to orange.

“Do you want some eggs?” I asked.

“No eggs! Popsicle!”

Would you judge me harshly for feeding my son a salty snack and a frozen dessert for breakfast? I made him the eggs, too, but he didn’t eat those.

He asked for another popsicle, which I gave him, and then a third, which, in case you were beginning to wonder if I have any limits at all, was where I drew the line.

“Up there,” he said. “Inna fridgerator.”

“No,” I said.

“I need popsicle.”

I got busy doing something non-popsicle related, and the next time he got my attention, he asked me to undo the baby gate so he could go downstairs.

“No,” I said. “You can stay up here with us.”

He tried to squeeze under the gate.

“Kai, no!”

My refusal was met with tears. “I need openna gate!”

It was 8 a.m. on a Monday, the beginning of a week that’s supposed to be brutally hot. I was tired. Scott has a big proposal going on at work and will be busy through the week, working all next weekend. I’d already fed the kid popsicles for breakfast, and he rewards me with this whole business of going downstairs. I figured he wanted to jump on my bed or get out the Yatzee! game and scatter dice and scorecards and chips and pencils all over the floor. I would hold my ground.

Tears escalated toward tantrum territory, and I decided to call his bluff.

“Kai,” I said, “can you tell me what you want down there?”

He didn’t answer. I tried something I’d talked about with the ABA therapist, trying to get Kai to use functional language instead of tantrumming.

“If you can tell me why you want to go downstairs, I’ll open the gate.”

He sniffed. “Wadder,” he said.

“Letters?”

“No. Wadder.”

I stared at him. “What do you need a ladder for?”

He gave me a look that I took to mean, Damn, woman! What’s wrong with you? “Get popsicles!”

Popsicles again! I rolled my eyes. “No way,” I said walking away, and then stopped myself.

He had done exactly what I asked, replacing tantrum behavior with functional language. Plus it was pretty good problem solving. How do you get the popsicles on the top shelf when Mommy won’t help you? A wadder.

I missed the opportunity to reward him immediately, but I owed it to him to get it right eventually.

I put my arm around his slender shoulders. “Let’s do it,” I said.

And we did.

I brought the step ladder upstairs. Kai climbed up and picked out his own popsicle.

Green this time.

And then I folded up the ladder and we went on with our day. Highlights of which include the following:

Kai refusing to put his shoes on when I picked him up from the gym daycare, so I put his shoes in my bag and made him walk to the car without them.

“My shoes and socks!” he howled.

“You should have thought of that before you refused to put them on,” I said. “Don’t step on that lit cigarette butt.”

And later, yelling, “Nooooooooooooooooo!” when I found him typing the following into this blog entry:

Uiytufhcghxdtzsghxghhgcfxd.

I pulled him from the chair and angrily shut the lid on my laptop.

Kai, who looked surprisingly chastened, crawled under the desk.

“Run away,” he said.

Oh my god. I buried my face in my hands.

I’m the worst! Do I think I’m Hemmingway? Who’s to say that uiytufhcghxdtzsghxghhgcfxd isn’t exactly what this entry needs?

I lay down next to him on the floor. “I sure would miss you if you ran away,” I said.

He smiled.

“I’d miss your nose and your head and your chin,” I said, kissing each one. He held out his elbow.

“I’d miss your elbow most of all,” I said, and pretended to eat it, which was met with peals of laughter.

Big sigh.

I did not do my best mothering on Monday. Luckily, the bar has recently been set very low indeed:

In which we realize that our biggest enemy is boredom

I remember my most boring summer ever, the summer after my brother was born, when I was five. I remember vast swaths of unstructured time, waiting for the baby to wake up so we could do something. Anything.

“Mom,” I would say. “When can we go to the pool?”

“When the baby wakes up,” she would call from her room, where she was probably trying to nap herself.

“When’s that?” I would ask, and I can hear the whine in my voice all the way from 1977.

“In an hour,” she would say.

I remember lying on the green carpet in the living room, so bored as to be prostrate on the ground, willing that child to wake up, already! Time passed so slowly that it was almost still. It was negative time. I would wait and wait, watching the dust swirl in the shafts of summer sunlight shining through the picture window. Surely it’s been an hour by now?

“Mom, has it been an hour?” I would say.

Did she do what I would have done? Bury her head into the pillows and count to 10? Do not yell at the child, do not yell at the child, you’ll wake up the baby, please don’t wake up the baby.…three, two, one.

“No.”

:::

I think Kai’s having that kind of summer.

We leave the house every day to do stuff, hit a playground or the pool. They go to the gym daycare and to Whole Foods, which is their personal buffet. But I think that Kai is free-floating in a swirly Mr. Peabody-style space-time continuum, missing the structure of school, bored to tears during Ryan’s naptime.

He doesn’t pester me the way I used to pester my own mother. But I can feel his need vibrating off of him, his need to smash into bouncy house walls, to know what’s happening next, that it’s time to unpack lunch, to go outside, to read a story with the class.

We went to a movie yesterday, and he turned around in his seat. Seeing all the kids in the theater, he smiled broadly. “Mommy!” he said. “Wook! Fwiends!”

:::

So I’ve been trying to inject a little fun into his day. I blew his mind last week by serving him green eggs. Now, every morning, he requests a certain color. Friday it was blue.

:::

On Friday, I was tired, having gotten up to teach a 6:15 class, so I decided that we’d go to an indoor play spot called Pickles, where maybe I could sit on a bench and stare into space while the kids played.

Leaving the house required Kai to put on clothes, which he has been less and less inclined to do. I don’t know if this is because he’s actually turned feral over the summer, or if he’s lost the will to get dressed, he’s so bored. But I often have to chase him around with his underpants.

“Kai, if you don’t put on your underpants, we can’t go to Pickles,” I said. This stopped him in his tracks.

“Pickows?” he asked, perhaps sensing adventure.

“Pickles!” I shouted, throwing my hands into the air.

Kai smiled. “Pickows!” Kai shouted.

“Gickahs!” Ryan offered.

“Pickles!” I repeated.

“Pickows! Kai said, allowing me to put his t-shirt over his head.

“Gickahs!”

We did that all the way out the door, into the car and all the way to Pickles.

“Pickles!”

“Pickows!”

“Gickahs!”

“Pickles!”

“Pickows!”

“Gickahs!”

“Pickles!”

“Pickows!”

“Gickahs!”

Pickles/Pickows/Gickahs cost me $21, which turned out to be totally worth it, as I was indeed able to stare at the wall for a little while. Also, Kai, who has been more and more inclined to engage in symbolic play, played pretend with the Barbies, walking first Barbie herself and then Ken up the stairs of their townhouse and tucking them, ever so chastely, into their bed.

 

We stayed for two hours, and finally had to leave when Kai set off the emergency alarm by trying to escape out the back door.

:::

Kai was bored out of his skull on Sunday. It was crazy hot outside, but I took him to the park up the street. He went down one slide before he sat down in my lap and played Angry Birds on my iPhone. It was too hot for that sort of thing, so I decided we needed to change things up. We went to see the Winnie the Pooh movie together, while Scott worked on a proposal and Ryan napped.

I bought him the largest popcorn they had, maybe to make up for my abject sense of failure, that I’d let him down this summer. I should have enrolled him in camp, I should have more energy, I should push him more when he says he doesn’t want to go to the pool or leave the house, the torpor closing in on all of us, weighing us down.

And maybe he caught the undercurrents of my mood, because he seemed to regard all of this as a grand adventure.

 

:::

I cried three times while we were at the movies. The first was during a trailer for a movie called Dolphin Tale, about a (real!) dolphin who needs a prosthetic tail and Morgan Freeman makes her one (Honestly. Is there anything that guy can’t do? Also, the dolphin plays herself in the movie!). The next time was during a trailer for a movie called Chimpanzee, about a (real!) baby chimp who loses his entire family and is adopted by an old, gruff loner chimp.

The third time was at the end of the movie, during the credits, listening to a song sweetly sung by hipster princess Zooey Deschanel. I had my arm around Kai and we were rocking to the rhythm.

“Mommy?” Kai said.

“Yes, honey?” I asked.

“Give me a hug,” he said.

And I did, wrapping my arms around him tightly. We stayed like that for a long time, listening to a song about friendship and childhood, in a dark movie theater full of fwiends.

When the lights came up and he pulled away, I wiped my eyes and we went home, but not before pretending to shoot deer with a plastic rifle in the adjacent arcade.

I think that the whole experience mixed things up nicely for both of us.

 

Boobs on a plane

“There are a lot of babies on this flight,” said a passenger as I squeezed up the aisle.

I did a little inward cringe, because I know. I know what they see when the look at me, which is not me at all, but the babe in my arms, who will keen a perfect and terrible note inside an aluminum tube for four hours. I put on what I hoped was a winning smile and plowed bravely forward, my bag banging into arms and heads all the way to our seats.

It was just Ryan and me on the flight to Portland. Scott and Kai dropped us off at the airport, and I knew a moment of intense sadness as they drove away, Kai’s “Mommeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” echoing painfully in the chambers of my heart.  I was, however, able to neatly compartmentalize it as I navigated two bags, a stroller and a baby through security, where they tested my bottle of breast milk to determine if the baby and the stroller and the diapers and the dolls and the butt cream and the Elmo Band-aids and the sippy cups were just an elaborate ruse to blow up a plane full of hipsters en route to the Pacific Northwest somewhere over East Jesus Montana.*

Ryan, for her part, helpfully screamed all through boarding, which actually kept both seats next to me free, until one panting girl flung herself down on the seat, having run all the way from security.

“Whatever, I’ll sit next to the baby, I don’t care,” she said. “You should know that I’m afraid to fly, and I might need to hold your hand.”

I asked her if I could buy her a scotch and skip the hand holding, and it turned out that I could.

:::

For all the fuss during boarding, though, she was an angel for the first couple of hours. She watched Toy Story on my iPhone while I read a book and sipped wine. I congratulated myself on raising a good traveler and for fully charging my iPhone before we left. I had a momentary glimpse of my future, a future in which my children would carry their own backpacks and play their portable games on the plane, where I could read or sleep in peace.

And then, things fell apart.

Ryan was suddenly restless and angry, wanting freedom to explore, to eat things off the floor, to stand on my lap so she could reach the passenger in front of us and pull his hair. She began to wail, first in frustration, and then in earnest. It was during this time that I realized I’d made several rookie mistakes. Not only did I embark on a four-hour plane trip without lollipops or other similar tantrum-aversion material, I also had no baby wipes (fingers crossed she didn’t poop). Additionally, I’d forgotten a nursing cover. Sensing that I might be forced to unleash my secret weapon, I asked the flight attendant for a blanket.

“Oh, we don’t do that,” he said, as though I’d asked him for an erotic foot massage.

:::

I had done some research on Amazon for a travel toy, something that was conducive to being shoved in a diaper bag, yet provided hours of fun for a baby. Amazon recommended the Pockets of Learning series of books, which are soft bound and feature pockets (hence the name), into which your baby is supposed to stuff various items. The following is an actual review:

“5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and durable, August 20, 2010

I bought this book for my 16 month old granddaughter. This has become her favorite book. She enjoys turning the pages, taking the animals out of the pockets and putting them in the correct places in the book. She asks for this book every day. It is extremely durable and will last through many more grandchildren! This book is something you can travel with since it has a zipper all around so nothing will fall out and for those times when your child needs to play quietly, this is perfect!”

OMG! Pockets! Zipper! Play quietly! Sold!

I was saving the book for a moment like this, where the girl has decided that she’s over the plane ride, that she’s been patient long enough.

“Oh, Ryan,” I sang, pleased with myself and even thinking of another glass of wine while Ryan played quietly with her new book. “Look at this!”

I presented the book proudly.

She took the book from me, threw it on the floor and proceeded to thrash and cry and tantrum for the next 15 minutes. She kicked me in the arms, the chest, the face, which was painful before I had a stroke of brilliance and removed her shoes.

I know these guys on Southwest are always bitching about nursing mothers whipping out their boobs to let their babies slurp away in plain sight of God and all creation.** And thus faced with a screaming baby and an hour until touchdown, I improvised to shield us from disapproving eyes and shut the baby up the only way I could.

I later penned the following review on Amazon:

“My daughter didn’t care about this book at all, even though everyone raved about it and it cost a whopping $30. It does, however, make a marginally okay cover up for nursing on a plane, as Southwest doesn’t have blankets.”

:::

On flight home, I removed Ryan’s shoes at security and never put them back on. Additionally I armed myself with several bags of popcorn (her drug of choice), baby wipes and a fake pashmina from Target. She lasted two hours before I had to nurse her, but this time, instead of a boozy girl in the aisle seat,  there were two sober guys in our row with us.

The one to my left saw what was happening and immediately put down his tray table, leaned forward on both elbows and actually shielded his eyes with his hand.

I maybe should have handed him the Pockets of Learning.

 

*I read today about a woman who got arrested for not allowing TSA to give her daughter the infamous TSA Crotch Massage, which is funny because in line, I was practicing not allowing this myself.

http://news.travel.aol.com/2011/07/13/mom-arrested-for-yelling-at-tsa-over-daughters-patdown/

And by the way, if you’re in the mood to be pissed off about TSA:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/26/tsa-pats-down-elderly-wom_n_884902.html

**http://www.mothering.com/community/forum/thread/1249713/southwest-airlines-breastfeeding-problem

 

In which the Punchdrunkfamily reunites after a brief separation, goes to the store

Scott and Kai picked Ryan and me up at the airport last night.

“We have to go to the store,” Scott said. “We’re out of everything.”

“No problem,” I said. For Scott, going to the store with Kai is a lot like me building a Web site for JP Morgan Chase. We’re both capable of completing either task, at least theoretically. But it’s undoubtedly faster if we retire to our respective corners and just get our own shit done. I recognize this, and knew I’d need to go to the grocery store when I came back from my weekend away.

“I have a list,” Scott offered, handing me a post-it.

I usually go to the store on the weekend, when Scott’s home with the kids. For one thing, two kids take up the whole cart. For another thing, it costs me $20 in bribery food to keep them from jumping out of the cart. We can’t even go to Target anymore—those guys have a toy aisle. But I’d missed my weekend opportunity in order to go to Portland and help my sister find a wedding dress. It was, of course, worth it, but I knew going in that the following week would be kind of ugly.

Anyway.

I thought that one way to get through the grocery store with both kids would be to get one of those car grocery carts. It seemed like a no-brainer. Both of the kids like those carts, as evidenced by the following picture from another, happier time:

 

Ryan went into the car with no problem. Scott buckled her in, and I tried to coax Kai in on the other side.

“In the cart,” he said, meaning the part where you put the food.

The thing with the car carts, is that the car takes up a lot of grocery space, so those carts are kind of small. Put a kid in it and you actually need another cart. This wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibility because Scott could push the second cart, but at one point, I’d told Kai, “no,” and I had to follow through.

Stupid behavior modification therapy.

“In the cart!” he said again, with an amount of increased intensity.

I’d already said no.

“Honey,” I said, “you can ride in the car with Ryan.”

“No car! In the cart!”

So Scott tried to herd the loose Kai in the store, through the deli and the bakery. I chose some eggs, Kai grabbed a carton, too.

“This is too heavy!” he said.

“Kai, put that back. Get in the car.”

“No car! In the cart.”

I tried to maneuver down the frozen vegetable aisle.

“Need cupcakes,” Kai said.

“Maybe we’ll make some this week,” I said.

“Cupcaaaaaaaaaaaaaakes!”

It was around this time that Ryan stood up and, climbing out of the front window of the car, started waving to passers by.

“Ryan!” I said, fresh from a four-hour plane ride with her in which we shared a seat, and in no mood for more Ryan. “Sit down on your bottom.”

“How did she get loose?” Scott asked. He had obviously never met her before.

He bent down to re-fasten her seat belt, which she quickly slipped off, exiting the car and making a break for it.

“Kai!” I said, scooping up Ryan and depositing her back in the car. “Put that back.”

“I need rabbit,” he said, meaning the Trix. “And Coco Puffs.”

Thank you, advertising.

“No, Kai. How about some Kix?”

“Ain’t happening!”

“Ryan! Sit down!”

“Kai! Get in the car!”

I picked up Kai and he started to flail. “Noooooooooooo.” 

“Scott, are we okay on bread?”

“What?” he asked, trying to wrestle Ryan back into the car.

“Bread! Kai! Come back here.”

“Noooooooooooooooo! Ain’t happening!”

I pulled Ryan from the car and tried to put her on my hip. She began to squirm to get down.

“Kai, I’ll buy you the Trix if you sit in the car.”

“In the cart.”

“Kai, I’ve already said no. There’s no room.”

“In the caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!”

After a brief discussion, we decided that Kai’s talents would be best served in our actual car, the one in the parking lot, with the car seat we could strap him in to. Scott carried him out of the store.

“Mommeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” he cried, his plaintive wail temporarily drowning out Christopher Cross on the PA system, and fading as the automatic doors whooshed open, then closed.

Sailing, takes me a way, to where I’m going doo, doo, doooo.*

:::

I smushed Ryab back into the car part of the cart, trying to make out the rest of the items on the list: blueberries, strawberries, kiwi.

Ryan tried to climb out again.

“Hold on, kid,” I said. “I have an idea.”

I grabbed a plastic tub of cut fruit from a shelf, opened it and handed it in through the door.

I tried to continue shopping. Hot dogs, avocados, bananas.

“Ryan!”

Ryan had upended the whole tub of fruit onto the floor of the car, tossing the plastic tub out of the window.

“We’re almost done, little girl,” I said, pulling her out of the car because she was picking up the fruit from the floor of the car thing and eating it. Hello, e. coli, I’m Ryan! How are you?

“Mine, mine, mine!” she insisted, throwing herself forward in my arms, hoping I’d let go.

I wrestled her over to the checkout line, Ryan protesting all the way, a wriggling piglet under my arm.

“21 on 2!” the checkout girl called, putting my wine aside.

I went to grab my wallet and realized—Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap.

They bagged everything up for me while I went out to the parking lot to grab my wallet and put the girl in the car.  

:::

I ran back into the store and paid, my vacation buzz long gone, knowing I’d probably have to go back to the store tomorrow, kids in tow, for everything I forgot, plus dishwasher detergent and dinner for the week, because somehow all I bought was wine and fruit.

:::

Later, after I’d wrestled both kids into the bathtub and was attempting to keep Ryan from escaping so I could wash her hair, Scott asked me where the Spray ‘n Wash was.

Spray n’ Wash! Damn!

 “You didn’t get it?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t.”

He cocked his head, frowning, looking nonplussed and vaguely put out.

“It was on the list,” he said.

And so it was.

 

*a Google search turned up the following lyric:

Sailing
Takes me away
To where I've always heard it could be

I don’t know where I go the doo, doo, dooooooo part. My apologies to Christopher Cross.

 

What I've learned (so far)

I have a friend whose kid got his diagnosis last week. This is for her, a partial and self-conscious list of things I’ve learned in the last two years about raising a special needs kid, with a nod to Kendy and Rebecca, who have been amazing teachers and friends.

What I’ve learned:  

It is not the end of the world. It isn’t even a total disaster. Terminal cancer, losing your kid in a car wreck, that’s the worst case scenario.

My kid perceives the world differently than you and I do. You can look at that as a strength or a weakness, and the choice is yours. It doesn’t change your kid.

His brain isn’t broken, and I am not fixing him. His brain works in a different way, and I am helping him manage that.

If you are mourning the loss of the idea that your kid will be the homecoming king or head cheerleader, realize that those expectations are yours, and that even if you have a typically functioning kid, they may dye their hair black and become one of those Goth kids, with those bizarre ear holes and black lipstick and tell you, ever so politely, that homecoming kings are totally lame and they have to leave now because they are out of Marlboro Reds. There’s a guy who lives in my neighborhood who has tattoos on his face. He’s over eighteen, and there’s nothing that his parents can do about it. What I’m saying is that it’s all kind of a crapshoot, so don’t get too hung up on what you want your kid to be. Whatever your kid is, love that kid all the way.

I love my pediatrician, but she hasn’t helped me at all with Kai. She writes letters I ask her to write and gives me prescriptions I ask for. Ask questions of your friends, your therapists, do your own research. Not to go all rogue on you, but the mainstream medical community will tell you that there is no cure, and a lot of ASD families will tell you that that’s not true. By all means, ask your doctor all the questions you want. Also ask the lady sitting next to you at your OT appointment. The most helpful things I’ve learned, I’ve learned from other moms.

Just because someone’s name is on the door doesn’t mean they’re right.

You will be told “no” a lot—by your insurance provider and the school system, among others. Reframe the word as a challenge.

Know your rights.

Your insurance company will make you cry. This is their job as handpuppets of the devil. Take copious notes, record conversations, ask for certificates of coverage, research the laws in yours state, and keep at them. Eventually, they’ll give you some of what you want just to make you go away.

There are people out there who say that they are okay with your special needs kid being in their yoga class, but are not really okay with it because they don’t know what to do with a kid that doesn’t hang on their every word. These are not bad people, but make sure you get your money refunded, and make sure your kid knows that you think that that yoga lady was a not a good teacher, and you’re glad you don’t have to go back there. Know additionally that that yoga teacher’s three kids will probably turn Goth and tattoo their faces just to get on their prissy mother’s nerves, and that you will try not to show any glee. Okay, that’s a lie. I will have an amount of visible glee.

My job is to help him be aware of what he needs so that he can manage those needs independent of me.

Additionally my job is to help him harness his strengths, whatever those are, to be as independent and as successful and as happy as he can be.

One more thing I have to do is help him function in a world operates in a way that’s not always compatible with Kai’s way, and this is actually the hardest part of all of it.

Take good care of yourself or you’ll never manage to get through the day. This includes showing yourself some compassion when you screw up or lose patience or burst into tears.

We have as much joy in our family as anyone else, typically functioning or not. We may even have more, because we appreciate victories we have to fight so hard for.

When you are tempted to look around and wonder, “Why me,” remember that the Universe gives you the kid you can handle.

Everyone has to take their own journey.

 

Greetings from Camp Judy! Alternatively titled "Hello, Muddah, hello Faddah"

So I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to take the kids to the pool, something that they both love.

I’ve decided that having kids who are 4 and 20 months is rough. Ryan wants to do everything Kai does, and she doesn’t seem to have any fear. She has no problem sliding on the big kid slide, she wants to climb up rock walls and stand up in the shopping cart facing the direction we’re traveling, like she’s a golden retriever. My challenge, therefore, is finding things that will appeal to Kai that Ryan can do, too, without me having a coronary.

Our local pool is awesome and free, but with all of its slides and depth, it’s too much for the girl, no matter what she tries to tell you to the contrary. So after much research on the Interwebs, I found the Bedfordshire Aquatic Center out in the suburbs. I thought would fit the bill quite nicely—stuff for Kai to do, enclosed splash area. There was even a designated “mom and tot” hour so we could enjoy ourselves without being buffeted on all sides by 10-year-olds. It’s near my friend Jayne’s house, so I e-mailed her to see if she wanted to go.

“I’m laughing at the ‘Bedfordshire Aquatic Center,’” she wrote back. “We just call it ‘the pool.’”

No matter. I made up my mind that we were going to do this, and I decided that today was The Day.

:::

I asked Kai if he wanted to go swimming.

“No.”

I pulled out his swim trunks, because he always says no, even if the answer is obviously a yes. Sometimes he needs to be shown a picture of what we’re doing in order to process it, but it turned out he’d heard me correctly the first time.

 “Don’t you want to go swimming?”

“No,” he said. “Grocery store.”

:::

The thing about going to the pool is that it’s a big pain in the butt, what with the sunscreen and the towels and the extra clothes and swimmer diapers and the toys and trying to get the wriggling children into lycra bathing suits and the chance of drowning and remembering to suck in your belly. Add Kai protesting the entire way and you kind of wonder why you even bother.

On the swim trunks: “That’s too small.”

On the sunscreen: “It’s too slippery.”

On the towel I asked him to carry: “It’s too heavy.”

I ignored his protest and plowed boldly ahead, strapping everyone in the car.

The rain beat a steady rhythm on the windshield the whole way up there, they sky a menacing charcoal gray. I didn’t care. It would keep the crowds away, I thought. The Judys were going to the damn pool.

When we got there, as I was parking, Kai lit off a new round of protests.

“No, no no!” he said. “That one!”

I had no idea what he was talking about, and decided to ignore this, too.

“Swimming, Kai!” I said cheerily. “You love swimming!”

I turned around to grin at him and offered up a high-five. This was met with a scowl and a gesture I like to call, “talk to the shoe.”

I had to drag him through the parking lot and into the pool house, until…

“Swimming!” Kai exclaimed when he laid eyes on the pool. “I love swimming!”

Well, duh.

:::

I couldn’t get either one of them to be interested in the carefully researched and fully enclosed and drown-proof splashpad.

“See? Look at all these awesome spray things!”

They both just looked at me like I was insane, since there was a perfectly awesome swimming pool right here.

Apparently, the “s” in splashpad stands for “sucks.”

Ryan, for her part, thought her talents would best be served over here:

After I chased her down every time she made a break for it  explained why she couldn’t be in the deep end, we had a lovely mom and tot hour at the pool.

And lo, there was much rejoicing.

Later, I blew their minds by taking them to the adjacent playground.

:::

I figured they’d be so grateful for the awesomeness of our adventure that they would go willingly when I’d had enough excitement for one day, but it actually cost me some McDonald’s French fries to get them into the car (well played, kids, well played). And now Ryan is crying though her naptime, Dora is on and Kai is actually sitting on my shoulders while I type.

Only six weeks left until school starts, kids.

And lo, there will be much rejoicing.