punchdrunkmom

In which the Punchdrunkmom has a punchdrunk week

Hello from Punchdrunkland. It’s been one of those weeks, you know? So busy doing…what exactly? I don’t even know, and I can’t think above this crazy din in my head that sounds like an old window air conditioner, a banging rattle and hum churning out thoughts in a jumble that looks like this:

Target and Whole Foods. Forgot Gluten-Free nuggets, have to go back. Out of Windex. Volunteer parent backed out of activity because her kid has pink eye. Need sitter for that now, also for chaperoning field trip Thursday. Remember to dress boy warmly, have been advised to feed him hearty breakfast. Right. Woman coming for Diaper Genie on Craig’s list is 2:30 okay? Need supplies for class project. Shower, no time to dry hair. Or eat. Speech therapy. Try to do breakfast dishes before I start dinner, get halfway done and get distracted by text message. GAH it’s from AT&T. Need to get sister birthday present. Friend invites me for lunch. But there’s no time! There’s. No. Time. Must return too-small clothes to Old Navy and arrange travel-size toiletries for flying with children on Friday. Oh, God, Friday. Must download Dora onto iPad. And Blue’s Clues and Wonderpets. Arrgh. Remember charger. And camera. Must do load of laundry. Leave list for Scott of things to do, arrange transportation from airport. Remember to tell them I need car seats. What am I going to wear during this trip? Also Kai. Also Ryan. Must pack nebulizer. Don’t forget epi-pen. Must buy gift card for Teacher’s Assistant’s birthday. Why won’t Ryan take a freaking nap? Answer 67 e-mails from class about the gift for the teacher’s assistant. Call airline. Check forecast. Must try on shoes that have been sitting in their UPS box since Tuesday. Also find toddler seat attachment for high chair and run half marathon.

:::

I was hoping for a little peace yesterday, but Ryan confused nap time with screaming practice. I thought I’d try again after I picked up Kai, but then the phone rang and it was the customer service woman from Dell calling back about my battery light that blinks four ambers and a white indicating some mysterious ailment she called a bad bios, and while I was on hold for that, there was a knock at the door and the Jehovah’s Witnesses were there. Either that or they were Mormons, but I think Mormons wear dark suits and this guy’s suit was green and underneath he was wearing a green and white argyle sweater. The kids were screaming and there was popcorn everywhere and I was on the phone so I told the guy that it wasn’t a good time.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll come back.”

So I’ve got that to look forward to. For some reason, I can’t be rude to those guys, even though there’s not a chance in Hell I’ll ever become a Jehovah’s Witness, because oh, my God, you guys, where would I ever find the time?

 

In which you find out what we bought at the costume store

So I bought the boy two costumes at the Halloween store last weekend. We narrowed it down from the six he wanted, excluding Green Crayon (too big), Penguin (not as cute as the costumes at the aquarium), Superman (not super enough, as you will soon see), Panda (OMG it was $75!), and settled on Thor (heretofore known as “Superhero”), and Crocodile.

Kai carried his bag of awesome to the car.

“I need superhero,” he said.

“You bet, Monkeyman. Just as soon as we get home.”

We put the costume on not one second after we were in the door.

“I need ears,” he said, referring to the picture on the front of the costume package:

I pulled out what I thought was the headpiece, which had two side-wing things with some double-sided tape and…nothing else. That was it. Plus, one of the side-wings was cracked and broken.

“I need ears,” he repeated.

Of course he did. For all I know, the ears were the only reason he wanted the costume to begin with. So we got back in the car, Kai still wearing his superhero muscle suit. I had to negotiate his cape to strap him into his booster seat.

The costume store guy said that we’d gotten the last Thor costume, so we couldn’t get a replacement headpiece. We hunted all over for something similar. Viking horns? No. Roman helmet? No! Kai looked very disappointed, and, wearing his Halloween costume on September 18, cut a pretty pathetic figure.

“Let me see what I can do,” the guy said, disappearing and coming back with a giant plastic hammer.

“It’s just like the one in the movie,” he assured Kai, who as far as I know, has never even heard of Thor. “I want to make this right, so you can just have the hammer.”

It crossed my mind that this hammer business was a really bad idea, and guessed that the costume guy didn’t have children, a suspicion that was confirmed when he told me about the costume he’d purchased for his dog. The dog would also be Thor.

Distracted by the dog-Thor story and really needing to get on with my life, I thanked the guy for the hammer. I was in the car approximately 20 seconds before I regretted taking that hammer. Kai hammered on the window (Kai, stop hammering on the window). Later, he hammered on the table (Kai, stop hammering on the table). He hammered on Ryan (Kai, don’t hit the baby with a hammer).

Meanwhile, I tried to salvage the headpiece, covering a headband in tin foil and attaching the side-wings with tape:

Kai gamely tried to make this work, but no one understands better than I do about wanting to have the right outfit, a feeling that harkens back to when I was in seventh grade and my mom convinced me that she could take a Guess jeans label and sew it on to a non-Guess pair of jeans and no one would know. Well, I knew, for one thing. And judging from the calls of "Look! Megan's wearing fake Guess jeans!" so did everyone else at Frost Junior High. 

Even the hammer didn’t make it any better.

Not long after that, Kai decided that he wanted to be the crocodile, so we stripped off Thor and put on the other costume.

“What does a crocodile say?” I asked, expecting a roar.

Kai smiled. “Chomp, chomp!”

Indeed.

Meanwhile, I did what anyone would do when one needs a new, bad-ass Thor helmet. I harnessed the power of the Internet. It arrived on Tuesday and I took it with me to pick Kai up at school and presented it proudly.

“Ears!” I said.

He put the costume on when we got home. It was so awesome, I asked him to come into the bathroom so he could see it in the mirror.

I lifted him up, and when he saw his reflection, he broke out into a huge grin.

“I’m a superhero!” he said.

And he is.

 

And the really weird thing is, he has no idea it's almost Halloween

“What’s your name?” the costume store clerk asked Kai. “I’m Kristen.”

That question fills me with dread. Still. Always.

The feeling harkens back to the time when I was hoping so very, very hard that this child was not on the spectrum. Strangers would ask him questions and receive…nothing. No answer or acknowledgement. No eye contact. I would always give him a beat or two, and then, hopefully before it got too awkward, rush in and answer the question, always a little too brightly: Two! Kai! Thomas! Chicken McNuggets! See? There’s nothing wrong here!

Over time, he’s gotten better at answering some of the questions, as long as they’re solidly in the present tense: Kai. Eggs and toast. Jumping on the bed.

My palms still itch with that old fear, though, so when Kristen introduced herself, I was right there to intervene.

:::

All weekend he’d been wearing Ryan’s Halloween costume, a cow I’d gotten at Costco for 13 bucks. She had her choice of a duck or a cow and chose the cow. I wouldn’t care if he wore it, and Ryan certainly doesn’t care, but it’s a size 24 months and he’s a 5T and it looks uncomfortable on him. Especially in the crotchal region. I have no idea what the future holds for him, but if he wants to have children one day, he’s going to need a little more room down there.

Not that I haven’t been enjoying Kai dressed like a cow. He’s been moo-ing. Juuuuust walking around moo-ing. While wearing the cow costume equivalent of a Speedo. What’s awesome is his moo delivery—deadpan, in the style of Bob Newhart. “Moo,” he says. There’s no inflection or carrying out the “oooooooo” sound.

Just, “Moo.”

Even so, I thought I’d take him to the costumer store and get him something a little bigger.

:::

“Superhero!” he shouted. “Green crayon! Penguin! Panda!” he pulled down costume after costume.

I followed him as he ran ahead, finding a wall of masks. He picked up a Bert mask (as in Bert and Ernie), and I helped him with the elastic. He looked around through the eye holes.

That’s when Kristen introduced herself.

I was willing him to answer (Say, I’m Kai. Say, I’m Kai) and was about to intervene (“Say, ‘I’m Kai!’”) when he did me one better.

“I’m Bert!” he said.

Kristen laughed.

“Oh, I see! Well, Bert,” Kristen said, “it’s nice to meet you.”

 

As Moe Szyslak once said, "Clean hole, clean soul."

I can’t stop getting rid of stuff.

I think it started last spring when I cleaned out my closet, and then the torpor of a long, hot summer set in. But at the first hint of a cool breeze, I’m back on the job.

I’ve Craigslisted an old stroller that I thought I might use again when and won’t. A sewing machine I’ve been dragging around since I graduated from college with the idea that I was maybe going to learn to sew one day. Kai’s old Diaper Genie.

I’ve been trying to take a pragmatic look at the crap I have crammed into my closets. And I do mean crammed crap, you guys. Playmats and stuffed animals, outgrown size 6 pull-ups and doll house paints and broken DVD players. The instruction manual for a Mongtomery Ward house brand VCR. An awesome coat I bought in New York City that frankly I would have to have some ribs removed in order to wear, and this was before I had children. A twin Duvet cover I bought at Ikea when I didn’t know what theme I was going to do Kai’s room, but Ikea is such a pain in the butt to get to that I just bought it because it was like $9.99.

Some of it’s hard to get rid of. The Duvet cover is cool, for example. As I pulled it out, I was thinking of putting it back into the closet. What could I do with it? And then the creative juices start to flow. Maybe I could learn how to sew and turn it into like a skirt or some throw pillows? And then I put it into the bag of stuff to give away because I sold the sewing machine yesterday.

Other things are hard to get rid of for different reasons.

I told Scott I was going to sell his juicer.

“Oh,” he said, twisting the word in his disappointment. “I like that juicer.”

I sighed. “Scott, in the entire span of time I’ve known you, you haven’t juiced anything.”

“Yeah, but—“

“Plus, you can just go buy juice.”

He was silent for a few minutes before delivering my death blow.

“I’m going to sell your boom box, too,” I said.

Maybe someone will buy it as part of a Halloween costume. Or maybe they can listen to the mix tape their girlfriend made them in 1987.

I want to photograph my portfolio, make a book out of it and then throw everything away. I want to clean out the desk, which is so jam packed with stuff we can’t put anything new inside. Same with the secretary, which has resumes from job searches in 1996, phone books and VHS tapes in it.

I’ve considered that I’m having some kind of manic moment, but I don’t think so. It might also be that I'm avoiding some tasks that I don't really want to do, like finish an essay I was trying to write that isn't coming together. Mostly, though I think it’s just time to let some things go, things that I’ve been holding on to for so long that I’ve forgotten about them. Letting them go so I have more room in my life.

That’s not a metaphor, by the way. Well, it is and it isn’t.

The one place I can’t seem to do this, though, is in Ryan’s closet. Her baby blankets and swaddlers and 0-3 month sleepers that were too big on her when we brought her home from the hospital. Giving those away means that she’s really growing up and I’m maybe not ready for that. I don’t want to admit that she’s almost two, that she’s probably my last baby, and she just keeps getting older and so do I.

On the other hand, I can’t buy her anything new until I clean out her dresser and Target has the cutest line of drop-waisted dresses and matching knee-socks.

Huh. All of this blogging and cleaning makes me thirsty. I could totally go for some juice.

Just kidding.

:::

On a completely unrelated topic, happy birthday to my mom, who is awesome. I love you so very much.

 

The besssssssssssst five dollarsssssssssssss I ever sssssssssssspent

I’ve been trying not to buy the kids so much crap.  I think that was a piece of advice I was given once. If you buy your kids something every time you go to the store, you’ll buy your kids something every time you go to the store. There’s wisdom in that, although the children often need an amount of bribery positive reinforcement in order to maintain throughout a trip anywhere. And sometimes, it’s just plain hard to resist. See exhibit A.

 

But this is why, after our trip to see Bottlenose for the second time, I didn’t want to buy Kai the stuffed snake from a lady selling stuffed snakes at the exit to the zoo. I was going to be strong, even though I was feeling melty and vulnerable to requests. Kai pulled a snake off the rack.

“SSSSSSSSSSSS!” he said, thusting the snake menacingly in my direction.

“Oh! I’m so scared!” I said. I was not going to buy a snake.

My mom sauntered over. “Symbolic play,” she pointed out, as Kai pretended the snake was alive and hissing at strangers.

“What color snake do you want?” I asked him, fishing $5 out of my wallet.

:::

The snake was soon the most disgusting thing in the world, having been dragged across a McDonald’s floor and into various gas station bathrooms on the way home from Minnesota. At one point, its tail was wet and I didn't know how it got that way, which made me want to barf. I compartmentalized that whole idea in a box in my brain where I keep the Things It’s Best Not to Think About.

Kai played with the snake fairly often, usually attacking me from behind with a loud, “SSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” My role, of course, was to be incredibly frightened, and I was only too happy to oblige.

Then one day, I heard the “SSSSSS” behind me and turned around to find not Kai, but Ryan.

“Oh, my!” I exclaimed. “What a scary snake!” She beamed.

:::

On Sunday afternoon, the family piled in the car. Ryan was upset about whatever pampered little girls get upset about—not enough glitter on her pretend unicorn or something. She was inconsolable, crying like I'd pulled out her toenails.

And then Kai found the snake, which of late has been doing time in the car.

“Oh, Baaaaaby,” he sang. “SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”

Ryan stopped crying.

“Here you go, Baby,” he said, handing her the snake, which she took.

"My SSSSSSSSSS!" she exclaimed.

Scott and I fell all over ourselves praising Kai.

“What a good big brother you are!” I said.

“Look how happy you made Ryan!” Scott said.

“That was awesome,” I said, as Scott and I buckled our seatbelts.

And it was. Not bad for five bucks.

 

In which a therapist realized what she's up against

Our ABA therapist asked me what I wanted to work on today with Kai.

“Stop,” I said. “I need a way to get him to stop whatever he’s doing immediately.”

“Like for safety?” she asked.

For safety. For when he climbs my parents’ balcony railing. For when he tries to use the chef’s knife or wash his hands in the toilet or pull my hair or bring eggs into my bedroom and ask me to cook them and then he cracks them on my dresser so he’s holding a handful of egg and shell and I’m dripping wet from the shower.

She set to work creating a social story, which, for those of you lucky enough not to know, is a short narrative that guides a kid through some kind of interaction.

“Does he ever stop when you say to?” she asked me.

“No,” I said, picturing him trying to seal himself inside a plastic tub this very morning.

We went through the story. We decided that a code word like “red light” was preferable to the word “stop,” which tends to get overused. “Red light” means stop immediately and put your hands at your sides.

Here is the social story:

Sometimes my mommy tells me to stop.

That means that sometimes I could get hurt if I don’t stop.

My mommy will say, “Red light.”

That means I must freeze to stop!

It is very important that I stop when Mommy says, “Red light.”

I can do it!

I can stop and freeze when Mommy says, “Red light.”

The end.

And then we tried to practice at using the stove.

“Kai, reach for the burner, and when Mommy says, ‘Red light,’ stop and freeze,” our therapist said.

Kai reached his finger toward the burner, which was not on, by the way. “Red light!” I said.

Kai giggled and reached touched it again. “Red light!”

More giggling.

Our therapist decided to model the behavior. She approached the burner with her finger. “Red light!” I said, and she went rigid, hands at her side.

“Now you try, Kai,” she said.

Kai reached his index finger to the burner. “Red light!” I said.

Kai giggled.

“Why does he think this is so funny?” our therapist asked.

I shifted uncomfortably. I knew exactly why.

“He thinks it’s a game,” she said.

I paused, but knew I should probably come clean. “Sometimes,” I said, we play a similar game.”

“You do?” she asked.

I closed my eyes briefly. “Sometimes, Kai pretends to pick his nose, and I pull on his arm and say ‘No, we don’t pick our nose,’ and Kai thinks this is the funniest game ever and…” my voice trailed off, remembering the time we played it in line at the deli counter. The other customers would turn around to find out what was causing peels of laughter and find my son with his finger jammed in his nose up to his knuckle, his mother actually encouraging this type of behavior.

“And?” she said.

“And sometimes we the same thing only with wet willies,” I finished, my voice barely a whisper. It sounds so unsophisticated when you say it out loud.

She gave me a long look.

“Well, you can work on it,” she said.

Indeed. 

 

On dolphins, penguins and mama polar bears

So there was a request for some additional dolphin action this weekend, and who were we to say no? We had two options: the aquarium or the zoo, and since we had free passes and because I thought the zoo might be a little more friendly and a little less ahem, we’re conservationists and we do not allow the dolphins to spit on your head, I decided on the zoo.

We tried to time it for the four o’clock dolphin show, having learned in Minnesota that no one goes to that show, but of course it was the last show of the day and sold out and the whole zoo was completely packed. On the plus side, they sell beer.

Let me tell you that at the zoo on Labor Day, everything is a two hour line that doesn’t move, so we saw exactly one animal exhibit:

And then we purchased some kick-ass headwear.

:::

We promised the boy that we’d go back on Monday and see the show, but we decided to mix it up a little and go to the aquarium instead. My friend Jen and her boys would meet us there.

The streets were empty as we drove to the aquarium, and I found myself hoping that the aquarium would be empty, too, but the streets were empty because everyone was already at the aquarium. We never even saw Jen.

We did, however, see some dolphins.

And we pretended to be penguins in the Polar Play Area. Scott somehow coaxed the boy into wearing this here penguin costume:

Kai went all out, flapping his arms and waddling around, but my favorite was how every time he slid down the ice-chute slide, he yelled, “Penguin Costuuuuuuuuuuuuume!”

 

We played on the rocks:

Ryan* wore a costume for thirty seconds:

:::

We lost track of Kai for a few minutes, and I suspected he was in the tunnel. I poked my head in and, amongst a heap of other children, caught a glimpse of his shoe.

“Kai?” I called.

A girl in a lavender top materialized at the entrance of the tunnel. “He doesn’t want to come out,” she said.

I squatted so I was at her level. There was something wrong here.

I wiped all traces of good humor from my face. “I wasn’t talking to you,” I said.

She stood her ground. “He told me to tell you,” she said.

I smiled, baring all of my teeth. “I can think of several reasons why that’s a lie.”

Kai piped up at that moment. “I need get out of tunnel.”

The girl exited the tunnel, evidently deciding to move on to easier prey. Kai and several other children clamored out of the tunnel upon her departure.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Penguin costume,” he said, brushing his hands down his plush penguin belly.

:::

We lost him again several minutes later, and found him once again in the tunnel. By choice, this time.

"You look away for a second and he's gone," Scott said. We had been playing a two-man offense, calling, "I've got the girl." Or "I got this, you take the boy." It was nice to have another adult there.

I realized that, child wrangling being my actual job, I probably had some tricks in my bag that Scott hadn't yet discovered.

"Here's the thing. It's like one of those Magic Eye posters that everyone used to have, where you stare at a picture for 20 minutes and finally you can see the whale or the mushroom or whatever was hidden in the pattern. You have to let your eyes go out of focus and take in the whole scene and it will come to you. You'll suddenly see a shoe or his cowlick."

Scott looked astonished and maybe a little impressed. "Magic Eye? Like at the mall?"

"It also helps if you remain calm," I said. "He's not going to leave the play area, you know?"

We scanned the Polar Play area for our children. I let my eyes go out of focus and found Kai on the slide and Ryan emerging from the tunnel in immediate danger of being squashed. A large boy was about to jump down from the rocks and didn't see her there, directly under his Air Jordans.

I placed my hand across his knees.

"Wait," I said.

He looked down and saw Ryan, and back up at me, his eyes wide and fearful.

"Thank you," I said, removing my hand and bending to scoop up the baby. "Carry on."

:::

We caught the dolphin show at the aquarium. Kai sat in his seat the whole time, clapping and cheering louder than anyone.

:::

On the way out of the aquarium we snapped a photo of this ponderous statue, dedicated to the memory of some guy’s wife:

 

I wonder if she was ever suspicious of that relationship.

:::

*Ryan is not pictured in close-up in this post due to the scratched face, the split lip and the goose-egg. She came by each injury legitimately, but taken together we don't want to invite any attention from the authorities, who should instead be investigating that sculptor for whatever indecent thing is going on between him and that poor fish. Whatever those NAMFLA people tell you, fish can't actually give consent.