A Smeddling Kiss

In Which We Love the Big Apple and Things are Generally Swell.

Sometimes, no news *is* good news. The last month has not been unproblematic, thanks to the Annual Bronchitis, but has overall been pretty **** skippy.

Peanut has been having a good spell, an even keel, a righteous time. It has been... more than pleasant. We attribute this to his stellar teaching staff and the current drug combination of non-stimulant ADHD meds (2 mg Intuniv to ward off the OCD and tics) and short-acting stimulant ADHD meds (2.5 mg Focalin to get him through the beginning of the school day but wear off early enough to cause no insomnia.) Knock on wood, it's a good regimen. It won't last forever, but for now it's terrific.

We just spent 3 nights in New York city, courtesy of April vacation from school. We enjoyed the American Museum of Natural History, FAO Schwartz, Central Park, Times Square, several restaurants and a Broadway show ("Anything Goes.") It was just us, the city... and FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND BILLION KAJILLION other families. Helllllllooooo, spring break!

We are home now, after an easy 4.5 hours drive home. And no, I'm actually NOT being facetious for once - the kids were great on this trip. There were small meltdowns and such, but for the most part they were amazing. When we walked into Toys R Us in Times Square and saw the line for the indoor ferris wheel filled with hundreds of cranky families, we led Peanut through the store to see everything and then told him it wasn't going to happen. He was unhappy, we talked about it, and then... POOF! We negotiated an acceptable settlement (candy) and we were done. And Pepper? She just grimaced and went along with it. I might not love the eye rolling, but I love the maturity that brings the innate understanding that she will get a chance to do what she wants to do, if at all possible. 

It sounds like such a normal thing, doesn't it? And yet the past 7+ years have been spent strategically avoiding situations that might trigger a meltdown. It was so hard. I can type that and read it and FEEL it, but I don't know if I can express it in a way that a casual reader will understand the import of that sentence.

It was SO HARD. And I'll be honest - it was one child that was hard, for the most part, and his needs have shaped this family.  I'm not foolish enough to think that it is all going to be easy from this point on.

But I have share this with anyone who still pokes around on this blog: it is so much better.

Whew.

Well, The Big Secret Activity That I Can't Blog About is over for another year. This year was a heartbreaker - the kids did really well, but then the scoring system screwed them over. And that's all I can say about that. 

In other news, we have been medicine-hopping with Peanut, thanks to the insurance companies insistence that he "fail" on two of their approved meds before they will pay for the one that worked great. Once again, I find myself so grateful for Peanut's special ed. teacher and aide. They have seen him progress through kindergarten and into 1st grade, and they have been tracking his behavior for me in 1/2 hour increments. We are now in the fortunate position of having a chart that details exactly when he showed multiple problem behaviors (yelling at a peer, crying, etc.) clearly indicating an escalation in those behaviors on the alternate medicines. 

 Pepper's 10th birthday was nice. We had her ears pierced after school on her birthday, then went out to dinner. For her party, she had her first sleepover, which was fun - except for the whole "sleepover" part. Although I tried to convince them to sleep in the family room, they spread out on the floor of her bedroom instead. An hour later, she came down from her room on the verge of tears, wailing "THEY WON'T STOP TALKING!!!" and ended up sleeping with me. Sounds about right for a first timer, huh? 

In other news, we are all crazy about "American Idol" here on the Cape these days, thanks to local girl Siobhan Magnus doing so well. It's so cute to go into the elementary school and see all of the "VOTE 4 SIOBHAN!" posters the kids have made. She used to warm up the little kids in one of the big musical productions Pepper was involved in, and it's wild to see her on television singing her heart out. 

 Now we are looking forward to Spring being sprung and all that stuff. Thank goodness the sun came out today, because I am heartily sick of 40 degrees and rainy. I just got a call about the CSA farm share this summer, and it was amazing how good just talking about summer plans made me feel. Hopefully the sun will stick around and help me shake the winter out of my soul this week.

Labels: ADHD, birthday cake, BSAICBA, cape cod life

Purse Paleontology

I cleaned out my purse this morning for the first time since before vacation. As the pile of crap I was excavating grew higher and more bizarre, I realized that the contents made a perfect little index of the last few weeks. BEHOLD! The Awesome Randomness of the February Purse.

 

In the bottom, there are the usual suspects: no less than 7 pens, 4 lip colors, 2 combs, and 3 iPod devices, including my iPhone. (I usually end up carrying all the family devices by the end of a trip after too many "I can't find my ..." complaints.) My little owl purse, which I use to hold my reusable shopping bags, except it's empty because I keep forgetting to put the reusable bags back in the cute little owl purse. 

 Epipen, and Benadryl, and Dramamine, oh my! Wallet, sunglasses, random keyring gifted to us by Disney because it was our second Disney cruise. (Ugh. I just regurgitated a little at the knowledge that I am officially a member of the "Castaway Club.") Oh, yay! My spare car keys! I've been looking everywhere for those! What a clever place to keep them, right there with my car keys, so in case I ever lose my car keys... crap. 

Mints, gum, Peanut's toothbrush. Wait a minute... if his toothbrush has been in my purse for a week, what's he been using to brush his teeth? Annnddd... a quick trip to the bathroom shows me that he's been using a WISP single use throwaway toothbrush for a week. 

As if that wasn't proof of my TOTAL PARENTING AWESOMENESS, let's dig around in the purse a little more. What's this? Not one but TWO separate prescriptions for valium floating around in there! One for me, for the flight anxiety, for the flying on the plane to and from Florida. One for Peanut, for the dentist anxiety, for the pulling of several baby teeth to make some space for the whoppingly huge big boy teeth that are crowding in. (Perhaps I haven't impressed you with the veritable pharmacopeia I'm carrying around with me, but be assured that the receptionist at the pediatric cardiologist's front desk gave me a satisfyingly appalled reaction as I fumbled it all out searching for Peanut's health insurance card. Thank God the EKG was normal so I never have to see her again.) 

 And floating on top, like the steamed milk on my Crazy Ass Latte, are a billion scraps of paper. Appointment cards, shopping lists, receipts for purchases, and Peanut's allergy testing results:

 

Oh, goodie!!! He's even MORE allergic than we thought! And here I was, dragging him in for skin testing, hoping that he might have outgrown the peanut allergy... only to find out that not only is he still highly allergic to peanuts, he is also allergic to soy, egg yolks, almonds and watermelon! That's pretty much it. Well, there is the random flotsam of earplugs and paper clips and dimes and... oh, look! More drugs!!

 

Actually, it's an empty capsule from the ADHD medication Peanut is now taking every morning. I collect the empty capsules at Peanut's request, since he likes to fill them with baking soda and drop them in glasses of vinegar. What?!? There's nothing weird about that, right? Carrying around a bunch of empty pill capsules loose in your purse? I mean, it's not like I've got a purse full of drugs or anything... oh, wait.

Labels: ADHD, allergy, gimme the good drugs, total randomness

Labeled With Love

When you become a parent you join a club. You bring home your first child and you spend your first moments marveling at the wonder of OMG!!! this is MY child, and then the panic sets in. It's not like you didn't know you were having (or adopting) a child, it's just that it was all so birth and/or arrival focused that you lost sight of the whole "after the big day" scenario. 

You settle in at home, thrilled and excited and sometimes in lots of pain, and then you are watching your baby breath in and out and suddenly 3 hours have passed. You get a flash of comprehension and a glimpse of the utter mind-wrenching task you have set yourself, and you begin that terrifying journey with the certain knowledge that you don't know what the hell you are doing. And then you multiply that feeling by the number of seconds in a day and then you realize you'll be doing that every day for the rest of your life... and ta da! 

Welcome to the club!

Start from there. We are all terrified and don't know what we are doing, and that is a big part of why we are so quick to judge other parents. If that person is doing something wrong, and I am not doing THAT wrong thing, then... I must be doing it RIGHT! Yay, me! 

I certainly had my moments with Pepper. My Judgey McJudge-A-Lot moments. The times that I felt like I must be doing this parenting gig so right to have such a well-behaved, perfect, brilliant child. I admit it freely - I didn't get a lot of the chatter about "difficult" babies, because Pepper was simply delightful. 

But then I learned that when you have a baby that is atypical, it takes a lot more to feel like you are doing it right. When we first started searching for some answers to why Peanut was such an odd little duck, I read a lot of blogs written by other parents going through the same thing I was. There were often discussions by parents about how they didn't want to "label" their kids, which I both understood and didn't. For me, I actually found relief in being able to name various problems, even though it was also scary to slap a one-size-fits-many label on my beautiful, perfect boy. 

Peanut: 

• 35-Week Preemie 
• Torticullis 
• Positional Plagiocephaly 
• Recurrent Ear Infections 
• Peanut Allergy 
• Eczema 
• Environmental Allergies 
• Sensory Integration Disorder 
• Speech Delay 
• PDD-NOS 
• Educational Diagnosis: Autism 
• Educational Diagnosis: Gifted

... and now, please give a warm welcome to the reason for this post and our most recent addition to the family corral: ADHD! 

Woo hoo! Give it up for the latest diagnosis for the boy! 

Here's the thing, though: after Peanut's recent ADHD diagnosis, I realized I've officially hit the point where the labels just bounce off me. They don't make an impact anymore. When the kids were younger, every diagnosis was weighted with fear and expectation. Every label held out the hope of an answer, and of a concrete plan, and eventually of more heartbreak when things didn't go according to that plan. 

I know I've been posting quite sparsely these days. I've temporarily lost my taste for blogging, because so much is happening so fast and there are only so many hours in the day. I'm overwhelmed with the actual events of the day and have no time or energy left to turn them over in my mind and examine them and polish and chronicle them. 

January was filled with doctor's appointments and the fun roller coaster of trying out some ADHD medication. We are still plugging away, and I am hopeful we will see some progress. I don't love the labels, but if they get my child the services he needs, then label away. After years of this I have come to the understanding that these things are not the measure of my child. Those labels just add to the picture. They bring might change the view other people get of him, but for me? 

Another label is just another brushstroke that makes up the gorgeousness of my boy.

Labels: Abby Normal, kids