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.

In Which I Try to Catch Up

So.

Yeah.

Hmmm.

Not sure where to begin, after so long away from the keyboard.

The holidays were good, and tough, and then blessedly over.

December was hard for Peanut.  After discussing the possibility for over 6 months, we decided to try a SSRI medication to try to alleviate some of his anxiety. We ended up trying two different medications, and unfortunately he could not tolerate them. And by "couldn't tolerate," I mean became activated within a day of the first dosing.

On the first day of the first 1/2 tablet of the lowest dosage of the first medication, he perked up. On the second day he was in a good mood and couldn't sleep until after midnight. By the third day, he was not-quite manic and didn't get to sleep until 2 a.m., and so we stopped the medicine.  

He crashed coming off that medication - was sad and depressed and angry and it was awful to see, and so we tried him on a different medicine with an oral solution that we could micro-dose him with. It seemed promising, and we kept him on a teeny tiny dose for 2 weeks. (The standard dose is 5 ml and we were giving him 10 - 20% of that.)

I found myself keeping copious notes: "12/11/10: .8ml, itchy skin, mostly happy, some frustrated tears. Very talkative, hyper physically in the evening. Gave extra melatonin as first dose seemed to have little effect. Slept 11:15 - 7:45."

We dropped the dosage: "12/14/10: .4 ml, tired, lots of stop/start sentences, distracted. Bad day at school, cranky, disrespectful to teacher. Slept 10 - 8."

We upped the dosage: 12/16/10: 8 ml. Better day - cranky at times but quick recovery. Fresh mouth and quick to offend but also very affectionate and giggly. Slept 9:45 - 6:45."

Christmas approached. Snowstorms and snow days and school parties and holiday activities, yadda yadda yadda. Moods are elevated and nothing is normal with the Big Day hanging over us. Christmas Eve arrived, and we were all set for the dramatic morning reveal and the big dinner with relatives.

The four of us were sitting around in the living room, watching tv and reading. Out of nowhere, Peanut casually said, "I don't know why, but sometimes? I look all calm on the outside, but inside I'm thinking about killing myself." 

Pepper was sitting next to him and looked at me for reassurance, and in the meantime, Dr. V. had been reading the paper and was tuned out and had missed it. You know how, in dreams, you sometimes fall for a sickeningly long time and then THUD! You wake up and you are in your bed and fine? That's what it felt like, except the swirly anxiety is still in me, a month and a half later. I feel like that all the time now. It's awful.

Peanut and I talked about it for a few minutes, but then he was sick of the subject and wanted to go play on the Wii, like we'd been talking about what to eat for dinner instead of his disturbing visions of stabbing himself.  It is one thing to understand that suicidal ideation is a known side effect of SSRI medication. It is another thing to have to calmly talk to your 8 year old about what he is seeing in his head when all you want to do is scream and cry at the wrongness of it.

Fast forward to now. He is off all medications except his non-stimulant ADHD medication. He is not the happiest kid on the block, but neither has he been thinking about harming himself. Those thoughts have receded, and while I miss the cheerful, sparkly boy we saw while on the medication, it isn't an option for him. We have started meeting weekly with a new therapist. School reports are the same - not real happy at school but no major outbursts, either. Life moves on.

Pepper has been pretty good through all of this. She has her own issues, but they are more mainstream and tweenish. She got braces last month, which she hates. She loves playing basketball but dislikes her team and her coach and especially all the losing. I keep telling her that life moves on and I struggle with being kind when I say she needs to get over it. I mouth platitudes like, "Each day that the braces are on is a day closer to getting them off," but the truth is that she pushes all my buttons with her negative attitude and it is a struggle to stay positive around her sometimes. I get fed up too easily and snap back, and that adds to the swirly anxiety in my head and makes us both unhappy.

She tried out for a big play and got called back, which I kept trying to tell her was great in and of itself. There were over 120 kids who tried out and only 18 got called back. Unfortunately, she then proceeded to stand up on stage at call backs looking like she had eaten something awful because she was so nervous. As soon as she finished singing, she turned to me in the audience and shook her head sorrowfully, and I thought, "Good God, child! FAKE IT! You are supposed to be acting up there - ACT HAPPY! Act like a kid the director wants to be around for the next 4 months!"

But, alas, she has No Filter, and my big fake smile from the audience was not enough to get my message across. Lots of drama when she didn't get cast, but she seems over it now. She's snippy and teary and by turns sweet and sour. I think we are okay, though. I hope so.

In the meantime, life goes on. We took a little family trip to NH this past weekend and stayed at a place with an indoor water park, so it was a mostly happy time. Peanut's fear of water miraculously went away when confronted by this:

There was, of course, the traditional First Ski Lesson Trauma, where a child falls getting off the magic carpet lift and other beginners crash into them and then they flail around on the ground crying, "I WANT TO GO HOME! I HATE SKIING!" and all the other parents smile because they are relieved it isn't their kid acting like that this time. Whatever. 

Now it is February, which is like the Monday of the year. Time to get back into the swing of things, buckle down, and focus on what lies ahead. But first, more coffee.

(Reading back through this feels like I plucked just 2 or 3 colorful fish out of an aquarium teeming with life to share with you, but I hope to show you more of my fish soon.)

(I'm not trying to coin a euphemism, there - I just mean I hope to blog more regularly.)

(Wow, I am really out of practice with this blogging stuff.)

In Which I Can't Sleep Worth a Damn Tonight

I am lying on my couch, tucked in with a blanket and pillows, staring out the back windows. It is 1:44 am. My nose is just stuffy enough to bother me and my elbow is just twanging enough to keep me uncomfortable in any position I try.

As I was laying in my bed, I could feel the mucus gathering slowly at the back of my nose every other minute and got sick of snorffling it down, so I came out in search of a box of tissues.

But those minor discomforts weren't keeping me awake. I just can't stop thinking of all the things I have to do in the morning - scratch that, I mean "in 5 1/2 hours." And I can't stop fretting about several barely fret-worthy emotional issues and one or two big ones.

I'll tell you this, however: first item on my list for tomorrow is to call the doctor to speak about this chronic 2 am bullshit anxiety. This is brutal, yo.

In Which the Heat Addles Everyone's Brains

I'll be generous and blame it on the heat, but it's been weird nonetheless. It has the surreal feeling of a post-apocolyptic everyone-out-for-themselves movie, and I half expect to be hunted down for my water or batteries or whatever the fuck people from over the bridge want. But I'll get back to that later.

This week has been crazed, full of appointments and running hither and yon and back to hither, with each trip taking much longer than it should thanks to the crush of tourists on Cape Cod.

I've been busy with kid stuff and house stuff and BlogHer'10 stuff and life stuff, some of it fabulous and some of it crappy. It seems like for every taste of emotional sugar I've been given this week, a blast of sour has come from out of nowhere to temper the sweet.  

Much of the off-kilter feeling is due to the steroid regimen I'm taking in an attempt to tame the plantar fasciitis before I get to BlogHer'10 next week.  I've been energized and a little shaky all week, no doubt the result of sleeping around 4 hours each night, but life events have certainly contributed their share. 

There was the short-lived panic about the well-being of a family member, subsequently assuaged by treating him to an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch and hashing out his problems. 

Then there was the feedback session for Peanut's neuropsychological evaluation, which was interesting. His profile has changed considerably from the last time we had him tested and while it was mostly good news it is still a lot to process. And even though I know that he is the same child I have raised for the last 7 years, hearing about some of those gains and deficits - and what they might mean for the future - is hard.

And there was also my rising excitement for BlogHer, as I prepare to focus on only myself for 4 days. It's so much fun when my on-line world comes to life for a few days, as I've learned from previous years.  The flood of invitations to private parties at BlogHer is something that is new to me. This is my 3rd BlogHer conference and I've never been invited to any of the private sponsored parties before, but I've somehow landed on some pr lists and my in-box has been deluged. It's ridiculous and puzzling, since I'm not a very active blogger and I don't give stuff away or have a large audience to influence, but I have to admit that it is fun to open up the in-box and have that "No waaay! Cool!" rush.

Back to the weirdness.  In all of this here life stuff, there has been a lot of driving around, which means a lot of dealing with traffic, and heat, and tourists... which means a lot of handling the CRAZY PEOPLE. I have seen two accidents happen right in front of me and multiple incidents of reckless bicycle operation which should have resulted in serious maimings. I even had my cart rammed in the grocery store by a nasty old lady who used her cart to shove mine out of her way instead of asking me! To top it all off, I've been personally flipped off by no less than 3 separate angry, pinch-faced old white men in the same afternoon for letting someone merge in front of me.

I never thought taking a trip from Cape Cod to New York City would result in my having contact with less crazy people.

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

Throw It at the Wall and See if It Sticks.

I'm tired of writing about my kids. They take up most of my time and energy, leaving very little left over in my days for ME, and that means when I sit down to write something, my brain is stuck on KIDS KIDS KIDS. How did I become this boring mommy person?! 

But hey - let's not talk about boring old ME. Let's talk about... my KIDS. Blerg. 

When last we heard about our mini-heroine, she was spending her time stressing out *about* but excelling *in* school while tilting from one emotional extreme to the next at home, all the while complaining of headaches and blurred vision and foot cramps and various other psychosomatic illnesses. Her mother attempted to assuage her worry by booking an appointment with the eye doctor 2 weeks hence, but our heroine continues to languish, convinced that she has something far more seriously wrong with her. 

Enough of that. My week was filled with lots of volunteering and random moments. In a typical 5 minute vignette that ended poorly, I was collecting the kids in the lobby of the school for an after-school activity when I ran into Pepper's teacher from last year. As we stand there catching up, another teacher walks up and says she has some books for Peanut to read - her son is in class with him and is also an advanced reader, so she has some books from her classroom to loan him. As she leaves, yet another person walks up with information about yet another school activity, and suddenly, Pepper lets out a shriek of pain that silences the crowd in the lobby. 

The adults scatter, and as we hustle to the nurse for an ice pack for her bloody nose, I ask what happened. 

"I walked into the wall!" 

"How did that happen?!" 

"I had my eyes closed and I walked into the wall!" 

"Why were you were walking around the lobby with your eyes closed?!?!" 

"I thought H was steering me by the shoulders, but she steered me into the WALL!" 

"How did that happen? Did she do it on purpose, or was it an accident, or what?" 

"She had HER eyes closed, too!" 

 Oh. Kay. Then. 

Multiply that scenario by, like, 70 and you've got my week. (And perhaps she *does* have something wrong with her, because that just ain't right. I KEEEEED, I keeeed....) 

As for Peanut, after much discussion with all of the various highly-trained personnel in his life, we have started him on an ADHD medication. So far, so good - not a dramatic difference, but it definitely lessens the "pinballing around the room" behavior. He's only been taking it for a few days, so we'll see if it helps his at-school behavior. His finger is healing nicely, although we have to work on his tendency to hold it out away from the other fingers as he uses his hand, inadvertently giving the finger to everyone in view. And don't even get me started on the campaign I am waging to get him to stop referring to a certain Looney Tunes character as "Yo, Semite Sam." 

Wish me luck - I'm hoping for a "Swear-Word-&-Bloodshed Free" afternoon.

Labels: blerg., kids, Peanut, Pepper, total randomness