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 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.

In Which I Am Happy, Busy, Crazy, Etc.

Summer so far has been feast or famine.  Either too little stimulation for the kids or too much for all of us, although it's been enjoyable.  Last weekend we had our first party of the summer where dozens of people crowded onto to the newly reinforced deck... and no one died! Yay, us!

It's a little embarrassing to drive up to your own house 3 days after a party and realize that there are still juice boxes and water bottles littering the yard because the dozen kids you had running around like lunatics in the dark just dropped EVERYTHING where they felt like it, but whatevs. It's summer, you know?

Today is a typical example - Peanut is still in his underwear and probably won't put on clothing until tomorrow. Pepper is draped across the couch moaning that she doesn't feel well, and when I suggest that a break in the "Harry Potter" movie marathon she's been glued to might be in order? Well, she reacts exactly as if I have just poked her with a pointy stick.

One of the unexpected pleasures of the 4th of July holiday was having my nephew come stay with us for the weekend.  He is 16, has Asperger's Syndrome, and is taking summer classes at Harvard. Differential Equations and some other mathematical gobbledygook class, for which he will receive full college credit. Which he hopes to transfer to MIT, because that is where he would like to go, 'cause the boy? S.M.A.R.T. The best thing about the weekend was how relaxed and happy he seemed. He'll never be a terribly social animal, but he seemed to enjoy himself with all of our other party guests and it was nice to see him so non-stressed. Usually I only get to see him a few days a year when we visit family in PA, so being able to sit and talk was great.

The kids have been taking little day camps here and there, but we aren't heavily scheduled for the rest of the month. It feels nice, now that the 4th is over, to just wake up and say to the kids, "What should we do today?" So far, we've been out to eat several times, played with the sprinkler, built a model of the solar system, painted with food-colored ice cubes, built a million LEGO contraptions, and read several of the Lemony Snicket books. So far, so good.

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

Tales From the Backseat: Forty-Foreplay

Driving the kids to school after an early-morning doctor's appointment, Peanut is chattering away. I am, as usual, having trouble catching everything he is saying. That child can go on and on about his various obsessions (the Titanic, the Beatles, the various intricacies of cultural life on Stomposia, the imaginary planet he says he was born before he came to Earth and became a baby in my tummy.) 

In the face of non-stop 7 year old nattering, I admit it - I revert to the parenting "Uh huh... sure... okay..." response mode with him a little too often. It's usually when I can hear enough bits and pieces so that I'm pretty confident I'm not agreeing to let him hitchhike to Arizona by himself, but I should try harder, I know. Moving on. 

"Mom, what's 'foreplay'?" 

"Uhm... that is a grown-up word. It's not a swear, but it is like a swear - kids can't say it." 

"But what does it mean?" 

 "Well, it's like kissing... but for grown-ups." 

A pause, and then, "Mom? I want to foreplay you on the mouth!!" Aaaand... SCENE! 

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The perseveration continues, however. A day later, he is dancing around me in the kitchen doing his OCD/Tourrette-like version of the pee-pee dance, only for words. He can barely hold it in, he says... he wants to say "FOREPLAY!!" He is stricken! He SAID it! Oh no!!! He cries, we talk, life goes on.

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A few nights later, he informs his father that he knows what "foreplay" means, then quickly backpedals and says, "SEVENplay! I mean SEVENPLAY, because *I* am seven and... and... and... Mom forty-fourplays with you, right?" 

And there is another serious conversation, and then the next morning in the car, he tells me he is afraid he is going to say it at school, that he just can't stop thinking it and that he is worried he will say it out loud and get in trouble. 

I suggest that he substitute another word for it, something silly that will distract him, like "walnuts." We have used this technique in the past for unacceptable verbal perseverations, and he does pretty well with it. "Mom, can I walnuts you on the cheek when we get home?"

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Another couple days go by, with him using the word "walnuts," but goofing around with it. "Walnuts me, baby!!" he says to his sister. "I want to walnuts your whole face, Mommy!" It tapers off, and then one morning, we are snuggling on the couch watching cartoons, and he turns to me and says, "Let's not say 'walnuts' anymore. We can just say 'kissing.'" 

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And so we come full circle, back to appropriate word usage, after a week of consoling, correcting, threatening, and explaining. Too bad for Dr. V., but I need a little break from "foreplay."

Labels: autism, bad words, frustration, Peanut, social awkwardness