Pretend That Christmas Was Not Like, 17 Months Ago For a Minute

Look! Christmas pictures! Still relevant because I say so.

Notice Santa's ingenious use of the number 4 in the absence of a third A. I wonder how many other greetings she he tried to spell before giving up and going with that. (Answer: SEV3N)

This was just a warm-up for the four-foot-tall sugar sculpture (competition theme: winter wonderland) we made later.

Noah has been sick for days now. DAYS. I don't even know with what, but it's ooky and sticky and involves a LOT of different ooky sticky areas of the body, if I may help you with that post-holiday diet for a moment.

Jason thinks it's molars, finally and truly coming for real this time, as opposed to the teaser appearances that have been plaguing us since September. I don't know what I think it is. I think it's fucking gross, is what I think it is.

Apologies to anyone who actually ate these cookies, i.e. my beloved family.

My birthday, however, was lovely. Thank you for asking. Noah had the courtesy to stay healthy until 4 am on December 28th. Although one boring administrative note: my birthday present thinks you are all spam. It thinks you are junk, and has been filing all your emails accordingly. Nothing personal, though. It thought my mom was spam too. I discovered this yesterday when I checked the junk mail folder of the Mac email program and HOLY CRAP.

(And I've been WONDERING why my email has been so shiny and manageable! It's because I've only received about a third of it.)

So if you've sent an email anytime since...hmm...mid-December, which is when Jason plopped a big wrapped present under our tree and told me I could open it then or wait until my actual birthday, HAR HAR HAR...rest assured that I DID receive it, but am just now actually reading it. Lands. And apologies. And blah.

Couuuuusins! Identical couuuuusins! Not planned at all by their mooooothers, believe it or nooooot!

Suspicion.

Sharing.

30

= Me! Yay!

I have so much to talk about (no, I don't know if I'm pregnant yet, and no, I don't feel pregnant yet, which means I feel comfortable knocking back my just-in-case-long-shot-in-hell prenatal vitamin with a glass of wine)...actually, I don't really have much to talk about after all.

So, here! The thing I was supposed to post on Christmas but didn't because of the aforementioned wine.

(No, I don't know why I'm posting random photos of random gigantic little boys either. I mean, who IS that KID?)

Noah's favorite Christmas gift was a giant plastic bank shaped like a giant plastic crayon. It cost $4.99 and he sleeps with it every night. Ohkaaaaay.

 

Merry Christmas, Baby, Maybe

(Alternate Title: My Oversharing: Let Me Share It With You)

Huh.

And now we wait. 14 days. Or so. Not that I'm paying obsessive attention, or anything.

Breakfast with Anna Wintour

The first rule is that one should always be fabulous, no matter how early in the morning it is.

The second rule is, of course, NO DAIRY.

Remember that it is never too early to get good and appalled and throw coffee on an intern.

And sometimes you do need to take off your fabulous glasses to get a better look at that atrocious hemline.

And when no one is watching, go ahead and stuff your face and make some NOM NOM NOM sound effects. You've earned it, baby.

Maybe It's Because I Forgot to Teach Him the Secret Lunch Bunch Gang Sign

So I'm turning 30 next week -- blah blah yes yes whatever not the point of this entry FOCUS people -- and when Jason asked me what I wanted, I did not even hesitate. All I wanted in the world was to not ever go back to the ruddy stinking Lunch Bunch nonsense.

He got me a MacBook instead.

Oh, I'm kidding. (Sort of. MmmmmmacBook. Shiny!) He took Noah to the class today, alone. I wish my reasons were more admirable -- to expand Jason's involvement in Noah's various therapies, to give him first-hand experience with what we're dealing with, or to maybe see if Noah behaved better without my neurotic self there. All perfectly good reasons, all perfect steaming loads of bullshit. I just didn't want to go. Don't make me. I can throw quite a tantrum myself, actually.

So Jason went and I stayed home and obsessed over Jamie Lynn Spears, clearly the current poster child for responsible, involved parenting.

It did not go well, again. Noah continued his full-scale freak-out over anything vaguely structured and bawled and clung and thrashed and screamed. Last week Jason listened to my report and wondered if maybe, JUST MAYBE, our kid was not SID or SPD , but was just an under-socialized brat who is allowed to run wild all day, which made ME freak out because I had been wailing that THIS IS ALL MY FAULT WAIT SHUT UP YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO ARGUE AND SAY THIS NOT ALL MY FAULT.

This week, Jason was a little baffled by what he witnessed. Noah was not just annoyed by being asked to sit on a chair. It wasn't like sitting on a chair at that particular moment was keeping him from the activity that he REALLY wanted to do. Noah was scared -- absolutely terrified -- of sitting in that chair. Or washing his hands. Or doing this or that or anything the teacher asked him to do.

And I think I get that. Back when I used to have anxiety attacks, I would have anxiety ABOUT my anxiety. I'd freak out before leaving the house because what would happen if I freaked out after I left the house? I was panicking about panicking.

Noah doesn't process things the way he should. I don't understand it, and obviously he doesn't understand it.  I don't know how he'll react to certain situations, and neither does he. Thus: someone asks him to sit in a chair, he doesn't understand why, he doesn't know what that person is going to do to him once he's sitting on that chair, they might sing or touch his face or hold his hand or do any number of things that set him off. Therefore: I am not going to give you that chance, motherfucker, and I am not sitting in that chair.

I don't know. Maybe?

Someone commented on the entry about last week's class and said, basically, what's the point? Don't go if it stresses you out, you're making a bigger deal of this than you should, he'll outgrow it, etc.

I would love to not go. I loved not going today! I love that there's no class next week and I won't have to think about it until January. But. I'm going back in January. We'll actually be there two days a week then, because Noah's also enrolled in a Hanen program that starts up soon. (Big perk for that one? NO MAMA IN THE ROOM. MAMA HIDES IN ROOM DOWN THE HALL. MAMA'S IPOD GOES UP REAL GOOD AND LOUD.)

For us -- personally, and our situation is not your situation and I would never, ever presume that there is only one "right" way to do things and Lo, We Are Doing It -- the therapy is kind of a no-brainer. We either deal with this behavior now, or we deal with it in September, when we get a call from Noah's preschool about Noah causing disruptions in class, when Noah is three and no longer qualifies for help from Early Intervention and we're dealing with a whole other class of services. Taking a wait-and-see-if-he-outgrows-it approach seems unnecessarily risky. Sure, he might! He might not. Then what?

And I know. He's two. Two-year-olds push and test and can be serious, serious assholes. It's hard to really explain the many nuances of Noah's issues in a blog entry -- how yes, he's only two but...still. Something's...off.

Jason saw it today. Something...different. Something wrong, something whatever. I guess I have to ask you to take our word for it, or at least not to call us neurotic to our faces.

There's a small window, I think, before "issues" that interfere with behavior kind of meld into "behavior" that interferes with living life. There's a lot of sitting in preschool. In chairs! People sing! Badly!

I'm proud of our boy and the job we've done -- I know he feels safe and confident at home. He loves me. He strokes my face and hair and says "Oh Mama," before covering me in kisses. When he came home today from class he wanted me to hold him and cuddle him and tell him everything was just fine. I wish that were enough, but I know my job doesn't end with preparing him for the wilds of the basement playroom. There's a big scary world outside of our little house, and I can't stay home on Wednesdays and pretend that Noah's ready for it.

Suburban Sprawl

Well, so much for that hypothesis. Noah seems intent on using the tiniest patch of big boy bed possible.

On the plus side, there's plenty of room for me to sneak in there for a little snooze under the tent. God, but I want that tent.

Ikea Jones and the Big Boy Bed of Doom

Dun dun duuuuuun!

God, but we're nuts.

Noah has been rather ornery about his crib lately -- preferring to sleep all spread-eagle on our bed, to the point of requesting "big bed nite-nite." (Hey kids! Nobody tells you this, but I will: Go and get yourself all officially speech-delayed and I promise you, your parents will JUMP to obey every request you deign to put into words. Fish, barrel, kabloom.) He didn't really care if we were there with him or not, so we wondered if maybe -- just maybe -- our 95th-percentile-for-height boy was feeling a mite cramped in his crib.

So Jason posed the question this weekend: "Noah, would you like your OWN big bed? In your OWN room?"

Noah thought about it for a second: "Yep!"

I was less convinced (last week I asked him if he wanted a knuckle sandwich and he replied, "YEP! WIT JAM!"), but then I remembered that holiday ornaments are currently 75% off at IKEA, and also they look like glass but are actually plastic -- a good call since Noah's obsession with all things ABALL continues unabated.  And the front hall closet really needs a Solution of some kind.

So we went to IKEA. We bought a big boy bed. It has a tent. I wish MY bed had a tent. Like, I am really very annoyed that my bed does not have a tent.

After we disassembled the crib, moved and reassembled the crib in the spare room (which now, with the crib and a wardrobe full of receiving blankets, looks an awful lot like a baby's room, which is GREAT, I AM BEING MOCKED BY A ROOM), assembled the big boy bed and had bitten our potty-mouth tongues down to nubs, we brought Noah in for the unveiling.

He thought about it for a second: "Nope."

It took a few trips -- five, actually -- back upstairs to escort him back to bed, but eventually he figured it out and fell asleep. He slept all night, woke up around 8 and amused himself quietly with his books until Jason went to get him. A raging success, I'd say.

Except...for right now, which is naptime. I don't know what he's doing up there, but I know he is definitely not sleeping. But I've decided I'm okay with that, so long as he continues to not know how to operate a doorknob. Behold, my foolproof plan!

(He was smiling and laughing right up until he realized I had the camera. Then he was all, "WOE FOR POSTERITY. BEHOLD THE TORTURE.")

(Seriously. A TENT. I WOULD NEVER LEAVE MY BED IF IT HAD A TENT.)

Closer to Fine...

...but honestly, things have been better.

But. Whatever. It's been one of those long shitty weeks that just never really got any better and I am sick and tired of listening to my own damn whining. So I will spare you more of my own damn whining, especially since your comments and emails have really been the only bright happy shiny part of this week. Thank you, all of you, the lurkers who have come forward and the regular commenters who always have a similar story to tell -- seriously, there are dozens of lovely little autobiographies being written here, piece by piece and day by day, so this blog has become so much more than my own story and that really impresses me.

(Although perhaps you can add "easily impressed" to the pile of Things That Describe Amy, right on top of "whiny," "melodramatic" and "princess of the pity party.")

(Oh look! My Us Weekly came! Just like it does every Friday! I'm so impressed! I need to lie down! With my Us Weekly!)

Actually, I think maybe there was more than one bright happy shiny part of this week.

Yes.

There was.

In the Meantime We Got it Hard

Noah's occupational therapy has been...not going well. To put it mildly. We've made so little progress -- OT arrives at door, Noah bolts, spends entire session wailing from under the dining room table because he. Does. NOT. Want. To. Ride. On. A. Towel. Christ. Almighty. -- so his therapist suggested moving his sessions to the EI center and enrolling him in a couple structured class-type things.

Today was the first of those structured class-type things. The Lunch Bunch, they call it. For kids with oral motor problems and sensory food issues. On paper, it sounds lovely -- a little circle time, feeding plastic food to a puppet, then setting the table and eating some lunch, cleaning up and a story. Every other week the kids make the lunch; other weeks you bring it from home. One food they like and another they don't, which they will then be encouraged to lick or kiss or even just to TOUCH it while putting it in the clean-up bucket.

So it's a lot of kids who eat crackers and shriek at the sight of lunch meat, basically. Our kind of people.

But...oh God. I don't even know where to begin. There are no words for how badly this class went.

Noah screamed. And screamed. And. Screamed. He screamed when asked to sit on a little chair. He screamed when people sang. He screamed at the puppet and he screamed at the plastic fruit and he screamed at the sink and the plastic plates and his apple slices.

He wept and clung to me and then smashed his head into my face. The little girl next to us was obligingly kissing her ham and the little boy next to her was using a spoon to eat some yogurt and before I could help it, I was sobbing too. Big fat tears that I couldn't stop or hide because hello! I am the biggest failure in this room and I don't know how to make him stop screaming and sit in the chair and my face hurts now and while I am really, really heartbroken over how hard this is for him, JESUS CHRIST, it's a fucking CHAIR that you SIT ON, WHAT THE FUCK.

I wanted to bundle him up and go back to the car, to hug him and tell him he never has to go back.

I also wanted to leave him there and go back to the car and drive far, far away from him and stay there for days.

Instead, we stayed. I pulled myself together and wiped up my mascara smudges while everybody kindly looked the other way.  Noah threw himself down on a mat and screamed some more. We managed to get him to toss his uneaten apple slices in the clean-up bucket, even though the reward for cleaning up (you get to go read a book! and sit on more chairs!) resulted in more screaming.

45 minutes and several burst eardrums later, it was over. Noah was red, sweaty and tear-stained and I was filling out a form that asked me to comment on the day's activities, which ended up being a lot of Not Applicables and HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAs.

We had a one-on-one OT session right after, during which Noah was an angel. Of course. He jumped on a trampoline and rode on a little car and rolled around in a pile of pillows. I sat there and couldn't stop the awkward, shaken crying as I struggled to tell his therapist that really, I swear to God, I'm a good mother. I discipline, he listens to me, we get compliments on his behavior from strangers, he's loved and happy, we just don't have a lot of structure to our days and I've been feeling kind of blue lately and my best mom friend is moving to California in two months and I just found out yesterday and I think I should go back to work but we want another baby but I can't get pregnant but God, I have no business having another baby, 20 minutes ago I was ready to slap the shit out of the one I already have.

(OK, I don't think I quite said all of that out loud. At least I hope I didn't.)

She told me it will get easier. That some kids are just like this, that we'll figure it out and get him used to structure and stimuli and other children breathing his air and daring to sing in his presence. That yes, clearly his sensory problems are affecting his ability to deal with life and chairs, but everyone here understands. They know he's struggling because their kids struggle too. They've all been that mother -- the one with the out-of-control wigged-out Jekyll-and-Hyde child, terrified that everyone is judging you and your bratty kid and why doesn't she DO something to MAKE him stop crying -- and anyway, her point was that it will get easier.  Some day, at some point.

But probably not before next Wednesday at 11:30 am in room C7. See you there. Bring earplugs.

Not McLovinit

I am typing this in bed, but not the NICE kind of bed-typing (sitting up against multiple fluffy pillows in a marabou-trimmed dressing gown while everyone around you murmurs admiring words re: the strength of your will for blogging while consumptive). I'm typing with one hand while my laptop is precariously perched on one slightly raised knee; my other arm is wrapped around a snoring, sweaty toddler with whom I am currently sharing a nasty cold. His head is leaking fluids of various kinds onto my chest. There isn't a stitch of marabou to be found.

OK, that paragraph took waaaay to long to type (must I really use words like "precariously?"), so I'm going to attempt a Sleeping Toddler Slide-Off Triple Axel. Please hold.

***

Success! He's now dripping snot all over Jason's pillow. Outstanding.

***
Anyway. I've been wanting to post a thank you and acknowledgment for all the kind thoughts and crossed fingers you guys left on this post, but since so many of you were all, "Oh, but your sense of humor will obviously GET YOU THROUGH THIS," I kept trying to hide the extent of my true depressive funkitude about THAT WHOLE THING. The Internet thinks I'm plucky and resilient! I am a brave little toaster of staunch character! I am not burying my face in the bathroom wall tile and allowing myself a single melodramatic sob because Mother Fucking of Fuck in a Basket, it's almost 2008 and 2007 was supposed to be my year, man. The year of taking charge of my fertility (which...hmm, that's almost like...a book title of some kind?) and getting the baby-making thing done without the aid of crazy-making pharmaceuticals.

And now, in the process of avoiding Clomid or other fertility drugs, it appears that I have succeeded in making myself crazy. Amalah! FTW!

***
Two things to quickly change the subject:

1) The motor in my electric toothbrush died, and I sort-of panicked, holding the brush to my teeth and hitting the ON button over and over, like WHAT DO I DO NOW OMG, before it occurred to me that I could, you know, brush my teeth by MOVING MY DAMN ARM.

2) We rented Superbad, and while I like to think that I am an extremely creative and prolific user of the swear words, this movie made me feel like a fucking amateur. So much so that towards the end, when one character said something like, "You were taking a big dump and I caught a glimpse of your housing forms..." I turned to Jason and said, "Oh my God, is that what kids are calling it these days? I am so old."

Superbad Spoiler Alert! He was talking about housing forms. Like housing forms for college-housing housing forms. He was not talking about his friend's genitalia.

***
And now we're back:

We're going to the doctor next month. I have no idea what protocol we'll end up with, but we're going. We're doing this thang up right and official. Jason is actually noticing other people's infants in restaurants and is like, awwww. Which for him means the baby fever is pretty raging. (Then I jump up from our table to stalk these infants' mothers around the restrooms,  all, "Can I smell your baby's head? Please?" so I think we're about even.)

Hopefully this will be the last time I mention my malfunctioning female housing forms for awhile. Thank you for all your kind thoughts and finger crossing, which OH MY GOD, I could have just typed that originally and saved us all a lot of trouble.