I am not your 28-pound monkey.

I am not your monkey because I am not here to entertain you today, but rather to seek ur knowledge and drink ur branes. You are MY MONKEY today. Answer my query, monkeys! And try to keep the feces-flinging to a minimum.

QUESTION: How old were your kids when they stopped insisting on being carried everywhere? Did you indulge this insistence until they got over it themselves or did you ever just put your foot down and make them walk places on their own? And if you did that, how did you deal with the boneless-floor-puddle-thing? Leashes? Shoulder-socket transplants? Games of chicken on the Capital Beltway?

Noah wants to be carried EVERYWHERE. I cannot get him to hold my hand and walk to the car or the mailbox or even just stand there by the ATM while I dig around for my wallet. This is particularly true in wide open and unfamiliar places, but he'll still pitch fits at the top of the stairs in our house because he wants me to carry him. "Up?" he asks, over and over, until it is NO LONGER A REQUEST, WOMAN. UUUUUPPPPP.

A long time ago a certain occupational therapist was vaguely horrified to hear that we carry Noah out in public most of the time. She said this was absolutely unacceptable at Noah's age and we had to insist on Walking Like A Big Boy. I nodded and pretended to care and thought about ponies instead. I sure do like ponies.

But today at the Mock Preschool For Kids Who Can't Talk Good And Want To Learn How To Do Other Stuff Good Too I noticed that I was the only parent carrying my kid across the parking lot and through the hallways and into the classroom. In fact, most of the kids insisted on walking themselves, while Noah started to protest the instant I slid him down past my hipbone. "No wok! UP!"

It's not that we haven't tried -- but seriously, I'm not about to get into a battle of wills when we're just trying to go to the post office, or let him collapse out in the crosswalk while I lecture him about acceptable Big Boy Behavior and how he is gunning for a life alone and living in our basement because he wants his mama to carry him at 28 months old, the goddamn pansy. He can walk and run and leave me in the dust at the playground; he just chooses not to most of the time. And in the end, he still just seems...like my baby. And you carry your babies. Yes? No? Uh...ponies?

Anyway. I'm really asking because I'm just curious -- not because I'm worried or looking for something new to be worried about. Honest! All my worry spots are completely booked right now anyway, I can't even THINK about taking on a new neurosis until AT LEAST April.

It's Another Blue's Clues Day. On the Couch. Winning Mother of the Year.

Whenever I happen across a blog entry about someone's kid having the stomach flu, I always cluck sympathetically, and then CLICK CLICK CLICK AWAY EW PLEASE DON'T TALK ABOUT YOUR KID'S VOMIT.

Commence clucking, y'all. And the little X up in the corner over there will show you the way out.

Noah woke up wailing around 3 am last night. "A MESSTH! A MESSSSSSTH!" he sobbed, pointing despair at his bed. He cared much less about the messth he made in our bed an hour later, and an hour after that he was over messthes completely and viewed our proffered plastic trash can as just getting in the way of his good time, man.

This continued all night and morning and well past the time when it finally occurred to Jason that he had a JOB he could go to instead, fuck this noise.

(Tangent! Did you know that the Noggin network airs 24 hours now? [Much to the despair of dozens of tweens who depended on the 6 pm switchover to Degrassi reruns, I'm sure.] But did you know that this is a LIE and an ILLUSION and if you actually do decide that all you need in the world is a damn episode of Blue's Clues or Dora or holy hell, I'd even accept Little Bear at 4 in the morning, you will instead be confronted with bizarre Barney-like imports from the mid-90s that involve a lot of neon and a bunch of very, very tall children playing leapfrog and singing to the camera with eyes that clearly say, "I AM GETTING NO RESIDUALS FOR THIS, THANKS MOM.")

(We switched to Cartoon Network and watched old Hanna-Barbera cartoons that were chock full of ethnic stereotypes and cavalier attitudes towards cigarette smoking instead.)

So while all plans for today were obviously hosed, we've managed to stay entertained, mostly through the power of Photo Booth, which Noah absolutely loves now that he's made the connection that WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY to record his every move and mug and deep thoughts on aballs.

(One day we're going to have to have a talk about where blogs come from, but I am not ready for that, frankly.)

Anyway, since I have sheets to wash and odors to...deal with...I'd like to present Noah's First Podcast. Today he'd like to talk about Dogs, Dessert, the Firefox Whee! Video and also Some Random Point On the Ceiling He'd Like Us All To Look At.

The Noah Report from amalah on Vimeo.

The Neenee of the Heart

When you have a speech-delayed kid, you will be constantly warned not to imitate their pronunciation, no matter how adorable it may be. When they butcher a word, you are supposed to model the correct pronunciation. You will be told this is very, very important. I have a very, very hard time remembering this.

"Buddy, do you want some muck?" I ask while pouring the milk.

"MMMMMMUCK!" he shrieks and nods his head.

"If you are a good boy, I bet you'll get a baboonay," I tell him at Trader Joe's.

"Yaaaay baboonaaaay!" he shrieks and eyes the balloons at the register.

When I tuck him at night, he asks for his neenee.

"Of course Mama will turn on your neenee," I say just before pulling the string on his favorite music box. That one is probably my favorite, since he calls ALL music -- instrumental, vocal, Snoop Dogg -- neenee.

Jason (who gets nagged with more child language development bullshiteese than anybody in the world -- "Stop! You're playing the Director Role! That's not the Tuned-In Parent! You're not O.W.L.ing it! Observe! Wait! Listen!") hears me do this and raises a silent, judging eyebrow.

"But it's so cuuuute!" I whine. "And his friend Max talks in paragraphs but still calls squirrels zaaaas because Julie thought it was funny and never told him that they aren't really called zaaaas and it's also so cuuuute!"

"One word," Jason says. "GUCKY."

Touché, dammit.

When I was a very little girl, probably a toddler, I called poop "gucky." Like...yucky. But...gooey. I don't know. My parents and siblings thought it was so cuuuuute and started using it all the time. Nobody went poop, we all went gucky.

The problem was, NOBODY TOLD ME I MADE THE DAMN WORD UP. Nobody, that is, until I used it in front of other kids. IN THE FIRST GRADE.

Not cute. Try mortifying.

Yesterday I was out shopping with Julie and Max (who cheerfully informed me that "Mas went Grandpa's house a couple days, um Amy? After baby brother come we go to California for good yaaay!" and it suddenly took all my strength to not collapse in a sobbing puddle in the men's department at Nordstrom because baby brother is due in two weeks and I have not yet been able to permanently affix myself to Julie's ankle while wailing DON'T LEAVE MEEEEE, but I'm working on it. I just got this new kind of glue off an infomercial.).

Noah heard the piano playing as we passed the escalator. "Uusic?" he asked.

I sucked in my breath and put my hand over my heart -- no! not uusic! neenee! call it neenee! -- before answering by the book.

"Yes Noah, music. Pretty music. Let's stop and listen to the music."

"Uusic," he said again, happily.

(He's also calling choo choos "trains" now all of a sudden. Will probably cost the island of Sodor millions in rebranding costs.)

Jesus Wants You To Get Out Of My Flipping Sunbeam

Or, Turf Wars Among the Small Ones
Or, Geez, Amy, Maybe You Should Turn Up the Heat?

I SENSES WEAKNESS.

You think I care, dogthing? I HAS A TENT.

SHADOW DOG IS SHADOWY.

YET...OMFG IS THAT KIBBLE?

Mwa ha ha.

Mine. All mine.

There was a brief stand-off...and then...

Blue Steel FTW! aka I Will Fuck You Up And Good, Dogthing.

*sniff*

(Okay, so this was terribly non-dramatic in the retelling, and not nearly as amusing as actually watching the every-changing-custody of the sunbeam, and wow, I'm actually now kind of ashamed that this is the sort of thing that I regularly depend on to kill a good 45 minutes of the day, so I'm just gonna go ahead and post some pictures of my kid.)

Yes, I know he needs a haircut, but obviously we are just WAY TOO BUSY.

Honestly, if I'd remembered he was home I would've just made a damn sandwich

"What are you eating?"

"Olives."

"Olives."

"Yes. Black olives. What?"

"You are eating olives out of a bowl. With a spoon."

"Well, eating them straight out of the can is too messy. Plus I could cut my hand."

"You've put a lot of thought into this, haven't you?"

"I've been working from home a long time, dude. I've picked up a few tricks."

"If I were the Internet I would swear you are pregnant right now."

"I am 100% not pregnant. And you don't even want to know what I ate when I was pregnant."

"You ate Indian food. And chicken nuggets."

"Yeah, IN PUBLIC. Then I would come home from work early and eat an entire package of sliced pepperoni."

"Ew."

"God, it was so good. Also those little snack sausage things. I would wrap them in Kraft Singles."

"I never bought you snack sausages and Kraft Singles."

"You also never really looked in the vegetable crisper."

"Wow. Today has been really enlightening."

"You know what these olives need? Some goddamn Triscuits."

It was either us or them at this point

The holiday season is officially over, as we finally threw out all the Thanksgiving turkey leftovers this morning. They were, uh, not in the freezer.

Ah, traditions.

Lunch Bunch Dropout

So I quit Lunch Bunch yesterday. And the one-on-one occupational therapy.

(The eyeballs of several trolls just rolled completely out of their heads and out into traffic. Quick! Run after them!)

I pretty much knew it was time to quit after last week, and then Noah's success in his Thursday Non-Lunch-Bunch class confirmed what I already suspected: Noah did not like his occupational therapist, and she didn't quite seem to like him very much either, and no, the marriage could not be saved and was probably doomed from the day she walked into our house and then tried to rub his face with the duckie washcloth 15 seconds after saying hi.

We moved OT from our house to the early intervention center. We added group therapy and a special ed teacher and yet, no progress.

I should have listened to my gut and just called and requested a new therapist. But lo, I am pussy, hear me puss out. I kept giving it one more week, another try, another chance for Noah to snap out it because dude, she hasn't touched your face in months! Chill out. Eat some pudding.

Then last week she called him a brat.

She. Called. Him. A Brat.

I cannot even tell you what it felt like to hear that -- especially after weeks of frayed nerves and nonstop worry; especially hearing it in the one place where special needs children are supposed to be understood and accepted. But because Noah was not getting any better, she decided that it was not her, it was him. Since she'd been unable to help him, his panic and screaming and refusal to do anything she asked were not sensory at all, but were "just him being a B-R-A-T."

I guess I should give her points for spelling it, since Noah was within earshot. But my heart clenched and my hair stood up on the back of my neck and Dear Internet Confessional, I have never, ever come so close to whipping my earrings out and lunging at someone's hair.

But instead, I just. Sat there. Dumbfounded. Because...mother h. fucker, Noah is one of the least bratty children in the world, swear to God, and I would really tell you if I believed otherwise. He is strong-willed, he is sensitive, he is difficult in his own difficult-to-define way. He is also calm and meticulous, empathetic beyond his years, loving and affectionate and just an all-around sweetheart. (I know, I know, he is also the most beautiful child who ever walked the earth and the smartest and his poop smells like flowers blah blah mama-delusion-cakes.)

I'm so disappointed that I just sat there. I think I maybe stammered that...uh...actually I don't think so, I think there might be some TRUST ISSUES at play here (what with her insistence that if we just forcibly hold him on top of the exercise ball, eventually he'll stop being scared of the exercise ball, GAH GAH GAH DID YOU LEARN EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SENSORY INTEGRATION DISORDER FROM THE BACK OF A CEREAL BOX?).

I should have said something else, or marched down to the office and demanded a new therapist right then and there, but I didn't. I sat there, in a little crumpled pile of defeat.

And then, Thursday.

That occupational therapist told me that Noah did need support to stay with the group, but she gave him that support and he stayed with the group. And he needed a lot of extra time to process transitions. While they gave the rest of the class a one-minute warning between activities, Noah got one at five minutes, and four, three, two and one. He needed time alone when he got overwhelmed -- they let him hide under a slide for a few minutes whenever they sensed the noise of the room was starting to get to him. Every teacher in the room was willing and able to help him, and he clearly adored them by the end of the hour. One hour, and total preschool-ready victory was achieved.

And then, yesterday. Lunch Bunch. With her. Once again, an exhausting, tantrummy mess. Noah did sit for awhile (only after some help from a random therapist who was there to observe) and fed some plastic fruit to a puppet. But it was obvious that he was not being all he could be. She suggested that perhaps we should drop all this and let Noah focus on his Thursday class. She told me I could think about it.

I thought about it. Five minutes later I signed the paperwork agreeing to end OT services. It felt good. It was the right thing to do.

The right thing for NOW, anyway. Let me say, while the therapy itself was usually kind of tortuous, there's no denying that Noah is a totally different kid now. Her bedside manner may have left something to be desired (she actually always sort of reminded me of my very first lactation consultant, a woman who can still make me cry just by passing by me in the pediatrician's office hallway), but she gave us tons of stuff to try and activities to do and ways to incorporate therapy into everyday play. And it all worked. I mean, SLIDES. HE GOES DOWN SLIDES. He jumps! He walks up the stairs sometimes! He no longer toe-walks and rarely falls. He eats...well, he eats a few more things, but no longer seems completely repulsed by certain textures or the feel of a fork. We will continue with the class on Thursday, and if I think he needs more OT services, I will request them from the therapist from there. Noah gave her a hug last week. I think he likes her. I like her. But I think we've cleared that particular hurdle.

While his speech started improving almost immediately after we started Early Intervention, we only really got the big language explosion AFTER we saw the OT-related improvements.   Maybe I should have switched therapists, maybe it could have been easier, maybe it all would have corrected itself on its own.  In the end, though, I can't argue with success, however we found it.

I officially enrolled Noah in a preschool this morning. And I think the little brat is going to do just fine.

Let's Just Call This One "Tuesday"

Yes, Internet, I fully and openly admit to coasting. Both emotionally and editorially. I have not updated since Thursday, greedily allowing the comments to build and build and pile up, checking in every hour or so to boggle at the number and inform Noah that OVER 200 PEOPLE -- WAIT 250! WAIT WAIT 271! -- give a rat's ass about the fact that he had a good day at the Mock Preschool For Children Who Can't Talk Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too.

Also? We've just been so good over here. Noah's little day of victory lifted us all -- even Noah seems to be happier and more confident, like...like he's some kind of actual human being whose quality of life is affected by his speech and sensory problems.  And here I thought all this stuff was dumped on ME for the sole purpose of pissing ME the hell off. Huh.

He's talking up a storm and busting out with some fairly random vocabulary -- I guess that one time we made mucus Christmas cookies made a fairly big impression on him, because he's constantly asking about the ROLLY PIN and COOKAYS. Mostly the COOKAYS.

"Cookay?" he'll ask sort-of hopefully, and then seconds later answer his own question, "Noooooo cookay."

And then again, JUST IN CASE HE WAS MISTAKEN ON THE COOKAY VERDICT, "Cookay?"

Anyway, it's been fun. With a decent chunk of the buzzing worry knocked out of the park, it's been a nice little honeymoon of a week, with lots of cuddles and hide-and-seek and maybe a couple living-room forts here and there.

(Oh, and one night of good-and-proper child abandonment, as we coerced the in-laws to come babysit over the weekend so we could go to Jason's company party and stay overnight in a hotel, which was also fun until 1) I was hit by the truck of What Do You Mean the Hotel House Label Chardonnay Was Not Exactly Top Shelf Wine at around three in morning, when I wanted to die, and 2) some asshole let their shrieking toddler run up and down the hotel hallway at six in the morning. Kids! They should all be kept in cages.)

It's also preschool application season around these parts, so we've been busy plastering big smiles on our faces, presenting our genius child who is a genius and...diaper? What diaper? Noooooo diaper. Please accept this check for AS MUCH AS MY COLLEGE EDUCATION COST AND PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE DIAPER.

(I told my mother-in-law how much the neighborhood preschools cost and she choked on her probiotic wheatgrass enzyme nugget and declared me to be talking much crazy talk. "Just find a little school run by a church!" she said. I told her that these ARE just little schools tucked away in church basements. But you know, NICE basements. One of them even had windows!)

(Her next suggestion was her all-purpose solution to All Our Problems: move back to Pennsylvania to live next door to them. I imagine Pennsylvania preschool prices have gone up since the late 1970s, but honestly, if we promised to move closer she'd probably be willing to start running her own preschool out of the garage. Grandparents! Their love is so easy to exploit.)

Wow. This is one hot mess of an entry. I go away for a few days and manage to completely fuck up the lovely narrative arc of my life story. (It goes something like this: Amy Faces Challenges, Amy Writes Many Words About Her Many Challenges, Amy Gets Meta About Her Challenges, Amy Either Conquers Or Gets Bored Of Her Challenges, Amy Gets Drunk And Falls Down. Repeat.)

Anyway. Us = good. Noah = outstanding. Preschools = uppity. Liver = shot. The end.

Run-on happy

I'm afraid if I try and do that thing where I put on my little serious writer's cap and try to write something eloquent and/or witty I will actually ruin this moment because I just can't wait to get the words out and tell everyone that Noah didn't cry at class today at all and I was in the next room the whole time supposedly getting taught how to teach my kid to talk but I really spent the whole time listening for his screams and when I didn't hear them I asked one of the veteran moms if the rooms were soundproof and she said no and I didn't believe her but when we went to join our babies for the goodbye song Noah was running around with a big smile on his face and then he ran to the teacher and sat on her lap while we all sang goodbye to him off-key and horribly and then he SAT ON A CHAIR NEXT TO HER and clapped along to the song and waved bye-bye to his friends and said "Again?" after each kid's turn and when we sang goodbye to a child named Kay Noah said "Kay!" and made the sign for the letter k and I was on the other side of the circle and burst into tears and the occupational therapist thought I was upset about something and rushed over to tell me how wonderful Noah was and how they worked extra-hard with him through the transitions and how he sat at circle time and snack time and talked so much and oh, what a smart smart smart little boy he is and I just stood there sobbing like a loon while Noah put his hands on my cheeks and said "Hi Mama" over and over and then he wouldn't let us leave until he gave all the teachers a hug and I haven't even learned their names yet but thank you thank you thank you.

My heart, it is soaring.

Global Heartwarming

Last spring Noah was burned pretty badly on a playground slide. I remember the details exactly -- how fearless he was when he scaled the equipment, how he obediently plopped his bare chunky legs down on the tall spiraling slide while I nagged from below (SIT! SIT! Good baby!), how he slid just far enough to realize that the morning sun had made the slide intensely hot, but too far to stop and climb back up to the top. He froze, his arms and legs went stiff against the sloped sides. He pulled his palms off the slide and wailed in pain, only to inch a little further down the slide, which hiked up his shorts and exposed even more soft white flesh to the heat.

And me? Oh. I just panicked.

I started to scale the slide from the bottom but couldn't get my footing in my flip-flops. (Why it never occurred to me to kick my stupid shoes off, I will never know, I am probably one of those mothers who instead of lifting the car off my trapped toddler in a fit of super-human strength,  I'll run around in circles screaming and then inadvertently set off the car alarm.) I shrieked at my friend to come guard the bottom of the slide and catch Noah if he fell while I started up the stairs on the other side of the...the thing, you know, one of those tall maze-like playground structures that requires you to climb three ladders and cross a drawbridge to get to the top of the slide.

I laid on my stomach and pulled Noah off the slide. He was hot to the touch. Everything -- hands, elbows, legs, even his cheeks, which he'd burned while weeping into the hot plastic in despair -- was red and raw. A crowd of mothers and nannies had gathered, and one woman handed me a bottle of water and ordered me in Spanish to get him to drink some and to douse his skin with the rest.

We were both crying, although Noah got over it before I did. Within minutes he was running happily in the direction of the swings while I muttered curse words at the heavens. DAMN YOU NATURE! ACCURSED SUNSHINE! HOW DARE YOU ILLUMINATE THE EARTH AND CREATE MOLTEN LAVA OUT OF PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT!

Since then, Noah has never ever gone down a playground slide of his own free will. We've taken down on our laps, but he's always hating it and always fighting it. Other than the swings (he adores those), he's remained extremely fearful of most of the stuff on most playgrounds. Those wobbly bridges? Forget it. Crawl-through tunnels? Maybe, but very very slowly, and not if there is another child anywhere in the vicinity. Monkey bars? Pfft. I am no monkey, woman. I'm gonna stay over here, on these awesomely solid metal steps. Which I will sit on and not move. Yes, I am having a great time, thanks.

The past two days have been unseasonably warm. Ridiculously warm. Suspicious-glance-to-the-heavens-in-search-of-stray brimstone warm. We've spent most of our time at the playground.

Specifically, on the slide.

Go little man. Go and conquer those fears. And get all grubby and crazy-static-haired while you're doing it..