A Million Points of Light. Or Maybe Just Eight.

POINT THE FIRST:

I have absolutely no idea what today's entry is going to be about. Topics are a luxury I cannot afford anymore. Instead, I'm taking the "toddler is at school baby is asleep grab laptop and GO GO GO" approach. Where I will just sit down and type whatever words occur to me at the time. Perhaps grammar will go next. Perhaps this blog will simply disintegrate into a Jabberwockian stream of nonsense apple tissue box bacon ham.

POINT THE SECOND:

We are out of coffee. I am drinking tea. I do not like tea. Well, I like tea, the way other people make tea, with the kettles and the loose leaves and the tiny little tea accessories I see at Crate & Barrel but am unsure of what they do. I have a microwave and Target-brand tea bags. This is not good tea. Therefore, I am in a terrible, terrible mood because my life is very hard wah wah wah etc.

POINT THE THIRD:

Some good news to report, however, is that we seem to have avoided another wave of sickness. Either the Zicam killed my cold dead or the whole thing was just another sleep-deprived hallucination. Which wouldn't surprise me. Last night I dreamt that a local 4H fair turned into an Indiana Jones movie, with Nazis showing up and then everybody started melting into the hay and sinking into some underground hell layer, and when the evil pigs showed up I said to myself: Self, you need to fucking wake up right now, because this is ridiculous.

Noah was not sick either, by the way. A three-year-old saying, "Mama, I sick" CERTAINLY cannot be trusted, as "sick" can mean anything from vomit to a leaky pull-up to a bad dream to his ruminations on mortality and the concept of Original Sin.

(It was the leaky pull-up this time. In case you were wondering.)

POINT THE FOURTH:

I had a baby eight goddamn weeks ago. Eight! A couple weeks ago I was within spitting distance of my pre-pregnancy weight (the five or so extra pounds were clearly housed IN MAH BRA), and then I started doing this thing where I eat dinner, and then...sort of...keep on eating dinner until it's time to go to bed. At which point I eat some dessert. Because of the BABY. Who needs more MILK. I do this for HIM.

Needless to say, I can no longer spit at my pre-pregnancy weight. I could probably shoot at it with a potato cannon though.

Ezra has left his birth weight in the DUST, by the way. Despite being three whole pounds lighter than Noah, I fully expect their weight stats to be pretty similar at his two-month visit next week. The boy is a tank. A soft, sweet-smelling tank covered in rubber-band fat rolls and chins. The kind of tank you just cannot stop pinching and kissing and making an idiot of yourself about because NOMMY NOM NOM.

(Yes, EXACTLY like a tank. Eyeroll! No time to redo metaphors, though. So onward!)

He smiles a lot these days, mostly at the miniblinds and the ceiling fan, but occasionally at me. His hair is lightening up, he's starting to coo, and oh my God, Becky, there is nothing better in the world than Naked Tummy Time, even if it does have the tendency to get thing a little...damp, sometimes.

POINT THE FIFTH:

This tea is really terrible.

POINT THE SIXTH:

Noah has finally started up with the questions. We don't have the dreaded "Whyyyyy" yet, but he's suddenly erupted into a non-stop stream of "What dat? What dose? What his name? What dat what dat what dat WHAT DAT?"

While we obviously celebrate each and every precious, momentous milestone around here, particularly the hard-fought speech-related ones, I have to confess that the questions make me want to drive fondue forks into my ears, especially after the 20th totally-vague WHAT DAT, complete with insistent pointing into a totally-vague point on the horizon, usually while I'm trying to get that pointin' arm into pajamas or a jacket while I list every possible thing that I see (door? window? picture frame? chair? pillow? atoms? cell nuclei?). If I ask him to be more specific about WHAT DAT, like maybe go a little closer? Show me what it is exactly that you're pointing at?, he simply points HARDER, pulling his hand back to his shoulder and then forcefully shoving it back in the direction of...the still totally-vague point on the horizon that CHANCES ARE he already fucking knows WHAT DAT, he is just trying to kill me with fondue forks and make it look like a suicide.

POINT THE SEVENTH:

We brought our Christmas tree home two days ago but have not decorated it. We bought Noah's presents three days ago which are still in the trunk of the car. I ordered absolutely gorgeous birth announcements for Ezra but haven't taken them out of the shrink-wrap. I have 24343240490 thank-you notes to send out, I've missed three birthdays, need a haircut, should really consider removing the terribly chipped toenail polish I've been sporting for eight weeks and I think that load of laundry has been sitting in the washer for two days now, ew.

But. The baby is awake. So...

POINT THE EIGHTH:

Bye!

PS New post over at the Luvs/Momspeak site. Yeah, I'm pretty tapped out of fantastic time and money-saving tips already, so it's similar nonsense over there, too.

Yes, the Baby HAS Mixed Up His Days & Nights Lately. Why Do You Ask?

Last night I woke up with a sore throat, a pounding headache and that crunchy fluid sound of a coming mucus blitzkrieg pulsing in my ears.

I stumbled into the bathroom to blindly snort some Zicam and got back in bed, wishing that I could just cut my head off at the shoulders, and then weirdly found some relief by visualizing this -- no head, no throat, just whack off the source of all the misery and...ahh. That's nice.

I fell asleep and dreamt that I was reviewing Mamapop posts on my laptop -- panicked because Catherine's Friday Eye Candy featured full frontal William Shatner nudity and Black Hockey Jesus' photo essay about stuffed animals had somehow attracted an army of white supremacists in the comment section. I then decided I needed to drive somewhere else to deal with it, but when I went to get the baby's carseat I found it next to a conference table where a very large business meeting was underway, and a woman seated nearby was using it to hold her wallet and car keys. She gave me a dirty look when I handed them back to her and tried to explain. "This is my carseat," I said dumbly, "For my baby." She rolled her eyes at me and sighed. "Adorable," she snapped.

I had just started to notice that the dream was actually taking place in our old condo building in the city when my eyes suddenly opened and I realized that Noah was standing next to the bed, his eyes boring into mine with one of those I Will Wake You Up With Only The Burning Force Of My Children Of The Corn Stares.

"Mama, I sick." he said.

And I looked at him and said, "I'm sorry, baby. Do you need your head cut off too?"

Lest Ye Blog Comes Back To Bite Ye In The Ass

I'll have you know that no less than two hours after posting yesterday's lovey-my-baby-is-perfect-and-life-is-a-beautiful-Hallmarkian-flower entry, I hysterically and uselessly ordered Ezra to "STOP CRYING!"

And it worked about as well as you would expect it to. Then I hid in the bathroom for 10 minutes.

/tackily ironic

/totally gratuitous and unrelated to this post

(Have a nice weekend, everybody.)

The Angel in the Details

I've found myself reading through my old archives a lot lately -- I have this compulsion to constantly compare Ezra's infancy to Noah's, both in photos and milestones, using Noah as a yardstick to know that I Haven't Fucked Up Yet -- and so I've also been cringing and laughing at myself a lot.

I feel sorry for that poor girl in those entries about breastfeeding, the girl who was trying so hard to succeed at something neither she or her baby were particularly jazzed about, but who did not want to F-A-I-L but needed to W-I-N and it all had to be P-E-R-F-E-C-T.

And I smile ruefully at that girl who could not stop writing about how much she loved her baby, like it took her by surprise, like she spent most of her time staring slack-jawed at her infant with a mix of rapture and utter terror while the emotions of early first-time motherhood engulfed her. And then pistol-whipped her for good measure. And then stole her wallet.

And then there's me now, who probably isn't that different, because while I can be all head-pattingly condescending to my former self, I'm still neurotic and guilt-ridden as all get-out, because I haven't written a single longwinded love letter to my second son yet, but instead keep looking back to things I wrote about Noah and nodding and thinking: Yes. That.

This time around...well...it's been easier, I think. Not necessarily from a practical point of view -- I run out of hours in the day in MINUTES, it seems like, and there's nothing to be done about the relentless grind of SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE needing you at all times, one right after another, or at the same time, while you struggle to prioritize the needs and again, smiling ruefully at your former self who would think: OH MY GOD, THE BABY IS CRYING I CANNOT EVER LET THE BABY CRY OH GOD IT'S BEEN FIVE MINUTES HE'S DESTINED TO BE A SERIAL KILLER. Because now the process is something like:

comfort infant vs. wash toddler's hands after lunch

(wash hands = five minutes of crying)

(peanut butter & jelly fingerprints on wall and dog = 20 minutes of cleaning)

(20 minutes of cleaning = toddler trying to "help" and infant needing simultaneous diaper change and peanut butter & jelly streaked dog jumping on couch and bratty phone call to husband to shriek YOU COME HOME. YOU COME HOME RIGHT NOW. and overall loss of sanity and dignity.)

And it's...five minutes of crying, FTW!

But beyond all that. I don't feel like I've been hit with the Emotional Vulnerability Train as hard this time. Oh, sure, I absolutely cannot read any news story about children being hurt or abused or lost or killed, lest I have to go lie down in the hallway outside the boys' rooms in a trembly pile. I sometimes can't believe I just knowingly and purposely DOUBLED the number of little precious bodies and people that I need to worry about for the rest of my life.

But oh, it's so worth it, and I don't feel the need to spend paragraph after paragraph explaining why. It just is. Ezra just is. He's just right, and weirdly familiar, and falling in love with him has not been so crazy and foreign-feeling, but more like how everyone around here has decided whatever, we're all wearing our clompy old Uggs again, because damn, I forgot how COMFORTABLE those suckers are.

But Ezra is also worth remembering, in every tiny detail. So here goes.

There's no staring slack-jawed in shock and wonder this time, but I still have a hard time taking my eyes off of him.  He is, to me, breathtakingly beautiful, from his long eyelashes to his stick-uppy hair to his impossibly round face to his stocky, chubby little body that I have nourished completely with my own body -- OVERSUPPLY has been our only breastfeeding hiccup beyond his initial tongue-tie, if you can believe it, which I can fucking not. No colic, no reflux, no allergies. He's spent a couple nights swaddled in his crib, although I much prefer co-sleeping, as does he, and I'm surprisingly able to get a good night's sleep with him curled up next to my chest, listening to him snuffle and hum.

(Co-sleeping was encouraged when Noah was born -- the hospital advised me to just keep him in bed with me after my c-section, and it was listed as a great way to increase my meager milk supply on the information sheet from the lactation consultant -- but now it's fallen out of favor thanks to some other study that was all, DEATH! DEAAAATH! I got yelled at in the hospital for keeping him in my bed [I simply learned to keep the curtain drawn so I'd have an extra second or two to snap to attention when a nurse came in, so I could pretend that no! We're not co-sleeping! We're co-awaking!] And while the LC now has "co-sleeping" crossed out on the information sheet, I noticed that NO ONE actually inquired as to where the baby slept, wink wink, nudge nudge.)

(Also things that have changed in three years: breastfed babies need vitamin supplements, no solids until six months instead of four, baby powder and cornstarch have become terrible lung-clogging dangers that we should never ever use, and pacifiers are now SIDS-prevention tools instead of Nipple Confusion Tools Of The Devil. I bet if we ever have another baby they'll tell us to let him sleep in a hammock and feed him pureed pepperoni pizza at four weeks old.)

And he sleeps! Oh, my, God, he sleeps. Noah slept six hours at night by seven weeks -- Ezra's been doing that since he was five-and-a-half weeks, when he went from waking constantly to sleeping soundly literally overnight, as if he knew we were teetering along our breaking point. Five hours is now considered a "bad" night, six is the average, and let us all speak in hushed, reverent tones of the night he slept seven hours. I don't really understand it, how I managed to get such a good baby -- I have always joked since Noah's infancy that since HE was a pretty easy baby, our next one would be born with 666 on his head, and yet here is Ezra, with nothing but a downy halo of light brown hair.

He still loves to be swaddled, but as the seams of the Miracle Blanket strain and his fat little body seems warmer on its own, I've learned that I can stop the flailing that wakes him up and soothe him back to sleep simply by gently holding both of his hands in mine.

Mostly though, he just wants to be held. He wants to be close to you, a body, a set of arms, a heartbeat. Put him down for just a minute when he's still awake and watch his little face crumple -- his forehead creases with worry and his bottom lip curls out and he sucks in some air and starts to wail. A sling is acceptable, but is no replacement for actually just plain being held and talked to and petted and nursed and kissed, while I whisper a hundred blog entries' worth of declarations of the fierce, wonderful love I have for him into his ear.

 

_{(And before anybody asks: this is the Rockin' Baby Sling, a gift from my dear HeatherB, and yes, I highly recommend it.)}

Chompabilly

I've been working on an entry on and off today, and it's now becoming clear that I am just not going to finish it. (Deep existential questions have been distracting me, like, which do I tackle first? soiled diaper or soiled bedclothes? kiss that bonked noggin or clean the spit-up out of my bra?) However, I'd like to move on from all the screechy rage, so here, please enjoy some goofy pictures of the mighty Ez and his chins.

Okay, and one quick anecdote: I forgot I had a dentist appointment this morning, and since it was too late to reschedule, I had no choice but to take Ezra with me. (Honestly, I cannot be expected to remember an appointment I arranged six months ago. I mean, I bought a couple of new nursing bras this weekend but I have already forgotten where I put them.) (If you see them lying around, please let me know.)

I was bracing myself for a disaster -- especially since he quietly slept in his carseat in the waiting room for 20 terribly wasted minutes -- because OH YEAH. If there's anything better than the cacophony of hideous drills and electric plaque removers and Lite Jazz radio that is the dentist's office, it's all that PLUS a screaming infant.

And instead, he slept the entire time. Completely ruined my hope for an easy blog post, too. Other than the dentist scolding me about not flossing enough and then bizarrely trying over and over to diagnose my peacefully sleeping baby with reflux (DUDE, SERIOUSLY. HE DOESN'T HAVE REFLUX. NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. YOU NEED TO LET THIS GO.), the appointment was completely unremarkable and boring and...wait. I've completely forgotten why I brought it up in the first place.

 

Huh. Okay, let's try this again: This morning Ezra smiled at Noah -- an actual, purposeful hey-I-like-you smile -- for the first time, while they cuddled together on the couch.  I sometimes suspect Noah likes holding Ezra more for the attention it brings HIM, rather than actually liking him, or understanding him, and I also suspect he is really, REALLY dying to know what Ezra's eyeballs feel like, snd whether they smush like Play-Doh.

But this morning, when Ez cracked that crooked, gummy smile, Noah was thrilled. He laughed and shrieked, which made Ezra smile even more, and...wait. Jesus. Why can't I seem to tell an anecdote with a point today? Well. You weren't there to see it and I didn't get any pictures and minutes later Noah decided his train set was way more interesting, but right when it happened? It was real cute.

So I guess I'm writing it down so I don't forget. Dear Self: December 3rd. Ezra smiled at his big brother, and it was real cute.

(P.S. Seriously, Self, where the hell did you put those bras?)

Diagnosis: Idiot

(Apologies in advance for the screediness of this post. I slipped in my socks and fell flat on my ass while attempting to kick a foam soccer ball into a miniature goal in my living room this morning, so perhaps it's my wounded pride [and backside] lashing out at its inner child, or some such.)

(For something more fluffy, feel free to visit the Luvs Momspeak site for my entry about Ghetto Fabulous Bargain Baby-Proofing.)

I currently find myself irrationally angry at Denis Leary.

Okay, let me back up. Denis Leary was on The Daily Show last week, where he attempted to clarify this passage from his book, from a chapter called "Autism Schmautism:"

There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can't compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks…to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons.

I don't give a fuck what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you—yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.

HA HA! Oh, funny fucking shit, that.

So in case you missed the 284304822343489 blog entries about this, uh...yeah. KIND OF NOT THE BEST THING TO SAY. The excerpt appeared in the New York Post, parents went nuts, people got angry, the Autism Society of America essentially told Leary to go fuck himself, and as of this morning, "DENIS LEARY AUTISM" is still the very first suggestion that the Google search bar offers you when you type in his name.

But! Dudes! You totally took that out of context.

So as part of the Denis Leary Big Fucking Apology Media Blitz (aka the book ain't selling so well), he appeared on The Daily Show, where he essentially repeated a canned statement he already released. A canned statement that SURELY was thought through and would make everything better.

*breathes*

*ctrl+zees*

...they missed the sections I thought made my feelings about autism very clear: that I not only support the current rational approaches to the diagnoses and treatment of real autism but have witnessed it firsthand while watching very dear old friends raise a functioning autistic child.

(Oh my God, he did NOT just pull the "but some of my best friends are autistic!" thing. He did NOT.)

The point of the chapter is not that autism doesn't exist—it obviously does—and I have nothing but admiration and respect for parents dealing with the issue, including the ones I know.

("BFFs! Really! I LOVE AUTISTIC PEOPLE AND THEIR BOOK-BUYING PARENTS!")

The bulk of the chapter deals with grown men who are either self-diagnosing themselves with low-level offshoots of the disease or wishing they could as a way to explain their failed careers and troublesome progeny.

On The Daily Show, however, Denis left out that "grown men" bit, and instead went on and on about parents. (Here's a link to the episode -- Denis appears in the last segment.) Parents are seeking low-level special needs diagnoses for their kids as some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for their children's bad behavior. Bad behavior that is a direct result of bad parenting.

Question. What "low-level special needs diagnoses" are you NOW expertly calling bullshit on, Denis Leary? PDD-NOS? Aspergers? Sensory Integration Disorders? Because now you're shitting really close to my own lawn, dude, and I've got a really long and pointy-ass rake.

(He then reiterated AGAIN that he totally knows a family dealing with "real" autism and knows how TERRIBLE AWFUL DEATH-SENTENCE-Y this "real" autism thing is. Like seriously, worst disease EVER! A lifetime of drudgery with a non-verbal kid who bites you and hand-flaps in a corner all day. That's not really my fight to pick with him, except that I AM SO SICK of people using autism -- and a misinformed and narrow view of the spectrum at that -- as a catch-all boogeyman to strike fear in the hearts of parents everywhere. Vaccinate? AUTISM. Get an extra ultrasound? AUTISM. Use a microwave while pregnant? AUTISM.  Meanwhile, I know plenty of parents who actually LIKE and ENJOY and LOVE their autistic children just fine! And their children love them back! Like they're real people or something! Imagine that!)

So, first. I get that Denis Leary is a comedian. I read the excerpt ages ago and while I thought it was dumb and misinformed and just highly ridiculously DUMB, I didn't get worked up over it. He's a comedian. He went for incendiary and controversial and frankly, he nailed it. South Park, Team America, Tropic Thunder -- three movies I laughed a lung out over; three movies that all had moments where I went, "duuude, I think they may have just gone far enough to kind of offend me." And then I went, "touche, good sirs. Tou-fucking-che."

But if you're going to backtrack on that incendiary and controversial statement when it doesn't pan out the way you wanted, when it appears that you indeed went waaaay too far, when it's hurting your sales figures and you start making the rounds of an I-Was-Taken-Out-Of-Context Media Tour, THAT'S when I'm going to take the words you say seriously.

And, second. This totally isn't about Denis Leary. This is about the last few days and weeks around here, as we attempt to navigate through Speech Delays v.2.0.

The school district -- and we live in a "good" and well-funded school district -- may provide Noah with some speech services. Services that we have already witnessed first-hand and realize that they simply won't be enough to get Noah where we think he needs to be, and where he's capable of being. There's a lowest-common-denominator aspect to the programs that hurt kids with the more mild (SOME MIGHT SAY "LOW LEVEL") delays and disabilities. Noah was always near the top of the Early Intervention scale of need. Put him in a classroom with neuro-atypical kids and other more serious disorders and he looks pretty good. He can hook himself onto the bottom rung of the ladder of "normal," and that's about as high as the free services are obligated to lift him. Which is exactly what already happened and what led to EI ending his services.

But. Put him in a classroom with neuro-typical kids and kids with zero speech or sensory issues and suddenly it doesn't look so great. He loves school, but that doesn't mean it's a perfect fit. His first progress report (we got it yesterday) was heartbreakingly abysmal. He tries hard to communicate with his teachers and peers, but no one can understand him. He still melts down over every transition. He cannot tolerate operating in the group for more than a few minutes. He needs constant one-on-one attention that the teachers cannot give. He is not demonstrating skills that I know he knows -- I looked at row after row of capital Is (for "Introduced," basically the lowest mark he can get) with a huge lump in my throat. He knows how to do that! And that! He's smart, I swear. I really swear he's a smart, loving, wonderful kid.

But he's struggling. In preschool.

And you know what, Denis Leary? If I were a bad or lazy parent, I wouldn't fucking give a shit. I wouldn't spend hours researching doctors and specialists in search of answers or therapy or a way to help my child NOT struggle in school and social situations. I would sit back and shrug my shoulders and tell myself that it will all work itself out by kindergarten. But I'd like to get my son a bigger boost up that ladder, Denis Leary, because I think he's capable of it and I believe in him and I believe it's my fucking job as his mother to get him that boost.

And you know what else, Denis Leary? You know why parents want those low-level diagnoses? It's not to ease our guilt or abdicate our responsibility for our child's "bad" behavior. It's because that's the fucking way the fucking system works, jackass. Call up your health insurance (if you've got it! ha ha!) and find out what kind of coverage they offer for, say, speech therapy.

Now find out what kind of conditions they put on it, and find out what conditions and diagnoses they exclude. Dyslexia? Articulation problems? Abnormal speech development? "Speech problems that are educational in nature?"

Now once you've asked the nice insurance rep what the fuck that even means, and well, what kind of diagnosis DOES get you the speech therapy coverage, and recieved absolutely no answer or guidance, you may realize that hell, the next phone call better be to a developmental pediatrician (appointment wait time: six months!) so hell, you can get your kid fully evaluated beyond the vague oral-motor sensory problems and get a damn solid diagnosis, and hell hot damn in a blanket, you might actually sort-of maybe secretly hope that diagnosis is enough for your incredibly expensive insurance to pay for a few measly sessions of speech therapy. (And let's not even get into occupational therapy! Ho ho!)

Meanwhile, try to look at your child -- your smart, loving, wonderful but struggling child -- and not be whalloped with fear from both sides. Fear that your insurance will reject your claims...and fear that if the insurance DOESN't reject your claims, it will be because the diagnosis your child receives will indeed be something that scares you. Something that you don't quite feel capable of handling, or something that means other people -- other misinformed, ignorant people -- will forever look at your child differently, or hold him to lower expectations, or cast pitying glances at you and wonder what you did wrong, whether you vaccinated or had ultrasounds or used a microwave while you were pregant. The boogeyman. The new scarlet letter A.

You have any best friends dealing with that, Denis Leary? Because if you do, I'm wondering why they haven't gently pulled you aside and told you -- with love! -- to please fucking cram a sock in it already.

A Bunch of Turkeys

(Photo-heavy post warning. Click below or skip it completely. It's like your very own Matrix blue pill/red pill conundrum!)