Humble Pride

There's nothing quite like those moments -- those rare public moments when the child you've spent years of your life raising as a kind, empathetic and polite human being opens his mouth...and says the most impulsive, selfish and socially tone-deaf thing he could possibly come up with. In front of God, everybody and at least 50 other adults with video cameras.

So I left a little anecdote out of my entry about Noah's belt test. Because...well, it wasn't exactly the sort of story I felt deserved to be preserved for posterity. At least...not at first. At first it was one of those "let's forget THAT ever happened" stories.

So Noah was waiting for his turn to break his board. It's the last task of the test, the big moment that signals your successful graduation to the next belt level, the part where everybody claps and cheers for you, and not to mention, is completely fucking awesome, because you get to break a damn board with your fist. 

But the little girl ahead of Noah was not getting that completely awesome moment, because she could not break her board, no matter how many times she tried. The instructor switched boards, had her practice over and over again, but the board would not split. They quickly abandoned the punching idea and had her try an easier stomp kick move. But the board would not split. 

The instructors continued to cheer her on, as did the entire audience of parents, grandparents and siblings -- you know, ANYTHING to keep the poor thing from getting upset or embarrassed during a moment that is solely intended to be a self-confidence booster, as I've always suspected that those balsa wood boards get a secondary helpful bit of snapping pressure from the instructors. 

Noah sat silently during this, growing slightly more impatient with every failed attempt the little girl made. Finally, he could take no more:

"SHE'S NEVER GOING TO BREAK HER BOARD!" he announced. Loudly. Very, very loudly.

There are a few sounds that I will never, ever forget, dear readers: The sound my car made during a violent head-on collision in high school, the sound of my newborn babies' cries for the first time...and the sound of every other person in that room making the same horrified and dismayed "OHHHNOOOOOOO!" sort of gasp.

Noah was quickly admonished by an instructor and we, the audience, were ordered to cheer for the little girl even louder. Jason and I looked at each other, completely mirroring the other's embarrassment and desire for the floor to open up and swallow us whole, because yeeeeah.

That's my kid, right there.

 The one that EVERY OTHER PERSON IN THIS ROOM is thinking, "oh God, I'm glad that wasn't my kid."

Argh. Kids. Five-year-olds. Whattaya gonna do, right? 

Well, if you're Jason, you spend a nice chunk of your afternoon assembling an extremely complicated Harry Potter Lego set while talking to your kid about why that wasn't a nice thing to say, how that probably hurt that little girl's feelings, and what "encouragement" means and why it's important, and suggesting that maybe an apology is in order, the next time that little girl comes to karate class.

But you might also probably feel like everything you said went in one ear and out the other, cuz LEGOS LEGOS LEGOS.

And if you're me, you'll completely forget to bring the topic up again and prompt your kid about that outstanding apology while driving to karate class a few days later. Until you watch the little girl in question arrive late and take her spot directly behind your kid in line, like, ooohhhhhhhhhrightthat. 

But if your kid is Noah, you will also watch him immediately turn around and face the little girl. And you will hear him, clear as day, say, "I'm sorry I said you couldn't break your board. I'm sorry you were having a hard time. But you did really, really great and I'm happy you got your yellow belt too."

And you will realize you are sitting next to the little girl's mom. And you will see the corners of her mouth turn up in a charmed sort of smile. And you will see the instructor's face similarly melt, as he turns to your child and thanks him for being such a gentleman and a good friend, and tells him he just earned himself an extra raffle/prize ticket for a random act of kindness. 

And then you will watch your kid earn a second ticket for winning that day's special "flying kick" competition, expertly performing a new double-leg jump-kick thing that requires all sorts of gross motor skills and coordination and crossing the midline (and lands 90% of his classmates on their butts), and you will think, "That's my kid. That's MY kid. That's my amazing, unbelievable kid."

Apple Store of My Eye

I had to ask what, exactly, a "word retrieval disorder" meant, when we met with the child psychologist to go over the action-packed, 25-page report on Noah's evaluation. I understood most of what was in there -- ADHD, auditory processing, some too-early-to-tell red flags for dyslexia for us to "keep an eye on" -- but the word retrieval bit was a new one. 

Was it like apraxia? I asked.

No, she said. That's an inability to form words. This is more about plucking the right word from your brain soup. Basically having it right there on the tip of your tongue, but unable to remember it, or only coming up with words that are similar in concept, but not quite right. 

For example: saying shovel when you mean hammer, bicycle for motorcycle, or in a unique-to-Noah coping mechanism the psychologist noted, expanding a simple sentence to include a ton of extra, early "filler" words, thus buying himself more time to come up with the more difficult verbs and nouns that would come later. 

That was really fascinating to see, she said. He's already very aware of what's difficult for him, and is coming up with his own accomodations in lot of those areas. That's a very, very good thing. 

***

The suggested school-based accomodations for a word retrieval problem include providing Noah with a "word bank" to choose from during fill-in-the-blank tests, or allow him to write expanded responses instead of counting on him to remember a single specific word, and to use lots of mnemonic devices and categorization exercises to help with his word-memory skills. 

I couldn't help but think that man, we are getting crazy obscure here, with the stuff you can now officially label as a "disorder." I mean, really:

PROBLEMS WITH WORD RETRIEVAL! CAPS LOCK COMPULSION! PUNCTUATION DEFICIT DISORDER! I HAVE ALL OF THESE PLUS WEIRD DOUBLE-JOINTED RING FINGERS. 

***

Last night, after dinner, Jason suggested we all head to the Apple store to check out their selection of educational games, to see if they included some age-appropriate typing or keyboarding skills. (This was another accomodation the psychologist recommended, to teach Noah to type as a less-frustrating alternative to handwriting.) Noah demanded clarification, probably thinking that we wanted to take him to a fruit store, which would have to be one of the WORST IDEAS EVER, unless we were talking bananas. Did the apple store also have bananas? 

No, we told him. The computer store. The one with the Dora games you like to play. 

Oh, okay, he nodded. I like the computer store.

A few minutes later we hadn't left yet, and Noah was getting impatient. 

Are we going to the...

That's as far as he got before his face contorted and the tears started. 

The word! I can't say the word! My voice doesn't remember that word! Naughty voice, why won't you remember!

Then he balled up his fist and started punching himself in the throat. 

Holy shit, I thought. Stop!

Computer, I said, as soothingly as I could. The computer store.

He repeated it and immediately calmed down, taking big deep breaths. I don't like when my voice forgets the words. It makes me angry. 

Of course it does, I said. It's frustrating. Everybody's voice forgets the words sometimes, though. 

We decided to go to the fruit store another time. We went to the playground instead. 

Grasshopper, Part II

Noah has his first karate belt test tomorrow.

A "formality," really, since white and gold belts are still grouped together, skill-wise, in the same class. A "confidence booster," according to the instructor who called me and twisted my arm up out my gut instinct that Noah probably isn't ready and convinced me to turn in the test form (AND OH RIGHT THE $40 FEE) anyway.

"Eight to 10 classes" is all it typically takes to move from a white belt to gold. Noah's attended 12. Every other white belt is taking the test, and the next opportunity to move up isn't until three months from now. Okay! Okay. Fine. 

And then: "Hmm, I dunno" from a different instructor on Monday, when I told him Noah was signed up. The attention issues, the inability to focus or look instructors in the eye, the non-stop wiggling and bouncing, all of it could, in fact, pose a little bit of a problem. He can do all the required moves at home, and one-on-one with an instructor when we've requested a bit of extra help. But the belt test isn't at home, or one-on-one, or even really, about the karate moves themselves. The first belt test is about self-control in the class setting. 

Fucking great. 

"Sometimes a belt is something you grow into," the instructor helpfully went on. In other words, no, he's not really ready, but you know, maybe we can toss the poor kid a golden-colored bone and then hope it all sorts itself out with a few more classes. 

Noah is so, so excited about the possibility of a new belt. 

I am ready to throw the hell up. 

Once upon a time, I'm sure I had an Opinion about kids and sports and everybody getting medals just for showing up. About parents wigging out because their preshus spechul snowflakes weren't automatically rewarded with success and straight-A's. About anyone who had a laundry list of "he can't help it" style excuses for their kid's less-than-awesome behavior (none of which had anything to do with their own parenting, oh noooo). About anyone who tried to shelter their children from the concept of failure of any kind. 

Maybe I still do, to a certain degree, but right now: Oh please, please, please don't let my baby's little heart get broken tomorrow. 

From the Rooftops

The thing, with Noah, is that his victories, however small, are so hard-fought for. And harder won. Little things like preschool, karate class, swim lessons, riding a bike, talking to another child or simply using an idiom or bit of slang correctly are huge for him, and for us to witness. He is playing a constant game of catch up. 

And we are his cheerleaders, celebrating every baby step and breakthrough, screaming from the rooftops. 

And then there's Ezra. 

Things come easily for Ezra. What once was a sigh of guilty relief over his "typicalness" is now a gasp of wonder at all the things he can do already, at his seeming bottomless well of innate talents and abilities. 

He doesn't just talk. HE TALKS. Full sentences. Every word he hears he immediately absorbs and starts to use. He talks about things he sees and thinks and did earlier that day and would like to do tomorrow Nouns, verbs, abstract concepts and feelings and scenarios playfully pulled from his imagination. He asks questions, he wants to know what and why and when and how come, and he ponders your answers with a seriousness in his eyes that looks so out of place right above his chubby baby cheeks. I might not catch every word of it -- his two-year-old tongue is not always up to his much-older-than-that vocabulary -- but I understand more than enough. We have conversations.  

He is social and affectionate. Strong-willed and determined. He will not let fear or failure stand in his way of trying new things. "Too young, too small, too little" mean nothing to him in his furious quest to master all big-kid things. The self-critical, perfectionist streak I admittedly passed on to his older brother seems to have skipped over Ezra completely, replaced with boundless optimism and a refusal to quit trying until he gets something right. 

Not that he even needs to try that hard, that often. He can pedal a bike, kick a ball, hold a crayon, use a spoon, run and jump and climb and balance. He can count to 12 and name all his shapes and remember EVERYTHING after a single viewing, hearing or doing. He's funny and he knows it, irresistably naughty and mischeiveous and he knows a hug and a kiss will melt any and all of my defences. "Thank you you're welcome," he says, after offering me some pretend pasta from his pretend picnic spread.

He is the biggest little person I've ever met in such a compact, cuddly package. 

He followed Noah to karate and watched from the sidelines, once, then rushed in to demostrate a perfectly mimicked forward kick at the target. The teacher's eyes grew wide. "Wow. He's a natural," he said, genuinely impressed.

"Hi-YAH!" Ezra said. Then he put his arms down and bowed. HE BOWED. HOW DID HE KNOW TO BOW?

I worry. I worry that it will be hard for Noah to see his little brother naturally excel at the things he struggles with. And God, aren't enough things hard enough for him, already? Ezra, of course, idolizes Noah. Worships the ground he builds Lego castles on. They bicker and argue, but things only get really heated when Noah is doing something that Ezra can't, or simply can't yet. I worry that those roles are already getting reversed.  

So I say things like, "Noah is soooo talented musically, you know, he has perfect pitch and already makes up his own songs and if we can just get his fine motor skills up where they need to be I bet we can really set him loose on a piano and..."

Ezra sings loud and terribly off-key, you see. And then I worry even more, because I know what I'm doing, right there, and it's awful and not fair, that my pride in my second child gets colored by concerns for my first. 

Oh Ezra, you are so uniquely, breathtakingly amazing. I hope I tell you that enough. You blow my heart up every day with pride and laughter and I love you so, so crazy much.

I'm your cheerleader too, and you're never going to get rid of me embarassing you from the sidelines of whatever thing you choose to do, because I already know you'll be the greatest and most brilliant boy to ever attempt whatever that thing you choose to do is. 

Grasshopper

Noah went to his very first karate class yesterday.

Long-time readers: Yeah. You know the deal. You know that this was kind of a big step.

Newer peeps: There's no way to nicely sum up three-plus years of developmental delays, meltdowns, evaluations, diagnoses, successes, failures, therapy, IEP meetings and God knows what else in a sentence or two, except to say that yeah. This was kind of big step. 

After our success with the homegrown hardscrabble soccer practices, we started wondering what other organized activities Noah was ready for. Soccer is on hold until the spring, since we could no longer consistently track down indoor venues and the constant switching of locations was driving the kids a bit batty. 

Jason suggested karate, mostly because Jason always, ALWAYS wanted to learn karate as a kid but Jason's parents wouldn't ever let Jason learn karate and yes, sometimes parenthood is little more than an ongoing experiment in Surrogate Childhood Wish Fulfillment. He then let Noah watch the original Karate Kid movie.

(Not only was karate completely off the table for me as a kid [GIRLS DID BALLET, YOU KNOW] [P.S. I HATED BALLET], I wasn't even allowed to see the Karate Kid movie. So as I watched it for the first time with Noah, I was sucked into some crazy mothering timewarp wormhole where I became the asshole who had to sit there questioning the appropriateness of the movie choice, especially since the main takeaway lesson Noah seemed to pick up on was that kicking people's knees means YOU WIN.)

But, the movie cemented it. Noah wanted to learn karate. Like, immediately. 

The place we took him to starts off with a short, private introductory lesson-slash-evaluation session, where an instructor teaches your child a couple basic stances and drills and sees if there's really an interest in karate (versus, you know, chucking ninja stars at thine enemies and shit). We'd prepared Noah for the fact that there wouldn't be other kids there at first, but chose the unfortunate wording of "If you do a good job and listen to the teacher, you can go to a real karate class afterwards."

During the private session, Noah was a ball of trembling, vibrating excitement. He couldn't stand still. He wiggled and jumped and wanted to talk the whole time.  He had problem keeping eye contact and was easily distracted by other people walking around or his own reflection in the mirror.

Still, though, the interest and motivation was obviously there. He was just so freaking EXCITED. He mimicked the stances and did some blocks and kicks and never once insisted on busting out his perfected-at-home Ralph-Macchio-crane pose instead of standing at attention. He earnestly promised to practice self-control, first-time listening, and never use karate on friends, family or pets, and I never realized that martial arts could be so damn adorable. 

(Plus, I highly, HIGHLY doubt anyone with a valid credit card actually gets turned down for white-belt preschooler karate. Just a hunch, though.)

We went into the office to get him officially signed and suited up for the class. Noah sat on my lap and suddenly we realized his eyes were red and brimming with tears.

"I didn't do a good job," he said. "I can't do real karate now."

HOLY SHIT. WHAT. 

Well! Best parents ever, right? Oh my God. 

Noah, you did a great job. You can absolutely do real karate now. 

(Not pictured: One poor, hysterically jealous little brother sobbing just beyond the glass door because he totally mimicked everything they taught Noah and showed off a great forward kick and the teacher said he was a natural but you have to be three years old for a class and it's not fair and you guys are mean and the worst parents ever.)

(Totally pictured: Pride, child having time of his life, money well spent.)

Slow Burn

Noah's fever spiked last night -- not high enough to necessitate a trip to the ER or anything, just one of those HOT. DAMN. moments when you stare at the thermometer and struggle to hold on to everything you know about small children's resilient little bodies and their tendency to run 102+ degree fevers for no damn good reason.

We dosed him up with Tylenol and I hovered around his red-hot presence anxiously, obsessively rubbing his back and his hair, convinced that we were, in fact, going to end up at the ER later and that it was pneumonia or something equally horrible, and wondering who the HELL left me in charge of this small, helpless human being? And the one in the next room? And the one that's not even born yet?

Dear God, why didn't we just stop with the damn CAT while we were ahead? 

***

So I mentioned that kindergarten transition meeting thing yesterday. Kindergarten transitioning is a Big Honking Deal for the kids in the district's special education preschool program, obviously. It involves weeks of observations by a whole team of people, preliminary plans and pre-plans and planning to plan, then an initial "invitation" to the parents to go and observe a couple of the district's continuation-of-services options -- basically, whatever options the team is considering as appropriate for your specific child. 

We were invited to visit two different options: Our school's "regular" kindergarten classroom and...well, the other one. The speshul one. It's called LAD -- Learning & Academic Disabilities, though it's a far cry from the type of remedial special education classroom that you might be tempted to picture, a la Bart Simpson's "Leg Up Program" with the kids who start fires and fell off the jungle gym or just moved here from Can-ah-da, eh? 

Kids in LAD -- at our particular school, I've since found out that the program is different at pretty much every location across the county, like THAT'S not a crapshoot or anything -- spend 50% of their day with their LAD peers, usually the more academic parts of the day. Small class size, extra paraeducator support, any sensory accommodations they may need, transition help, and of course, time for any individual speech/language or occupational therapy services their IEP may include.

The other portion of the day is spent being co-taught with the "typical" kindergartners for stuff like PE and art and music and storytime, the "easier" blocks of the day, so they can get the critical social pieces of kindergarten without being impeded academically because they've just been tossed into a class of 25+ kids with one teacher and spend the entire day in an overwhelmed sensory fit, wandering around the room and singing the Star Wars theme over and over and over again while insisting that their handwriting practice sheet is "the yellow letters" and making it "crawl" in front of their face and wait...was I talking about the kids in general, or just mine?

(I should note, for the sake of UNFLAILINGLY BORING COMPLETENESS, that even if Noah was put in the typical classroom, he'd certainly still receive "resource services," like OT for handwriting help, but it sounds like there wouldn't really be any in-class support for him when it comes to his many, many other stubborn little quirks.)

(Oh! And if Noah WAS put in the LAD classroom, because it's at our home school [something that's actually on the usual side, since not every school has it and thus other kids must attend school further away], Noah could ride the "neighborhood" bus instead of the "special ed" bus. AND if, say, it was decided that by second grade or so, that he no longer needed to be in LAD, he'd still get to stay at the same school, with kids he knows and has spent time with. Other kids typically get booted back to their home school at that point to essentially start over. All in all, it looks like we really didn't do too shabbily when it came to buying this particular house in this particular neighborhood, even if the decision felt like we just panicked because our condo buyers wanted us OUT and we had no where to go so QUICK, THIS HOUSE IS FINE, WHATEVER, WE'LL TAKE IT, GAAAAAH.) 

So next week, we go and observe these two classrooms. And then we wait until APRIL for our IEP meeting, where the team will presumably make their recommendation, albeit with input from us (supposedly) and from Noah's private occupational therapist, who will also be attending the meeting on his behalf. 

A lot of the other parents are using all this hurry-up-and-wait time to tour and apply to private schools, just in case they are unhappy with the IEP team's recommendation. Hearing them discuss all the expensive private options in the area (and the multi-stage interview-and-IQ-test heavy application process) always makes me feel a bit panicky, because...well, we AREN'T considering any private schools. Are we...wrong? 

I LIKE our public school, and I LIKE the way they've provided for Noah so far. And more importantly, I BELIEVE they have the right kindergarten environment for him, and I BELIEVE that they will do the right thing for him and put him in it. And if not at first, then they will after I get done with my own personal 20-minute slide presentation on WHY YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY GODDAMN WORD I SAY, RAWR. 

But still, of course, I worry. I worry that our classroom observations will reveal some horrible unforeseen something-or-other that I never considered, or that our IEP meeting will go horribly awry, that I'm once again completely over- or underestimating the whole system and process and oh God, maybe even poor Noah himself, because he can't tell us what he'll really need for kindergarten next year. (Other than a Star Wars lunchbox, I'm guessing.)

Who the HELL left us in charge of this stuff, honestly? 

***

Last night, about an hour after the Tylenol, Noah's temperature was down to a cool and refreshing 98.3. And it stayed down. 

He's fine. We all are. 

Star Wars to the Rescue, Again

It was cold outside, so I put on my new earmuffs. 

Noah stopped dead in his tracks.

"What are those?" he asked, staring at me with rapidly darkening eyes.

"Earmuffs," I explained. "They're kind of like a hat. They keep my ears warm."

I watched his body tense up, his rigid little internal alarm sounding the different! new! unfamiliar! alert as he tried to make sense of the funny-looking circles on my head. Was it a costume? Was I playing dress-up? Did it bother him? How much did it bother him? 

"May you take them off please?" he asked, in his usual pained attempt to politely frame a demand as a request. 

"I think I'm going to leave them on, buddy. It's cold outside." As I said this, it was my turn to rapidly attempt to gauge the danger level of the situation, to try to figure out our odds of making it to the car without a meltdown, whether this was a don't budge power through teaching moment or one of those times to just give in for the sake of everybody involved.

"It's okay, really. Just think of them like a funny-looking hat, but just for my ears."

It was interesting, in a way, to watch this, and him. Usually his reactions are zero-to-sixty, his impulse control so poor that he's generally already too far gone into a tantrum by the time he realizes there's nothing to tantrum about, really, so to see him hover on the verge like this and actually process the existence of a weird thing on Mommy's head...well, it was different. And like him, I wasn't exactly sure if it was good different or bad different.

He chewed on his lip for about a minute more. He raised his hands up to chest level. That's usually followed by some nervous flapping, then some anxious foot-stomping, and then...

He broke out into a wide, amused smile.

"You look like Princess Leia," he said. 

I laughed. "I guess I do, don't I?" 

"Can I wear them?" he asked.

It was my turn to stop dead in my tracks. I silently took the earmuffs off and placed them on his head. Over his EARS. Next to his FACE.

"You are just full of surprises sometimes, you know that, Noah?" 

"Not Noah," he corrected me. "I'm Princess Leia. See?"

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME CHRISTMAS

'Cause we're ready for some Christmas.

Noah helped decorate the tree -- one of about a bajillion different firsts for him this year. We finally figured out that he's okay with having a tree in the house, he just doesn't want to see or even hear about it riding home on top of our car. Because...trees don't belong on cars? Because it might fall off? Because it's a flagrant violation of proper seat-belt usage laws? I DON'T KNOW WHY. I DON'T MAKE HIS RULES. All I know is that this year we skipped the whole picking-out-a-tree-as-a-family bit and didn't tell Noah anything about it until the tree was off the car roof and in our living room. This, he was fine with. 

More than fine, actually. Excited, even, to get going with hanging up the orbbamints.

So our tree has a LOT of orbbamints on that one side, towards the bottom. I am more than fine with this too.

Ezra supervised the garland placement.

I waited until he was in bed to begin the untangling and cursing of said garland, and only barely managed to finish sometime before breakfast. The magic of Christmas!

I used to pretend our  holiday garland was a Golden Lasso, too. Though if Ezra ever asks Santa for a Wonder Woman costume, he'll damn well GET a Wonder Woman costume. 

No, I'm still not over it, Santa.

As for this year, though, early signs are looking very promising for the current plan of giving Ezra nothing but a bunch of Random Plastic Packaging Shit on Saturday. OMG IKEA ORBBAMINT BOX IS GREATEST THING EVER.

Except for maybe snowman cookies.

Well. They were at least kind of excited about it, I swear.

I think the enthusiasm was dampened by my overselling of the accompanying hot chocolate as being something so delicious it was going to blow their little minds out their ears, but they both took sips of the tepid, barely-lukewarm liquid and shrieked and wailed from the HORRIBLE SCALDING HEAT WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO US, MOTHER, WE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED.

 

Moving on. 

Another Big First: Noah licked the bowl after we made cookies. 

Translation: Noah actively participated in the cookie-making process, complete with the BREAKING OF EGGS and the NOISE OF THE KITCHENAID, and then willingly TOUCHED THE STICKY, SLIMY BATTER with his OWN FINGERS and then ACTUALLY TASTED IT.

And declared it DELICIOUS. 

So delicious, in fact, that I was forced (FORCED, I TELL YOU) to make a whole separate batch of cookies just so Ezra could get his first taste of cookie dough.

 

Now all that's left to do before Christmas is make one last batch of cookies after the kids go to bed so I can get some cookie dough. This spirit of "giving" and "sharing" garbage is for suckers. 

Bounceback

Those of you who have been reading for some time now -- particularly the stuff I've written about Noah over the past three years or so -- may remember The Thing About Birthday Parties.

(For those of you who haven't been reading that long: The Thing About Birthday Parties is that Birthday Parties Suck Elephant Ass, Most Of The Time.)

But we went to a birthday party on Friday night -- the birthday party of the very same little boy whose at-home, laid-back party was so perfect for Noah when I wrote this post, almost exactly a year ago. The party that came just hours after one of my lowest moment as Noah's mom, a moment that left me frustrated and angry and embarrassed and...scared. So very, very scared.

This year's party was not at his house, though. It was at one of those dreaded kiddie gym places, with the parachute and the games and the singing and a good dozen activities with a dozen transitions in between. Basically, EXACTLY the sort of party we have avoided for years now. A ton of kids, a ton of colors and music pumped in over loudspeakers, with lining up and taking turns and Staying With The Group and Other Kids Bumping Into You and Things That Require Motor-Planning Skills and a million other everyday things that most kids are okay with, because it's a party! It's fun! No reason to melt down and scream sensory bloody murder here, right?

But we went anyway. 

 

He's the one in the blue Yankees shirt. You know, if you couldn't pick him out from the crowd, having the time of his life, just like every other kid there. 

The First Steps Into a Larger World

Hey look! I'm LIKEABLE, dammit! Likeable! I'm having a hard time refraining from typing a riff on Sally Fields' Oscar speech that includes the word "cocksuckers." But you're all probably imagining it now anyway. So there. I'm done here, let's move on!

So. Noah. Costumes. Playing dress-up. Not at all a thing he enjoys. We successfully got him into a costume last Halloween at the 11th hour when he suddenly realized that Mommy and Daddy weren't playing: There was free candy to be had if you wore one. Okay Earthlings, I will indulge you this time in your strange fun-sized candy-procuring middle-man ritual. THIS TIME.

Afterwards, though, whenever I mentioned next Halloween, he would do some kind of dramatic fainting-couch thing and announce that he was NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN. NO. NOT EVEN. 

Time went by, and he seemed a bit more open to the idea -- probably because in the wake of us cracking down with a righteous vengeance on food dyes in his diet, he's figured out that Halloween is his once-a-year window to fuck up his nervous system with all the Red 40 and Yellow 5 he wants because CHILDHOOD IS AWESOMMMMMME -- but he said he would only wear the same blue monster costume from last year. Which was actually purchased (and rejected) the year BEFORE, and was already a size too small when he wore it. 

If I told him that I was sorry, that costume doesn't fit, we'll need to find another one or something different...back to the fainting couch he went. 

Over the summer, there were a number of little girls at his camp who loved to play dress-up, and the classroom had a wide variety of fairy wings and tutus and tiaras that they favored, but seeing them dressed up would send Noah into total meltdown mode, with screaming and sobbing and...well. He really, really didn't like it, to put it mildly.

So you can imagine my shock when one day this past weekend, out of the blue, Noah donned Ezra's bathrobe, declared it a "cate" (cape) and started calling himself Obi-Wan Kenobi:

 

 

He wears it everywhere and all the time -- except right after bathtime, when Ezra starts shrieking MINE MINE MINE because it is, in fact, a size 24-months and HIS HIS HIS -- I've even caught him wearing it to bed a couple nights, sweating profusely but sleeping peacefully, with a lightsaber fashioned out a Tinker Toy tucked in his hands, under his chin.

 

I've always listened to other parents' stories about the wacky things their children insisted on wearing day after day or the crazy outfits they proudly assembled for themselves and felt a little twinge because Noah has never been that kid. His clothing preferences begin and end with what I pull out of the closet every morning, provided I conceal the fact that anything might be "new" by ripping off tags and hiding shopping bags. We buy him Star Wars shirts because we think he'll like them, but I'm not sure he really notices them all that much. Part personality, part other issues, who knows, but oh, I love the sight of other kids who think rainboots and pirate hats and bumblebee wings are perfectly sensible day-to-day ensemble.

I let him wear his cate to OT yesterday, because why the hell not, and his therapist's confusion quickly melted into laughter when she realized just what he was wearing, and then to a triumphant fistbump with me when it dawned on her that he wasn't just wearing a bathrobe, he was wearing a costume. That he'd come up with all by himself. We got a couple WTF looks from other parents in the waiting room, but I honestly could not have been more proud, as I watched my kid run around with his Baby Gap microfleece freak flag high.

"I love Thursdays," she laughed.

 

Me too.