So Many Entries to Write, and Yet I Give You This

I am losing mah mind over here, people. You know it's bad when I start breaking out the phonetic Southern accent that I don't actually talk with.

1) My baby is SIX MONTHS OLD today. Six! Such a random number to get worked up about, I know, but six! Half a year! Totally in need of a long detailed entry about the state of every tiny little thing he does! But who is going to write that, I ask you. WHO? All my ghostwriters called in drunk.

2) Noah's evaluation with the school district is TOMORROW. At the crack of 9 o'clock. And I've got a whole entry about THAT percolating in my brain, in which I confess that the last couple weeks have actually been w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l and we've made a lot of great p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s and now I have NO idea what to expect from him tomorrow, like I think there might be a chance we get sent home with zero services and I think I might be okay with that, because seriously: w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l. But the minute I say all of that out loud I just know I will jinx everything and come home tomorrow feeling like a truck up and ran over me, hence the s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g, which probably doesn't work so well on a blog, where everything is spelled, unless the universe gets easily confused by hyphens.

3) My dad was back in the emergency room yesterday, and this time was finally sent home with a new diagnosis other than effed-up lungs: congestive heart failure. Which I know is not quite the death sentence that the "HEART = FAIL" implies, but oh my God. He's already ON every medication in the world, he's already CHANGED his diet a million times over, he's already had TRIPLE GODDAMN BYPASS SURGERY, so...just between you and me, I would still like to tell the u-n-i-v-e-r-s-e to go f-u-c-k itself.

4) Now that I've maybe got a few of you feeling all sorry for me, please allow me to send you elsewhere! There's a new Bounce Back up, where we're talking about the things you wish somebody (fuck you, somebody!) had told you about breastfeeding. I'm also contributing (for a few weeks, anyway) to Clean Freak Confessions, one of those sponsored site things that I have to sheepishly ask you to maybe consider commenting over there and/or thumbs-upping my entries so the sponsor is all happy happy? Y'all are VERY good at making the sponsors happy, I must say, and for that I want to lick all of your faces. I have entries up (so far) about washing cloth diapers and how cleaning can help families coping with illness. Yes, the topic of the site is cleaning. I assume I shall run out of topics in about...oh, already.

5) And hey! Speaking of places to click and read and comment, look at these morons over here at Washingtonian.com. They look familiar. If you're one of the two or three people who have copped to being driven crazy by my refusal to tell you what our "girl name" was, I finally caved and revealed it to the interviewer, because what's the point? If I ever have another baby you just know it will be another boy. Probably twin boys. Or someone will leave an entire soccer team of boy babies on my doorstep, wrapped in Thomas the Crazy-Eyed Tank Engine blankets.

(And in the non-selfish realm of pimpage, check out my lovely new Twitter background & design. It looks like a real blog, where I actually remember to say things and update occasionally! Imagine that! Anyway, the folks at Sweet Blog Design can make one for you. Look, I'm on Twitter, I use Twitter, I totally still do not fucking understand Twitter, but I hear it's all kinds of important and the celebrities and the destroying of traditional journalism and all that. So you better make sure your profile is pretty.)

Square One

Our insurance company finally reviewed our claim for Noah's proposed speech therapy plan.

Denied.

Thanks.

Assholes.

I...I just don't even have the energy to get worked up about it. We'll appeal the decision, of course, but Lord. We waited close to two months for the initial evaluation. We waited another two months for the insurance company's decision. And now. Pfft.

There's a "private" rate for the therapy, of course, but I know it's more expensive than another speech/OT program in the area, a program that I think is more comprehensive, a program that I didn't contact initially because...they don't accept our insurance. Our insurance which, on paper, offers fantastic coverage for speech therapy, so it seemed like a logical trade-off. But if we're going to be paying out of pocket ANYWAY...I should...we should...should we? And then there's another, even better program in the city, which we could afford if we downsize to a condo and reduce our mortgage and again, if we're going to be paying out of pocket ANYWAY, if Noah ends up needing private schools ANYWAY...should we? What if Ezra needs early intervention? What if Ezra doesn't?

The school district evaluation has become our own personal red wheel barrow glazed with rain water.

They graciously offered a private screening, since they typically start with big group clinics where kids play together and there's chaos and lots of transitions and redirection, with one skill set being observed and evaluated right after another. In other words: a total freaking nightmare for a sensory-senstive child, and likely to set off a number of Noah's triggers. They said they'd be happy to adjust their tactics and conduct the evaluations one at a time, in our home. I said no, thank you, I'm sure Noah will be just fine.

I know he won't be fine. I'm practically counting on us being dismissed from the clinic setting early with appointments for private screenings at home. I need them to See It. I need them to see him Fail.

***

We took Noah to Barnes & Noble the other night to pick out some new storybooks and play with the train table. I sat and watched him and paged through a towering stack of parenting books. Books about Raising Your Quirky Sensory-Sensitive Spirited Unpredictable Out-of-Sync Different Child, books that promised Practical Simple Solutions To Everyday Challenges, books that promised to Fix It.

Of course they don't. They look substantial but spend chapter after chapter rehashing the same information, the same in-depth scientific descriptions about Vestibular Systems gone awry. You find some comfort in the anecdotes -- kids who sound so creepily like your kid, parents who also admit to snapping and scolding and just being so tired -- but then the actual strategies are all the same ones you've read about before and tried already. Social stories, check. Take breaks, trust your instincts, shaving cream and bread dough and electric toothbrushes and above all, the right kind of therapy. Which: dooood. I am trying. Two paragraphs about choosing the right preschool (Trust Those Instincts! Talk To The Teacher!) are followed by sections about elementary school and junior high and high school and oh, God. It just doesn't end.

Noah came over to show me something. "A gween train, Mommy," he announced. Two feet away another little boy rolled his eyes and muttered a correction. "Not gween. Green." Noah didn't seem to hear him. He honestly didn't even seem to register that another child was there.

I ended up putting all the books back on the shelf. As I tried to remember where I'd gotten each one, I stared at the rows and rows of parenting books. Books about diet and discipline and how to get your kid to do this and that and coping with this and that. Bullies, anxiety, allergies, learning disabilities, illness, grief. It's tough for everybody, the books seemed to say. It's a terrible business, this raising human beings thing.

***

We got home and put the boys to bed and I stood outside Noah's door for a bit, listening to him talk.

"Not gween. Geen. Not geen. Guh-een. Guh-reen. Guhreen! Good talking, Noah. Not gween. Guhreen."

Pansy

I spent all weekend planting things. OUTSIDE things. OUTSIDE, where there are bugs. Worms. Dirt. Nature.

After working diligently for two whole minutes I commented to Jason that this wasn't so bad. This wasn't so bad at all!

We've spent the last 10 months or so going back and forth about whether we really want to stay out here in the suburbs -- we kind of hate it, honestly -- and we were *thiiiiiis close* to making an offer on a condo in our old neighborhood (hell, practically in our old building) right after Ezra was born (hell, he was still pruny and gory) but then waffled for five minutes because HELLO, pruny gory baby and our house wasn't ready to sell (despite our best psychotic nesting efforts) and then the condo went under contract and All The Stuff With Noah happened and finally we both admitted that yes, we really really really do want to move back to the city but it's just not the right time yet, maybe next year, in the meantime, let's get outside and plant some goddamn tulips.

So there I was, planting things -- some bulbs for next year, some shrubs and groundcover and a million and four purple and yellow pansies -- and after I planted the third bulb and STILL hadn't gotten bored and/or irritated enough to wander away from the project, I degreed that yardwork really wasn't so bad.

That's when Jason noticed that I was planting two-year-old dead and dried-out husky shells of bulbs instead of actual living bulbs that would...you know...grow. He suggested I move on to the pansies.

I spent hours planting pansies. Yellow, purple, yellow, purple. We dragged Ezra's Jumperoo out onto the lawn with us, using him as bait to Finally Get Our Neighbors To Talk To Us, while I planted and planted and every exposed inch of my skin broke out in various kinds of rashes (when I was in elementary school and was quizzed on my extremely long list of allergies I usually gave up halfway through and simply said I was allergic to "OUTSIDE").

(Photo not actually representative of this story, but inserted anyway because HELLO TALKY.)

When I was done, I had several garden beds of somewhat pathetic little lines of droopy pansies -- nothing like those landscaping shows that I watch whenever I'm in a "let's make the best of the suburbs!" mood. (Whenever I'm in a "screw this, let's move back to the city!" mood I watch shows about real estate, and whenever I'm in a "we probably couldn't move even if we wanted to because goddamn this economy!" mood I watch the Food Network for 76 hours straight and order a lot of pizzas.)

We still decided it was a Good Start, since the previous owners hadn't exactly exerted a ton of landscaping effort either -- when we visited an area nursery soon after we moved in we found a clearance table all the way in the back that featured every single plant and shrub currently residing in our yard. Next weekend we mulch, or something, I don't know, and then after that we start on some serious vegetable container gardens in the backyard. Or something. I don't know! Last year we grew herbs and tomatoes and this year Jason bought a book and is growing salad and peppers and is promising me all sorts of amazing things and I think he may very well have lost his goddamned mind.

Meanwhile, every indoor plant we brought here from our old condo has died of root rot. I feel very responsible. My misguided belief that we really needed More Closet Space led to plant genocide, including my favorite jade plant, which was the first one to die, and at the time I was all, "oh well, who cares, I have extra bathrooms!" but I've never stopped thinking about that plant, because I loved that plant, and I miss that plant, and how lovely it always looked on the windowsill at our old condo. And while I'm no gardening expert or a pyschologist, I get that it's probably not REALLY about that plant.

Meanwhile, I have a splinter in my foot and my back hurts and I couldn't sleep last night because I was stressing about how we need to cover our new plants with some sheets tonight so they won't freeze and do I have enough clean sheets? But I suppose that's preferable to stressing about April 16th, the freshly-set date for Noah's evaluation with the school district -- speech, motor, hearing, vision, social skills, sensory issues, the whole shebang -- an evaluation that will likely decide for us whether we belong here or elsewhere, whether the district will help him or if we remain on our own, whether it's worth staying where we're unhappy or time to move on, Montessori vs. special needs vs. something in between, public vs. private, suburbs vs. city, whether or not we'll still be here next spring when the periennials return.

Exhaustification

Oh my God, y'all.

So Monday night* the phone rings, it's my mom, my dad is back in the hospital. Irregular EKG, lung problems, dizzy spells with chest pains and problems breathing, yadda blah etc. By midnight, he's been admitted, by Tuesday morning the doctors are all, MEH, go home, it's all probably nothing. Have some more Xanax. (My mother is EMPHATIC that these episodes are not panic attacks, as he already HAS panic attacks and takes Xanax for them but there is also Something Completely Different going on that no one seems willing to get to the bottom of.)

Oh, but before you go home this here nurse is gonna draw some blood and slap a bandage on you while completely forgetting about the massive amounts of blood thinners you're on and WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE THINKING WE ARE ALL MAYBE LESS THAN COMPETENT?

I was all set to do that EVERYBODY! IN THE CAR! NOW! thing that I do, but I woke up with a cold, another blablittyblatbitch cold, hopefully the last one for winter (just in time for ALLERGY SEASON!). But still. Two topics that this blog has covered a few too many times in recent months: mortality of aging parents and mucus.

AND THEN! Something weird and complicated and completely boring happened with my phone and a voicemail from LAST THURSDAY suddenly appeared in my inbox and lo, this phantom voicemail was the school district, calling at long last to schedule Noah's evaluation. And I immediately called them back, all AAAAEEEIIII and OMGGGG and the nice lady who answered informed me that "everybody" was out at clinics that day and could I call back on Thursday? And then I said, "Sure! No problem!" And then I went home and bit my pillow and my brain leaked out all over it so FINE. NOW I HAVE TO DO LAUNDRY.

And then I thought to myself, "Self, you should just not write about any of this and hope that by Wednesday morning everything in the world is just magically all better."

(My optimism! It borders on deranged.)

Anyway. Hi, Wednesday! You sure did turn out to be overrated.

Here: Have a baby story. Ezra officially clocked in at five months old on Sunday, and according to my email newsletter of things to obsess over this month, he should be fully rolling from front to back by now. And I thought: Hmmm.

He can roll from his side to his front, but I'm not sure I've ever seen him roll back over from tha- OH LOOK THERE HE GOES.

So now we're at that delightful stage where I put him on a blanket, on his tummy, like I've always done because he actually really loves being on his tummy, only now he rolls over immediately and then squawks in protest because he hates being on his back WHY AM I ON MY BACK HALP HALP MOOOMMM!

And then I flip him back over and put a toy in front of him and he's all YAY I LOVE THIS TOY I'M GOING TO ROLL OVER WITH JOY OH FUCK NOW WHAT.

Therefore, I don't feel guilty about slapping bibs on him that represent my own personal belief system and values. He can't even READ yet. God. Those baby newsletters a load of crap.

* I know, I know. The recent-ish compulsion to start sentences off with "so" is SO on the top of my list of non-adorable grating blogging tics** to get rid of, along with overuse of "apparently" and "totally" and of course, ending every sentence with CAPS LOCK, but I am apparently totally unable to DO THAT, SO...

**Oh, God. I bet a good 25% of you never really noticed that I do those things all the time but now it's going to drive you completely batty everytime you read an entry here, sorry.

A Million Tiny Updates

My coffeemaker randomly overflowed AGAIN this morning, despite my remembering the inner basket and the filter and the carafe and it wasn't my fault and basically I HATE IT AND ITS ASS FACE.

***

The unthinkable (yet long-predicted-by-readers-of-this-blog) thing finally happened last night: Jason and I both turned to Noah -- our precious little speech-delayed child -- and begged him to please, just shut up for a goddamn minute, just be quiet, oh my God, my eardrums cannot take another second of full-volume chatter about goddamn Corduroy and his goddamn button and HERE COMES THE CAT! HERE COMES THE CAT! HERE! COMES! THE GODDAMN! CAT! and seriously, child, do you ever stop to breathe anymore?

***

(I assure you that last bit had a LOT fewer "goddamns" in real life.)

***

I went ahead and sent in our deposit to the Montessori preschool. I just don't feel -- right now, anyway -- that Noah's little quirks and "issues" and "whatevers" are enough to justify pulling him out of the mainstream. I...yes. I feel that. I'm still not totally back up to my old confidence levels regarding my decision-making skills for him, but I finally pulled my ass out of that "paralyzed by past actions into complete inaction" sinkhole I've been in for a few months now. If he succeeds at this school, he could potentially stay there through sixth grade. If it's still not the right fit, well, we've still got two more years until kindergarten to figure this shit out, and hopefully by then Ezra will be off the boob and Mama will be on the Xanax.

***

My dad came home from the hospital yesterday. YESTERDAY. It's been...I don't even know how long it's been. It's been a long bumpy story with no end in sight and more collapsed lungs! and pneumonia! and infections! and heart palpitations and chest pains and breathing treatments and incompetant cardiac rehab centers and...and...is it okay if I just mash my fingers down on the keyboard for a bit? Yes? Okay. OSFHGOSDHFOASJDASLMAEOHRHFFOEIJDJGPS.

Thanks. I feel better now. My dad feels better to be home, I know, but...he's not really better yet. He is and he isn't. I don't know. There's a lot of medical equipment in the house and therapy and my mom is pretty scared and I haven't been talking about it because it's hard to talk about because I'm NOT THERE and haven't been able to be there and I don't feel like I have a good grasp on the situation. And MAH GOODNESS, if I could get a good grasp on one! single! fucking! situation around here I WOULD APPRECIATE VERY MUCH, UNIVERSE.

***
Wait. Hang on. There is one thing going ridiculously well, provided this next paragraph doesn't up and jinx everything: Ezra is sleeping through the night, allllll night. Every night. In his crib. 9 pm to 8 am, at least. Unswaddled, even. He's gotten mighty proficient at getting his thumb into his mouth (with a bare minimum of face-and-eyeball poking from bad aim), and is completely in love with Noah's old Fisher Price crib aquarium. (We also took down his mobile, which apparently was scaring the crap out him.) We bathe, we rock and sing and nurse, and he just...goes to sleep, like a perfectly reasonable person. I keep the video monitor aimed direction at him (we're getting some rollage, people, and he's developed quite a penchant for tummy sleeping) all night, but with each passing night of solid, uninterrupted sleep and waking up to a perfectly contented and alive baby, I'm relaxing about it. Ever so slightly, with maybe only ONE nightly jerking awake in confusion because OH MY GOD WHERE IS THE BABY DID I JUST KICK THE BABY OH WAIT THAT WAS THE CAT.

SORRY CATZZZZZZZZZ.

He's also taking predictable daytime naps -- two nice ones, the second of which often overlaps Noah's nap (which is hit-or-miss some days, but at the very least involves a decent chunk of Quiet Time In Your Room Reading Books I Do Not Care If You Sleep But By God You Will Stay In Your Room Until Mama's Eyelid Stops Twitching).

My only guess as to the cause of this belated Christmas miracle is that we've been following Ezra's lead when it comes to solid food as opposed to the books and rules and such. (Within reason, of course.) He wants solids twice a day. He wants his cereals chunky and substantial and not thinned out (the initially rejected barley cereal became a runaway hit once it spent the night in the refrigerator and got really plump and sticky). He wants to hold and gum on his own rice rusk, dagnabbit. He wants MOAR SWEET POTATOES and you BETTER be planning to share that avocado slice from your sandwich, missy.

And because I am frankly, fresh out of Fretting, we go with it.

(I still have a really good supply of Hovering, of course, ready to whip out at the first sign of gagging or choking or...uh, allergy-ing. Although mostly I Hover to prevent sibling grilled-cheese-related plate swipings, because HOLY CRAP, this baby likes food.)

He still lovvvves nursing, even though I do miss the exclusive closeness we had before, even though my head sometimes spins by how quickly it's all happening this time.

He is still such a darling lump of baby, though, with insane little thighs and cheeks and funny squawks and faces, whose needs are uncomplicated and whose happiness is infectious, whose whole face lights up everytime I simply walk into the room. It's been a long winter, and I cannot even imagine what these past few months would have been like without the wonderful ray of sunshine that is This Boy.

(And that goes for this crazy monkey, too.)

Don't Steal My Sunshine

Dad Update:

His left lung, the one that collapsed, has been drained of fluid and...uh...reinflated? uncollapsed? You know. Whatever the proper technical term for WE DONE FIXED IT is. But! Now he has pneumonia in the right lung, and is hallucinating from a lack of oxygen to his brain. And not fun hallucinations that we can tease him about later. Scary dreary hallucinations about death that are making my mom cry and me stress-eat the hell out of a pan of brownies. AND THEN there are a couple heart-related things that I cannot spell but we are assured are at least somewhere in the realm of "normal" complications. So...yay for that?

Noah Update:

Despite waiting for almost two months for yesterday's evaluation appointment, I sincerely wished I could have rescheduled. Y'all know what the past few months have been like, health-wise, over here, with the colds and sinus infections and ear infections and ear infections LEAKING OUT OF OUR EYEBALLS. So you know that I know Sick. I am an expert at Sick. And yesterday I was indeed at the level of Sick where I shouldn't have been anywhere except my bed, researching the same damn breastfeeding websites, hoping for JUST ONE that would tell me some Nyquil would be okay, because I WANT NYQUIL. MULTI-INGREDIENT, ALCOHOL-RIDDEN NYQUIL.

Anyway. Noah went back with two very young speech pathologists -- I'm not old enough to be other adults' mother yet, but I was definitely old enough to buy them booze in junior high -- and I sat in the waiting room filing out scads of paperwork, balling a tissue up by my red nose to prevent dripping snot all over a detailed account of Noah's developement. How old was he when he sat up? Walked? Moved from single words to two-word phrases? How long did he toe-walk for? How many hours was I in labor with him? APGAR SCORES, LADY. WE CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DON'T HAVE ALL OF THIS WRITTEN DOWN IN YOUR WALLET.

(I DO have it written down, of course, but my iPhone's battery was dead so I couldn't access my blog. And without access to my blog I can only tell you that I have a son named Noah. He's over there. The skinny one with the dimple.)

I coughed and sneezed and crossed stuff out because I kept misspelling complicated words like months and speech and Noah. I detailed his diet (bread and other bread-like substances) and his likes and dislikes and fears and various obsessions, like it was a online dating profile for Very Quirky People. (Do you enjoy long walks on the beach with your socks on? Do you hate fingerpaints? If you could eat only one food for the rest of your life, would it be Goldfish Crackers?)

I was called back after the evaluation and tried my damnedest to seem alert and together and ADVOCATE, DAMMIT. ADVOCATE THROUGH THE SINUS PAIN! The head therapist felt that Noah's articulation actually IS very good -- he CAN say all the sounds that a child his age should be able to make. He just...doesn't, a lot of the time.

She noticed his lack of social/conversational speech and that the vast majority of what he says is simply him repeating what you've just said. ("Noah, do you want to play with the trains again?" "Yeah, I want to play with the trains again.") When he needs to build a sentence himself ("Noah, what do you want to do now?"), he struggles and comes up with something more basic and hard to understand ("Noah wan pay trains."). This might explain why he often defaults to stuff he's memorized -- canned answers and phrases, entire patches of TV dialogue -- and why he has difficulty answering complex questions about when and why and how.

When he eats, he only chews on the right side of his mouth -- something I'd never noticed, but hot damn if it isn't the truth. Put something in the left side and he'll immediately move it over before starting to chew. He still refuses to use utensils -- he'll lick stuff off them, maybe, but you'll rarely see a spoon actually enter his mouth -- and still has difficulty drinking from an open cup. And textures. Oh my hell, with the textures. His diet -- despite us doing and trying EVERYTHING that every book or expert recommends -- has never been worse or more restrictive. We essentially give him everything he needs to live mixed into liquid smoothies.

The therapist did not think that there is anything super serious or profound going on -- he's a quirky kid with a lot of little stuff going on all around the sensory spectrum who could really benefit from some extra help during a fairly critical age. You know, exactly the sort of kid who would graduate out of Early Intervention and then still struggle to really fit into a mainstream preschool classroom. Imagine that! Why I never! The more you know!

They're proposing speech therapy that will focus on his eating and oral motor skills -- getting him to use both sides of his mouth, accepting different textures and foods, and packing some pounds onto his skinny little self. (Like our ill-fated foray into EI Lunch Bunch, only not in a group setting and hopefully with a therapist with the tiniest modicum of PATIENCE for CHILDREN.) And then, a conversational/social skills session, where he'll be paired with another kid of similar needs/abilities and act out simple situations with appropriate conversation. They're also pretty sure they can work around our insurance's list of exclusions for speech therapy.

By the time I heard all of this, I was completely DONE and exhausted and achey, to the point where I hope the therapist doesn't think I approach breakthroughs in my child's developmental needs with all the excitement of a teeth cleaning. As we were driving away to pick up the baby from a friend's house, I belatedly started to process the New Plan v. 2009 and realized that wow, I think this is really going to be good. Great, even. Just what he needs.

We shall see, I guess. I need to recharge my optimism circuits, a little bit, but I think this might be a good start.

Done But Not Over

The breaks. We cannot has them.

Since I posted on Friday, things went from Fine to Not Fine. "Kaflooey," is my mom's technical term for it. My dad's lung collapsed, his blood sugar went through the roof, he developed an arrhythmia and most likely pneumonia. He's had his lung drained of fluid and several panic attacks because he simply can't breathe. He's been on and off oxygen treatments for days, constantly dancing around the edge of ventilator territory -- improving a little but not quite enough, remaining solidly in the high-level cardiac care unit, which we keep telling him is actually a million-dollar spa getaway when the nurse comes to thump away on his back. I'm sure his insurance company would find us HYSTERICAL.

On the other end of the whining spectrum, I woke up on Sunday with another cold. Meaning I could do nothing more for my dad than miserably wave at him from the doorway while covering my mouth and nose, and could do nothing more for my mom than drape myself over the chairs in the waiting room and pretend that I was still awake. My body just plumb gave out, so I came home.

And yet I will be dragging my feverish ass out of bed this afternoon to take Noah to a speech evaluation -- a private one, which I suppose our insurance may also find rather amusing. Also, I think I will bet myself 10 bucks that I can get him to say "kaflooey" to the speech therapist. It's good to have goals, people.

The Worst Thing Ever That Actually Really Wasn't

I have been writing posts nonstop in my head since Friday -- nothing I ever intended to commit to the keyboard and publish, just a endless series of disjointed paragraphs that bounced from topic to topic and argued with straw men and imaginary bureaucrats. On and on, my brain kept going and talking and spinning. It kept me awake and anxious at night and distracted and disconnected during the day -- all the signs of an obviously superior coping mechanism.

Those of you who follow my sporadic dispatches over at Twitter probably Know Of What I Speak.

Here, like a Band-Aid: On Friday, Noah's teacher unleashed a long litany of behavior complaints at me, many of which I was hearing for the first time, others which I thought were already being addressed, all of which together painted a very bleak picture of an overwhelmed, uncontrollable child with no attention span who simply could not function in the classroom. A child whose continued enrollment in the school was in serious jeopardy and was on a one-way track to being dismissed from the school.

Here, like a bottle of alcohol emptied on the open wound underneath the Band-Aid: Expelled. From preschool. Merry fucking Christmas! Epic parenting FAIL1!!1

Of course, I did exactly what any capable parent would do in that situation: I burst into tears, and then came home and spent the next 60 hours of my life freaking the royal fuck out.

I called the school district and formerly requested a new evaluation. I called the private speech center that I'd contacted several weeks ago and got a little screechy about how long I've been waiting for a therapist to call me and schedule THAT evaluation. I called some smaller, more specialized preschools and nearly threw up when I heard the tuition rates. We talked about moving. I emailed everybody I ever talked to at Early Intervention to see if there was any way they could help speed up the process of getting back into our current county's system. We purged our house of extra cluttered toys and distractions and outlined a plan for improving his attention span and adding more structure at home. I called my mom and whimpered that I just wanted someone to tell me what I should do-o-o, I'm not smart enough for th-i-i-i-s, why can't I figure out how to fix my ba-a-a-by.

On Sunday, we attended a preschool classmate's birthday party at one of those kiddie gym places. Despite giving Noah a pre-party briefing that rivaled most military operations, it did not go well. He was indeed, as usual, overwhelmed by the group, terrified of the organized games and activities, melted down at every single transition or whenever something happened that he had not been prepared for. (I spent a lot of time talking about how he would be asked to leave the play area and eat birthday cake, since that caused a lot of woe at the LAST birthday party we attended, but forgot to mention the possibility that someone might dare put a slice of PIZZA in front of him BEFORE the birthday cake was served, and Oh. My. Fucking. God.)

Jason and I were exhausted and heartsick by the end of the party -- Jason mumbled something about taking equity out of our house to pay for one of those special preschools, and since I could no longer even attempt to keep up a happy social party face, I broke down and shared what the teacher had said to me with a couple other mothers. Who then shared a few anecdotes of their own and stories they'd learned from previous years' families that painted a picture of a teacher who maaaaaybe gets a little crazy by December and maaaaaaybe a little dramatic about things and maaaaaybe I should go talk to the principal myself before, you know, losing my shit too spectacularly.

So...long story short, I saw the school's principal today, whose jaw dropped to the floor when I repeated what had been said to me, because: no. Not even. Noah is most definitely not at all in danger of expulsion. Never has been. The whole thing was a case of a preschool teacher gone rogue, off the rails, whatever. The principal has observed Noah many times, and she's never seen anything remotely close to the kind of behavior his teacher was describing or at the level where they'd start considering dismissal. He wanders away from the group when he is bored. He prefers one-on-one direction to large group free-for-all projects. He is easily agitated by transitions and easily distracted by everything in the world. Also, you know, he is THREE. 

There IS a child in his class who is causing the teachers and the school a lot of problems (pushing, hitting, using not-so-very-nice words), and Noah and I may have simply gotten caught up in a teacher's Terrible Horrible Not So Good Very Bad Day, and maybe she just really needs her holiday break.  And then the principal and I had a long talk about Sensory Processing Disorder and brainstormed some additional strategies that could be used to keep Noah with the group and help him through transitions.

Of course...I'm not an idiot. The behavior at Sunday's birthday party alone is enough for us to realize that yes, Noah most definitely needs some help. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between Early Intervention assuring us that Everything Is Just Fine!! and his teacher telling us that Everything Is Just Terrible!! I am still anxious to get him re-evaluated. I am still exploring other preschool options, because GODDAMN.

But at least now I can go back to making up imaginary conversations between my deodorants in the middle of the night instead. So...back to normal! Hooray!

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.

Let Your Guilt Flag Fly

Oh my God, yesterday's post. I'm sorry. I fully own up to the fact that the last paragraph in particular got COMPLETELY away from me, with the dramatics and the...well, the dramatics. I went out to lunch with my nursing bra unhooked and I posted on my blog with my mommy guilt showing. Same diff. Kind of. Look, I plead sleep deprivation, both for the entry and that metaphor there.

So I was rehashing the entry a few hours later while nursing the baby (That's what I do while I breastfeed. I think about my blog. And drool. And hallucinate that I'm awake, lying in bed and breastfeeding, only I'm kind of asleep? Because I don't think there's a swimming pool in my bedroom?), and I blearily did the math that November minus June equals...five months. Five months without speech or occupational therapy. Even in the accelerated life of a toddler, five months is not (NEWSFLASH) really that long, or (NEWSFUCKINGFLASH) the end of the world.

So now I'm embarrassed about the whole "I LET MY CHILD DOWWWWN! I FAAAAAAIL!" tone I veered into, but grateful for all your lovely and reassuring comments, and sorry that I made y'all feel like I needed (or was fishing for) that reassurance, when really what I needed was:

1) a nap
2) a nice hard slap
3) some quiet meditative time of private and offline self-reflection
4) a fucking lot of wine.

Guess which one I actually got? Guess! Do you think the Internets will line up so readily to reassure me that I'm a good mother when I confess that HELL YES, I left both my children with a babysitter last night and went out a'drinking with my husband?

MAD COPING SKILLZ, I tell ya.

(And dudes, I'm totally doing it again tonight. Oyster Riot! Causing Amy To Abandon Her Five-Week-Old Babies Since 2005.)

(And semi-relatedly, if you are a breastfeeding mother who enjoys the occasional moonshine, these flat out rule.)

One thing I have absolutely NOT done is...well. Anything ABOUT any of it. No phone calls, no consulting of our insurance, no contacting anyone for audiologist recommendations or further researching our school district's policies for evaluations or anything like that. I am waiting until Monday. I can never seem to get stuff like that done on Friday. It feels wrong and pointless, like how I never started new projects at my old job on Friday either. Or...after 4 pm on any other day of the week. You know, lest I mess up the amazing MOMENTUM I set in motion by...dialing the damn phone. On a Friday.

Wow. That sounded a lot more endearing and charmingly quirky in my head. Now I just sound lazy and possibly insane and like I should retroactively be fired from that job.

Ahem! So, in summary. This was me yesterday:

Then I had some wine:

And then I calmed down and decided that everything was okay after all, oh who am I kidding, I'm totally just posting this next photo because OH MY GOD LOOK AT TEH TEN POUND CHUBBY CHUBKIN CHEEKS NOM NOM: