Oh, just...BAH

First, the insanity report: I took both boys to the doctor's office today for check-ups. Approximately seven hours later I emerged from the little exam room, only to smack face-first into a wall, probably from a combination of plunging blood sugar* and the disorientation that comes right after one loses one's soul, as mine flew out the window sometime around the moment right after both boys had their meaty thighs stabbed with needles and started screeeeeeeeeeaming and screeeeeeeeeeeeeeaming and I figured WHAT THE HELL, LET'S BREAK SOME FACIAL BONES WHILE WE'RE AT IT.

*My plans to eat lunch before the appointment** were derailed by a leaking poopy diaper, of the Turn This Car Around And Head Home, Oh My Hell Variety. I grabbed a half-empty and fully-stale bag of chocolate graham cracker bears in a panic since I did That Thing you're never supposed to do, That Thing Where You Leave Your Toddler In The Car While You Run Inside To Change The Baby's Diaper Real Quick But Then The Baby Pees On His Head And It All Takes Much Longer Than You Planned, but then Noah ended up demanding most of the chocolate graham cracker bears, which I served to him in a plastic snack cup I found under the driver's seat. Man, I hadn't seen that snack cup in like, a good six months.

**The appointment was at 1:45, or so I was told by our appointment card AND when they called to confirm yesterday, which was when I was also reminded to arrive 15 minutes early. So I did. At 1:30. When I was told that no, our appointment was at 2:00, but you know, they sometimes bump the appointment time up by 15 minutes to ensure that you do truly arrive 15 minutes early. Good luck trying to point out the flaw in that math there, for future reference. Just sit the fuck down and watch PBS Sprout for a full half hour while dreaming of the bagel place across the street, but WHATEVER, you have TWO CHILDREN NOW***, running across the street for a bagel will take 45 minutes and two additional wardrobe changes, at least.

***I had a lot more getting-out-of-the-house-related whining things to write about, but as we were leaving I watched a woman get out of the elevator with her three-year-old daughter and newborn twins. That made me realize that hey! I should totally trying shutting up every once in awhile.

***
Second, the Ezra report. He now weighs 10 pounds, 7 ounces and is 23 inches long. 75th percentile for weight, 90th for height. 100th percentile for absolute perfection.

***
Third, the Noah report.

Oh, Noah.

You have my permission to skip the next bit,  particularly if half-formed, reactionary tantrums of misplaced rage are not entirely your thing. My anger and sorrow are kind of still shooting out all over the place, probably missing the proper targets, fizzling out like my hair is made of stray electrical wires.

Noah's speech and sensory delays -- you know, the ones our county told us were All Good, All Fixed, Bye-Bye Now! back in June -- now appear to be bordering on "severe."

My final conversations with Early Intervention went something like this:

"I'm still REALLY concerned about his articulation. He's still REALLY hard to understand."

"Pish! And posh! His pronounciation at the single-word level is just fine! His combinations will catch up with practice. Calm down."

"Okay, so...what about the sensory stuff?"

"Mere quirks!"

"Should I be concerned that he can't drink from a cup? That he can't use a fork or a spoon? That he still screams when you brush his teeth or touch his ears? That he won't eat anything other than bread? That he'll go a week without pooping, just because he doesn't want to?

"Look...just...whatever, okay? He's not autistic. It's not apraxia. It's not nearly as terrible as the terrible things we deal with everyday. Can you just sign this paper so we can free up some damn resources already?"

Obviously, today's appointment was just with a pediatrician. It wasn't a formal evaluation or anything. But, still. I trust our pediatrician. I saw the relief in her eyes when I brought up Noah's speech and oral-motor issues first. I saw that look of, "Oh, good. I don't have to be the one to break it to her."

A stranger or non-parent should be able to understand about 75% of a three-year-old child's speech. That's honestly a more than I can understand. I translate constantly for his preschool teachers, and our doctor admitted she was catching maybe about 25% of what he was saying.

His reaction to having his ears examined was...extreme, so say the least. Violent. Thrashing. The very reason, I admitted with shame, that I haven't even considered taking him to the dentist yet. I can't even IMAGINE taking him to the dentist yet.

One week ago, to the day, Noah drank out of a cup for the first time. A cup! Without a spout or a straw! We'd been sending in plastic straws to preschool for months, once it became clear that Noah was willing to let himself dehydrate rather than take a sip out of a small plastic cup like everybody else.

"See?" I told myself last week. "All good! He was just being stubborn."

The fact is that I've seen one-year-olds handle an open cup with more skill than Noah. Stubborness may be half the battle, but the other half of the battle is...God, I don't even know.

Our pediatrician is recommending we seek a private evaluation and therapy this time -- that again, Noah is probably a little too borderline to qualify for the level of service he really needs through the county. (We'd be dealing with the school district this time, now that Noah is three, which does indeed have a higher bar for needs-based services, and also would mean Noah would be officially "labeled" as special needs in his permanent school record, or something. I forget. Early Intervention covered all of that the week AFTER they told us Noah was ready to graduate, so...yeah. I probably spent that session counting ceiling tiles or doodling "Mrs. Zac Efron" or something on my binder.)

But it's crystal clear now -- and I knew it but I didn't know it or maybe I just didn't want to know it -- the progress we achieved this past year was good but not enough, and we're not out of the woods yet. Wow. That's an exhausting thought, especially when you consider "four straight hours of sleep" downright luxurious these days.

So...I need to check our insurance, cross-check therapist recommendations with our insurance, make appointments for evaluations, take Noah to an audiologist, dig out all our Early Intervention reports and assessments and basically get ready to start everything all over again. And try to stop beating myself up too badly for letting things end at all, in the first place. For wanting so badly to believe that things were fine and fixed and over, for constantly giving things "one more month" and "a little more time" in hopes that it would all work out on its own, and for -- goddamn it -- letting Noah down and not getting him the help he needed sooner.

He Still Has Green Paint All Over His Hands & I Couldn't Be Happier About It

I sometimes struggle over what constitutes an entry here...what's an important enough development to put into words and demand your eyeballs and indulgence, or what I should just post on Twitter, or maybe email to friends, or just file away in my own memory.

So this one is just for all of Noah's virtual aunts and uncles and cheerleaders, those of you who never. ever. fail to leave wonderful comments about him and your own children and family members, full of ideas and suggestions (to Liz, who suggested supplying Noah with word choices to encourage him to talk about past events [i.e. did you eat pizza or hamburger buns for lunch? did you go on the slide or hang out with those no-good ruffian beatniks at recess?]: THANK YOU. I gave myself the world's biggest forehead slap for not ever once thinking of trying that, and surprise! It works! Most of the time. I don't THINK his teacher's name is Ms. Pinky Dinky, but maybe I'm wrong).

I picked Noah up from school today -- his first Thursday class ever, and was greeted by his teacher, who was ECSTATIC. He'd had a great day -- his BEST day, thanks to a few new classmates who are a tad less "exuberant" (as she put it) than some of the Monday/Wednesday/Friday kids. Noah seemed less overwhelmed and was happy to play quietly with them throughout the day, following his calm little friends to circle time and snack time. He stayed focused and didn't wander away from the group constantly like he always does. I guess the hyper-verbal and in-your-face kids would bother him and trigger one of his little sensory-overload fits where he needs to step away and flit around the room while reciting scenes from The Incredibles and just...you know, generally be weird for awhile.

People, he FINGERPAINTED today.

His teacher smiled when she told me, and nodded extra-knowingly at my shocked, slack-jawed reaction, because...FINGERPAINTS?

It turns out that in addition to having one boy with PDD-NOS, his teacher ALSO has a son with SID. Mild, like Noah's, but enough. Enough to raise red flags and eyebrows and make you feel like you're constantly strapped on a roller coaster while blindfolded -- are we headed into an upside-down loop-dee-loop or just one of those times where you get turned a little sideways and whipped around the track for a bit?

"I've been through it," she said, "I get it."

Anyway. I'm really happy that Noah will be there five days a week now, and that it was even an option for us -- there were three full-time spots left and a set of twins snagged two of them just hours before I decided to sign Noah up. The money is...well, it is more money and it is more money than I'm probably going to find in our couch cushions...but it's just something we'll make work because we need to make it work.

This blog is going on five years old now, and while I couldn't even count the number of dumb entries I've started and deleted and even published and deleted while trying to figure out what was vaguely post-worthy, I don't think I ever imagined that one day I would sit down to tell the Internet that MY SON FINGERPAINTED, in all caps, like I expected the ceiling to open up and dump balloons and confetti on us.

But here we are. It might not seem like much, just another mother blogging all her insignificant little dreamy dreams and the sort of thing that makes people yell that NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR KID, GAWD, but I know a lot of you DO care, and that means so much to me, so fuck everything and bust out your party hats because Noah had a kickass day at preschool and even if tomorrow sucks and I call for that private evaluation next week and end up crying about it and he never touches the fingerpaints again, today was a good, good day.

Still Talking About Not Talking

What was I saying about those boys of mine and their little pussy head colds? AW, POOR BABIES. EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT. YOU'VE BEEN TRUMPED.

Well. Uh. You know what else trumps your pussy head cold? EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT WITH A HEAD COLD. Oh, God. The agony. The pressure. The postnasal drip.

(Or...am I NINE months pregnant now? I am IN my ninth month, but have COMPLETED eight months? Are you only considered nine months pregnant right at your due date or do you get to whine dramatically about being NINE MONTHS PREGNANT WITH A HEAD COLD or NINE MONTHS PREGNANT AT THE GROCERY STORE or NINE MONTHS PREGNANT AND STILL EXPECTED TO TIE MY OWN SHOES for a couple weeks before that? I can never really follow the pregnancy math, but I would like it to work out to my optimal whining advantage.)

Last night we attended our very first Back To School Parents' Night Thing at Noah's preschool. I was a little bummed, frankly -- I thought there would be punch. Maybe cookies. Instead we got handouts and sat around perched on teensy little chairs and discussed our Educational Goals, Wishes and Dreams for our not-quite-three-year-olds. And the policies on birthday cupcakes. I learned a few things:

1) On the very first day of school, Noah was the first and only child to spontaneously request to go potty, and he started a small wave of peer-pressure-induced lining-up to go potty, including his non-potty-trained peers. I think this means we Win, and that I should get a Dora sticker.

2) The new obsession with pirates and talking like a pirate? No, he didn't get that from school, and as such, it remains a total mystery. Arrrr.

3) Other kids talk about Noah to their parents, but Noah simply refers to everybody and everything that he encounters at school as..."school." His teacher is School, his classmates are School, the paints are School. The playground, of course, is FUCKING AWESOME.

4) His social language continues to be a problem, as he doesn't really understand how to ask or answer questions or talk about anything that isn't going on right in front of him, in the present tense. Ask him about what happened earlier in the day and you'll get nothing beyond confused silence, since...no...he's NOT painting right now, why are you talking about painting? There are no paints. You're boring me, and I am going to wander away now. He rarely attempts to converse with other kids, except to mimic their speech or roar at them like a dinosaur. Or a pirate.   

5) His teacher has a son in elementary school with a PDD-NOS diagnosis. She became a preschool teacher while advocating for him during his early childhood education, since she found she needed to literally be with him in his classrooms in order to make sure his needs were being met and understood.

After Jason and I left and went off to search elsewhere for some damn punch and cookies, we realized we'd both come to the same conclusion, and after picking Noah up from school today and I went and upped his enrollment to five days a week.

The other kids in his class are...wow...way beyond Noah in terms of their verbal abilities. I know I'm not supposed to compare him to other kids; I know he moves at his own pace; I know he's special and gifted in his own quirky little way, but...wow. I'm not neurotic (much), but I'm also not fucking deaf.

It pricks at my heart to see him wandering on the outskirts of the group, reciting entire books and and vaguely comprehensible stretches of movie dialogue to himself, and I get a little angry at myself for being so easily comforted by some damn standardized test scores that allowed the county to hand Noah his "graduation" papers and leave us standing here scratching our heads because...well...SURE he did great on a standardized test. They sat him down with one other adult and showed him pictures of dogs and balls and toothbrushes and asked him to say dog and ball and toothbrush. They told me his articulation at the single-word level meant it was okay that he's impossible to understand when he strings several words together. They told me it was okay that he couldn't ever accurately tell me what he had for lunch earlier or what his dog's name is if his dog is not right in front of him. They told me it was okay that he just roared at other children and couldn't possibly tell me about his friend Chase or Michael or Eva because...Jesus, I don't even know WHY he can't tell me. 

Early Intervention's official report states that Noah's delays and developmental difficulties would "not impede or interfere with his ability to learn in a mainstream classroom." So. We're counting on that part being correct. Five days a week with the kids who can talk and the teacher who thankfully, blessedly, seems to understand our little question mark of a boy.

PrePreschool

Ages and ages ago, I remember reading someone else's blog post about their child starting preschool. And it was boring! Preschool! It happens! Your kid is too big to cuddle now anyway! Send 'em off, ship 'em out, I have no time for your hand-wringing and hair-biting!

Noah starts preschool on Monday.

*shoves hair in mouth*

We went to drop off another stack of forms and oh, I don't even know how many dollars today and were told we could go meet his teacher.

Noah shyly walked around the room, played with a toy cash register and some puzzles, eagerly selected a moon-shaped sticker from a proffered baggie and recited a fairly impressive soliloquy from Blue's Clues while investigating a toy baby bassinet. ("Cinnamon! He looks like a Cinnamon. What a great name! Paprika, you just named your baby brother!") (We've been watching "The Baby's Here!" episode quite a bit, for obvious reasons.)

Then Noah spotted a pile of posters on the floor -- shapes, colors, numbers, all waiting to be be hung up. "An octagon!" he shouted. "Stop sign is octagon."

He moved on to the next poster, which was about counting to four. "Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!" he finished.

His teacher raised an eyebrow and looked at me. I jokingly thanked Noah for making me look good.

(Confidential to Steve from Blue's Clues: THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME LOOK GOOD.)

***
Just an hour or so before, we randomly bumped into one of the Early Intervention/Kids At Play moms at our pediatrician's office. We didn't have much time to talk -- she was there with her brand-new-as-of-THURSDAY baby, looking exhausted and overwhelmed. We promised to get back in touch and finally plan that playdate we've been talking about for months and months now. She headed off to meet with the lactation consultant, I went to go get my forms certifying that my child is not pulsing with lead and infectious diseases.

I'd dutifully filled out my required sections of the forms, occasionally stymied by the questions about Noah's development.

"THINGS I AM WORKING ON WITH MY CHILD."

"MY CHILD WILL NEED HELP WITH THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITIES."

I attended the panel at BlogHer for special-needs parents, although I almost skipped it, fearing that I would be viewed as some kind of tourist. Hadn't we gotten the all-clear from our EI program? Didn't I have a stack of test results proving that my child was speaking at a normal and age-appropriate level? Wasn't that chapter of our lives over and done with?

Well, yes. And no.

Noah graduated from EI on the basis of speech, and speech alone. I didn't realize that by dropping our (awful terrible grr hate smash) occupational therapist and opting to work on his sensory issues in a group setting only, I was essentially telling the county that I was no longer concerned with those "other" problems.

Noah still has a pretty pronounced oral aversion. He cannot use a fork or a spoon or drink from a cup. If he likes a food, he'll stuff his mouth until he chokes. If he dislikes something, he can't even bear to touch it to his lips. He is the most physically cautious almost-three-year-old boy you will ever meet. He will go down THAT kind of slide but not THAT kind. He hates messes and still lines up toys. The test scores indicate a child who is speaking and articulating appropriately. The average trip to the playground indicates the exact opposite. Sure, he's not silent. But his social language is still mostly roars and amusing sound effects. He's very, very hard to understand. Countless times people have looked to me for a translation and all I can offer is a shrug. Certain triggers send him into a frightened, overwhelmed state that I can only describe as a toddler-sized panic attack.

He is, to put it mildly and spare you a million other humdrum details, a quirky kid.

And I mentioned this to other bloggers who have kids in EI or on the spectrum or undergoing developmental assessments. And, bless them, they all GOT IT. The constant waffling between "he's fine, that's just who he is, embrace it already," and "will his life be made harder because of this, and should I be doing something about it?"  And that's where we are, muddling through. Thrilled to be officially past the label stage of speech delays and SID/SPD, but also at a loss, because now how do we explain Noah and his needs without falling back on labels that maybe don't apply?  "Child had speech delay, is all better now, hooray!"

I wrote a lot of neurotic-sounding nonsense on Noah's preschool forms. Overprotective and overused crap about "transitions" and "overwhelmed easily in noisy areas" and "dread fear of fingerpaints." I wrote it because I worried I'd be doing Noah a disservice to pretend that side of him didn't still exist.

His teacher will read all of that later this week, I guess.

But...I hope she mostly remembers that Noah is the kid who knew what an octagon was.

Noah and his very own photo of Baby Brother. He says he loves Baby Brother. He also says he loves windmills, chocolate, his SpongeBob soap dispenser, helichoppers and Olympic synchronized diving.

Graduation Day

Noah's official graduation from Early Intervention came in the form of a phone call one morning to inform me that the building had no electricity, therefore his mock preschool group session was canceled. After the results of the assessment testing, we had already agreed this was to be his final class -- I was going to provide the store-bought, peanut-free snack and I was planning to write a thank-you note for all of the therapists, perhaps with a little photo of Noah tucked inside, if that wouldn't be too presumptuous to assume that anybody cared enough to remember Case File Blond Dimpled Boy #2980542618.

After I expressed my understanding of the power situation and the last-minute cancellation, I was then told that Noah's spot in the class had been filled for the next week. There would be no make-up class, no snack, no three cheers for the Little Toddler Who Could Talk Now. We were done.

The week before, another mother was reeling from her daughter's recent diagnosis of apraxia from Children's Hospital. She'd known for awhile it was apraxia, she told us, but figured she was being neurotic and spending too much time on the Internet. So when they had their appointment at Children's she was determined to keep her mouth shut and never mentioned her suspicions. Sure enough, she was right all along.

Another was worried that her former micropreemie's assessment scores were indicating that he was on the autism spectrum, something she'd also been secretly fretting about for months now. I sat with them, feeling like a total shit, since I'd so brightly burst into the room that day with the news that Noah was no longer eligible for services, isn't that great? They of course clapped their hands and hugged me, because it WAS great -- only a nanny eyed me with suspicion, declaring that her charge talked waaaay more than Noah, and spoke more clearly at that, so why wasn't anyone talking about ending HER services? But still.

We always join the class at the very end for a final circle time and goodbye song -- we usually arrive right when the children are cleaning up after snack, and I'm always charmed by the sight of Noah slowly and seriously carrying his plate and juice cup over to the plastic bin, and then his giant smile when he turns and sees me standing there. There was a new little girl in the class, and her mother had spent the session observing. I recognized her drained, tired face. Her daughter had screamed the entire time. She'd refused to join in, she'd thrashed and sobbed. Her mother couldn't comfort her and there was a telltale red patch on her cheek, likely the result of a toddler head butt.

They sat next to us on the mat, the mother engaged in full-contact wrestling to keep her terrified toddler on her lap, trying to offer soothing reassurances through her clenched teeth. She noticed me watching her and apologized. For what, I have no idea.

"It's okay, I know." I told her. "I was YOU."

I hastily tried to tell her about it all. About the time I broke down in tears at Lunch Bunch. About feeling like a freak at the one place you weren't supposed to be a freak. About the time that little girl screamed at Noah, demanding an apology for something or other, while he sat there silently, frantically signing SORRY over and over, wondering why she didn't understand him. And about the time I broke down in tears after getting Noah's first glowing behavior report from a teacher.

"So it gets better?" she asked. I noticed her mascara was slightly smudged.

"SO MUCH better." I promised.

I was looking forward to talking to her again. I hope it gets better for her. For everybody.

***
We were going through a fat stack of memory sticks this week -- all our precious family memories, still housed as zeros and ones on a bunch of incredibly tiny bits of plastic -- and I came across this one from late last summer. Noah is not quite two.

There it all is. The gibberish, the lack of sounds, the singsongy attempts to mimic the sounds of speech with just a single syllable. Everything I wrote on our Early Intervention application. Everything I didn't really want to acknowledge or talk about -- if you look through the archives of this site you'll find I was much more eager to post videos when I'd managed to coax a word or two out of him. It was easy to brush aside -- LOOK at him, he's still a BABY -- but at the same time I could never quite brush it all the way aside. His playmate could talk; Noah could hum.

Untitled from amalah on Vimeo.

Whenever I write posts like this, everyone rushes in to reassure me that I did the right thing. Which, dude, you don't need to tell me twice or 78 times. But I know. I did the same thing last week, when my friend mentioned the apraxia diagnosis, which usually isn't discovered until the child is three years old. Her daughter is two. Right there, I said, is the reason she's going to be fine. You got her answers and now you'll get her help and you're ahead of the game.

Noah is, hands down, a complete Early Intervention success story. We're still working on his articulation, but really, he's progressing and catching up at an admirable rate on his own. So it's time to send him off into the world of "typical" kids, since he tends to be the odd little duck on the playground who clams up when kids ask him his name or age and prefers to invite them to play by  leaning in close to their faces...and roaring at the top of his lungs. "Chase me!" is the translation. "Let's play monsters! I like you!" I used to rush in to interpret his signing for other kids, and now I hang back, nervously letting playground law sort it out, although I'm always sort-of delighted to see how many kids-- after a moment or two of shock --look at Noah's beaming face and laugh, and roar back.

They speak his language now.

With Asses Roundly Kicked

Noah just officially passed the standardized articulation test at "age-appropriate levels." He has no detectable delay or difficulty that would "inhibit his ability to learn and function in a mainstream school environment." He is "one smart little guy there, like for real, wow."

And His Favorite Thing in the World is a Treble Clef I Made Him Out of a Twist Tie

The other night we had the TV on and a promo spot for Law & Order: SVU came on -- the one with Robin Williams playing some sort of unhinged psycho,which is only vaguely more terrifying to me than Patch Adams -- and at one point he bellows, "You don't know what I've suffered!"

Noah rounded the corner at this precise moment, and without missing a beat, pointed a chubby finger at us and shouted, "YOU DON KNOW WHA I SUFFER!"

Needless to say, we aren't really dealing with much of a "speech delay" anymore.

He still goes to his little mock special-ed preschool class, and he gets speech therapy twice a month at home, but next month those services will drop back even further when he starts a very mainstream summer camp program at the very mainstream preschool he will be attending in the fall. I've been told that all county-run preschool programs are off the table for him at this point, and while they will test to see if he'll qualify for itinerant speech therapy, it's been strongly hinted to me that I shouldn't hold my breath on that one either.

The only "concern" at this point is his articulation, which (as you heard on the video yesterday) gets pretty unintelligible whenever he's excited or stringing more than two or three words together. Still, however, this falls solidly into the realm of "normal" speech, especially for a child who just started using two-word phrases for the first time a couple months ago. His brain is moving faster than his mouth, which has always been the problem. The difference is that he no longer lets that stop him from TRYING to get his thoughts out, whereas before he seemed to clam up mostly out of frustration that we couldn't understand him, or that the list of sounds he couldn't reproduce was so long and daunting so you know what? Let's just talk more about aballs today.

He's even figured out how to use our non-stop translating against us -- we pretty much run on auto-pilot now when it comes to repeating the stuff he says, you know, to demonstrate the proper pronunciation or to give him two words when he supplies one -- so we have a LOT of conversations that go something like this:

NOAH: (very quietly) eye keem cone?

MAMA: Uh...ice cream cone?

NOAH: OKAY! GOOD IDEA, MAMA! ICE CREAM CONE! YAY!

He outsmarts me with this same trick at least 14 times a day, people. 

Early Intervention has also completely dropped the SPD diagnosis -- there's no doubt he HAD some rather profound difficulties, but as his speech improves and we doggedly continue giving him repeated (yet low-pressure) exposure to the wig-out triggers, it's all become much less of a "problem" and more of a "quirk."

That's pretty much how all his therapists and teachers refer to him now.

"He's quirky."

"He marches to his own drummer."

Independent, but not overly willful. Spirited, but unbelievably sensitive and gentle and kind. Shares well. Extremely aware of other's moods and feelings. Dislikes fingerpaints and transitions, but is the only kid in his class who will eat oatmeal with gusto.

"He's a special one, that's for sure." his teacher says, laughingly shaking her head after class.

He still uses sign language, along with the words, although sometimes he will revert to signs-only when he's shy or scared. He remembers every single one he ever learned, sometimes sending me back to the DVDs for a refresher course.

He can sing all the words to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Old MacDonald. He will tell you that "you can do anything that you want to do" and then tell you what Blue's dream was about ("A leotard dream! Blue rolllled!"). He will not say his name, preferring to call himself Baby. We've talked about the baby in Mama's belly a couple times but it's not really making much sense, although one time he did lift up my shirt and shouted "ALLLLO BABY! WHA YOU DOIN IN DER? DON WORRY, BABY! I COMING!"

It's funny. When we first started using Early Intervention and speech therapy and sign language, a few people did not hide their opinion that we were overreacting. He was too young, he was just a late talker, God, what is WITH parents and doctors today with their "labels" and their "therapy" and in our day kids didn't talk until the second grade because they were too busy shoveling all the snow off that hill. Okay, maybe that isn't very funny.

First, the sign language flipped a switch for Noah -- the first of many. He understood WHY communication was good. Expressing your needs! Getting those needs met! You could almost see the exact moment the light bulb went on and the signs poured out.

Then came the speech therapy -- which was as much for me as it was for Noah. It was humbling, honestly, to have someone come to your house and tell you how to talk your kid. I've met parents who resist it, for whatever reasons -- they smile and nod during our Hanen sessions and then roll their eyes afterwards and admit that no, they don't really go for a lot of "that stuff" at home. But we did. We slowed down, we made stupid noises and faces and gestures out in public, we signed and talked and listened and pauuuuuused and repeated and then we did it all over again. And it worked. It just worked.

Then came the social therapy -- the tears at Lunch Bunch from us both, picking up the red-faced tear-stained toddler after Kids at Play, feeling like my heart was going to break because THIS was too much, too hard. And now I get glowing reports every week. He stays in the class because they like a few well-behaved "example" kids to help the newer additions...and because he just loves it so much that I asked his service coordinator that as long as we aren't taking a spot away from a kid who really needs it, could he please just keep going until summer camp starts?

Now when I tick down this list of victories for some people -- victories that came much sooner than we expected, but were hard-fought all the same -- I still sometimes get that dismissive wave of a hand. "And you were sooooo worried," they say with a bemused smile. Silly neurotic first-time mother.

Yeah. You know what? I was worried. And so I did something about it. And I would do it all again.

 

The Toddlerese Phrasebook

"Mama in der? Mmma an na na a CHOUND? In der? IN DER?"

(Mama, do you hear the sound that is coming from that general direction over there?)

"A cow! Jump cow oh uh na amoon!"

(The cow jumped over the moon.)

"A TRAIN! A TRAIN! CHOO CHOO!"

(A TRAIN! A TRAIN! OMFG!)

"Aw, a boo hurt! Na ma a ban aid? Boots?"

(I have injured myself and require a licensed-character Band-Aid.)

"RAWR! RAWR! Onster anna book anna yoo turn da page! Oh no!

(There's a monster at the end of this book and you turned the page! Oh no!)

"No poop."

(I don't care what you smell, woman.)

"Oh no! A messth! Whew! Dapeart? Okay."

(I would like to reverse my earlier position re: poop.)

"I know. In der. A dridge. Ohhh, down. An tuntel. Up up up an der."

(A complicated description of the engineering of drawbridges. I am told I wouldn't understand.)

"Oh maaaannnnn!"

(Success! Swiper the Fox has been foiled yet again!)

"A nack? Okay nack. Nack oh der."

(May I have a snack? Actually, I'm just going to go ahead and answer in the affirmative that yes, I may have a snack. And I'm going to go eat my snack over there. Smell ya later.)

"A chide an mah polpet! A polpet, Mama! Choon an polpet!"

(Uh.)

"DADA! DADA! WHEAH ARRRRRE YOOOO?"

(Dada, Mama is currently denying me the object of my heart's desire, please come home from work to rectify the situation.)

Stuff, and Then: Surprise! MORE WHINING!

THINGS MY CHILD WILL SAY IN FRONT OF ME, BUT NOT IN FRONT OF ANYONE ELSE, INCLUDING THE &$@* VIDEO CAMERA, WHICH MEANS ACCORDING TO THE LAWS OF BLOG IT'S LIKE HE NEVER SAID THEM AT ALL:

1. Hmmm. I know!
2. ONE MINUTE!
3. Dog! Dog! Where arrrrre you?
4. Won, Too, Tee, ready or not here I come!
5. Oh mah gawd!

WORDS MY CHILD CAN READ VIA THE REFRIGERATOR MAGNETS, BUT ONLY IN FRONT OF ME BUT I SWEAR, PEOPLE, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP:

1. Oops
2. Egg
3. Noah
4. Hot
5. Ass

NUMBERS MY CHILD LEAVES OUT WHILE HE COUNTS TO TWENTY:

1. Four

NUMBER OF TIMES IN THE PAST THREE DAYS I HAVE TACKLED MY CHILD, DIPPED HIM IN CADBURY CREME EGG FONDANT AND SWALLOWED HIM WHOLE:

1. 567,987,001

I expected pregnancy to sort-of suck. I mean, honestly, it sucked last time too. Although I would probably never let myself use that word, since I still remember walking through the pregnancy and family planning section of the bookstore years ago, a massive dose of Clomid coursing through my system, and seeing that book called "Pregnancy Sucks." And I blinked and sniffed and thought, "Ungrateful bitches."

I keep saying that I feel better this time than I did with Noah, although Jason is often there behind me, shaking his head, because he thinks this go-round is just as awful. I'm not throwing up as much, that's for sure -- maybe four or five times total so far, with at least three of those times being more the fault of a skull-bashing migraine than traditional pregnancy nausea.

I didn't get migraines last time, though. Definitely not. And those of your who have ever suffered from migraines, pregnancy-related or otherwise, well -- you know. Migraines are more than a headache. They manage to hurt both before and after the actual head pain. You feel them in your shoulder blades, in your eyeballs, your stomach. Light hurts. Sound hurts. Movement hurts. After it goes away you're left exhausted and shaken and terrified that it will come back because you just can't fathom living through that kind of pain again. They have colored my entire world in dark, dismal hues that I can't see past right now.

I used to get migraines a lot -- in high school and my early twenties, mostly, when I was in the thick of eating disorders and jacked my blood sugar all up for the sake of size zero jeans. I never had a single headache once I got pregnant, though. The nausea was bad, I lost weight, I got slammed with anxiety attacks because OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH A BABY OH SHIT, but no headaches. And even at my sickest, I really did have a deep and profound appreciation for pregnancy and all the glorious suckitude that came with it -- even if I rarely admitted that yes, wow, this sure can suck sometimes.

This time, I am happily and completely anxiety-free. Dude, I WANT this baby. Jason and I both WANT this baby. Badly. We are, simply put, so fucking excited about having another squeaky little newborn here. Another year of fat baby thighs and rapid-fire milestones and we cannot wait to hear what this little being has to say when s/he starts talking, whenever s/he chooses to start talking.

In the meantime, though, I am impatient. I want the BABY. The CHILD. The little THING in my ARMS.

The migraines -- and I've had at least a dozen of them so far -- are worse than labor. Worse than the morning sickness. They take me away from Noah and turn me into a shitty, lazy mother who leaves the TV on all day and slacks on her writing deadlines and gets short and irritable with anyone and everyone. Some days I'm okay. I get a little caffeine and watch my blood sugar and use a cold compress at the first little twinge in my eye sockets. But then there are days when we're out of easy breakfast options and Noah needs to get to some activity and we're running late and I suddenly feel my stomach lurch and my shoulder blades hurt and I know I should go lie down and take it easy but I can't, I just can't. 

And then Noah cries because we have to leave the park and I've yanked his arm too hard and scared him and Jason comes home and I yell at him to shut up and leave me alone when all he tried to do was talk about his day and make a suggestion about dinner and then because I've been in bed for hours I can't actually sleep at night and spend hours and hours pacing the house and watching crap TV until Noah wakes up exactly 20 minutes after I've managed to fall asleep.

The only pregnancy-approved painkiller option (besides Tylenol, pffffffft, I spit on you, aspirin has always been my drug of choice) would be narcotics, which my doctor doesn't want to prescribe unless the headaches continue beyond week 13, and honestly I don't really want narcotics either. Codeine, Vicodin...I don't mess with that shit when I'm NOT responsible for a vulnerable, developing being. I wouldn't fault anyone for turning to them, however, and I am not trying to be some kind of pregnant martyr, but they just aren't for me.

My parents are here this week, to help me out and care for Noah while I "rest" and "take it easy," although it's already translating more into "frantically digging myself out of the professional black hole I've made for myself over the past few half-assed weeks."

I wish I were writing funny stories about oh my gawd! Pregnancy Brain made me walk out of the house with no pants on! Ha ha ha! I wish I could look at my round belly with a sense of awe and wonder instead of, "Oh. It's just bloat. Whatever."

I wish I felt better. I wish I felt like a better mom right now. And a better pregnant lady. And less like an ungrateful bitch.

But pregnancy...well, it's not the baby. I get that this time around.  I get that my attitude towards the whole messy gestating process does not mean I have the same attitude towards the baby. They're more separate this time, since last time I couldn't really fathom anything beyond pregnancy and the hypothetical idea of a newborn who would grow up into...a kid? A person? Pshaw! Crazy talk, that.

Maybe I have my priorities more in order this time? It's not about me and a big show-offy belly and prenatal massages and piles and piles of itty bitty clothes? It's about just one fleeting step in the process of being a family? The pain of struggling to build that family is still fresh, but doesn't sting as much, because I've already been blessed worlds and worlds over.

It's a miracle and a gift and exactly what I've wanted for ages now...but it's also kicking the living shit out of me. I have three weeks to go until the second trimester, I think, I hope. I also hope it will suck less.

Yeah, pregnancy sucks. But I am one grateful bitch.

When Enough is Enough is Enough

So I was rifling through the closet today -- looking for my lost glove, of all things -- when...what's this thing? A...toddler? Oh RIGHT! My other kid. I completely forgot.

Noah's doing just fine, thank you for vaguely maybe thinking of asking. The hellacious tantrums of a few weeks back turned out to be, like many of you said, the precursor to a lovely developmental spurt. He went to bed one night saying, "Bye Dada" and woke up the next morning saying, "Bye-bye Dada go work ALL GONE!" Complete with a little hand-wringing and the perfect touch of woe during the "ALL GONE!" part, like "Yes, Dada is all gone. We are fresh out of Dadas and do not expect our next shipment for at least six to eight weeks and it just breaks my heart to have to tell you this, ma'am."

Don't get me wrong -- he can still be a willful little shit if he wants to, but 99.9999999% of the time I just adore the hell out of him.

In a couple weeks we begin "transitional testing" -- basically we start the assessment process all over again to see what (if any) services Noah will qualify for after he turns three. It can range from "nothing, there is the door and I said GOOD DAY SIR" to continued therapy to free daily preschool, courtesy of our tax dollars.

I believe I've mentioned that I already enrolled Noah in a preschool for this fall -- the assessment process is fairly maddening, as we won't find out what we qualify for until Noah actually turns three. We may have an idea, but we won't know for sure until well after the deadlines for preschool enrollment and well after all the four-digit deposits are due. (Early Intervention at least seems to know the system sucks, and promised to write a letter begging for our deposits back if it turns out that if Noah DOES qualify for the preschool program. Am hoping this would be enough, considering our chosen preschool already has a waitlist 50 families deep, so it's doubtful they will be incredibly crushed over missing the chance to educate our special little snowflake.)

I honestly don't know where we'll end up. I once felt very sure that Noah's third birthday would mark the end of our EI journey, but now? Eh?  Verbally, Noah is clearly near the top of the pack in his class-slash-therapy group, but...that's not really the best comparison for basing a decision to go mainstream on. The group isn't exactly chock-full of "typical" talkers.

Behavior-wise, again, I don't know. He's had a few really good weeks. He's definitely more comfortable with circle time and the singing and transitioning from one activity to the next, provided he gets a little extra warning time. He plays beautifully with other children. But then try to slip on a plastic-y vinyl art smock or get glue on his fingers and hoo boy. Just...hooooo. Fucking. Boy.

Today I eavesdropped on another mother discussing the results of her son's testing. He qualified for four days a week of district-sponsored preschool. I was shocked, honestly -- her son's verbal abilities seemed pretty good. She was a little shocked as well, but said the decision was made more for his sensory and behavioral problems. What behavioral problems? Well, resistance to transitions and trouble staying with group activities. Huh.

For some reason I assumed the school district's bar for free services would be set much higher. And I also assumed that my kid was going to be some kind of valedictorian of Early Intervention, because come on. Look at THAT kid. And THAT one.

But then we hang out with non-EI kids and I can't deny that Noah isn't there yet, speech-wise. Socially, he's fantastic -- he shares pretty well, he's never aggressive, he's almost painfully aware of other children's moods and feelings. But the holes and gaps are definitely there. I just don't know how important they are anymore, at least in the school district's eyes.

While Noah attended his class today, EI had the mothers meet with a parent educator/child behavioral specialist/I'm not really sure of her title. Basically a support group where everybody can talk about different challenges and problems related to speech delays and sensory problems and typical toddler drama bullshit. (I know, right? It's like, start a damn blog already, people. That's what the Internet's there for.)

She spoke to us about the transition testing process, and warned us that it will most likely be even more draining and difficult than our initial intake assessment -- simply because of the bubble Early Intervention unwittingly puts you in. During the initial assessment -- you're scared. You've just started to come to grips with the idea that there's something "wrong" with your child (or "different!" as the parent educator would cheerfully correct me). You want help. You need help. These people are here to help. They give you a plan and goals and a promise that they can help. Okay. It's going to be okay.

After months and months in the program, you see progress! Glorious progress! You see how bad it could have been and you see how far you've come. Noah had six words in August, now listen to him! Bye-bye Dada go work all gone! Look at him walk! No tippy-toes! He loves slides! He'll play in the dirt! PRAISE JEBUS, HE'S CURED!

And then people swoop back into your home with clipboards and checklists and measure that progress and tell you that hey, yeah, that's great. It's still not enough. There's still a delay, a problem, a difference. He's still not ready.

And that might not happen. And if it does, well...jeez, I can certainly think of other things I would LOVE to spend that preschool tuition on this fall. And if it doesn't, well...I'll send him to preschool with a cotton art smock and hope that it's enough. That it was all enough.