I know. I KNOW I already posted photos of Noah in his monkey costume, but that was a moment of shiny-new costume weakness. A moment I knew I would regret come Halloween. Don't post the monkey costume photos, self, I said to...uh...myself. Because then you will actually have to come up with things to say on Halloween, and dude, you know how you hate coming up with things to say. Fine. So I have one thing to say: This morning was our first occupational therapy session, and oh, gee! You know what is fun? Listening to your child scream while a stranger attempts to massage his face with a yellow duckie washcloth. And then being asked if your child has any negative connotations with the yellow duckie washcloth. You mean something like, oh, this very moment right now? We shall now and forevermore refer to the yellow duck washcloth as the yellow goose washcloth, because, well. Fuck the fucking geese. Seriously. I hate them. That is a banana in his pocket, but he is not happy to see you or your NUK brush. And...that's really all I've got. How about some bemittened sign language? ABALL! ASTAR! ACAR! (Oh fine, acock.... Read more →

Oh, it's ON now, motherfuckers. (You probably thought I was over the train set, didn't you? You probably thought I stepped away and took a deep breath and remembered that the train set does in fact belong to my two-year-old, who is perfectly delighted by his imperfect track layout and that I would be satisfied with watching his innocent delight BUT YOU WOULD BE WRONG ABOUT ALL OF THAT.) (I have since dragged Jason down into my personal brand of crazy, actually. The family that curses wooden train sets out together, drinks more together, is what I always say.) (I gotta go now! Bye! Very, very important parenting stuff to do.) Read more →

One drawback to the fancy search bar over to the left: I can now see exactly how repetitive my blogging -- and thus my very LIFE -- has been over the past few years. I broke my toe over the weekend. The same toe I broke here. I stubbed it on the vacuum cleaner, just like I did here. But it's a different toe than the one I broke here, so I am mixing it up a little bit. I stubbed it in the morning and did the whole silent-gasping dance around the bedroom, but it wasn't until a few hours later -- while we were shopping for last-minute Halloween costumes for ourselves, more on that ridiculousness in a second -- when I noticed my toe felt a little stiff. I flexed it inside my shoe, and heard an audible popping sound. "JESUS CHRIST!" I hissed, as I kicked my shoe off to watch the swelling. "Can I help you?" a store employee, dressed ever-so-conveniently like the deity in question, smirked back. I followed up with a muttered "mother of GOD," but that doesn't appear to be a very popular costume this year. *** I cannot remember the last time... Read more →

We're good. We're super good. I had a nice snotty ol' weepfest this morning, reading your comments, and I may have possibly had an imaginary conversation with you (ME: Buh-buh-but I don't FEEL brave! YOU: Go Amy, Go No-ah, Go, Go, Go No-ah!) and then I wandered off to look at lolcats, or something. Anyway, I needed that. Thank you, everybody, for being so kind. You guys are such a help, you don't even know. You make me a better mother, honestly, by allowing me to sometimes skip the funny and just sort of...BLAH! EEK! GAH! all over the place, and then by helping me through it with all your stories and support. I've started about five or six DEEPLY META entries about this and the Internetosphere and modern motherhood, but I've deleted them all because they all stink of post-divorce celebrity press releases and belly button lint. (So...sort of like Paris Hilton's perfumes, then.) Instead, please accept this awkward hug and/or affectionate punch in the arm. Hug. Punch. Anybody else watching Pushing Daisies? Ahem. Anyway, like I said, we're good. We're having one of those lazy days here -- it's dark and raining, so we all overslept. Breakfast lasted... Read more →

Once again, I am blown away by the response to Monday's post. (I would link to it but my head feels like it is about to split open and I'm trying not to spend much time looking at a computer screen. Or read. Which means I am typing this entry while staring at the ceiling. I am n0t kiddign.) And once again, it sounds so trite to simply say, "Thank you for all your comments and emails." But...thank you for all your comments and emails. I'm still a bundle of emotions and opinions about That Thing From Monday. Let's recap! DENIAL! I think they may be full of shit. Like a lot of you mentioned, when you go looking for problems, you're going to find them. Especially when it comes to sensory processing disorder. If I said, no, Noah doesn't usually sit still and read books, he likes to tear around the house like a linebacker who just won big at the dogfight, they'd tell me that oh my goodness, your child is not processing sensory movement properly and is seeking extra sensory input with a constant need for motion. Since Noah does sit still and read books, well oh... Read more →

Please indulge me, because this is exactly what I needed today. Professional photography by Kaileen Galhouse. Music: Calico Skies by Paul McCartney (Last year's session with Kaileen is here, if you're in the mood for TWO sappy montages and a good dose of OMFG WHERE DID THE BABY GO?) Read more →

Sorry, sorry. Forgive the pun, but I needed a few hours to process everything. I was extremely cheerful for about 10 minutes after the therapists left this morning, but after describing the evaluation to a couple friends I realized that oh my God, I really just want to go to bed for days. (And Girl Scout cookies. I really, really want some Girl Scout cookies.) The evaluation went well, in that Noah easily qualified for weekly occupational therapy sessions for oral and gross motor skills and a host of sensory-processing issues. It didn't go well, in that Noah like, easily qualified. For a lot more than I was expecting, honestly. Every question, every answer, every knowing "mmm-hmmm" rattled me more and more, since I would describe what I thought was something fairly innocent -- something that makes Noah so unique and special -- and they would mark another symptom off the SPD checklist. He's cautious and thoughtful and would rather sit and read books than dive-bomb off the couch. Well, that's probably because Noah is not processing his responses to physical movement properly. Wait. What? He toe-walked the entire time...something we thought he'd more or less outgrown...and at one point... Read more →

Noah's getting his oral motor skills evaluated by an occupational therapist on Monday. He's made incredible progress over the past month and a half -- it's been hard to know what necessitates an update or not. Sit? Dessert? Hop, tick-tock? Clue? Big truck? The way he imitates Cesar Millan's patented TSSST! sound when Ceiba barks? But. One problem. I'm the only one who can understand him. (Car + Truck = Cahck = Noah joyfully shrieking BIG COCK! at every possible occasion) His speech therapist doesn't think he's like most children she treats, since he's clearly ready and willing to communicate at a much higher level than he is. (Based on the way he plays and the signs he uses.) But something is stopping him. Something is causing him to make an M sound with his front teeth sticking out over his lip, and to go out of his way to avoid sounds that create vibrations in his mouth. Something is definitely up with his pronunciation. He won't pucker his lips or make a fish face or eat with a spoon. Food must be extremely crunchy (cracker-like) or practically mush. He won't let us touch his mouth and brushing his teeth... Read more →

But you should know that I have indeed stepped away from the train set. Actually, I take it back. I am busy. Lot more playing outside to do. Be back later. Read more →

You know how some bloggers come back after a few days of not updating and talk about how BUSY, SO VERY BUSY they were, and you think, "I bet you were not really that busy." Well, I was not really that busy. The other half of Noah's train table finally arrived, as did a bunch of Thomas the Tank Engine recalls-in-the-making train sets. I should have known I was getting in over my head when I read the user reviews on Amazon...someone would complain that a certain piece had "two female ends" and thus wouldn't fit to form a circular track and blah blah blaaah, and then a hundred people would vote the review "unhelpful" and there'd be a series of rebuttals from Little Engineer in Little Rock and tommylovesthomas and hotdude4673 about how like, heh, the trains aren't meant to only go in CIRCLES and two female ends are actually really HELPFUL if you actually KNOW ANYTHING about TRAINS, unless you're like, heh, trying to replicate the track from the infamous Percy Saves the Day episode, which, heh, had a COMPLETELY BACKWARDS t-junction, like are we supposed to believe that was some sort of MAGIC t-junction? I mean, come... Read more →