So yesterday was not really a good day. Honestly, it started the day before, when the babysitter left. Ezra cried. No, he wailed. He toddled after her as she opened the front door, his arms outstretched and his face crumpling. She stepped outside and he pounded on the storm door and howled. I picked him up and he tried to push off my chest to lunge after her. She waved and blew kisses at him while looking at me like, "oh God, I'm SORRY," while I tried to smile and put on a brave face even though oh God, this SUCKS. Of course, he got over it fairly quickly -- 10 minutes, tops, but the sting of his preference, of him wanting nothing to do with me even after hours apart, definitely set me up for a crappy sitter-less Tuesday. Nothing I could do was enough. I wasn't fun. I was distracted and impatient and bored and scoldy and naggy. I hated everything that I heard coming out of my mouth, because it was all so damn negative. Don't do that. Stop that. Put that down. No, Ezra. No, Noah. Not right now. In a minute. STOP THAT. So then... Read more →

I thought making chocolate pudding would be fun. Noah and I would do it together, just us, during Ezra's nap, making up for a morning of too many cartoons followed by boring, tortuous errands and Mommy Not Being Any Fun Because Mommy Was Really Caught Off-Guard By Spring Break And All This Damn Time To Fill. His occupational therapist would be so proud of me, I thought, for coming up with an easy activity that involves some pouring and stirring and touching sticky things and I was so sure he'd be tempted to at least taste the pudding or lick a spoon and I even promised him chocolate chips, for God's sake. And then he realized that the chocolate chips were going in the pudding, for God's sake, what are you DOING, woman, and then I stirred them up and asked him to lick the spoon and it was messy and all too much and I should have backed off and I didn't and offered him the spoon again and he panicked and screamed at me and cried and I was like, for God's sake, IT'S CHOCOLATE PUDDING but that didn't help and I'm typing this from my room and... Read more →

NOTE: I have spent the last two hours waiting for something more interesting to happen that would either bump this post out of publishing contention or make this post vaguely interesting in the least. Clearly, my life is bone-thumpingly dull and I need to embark on more zany adventures over the weekends. I'm thinking of becoming a spy. Or an Ultimate Fighting Champion. Or switching from Blockbuster to Netflix. SOMETHING'S GOTTA CHANGE. Things I Wish I'd Taken Photos of This Weekend: Ezra approaching our friend's three-month-old baby with repeated squeals of BAYBEE! BAYBEE! and then hugging and kissing her. With tongue. Ezra sitting on a different friend's lap and enthusiastically stealing Indian food off his plate and declaring it YUMMEE! YUMMEE! Things I'm Glad I Didn't Take Photos of This Weekend: Ezra barfing up said Indian food all over said friend's lap.* Things I Wish I'd Taken Video of This Weekend: When the girl directly in front of us at a Ben Folds concert (who viewed the entire concert via the screen on her camera, as she was way more interested in filming shaky-cam, far-away video of the concert instead of I dunno, just watching it), got approached by club... Read more →

Noah's friendship with the little boy next door continues. Though it's only been two weeks and I'd already have to describe it as "rocky." On the other hand, the confidence boost was almost immediate -- Noah excitedly goes outside in search of Other Kids, and is bitterly disappointed when they don't magically appear. One day a couple of (much older) kids rode by on their bikes and Noah greeted them with boundless, innocent joy: "Are you here to play with me?" They (very kindly) admitted that they were not before pedaling off, leaving Noah behind and his little heart melting all over the sidewalk. "They didn't want to play with me," he said quietly. He looked at me with his big brown eyes and I felt my chest clench, but I felt weirdly prepared for this moment. Like I'd been expecting it, ever since Noah marched up and knocked on our neighbor's door. Kids are mean little bitches. Even when they don't mean to be. So I calmly explained (over and over) that those kids were just so much older and were allowed to go different places and probably already had somewhere to go or maybe it was just time... Read more →

Spring break arrived early this year, just to mess with me and my Productivity Skills and All The Very Important Bullshit That I Do. (New column up at The Stir, too. Word.) I've got over a week of All Noah, All The Time ahead of me and I really hate to admit this but the last hour and a half I've spent playing some incredibly convoluted game of Thomas trains has robbed me of a decent portion of my will to live. I tried distracting him with a puzzle so I could check my email but he was so displeased at my failure to applaud each and every correctly-placed piece (but oh my God, it's a 100-piece puzzle! At least let me hold my applause until you finish a general area or match up a complete set of fish eyeballs!) that he abandoned it in favor of lying on the carpet and whining to an invisible teacher that "Mommy isn't playing with me the right waaaaay and she isn't shaaaaring and it's not faaaaair and she hurt my feeeeelings and isn't my friiiiiiiiiieeend anymore." I'm wondering how many preschool-caliber insults he's got left before he realizes that Ms. Beth is... Read more →

So. Internet. People of the Internet. YOU THERE. I need to know something. I need to know that I am NOT the only wackalooned paranoid freak who occasionally gets a completely crazy random thought that comes out of nowhere but then decides to burrow in your brain and not leave, even though you KNOW it's crazy random, and eventually you're like, "OKAY FINE, I'll do something about it just so I can know definitively for sure that I'm ridiculous and don't have to worry about it anymore." And then you take said Crazy Random Thought to the appropriate authority figure, expecting to be laughed at, except that then you actually get taken seriously and the authority figure agrees with you that yes, actually, We Must Investigate This Crazy Random Thought Which Actually Could Be Quite Serious. And then you panic and die because WHAT. Translation: About a month ago Ezra started drinking a lot. (Water, that is. Not booze. Yet.) Actually, it started off with milk. After dinner he brought me his empty cup and desperately signed "thirsty" over and over again. I gave him some milk, which he chugged as if he hadn't seen liquids in DAYS. And he... Read more →

My weekend, in bullet form: 1) I found this picture on my phone. A Twitpic from Barnes & Noble that never happened, thanks to the Escalator Incident: Upon much (much) closer examination, the title of this kids' book is actually "Oh, Yuck!" and it's about...I dunno. Bugs and slime and stuff. But from a few feet away, combined with the glare, I thought it said something different. You know, with the U-C-K? But it didn't? Har har? On second thought, the thing with the escalator made a much more interesting story. Thanks for the save, Ez! 2) Jason, the biggest sucker to ever wander into the sporting goods department, bought Noah a pair of rollerblades. The wheels are like, five inches longer than the shoe. He got a new badass helmet and wrist/elbow/knee pads. Jason took him down to the corner and back, while Noah shrieked, "LOOK AT ME, MOMMY, I'M ROLLERSKATINK!" at the top of his lungs the entire time. 3) Ezra is officially praying for dual growth spurts so he can get his mitts on all the dangerous be-wheeled options his brother owns. 4) Although speaking of growth spurts, a quick inventory of Noah's closet revealed shorts and... Read more →

One year ago today, I performed the Heimlich on Noah to save him from choking on a fruit bar, because he liked shoving too much food in his mouth, a common trait of SPD kids. One year ago, he ran away from us in public and threw multiple tantrums a day. We were preparing for his first evaluation from the school district. We were arguing with our insurance company's denial of coverage for speech therapy. He couldn't pronounce "green" correctly. Or ride a bike, or color a picture, or make friends, or do anything that wasn't part of his rigid, inflexible routine. We lost a deposit to a Montessori school that he would not attend, because in just a few weeks he'd have an IEP through our school district and be officially placed in special education. Less than a year ago, I received a report from a psychological evaluation that took place at his preschool. It shook me to my core, because my son was slowly, steadily disappearing into himself and his rituals. He was withdrawing from a world that overwhelmed him. I remember putting the papers down, then folding my arms over them, and sobbing. We had to stop... Read more →

So. This happened. "This" is Toddler vs. Escalator. We took the boys to Barnes & Noble last night in a fit of "it's gorgeous outside! let's go someplace with the plan of spending time outside but really, who are we kidding, Noah can sense the presence of a Public Thomas the Tank Engine Train Table from within a five-mile radius!" Noah indeed made a beeline for the Swine Flu Comes to Sodor table while Ezra...well, while Ezra proceeded to BE INSANE. He ran down aisles, he knocked books off displays, he responded to every kid-friendly merchandise offering I made with disdain and a wicked curveball throw. He responded to Jason and my calls after him with a downright evil glance over his shoulder right before speeding the hell up in whatever direction he was unsteadily bolting towards. For lo, he'd discovered the escalators. I'd let him stand on one while holding my hand as we went down to the children's area instead of carrying him, and it was easily the biggest thrill of his young life. (His expressions looked something like this.) So he couldn't begin to understand why anyone in the store would want to do ANYTHING ELSE except... Read more →

I'm not sure there's anything more futile than spending significant chunks of time, energy and money on organizing a room that is guaranteed to get thoroughly trashed again in a matter of hours*, but damn, it's satisfying. *Minutes if they've had frosting. Satisfying in the fleeting way that Snickers bars and McDonald's fries are satisfying, but still. Jason was impressed with my preschooler art-project gallery, having been unaware that I'd gone out and bought special hangers for everything. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd been struck with the idea randomly at 11:30 pm and just grabbed the nearest box of thumbtacks. Whatever. Thumbtacks were good enough for my New Kids on the Block posters once upon a time, I THINK they're good enough for a fleet of two-wheeled rescue vehicles that I Am Very Sure My Child Had Very Little To Do With. (Though I think I hung at least one of these pictures of our house and the Jamaica house upside down, so perhaps some tape would have been a wiser choice. I get points for the airplane right? That you can make go back and forth? I thought of that all by myself. I... Read more →