Workarounds

Kiddo is fine, except when he isn't. That is, he's fine until something upsets him, and then he says mean things and is generally unpleasant to be around. That's the pattern these days.

DH and I have figured out that if he's having a meltdown, he's either tired or hungry or both. So we don't react when he yells "I hate you! I hate everyone in this house!" or when he runs away instead of helping to clean up. Getting upset adds fuel to the fire, so to speak, and yelling solves nothing. I've tried it. Doesn't work.

Instead, we wait for him to calm down, or encourage him to breathe, or give him some space, or suggest a snack and/or nap. These are the workarounds. They take a lot more thought and careful planning, but they do seem to help.

Sometimes I resort to sneakiness. He was heading toward meltdown status because I was feeling off and didn't want to take him to the park. I lay down on the couch and pretended to doze. A few minutes later, he crawled onto the couch to join me, and promptly fell asleep. For about two hours.

You can't just tell him to take a nap. You have to make the nap look inviting.

Sometimes I set the rules in advance. I gave the kids a strict edict on Monday that we would not visit the ice cream truck more than once a week. They nodded "sure, sure" as they ate their ice cream sandwiches. Today, they asked for ice cream. I reminded them of the rule, and after only a tiny bit of grumbling, they stopped.

I warned kiddo in advance that he would not be playing with the computers in the children's section of the library, and he listened, although I did have to nudge him away from the screen. But I always have to nudge him away from screens. Because ADHD.

I used to just get upset whenever he had a meltdown, or whenever he whined and complained and seemed overly negative about things. But I know the real kiddo is not that kid. The real kiddo is the little sweetie who likes to play peek-a-boo with babies and who always opens doors for me, declaring, "Ladies first!" That kid deserves the extra care and consideration if he's having trouble managing his emotions. Fortunately, now we have the time to give him that extra care, and I think that'll make a difference in the long term.

An interesting side note: Kiddette has decided she needs fidget toys for camp. This may be her way of sneaking toys to camp. Or her way of getting some of kiddo's attention for herself. Or maybe she just thinks, as she says, that if you get too happy, you need a fidget toy to calm down. But she's designated a tiny Elmo doll as her main fidget toy, and has been bringing him along to camp.

I figure it can't hurt. Kiddette just has a workaround of her own. 

Existential crises and other weekend activities

So I bought kiddette a book about Emma Lazarus. This seemed like a good idea at the time. She's fascinated with the Statue of Liberty, which I expect we'll be visiting at some point when the weather warms up (HAHAHA that's a good one, clearly we are going to be having winter forever and I will be driving to work in the snow every day from now on), and this lovely children's book explains all about Emma and how she wanted to advocate for immigrants and so she wrote the poem that's engraved on the base. You know the poem. Don't make me weep for the future of literacy in America. Just say you know the poem.

Kiddette loved the book and we were reading it when, toward the end, she wanted to know where Emma was. Here's the thing: Emma died young, before the poem was added to the base. The book gently phrases it as "she lived a short time after" or something like that, so kiddette missed the nuance. So I explained to her that Emma -- who I'd already said was a real person, who lived a long time ago -- had died.

Now I've had endless conversations about death with kiddo, but in this interested abstract sort of sense. Most notably, during the opening chapter of "The Secret Garden," but I had that coming because everyone Mary knows dies of cholera by page 12 or so.

Kiddo: Do people die of cholera?

Me: No, that was a long time ago, no one dies of cholera now.

Kiddo: Daddy's sick. Will he die of cholera?


Also, he was fairly gleeful about the evil aunts getting squished by the peach in "James and the Giant Peach," but in his defense, they are pretty evil.

So I've gotten used to the idea that death is an endlessly fascinating topic but not an upsetting one.

Kiddette, apparently, begs to differ. As soon as I told her Emma Lazarus was dead, she dissolved into tears and was inconsolable for several minutes. Then she started asking whether various family members were going to die. Then she asked whether she was going to die.

Sweetheart. Seriously. You are 4.

I'm not going to lie to her -- obviously, otherwise I would've said Emma Lazarus is totally fine and lives right around the block -- but I'd like to be diplomatic about these things whenever possible. So I said that everyone dies eventually, but that she was going to live a long long time and grow up and do wonderful things, and she seemed fine with that. I have no idea if that's what you're supposed to say. I never looked it up, because I didn't expect to be having this conversation with a 4-year-old. Next she's going to ask me where babies come from.

Kiddo meanwhile is -- well, it's hard to say. He's had a couple of good-enough days at school. He hasn't complained about the vest -- to us, anyway. He got a good report card (as expected, just fine academically, less so behaviorally). But he's been a hair-trigger away from a meltdown on pretty much a constant basis. On Saturday, he utterly flipped because he didn't have time to watch TV before karate class, to the point where I nearly didn't bring him to class. On Sunday, he utterly flipped because the guests for our impromptu Super Bowl party were running late and he wanted them to come play with him. Today, he utterly flipped because he would not be woken from his nap and thus missed out on playing in the snow during his 197876879732877684th snow day of the year. I wonder what he'll utterly flip about tomorrow?

He's got no coping skills, emotionally. Something that would be a minor annoyance to another kid is a major crisis to him, and he can't process it. I don't know if it's the ADHD or the OCD talking, or if they're just sort of ganging up on him and it's a team effort. I can't lie -- it's exasperating, even knowing he's not doing it on purpose. I'm not always sure what to do about it.

Today was kind of a freebie with the snow day, but we'll see how he does the rest of the week. If the modified class accommodations keep helping, great. If not ... hmm.

The trouble with blankies

Both kids have blankies. Adorable. I know. Kiddo's is green and fuzzy. Kiddette has two blankies -- a fuzzy pink-and-white one, and a smaller, crocheted pink one that she acquired in the hospital, along with her little infant bonnet. It's like a blankie tag team.

I wouldn't mind so much the blankie love if said blankies would just stay in place. Like, on their beds, all day. But kiddette absolutely insists on bringing her fuzzy pink-and-white blankie -- aka Main Blankie -- to school, even though she hasn't taken a nap roughly since she was still wearing diapers. (Every day her teacher sends home the daily report and writes "NO NAP" on it as though we should somehow still be surprised at that fact.) This means that Main Blankie must travel from her bed to the general area of the front door so that she can bring it to the car. For some reason this is such a herculean task that it isn't done until five seconds before she needs to leave, and the entire parade of coat and backpack and car is held up while she wanders around looking for the blankie that she'd left in a heap atop her bed.

On the other hand, kiddette never insists on bringing the crocheted blankie -- aka Auxiliary Blankie -- anywhere, and frequently forgets about it at bedtime, so it doesn't cause any trouble. It can be found at random spots throughout the house, sort of like an Elf on the Shelf, except softer.

Kiddo doesn't bring his blankie to school, so there's that. He just brings it everywhere else. Grandma and Grandpa's house. The supermarket. Karate class. Any sort of car trip requires the blankie, even if the trip is only five minutes. The worry is, he's been known to bring toys places and lose them. How hard could it be to misplace a green fuzzy blankie?

We nearly found out last week. I brought him to karate class, then we dashed home to get food before heading out to a doctor's appointment. Naturally, he'd brought his blankie and a toy. The toy came into the doctor's office with him. The blankie, as far as I knew, did not.

We managed to leave the office without forgetting the toy, came home and began our weekend project of cleaning out the playroom, because we are drowning in toys and many of them are baby-scaled. And next time I will pay someone to do that for me. I swear the toys multiply when we're not looking, like clothes hangers. Sometime around bedtime, kiddo began to flip when he couldn't find his blankie. And DH and I realized we hadn't seen the blankie all afternoon. Or the toy he'd brought to the doctor's office.

Crisis!

What if he had brought the blankie in? What if he'd hauled himself in my car afterward and forgotten to haul his stuff in with him?

What if his blankie and his toy were sitting in the parking lot of a doctor's office 20 minutes away? The increasingly icy, dark parking lot?

DH and I managed to get kiddo to bed, with the promise that we would keep looking, and then started to play "CSI." He had the blankie before lunch ... did he have it after lunch? He made me wrap the toy in the blankie so he could pretend it was a present. Was that before or after the doctor's appointment? It's not in any of the usual places he hides it in. Are we sure it's in the house? 

Proving that becoming a parent makes you take leave of your senses, we were convincing ourselves that DH needed to drive out to the iced-over parking lot and check. Fortunately, DH had a better idea. He dug through the massive pile of still-unsorted toys in the basement ... and pulled out the blankie, still wrapped around the toy from before. Where it had clearly been all afternoon.

I was delighted, and also wanted to smack my forehead a few dozen times.

Kiddo was ecstatically reunited with his blankie in the morning. I don't think we've had any incidents since then.

I know I should appreciate this whole blankie thing, and how adorable it is, and how in a few years they won't want to hug me or a blankie anymore. But that's a little hard to remember when we're all playing Blankie Hide and Go Seek at school time, or bedtime, or pretty much any other inconvenient time.

Still I hold out hope that they'll start being more mindful of their blankies. Because clearly, I'm not up to the task.

Whew.

I think the children have been out of school for so long that they've reverted to their natural state, which can best be described as "gleefully off-the-wall." They're bouncing about. They're chasing each other around the house. They're crawling on all fours and pretending to be the hero doggie characters from "Paw Patrol." (Actually that's just kiddette.) They got everything they wanted for Christmas, they got days and days with Grandma, they've eaten Christmas log and apple pie and chocolate and candy canes and ice cream. They had a playdate at the museum and a playdate at their friends' house. Right now they think life is fabulous. Oh, the culture shock when they go back to school. Homework! Healthy food!

Fortunately we've managed to convince them to nap nearly every day, just so we can breathe. What I mean of course is that kiddo naps every day. Kiddette pretends to nap for about five seconds and then grabs a bunch of books from her bedside table and pretends to read, because technically speaking, she can't yet. I'd get annoyed, but I've been reading in bed for just about my whole life -- my parents even installed a wall lamp and a mini-bookcase on the wall next to my upper bunk bed so that I could have easy book access. I figure kiddette is just proving we're genetically linked.

I hope kiddo doesn't look for naptime after he's back at school. I don't think first grade offers a naptime period. Though I've been long convinced that everyone would benefit from a naptime period. Especially me, at about 2 p.m.

So far we have had no issues with his "bomb gun." Which may be because when he asked Santa about it in NY, in his little holiday hut, Santa also told him not to point it at people. He was quite the perceptive Santa. And then he went and made a Jersey joke. We told him where we were from, and he said, "Santa says, what exit?"

Ho ho ho, Santa. You're a card. Hey, you know what Jersey has that the North Pole doesn't have? Summer.

Kiddette loves her purple cat and I can't wait to see what sort of purple animal she dreams up next year. Maybe she'd like a purple giraffe or a lemur. I suspect at some point I'm going to just start bringing generic stuffed animals to my dry cleaning and alterations guy and saying, "Please, make it purple!" He could do that, right? 

Anyway, next weekend I imagine we'll begin the impossible task of packing up all the holiday things and putting them away, and maybe in the process we'll figure out which box has the holiday books, so that next year we can read the kids "The Latke Who Wouldn't Stop Screaming" as well as "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." Also, maybe next year I'll remember we own an Advent calendar, sometime before Dec. 15.

As for this year, it seems to be ending on a pleasant note, even if the house does look like several small tornadoes have blown through and dropped toys everywhere, which they have. The price of having fun, I guess.

Halloween: A Postmortem

Superman and the strawberry had a fine time. They each got parades and parties at their respective schools, and then came back here and dragged me halfway around the neighborhood, and then had pumpkin macaroni and cheese for dinner (sounds odd but is good), and eventually we were able to get them to bed.

I took a half-day from work to catch kiddo's parade and to handle trick or treat duties. (There was no way I could make both parades unless I skipped work altogether, but skipping work altogether seemed like a bit much. DH and MIL attended kiddette's parade.) I'm always kind of fascinated by what the neighborhood is like during the day, when I'm not there. It's like a glimpse into the stay-at-home moms' world. Although actually there were quite a few dads at the parade too; either they all work two minutes away from the school, or they skipped work.

At any rate there was a crowd of adults lining either side of the sidewalk outside the school along with MIL and me, and then "Monster Mash" blasted out from the speakers and out came the kids. ("Monster Mash" continued to repeat, scratchily, for the entire parade. If there's one song you shouldn't listen to 10 times in a row, this is probably the one.) Kindergarten first, then the first-graders, and as I was frantically fumbling with the camera to capture Super-kiddo I heard a happy shout: "Mommy!" And hearing that made the whole half-day worth it.

Trick or treating went ... well, pretty much as I should've expected. Kiddo refused to go up to one house at all because there was a fake dead guy in the driveway. He was nearly scared off a couple other places because of dogs. (We are clearly never getting a dog. Okay by me, since I'm more of a cat person.) He insisted I walk him up to all houses after that, holding his hand. The irony of a kid in a Superman costume acting less than brave was not lost on me. I pointed this out to him, but it didn't help. I guess dogs and scary decorations are his kryptonite.


One of our neighbors was giving out whistles instead of candy. I'm sure she thought she was helping break the candy cycle, or something. I'm also sure her house was soundproofed. Because throughout the neighborhood, you could tell which kids had been to her house by the piercing sounds echoing through the streets. Kiddo, adorably, thought they were all sending messages to each other via the whistles. Sure, and the message was: "All I got was this lousy whistle so I'm going to break some eardrums!"

Really the kids around here are pretty nice, though. They all say thank you when taking candy and they ask before taking extra (I always let them). At one point when kiddette was coming down the steps of one house, she slipped (it had been raining) and fell. One of the older boys passing us stopped to ask if she was okay, and helped pick up her dropped loot. Very sweet.

(Incidentally, I was totally kidding about parents driving the kids from house to house in the rain, but I swear some parents were doing just that. It wasn't even raining that hard. Wusses. Work for your candy.)

I managed to more or less keep the kids together until we visited a family we're friends with, and then fell in with the son and all his buds as they went back out. Bunch of boys together, running ahead of their parents, and you can guess what happened next: Kiddo ran off with them, kiddette and I were three houses behind, it was getting dark and I started to panic because I couldn't see him. There was a point where I was in the middle of the street, kiddette at the house behind me, kiddo at the house across the street in front of me, and I wasn't sure which one to go after. That was when I finally hauled him out of the group, and we headed back shortly after.

We were home and he was already out of his costume when we noticed the fire truck lights outside. No fire, just the firefighters roaming around the neighborhood, giving out thick glow necklaces to the kids. (Cute, I know.) Kiddo ran back outside. I was in the middle of making a salad, but I ran out after him, minus my coat. The truck drove off and kiddo nearly had a massive meltdown, but I pointed out that it was going to stop again up the street. We were on the sidewalk and I thought it might be safe enough, so I let him run. Man, he is fast. I'm thinking we sign him up for track as soon as he's old enough. Unfortunately the truck made a bit of a rolling stop and kept going, and kiddo kept running after it, and at this point I couldn't see him and realized there was no way I could catch up to him, ever. But then the truck did stop, and he scored a necklace and came bounding back to me, like the world's most fright-inducing boomerang. I even got him to get a second necklace for kiddette, who unlike her brother had come back to the house when called. So everyone was happy, and it could've been worse, I suppose.

And my next source of worry will be the parent-teacher conference next week, because while kiddo is doing just fine academically, behaviorally, not so much. At least one incident of lying on the floor and refusing to do something or other. I suspect there have been meltdowns, since he's been having them at home. Not sure yet what we do about it.

But at least we had Halloween without any major incidents. Oh, and that salad? The kids ate it. I figure that sort of offset the candy.

A promising scene, and a new worry

Kiddo's school had its annual PTA ice cream social last week. Basically it's a PTA meeting for about two seconds and then it's an excuse to give the kids ice cream and let them run around the auditorium, and then outside on the playground in the dark. You'd think that would be a bad idea, but there have been no reported injuries, and there's just enough ambient light that you can more or less pick out your kids on the jungle gym or wherever they are. The only problem is when you decide it's bedtime, and then your children, hopped up on ice cream and the thrill of after-hours playground time, scatter to the winds and now you have to chase after them in the dark. I think strobe lights would be really helpful in this case. Someone could flash them on selected kids as needed and then the parents could more easily grab them. Or possibly this would be a good reason to install homing devices on their hoodies. Either way.

What I liked about the social was watching kiddo (before we moved outside, that is). He fell right in with the other boys from his class. They ran around the room together. They created an ad-hoc conga line together. One sweet kid with a gap-toothed smile even came over to DH to ask if he was kiddo's dad, and then to introduce himself. Pretty good manners for a first-grader.

I've always been most worried about kiddo's interactions with other kids, because social cues are so hard for him, he has issues with personal space, he can't handle losing at anything, he's not always good at sharing toys, etc. I tend to worry about that more than his academics, although admittedly his academics are so far pretty good so that's an easy choice to make. But he's clearly getting along with other kids. They were coming over to say hi to him, to give him a hug, to get him to come play. And that's really reassuring. Also, I will be sad when they all outgrow hugging each other, because it's so adorable.

I also said hi to kiddo's kindergarten teacher, who is super-involved and always at school functions, and she said nice things about his current teacher (and about us). So that was reassuring too.

The worry, right now, is kiddette.

I have at times described her as tough, assertive, determined, not afraid of things. All of which will be really beneficial for her when she's grown up and ruling the planet. Right now, though, she's getting in trouble at preschool. She isn't listening to her teacher. She talks back at times. She's being a total disruption at naptime, noisy, throwing a book when she's done with it. We're having obedience issues at home, too.

At the ice cream social, she was the only little girl running right around with the boys, doing everything they did (including jumping right up on the stage in the multipurpose room, even after I'd told her not to), and at the end of the night, she was the one who was harder to corral for bedtime. She had a total meltdown about needing to go home.

So. Running around, not listening, being defiant, throwing things, getting in trouble at school. Stop me if you've heard this song before?

I'd say it's too early to diagnose kiddette, except that kiddo was diagnosed at age 4. She doesn't seem to have the sensory issues he does, but ... well. Either she's potentially got ADHD or she's being an unbelievable brat right now for no good reason.

I think it's probably too early to panic. But it has been a real struggle to stop myself from yelling at her on just about a daily basis. I'm inclined to take a wait-and-see approach, though in the meantime I'm going to use the techniques I use on kiddo and see if they work.

I don't think I want two kids with ADHD. That is entirely too much chaos.

The week of everything

Well, not everything. I don't remember seeing any locusts. But they're going to show up Oct. 30 so Halloween gets canceled again and we can all lose power for two weeks and wait on hour-long lines at gas stations. I don't know how locusts will make us lose power but it will happen. Maybe they'll chew through everyone's electrical cords. Schedule it now, people. 2011: Snowmageddon/Hurricane Irene. 2012: Superstorm Sandy. 2013: Locusts.

What actually happened this week was, three days of physical therapy sessions -- which I have now been doing for a month, and it's helping, but back pain still wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes -- plus two different Back to School nights for two different children at two different schools, back to back, plus our meeting with school officials to update kiddo's 504 plan, plus meeting up with my fellow ADHD moms for dinner, drinks and commiseration, plus wrapping up the details on kiddette's 4th birthday party, which was Saturday. It is surprisingly difficult to figure out the goodie bags if you have zero time to get to a store and buy things. I ended up doing something I never do: I went to Wal-Mart. I hate Wal-Mart. But all the other stores I like better don't happen to be open until midnight.

Incidentally, there is something ... off about Wal-Mart late at night. Maybe it's the gloomy lighting, or the lack of people. Or the fact that the people who are there seem to wander like lost souls. Or maybe it was the creepy guy zipping around the store on one of those motorized store carts while wearing a Hulk mask, not appearing to do any work, not saying a word. If I'd seen that guy in the parking lot afterward I was fully prepared to throw something heavy at his head and run like hell. Although I'm not sure what I would've thrown, since multicolored plastic stencils and bags of fun size candy don't weigh much.

Back to School went well, for both kids. Kiddette is fine academically. Her desire to tell everyone else in the world what to do, however, is getting her in trouble. We don't let her pull that crap at home, either, so maybe she'll settle down a little.

Kiddo is also doing well. His math and reading skills are good, he's listening, he's doing his work, he's not getting in trouble. He loves reading, his teacher noted. And right there, that would be enough to make me happy. Any kid of mine should love reading. She also said she hadn't seen any of the misbehaviors he'd been showing last year, and that he's a sweet boy. Hooray!

The 504 plan has basically been fine-tuned to reflect the change in schedule, and to encourage him to be less anxious about getting his work done perfectly, because that seems to be the issue right now: If his classwork or homework is somehow less than perfect, he gets upset and can't seem to move on from that. But really, a good meeting overall -- everyone in the room seemed to be on the same page, and to have good things to say about our boy.

Kiddette's party went fabulously (plus a delightful visit from C. and company), and the 500-decibel shrieking you heard was the sound of her reacting to all her lovely gifts. (I didn't even know they still made Lite Brite. They do.) I got her a little musical jewelry box with a twirling ballerina inside, because I had one when I was a kid, and I loved it. Both kids are fascinated with it, and let's hope that ballerina is still twirling in a week, not keeling over from overuse. Also, kiddo has been getting a little too enthusiastic about "helping" his sister open her presents, to the point where I started taking them away from him. He occasionally has this "what's yours is mine, and what's mine is mine" take on toys. Kiddette is way more patient with that than he has any right to expect, but I still need to step in sometimes.

Much of today, of course, was spent trying to make the family room look less like an entire toy store was just dumped in the middle of it. I have this thing about being able to see the floor.

So, kiddette has been well and truly celebrated, kiddo is having good school days and my back is functioning. On to the next week, in which I will not need to buy anything for any goodie bags.

The state of kiddette

I thought we could pause a moment and consider kiddette, or as I occasionally call her, Miss Thing (say it with attitude), since she's been largely ignored on thishere blog lately and well, I do have two children.

She is, as one colleague who's met her puts it, "quite a character." She's 3 going on 10. She's already perfected the art of running into her room, slamming the door and throwing herself on the bed, meaning I already know what her teen years will look like. She has no problem being utterly rude to boys if they're in her way, or if they're annoying her, or if she feels like it. She can already write her name -- legibly -- and she draws constantly. One drawing featured her and her brother inside, and then the two of them outside, in the snow, with mittens on. That I believe constitutes drawing a sequence, which is a pretty big concept, artistically. (Still stick figures, of course.)

She picks the most dangerous, age-inappropriate part of the playground -- whatever involves climbing -- and runs right for it. I stand beneath her just in case she falls. Probably I should shoo her toward the swings instead, but I hate to discourage her spirit of adventure, and I'm usually curious as to whether she'll make it. She usually does.

She especially likes to pretend she's whoever she was just watching on TV. Interestingly, she always picks the main character on a show, even if that character is male. Example:

Kiddette: "I'm Jake!" (Of the Never Land Pirates, if you've so far managed to escape that show.)

Me: "Hi, Jake."

Kiddette: "Say, 'Come on, Jake!' "

Me: *sigh* "Come on, Jake."

Kiddette: "Okay, Mommy Jake!"

There's a girl pirate named Izzy, but she never plays Izzy. Only Jake.

She likes to get out of bed after we've tucked her in and turn the light back on. Sometimes I catch her "reading" a book to her stuffed animals. We've found it's best to wait until she's asleep to turn the light off again, because otherwise she gets right back out of bed and flips the light on. Even after she's out, sometimes she wakes up just enough to turn the light back on, then goes back to sleep, and we don't notice till the morning. Thanks for the electric bill, kiddette.

She sits perfectly still for haircuts and then chases her brother around the house. She wears fairy wings and then roars like a dinosaur. She's this fascinating blend of "girl" and "not so much." She semi-routinely gets in trouble for talking back. I find her exasperating and hilarious and occasionally I'm a little in awe of her, because no one is pushing this kid around. That'll be great when she's a grownup. Less great now, but what can you do?


One of our friends, who has two sons, was asking me what the difference was raising a girl. I said, considering our girl, that I really didn't see a difference. Our friend seemed skeptical until kiddette ran by, gleefully yelling, and launched herself at the most age-inappropriate part of the playground. And then hopped on the huge ride-on electric kiddie car that she wasn't even remotely big enough for. And then our friend said, "You're right. There is no difference."

Well, with kiddette there isn't, anyway.

Unicorns and fairies (and pirates)

So the letter for show and tell on Friday was U, meaning, bring in something that starts with U. I love these impossible letters. What are you supposed to do with X, if you don't own a toy xylophone? (I realize everyone probably owns a toy xylophone. It's one of those things you would not necessarily have chosen for your child but that your child ends up acquiring anyway. Like temporary tattoos.) Really I think it should be acceptable to just write the letter on a piece of paper, in marker or something, and bring that in. Kiddo decided that his letter U should be a unicorn, because he knew that I could supply one.

I had a big love for unicorns when I was a kid. (This is how it shakes out. Regular-type girls love horses. Geek girls love unicorns.) Unicorn bedsheets. Unicorn necklaces. Unicorn T-shirts. Ceramic unicorns and unicorns full of bubble bath formula. Unicorn prints on my wall. "The Last Unicorn" on VHS. Unfortunately most of that has vanished with time. What's left, mainly, is my old My Little Ponies, some of which happen to be unicorns. How they all got in my closet is beyond me. They appear to have snuck in along with the Cabbage Patch Kid.

Anyway kiddo requested a rainbow unicorn. I have no idea what prompted that -- I'm going to blame "Dora the Explorer," because he's been watching it lately, and because I can -- but it just so happens that I have one. Her name is Windy. You can see her here. There's quite a bit of devotion to My Little Pony out there.

I'm not entirely sure how many 6-year-old boys ask to bring a rainbow unicorn to school for show and tell. I don't know that rainbow unicorns exist on the same planet as most 6-year-old boys. DH did gently try to explain that this was more of a girl toy, but kiddo didn't care. Well, shrug then. I gave him the unicorn.

He was quite taken with her, except that her mane kept getting in her eyes and that bothered him. But he took her to school, and that night she acquired a space on his bed, next to Cowboy Woody and whichever Matchbox car he'd chosen for night duty. The next day he asked to swap her out for a different pony, because her hair was still in her eyes. (The '80s ponies did all have that Veronica Lake thing going on.) I gave him a different pony, and he was happy.

And the next day, we attended the Fairy and Pirate Festival. No, really. This town event started off as the Fairy Festival, but clearly this was not gender-inclusive enough so it was amended. Kiddette wore her pink fairy wings. Kiddo wore his two-year-old pirate costume. They blended right in with a sea of little girls in sparkly dresses and wings and boys in bandannas and the occasional eye patch. Some of the business folk and craft vendors manning the tents, endearingly, also wore wings. There was a "bounce castle" -- okay, no, it was a bounce house, talk about inflation -- and a big slide and a treasure hunt and games and dance demonstrations. You have not seen cute until you've seen Irish step dancers performing with wings on.

I have to say, occasionally I am puzzled at how thoroughly geek culture has gone mainstream. Adults walking around in fairy wings. Summer blockbusters riddled with superheroes. "Star Trek" movies that actually make money. Teen romance novels full of vampires and werewolves. It's all very strange. Don't people know that only geeks are supposed to like this stuff?

Now how is the next generation of geeks supposed to rebel against the mainstream? Read "Babysitters Club" novels and play Scrabble?

My point is, it's weird. But kiddo and kiddette don't care about such things. They just liked the "bounce castle." And, well, I would too.

Road tripping

Well, of course I was worrying about leaving the kids for multiple nights. A lot of moms would worry about such things even if their oldest were not ADHD and known for bouncing off walls/running in front of cars/throwing fits over being asked to wash his hands. That particular extra factor was just the cherry on top of the large sundae of worry. In fact my original plan was that we would go away for part of one day, no overnights. DH talked me out of it, on account of it was our 10th anniversary, and that plan was lame. (I would like to note that there are plenty of nice day-trip spots in Jersey. Just saying.)

Grandma and Grandpa were up for whatever, and saw nothing to worry about. I privately worried that Grandma and Grandpa were not exactly the swiftest of runners. The kids' favorite battle tactic? Running in opposite directions. They're like little Ping-Pong balls, with legs.

So we arranged backup. Kiddo's nanny would come for two days to help out, and the grandparents would be on their own after that. And then I was cool with making hotel reservations.

I won't bother with suspense: Aside from an occasional time out, the kids were fine. They went to the pool, they went to the library, they went to the kiddie play place at the mall. They helped kiddo work on his writing skills. They read books, they baked cookies, they cheered kiddo on during his swim lesson. A grand old time was had by all. Because the thing I keep forgetting is, the kids always behave better for other people than they do for us. This is both useful, and immensely aggravating.

Meantime DH and I were in Boston, touring Fenway Park ("we have to go extra slow for the Yankee fans," said the tour guide, ha ha ha) and the Sam Adams brewery (it was us, a bunch of thirsty college kids and one poor pair of parents whose kiddies kept wailing in their strollers, not that I would bring my kiddies to what is essentially a 20-minute talk and a beer tasting) and getting massively stuck in Boston traffic. Because I forgot the cardinal rule of cities: Don't drive in them. Also met up with cousin E. for dinner at the Seaport, which was great fun and also instructive, because their son has Asperger's and she knows quite a bit about parent advocacy at this point. Her main point was, the school districts won't necessarily volunteer all the resources that are available to you; you need to research them, and then push for them.

I heard precisely one actual Boston accent, from the cafe cashier who I was going to ask about restrooms, but who clearly assumed I was going to ask about parking meters. "Sure, you need quahtahs?" she said. Hee.

We also drove all the way up Cape Cod and back, which you can do in one day if you're willing to skip a few towns. The Sandwich Glass Museum is interesting, with all kinds of lovely glass objects on display, and glassblowing demonstrations. We also stopped at the Edward Gorey House, which was charmingly odd, and I learned that Gorey had seven cats and loved "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which is just cool. Fun/morbid fact: There are little gravestones in the garden representing the victims of "The Ghashlycrumb Tinies." I brought home several books for kiddo (no, not "Ghashlycrumb"), which may or may not make me a horrible mother, but he's made me read "The Epiplectic Bicycle" to him three times today so I'm leaning toward not-horrible. We ended up in Provincetown, which is this delightfully weird mix of funky shops, ice cream stands, kiddie attractions (a pirate museum! Really!) and drag queens on the sidewalk advertising the 10 p.m. show.

The antiques show in Rhode Island on the way home was less enjoyable, what with all the fisheye stares from all the expensively dressed attendees who correctly guessed that we were not in their tax bracket. Of course we couldn't afford anything there -- I usually can't in antique shops. I happen to like looking at antiques, because they're beautiful, and they're a reminder of a past way of life. Except to this crowd, apparently, who seemed to think of antiques as commodities to be bought, and could not believe my temerity in standing in their way when there were things to acquire. One of them practically nudged me aside with his cane. A disheartening experience, but the only downside to a really nice trip.

And the house is still standing, and kiddo and kiddette were not bothered in the slightest by our absence, and kiddo has already broken the little pirate ship I bought for kiddette. Because he's, you know, a pirate. Many thanks to Grandma and Grandpa, who made this trip possible, and I expect you'll sleep well tonight.

Good news, and maybe good news

Week 1 of Operation Nanny was a success. She's a sweetheart and she keeps him incredibly active -- they're basically living on the playground. She tired him out so much on the first day, in fact, that his OT ended the session early, on account of he was too wiped to do the exercises properly. We're a little in awe, because we can't remember the last time anyone tired him out (or outlasted him, for that matter).

So this does seem to have been the right move. He even still seems excited about kindergarten in the fall.

The bad part is that kiddette has figured out what's going on and appears to be jealous of her brother, because man is she acting up at school. She's pinching people. She's disobedient. She's giving teachers the Look of Death.

I'll explain: All of the women in my family can do the Look of Death (as DH calls it). It is a seethingly baleful glare that says, "Don't mess with me or I will destroy you." It is an especially intimidating look and I have occasionally found it useful. (No, not on DH. I wouldn't, and he's immune.) I expected kiddette to develop the look at some point, it being part of her heritage and all. I don't quite think I was expecting her to develop it at age 2. Umm ... hooray, she's a fast learner?

Admittedly, that look coming from a toddler is actually a little funny.

Anyway, her teachers find the look off-putting. One of them decided to give her a look right back. There was a stare-down. I kind of wish someone had taken video of this. I keep picturing it like a showdown at the OK Corral, with some Ennio Morricone whistle-twang music in the background. Fortunately, perhaps, for all of us, kiddette quit first and looked away.

I just can't wait until that child is 14. Oh, the slammed doors and the stomping feet and the teenage Look of Death, which will not be nearly as cute as the toddler version.

Aside from that, we got the test results back from the Brigance screening the district did a few weeks ago. Nothing incredibly detailed -- just the final score. The letter notes that they assessed for "reporting and printing personal data, gross and visual motor skills, counting, number readiness and uppercase letter identification," as well as checking for "handedness, pencil grasps, hearing and speaking." The categories were Partially Proficient, Proficient and Advanced Proficient. Advanced Proficient was a score of 80 and up for his age group; kiddo got an 85.5.

Well, OK. We knew he was smart. Because even if we hadn't figured that one out for ourselves, every single doctor or therapist he's ever been to has made a point of telling us that. It's nice to see that the testing reflected as much ...

Except that sometimes, per my research, districts will say to parents of an ADHD child, "But your child is smart. He doesn't need any special services." Completely overlooking the fact that ADHD kids tend to be very smart and creative. Their problems lie elsewhere.

Also, no breakdown by individual score means I don't know if he was doing well across the board, or if he was great during some parts of the assessment and entirely blew it on others. The highs and the lows could have averaged out to a good score, hiding the fact that there were any lows. Meaning there could be something he's not good at that he doesn't get help for, because hey, the final score was good, right? No problems here.  (This is also per my research.)

So I will probably call the school and ask if they have the full breakdown, and they will probably think I am crazy for complaining about a good score. C'est la vie.

In closing, I'd like to wish DH a Happy Father's Day, even though I think he's afraid to read this blog, because he's a wonderful husband and daddy and he's willing to do the grilling today when Grandma and Grandpa come up to visit. (His grill; I don't touch it.) I hope he has a lovely day.

Mommy monsters and other conversational oddities

So kiddo wakes up one morning and immediately -- before he can possibly get dressed, even -- starts to tell me about the big boat. "And it crashed into an iceberg, and it broke in half, and all the pieces fell into the ocean, and all the people got dead."

"Um. Do you mean the Titanic?"

"Yeah, the Titantic. And the driver -- "

"No, the person who drives the ship is called the captain -- "

"Yeah, and the captain got dead too."

My son, James Cameron.

I couldn't figure out where he'd learned about the Titanic, since it seemed not precisely age-appropriate to his class, and I don't think he's scored a Netflix account recently. My friend M., whose daughter is in his class, reported to me later that she'd stopped by the classroom for something and had noticed kiddo building a large boat out of Legos. She complimented him on it, and then he told her about the Titantic, and the iceberg, and how all the people got dead. M., slightly flabbergasted, asked the teacher if that was really the sort of thing the kids should be learning right now.

We figured out that another kid in their class had brought in a book about the Titanic, and that had been kiddo's source material. So ... good memory skills, sweetie!

I suppose it's not any worse than his explanation for why you have to look both ways before crossing the street: "If you don't, a car will run over you and you'll turn into a skeleton. Then you have to eat another little boy to turn back into a boy."

I swear we have not shown him one zombie movie.

It got even weirder a few days ago. He was throwing his usual "I don't WANT to go potty and you can't make me" fit, refusing to go upstairs, refusing to pull his pants down, and finally I snapped and really yelled at him. Because the word "saint" is nowhere in my name. And frankly, if you're going to pick something to throw a power-play tantrum over, why would you pick bathroom breaks? Is needing new pants and underwear really worth your moral high ground?

The next morning he told me all about the mommy monster. She came out of her cave and went into his classroom and came after him, and tried to drag him away, and then he kicked her in the face and tied her hands and she got dead.

"Uh huh," I said, wondering, should I take this personally?

He went on to explain that I am not the mommy monster, that the mommy monster is in fact a monster. I told him it still isn't nice to kick people in the face.



And then later that day, we were sprawled across the couch together when he looked down and suddenly said, "Mommy, is that your penis?"

Uh .... what?

I had to explain to him that women don't have penises. He didn't make the connection between women and Mommies, and asked again. I said that boys had penises but that girls did not. "But what do you have?" he persisted, and I somehow managed to avoid answering the question. Because really, I didn't think we were going to be tackling that until, oh, grade school? How about college? College okay on that one?

DH, by the way, found the whole exchange five kinds of hilarious, which means that 11 years from now when kiddette gets her first period, I will be making him explain the whole thing to her. Ha!

No. Sleep. Till. Brooklyn!

Or at least I'm assuming that's the song running through kiddette's head these days. Not that she's ever been to Brooklyn. But she's taken a firm no-nap stance for several weeks now. Which would be fine if she didn't actually need the sleep, but since she's a weepy, hormonal little mess every single evening, clearly she does.

She drops a toy, she cries. Her slipper gets jostled loose, she cries. She drops a piece of pasta at dinner, she cries. She has to stop watching "Phineas and Ferb" so we can eat dinner, she cries. Basically it's non-stop sobbing from school pickup to bedtime. Just imagine how much more enjoyable that makes dinner conversations.

Weirdly, she still naps for us on the weekends, at least eight times out of 10. (Although she didn't on Sunday. But Grandma and Grandpa were here, so the excitement might've kept her awake.) I figure she needs total silence and isolation to nap, and she can't really get either of those at school. Instead, she tries waking her little friends up so they'll play with her. Teachers: I am deeply sorry.

This is yet another way in which she's the polar opposite of her brother, who needs to listen to his favorite CD in order to go to sleep. He's been listening to this CD every night for several years. In fact he likes the first song so much, he'll yell through the bedroom door for us to come back in and replay the song for him. If he is somehow still awake toward the end of the CD, he'll yell for us to restart it. If you're thinking this is incredibly annoying, you are correct.

I just don't get all the fuss. I would love to have naptime. Every single day. I would save so much money on chocolate and caffeine.

They're both pretty good, actually, about staying asleep once they get there. There are no midnight wanderings or unexpected parental bed visits in this household, which I know is not the case everywhere. So once they're both down for the night, we can legitimately relax. I mean, after the dishes are done and their lunches are made for the next day, and laundry, and ironing, and cleaning the bathrooms etc., we can relax. And after I take kiddo for his late-night potty run so we avoid a.m. accidents. OK, basically we don't relax. But we could, is my point.

My real fear here is that kiddette is trying to ditch the nap altogether. And that would be bad. She'd be a weepy mess every single day, and I would never get anything done on weekends. Basically a lose-lose all around.

I hope she changes her mind. Either that or she and I can swap places for a few days. I'm sure she would do wonderfully at meetings. And I could nap!

Santa dreidel dreidel Santa

Kiddo goes to school with contraband dreidels stuffed in his coat pockets and makes Christmas crafts. We light the menorah my parents brought us from Israel and then open another box in our Playmobil Advent calendar (this one, courtesy of a co-worker, and it's entirely cute). The candy canes are piled up next to the chocolate gelt. Welcome to our schizophrenic holiday, 2011 edition.

The kids' classes have a sign-up sheet asking which holiday everyone celebrates, I guess so the teachers can talk about the holidays with them. Our kids are the only ones on the sheet to have Christmas and Hanukkah next to their names. So far they're completely blase about it. Kiddo seems to find this book useful, and has been making happy comments about his "two holidays." Which is good. 

So far we have seen Santa several times, and the kids have yet to wonder when Santa has time to make all those toys if he's bopping around having breakfast with everybody and riding random trains to nowhere. I assume that whole logic thing will kick in in a couple of years. Or else I will be a dumdum and slip up.

At any rate, we took the Santa train out of Hackettstown this year, which gave me the added bonus of now knowing where the train station is in Hackettstown. Sometime this decade, I sincerely hope to learn my way around the area. Grandma came with us this time, because she was in town, and because she is a good sport. We took two cars, because the car seats basically suck up all the extra space in our car, and that provided the added bonus of 1. our cars getting separated and 2. Grandma getting lost. She insisted we go without her if she didn't get there in time. I had visions of the kids' faces pressed to the train window, horrified that we had abandoned Grandma.

We got to the station just barely in time, I thought, and then I saw other parents frantically hauling small children toward the train and I realized the train folks must be used to this sort of thing. Because when do parents of small children ever arrive on time for anything? Inevitably there is a diaper blowout or a lost toy or a sudden tantrum, or the child decides now would be the perfect time to run in the exact opposite direction from you, and you're lucky you're able to leave the house at all, frankly.

So we walked up to pay for our tickets and we realized that the Santa train is so adorably old-fashioned that tickets are cash-only. And we froze, because we never carry cash anymore. The "conductor" took pity on us, though, and took whatever cash we happened to have and let us on board. I guess the slight monetary loss was easier to take than the inevitable crying fits when the kids weren't allowed on the train.

And we were on our way! Sort of. In that the train was experiencing technical difficulties. So it started, briefly, then stopped. In the meantime, Santa began to make his rounds. He was quite a friendly Santa, and posed quite nicely with the kids, even if he couldn't get a smile out of kiddette. But then Miss Poker Face never smiles for pictures, except the school pictures, and I would love to know that photographer's secret.

Santa went his merry way, even though the train still wasn't going anywhere. And then out the window, we all saw ... Grandma! Hustling toward the train. And they let her on, since we weren't moving yet anyway. What a perfectly timed electrical problem. The kids were thrilled that Grandma made it, I was secretly relieved, and we'll be coming back to this train group next year, because they were so nice about the whole thing.

Of course, once the train actually got moving, kiddette realized that Santa had been the high point, and was exceedingly annoyed that I wouldn't let her spend the trip racing up and down the aisle. Fortunately, Snoopy and the Grinch came around too, and Mrs. Claus, and then one of the women pulled out a guitar and started singing holiday tunes, so that kept the kids more or less occupied. (A quibble: "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"? I thought it was funny too when I was in 8th grade, but isn't that a little ... dark for a holiday sing-along?)

Balancing things out, we visited my parents' synagogue over the weekend for a Hanukkah party. The party kicked off with each Hebrew school class performing a skit, which was cute, but it did remind me that I have years of such performances to look forward to. Also, now I can't get this song out of my head. Then everyone headed downstairs for a DJ dance party, latkes and crafts. The kids have developed an appreciation for latkes, but they haven't quite figured out the point of the applesauce yet. It'll come with time. (And yes, applesauce. Not sour cream. Absolutely not ketchup. They're not Tater Tots, people.)

Kiddo danced a little and then sweet-talked yet another adult he'd just met into giving him something -- in this case, one of the light-up toys the DJ was giving out. I think maybe I should prevent this kid from going into politics.

The music actually made me a little nostalgic for when I used to go out dancing. Clearly I wasn't the only one, considering all the moms on the dance floor. Can't say I blame them.

We left after the Limbo started, mainly because I'd gotten hit with a cold or something cold-like and was petrified I was going to infect someone, even though I was slathering my hands in sanitizer. Still, good timing, since kiddo left under the impression he'd won Limbo, because the DJ had given him (along with all the other eliminated folks) a shiny dreidel. He was so taken with the dreidel, he decided to give it a spin, right there in front of the Limbo bar. I had to haul him away before someone tripped over him.

And now, as our Merry Everything celebration gets well under way, I say to you: Merry Everything! May your latkes be crisp and your eggnog incredibly spiked. May Santa or Hanukkah Harry bring you whatever you wanted, except a Lexus, because I hate those commercials. And maybe one of those guys could bring me what I want too. I don't care which one. They can draw straws for it.

Stroller derby!

Some time ago we decided kiddo needed his own baby doll (as chronicled here) and got him one. More precisely, my parents got him one. They were very careful to meet my specifications -- no creepy blinking eyes, no fake-wetting, must gurgle and make baby-like noises. They gave kiddo the doll ... and he promptly rejected it in favor of kiddette's doll, which he liked better.


Honestly. They're both baby dolls. They're both cute. One is in purple and battery-operated, so it waves its arms around, and the other is in pink and doesn't. They both talk (though purple baby mostly gurgles happily and pink baby cycles through gurgling to crying to snoring). They both have little hats. I'm not seeing what makes one more special than the other.


This seemed like it could be a bit of a baby war, except kiddette decided she liked kiddo's baby, so kiddo could claim her baby. And all was well in fake-babyland, except when kiddette forgets she likes pink baby better and grabs purple baby, and then kiddo flips out over the babynapping.

They're actually pretty good fake parents. Kiddo likes to feed purple baby its bottle because if you hold the bottle to its mouth it makes little slurping noises. Kiddette likes to squeeze pink baby's belly so it makes all the sounds, and then when it starts crying, she cuddles it and says "Okay, baby." Which is exactly how I used to comfort her, so it's entirely cute. Then they both sit on the couch with their babies and watch TV, which probably loses them a few fake-parent points, but on the other hand, I'm letting them watch TV in the first place, so I guess I get a demerit. Plus an extra demerit for corrupting little plastic minds as well as little real ones.

Then there are the doll-size strollers. My MIL gave one to kiddette to go with purple baby, but then kiddo wanted purple baby. I ran out and got another stroller for pink baby, and now they each have one. Unfortunately I forgot what happens when these kids are anywhere near something with wheels. So every day they put their babies in their strollers and race around the house. Apparently it's a multi-lap race. Also, collisions are not only allowed but welcomed. Because there is, after all, very little difference between a stroller and a bumper car.



How excellent for them that we had hardwood floors installed on the main floor. Now they can go even faster!


So adult conversations in our house go something like this:


"So at work today I" WHOOSH ZOOM HA HAHAHA


"What?"


"I said" ZOOMZOOMZOOM CRASH

"Mommy can you fix my stroller?"

"My baby!"


"No my baby! Mommmeeeeeee she took my baby!"


"NO MINE!"


And then we propose to table all adult conversations until kiddie bedtime.


I can't be sure, but I do strongly suspect that other children do not play with their dolls the way these two do. Truly I don't know how the fake babies are going to live to fake adulthood.

But hey, I guess this counts as exercise.