A disjointed Christmas

Yesterday DH had the bright idea to Rollerblade to the grocery store to buy a copy of the Post. Well, he returned home briefly with a bandage on his hand and plans to go to the emergency room. He said he had dislocated his finger in a fall. I was baking a cake with Pouce and I needed a few minutes to get some food together for Chunky Monkey before we could leave. He insisted he could not wait. He didn't tell me how bad it was and I wondered why a dislocated finger required such urgency. He ended up driving himself because he thought he might be there all day.

It did take all day, mainly because he had cut his finger DOWN TO THE BONE! I mean, the bone was visible! And I let him drive himself...I will accept my award for Wife of the Year any day now. He got an IV antibiotic and multiple X-rays.

I was happy he was eventually okay, though we are on infection watch now. He'll be showering with a bag on his hand for the time being, but he should regain full use of everything. He's a lucky guy. Must have been because it happened on Christmas Eve.

M's Christmas Plan

M. is really excited about Christmas this year. She has watched pretty much every special that Noggin has to offer and I have suffered through multiple readings of Rooftop Santa. Let me tell you, that title is worth every bit of the 25 cents the Embassy spent for it. We have also been reading The Night Before Christmas. She loves the story, but she looks a little wary of Santa every time we read it.

We went to see Santa at the mall and M. would not even approach his chair. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. G. agreed to be placed on Santa's lap, and it looked like things were going to go well for a quick photo. He tried to grab Santa's beard and was happy being jostled on his lap. Then as soon as I called his name to get his attention, he realized just how far away I was. His bottom lip quivered and the sobbing began. M. took this as all the evidence she needed that Santa was very, very scary.

Well, today she announced that it was Christmas Eve and she was going to get presents tonight. "Santa is gonna come and leave me presents," she said. I said yes, he certainly was. She thought a moment and said, "And I'm gonna wear my dinosaur costume and scare him when he comes."

Merry Christmas, Santa. Love, M.

Twice a month is all you need

We met with G's therapist, the social worker and the case manager this week for his 6 month review. It went as expected, with the recommendation that his physical therapy be reduced to twice a month. They really feel that he is doing well enough that he will be weaned off therapy soon. I think they mean that I will be weaned off therapy soon. The therapist and social worker will switch off weeks so I am never alone for a week.

Early Intervention is great and all, but I kind of wish they would stop treating me like a nut. Why does every session have to feature questions on how my medication is working for me? They insist that it is way too early to tell if he has asd, but they always tell me just as emphatically that he DOES NOT SHOW ANY SIGNS OF BEING ON THE SPECTRUM!!! You can't tell if he is, but you can be sure that he isn't? That doesn't make sense to me.

I should be ecstatic about this. I mean, he babbles all the time (it's even begun to get annoying), he rolls over well and he bangs toys with the best of 'em. What do I have to worry about? Why can't I seem to let things go? It's very tiring watching his every move for the next "sign."

I keep telling myself that when he crawls, says his first word and points (that's the biggie) that I will stop worrying about him. I mentioned this to my father and he was quiet on the phone. Then he said, "You'll be worrying about him when he's 35 with his own children." Spoken like a man with 4 kids of his own.

Precocious...and obnoxious!!!

This morning our sweet little M. was playing with a Pokemon superball that I am sure was stolen from some hapless child on the playground. I watch her like a hawk when she is with the ball, because small rubber balls are right below balloons on the list of things that will get you placed on the Bad Mother Hall of Fame.

She starts putting it near her lips, which causes me to immediately warn her not to put it in her mouth. Of course she hesitates like a nanosecond before putting it into her mouth. I warn her that if she does it again, the ball is going away for good. She smiles sweetly and shoves it into her mouth. I yell, pry it out of her little mouth and throw it in the trash. Adios, Pokemon! She starts sobbing that she wants the ball. Sorry, I say. She stamps her little foot, looks up at me with a venomous expression and says, "I hate you!"

Wow, pretty impressive for a two and a half year old! As I put her in the Naughty Chair (yes, we have seen Supernanny) she was saying, "It's not fair!!!" over and over. What the hell are we going to do when she is a teenager?

Crikey, that's sad news...

I was so upset to get up this morning and find out that Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray in a freak diving accident. I really liked him a lot, and it was so sad to think of his wife and two young kids. What are they going through right now? It made me think of trying to explain something like that to our daughter. I am sure she would ask every single day where so and so was. It would kill me to hear that.

Because he spent so much time doing daring and risky things, I am sure gave all of those close to him a sense of invincibility. Surely a man who can wrestle crocodiles can handle anything! What a horrible surprise to find out that he was human after all.

Who needs therapy?

After a brief period of feeling better, I have sunk down into the dumps again. I am not really sure what sets things off, what makes me convinced that things are not okay and that they never will be. But I look at my beautiful baby and this little gnawing feeling starts in my stomach. It makes me want to wring my hands just to have some physical release of the overwhelming despair. I honestly thought that I have been depressed or anxious before. Now I know that the real thing is much more sinister and difficult to snap out of.

On Thursday I felt so terrible that I had to call my father sobbing once again about Graham and his behavior. He is so calming with his "doctor" voice honed through 30 some-odd years of practice. His message, however, does not really calm me. He knows that I could be right, that our lovely son may never interact with us normally. So he has to hedge his bets rather than tell me that of course everything will be okay. He asks me if I have talked to the therapist lately, what the neurologist found during his exam and slowly I start to be able to function. I feel better momentarily, if even because I have released all kinds of chemicals through my flood of tears, but soon the gnawing begins again.

Part of the despair is actually stress. Stress that I will not be the kind of mother that drags her child kicking and screaming out of the throes of autism. That my boy who loves windows will always love them, that he will not end up in a mainstream school ahead of grade level as Patricia Stacey's son did. Stress that something I did while pregnant or even before caused our son to develop more slowly. Stress that we will wait and wait and wait for treatment while our son slowly slips into his own world.

I am hoping and praying that Floortime will be our salvation, but I am worried that I will simply be too lazy to do as many hours as they say you need to do. Can I really do 6 hours a day of handing toys to Graham? Will I slowly lose my mind? Will I sacrifice his eventual recovery to read a book or go to a movie?

I can hear my husband's voice in my head right now that all of this is premature, that no one has diagnosed our son with anything. He even scores okay on the Denver II! But a mother knows... I never really understood that trite saying until now. I just wish I didn't.

I'm Josh Rales, and I can save the world!!!

This by no means a political blog, but I just have to comment on this guy running for senator here in MD. His name is Josh Rales, and he has the most unbelievable commercials. Unbelievable in the sense that they are totally full of crap. In one, he promises to improve the schools, lower student-teacher ratios and raise teacher pay. In another he promises to both reduce our dependence on foreign oil and pull our troops out of Iraq. I can't wait for the one where he promises to find a cure for male pattern baldness and to put a stop to telemarketers.

The commercials and the whole campaign seem so childish to me. It's like watching a kid running for jr. high president who promises that detention will be abolished and that pizza will be on the menu every day in the lunchroom

You go, Josh Rales! But don't count on my vote.

I love him, no matter what you say!

Today I found a post on a discussion group about eye contact and how worrisome it was when your baby did not gaze at you for hours like all the books said he would. I recognized myself a few months ago in these freaked out mothers and I wanted to warn them away from reading too much into any one thing.

I described my whole ordeal, including my obsession with my son having autism and my possible PPD. I talked about how our son had to endure an MRI and blood work. I shared how he has mild delays that could amount to someting or nothing at all. I talked about my frustration at not knowing what the future will bring for my son. My aim was to illustrate how I have ruined my baby's first few months and to help others avoid the same fate by STAYING OFF THE INTERNET.

The web is full of horrible neurological diseases and random lists of symptoms for autism. My personal favorites are the sites that detail how a parent was certain his or her child was autistic from a very early age. I took them as gospel at first, then I noticed that some of them were kinda unreliable. One person would say that they knew absolutely when their child would stiffen when picked up and the other would say that his epiphany came when the child went limp when picked up. Hmmm...It's so easy to lose perspective and to see your child in a list of so-called red flags. Most days I log off convinced that I myself have some sort of syndrome. Or a brain tumor.

I was not looking for sympathy, I was just putting my two cents in about how a little worry about your child's development can turn into a ginormous problem. Well, I certainly did not get much sympathy. One poster accused me of not loving my child and only wanting a perfect baby. She ranted that I was giving up on him way too soon and that if I didn't love him unconditionally, who would? Then she recommended some odd self-help book about intellectual learning through kinetic pursuits.

What the hell did I do to inspire such a diatribe? It's amazing to me how critical mothers are of one another, no matter how little they know of a situation. I lurk on an ASD support board and all of the moms there are really inspirational. They work so hard to get everything their kids deserve. Yet they take the time to fire shots off at people who don't believe that vaccines cause autism or who don't follow the GFCF diet.

I have been guilty of this many times, I will add. I don't really have much respect for moms who blindly follow Dr. Sears and his love of the family bed. Our kids always sleep in their own rooms and beds and if we have anything to say about it, they always will. I also find it soooo much easier when we adhere to a pretty strict schedule of naps and meals and walks. We truly believe that kids do better when they know what is coming. So, when my friend who will NOT follow any sort of a schedule gripes about how her son will not nap at all, I have little sympathy. In fact, I notice a certain smugness in my heart that I just don't like. Maybe G. is here to teach me that I have nothing to be smug about, that I may very well be that mother with kids who won't sleep or who destroy the grocery store while everyone stares.

Entering the blogosphere...

I have no idea why I am introducing myself, since I sincerely hope that no one will ever read this blog. I am a stay at home mom with a 2 1/2 year old daughter and a four month old son. This blog is meant to serve as a form of therapy for me, not to regale the bored public with accounts of poo-poo diapers and food refusal. Not that I couldn't provide both if asked...

Who am I? Well, I am 33 years old and have been married for 4 years (anniversary was last week). I love dogs, frogs and Jane Austen, especially Persuasion. I can live without cats, the leggings-under-miniskirt look and moms who flaunt organic crackers at the playground. I loathe spiders, beets and Ann Coulter. I like to think that I learned something as an English major at a top 20 university, but I am sure my grammar is lacking from time to time. I have a degree in graphic design and photography that I have never really used. Okay, I do make some kick-ass scrapbook pages, but I guess that doesn't really count. I speak some French and understand a lot more than I can say, but you'd have to ask my in-laws whether that statement is really true.

That's all I can say about me right now. It's kind of hard to define yourself when you have to keep one ear trained on the door at all times--naptime is prime time for mutiny!