A Bump in the Preschool Road

With all that's been going on in the past couple of months, I realize I have not yet written about Ceeya's transition to preschool. Ceeya moved from daycare, where she'd been since she was only a few months old, to preschool at the beginning of April. It was a long search which I haven't fully detailed here (and I won't go into it now), but we ended up finding a preschool program we were comfortable with in a church about four to five miles from our house. I love Ceeya's teacher, Miss Mary. She is clearly committed to the kids. She does special theme-based projects with them and focuses on areas of concern—she had no hesitation about working with Ceeya on her sensory processing issues and has made great strides with her in terms of potty training. We are very close to moving Ceeya out of Pull-Ups and into cloth training pants, despite training being somewhat interrupted and erratic when we pulled her out of school for a week immediately after my grandmother passed. Ceeya loves Miss Mary and talks enthusiastically about school and how she had a good day, every day. On Friday, I worked from home and Sweet Dub had a video gig in the late afternoon, so he asked if I would pick up Ceeya. (Normally it would be difficult for me to pick her up since preschool is nearly 5 miles southwest of our house, and work is 10 miles northeast. That's 15 Los Angeles miles across town in rush hour, which translates into at least 45 minutes to get there and then another 15-20 minutes to slog back home. I am not a big fan of traffic. If Sweet Dub weren't available to do the pickup on the regular, this would really suck.) He usually picks her up by 4:00 PM so he can talk with her teacher before she leaves for the day. As I was mired in my project, I did not make it to school before 4:00 PM. I arrived at 4:30, and as I walked from my car to the building I could see Ceeya's classmates out in the yard. When Miss Mary leaves at 4 PM, Ceeya's class gets combined with another class and the director of the school comes in to help out to ensure they have the correct ratio of adults to kids. The director and the other preschool teacher, Miss C, were out in the yard. I waved and looked for Ceeya but didn't see her—not strange because she might have been inside one of the climbing structures. I walked into the school and into Ceeya's classroom and I heard a child crying loudly. More specifically, I heard Ceeya crying loudly. I hurried into the adjoining classroom and Ceeya was sitting at a table with her back to me, sobbing. "Ceeya!" I called out. "What happened? Did you hurt yourself?" She turned around and her eyes were puffy, and her nose was red, and I could tell she had been crying for a while. I looked around as I gathered her into my arms to soothe her. No adults in sight. What on earth? My brain couldn't process what might have happened, and Ceeya was crying too hard to talk. I went outside to the yard. "Ceeya was in the classroom alone, crying," I said to Miss C, as she simultaneously asked, "Where was she?" "What? She was inside?" she said. She looked Ceeya over with concern. "How did that happen?" The director came hurrying over. "I was just asking, 'Where's Ceeya?'" she said. What a pile of baloney, I wanted to say. The only reason you wondered where Ceeya was is because you just saw me walk up. "She must have followed me back inside without me knowing it, when I went back in to get balls for the children," Miss C said. "Oh, no, sweetheart, I'm so sorry." Ceeya lay on my shoulder, quiet, but holding on tight. All I could think to myself was how lucky they were that it was me who found her, and not her dad. And then I thought how lucky we were that she didn't put something in her mouth and choke, or climb on something to get at a toy and fall, or hurt herself a million different ways. And how lucky we were that one of the outside utility workers who were there that day, working on lines outside the church, wasn't a predator looking for kids by themselves. I spent ten more minutes there as they tried to figure it out and apologized and told me they didn't know how it could have happened. I still don't know how Ceeya got locked into the classroom by herself. All she will say is that she was by herself, and she was crying. I still like the preschool. I'm angry that this happened, even though it was clearly not intentional. I have the feeling that Ceeya probably did closely follow the teacher back inside and then sat down with a toy somewhere she couldn't be seen, and the teacher left her there. When Sweet Dub spoke with Miss Mary about it this morning, she had not yet heard about it, and she was livid. I feel certain this would not have happened if she were there, and I feel confident that she will always look out for Ceeya. At the same time, this can't go unaddressed. Sweet Dub was unable to find the director this afternoon when he went to pick Ceeya up. I am hoping that tomorrow morning he will be able to speak with her about our concerns. I am also hoping that my next preschool post will be a lot more positive.

Alone, But Not Lonely

What a whirlwind the past couple of weeks have been. My grandmother has been gone for two weeks already and I feel like I still have not had time to process it. I have been spending a lot of time with my mother. She cared for my grandmother through her long illness and was definitely the person who was closest to her in many ways. Because my grandmother depended so heavily on her, my mom hardly left the house except to get to doctor's appointments or to the market or pharmacy. Until two days after my grandmother's death, my mother—who lives 45 minutes away, in Ventura County—had never been to my house. My sister and brother-in-law, who with my nephews share the house with my mom and grandma, had booked a cruise months ago for April 27th, just a week after my grandma passed. So the day after the viewing in San Diego County, as my grandmother's body was being flown back east for burial in the family plot, my sister and her family took their trip as planned. My mom was alone in the house (where my grandmother had just died) for the first time ever in more than five years. I asked her if she would be all right, if she wanted me to come and stay with her, but I knew she would say no. My mother and I are very similar in our need for time alone. I honestly think this oddly-timed vacation was one of the best things that could have happened, to give her time and space alone to get used to a world without her mother in it. I have called her just about every day to check in, and while her sleeping schedule is out of whack, other than that she is doing fine. Last Saturday, I took the kids up to spend the day with her. We drove to Ventura Harbor, had fish and chips and ice cream. We took lots of pictures, and laughed a lot, and enjoyed the sun and the water and people watching. My mom was happy. The kids were exhausted and happy. At the end of the day as we were driving home, Viva said, "That was the most fun I've ever had with Grandma." Bittersweet. My mom and I have had our differences and our difficulties in the past, and she can still push my buttons like no one else can. But, at the same time, helping each other through this transition has brought us closer. Of course, this weekend is Mother's Day. We will be celebrating together tomorrow, as my sister and her noisy bunch arrive back in Southern California sometime tomorrow and I'd like to give them their space to recoup on Sunday. Sweet Dub and Viva are on a road trip to Northern California to celebrate my 22-year-old nephew's graduation from college, returning Sunday morning, so it will be me and my ole roll dog Ceeya* holding down the fort until Mother's Day festivities can commence on Sunday. To all: thanks for your words of support and comfort. It means more to me than I can say. Happy Mother's Day, whether you are a mom or have a mom, or are just one bad mutha-shut yo mouth. Be safe and be happy! * I would love to be part of the road trip, but the very idea of six hours one way with a 2.5 year-old makes me want to poke a chopstick in my ear. Or my eye. Or up my nose. Whatever, it would be painful.

She is Gone

After 85 years, she is gone.

My grandmother passed away late Wednesday night. There are no words.

I am grateful for her. That is all I can think to say. She was a very strong personality, hugely determined, funny (sometimes unintentionally), and so loving. I never ever for a second ever in my life doubted that my grandmother loved me and was for me, 100%. I learned so many life lessons from her.

I am so sad. And my brain is really scrambled and I feel incapable of putting together anything coherent.

Viva headed back to school today after a week of Spring Break. I asked her how she felt her vacation was. She said on a scale of 1 to 10, it was about a 5, because it started out great, but Thursday was horrible. When we drove up to the house on Thursday, “there was a hole [in the room] where Nana should be sleeping,” is how she put it.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

I am trying to figure it all out. Bear with me.

Strange Days Indeed

Dear Anonymous Woman who Wanted Just a Small Salad This Afternoon,

I am sympathetic to you. I realize that it could just as easily be me who is hungry and does not have enough money for food. However, when you come up to me as I am standing in line at the salad place and ask me not once, not twice, but three times to give you money, and then, even as I politely for the third time tell you I cannot help you, roll your eyes at me? Girlfriend, you just lost me.

You do not know me, and I do not know you. You don’t know my coworker either. She is a single mother raising five kids. I have kids, too, both of whom just outgrew their shoes, and a husband who has been laid off for over a year. We are squeezing every penny. Times are hard.

You are not the first person to ask me for money today. I am sorry, Anonymous Woman. But you don’t get to decide what I do with my money, and being rude doesn’t help your cause.

I hope that things turn around for you soon.

Most sincerely,
Mama Blah Blah

To Make You Smile

Me and my two lovelies. The picture feels like a hug to me.

Love you, love you, love you

Sweet Dub is out tonight, taking photographs for a client. I am home with the kids, who seem to be doing everything possible to tap dance on my last nerve. I lose my temper more than once. I finally banish them to their room to play so I can have 10 minutes of peace and that is when I realize I am on the verge of tears and have been all day.

My grandmother, you see, is passing over into the other realm. I have just spent the weekend with her--a weekend where she was not once conscious--and it was very, very tough. She is in the phase which I am told is called "active dying," so she is very agitated, raking at the bedclothes and wearing an expression of acute pain or distress. She doesn't open her eyes.

My mom says that this morning she spoke. My mom was able to tell her she loved her, and my grandmother said she loved her too. I am glad they at least had this moment, as my grandmother has been rather disoriented in the last week and at one point was convinced my mom had tricked her. She became very fretful, saying she knew there must be a phone around here somewhere. My sister asked her who she wanted to call, and my grandma said she wanted to call my grandpa (who passed away 7 years ago). I'm not sure what she thought my mom had tricked her about, but it's funny that she was going to tell on her to my grandpa.

My mother was 19 when she had my sister, and 21 when she had me, and 22 when she took us and left my dad. My grandmother was 41 when she became a grandmother. When my mom left my dad, she moved in with my grandparents for a while. My mom was an only child, and my grandma had always wanted a houseful of kids. My mother likes to say that she had my grandma's other kids for her. All I know is that my grandma loved us to pieces and she was in constant motion, usually doing something for one of us. She would play leapfrog with us, and build snowmen with us, and when she wasn't doing that, she was cooking something obscenely delicious (and with the benefit of hindsight, ridiculously fattening).

In time we moved out to a series of apartments as my mom went back to college, but we were never more than 15 minutes away from my grandparents at any time. We were expected at their house every weekend, even after my mom remarried. My grandmother took early retirement in her 50s. If I got sick at school, it was Grandma who would come and get me and worry over me tenderly. My grandmother loved us all loudly and with great ferocity. She is not a tall woman (we are the same height, 5-feet and one-inch on a good day), but she has always been formidable. She expected a lot of us, but she expected a lot of herself--something I didn't recognize until I was well until adulthood.

My grandma, Muriel, grew up in a small town in a very segregated area of Virginia. She is a very fair-skinned black woman who could pass for white if that were the road she chose. In her small town, everyone knew her family and she was known to be "colored," so she had to sit in the back of the local bus and when in town, couldn't sit at the counter at the local diner or drink at particular water fountains. She met my grandpa while she was waiting tables at her cousin's restaurant during World War II. He was a very handsome light-skinned man on shore leave from the Navy. "I don't know what he saw in me," she has said on more than one occasion, but if you see pictures of her from this era, she is a beauty. She loved to laugh and loved to talk. His family were New Englanders and very reserved, so I can see how he would be captivated. I would imagine she was kind of sassy.

Because of her upbringing, I believe, my grandmother was very quick to take offense. This trait seemed to become a bit diluted over the years and I think she began to cultivate some patience and tolerance with people, but I was always amazed at how much she could read into a situation where I would not have come away with the same opinion. Her early experiences really colored (sorry, can't think of a better word) the lens through which she viewed the world for the rest of her life.

I never had any doubt that I was loved. My grandparents' house (which we always referred to as "Grandma's House") was a place of order and calm, of fun and laughter, and a veritable cocoon of love against the chaotic home we lived in. Every single time we would leave the back door to go home, whether bundled up against the snow or heading out into a muggy mosquito-laden, sun-baked driveway, my grandmother would squeeze each of us tight. "I love you, love you, love you," she'd crow, every syllable dripping with affection, and we would yell back in a cacophony of squeaky shrieks how much we loved her as we were hustled into the car.

Tonight I apologized to Viva for not being myself, for yelling, for not wanting to play. "I'm just very, very sad," I said. She put her arm around me. "I know, Mom," she said. "I know how you feel."

Three Beautiful Things, March 24

1. Orange gerbera daisies on my desk and a bright orange balloon tied to my chair by a co-worker. Leftover from a festive event yesterday, they keep the cheer going on a mainly overcast day.

2. The sky is blue, it’s gray, it’s white puffy clouds, it’s sunny, it’s rapidly darkening—reflective of my day, and almost following along with my moods.

3. Loving John Legend’s version of Nina Simone’s classic “I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel To Be Free,” though I suppose you could read a lot into me listening to it on pretty much a daily basis as I’m driving to work. :-)

An Ill Wind

My sister left me a message this morning that my grandmother fell. My grandmother is 85 years old and has stomach and lung and maybe liver cancer. She lives at home, with my mom and sister and family, and has refused all treatment except palliative care; a hospice nurse comes to bathe her and help with other tasks my mom can't handle. In the past week my grandmother has become increasingly disoriented and can't recognize certain people. They are theorizing that the cancer has spread to her brain. Her coordination has also fallen off dramatically--hence the fall. The decision has been made to bring in a hospital bed and have her sleep in the family room. She is taking liquid morphine and codeine and that's about all I know because my mom won't answer the phone right now.

Also today: my aunt emailed me that my stepfather, a recovering alcoholic with a host of medical problems, also fell and broke his kneecap. He is in the hospital and will need physical therapy and then substance abuse treatment.

In the meantime, all hell has broken loose in the Middle East and there has been that stupefyingly horrendous trifecta of the earthquake, tsunami, and near nuclear meltdown in Japan.

I know I am prone to exaggeration in the best of times, but life has taken on an apocalyptic tone of late.

Three Beautiful Things: The Ceeya Edition

1. Ceeya slowly expanding the repertoire of things she will eat. In the past couple of weeks she has added French bread, plain spaghetti, broccolini, tater tots, and edamame beans to her list of accepted foods. Oh, and chicken! Which is huge, since really the only protein she was getting before was cheese, yogurt and occasionally peanut butter.

2. Rediscovering our creativity as a family. We have been singing together, dressing up and goofing around in a short film, and doing little crafty projects. We have been laughing a lot and recently Ceeya came up with her first joke:

Ceeya: Knock knock?
Mama: Who’s there?
Ceeya: Cowboy.
Mama: Cowboy who?
Ceeya: (singing) Na na na na na!

It makes no sense whatsoever, but we laugh hysterically every time she tells it because she cracks herself up. And that is some funny shit.

3. Hearing the true distress in Sweet Dub’s voice when he called me this morning during Miss Ceeya’s first official visit to her new preschool this morning. She starts there full-time in three-and-a-half weeks, so we are taking her to visit at least once a week to acclimate her. As previously arranged with the teacher, Sweet Dub left the classroom for 15 minutes and went to sit in his car—hence the distress call. “This is so HARD,” he said, anxiously. Evidently Ceeya wound up in a shrieking panic as she saw him walk out the door. I love him for being so distressed at her distress and calling me for reassurance.

(3.5. After the allotted 15 minutes, Sweet Dub returned. Ceeya was sitting on the rug for Circle Time, perfectly calm, and then burst into tears as soon as she saw him. He ended up sitting down with all the kids on the rug with Ceeya on his lap and singing along with their squeaky little voices for a couple of songs, which is an image that makes my heart explode. Then he and Ceeya packed up and left for daycare.)

(3.75. I will take pictures when I go with Celia to preschool, I promise. And I will actually put up a halfway coherent post about the whole preschool search, which was completely cuckoo bananas for a multitude of reasons.)

(P.S. Started this based on Three Beautiful Things, which I recently discovered. Hoping to make it a regular thing. Now you try it!)

I Am Not Trying to Break Her Heart

Viva has been asking for a dog since she was 3 years old. For a couple of years there, she would ask for a dog pretty much Every. Single. Day.  Finally, Sweet Dub declared that we would get her a puppy when she turned 8. At that point, he reasoned, she would be semi-responsible enough to handle some of the chores that come with having a dog, although he realized that We the Parents would have the bulk of the caretaking duties.  Viva was satisfied with this, and at every birthday since, she has mentioned that she is one year closer to getting a dog. You know, in case we forgot.   You see the foreshadowing, right? Okay, moving on.   When we moved into our current house, we brought it up with the landlords to make sure they would be okay with us getting a dog. They were dog owners themselves and said that was fine. All was well.   We are now less than two months away from Viva's 8th birthday. And we also now realize we must move in September, if not before, since our landlords have moved back to CA and want their house back.  I would hate to get a dog and then have to move into a place that's not pet-friendly out of desperation or financial necessity and then have to farm it out to relatives, or worse, take it to the pound. So here we are. For literally years, we've been planning to get a dog (or two) when Viva turns 8. I've imagined various scenarios via which we would surprise her, the joy on her face, etc., and dammit, just the plain fun of having a puppy.   It doesn't look like that's going to happen in the planned timeframe. It bums me out on Viva's behalf.   Also (and take with a grain of salt): the Experts say that you shouldn't introduce a cat or dog into the family if you have a baby or toddler. You should ideally wait until the kid is at least three to minimize the possibility of the animal biting an over-affectionate or not very gentle kid. So there's that then.   Keep in mind that my own parents promised me a dog for years. I actually got a puppy (the cutest thing EVER) when I was 11. My mom named her Jamocha, after her favorite coffee, but we called her Moki for short. I housetrained her, I walked her, I was actually pretty responsible with her. And then my parents decided she was getting too big for our (admittedly small) apartment and GAVE HER AWAY. I know the heartbreak and I can't do that to my baby.   (Even now as an adult, I understand why we couldn't keep the puppy but it still makes me furious that they would let me get a German Shepherd-Lab mix in the first place. You had to figure it was going to be a fairly large dog. But that's a psychological scab you don't want to pick at, so let's bury it deep once again and move on.)   I'm hoping we can put Viva off for a while (tell her she'll have to wait for now), get our housing situation settled, and then surprise her with a puppy at Christmas. Maybe.   (My puppy was so cute. She was black and tan and when she wagged her tail her whole body would shake back and forth.  The first night she came home I slept snuggled up with her on the kitchen floor. )   What about you? Have you ever promised something to a child and then had to back off? Did you pretty much feel like crap? Discuss.

Now I Kiss You on the Nose

Happy Love Day!

I am filled with love for you and the universe.

And yet I did not get you anything for Valentine’s Day. No roses, no chocolate, no extravagant jewelry.

Just love.

Here it is.

I didn’t wrap it, but I hope you like it anyway.

Love & kisses,
Mama Blah Blah

More Joy, Less Stuff

Earlier this week, I was working from home one day and my Internet service (which is very, shall we say, quirky, at best) suddenly decided it had had enough. Despite my best efforts, and a 40-minute phone conversation with my carrier (AT&T, whose customer service department truly must look like Outsourced), nothing would make it come back on. Well, what to do? I could get in my car and drive 25 minutes back to my office, waste time explaining why I was there, work for another hour and a half and then leave to go pick up Ceeya, or I could try and channel my rage constructively. I suppose there are a couple of other options—such as declaring the day a wash and either going shopping or lying on the couch watching DVDs and scarfing potato chips—but instead, I chose to tackle our home office.

I have to say, SOMEBODY in my house is completely disorganized when it comes to paperwork, and that SOMEBODY isn’t me.

Also: it seems we might need a shredder. There is a mountain (perhaps not a mountain, perhaps a small hillock) of paper in that room that we no longer need but cannot simply throw away recycle.

I’m not done, but I’m already feeling better about it.

Now as far as the Internet: still not working. I picture AT&T execs just sitting around on cushy lounges made of money, wearing T-shirts that say “Customer Service is for Suckas.” They probably smoke, too. And eat live kittens for fun.

In other earth-shattering news, the weekend has arrived. Enjoy it to the utmost!

I'm going to do something fun.

Digging Out

First off, apologies for the misleading post title. It’s not about digging out from the snow, and as a native of New England, my sympathies to all of you out there across the land who are neck-deep in drifts and anxiously surveying the overcast sky. Believe me, more sympathetic I could not be. I’ve been there. Unpleasant.

No, what’s on my mind is digging out from under all kinds of clutter—emotional, mental, and of course, the actual tangible stuff that threatens to swallow my house. I’m on a simplicity kick for the new year. I haven’t made a resolution about it, since that’s not my thing, but I have this overwhelming urge to fix everything. You could read a lot into this. Here, I’ll get you started: my husband has been laid off now for ten months. We are fortunate that (a) he got a severance package; (b) he is eligible for unemployment benefits; and (c) we had a pretty good cushion of savings built up before this happened. We have been making it work. Every avenue that he has looked into in hopes of getting paid employment has taken far longer than we hoped. It doesn’t mean none of these leads will pan out ever; but it is stressful knowing that (a) his eligibility period for unemployment will run out in a few months; and (b) we are going to have to move out of our rental home in September and we had been hoping to buy a house at the end of this lease. Since our savings are dwindling, I can’t see how that would happen. The owner of the house, who moved out of state for a job offer, got laid off and now wants her house back (but is honoring the lease, so at least we have until September). Moving requires a significant outlay of cash, so I am not liking that. Oh, and (c) Miss Ceeya has to move from daycare to preschool. Still looking for a preschool and dreading the thought of having to put down a deposit. Keeping her out of childcare is not an option, as ironically Sweet Dub is busier now than he was when he had a job—he is literally working day and night on various projects he’s trying to get off the ground.

So things are feeling a bit out of control, and that is not a feeling I like all that much. Hence, the urge to undertake some project where I can create the illusion of some kind of order. I have been reading a couple of books lately about simplifying one's life and they are calming me down and inspiring me. Maybe at some point I will even review one (or both!) of these books here. Yes, that could happen. Anyway, moving on…

Is it wrong that one of the main messages I take away from both books (neither of which I have yet finished) is that I must cut the number of toys in my house by half? Is it also wrong that I hold in my head a completely unattainable vision of an organized, clutter-free home office/exercise room/back entry that doesn’t contain IKEA bookshelves, various pieces of sporting equipment and random power cords belonging to who knows what?

Now if only I could stay awake after the kids are in bed to get some of these projects going while simultaneously sublimating my anxiety…stay tuned.

Tired of Being Tired?

Last week, I went to see my primary care physician because I’ve had a low-grade earache for a couple of months and it recently started becoming more painful. While I was there, we discovered through looking at my chart that I hadn’t been to the doctor in a couple of years. Indeed, not since 2008, when I went in ostensibly to deal with a lingering cold and ended up taking the pregnancy test that eventually culminated in the birth of Ceeya, who is now 27 months old. So you see, it had been a while.

My doctor recommended that I have a blood panel drawn since I hadn’t had a checkup for easily three years at this point. (I *have* gone to see my OB-GYN in that time span, so I am a little off the hook, but yeah, three years is pretty bad.) This morning she called to tell me that most of my bloodwork came out okay but that I have unusually low levels of B12 (the energy vitamin!), Calcium, and Vitamin D.

I have been falling asleep immediately after and sometimes during putting the kids to bed by 8:30. Sometimes I am sitting on the couch talking to Viva during the extra half-hour she gets to stay up past Ceeya’s bedtime, and I start falling asleep as she’s talking to me. I just figured I’m a working mom, I’m a little stressed, that’s normal. Hey, so guess what? Not so much.

If I can stay awake long enough to get myself to GNC, I’ll be back in the game, sports fans!

Moral of the story: take the time to listen to your body and take care of yourself! Too many of us are so used to taking care of other people that we don’t take the time to take care of ourselves. If I can’t be a role model to you, let me be a cautionary tale.

Finally!

After a week of back and forth over whether we needed a referral for Ceeya and in what format, I finally cleared it all up and dropped by the Regional Center this morning. While I was expecting to just drop off Ceeya's original assessment, they asked me to sit and talk with an intake specialist. After a 20 minute interview during which she asked questions to which I did not know the answers (at what age did Ceeya sit up? Say her first word? Really? No idea. All I know is that she hit all major developmental milestones at the appropriate times, because our pediatrician would ask what new things she was doing every time we went in for a checkup, and she was right on track. I didn't write these things down in a baby book or commit them to memory and for that I felt the slightest tinge of guilt which I quickly got over. Ahem, anyway...) I say, after this interview, she set an appointment for occupational therapy with one of the actual doctors for 12 days from now.

So what I am saying is that the clouds have finally parted and it looks like we are actually going to get free (or at least low-cost, once they assess our insurance information) therapy to help Ceeya with her various issues.

If you felt the earth get about 800 pounds lighter this morning, that was the movement of the 800-pound gorilla finally getting off my back. How do you spell relief?

So here we are. In other world news, after trying since this summer (I simplemindedly declared August "the month of pasta," the more fool me) to get Ceeya to try macaroni or spaghetti or whatever, three days ago, she tentatively put farfalle pasta with butter and cheese into her mouth and declared it good. Since then she has been requesting pasta for lunch and dinner every day. So again, there is hope. Yeah, it only took her FIVE MONTHS to accept one new food (and I have not yet tried a different pasta shape, I'm just sticking with what works). Whoever tries to minimize the struggles we've been having with her can stick that in their pipe and smoke it.

So yeah, I'm feeling optimistic. And that's unusual enough that I have to point it out, somewhat tentatively because I'm worried I'll jinx myself. I'm halfway holding my breath.

One step at a time, chickadees.

The Present

Happy New Year!

So far, this year 2011 has been very busy. We are almost a week into it, and it doesn’t suck exactly, but I was hoping for less running around like a rat in a maze for 2011 and more—I don’t know exactly, but more of things kind of going swimmingly well, with everything tinted in a kind of rosy backlit kind of way.

I am doing lots of things! Not really anything that is interesting, unfortunately.

I have been caught up in the swirl of the holidays and vacation and, back at work this week, we are preparing to move to a new office building 15 minutes away. There has been a lot of activity at home and at work and not much time for doing my own thing. My co-workers and I have been pranking each other and making snarky remarks about how we’re going to take over the new building once we move. My co-workers are a rowdy bunch. Every now and then we actually pack our crap into big black crates and slap labels on it. The move is allegedly happening tomorrow and over the weekend, and on Monday we are just supposed to show up at our spanking new offices and everything is going to work perfectly, forever and ever, Amen. I am skeptical.

At home, Viva is in her THIRD WEEK of vacation from school—curse you, Los Angeles Unified School District!—and Sweet Dub has almost certainly had enough of her. He has played Legos, and Bingo, and Monopoly, and scheduled playdates and sleepovers, and they have ridden bikes, and they have fought over the remote. When I arrived home last night he said defensively, “I haven’t been letting her watch TV all day,” even though I had made absolutely no such accusation. Viva was still in her pajamas at 5:45 PM. We were out of milk, and dishes were piled high in the sink. I took a deep breath and went back out into the night to the supermarket.

Our house is a wreck. But the kids seem happy to have had all this intensive one-on-one time with us, so much so that Ceeya won’t let me close the bathroom door between us.

Speaking of Ceeya: somewhat good news on the therapy front! I have contacted my local Regional Center and based on what I have told them it appears she is eligible for FREE services for her developmental delays. I must now get a referral from my pediatrician and/or the occupational therapist who conducted our initial assessment, HAND-DELIVER it to the Regional Center (tell me that will be easy) and then begin the nasty bureaucratic process—er, um, I mean, the exceedingly pleasant process during which I will run across happy government employees who will indulge my every request—of whatever I have to do to get her free therapy.

I have to say that Ceeya is doing much better on her social skills, somewhat better with her fine motor skills. Still needs work on depth perception and oral motor. Her food issues have seen no improvement. Somehow despite this she is growing like a dandelion. I include her hair in this characterization.

As for the title of this post: it is not a reference to a gift. It is a reference to what is happening now. Much as I resist New Year’s resolutions and their ilk, what I want to focus on this year is being present, as much as possible. Forget the dishes in the sink, forget all the stuff on the “to do” list, and give my attention to what is in front of me at any given moment. Easier said than done, but as 2011 motors along, I’m hoping I can retrain myself to do it.



P.S. I also want to cut down on using ALL CAPS in my posts. Rereading the post: what was the yelling for?

Holidazedly

Feeling a bit grinchy today. Discovered that a package containing Christmas gifts that I ordered online was stolen from the FedEx station. Did FedEx call me to tell me so? No, I kept tracking it and was mystified that it had been “out for delivery” on the truck in Los Angeles for FOUR DAYS and yet not delivered.

I was tracking it rabidly because the box contained the Christmas morning “wow” present. You know the one, yeah, you know it. The one that you anticipate your kid’s head exploding with joy when she opens it? Yeah, that one. Naturally, it was not a small package. It contained three Razor Sole Skates for Viva and my two nephews. We are not doing a huge Christmas this year and I got a deal on these through painstaking bargain hunting online.



The good news is that Amazon is replacing them and rush shipping them to me at no charge. They will deal with filing a claim with FedEx and all that. Barring more delays from the weather (yes! Here in Los Angeles we are in the midst of a week-long deluge. Welcome to Christmas in Southern California), they should arrive on my doorstep tomorrow. I am tempted to stay home to insure they arrive and are not instantly carried off by a plague of pterodactyls.

In other world news, I am loving my kids right now. Ceeya is two, and what else need be said. She is fierce about her opinions, oftentimes to a maddening degree, to wit: We are in the car listening to music on the way home. She screams out, “Too youd!”

“Too loud?” I say, and obligingly turn it down a couple of ticks. She bursts into tears. After several stop lights of her howling with me asking different questions to determine what’s wrong while driving through the pouring-down rain in rush hour traffic, I finally come up with: “You said too loud, but do you want it louder?”

“YEAH,” she yells through her tears in that brokenhearted way kids do. I turn up the music.

“You need to say ‘MORE loud,’ not ‘TOO loud’ when you want to hear it better,” I say, as calmly as I can, considering that this type of outburst happens about five times on average between day care and home.

She sniffs. “Want juice,” she says. She is exasperating but so sweet.

Viva is amazing. We had a stellar parent-teacher conference. She is still consistently two grade-levels ahead of her grade and knocking the socks off her teacher with her kindness and willingness to help the other kids. Probably fodder for another post, but I am so thrilled with her transition to this new school. She has really come into her own. She is confident and happy and although we have our moments, most of the time she is such a cool person to be around. Our latest pastime is deconstructing Dora the Explorer (Ceeya’s new obsession) and laughing our heads off about how ridiculous it is.

It is a good time. This year has been a bit bumpy for us, but I feel like we are all doing well, considering, and are closer for it. I am looking forward to seeing what the new year brings.

In the very likely event that I don’t get back to the blog before the end of the holiday season: a belated Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Happy Kwanzaa and a very healthy and happy New Year to all!

The Preschool Search is On

So the infant/toddler day care facility where Miss Ceeya frolics during the week has an age cap of roughly 2.5 to 3 years old. At that point you must get your kid the heck out of there. They don’t care where you go but you can’t stay with them—sort of like closing time at the bar, so to speak. (Not that I would know anything about that. And if I did, it was so long ago that it seems like a lifetime ago. Not that I’m old or anything. Wait, what was I saying?)

A couple of months ago, the lead teacher at the day care asked what our plans were as far as moving on. She gently mentioned that a couple of other kids around Ceeya’s age were already shopping around, and indeed, a couple of weeks before Ceeya’s birthday, two of them left for preschool. I started calling around and discovered to my shock that we are now at the point where there are already waiting lists. WHAT?

Well, you might say, why not just send her to Viva’s old preschool, and you would be right, except you don’t have all the facts, so you’re actually wrong. (I know, I know. Don’t get so upset, I can’t bear it.) Viva’s old preschool would be perfectly acceptable if: (1) we had two incomes; (2) it was anywhere near our current life, not a trek completely out of the way; and (3) Ceeya were a slightly different type of child. Viva loved preschool, but her preschool was very structured and traditional. Sweet Dub and I have been talking it over and thinking maybe we have to go Montessori with Ceeya. Not sure.

But you might say, why does Ceeya even need to go to preschool if her dad isn’t working? Can’t he look after her all day? I will say this to you: if I wanted him to never work again and also at the same time completely lose his mind, sure, he could be a stay-at-home parent. But I would like him to (1) have the option of taking a job should one arise (which actually looks imminent*) and/or (2) continue working on the film projects he has been doing while he is unemployed, because he is extremely talented and one of his projects is almost done. We are very nearly at the point where he could sell it and get distribution. This means he needs his days free so he can finish his project, work on the other projects he has in development and pre-production, and take meetings with people who can finance his production company. Following up on the numbered list from earlier in this paragraph, I would also like him to (3) be happy when he sees his family at the end of the day. He doesn’t do domestication very well. By this I mean he can do it—he cooks, he cleans, he changes diapers, and he kicks ass at all of these—but if he doesn’t have a creative outlet he goes cuckoo bananas.

I went on a preschool tour this morning at a place about 5 minutes from Ceeya’s current day care. It is a nice place, with a nice mix of kids (with our multiracial family, diversity is a plus and I am always looking for a place where one race doesn’t predominate). The teachers seem genuinely caring and the kids appear to be happy. They incorporate art, music and education throughout the day (basic numbers and letters), and the older group (age 4 and up) does simple cooking and computers once a week. They even have field trips occasionally. Monday through Thursday is a similar routine and Friday is a bit less structured. On Friday afternoons after nap time they watch TV because the main classroom is off-limits. The preschool is located inside a church, so they have to clean up that room as it is used by the church on the weekends. I am not clear why they can’t just do some other activity and I didn’t ask what they watch on TV, but once a week wouldn’t kill her, I guess. The monthly tuition is half of what I pay now, and less than half of what I would pay at Viva’s old preschool.

It was okay, but I didn’t LOVE it. I put our name on the waiting list as a safety and I’m going to keep looking. I have a tour with another preschool scheduled Monday. Stay tuned…

* Another conundrum, because he doesn’t particularly want a desk job, but in this economy, and with his film project not yet in the can, he is feeling pressure to cave and go back to working for The Man. While a regular paycheck is a lovely thing, I don’t want his soul to shrivel up and die. You see the problem.

Let's Go Ride a Bike

Recently Viva was riding her bike around the neighborhood with her dad and she was coming down a hill and got nervous as she was going too fast. Instead of braking, she put her feet down, nicked one heel on a bike pedal, and then in reaction, leaned too far in the other direction and pretty much ate it on the tree she was trying to avoid. They were a couple of blocks away, but her leg was scraped up pretty badly and she wanted Sweet Dub to carry her home. (Oh, there were tears! And moaning! And he was so mean because he would not just carry her!) He reasoned with her that they couldn’t just leave their bikes on the street, so she had to tough it out until she got home. She recounted the whole episode to me while I washed her wounds, put her feet up on a pillow, and treated her to a Popsicle and uninterrupted Disney Channel viewing.

A couple of days later, Sweet Dub had her go back to the same spot and ride down the hill again. She didn’t want to do it, but he insisted that was the only way she would learn to navigate the situation. She came back very proud of herself for having conquered her fear of the big hill.

So you know when you've been away from your blog for a while and you don’t even know what to write about? You think, I just have to get back on that bike and write something, anything, any damn random thing. And then you do and you even connect it to something else that actually happened in your universe and you’re all like, well, that wasn’t so bad. And then you realize you’re kind of talking in the second person and that’s kind of annoying. And then you’re a bit peeved at yourself. And around we go.

I’m going to put it out there: I’ve been a bit depressed lately. And when I’m depressed, I tend not to write about it, because that makes me dwell on it and that is no good for anyone. And I hate using my blog as a dumping ground for this kind of thing.

And there is this thing, this NaBloPoMo? Which all of us who have been blogging for a while are well familiar with? If I were participating I would have posted something every day this month so far. I thought about writing something cheeky and subversive like, “I declare this to be NoBloPoMo” but what sense does that make, it’s really just an excuse to be lazy, yeah?

I’m officially back on the bike and I’m not making any excuses for myself. Hello, Internets! What’s happening out there?

She is Two

Two years ago today, I was in the hospital having a wee little person removed from my uterus:

And these days, the paparazzi can catch her eating junk food and givin' folks the stink eye:



O Celia my love, how my adoration for you grows with each passing day. Now I must tear myself away from my computer and hie myself yonder to Ye Olde DayeCare, where lo! I shall distribute popsicles to many small people before taking thee out for pizza, which ye shall not eat. Many happy returns of the day.

Breaking Free

Taking a break for the moment from the “all Ceeya, all the time” tone that this blog has recently adopted to get us all caught up on that other child of mine, Viva.

Viva is in second grade. She has moved seamlessly from the private school where she spent most of her weekdays between the ages of 2.5 and 7 to the public school right down the street from us. If you were me, you might have expected more drama. You might have agonized a bit over how she would do in this new school, this new environment, this new sphere. Would she make friends? Would the teacher like her? What if this were a complete disaster?

Honestly. I worried about the class size. She was moving from a school where there were 12 kids in all of first grade. I worried about the quality of the education. She is extremely bright, gets bored easily, and is used to getting one-on-one attention from the teacher. I worried that she would have trouble dealing with “regular” kids (whatever that means). You know, I just worried, because that is my nature and I am her mother and I want her to be happy and have a great school experience.

So: class size? She’s in a gifted/talented magnet so there are 16 kids in her class, not the 35+ I was having hissy fits imagining. Quality of the education? Because she is in the magnet program, she is surrounded by other kids who are quick and curious and as eager to learn as she is. Their teacher, who is happily back in the classroom after three years in administration, says, “These kids came in like it was March, not September. They were ready to go, and I love it!” She is getting to know each of the kids and tailoring different projects to their interests. She is as thrilled as I am with the small class size and getting to spend so much time with each kid.

Viva loves her teacher, her class, and her after-school program. So school is going way more amazingly well than I could have hoped. Since there is no drama in that, let us move on. Viva has also, over the past few months, undergone a radical transformation.

Perhaps you know that Viva is a tomboy. She is a tomboy to the extent that most of her friends up to this summer were boys. Had you asked me to describe her up to now, I would have said something along the lines of: she plays sports with a fierce competitiveness; she has a true disdain for fairies and princesses, dresses, and anything sparkly; she abhors pink. She likes to play with superhero action figures, and when she comes home from school, she strips off her uniform and pulls on a pair of boy’s basketball shorts. She may or may not wear a shirt. If she does, it will be a boy’s undershirt or an oversized T-shirt.

Over the summer, at camp, Viva had a gradual awakening, thanks to a group of knuckleheaded little boys at her camp. “Boys are stupid,” she told me. “And you know, I don’t think I want to be a tomboy anymore.”

I was blown away. I said, “Maybe some boys are stupid.* Some girls can be stupid, too. But don’t let the behavior of some silly kids make you change who you are. If you want to try being a little more girly, that is fine with me. It’s fine to try on different ways of being as you figure out who you are. I love you if you’re a tomboy, and I love you if you’re not.”

When we began back-to-school shopping, she indicated that maybe she’d be interested in trying on a dress. I ended up buying her several knit cotton dresses and leggings, along with pants and nice shirts. She also wanted sparkly low-top sneakers that lit up when she walked. Do you know that every day for the first week of school, my “tomboy” wore a dress and sparkly shoes?

Children are amazing. Viva is never boring. I love that I am here to buckle up next to her and marvel at her journey. And that still, so often, she is still badgering me to come along. The years move quickly, you know. Sometimes I miss her even though she is still here.


* The fact that she even uses the word stupid is incredible, since just a couple of years ago the word stupid was equivalent (to her) to using a “bad word.” My, how times have changed. How lazy I have become in my language policing.

Food for Thought (2 of 2)

So here is the thing with Ceeya, as we call her. There are all these neat little boxes that “specialists” want to put her in. She has dyspraxia and neuromotor incoordination. She is oral defensive. She is a resistant eater. She needs helps with her oral-motor skills. She is tactile defensive. She needs help with her fine motor skills. I could go on.

I could. I could make myself crazy looking up stuff online (okay, so yes, done that) and reading books and articles until my eyes bleed (almost), and worst of all, feeling unable to share much of what we’re going through because (a) some people really don’t believe in all this mumbo jumbo and say, “there’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just sensitive…she’ll eat when she gets hungry…you’re spoiling her.” (No, it’s true, some people say some bullshit like that. It’s astoundingly helpful, just as much as you might imagine.) Or (b) some people will really want to get all in your business and ask all kinds of questions, most of which are not really all that helpful, under the guise of being helpful. “Have you tried X?” they ask. “I heard that helps with autistic kids, my friend’s niece had a baby who had that.” As I prevent my head from exploding into smithereens via the sheer force of my will, I explain that Ceeya is not autistic. And as much as you are trying to help me, I am relying on paid professionals who, you know, have some kind of training in this area? To help come up with some kind of treatment? So as I do not run screaming off into the night?

I also steadfastly refuse to share this with my mother because inevitably she will latch onto Ceeya’s diagnosis and conclude that she has suffered from the selfsame thing for lo these 60-some-odd years, and that every bad thing that has ever happened to her can be traced back to it forever and ever amen and that it is too upsetting for her to deal with because it makes her think of bad things that happened 50 years ago and how things could have been different if only, so we should never speak of it again but recognize that she is suffering silently henceforth. Let it be stated for the record that I love my mother dearly, but: she has been known to try my patience.

I am tired. I have been dutifully taking Ceeya to occupational therapy once a week, which I now have to submit claims to my insurance company for and struggle to get reimbursed for. It is a dance that I never wanted to learn. We have been doing all kinds of activities with her—exercises to strengthen her grip, a vibrating toothbrush to desensitize her to oral stimulation, putting at least one unfamiliar food in front of her at meals and leaving it there even as she screams in horror. We play blocks with her, build Legos with her for fine motor coordination, bounce her gently on the bed to help with the vestibular issues. I know it will take time. It will take time.

Tonight around the Blah Blah Family table, we were building taco-burritos for dinner. Ceeya watched as we each spooned ground beef, and then rice with tomatoes, and then lettuce and cheese on our tortillas and rolled them up. She asked for rice, and lettuce. She carefully, methodically, spooned them out of the bowl and plonked them next to her shredded cheese. She didn’t eat them. She arranged them on her tray, and then asked for more.

This is nothing. At the same time: this is huge. She is playing with unfamiliar food. She is not eating it, but she has decided that it is not scary. It has a place on her tray, where the rest of her food goes.

It will take time. Lord, I am tired. But tonight, this one small thing made me happy.

Food for Thought (1 of 2)

I have been doing a lot of work with Ceeya’s occupational therapist on her oral motor skills to try and find ways to help her learn to eat better. Aside from a lot of oral motor exercises (try and get her to eat applesauce through a straw, see if she can blow a cotton ball across a table faster than her sister, etc.) I’ve been doing a lot of online reading.

Just found two blogs about kids and food that I’ve added to my reader and I’m putting them out here for you to peruse and enjoy:

(1) Spoonfed
(2) Raise Healthy Eaters

More to come, but wanted you to know I haven’t run off screaming into the night. (Well, not permanently.)

Duh...Smartphone

I had a pretty good week there where I posted something every couple of days, and then: I fell off the face of the earth.

Hello, and welcome to Monday. I am back, and not necessarily better than ever, but better than some days, which is better than nothing.

Quick update on Ceeya: her occupational therapist came down with the flu, so she couldn’t make it to what would be only our second session with her on Saturday. She emailed me on Friday to tell me this, rather than calling me, but since I was out of the office at an all-staff event all day on Friday, I didn’t see her email until Saturday morning, 45 minutes before I was supposed to leave the house. Fortunately, she had arranged for another therapist to take us at the same time. I was a little irritated because our appointment was for 12 noon—smack in the middle of Ceeya’s usual lunch/naptime groove—and she emailed to ask if we could do a 10 AM time just this once. That would have been my preference.

All this boils down to: I am really in need of a Smartphone, don’t you think? The more I think about it, I don’t even understand how I am functioning without one. Wait! Clearly, I am not functioning without one. I have my pathetic Motorola flip-phone and it is a piece of garbage. Wait, I didn’t mean that. It has served me well, but Ceeya threw it on the ground a few months ago and ever since then my screen has been badly cracked and I look like a total loser with my Fred Sanford phone. I have been waiting for my Verizon “new every two” deal to kick in—whereby I can get a new phone at a deep discount every two years—and that just happened last week. So I was merrily researching Droid Smartphones and mentioned to Sweet Dub that I was thinking of getting one.

Leave it to my husband to throw a wrench in the works. “Why don’t you just get an iPhone?” he said. “Maybe because I already have AT&T, we could get a deal and you could get the new iPhone 4. Maybe we could both get one!”

(Note that Sweet Dub was forced to buy a cell phone when he got laid off in April because his employer reclaimed the company cell phone which he had had for 6 years, thereby forcing him to switch phone numbers after 6 years, and by the way not letting him take any of his contact info off the phone, so he spent several laborious days emailing people and asking for numbers, oh my God, the humanity. At any rate, at that point, he chose the iPhone 3, and he LURRRVES it.)

I could be wrong, but I think it’s highly unlikely that we will have to pay less money for two new iPhones than for one Droid on the plan I already have, which will give me a substantial (read $300) discount on a new phone. Hence, this is all very pie in the sky.

You know those people they call early adopters? I am not one of those people. For many years, I thought the whole concept of every one having a cell phone was ridiculous. And even as a mom, who you’d think would be paranoid and need to have her phone with her at every moment just in case something happens to the kids, it took years—I mean seriously, only until the last year or so—for me to not leave my phone inside my purse, inside my desk drawer, and walk off to meetings and such for hours. I am just not all that plugged in.

Anyhoo: at some point in the next week or so, I expect to get a new phone and I will be up-to-speed for about five minutes until the next thing comes along. But most importantly, I will be able to get email anytime, anywhere, forever and ever, the end.

And maybe get all of my appointments synced up and know where I am supposed to be, with kids and without. That would be handy.

Chewin’ the Fat with Dr. Eats

I met with a nutritionist yesterday to talk strategy for Ceeya's feeding issues. It was very helpful, and I walked out of there feeling poorer, but optimistic.   For one thing, the nutritionist (known henceforth here as "Dr. Eats") was very encouraging about what we are doing right, such as all eating together as a family at the table without the TV on, saying grace before meals (SPD kids need routine and ritual), and pushing fresh as opposed to processed foods as much as possible. She also liked that we are doing sensory activities that are related to food, such as putting uncooked rice and beans in a large Tupperware container, hiding small toys in the rice and having Celia dig through to find them, and "painting" with whipped cream.   Her primary concern as we talked about what Ceeya eats is that she's barely getting any carbs, since she doesn't eat rice, pasta, bread or potatoes (except in French fry form). So she wants us to begin trying to get her to eat those at every meal—to keep giving her the core foods she loves but also at each meal to offer a food she won't currently eat, preferably a starch. She made the point that when Ceeya rejects a food that she has been accustomed to eating, we should respect that, keep it out of her diet for a few days and then bring it back.   Interesting: when I told her of Ceeya's vestibular issues (i.e. she becomes anxious with unsteady or unpredictable movement), she asked whether she sits in a high chair. She does, so Dr. Eats suggested simply moving her to a child-sized table and chair, so her feet are firmly on the ground and she doesn't feel like she is floating in space. Despite the high chair having a platform for her feet to rest on, she may simply have issues with eating that far up off the ground. That had not even occurred to me, but it makes perfect sense.   Other tips: make everything bite-sized and stick a toothpick in it. Since Ceeya hates touching things, she may be more amenable to eating food when holding it on a stick. (She certainly loves popsicles, so this is familiar to her.) Dr. Eats suggested making really tiny meatballs, cream of wheat "snowballs," and rice balls to be speared with toothpicks. Sweet Dub, ever the dedicated father, has declared Friday night "Toothpick Night," and claims he is making food the whole family can eat and it will all be on toothpicks.   Dr. Eats says we should make the most of Ceeya's willingness to dip things to get more protein into her—since she loves tortilla chips, she suggested pureeing black or pinto beans into bean dip, or making "baby" guacamole with mashed avocado and a little salt. She is already into dipping fruit into yogurt, so we will just continue with that.   Portion size is another thing. We don't tend to give Ceeya a lot of food at one time, because it overwhelms her and she will just throw it all off her high chair tray and look at us blankly. Dr. Eats said that even giving her a lump of mac and cheese is too much—we basically have to differentiate each noodle. "Pull out five individual noodles from the mac and cheese," she said. (Dear Lord.) Dr. Eats also suggested getting Ceeya more involved with food prep—for example, in making homemade chicken tenders. She advised putting cornflakes in a Ziploc bag and letting Ceeya bang on the bag until they're pulverized, then putting boneless chicken pieces in the bag and letting her shake it until they're coated. She can then watch me fry them. "Now, she may not eat them the first few times," she said. "In fact, you might have to make them that way twenty different times before she'll actually eat them. I'm not saying she's going to eat a new food tomorrow, but she may eat it in three months."   So, pretty much as expected, there is no quick fix. We're in this for the long haul, but there is at least light at the end of the tunnel.   And my little lambie pie is so worth it.

The Official Word

Yesterday when I picked Ceeya up at daycare, they told me she not only refused to eat her yogurt, but she had a complete meltdown about it. It feels like the range of foods she will eat is steadily shrinking.

Here’s the good news: I have a consultation with a nutritionist tomorrow. Cost: $175. That’s not so good.

But: we received our full evaluation from the occupational therapist. Verdict: Ceeya presents with an array of behaviors that indicate sensory processing difficulties, including:

Tactile defensiveness, which means her central nervous system has difficulty processing and modulating incoming touch sensations. She is averse to many textures including many different kinds of food. This has impacted her muscle development in her hands because she does not use them as effectively as she needs to manipulate and explore, so she is delayed in terms of grasp patterns and object manipulation.

Oral defensiveness, which makes her highly sensitive to tastes, textures and temperatures of food. She eats a very limited range of foods, primarily cheese, fruit, crackers, chips, and over time has actually decreased the foods she will eat, probably because she is bored from eating the same damn thing all the damn time. So now off the list are cottage cheese, yogurt (as of yesterday), applesauce, steamed green beans, broccoli and peas.

Poor modulation, which means she can’t self-regulate very well. She gets upset easily and can’t calm down, she has a hard time falling asleep, she is a restless sleeper and if she wakes up in the middle of the night she can’t put herself back to sleep. I am serious when I tell you that I have not had a good night’s sleep in over two years.

Over-responsiveness to sound, i.e. “kids’ birthday parties are my worst nightmare.”

Decreased vestibular processing, which means her awareness of where her body is in space is poor and unpredictable movement of her body freaks her out. This translates into her hatred of swings, not liking to tip her head back to get her hair washed, and an aversion to unsteady surfaces like a balance bridge or a large trampoline (she seemed to like the small trampoline at the OT center, which had a support bar she could hold with both hands while jumping).

So we clearly have some work to do. I am relieved that this is not just my imagination, or something she will grow out of on her own. I was really upset when I first read the report, mainly because of her fine motor delays, which I wasn’t even aware of. She has low muscle tone and decreased strength in her hands due to her tactile sensitivity. Rationally I know this is reversible, but it just hurt my heart to read it.

Recommendation: occupational therapy twice per week, as expected.

Current status: waiting for a phone call back from the head of the OT Center to discuss more realistic options.

A Grain of Salt

This week I have been going back and forth via email with the very nice occupational therapist who is writing up Ceeya’s assessment. She cautioned me that because SPD is not recognized as an official condition and will not be until inclusion in the DSM-V in 2013, for now she is going to have to couch her observations very carefully in order to see if we can get full coverage for Ceeya’s therapy. For one thing, she is going to note things that I don’t think are an issue, like Ceeya not being able to put a wooden puzzle together correctly, as a fine motor skills delay. “Read it with a grain of salt,” she says. (I love salt! Salt N Pepa too!)

On the one hand, I appreciate this, as I do not have the fundage to pay for occupational therapy twice a week out of pocket, to the tune of $15,000+ per year (since that was her initial recommendation—a full year of therapy, sweet holy Moses. Have I mentioned that my darling husband got laid off in April and is still unemployed?). On the other hand, I’m not crazy about the idea of Ceeya being labeled with something she doesn’t have, and I worry about all sorts of “pre-existing condition” crap that might follow her forever. That does not float my boat, my friends.

If Ceeya did have some sort of fine motor skills problem, it goes without saying that I would want her to get some help for it. I am not THAT bad of a mommy. I think. But that morning was the first time, to my knowledge, that she had ever even seen a puzzle of that sort. The fact that she matched the shapes to where they were supposed to be, but didn’t actually press them in hard enough so they would stay there, indicates to me she didn’t fully understand the point of the exercise—not that she was incapable of doing it correctly.

Over the weekend, I bought a similar puzzle at Target which had more pieces and was labeled ages 3 and up (they didn’t have any which were labeled for younger kids, which is probably why Ceeya hasn’t encountered them before since she is not even 2 yet). Ceeya matched all the pieces perfectly but again didn’t push them fully into place. When I asked her to do that, she did, with a bit of frustration on a couple of oddly shaped pieces, but she figured out that she just had to move the pieces around a bit to make them fit. Now it is one of her favorite things to do.

This leads me to the official Blah Blah plan for handling our business, which boils down to this: we would rather fork out a few hundred dollars at the outset for sensory-stimulating and educational toys and play with Ceeya every day ourselves than pay out $1,200 a month to a twice-weekly occupational therapist and then fight to get reimbursed by the insurance company.

By this I mean no disrespect to occupational therapy as a profession. I realize neither Sweet Dub nor I are trained to provide OT, but surely there are ways we can work with the OT to reduce the time and cost and make it work for our family.

Stay tuned for next time, when we (hopefully) get the actual written report. What will it say? What does it all mean? Will I ever look at a wooden shape-sorting puzzle the same way? And will there be ice cream? (Highly doubtful, and perplexing.)

And So Our Long Journey Began...

So we had Ceeya’s assessment on Saturday morning, and it was quite an experience. The Blah Blah Family arrived at the center on time, and sat in a very nicely furnished, sunny waiting area with lots of toys, books and puzzles. Ceeya and Viva immediately began playing together with one of those giant wooden activity boxes. Our assessing occupational therapist arrived and started us off with the paperwork. There was so much paperwork that Sweet Dub and I split it and continued working on it throughout the session. Much of it involved our own assessments of Ceeya’s sensitivities, but some of it involved very detailed questions about her birth and her developmental milestones. I honestly don’t remember exactly when she started doing certain things (the curse of the second child!) but I know that she has always been well within the normal range of physical development.

Anyhoo, we were there for well over an hour, and the OT tested her with puzzles, checked her muscle tone, tried to get her into a swing (which Ceeya was simply not having—she detests swings and almost anything that makes her unsteady. Oddly, she enjoys a rocking horse or a rocking chair), watched her on a trampoline, checked her balance on an exercise ball, watched her eat, had her use crayons and utensils, etc.

One thing I will say is that I was really surprised and proud that Ceeya pretty much took off exploring in each play room that we went to. (There were three successively bigger rooms.) This might have been because Viva was there with her and there were no other kids around, but still, I was pleased to see that.

We have not yet received the official evaluation, but the bottom line is this: the OT is not sure that Ceeya has enough “wrong” with her to be eligible for her sessions to be covered by insurance, and yet (yes, you knew this was coming) she would recommend therapy twice a week for the next year. She's pretty sure she has SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder), and that she's pretty much constantly in a state of "fight or flight," but yeah, probably our insurance won't cover it. Occupational therapy costs $150/session. Doing the math: that’s $1,200 a month.

Fortunately, I work for a children's social services agency and my bullshit meter was pinging off the charts.

Stay tuned for the next installment, when we take matters into our own hands.

Floundering

Recently, I received confirmation that, much as I’ve suspected, Ceeya has a sensory processing disorder. We have a variety of problematic issues that have gotten progressively worse in recent months. I don’t talk much about that here, which is a shame, because it might help someone else who is struggling with something similar. But I feel that we are just getting started sorting out her issues and receiving treatment (primarily occupational therapy). It may be a long slog.

I’m teetering on the fence of how much do I share here. How much of this is really her story, but also about how this is such a small part of who she is. She is a sweet and smart and funny (yes, she already has a sense of humor) kid. I love her to pieces. I don’t want this condition to define her, but at the same time it occupies so much of my energy and brain space.

Too often these days, the things that are happening in my life are personal to many other people, and I don’t feel comfortable sharing so much about their lives. Again, rethinking what I want this blog to be.

Thanks for your patience as I sort this out.

Working from Home

Sometimes when you are working from home all the planets align and even though you might occasionally stop working to throw in a load of laundry, you nonetheless are able to buckle down without the distractions of the "water cooler talk" and the like and you write something totally kick ass and you can actually check off a huge project on your TO DO list, a project which has been hanging like a millstone around your neck, like a big frickin' piece of granite or even a giant block of ice, whatever, it's heavy, dude.

Or sometimes, like today, you decide you will buckle down to work right after you make a big pot of coffee. But when you happily pull out the bag, it is suspiciously light, and you realize in horror you are almost out of coffee. And then you go searching through your freezer in hopes that a random bag of java might have fallen behind some tater tots (which you just mis-typed as tater tits, which is a bizarre notion in itself). And no, no hidden coffee, but then you notice that a bag of edamame beans was not correctly closed, and so there are assorted beans littering the bottom of your freezer, along with assorted coffee grounds. And of course you notice there are things in the freezer that are well past their prime, like pot roast that has been frozen for well over six months, so you go on a veritable freezer purge and a good scrubbing, and then you realize that you have just spent half an hour when you should be working, cleaning out the freezer. And the coffee still isn’t made.

And then you think this would be a funny blog post about procrastination, but then you think you don’t have time to blog, you have a grant to write, and then you promise yourself that if you buckle down and finish it, you’ll write the blog post too. And then you make the coffee and go out to the backyard and write out in the sunshine for 15 minutes so you get some Vitamin D and then you go back inside and type for 3 hours and finish the first draft of the grant and email it off and then boy howdy you feel pretty good about that, so here we are.

Happy weekend to you all, procrastinators and non.

Cuatrodos

Hello!

I am forty-two years old today.

That is not so bad, right? It is better than the alternative, which is to cease to exist altogether. When you put it like that, it sounds pretty damn good to me.

Over the weekend, we were having some lovely, funky friends over, and I bought an assortment of beers because I was feeing a bit whimsical. Why not try different kinds of summer ales and such?, I thought. They might in fact have enjoyed some rum punch or something, but making some sort of rum punch was a bit beyond me. (They probably like punch. I knew I should have made punch.) At any rate, the cashier carded me. I almost wept, except that I was giggling a little bit. I thanked her and as I handed over my driver’s license as proof that I was of legal drinking age, I said, “I will be 42 next week!” I might have sobbed as I said it. Maybe not.

So here we are, forty-two. It honestly is not all that different from 41, or 40, or even 39, if you want to know the truth, and yes, I can remember that far back. The main issue of being 42, and it may not be related to my age, seems to be that I think I am going blind in one eye. My ophthalmologist can not seem to tweak my prescription correctly in my right eye, and so I spend my days tapping away at my computer with one eye closed in order to see correctly. Since I spend a great deal of time writing for my job, this is annoying. If I open my eye, it’s all blurry and I can’t read a thing. Not to worry, though, I can drive perfectly well! Take it easy out there, Greater Los Angeles!

Today I am looking forward to having Ceeya sing Happy Birthday to me on my actual birthday. She has been practicing the song every day for about three weeks or so. It sounds a bit different when she sings it, principally because she interprets it as “Appo DIRTday to you,” which I love, and I particularly love the way it sounds in the high-pitched gusto with which she sings it.

One final thing: In honor of my Dirt Day, and with a hat tip to Chad Ochocinco, I am changing my name for the day to Lisa Cuatrodos. Encantado.

Pampering Myself (and not with Diapers)

I took a few days off a couple of weeks ago (calling it a vacation seems a bit disingenuous, since we didn’t go anywhere and since I spent most of it working hard corralling the kids without the help of my husband). On one of the days when Viva was in camp and Ceeya was at daycare, I took 3.5 hours at a new salon to get my hair colored. Call me shallow, vain, whatever, but baby, I felt like a new woman when I walked out of there. My new colorist, April, was sweet and down to earth and my hair looks exactly its natural color. I mean exactly.

My hair is very thick and resistant to color, so whenever I color it takes forever. Somehow she managed to cover most of the silver hairs that were cropping up (I did find a few strays here and there later) and she also managed to duplicate not only my natural light brown hair but also the lighter highlights that naturally occur. I’m not sure exactly what went down in the salon—I may have made promises I couldn’t keep, something about free tickets to the Cayman Islands or something, it’s all a bit foggy in my memory, but you know, whatever I said, she hooked me up and my hair looks better than it has in recent memory.

I was thinking, as I walked out, how difficult it is for me to do this kind of thing with any regularity, but how easily it made me feel better about myself. And feeling better about myself makes me better in every other aspect of my life (cue cheesy music here, I mean could I BE more predictable). Sorry for the cliché, but for reals, it’s one small thing that makes a big difference.

Take care of yourselves out there. Give pampering a chance!

Blog Angst

Much has been happening in my personal life and I don’t feel I can share much of it here, although when I sit down to write, that’s all that’s on my mind. Then there’s the larger question: what is the purpose of me writing here? What or who is it for?

When I began blogging many years ago, I did so at the suggestion of some friends (Splooey and Mr. X, and they know who they are). “Blog? What’s a blog?” I said. They knew of my writerly ambitions and thought it would be a good way for me to get started writing regularly, with no pressure. Maybe they thought I would find my voice.

I like to write, and I like to make people laugh. I think I thought blogging might help me write some humorous essays, a la David Sedaris or something. Maybe. But all I know is I’m not feeling very funny these days, and I’m wondering if it’s because writing is an introspective exercise and when I take a half-second to get introspective, I get depressed.

But when there are these significant lapses between posts, a year later I look back and wonder what happened. Hence, I’m writing this so I can document where I am.

I am exhausted in just about every aspect of my being—physically (we just recovered from a family-wide bout with a nasty stomach virus), mentally, emotionally, the end. I no longer enjoy my work. I still enjoy my kids (most of the time). I miss Sweet Dub because he is in the middle of a manic creative phase right now, trying to launch a new career and get a TV project off the ground. My extended family is a huge mess and I’m trying to stay out of it. Work is really making me unhappy and I feel I have no options for fixing it.

It’s just a rough time.

Follow-up to this post: due to liability issues, one can’t actually tell this prospective employee that she needs to do something about her hair. Total can of worms, and what a shame. She was the top candidate for this job but eliminated from consideration for this one reason. (See the comments section for more info if you'd like.)

Can This Be Salvaged?

Something has been weighing on my mind over the past week or so. I know of a situation in which there is a job opening and three candidates have been interviewed. Of the three, one clearly ranked above the rest in terms of experience and consensus was that this person was the most personable and all-around best fit for the position. The position was not offered to this person because of this person’s appearance. This person would be going out to meet with people to get them involved with the organization and it was unanimously felt that this person’s appearance (more specifically, hair) was unkempt and disheveled and that this person would not present well to the public for this reason. This person is warm, well-spoken, and passionate about the cause that they would be speaking about. Everyone who interviewed this person liked this person and wanted to hire this person. Everyone on the interview panel agreed that it was a shame they had to discount the person for this reason.

In this economic climate, I can’t imagine that this person (who, like the other two candidates, has been unemployed for some months) would refuse to do something about their hair if they really wanted the job. This is probably hindering their job search considerably, so even if they are offended that this criticism is made, it just seems the decent thing to do to let this person know what’s up.

The person who ultimately makes the hiring decision has been agonizing over this for the past week, particularly given that another interview was held yesterday and the interviewee was not anywhere near the caliber of the first person. The interview panel now compares every interviewee to the first person and finds them lacking.

The hiring person really wants the first candidate. If you were in the position of the hiring decider (just made that up) how would you handle this situation? If you were the really strong candidate who is being passed over due to your appearance, would you want to be told? And how?

Beach Blanket Blah

Happy 6th of July. It’s chilly and raining here in Los Angeles. Maybe I should move to San Francisco?

Speaking of chilly, now that T-ball season is over, our Saturday mornings are free [That I even mention this tells you how enamored I am of organized sports and getting up and running out the door first thing on the first day of my weekend] and this Saturday, we decided to go to the beach. Some of us wore bathing suits with shorts and sweatshirts over them, while some of us decided why even pretend that we were going to get into the frigid and filthy Pacific. It was overcast, and “June gloom” (a weather phenomenon wherein Southern Californians wake to a morning cloud layer overhead which usually gives way to sunshine later in the day) has not been burning off until sometimes mid-afternoon, so we bundled up, threw all our crap into a wagon, threw the wagon into the back of the Jeep, and motored over to Santa Monica.

We arrived at the beach maybe twenty minutes later, removed the children and wagon from the vehicle, and trundled across the sand, where we staked out our spot. Let it be known here that the Blah Blahs are spoiled beach-goers, in that we generally go to the beach for only a couple of hours because we live close enough that it does not need to be an all-day affair. Also, we do not like crowds, so we like to get to the beach early, do our beachy activities, and then move on as the crowds start to arrive.

We laid out our blanket and promptly began building sand castles (Viva) and eating snacks (me) and placing teaspoons of sand into buckets (Ceeya*). We Blah Blahs are industrious folks. Sweet Dub sat in a beach chair and over the next twenty minutes or so, provided the following commentary:

Man, I wish I had a breakfast burrito right now.

Is anyone else hungry?

Man, it’s cold. I mean, it’s freezing!

Did you see that? Are those dolphins?

I’m wearing two T-shirts and I’m still cold. My feet are even cold. Are yours?

Man, it’s cold. This is really unpleasant. We might have to go home, guys.

So…I’m thinking we head out of here and go find a breakfast burrito. Anyone?

Honey, where was that place we used to go to that had those really good burritos?

Why are you laughing?

This is unpleasant.

Shortly after this we were treated to a gross display of extremely poor beach etiquette in which a family of five who were clearly from out of state arrived for their first look at the Pacific Ocean and despite there being very few people at the beach plonked their stuff down about two feet away from the people closest to us and then proceeded to yell back and forth to each other at great volume, from the water’s edge to the blanket to the teenage daughter who was hanging back near the car, a good half a football field away, draped in a blanket against the wind and the water spray.

Oh, dear Lord. I was fascinated yet simultaneously annoyed. I began to ruminate on the wisdom of posting some pointers at the beach, to wit:

First and foremost, most people go to the beach to relax and have fun. As much as possible, give your beach neighbors some space. This is easier when the beach is not crowded, but even when it is, keep at least 6 feet (i.e. one beach-blanket length) between yourself and the next group of people. We don’t want to know all your business, we don’t want to lie all on top of you, and we want some illusion of privacy.

If you’re going to play football or Frisbee, don’t do it right in the field of play. That is, don’t do it right at the shoreline, where people are entering and exiting the water and where people often like to take a walk. Sorry, but that’s unfair. Do it in the beach space behind where people are relaxing, i.e., furthest from the water.

Also, and this is related, don’t yell into your cell phone. Don’t blast your music. And for heaven’s sake, don’t set up your beach blanket and umbrella directly in front of someone who’s already sitting there. It’s rude. Finally, don’t smoke and don’t leave trash on the beach.

Whew, I feel better.

It's all a blur, but I think we lasted a full hour at the beach due to the cold and wind, rude beach neighbors, and lack of breakfast burritos materializing out of thin air. However, as I remember it, we nonetheless had a very nice afternoon chilling out in the backyard after the sun came out. I even seem to remember Sweet Dub later making a very scrumptious surf and turf dinner, so all was not lost.


* This is how our youngest says her own name. Since that is how Viva got her bloggy nickname, I am holding with tradition and will henceforth on this blog refer to Miss Celie as she refers to herself.

Wistfully, Summer

Today I do not like being The Grown Up.

Today is the first day of summer camp for my little schnitzel with noodles, the All-Wonderful Viva.

Her father, the Ever-Amazing Sweet Dub, was a little concerned, I mean, curious, about how her day was going, and since he is not working, he thought he would sneak a peek a few hours in to see how she was doing.

Here is his report:

“I can see her right now, it looks like they’re just finishing lunch. She can barely sit still. She just jumped up and ran over to the counselor and I can’t hear what she’s saying, but she looks like she is really excited. She’s kind of standing on one leg and leaping around while she’s talking. Okay, he said yes to whatever she was asking and she ran back inside the gym all happy. So it looks like things are going well. You know, I can’t hear her but I know my baby. I can read her body language and it seems like she is pretty excited, so – oh, here she comes. She is sitting back down at the picnic table and it looks like she is doing some kind of art project.”

I wish I was doing some kind of art project. I wouldn’t mind an art project and maybe some kind of group game that involved kicking a ball and running and then having a cold beverage and a snack.

I loved camp. I loved the swimming, and the macrame, and making those plasticy lanyards, and playing soccer, and eating PB&J on the grass. And the smell of the grass, and the heat, and the sweatiness, and flinging oneself from activity to activity with total encompassing joy.

It’s hard being The Grown Up some days, is all.

First Post by Viva

From Sweet Dub's iPhone, written on Memorial Day weekend:

I just went to the beach with my daddy and mommy I had a great time with my family we dug a tunnel we almost hit water my little sister is scared of the sand and dosnt want to put her shoes on I wanted to swing on the swings but my dad didn't let me so we had to leave good bye.

It makes me a little breathless, reading it, because there's no punctuation, but that is part of the beauty of it.

Find a Happy Place

Sweet Dub is going out of town for a few days to do some filming. I miss him already. I really do! I have a lump in my throat and it’s been about 6 hours. That’s kind of ridic, but as Woody Allen once said in far ickier circumstances, “The heart wants what it wants.”

In the meantime, I will be working on Celie’s food aversion and social anxiety*, corralling kids before and after T-ball (it’s Team Picture Day on Saturday! At which time we will be asked to cough up an obscene amount of money to get a picture of our kid with her team and her very own personalized baseball trading cards with her picture on them! Remind me again why we are doing team sports?**), attending two Sunday birthday parties which are being held at exactly the same time, and trying to meet multiple deadlines at work. It is time to put away childish things like coffee and invest in some Red Bull. Or maybe just step it up to espresso, no?

Work is kind of sucking right now. The deadlines seem to be reproducing and as they do my Malaise seems to be trying to keep up, followed closely by Eye Strain and Headaches, both of which seem to appear within an hour of my arrival at work. I have not had a vacation this year (woe is me), and I am not expecting to get one now until September. Feeling very ground down and unappreciated, whiny whiny fiddlesticks.

P.S. I have officially hit the wall on the third of eight projects I am working on. Well, I cleared my desk of two projects this morning, so I am actually ahead of schedule. When does THAT ever happen, I ask you?

P.P.S. Bizarre interaction of the day: an older white male co-worker telling me, “You da bomb!” What?! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

* I expect to have both of these completely under control by the time her dad gets back on Sunday. I believe this falls under the category of “if you can believe it, you can achieve it.” In reality, I am hopeful that I can get her to accept one new food this weekend. Baby steps, as They say.

(Have been doing some research on food aversion and have discovered that Celia has what is called food neophobia, i.e., a fear of any new foods. [This flabbergasts me, since I am pretty much game to eat anything and that was the expectation in my family of origin, in which my sister and I gained reputations as “picky eaters” because she would not eat lima beans and I would not eat raisins. Honestly. We would both eat all kinds of things that other kids wouldn’t eat, including Brussels sprouts and beets, and yet we were stigmatized. My family is a piece of work.] This goes beyond being a picky eater into total freakout territory. Whee, fun times.)

** I am so not a joiner of anything. Slacker, thy name is Lisa.