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.