my carrie

Progress

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Weekday mornings at 9:00, Isaac’s ABA therapist arrives.

(we’ll call her Y here)

Isaac knows when it’s about time for her to get here, and he perches himself on the back of the big couch, the one against the picture window. When he sees Y’s car pull into the driveway, he smiles his happiest smile and watches her walk from her car to our front door, and he beams at her as she comes inside. 

She washes her hands first thing (after all, we’re still in a pandemic), and then she goes into the toys room (it’s supposed to be a dining room, but Sam’s toys have kind of taken over, and we don’t really have the best dining furniture anyway) to get the Box. The Box is essentially a lockbox full of developmentally appropriate toys: crayons, blocks, beads, puzzles, Play-Doh, etc. The Box only comes out during ABA time and gets put away when ABA time is over, so the toys mean a lot to Isaac (and to Carrie, who gets ABA therapy at the same time Isaac does). 

ABA is a lot less structured and behaviorally focused than I’d expected it to be. Isaac mostly directs what they do himself, with the only real therapeutic mandate being that he has to communicate as much as possible during play. This typically takes the form of him asking for things by saying their name and saying, “please” (e.g., “please puzzle” for today) or making a verbal choice between two things (e.g., choosing between the yellow crayon and the purple crayon… admittedly, a very difficult choice). 

For two hours, from 9:00 to 11:00, things are pretty blissful. Isaac loves Y to pieces (and she’s fantastic with him), and he loves his Box. I can’t tell you if he’s got one favorite toy in there that matters more than the rest, because he bounces between them so happily, though he makes sure that he spends a healthy amount of time with each one. He likes stacking shapes and building with blocks. He likes using crayons–both fat and thin–to make various masterpieces in a coloring book. He likes putting together the puzzles and naming each picture. He likes smushing the Play-Doh between his fingers. He likes pushing the wheeled toys–a fire engine and a singing puppy–around the living room. 

When it’s time to clean up and have lunch, he helps, because he’s a firm believer in everything having a place, and the toys’ place is in the Box. Y takes the box back to the toys room and says good-bye (Isaac always says, “Bye!” very happily, I think mostly because he knows how to say it), and then it’s time for lunch. 

*

ABA is one of those things that I find difficult to talk about with people I knew well before Isaac got his diagnosis, because in a lot of adult autistic circles, ABA is tantamount to child abuse. It’s painted as a way to erase your child’s autism, as a lot of negative reinforcement, as trying to make your kid “normal” rather than as accepting them for who they are.

And the reason I’ve found it difficult to talk about ABA is because… well, our ABA isn’t like that at all. Not even a little bit. 

I’m not saying that to invalidate anyone’s experiences, because I believe them, and I can see where ABA therapy has the space and methodology to become really nasty, really easily. And I’m also really frustrated that it’s often the only therapy approved by insurances.

I remember when Isaac first got his diagnosis, the doctor who gave him the diagnosis said that maybe he wouldn’t even need a diagnosis in a few months (of course, this was before COVID turned everything into crazy town, so who knows what she’d say today?). The way she said it sort of suggested that ABA and therapy would remove Isaac’s autism, but they haven’t done that, and that pleases me. He’s autistic. That’s as much a part of who he is as his brown eyes, his adorable giggle, his amazing hugs (seriously, this little guy gives the best hugs). 

What ABA has done for him is given him a way to communicate with the rest of the world and a way to not feel so frustrated. He’s always been a kid who desperately wants to be understood, so when he started having those lightbulb moments with ABA where he realized “oh, if I make this noise while moving my lips like this, they understand that I want milk” they came with so much joy for him. He still gets this enormous smile on his face when he says something and you understand him. He wants to be heard. 

That he’s being heard and understood has also really improved every aspect of his life. He’s not as prone to meltdowns or tantrums as he used to be, and he’s sleeping better. He’s stopped throwing the entire contents of his and Carrie’s room to the bottom of the stairs most days (most days). Even better, for my mommy heart, he and Carrie have suddenly become inseparable. Oh, they still fight like cats and dogs sometimes, but they also refuse to sleep in separate beds at night (though if they wake up at 3 a.m. and aren’t in separate beds, it gets very loud) and they tag team almost everything. Isaac is mindful of the things that Carrie likes and makes sure she has those things whenever possible (e.g., her favorite toy in the ABA Box is the bucket full of Mardi Gras beads; she likes to drape them around her neck and around her ankles to be as glamorous as possible. Isaac knows this, and so once he’s worn all the beads for a beat, he finds her wherever she is and methodically adorns her). When he is upset, Carrie is often the first to notice and make sure that everyone else knows (“ISAAC SAD! STOP IT!”). 

I don’t know how things are going to progress in the next ~year (the twins will be aging out of early intervention next spring, theoretically, depending on what COVID is doing), but so far, ABA has been nothing but wonderful for us. And I think that boils down to two (or so) things. 

The first is Isaac’s personality. He’s an extroverted autistic kid; he wants to communicate. He’s a goofball, very talkative and curious, excited about being tall someday, loves singing, and loves people in general. And I think that’s kind of what autistic therapies–especially ABA–want kids to become: those outgoing, will tell you all about This Neat Rock They Found, absolutely hilarious kids. I’m fortunate enough that I have three (hahahaaaaaa my introverted ass is like “I love you all so much but I need sixteen naps right now thx”), that Isaac was essentially just waiting to have the tools to communicate, so when he was given those tools, he flourished. 

And like… I think a lot of people don’t understand that autism is a way of experiencing the world, not a personality trait. You can’t train it away by trying to reward outgoing behavior or punish introverted behavior (nor should you because hello, let your kids have personalities?). And that lack of understanding permeates a lot of autism therapies, unfortunately, so instead of focusing on giving kids the tools they need to express their wants and needs (because I don’t think anyone would say that giving kids those tools is a bad idea–you need to be able to express that your needs aren’t being met, and what sort of shitty life is it if you can’t ever say, “I want a doughnut”?), they focus on trying to change personalities. And that just isn’t going to work. 

If that makes sense, which I have no idea if it does. 

Anyway, the point I’m trying to drive at is that Isaac’s personality already lends itself to being outgoing, friendly, and excited about interacting with the world. And I think that this sort of therapy wouldn’t be great for a kid who’s the opposite, who’d prefer to sit down and read a book or draw a picture instead of telling you about Also I Found A Stick Shaped Like A Y.

And the second, which remains the reason I sort of stay aloof from a lot of Autism MomsTM, is parental wants and expectations. I have a really good friend whose son has autism and is about two years older than the twins, and she’s been kind of a mentor/guide for me whenever I’m like “AAAAH WHAT DO I DO ABOUT THIS???” One of the things she told me that helped me the most was that ultimately, therapists work for you, and I think that’s been enormously helpful in making ABA a positive experience for us. 

At the beginning of Isaac’s therapy, we talked about what our goals were for him, and Kyle and I expressed that we just wanted him to have a way of communicating with us. We didn’t–and still don’t–want to take away his stimming or force him to communicate in a way that doesn’t work for him (e.g., if he’d really struggled with talking, we’d have been perfectly happy to work with PECS or to learn sign language or whatever he needed). Our therapists have been really respectful of that; Y, in particular, hsa been fantastic about incorporating Isaac’s stimming into his therapy (like how she taught him to say, “ready, set, go!” by preceding a moment of spinning with those words, and now they’re his favorites). 

There’s a lot to unwrap about therapeutic goals coming from parents, because I’ve no doubt that there are plenty of less than reputable agencies eager to make a quick buck or adhere to some weird guidelines who will pressure parents into setting goals that aren’t fair for their kids. Kyle and I tend to be immovable rocks when it comes to our kids’ best interests (e.g., if you can’t present a very strong, very scientifically backed, peer reviewed reason for changing our minds, we’ll be showing you the door), but when you’re overwhelmed by a diagnosis or don’t understand what autism is, it can be easy to find yourself steamrolled. 

And at the same time, there’s a lot of pressure in our society towards conformity; not necessarily towards sameness, but rather towards not getting too far outside of the mold. Even without external pressure, I feel like parents can have an internal need to “normalize” their kid as much as possible, and again, that can lead to some… mmm, wonky therapeutic goals. 

So I guess my overall takeaway with ABA so far is that (a) it’s not for everyone, and less cookie cutter therapeutic approaches should be researched and covered by insurances; and (b) parents of autistic kids need to be educated and empowered to set therapeutic goals that don’t erase their kids’ neurodivergence but instead give their kids the tools they need to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. 

*

Tangentially related, the twins have been on a Sesame Street kick lately (just the old stuff, though; I don’t know who’s who on the new episodes, and I don’t have the mental real estate to learn just yet) and have continued to prove my hypothesis that old school Sesame Street creates early readers. Between that and the Number Blocks on Netflix (highly recommend both, btw), both twins can count to at least thirteen (and, if you accept them repeating thirteen several times before shouting “TWENTY!” they can also count to twenty) and have started learning their ABCs. Carrie is particularly blowing my mind by (a) singing the whole alphabet song by heart, (b) learning the signs for all of the letters, and (c) recognizing letters and numbers by sight. 

Which isn’t half bad for a pair of 34 week technically developmentally delayed preemies 🙂 

One Month on the Inside

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The weird thing about lockdown is that not much changes from one minute to the next, even when it’s been a full month+ of hanging out at home all the time. On the plus side, I can safely say that I did not get Covid-19 when I last went to the store back in March. On the minus side, literally everything else.

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The only big thing of note is that Isaac has, despite the lockdown, started ABA therapy. ABA is apparently considered an essential service, so we have his therapists scrub down as soon as they come in the house, and since Isaac is the first kid of the day for them, there’s no huge worry that they’ve gone and gotten something and brought it to us. 

Today was day 2 of ABA, and it went… alright, I suppose. We’re still in the “let’s play so he gets used to us and then we can start therapy” stage, so it’s mostly two hours every day of unguided play with a box of toys that doesn’t leave our house but also only comes out when it’s ABA time. Carrie participates as well, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad, but both of our services coordinators pointed out that her participation is pretty important, because Isaac lives with her, so he needs to learn all of the things he’ll be learning in context of her instead of just in context of a therapist and one or two parents. 

The box of toys is all pretty easy stuff–shapes boxes, crayons, stacking toys, a firetruck. Its primary appeal is that it only comes out during ABA time, so even though the kids are playing with those toys every day, they still have some novelty to them. And it’s a plus because between Isaac “cleaning” (read: throwing every single thing he owns into the gated space between the TV and the rest of the living room) and Sam sweeping things out to the dining room/playroom with him, most of the twins’ toys are. Missing. 

Sam continues to take this entire situation harder than the rest of us. It’s a huge and difficult change for anyone, and I don’t know a single person who’s looking at the state of the world currently and getting super excited about it, but Kyle and I are at least adults with coping skills. We grumble, and we’re anxious, and when I think about the Worst Case Scenario, I have a panic attack (which is super convenient, because do you know what happens when you have a panic attack? You can’t breathe, that’s what happens, so it sends you on this delightful spiral that never ends :D), but for the most part, we have coping skills. We can conceive of restrictions lightening somewhat, and we know that if we do get sick, odds are that we’ll be fine. Hell, we’ve even got a theory that the bug that took me out for most of January and February (remember that?) was Covid-19 but nobody expected it around then, so nobody knew.

But then there’s Sam.

It’s rough on him, of course, because he’s lost school–at the very least until May 4, possibly for the rest of the year (I would be surprised if school starts up again before September). He’s lost that daily connection to his friends and teachers, his routine has been thrown to the wind, and although he’s kept his academic progress (we check in daily, he does his work, he’s doing just fine), I feel like he’s lost a lot of the non-academic stuff that kindergarten teaches you. Worse, he’s five, so he has no coping skills for just about anything. He’ll be alright for a few days, and then he’ll just completely melt down and sob and throw hours long tantrums, and when we ask him what’s wrong and how can we help, he can’t explain it. 

And we know. He’s scared. He’s lonely. He’s sad. He’s angry. He feels what we’re all feeling, but he’s only five, so he doesn’t have the same coping strategies we have as adults, and it’s heartbreaking to watch.

(but hey, at least his eventual therapy won’t be mostly talking about how he’s messed up because of his parents, so that’s a win!)

hallelujah

I see people protesting because they want to go get haircuts and go to Applebee’s and go back to this arbitrary “normal” they imagine existed, but I’m here hating lockdowns because I can’t help my kid. Yes, it’s hard not being able to go to the mall on the weekend or even just visit my parents. Yeah, I’m frustrated that I’ve had to try and reschedule about 42 doctor’s appointments in the last couple of weeks. But I’m most worried about my son, and I’m most worried about people who needed those nonessential jobs to pay their rent and get groceries and now have to make $1200 stretch for who knows how long?

I’m trying really hard to be optimistic and know that things aren’t going to last forever. By hook or by crook, 2022 seems to be the date that the experts are saying “okay, if normal even existed, look for it then.” Which is A REALLY LONG TIME to be having periods of lockdown and not lockdown and lockdown and not lockdown, but okay. 

And humans have this neat superpower of being really adaptable. We’ll find ways to make school happen and we’ll find ways to continue seeing our friends and family and we’ll find ways to reopen various things (because CAPITALISM, gosh darnit!). I know eventually, humanity as a whole will adjust.

But I’m looking at the damage happening in the meantime and feeling awfully sad that some of it could’ve been avoided and some of it couldn’t, and basically, this continues to suck.

BUT. We did get a new iPad so that Sam could do schoolwork and socialize, so there’s that.

Clinging

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“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
(Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers (314)”)

I was initially doing okay with all of this, and ultimately, it was the thought of a longterm social distancing adventure that drove me to snap with rage that disappeared as quickly as it had come. 

tenor

(this happened, like, a week and a half ago)

I can’t remember what set me off, but I think it was Kyle saying the words “…if Disney World is even open by then” about our trip that’s coming up in November. The idea of living life like this the entire rest of the year just made something break a little in me, and I sort of snapped at him in that way moms do when we’ve been carrying it all inside to keep the rest of the family from seeing, because it’s fine to vent to your partner when they’re available, but the emotions show up whenever anyway, and you tamp them down because you don’t want your kids to be scared or pick up on you freaking out.

But eventually, the dam breaks a little.

I snapped, and then it was gone, and I’ve been about as fine as I can be, considering the circumstances, ever since.

That sounds like I’m dismissing things, and I’m not trying to. I’m feeling the emotions everyone’s feeling: grief over the world changing overnight into something unrecognizable. Rage about politics. Fear about what’s coming next. But I feel like I’ve got a better handle on it than I did before, when I was still hovering in the “denial” stage of grief about everything. 

(and anyway, I will eat my hat if Disney isn’t open in November)

Which is all good, because we’re kind of floundering a lot with many bizarre emotions in this house.

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Anxiety is, understandably, the big one. I think I’ve got an okay handle on that because yay, antidepressants. Venlafaxine will probably be the reason I go crazy if the world ever does end properly, but for now, I’ve got a healthy supply of it, and it turns my anxiety into either really vivid crazy dreams or just really pleasant but unrelated dreams. Last night, I dreamed about characters from the soap opera One Life to Live, which I never even watched when it was a thing that was on often. The dream also took place in a therapist’s office, but that’s it. Nothing otherwise notable about it. No portentous 19 crows or anything like that.

Nobody else in this house is on antidepressants, which creates some interesting situations, most of them with Sam. He doesn’t have a completely firm grasp of what’s going on, but he knows that he can’t go to school, he knows that his school year is probably over as he knew it (they’re saying schools are closed until May 4, but I’ll be very surprised if they reopen before summer break), and he knows he misses his friends and teachers.

So, of course, he’s scared.

It mostly comes out at night, and he’s too old for the magic jar of dirt stuff I did when he was younger. Too smart, too. He doesn’t believe it when I rub lotion on his hands and tell him it will protect him from bad dreams, because his anxieties are too big to be vanquished with some love and lotion. He knows that the world isn’t the same, and will never be the same again, and it scares him. 

He gets out of bed every night after he’s been tucked in. We talk to him, we hold him on the couch, we tell him the truth, but we sprinkle it with generous doses of hope, because he needs that. Still, he’s scared. 

He’s kind of shut down about homeschooling, and I’m not sure what to do about it; worse, I’m sort of limited in what I can do about it. He’s in kindergarten, and he’s covered most of the basics he’ll need before first grade in the fall (this will have reached some sort of equilibrium by fall or I am punching this virus in the face myself), so I’m not terribly worried about him falling behind… but I still want to try and help him learn things while he’s at home. 

He does alright for about two days when we give him a new routine, but then on day three, he decides he doesn’t like this anymore and has a meltdown. Which… okay, fair. Maybe he should just have Wednesdays off or something? The routine was, briefly, some yoga and then a video about a subject he liked, writing a sentence about the subject, then doing math. And, of course, forever checking his messages on Facebook’s messenger for kids (he’s got a long distance friendship blossoming with my friend’s daughter, and it’s basically destroying me with cute). 

I feel bad. I wish that I could be 100% there for Sam, but the twins are another adventure during this, my everyday adventure that hasn’t changed in the slightest, except that Kyle is home for that adventure all the time now, so lunch and naptime are both easier.

But the twins seem to sense that something’s amiss as well. They don’t like to not be on my lap, which makes trying to help Sam with literally anything a struggle, particularly because the twins are not small anymore. They’re two now, had their birthday less than a day after the state started shutting down altogether. Our plans to take them to the aquarium were dashed.

Everyone senses that something’s up, and nobody can really parse their feelings on it. I can’t either, but I’m trying to at least throw positive shit out into the world to see whatever glimmers of hope will stick. 

That mostly happens outside. When the weather permits, we throw jackets on the kids and take them out to the front lawn to run around for a little bit after dinner (the backyard is a disaster area, and before all of this, we were going to see about hiring someone to clean it all up for us).

The twins like to run to the edges of the yard and get caught. Carrie especially likes to look at our crocuses nosing up through the dead leaves and greening grass, and Isaac likes to watch trucks rush past on their way to the farms up the street. 

Sam likes to run, just run. He runs from the porch to our big oak tree back to the porch then to the mailbox and back to the porch and to the lilac bushes and back to the porch. Being able to run with abandon helps him, I think, because our house is not a jungle gym, no matter what he thinks.

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I try to plan for Easter, such as it is. We have candy from the Easter Bunny, or at least half of what we’ll need (the other half I need to order from our local candy shop, which is taking orders but not in store shopping). The kids need nice Easter shoes, because even if we’re not DOING anything, I want them to look cute. It’s the twins’ first Easter able to do anything besides be confused about “why is this basket on my desk?” 

I mean, they’ll still be confused, just about more things than “why is this basket on my desk?”

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Nothing is normal, but it’s the new normal for at least the next month, probably longer, at least if people are smart about this. I’m still working through my feelings about everything, kind of picking at them a little bit day by day and seeing how my dreams/nightmares play them out. I think the only real waking fear I have is not about famine or a lack of toilet paper or anything like that but of getting sick myself, knowing that my lungs are kind of crap and that, at the very least, I’d likely be one of the young people ending up in the hospital and on a ventilator, away from my husband and kids for weeks on end. Without the kids, I think I could stand it, but just knowing what it would do to them…

I have a friend who’s an RN in an ICU, and even though I don’t really pray, I pray for her, to anyone or anything that might be listening. She has three kids, just like I do, two boys and a girl. She can’t even snuggle with them anymore, not until this has all passed, and it breaks my heart for her. 

Basically, I just want everyone to hurry up and stay home and behave. I saw a post earlier about this whole thing being like when you were in elementary school and some kids just wouldn’t stop acting up, so you kept losing more and more recess time, even though you weren’t doing anything wrong. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but the teacher couldn’t let the kids who were behaving outside while she stayed inside with the kids who weren’t behaving. So you watched as the bright spot in your day was gradually eaten away because people didn’t know how to act. 

Maybe it’s because I tend autistic, or maybe it’s because it’s in the nature of the oldest child to loathe getting in trouble for something not your fault more than for other kids (like we all hate it, but I think we oldest children hate it the most; I can see the loathing building in Sam’s mind every time we scold him for something the babies are doing too, and I have to remind him that he’s older and knows better), but GOD did I resent those kids. I don’t resent the dumbasses still going out and being Typhoid Marys around the world nowadays, but I do wish that someone would throw dirty diapers at their heads.

I think about them, and I think, “This stupid thing is just going to keep going, and it’s going to be 2021 before anything is over, and we’re going to just have this long, miserable time because people don’t know how to act. There goes everyone’s recess. There go people’s lives. Womp womp.”

dishonor

I let myself think that, and then I take a deep breath.

And I say, the first thing I’m doing when this is over is packing the kids up in the van and going to spend a day with my parents. 

I plan for going back to group with Isaac and Carrie and letting them play with all the plastic toys and watching them do more art and wreak more havoc, but this time, it’ll be slightly different havoc because Isaac will have his ABA therapist by then (let’s not get into that can of worms right now, I’m so tired). 

I imagine having a weekend day again where I go up to Michael’s and get whatever craft stuff I want for whatever dumb project I’ll never finish. Like maybe I’ll get photo albums or start scrapbooking or something, or at least think about it. And wandering through Barnes & Noble, enjoying the smell of ink on paper and coffee. And going to see a movie, taking all the kids to whatever crappy kids’ movie is out because we’re free to do so. 

And eventually going out to the mall, walking those long stretches of gleaming tile and popping my head into my favorite stores. Getting a free chocolate from Godiva. Setting the kids loose in the indoor playground after patiently wandering the Lego Store with Sam. Eating something that’s wretched for me from the food court and just not even caring. 

We’ll go to the beach this summer, plan it out a little more than our last trip. We’ll bring quilts and set up a full little camp on the sand, and take off a weekday to go (after all, Kyle has been working 7 days a week the past two weeks; who knows what it is about tech companies that drives them to think, “Ah, you’re working from home, that means all your hours are mine!”) so things will be less crowded and we can get a spot closer to the water.

(probably not Hampton Beach this time, though)

And we’ll have our road trip, in the fall or next fall, one or the other. We’ll pack the kids up in a rented van, we’ll see the roads, we’ll stop for gas and goodies. We’ll take 95 all the way down. We’ll stop at South of the Border, because I’ve always wanted to go but never have. We’ll see enormous fields of cotton and black eyed susans on the sides of the road. We’ll stay on the beach and then we’ll drive to Disney and we’ll be in that delightful bubble for a blissful week. 

This will happen, it will all happen eventually. This is what I think about to keep myself sane, because things are really hard and really scary right now, but it’s not forever, and in the end, we’re all in this together.

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Can I be blamed if I’m angry?
Can I be saved if I’m barely clinging to hope?
I’m clinging to hope

When I say oh, oh
Rain don’t change the sun
Jealous is the night when the morning comes
But it always comes
(Delta Rae, “Morning Comes”)

 

This Damn Week: A List

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  • On Saturday, Isaac got norovirus.
    • We did not know, at the time, that it was norovirus.
    • We thought he just had a cold and had too much mucus in his system and it was just coming out all ends.
    • So we took him to the ER because he couldn’t keep fluids down.
      • He could have been there for two hours so that the Zofran would work and he’d be able to drink again.
      • By hour five, Kyle called me to ask me to bring Isaac’s usual bottle so that he would drink the fluids.
      • So my mom came to put Sam and Carrie to bed while I drove all the way to the hospital.
      • Only for Kyle to call as I was about to turn into the parking lot and say that just kidding, Isaac just drank the whole bottle.
  • Kyle and I were supposed to go on a date Sunday afternoon, but since Isaac had norovirus, that was out.
    • Instead, my dad came over and ate cake, and that was fine.
  • Monday was a holiday, and that was fine.
  • On Tuesday, Kyle worked from home. 
    • Which he does every Tuesday.
    • So when he finished work, he decided to take Sam to our local CVS to get a flu shot.
      • Despite having lost three hours of work to a random power outage halfway through the day.
      • (it was also pouring rain)
      • They were also going to buy groceries.
    • While they were gone, Isaac vomited profusely. 
      • It was impossible to clean.
    • And Sam couldn’t even get his flu shot because the power outage had caused the clinic’s supply to go bad.
  • On Wednesday, things mostly seemed normal, except I wasn’t hungry.
    • But mostly things were okay. 
    • My mother visited for an hour in the afternoon, and I had dinner with the kids.
    • After dinner, the kids started climbing on my lap.
    • I started feeling seasick.
      • Uh oh.
  • After Kyle got home, I barely made it upstairs before I, too, fell victim to the norovirus.
    • Cue six straight hours of running to the toilet every twenty minutes and not being sure which end was exploding.
      • (sorry)
    • And after that, cue the next eighteen straight hours of brutal muscle aches and a low grade fever.
    • Norovirus is a bitch.
  • BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!
    • Kyle and I share a toilet.
    • Sharing a toilet is a good way to pass norovirus from person to person.
    • About twelve hours after I first got sick, guess who also got sick?
      • (it was neither Sam nor Carrie)
  • So now we have two adults sick as can be, zero backup because we’re not inviting people into our plague shack, and three hyperactive children.
    • Child Sam is on break from school and will not stop running and scream singing “DIGGY DIGGY HOLE” all the time.
    • Child Isaac is HUNGRY but he’s also not 100% feeling better so he’s ANGRY because he doesn’t want any of his usual favorite foods and he’s very tired of Pedialyte.
    • Child Carrie is playing with Child Sam all the time at 9000 MPH and scream singing either “INTO THE UNKNOWN” or “BABY SHARK” while running around the living room.
    • My head.
  • Everyone finally seems somewhat recovered today, Saturday.
    • (this after completely losing both Thursday–when Isaac was supposed to have his ABA assessment–and Friday to illness)
  • Kyle and I feel well enough to start cleaning up after our illness.
    • We start a load of laundry.
    • When Kyle goes to switch the laundry, he discovers that the water did not drain.
    • He tries to fix the washing machine.
      • He finds $5 in change!
      • He does not fix the washing machine.
    • We cancel tonight’s D&D session so one of us can go to the laundromat.
  • At bedtime, we’re changing Isaac.
    • He has hives.
      • Wtf?
      • We have not started new foods.
      • We have not used new detergents.
      • He is not on new medicine.
    • So we call the nurse line.
      • Nurse line says that this can happen at the end of a virus and we should give him Benadryl.
      • Cool.
      • We don’t have Benadryl.
    • Everything gets pushed back an hour or so while we hunt down Benadryl and give it to him. 
  • Kyle just now got home with the laundry.
  • It is 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday.
  • I need a vacation.

Two of them

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It’s coming, sooner than I want it to, mostly because I feel wholly unprepared.

It, of course, is my life as a stay-at-home mom of two two-year-olds. March 14, the twins turn two, and even though it won’t technically be all that much different from the day before, things are already starting to take a turn for the chaotic.

The biggest preview of things to come happened about two weeks ago. As part of Isaac’s therapy, we’re taking him (or trying to take him) to a parent-and-child group through our local Early Intervention center. I’d tried it before, when the twins were really young, but it hadn’t worked out because being a singular mom hauling around two babies with the exact same needs is… well, it’s rough. 

The twins were, I believe, barely past 5-6 months old at the time, not quite sitting up independently yet, and certainly not in a place yet where I could really settle them down and let them frolic. I mostly just sat on the floor, cross-legged, with the two of them lying in front of me, immobile and baffled by the suddenly crazy world around them. The other parents were chatting back and forth about how their kids were doing–this one had a GI appointment later this week, that one was finally taking a bottle without any struggle–but I could barely pay attention for more than a few seconds because the twins just. Didn’t want to be left alone on the floor. 

I couldn’t do it alone, I realized. Whether it was because of my own sensory issues making classroom settings stressful for me (too. much. talking.) or because having two infants and one parent makes doing things impossible, I couldn’t do it alone. And anyway, we didn’t really need group back then. It was mostly a playgroup for parents to come and talk about their struggles and get support, and while I’ll be the last one to suggest I don’t need support, I prefer the one-on-one kind or else support in chat windows. Face-to-face support is… stressful. 

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But then Isaac got his diagnosis, and one of the recommendations from his doctors was some sort of playgroup. Right now, he’s just old enough for the parent-and-child group, like before, and because Carrie is also in Early Intervention (at least until she stops being a little turd during evaluations and shows people what she can really do), she gets to come along, too. It’s a two hour session, once a week, and because Kyle works, I’ve asked my mom to join me on group days (which is great because half of the other adults there are grandmas as well) because otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do it. And she’s graciously agreed to join me, and it’s all fun, we expected.

Except. The first day of group, she got a stomach bug, and she got it right as I pulled up to the center.

So I tried it alone again.

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What you first must understand about having twin two-year-olds is that unless a place is easily accessible by stroller, you’re going to have a helluva time getting in. I was recovering from bronchitis at the time (more on that in a second), and I had to haul these two children, neither of whom wanted to be carried, down a couple of flights of stairs to the classroom. I don’t blame the EI center for this, since they technically do have access around the back of the building, and they have an elevator as well (“elevator” in this instance meaning “manager’s lift from back when it was an industrial building”). I mostly blame my thought process of “well, we’ll just go in the front door because that’s less of a hike than walking around back.”

So twin two-year-olds down two flights of stairs, both of them wanting to get down but also not wanting to let go of me, and there’s no space on the stairs for any of us whatsoever. We finally got down to the classroom in time for the end of free play, and the twins had their first encounter with washing their hands in a weird place. By this age, Sam had been in daycare for about a year, so he was an old pro at washing his hands in strange places, but the twins have mostly just seen the inside of our downstairs bathroom and me coming after them with wipes. Carrie wanted nothing to do with the process and screamed and cried and refused to get her hands wet. Isaac, on the other hand, kept climbing up the step stool to play with the faucet again and again and again. 

Now here, one might ask, “well, why didn’t you pull him away?” or “why didn’t the teacher pull him away?” and I might say, “because my hands were full with Carrie, who was melting down utterly; and because the teacher had half a dozen other children plus the classroom schedule to take care of, as this is a group that has a more one-on-one dynamic.” 

Yes, Carrie was melting down, though Isaac recovered quickly from being prevented from making his dreams of flooding the room come true. He spotted a peg board like one we have at home and set to work making the tallest possible tower of pegs. Carrie, once she’d adopted a pouting acceptance of her fate, dutifully marched around the room to see what toys she could see, often coming over to sit on my lap and cry against my shoulder some more at the misery of it all. 

They both finally shuffled over to the play kitchen, which pleased me–they love watching me cook, they love watching cooking videos, and now they were getting a chance to try it out for themselves. Isaac hummed and babbled to himself as he tossed plastic ingredients into a pot (carrot, fried egg, doughnut?), and Carrie became… oddly enamored of a plastic spatula and a plastic watermelon slice. For a few minutes, they were very happy. 

I, too, was happy–happy enough to play with the Little People someone had scattered on the floor by my feet. I set up a summoning circle, and the Little People called forth the Little People Pope in his Little People Popemobile, and it was great.

And then, it was time to stop free play. 

The other kids were, I think, seasoned pros about this, or at least more of seasoned pros than either Isaac or Carrie, whose days at home have all the structure absurdist literature, which is to say little to none. Their switches between activities at home are fluid, and I don’t make them put away their toys before settling them in their high chairs or bringing them up to bed because I am tired and I don’t want screaming. At group, however, once free play is over, the free play toys need to be put away. Isaac was fine with this (hilariously, my autistic kid had the least issue with change) because he loves cleaning up, and seeing that these New Toys also had a Place basically made his life. 

But Carrie.

Dear, sweet Carrie. Carrie, who has developed an almost obsession with me lately, where even if I just step outside the room to go to the toilet, it sends her into a meltdown. Carrie did not want to give up her spatula and watermelon. 

I’m pretty sure I did it wrong. I asked nicely for the toys and, when she wouldn’t give them up, pried them from her vice like grip, which resulted in another tantrum. And I say tantrum, rather than meltdown, because there is a difference between the two. She wasn’t overtired or overstimulated, she just wanted to hold onto those two toys in particular and having to give them up made her Very Angry. It didn’t matter that it was circle time, and circle time meant songs. It only mattered that fuck you people, I want my spatula and my watermelon. 

And all the while, Isaac was running around the rest of the room. He discovered the trash can, which the teacher promised would be put away the next time we came (but for that time, it was not put away, and Isaac liked how the lid flipped around). 

I tried, I tried so hard to wrangle them both to the circle, but I could only hold onto one at a time. When they’re calm, I can do both. They rest their heads on my shoulders and conform to my body, and we’re happy. But Carrie was angry, and Isaac was excited, and their existence was chaos given form. Letting go of one to catch the other made it worse. Other children in the circle were less than happy to be there, but those other children had a parent apiece to keep them from running amok. Isaac and Carrie just had me. 

(sidenote here: I’m not mad at my mom for not being there; she got sick, and that happens. I’m just recounting how crazy it was and how it’s helped me realize that oh man, am I in over my head)

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Circle time was all about songs, with the kids who’d been there before maturely choosing a song they liked and adorably doing the hand motions. My kids, who had not been there before, either ran around the room like a crazy person (Isaac) or screamed and cried like I was tearing out their toenails one at a time (Carrie). Carrie did pay enough attention, however, to fall in love with the “fishy” song and how it ended with “bubbles… bubbles… bubbles… SPLASH!” I think it may have been the only thing she truly enjoyed about the experience.

After circle time, it was time for snacks, which prompted another ruckus from Carrie because hand washing. Isaac washed his hands once, went to the back of the line and washed his hands again, went to the back of the line and washed his hands again… while Carrie had to be forced to touch the water (she’s not like that at home at all… she’s kind of my little fish) and continued to sob hysterically when she couldn’t grab a bowl of peaches all by herself. 

It felt like I was upending this poor teacher’s entire day by having these two unruly kids. Everyone has a first day in group, I know, and all kids have bad days, but they were out of my control entirely. If I had one calmed down or under control, the other was off in the corner summoning Baphomet from the ninth circle of hell or something. 

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But at least the snack was okay. The other parents sat nicely with their kids who’d been there before, all of them using utensils in some approximation of correctness. My twins have little experience with utensils, since finger foods are just easier when you’ve got two, but Carrie gave it the old college try and ate her peaches in about three seconds flat. Isaac had no interest in peaches and instead dumped the bowl over with glee. They both selected pretzels and goldfish as part of their snack, and they would have done well, except they were next given open cups of water to practice with. 

Like. Okay. I know that I need to get them started on that. I know it’s something I should’ve been doing for a while. They’re almost two. Bottles should be ancient history.

But I remain tired and maybe I don’t want to deal with wet milky clothes every day all the time. 

Carrie gave it a try again, and she got thoroughly soaked, though she got some water in her mouth. Isaac grabbed the cup by the lip, and while I know I should have repositioned his hand and let him try again, all I could think of was how I was about to have two drowned rat children and it was 19 degrees outside.

So I took the cup away.

Undeterred, Isaac took Carrie’s cup and sat there merrily squishing every goldfish and pretzel he could find into it until the teacher finally came and took snacktime away, replacing it with craft time: black construction paper and chalk. 

Isaac ate the chalk, but it’s nontoxic, so whatever.

Carrie actually did a very good job, scribbling and stabbing and giggling all the while, which is probably why her next despair-a-thon started when it was time to give the chalk back in exchange for bubbles. 

I like bubbles time. Everyone likes bubbles time. All of the children calmed down and started laughing and chasing the bubbles. Blowing bubbles is a soothing breathing technique, and I felt some of my stress dissipate. Carrie even managed to blow a bubble of her own and squealed with pure joy when I caught it on the wand for her. 

And then it was time to move on. Free play, circle time, snack, craft, bubbles, and now gross motor play in the gym area two rooms down. The twins aren’t very good at being escorted places while holding hands because… well, a lot of reasons. With Sam, we had one child, so we took him out everywhere by himself, and we could hold his hands, and he got good at it. I took him out alone a lot. When Kat lived with us, she came with me. Taking Sam out was easy at most ages, and it still is; he’s a delight to have at any store, behaving himself quite well in exchange for a trip down the Lego aisle.

But the twins… I’ve been afraid. For good reason. I have two hands, exactly two, and any outing with two children requires more than two hands. You need at least one hand, probably two, for each child. You need hands for the stroller and hands for the diaper bag and hands for the inevitable “NO DON’T TOUCH THAT… oh, sorry, I’ll pay for it, sorry!” Being that I only have two hands, I don’t take the twins out by myself very much yet. I need to, I need to start doing it because how else will they learn? But…

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But. That’s basically the moral of this whole story. Everything is twice as hard with twins, which is why I haven’t been doing any of it, which is why they came to the parent-child group as a hot mess.

Somehow, I wrangled them down the hall and let them free. It was… something. Isaac is bad at following commands and ignored everyone who told him that slides are for sliding, not climbing, but later found a rocking horse and pure joy. Carrie just… up and slapped everyone she met. Hauled off and just, SMACK! Right in the face. I thought I saw it once or twice, turning around from helping Isaac to stop climbing up the slide, buddy, what did I say? but I only really caught it once, as I was bringing Isaac back from something else. I turned around, Carrie was facing this other little boy, and she just smacked him right across the mouth, twice, before heading off to do her own thing. 

“Carrie!” I admonished her, hurrying to find some way to scold her without dropping Isaac. The little boy seemed mostly unfazed, though he did lean against his mother sadly, and I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t bring myself to fess up and apologize. 

And then the twins got stamps on their hands and the group was over. I wrangled them back up the stairs, and right when I thought we were going to be okay, Carrie broke away from me, running past the receptionist’s desk and into a meeting room filled with heavy and dangerous office supplies. I had Isaac on one hip, the diaper bag on the other, my purse slung around my neck, and zero energy. “Carrie!” I cried again, and the receptionist looked concerned while doing nothing. 

I put Isaac down. He dissolved into sobs because I was clearly leaving him to be eaten by wolves. I put the diaper bag down. I put my purse down. I marched into the office after my little escape artist, who giggled merrily until I picked her up and then began screaming. I scooped up the diaper bag. I scooped up the purse. I scooped up the sobbing Isaac. I got us all out to the van, somehow, and got everyone buckled in, somehow, and I sat in my front seat and sobbed. 

It was just so much.

Group is a challenge for me from the start, because group means interacting with strangers, which is not something I do well. It means an unfamiliar environment. It means too much noise. It means new situations and strange schedules, and it means that I’m already parenting on hard mode just by being there. 

But add twins. 

Two little adorable kids, one of whom can’t talk at all yet, the other of whom is an impish diva gremlin child. They’re freaked out because it’s a weird place. They’re freaked out because it’s a weird schedule. They’re freaked out because there’s so much noise and so many people and everything happens so much. 

And congratulations to me, I think I just did parenting on hard mode tournament level. 

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I congratulate myself mostly because they came out in one piece, nobody got seriously hurt, and against every sense of self-preservation I have, we’re going back on Thursday (after missing last week because Isaac had a merciful 100 degree temperature, the exact cut off for “you can’t come to group today”). But man oh man do I feel like I’m shitting the bed on this parenting thing. I need to push them and teach them new things, but group made me realize just how behind I’ve been and just how ill-equipped we are for that sort of thing. Worse, it made me feel utterly incapable of doing… well, anything that involves them. How am I supposed to manage twin two-year-olds on a day-to-day basis if I can’t even keep them from wreaking total havoc in a group environment?

I remind myself that my mom will be there this time (hopefully), and that once Isaac’s ABA therapy starts, his therapist will be there. That it’s neither a race nor a competition. That they’re happy, healthy, and perfectly fine children, technically around where they’re supposed to be. 

But I also can’t help but look at it as a test where I didn’t exactly fail, but I won’t be getting a lot of praise, either. 

It also caused my bronchitis to relapse, and now I’ve got a nebulizer, so that’s fun.

I don’t know. I shouldn’t be in my feelings about this, I shouldn’t still be kicking myself about the whole situation, but I am. I feel like I’m failing them on some level that they’re nearly two and don’t have these basic things going on–the ability to transition from one activity to another without falling apart, the ability to drink out of a cup without a lid, the ability to not slap the living daylights out of other children who happen to exist. They’ve not had a lot of opportunities to practice those things, and I know that’s largely my fault, and it’s something I need to work on going forward, but I feel shitty that I haven’t… I don’t know, I guess been doing more to this point.

I don’t know. I don’t know. Two year old twins are a lot.

Right This Very Minute

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There’s a weird thing that happens to me after Christmas, as I look at January on my calendars and realize that I have no plans whatsoever. I don’t need to figure out baking specifics and schedule supply runs for specific pay days. I don’t need to make sure the kids have specific outfits at specific times. I don’t need to do much at all in January, and even this year, when I’m looking at a whole bunch of specialist appointments for me and for Isaac (geneticist for Isaac, geneticist and endocrinologist for me), the first couple of months are so calm and nice.

I mean. That won’t last. And it’s mostly just January because the twins turn two in March and then there’s vacations and Easter and Sam’s birthday and basically from March until July 4, I’m going to be screaming like a velociraptor…

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…BUT FOR NOW, everything is copacetic!

Christmas was honestly pretty nice and lowkey, despite everything I ended up putting into it (lots of baking, lots of stuff for the kids, lots of everything), and that tends to be the case year after year, and I won’t complain about it. I was utterly spoiled this year, with SO MANY KITCHEN THINGS, ranging from a food processor (I can make pie crust now!) to a gloriously sweary oven mitt…

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…and then, of course, Kyle added a winter coat and a lovely necklace to the mix, so all-in-all, I feel quite loved and appreciated.

Kyle does as well, but that’s more in spite of me than because of me because GOSH but I hecked up his Christmas.

See. Okay.

The initial plan was to get him a nice, new camcorder because he’s always been about video production and editing. He has a degree in it, even! And although we had a camcorder, it was old and didn’t seem to work well, so we never used it and mostly just depended on our phones to commemorate special occasions in 60-second snippets. And that’s fine, but I kept thinking about how nice it was when I was a kid to have longer videos of our family life and how much fun Kyle has when he’s editing videos.

So I ordered the best reviewed camcorder on Amazon, at least in our price range, and did so after talking to him about it, as I have a personal policy on not buying big gadgets for people until after I’ve cleared it with them. Kyle was excited about it, the camera came with all sorts of accessories, and once it arrived, he set to work putting it together and trying it out…

…and found out that it does not, apparently, work with his computer or mine.

We’re not really sure why. It didn’t manage to record ANY video, despite us taking plenty, and connecting it to both of our computers just got a lot of “?????” from all devices. On the plus side, we discovered that our old camera works really well and has a TON of pictures from Sammy’s first birthday stored on it, so we do have a camera in the end. On the minus side, I still have to go and return the damned thing because what the hell even.

And ALSO on the minus side, because I figured the camera would be such a hit (and it would have been if it hadn’t sucked), I kind of got lazy about Kyle’s other Christmas presents. I got him a couch slipcover, with the mindset of “now we can put off getting a new couch for longer without stressing about our couch being disgusting!” because finances or something? I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know what I was thinking, and anyway, it doesn’t matter because the damned thing doesn’t even fit on our couch. It’s big enough, oh yes, but it’s designed for a specific shape of couch and that shape is not our shape.

So I’m 0 for 2, but I didn’t fail entirely. I also got Kyle a beard kit that includes a sheet to keep beard hair from falling in the sink and some beard shaper tools and combs and such, and he liked that a lot. And he liked the things I got him from the twins. 

Just. You know. Not from me. Womp womp. 

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The kids also had great Christmasses, and their gifts have been overall hits. Sam benefited from Minecraft only being $6.99 to put on his Kindle, so even though we’d stuck to our self-imposed limits of four presents from Santa and four from the family (from each of us: Kyle, me, Isaac, and Carrie), we added that to the list, and it’s basically made his life. And it’s been great because even though he’s in love with the game, he’s still been really good about sticking to his screen time limits without getting angry or complaining, so I’m pleased as punch there.

Isaac has been the hardest to shop for because his interests are a bit more complex than “Sam likes MInecraft” or “Carrie likes Elsa.” He likes figuring out the mechanics of various objects–how they work, how to turn them on or off, how to make them do what he wants–and he likes climbing on things. Eventually, once we’ve got off our asses and cleaned up the backyard some, he’ll have plenty of places to climb around, so we mostly focused on puzzles and mechanical toys, which have all been hits to varying degrees. He mostly just seems happy that he’s got a week with both me and Kyle home to play with him, because he’s too sweet for words.

And Carrie, sweet Carrie, has discovered (though not to her disadvantage!) that having narrow and specific interests makes Christmas very easy for people. She received a grand total of three different plush Elsas, all of which she adores (though only one of which is she allowed to bring to bed every night) along with a periwinkle blue “Elsa” cloak that she asks for by adorably saying, “coke! coke!” at us. She is also confused by Kyle having this week off, but is mostly happy about it… though also sometimes prone to tantrums about it if she realizes that, despite there being two parents home, neither is currently paying her All Of The Attention.

So overall: good times. I’m excited right now about having the Christmas-to-New-Year’s Fugue Week to eat all the candy we got for the holiday, return the camcorder and slipcover, and basically just exist without any conscious understanding of the passage of time; and then I’m excited about having January be a much slower month than the last ~3-4 have been in terms of Stuff To Do, because this year is going to be absolutely wild once it picks up steam. 

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But in the meantime, it’s time to breathe.

It’s the Holiday Season…

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I love the holidays, though my definition of “the holidays” differs from most people’s in that I firmly believe “the holidays” begin with Halloween and end with New Year’s because those are the temporal boundaries of my other busy season (the primary busy season lasting from March through July). During what I’ll call a twelve week span (because let’s be real–October first is the very latest we all start celebrating Halloween), I’m constantly baking and getting the kids ready for things and wrapping presents and baking and traveling and baking and did I mention baking?

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(for the record: I love all the baking I do, but it’s a lot between October 1 and January 1)

As of this writing, my holiday season has been in full swing for about a month, with the first holiday happening last week. Halloween was unseasonably warm this year, and that turned it into an adventure for everyone. I baked the cupcakes I’d signed up to bake for Sam’s class party…

…and they were apparently a big hit! And honestly, they were great fun to do, at least partly because Kyle helped with the decorating. We spent two evenings together in the kitchen baking and mixing and mixing and decorating, and per his report, the whole experience was highly satisfying (his favorite part was rolling the cupcakes in sprinkles after they’d been frosted, and I can’t blame him). 

Our Halloween plans had otherwise been to attend the school’s trunk or treat (since our neighborhood is garbage for trick-or-treating–no sidewalks and halfway up a really steep hill that people like to drive down at about 300 MPH) and show off the kids’ costumes. For Isaac, we ended up getting an embarrassingly cheap dragon costume (and I say “embarrassingly” because it was horrible quality and way larger than the site suggested it would be, leading to a very difficult time when he eventually did wear it), and Carrie got a very floofy version of Rapunzel’s dress along with a gorgeous braid headband. Sam was, of course, Darth Vader. 

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But anyway, we wanted to go to the trunk or treat, but that first got rescheduled because of mosquitoes (Massachusetts was having a pretty bad EEE outbreak this year, but we had a hard frost a couple of days ago so TAKE THAT YOU BLOOD SUCKING MONSTROSITIES) and then it got cancelled because of rain. This left us without any sort of trick-or-treating for the kids (because our hill is dangerous in good weather, never mind when it’s pouring out) until my mom gamely agreed to come with me and take the kids to a local mall for trick-or-treating there.

This was something of a mistake.

Our local malls vary from “pretty nice, actually” to “why is this still open?” and this mall tends towards the latter category. Thirty years ago, it was a really nice place with fancy restaurants and a really posh feel to it, a classier version of the typical 80s mall. As is the case with most malls, however, time and changing trends in retail chipped away at its poshness and left it somewhat of a shell. It’s still got a singular anchor store (there’s a Sears, which gives me questions, and the other anchor spot is now taken by a doctor’s office) and the skeleton of a food court, along with a handful of mall fixtures (American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret, Journeys, etc.), but it’s definitely a shadow of its former self. 

A disheartening number of storefronts were vacant when we got there on Halloween, and the fronts that were open ran out of candy pretty quickly–I don’t think anyone at the mall anticipated the entire county coming to trick-or-treat there rather than face the rain. Sam had a grand time because he’s five and got lots of candy (a full set of Dum Dums! I’ve never seen one of those before!), but the twins were wailing by about 10 minutes in, and my mom and I were both exhausted at the end of the adventure.

So. Here’s hoping that next Halloween has pleasant temperatures and no rain.

(but at least the kids looked cute! For all 5 minutes they all stayed in their costumes)

And now it’s today, which is my birthday.

Did I do anything to celebrate? Well, I wanted to, but the kids shared a wonderful cold with me, so I spent most of last night with a throat too sore to allow talking and most of today wishing I could be horizontal. Kyle, being the star that he is, stepped in and made the batch of brownies I’d planned to make for myself and, since he was working from home today anyway, let me get a nap in while the twins were napping, which will hopefully help me recover from this cold quicker and without any trips to urgent care because of breathing (because the last thing I either need or want is to get pneumonia again). 

So things have been lowkey, but I need that. We’ve been juggling a lot of adventures lately with the twins especially, namely that Isaac has been fast tracked on the path towards an autism diagnosis and Carrie still qualifies for early intervention services.

Carrie first: she had her annual evaluation today to see if her development has caught up to where it should be, and the hilarious thing is that she’s basically where she ought to be when she’s not being observed. When she is being observed, as we discovered today, she’s pretty behind in a couple of areas, namely fine motor and receptive communication. 

But she’s not actually behind.

Most of the areas where she scored “behind” were items on the test that she knows how to do and does often, but today, when asked to do them in front of the EI evaluation team, she gave an impish little smirk…

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…and ran off giggling to hide behind the couch. Cue my little genius communicator getting much lower scores in fine motor skills and receptive communication than I know she’s capable of. On some level, this should bother me, but I’d rather she get services and not need them than need them and not get them. Worse comes to worse, they reevaluate in six months and she doesn’t get services anymore after that, or else she just gets a little supplemental help and EI helps with her preschool placement in 2021 (wow, that’s an actual year, that’s bizarre).

And then there’s Isaac.

A couple of months ago, I mentioned my concerns about him relating to autism… well, less concerns, more “I’m autistic myself, my entire family is autistic, I know what it looks like, and he looks like he’s going in that direction.” Our wonderful services coordinator got the ball rolling for diagnosis, but because he was only 17 months old at the time, we couldn’t do a lot because most diagnostics won’t say much until a kid is at least 18 months old (which I hate because if you’re living in a bright, loud world and can’t filter out sounds and sights, important to unimportant, and get so exhausted because of it and have a hard time having conversations or learning language because you’re so overwhelmed… like, wouldn’t you want to name that and learn coping skills ASAP?). 

But we started anyway. We took the ASQ and the M-CHAT, both of which mostly look at autistic traits–that is, traits that are common in people with autism. Things like lack of eye contact, stimming, repetitive behavior, the typical “that child has autism” traits, you know. Those both kind of bugged me because they felt like they were reducing autism to a checklist of traits, which I haaaaaaaate. 

BUT then came the RITA-T, which we did last week. The RITA-T actually looks more closely at behavior that makes sense when you understand how autistic brains function (i.e., it’s hard to split your focus because so much sensory input is competing for your attention, and you can’t automatically filter it like a neurotypical person would). The test focuses on something called “joint attention,” trying to split your attention between a toy you’re playing with alongside another person and the person sharing the toy with you. It also focuses on how you’re interpreting sensory input (e.g., how Isaac reacted to me pretending to cry, how he reacted when I called his name with a blank expression, etc.). 

And, well. Isaac scored high enough to qualify for fast tracking towards diagnosis at our local hospital. 

Fast tracking essentially means that instead of us having to play telephone games trying to get in touch with someone, the EI specialists send in the paperwork for us. Fast tracking means that instead of facing a 6-18 month wait for an appointment, we’re looking at a 6 week wait. And that’s a huge difference. Six months would put us at Isaac being two years old, skipping over a lot of development. And eighteen months would put us at Isaac being three years old and aging out of EI services altogether. That it’s been fast tracked means that if he gets a diagnosis (which seems very likely at this point), he’ll be able to receive the services and therapy he needs to help him cope with a very overstimulating world and hopefully start preschool already better prepared than he would otherwise be. 

So. We’ll see what happens there. In the meantime, I’ve got 16 days until we do something absolutely insane and pack up the whole family in a rental car to drive down to Texas for Thanksgiving! Until next time and a wild trip report…

(oh also I have purple hair now)

Decisions

/ lovescienceandnat20s / 1 Comment

You know, if you’d asked me six weeks ago what everyone in the house was going to be for Halloween, I’d have rattled things off so easily that I’d have seemed like a mythical Good Mom, someone who’s got all her shit together and actually does the stuff she pins on Pinterest. 

(I do not have all my shit together, and Pinterest scares me)

And now I’m in a wild spot because while Sam has committed to being Darth Vader (“I’m going to do every other year, Mom! This year, Darth Vader; next year, Jack Skellington; the year after that, Darth Vader…”), I cannot decide what to do with the twins. 

A few weeks ago, Sam decided that he wanted to be Peter Pan, and I thought, well, that makes things easier. He’s Peter Pan. Carrie is Tinkerbell. Isaac is Captain Hook. I’ll be Wendy, Kyle can be Mr. Smee, and life’s fantastic. 

Except the next day (fortunately, before I bought anything), Sam informed me that he didn’t actually want to be Peter Pan. He was married to Darth Vader as a costume. Historically, he’s been unlikely to waver from a chance to dress up like Darth Vader, so I went ahead and ordered that, and it should arrive any day. I’m hoping it arrives while he’s at school so I can lay it out during the twins’ nap and he can try it on once he gets home.

14222370_10153829612385592_6350598245219719049_n(the infamous Darth Vader costume when he first got one, three years ago)

So he’s set. It’s the twins. Wayyyyy back months ago, when I naively thought that maybe I could convince my five-year-old to go along with my Halloween ideas, I thought that we could do a Toy Story thing. Sam would be Buzz Lightyear, Isaac would be Woody, and Carrie would be Jessie. It would be adorable, we’d get some great pictures, everyone would have a laugh. But nope, Sam wants to be Darth Vader, and I’m not about to tell my five-year-old that he can’t wear what he wants on Halloween, and the Toy Story thing doesn’t seem worth the expense (because Toy Story costumes are expensive, at least when you’re buying them for more than one person) if we’re not going to fully commit. 

Some ideas I’ve had and discarded:

  • Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. It’s the obvious choice, but (a) finding a Luke Skywalker costume is very difficult when your costumee is younger than nine; (b) making a Luke Skywalker costume involves time that we don’t have; and (c) I kind of want to save that for when they’re old enough to understand the implications of what they’re wearing. So nope.

    731h

  • Grapes, purple and green. On the one hand: cute, easy, and cheap. On the other hand: there’s no way the twins would do anything besides sob wearing a costume made entirely of balloons. So nope.

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  • Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. If you want the costumes to match somewhat (like, look like they’re of the same quality and you didn’t decide to save on one twin’s costume so that you can splurge on the other), you’re SOL. Tinkerbell costumes exist at every price point for kids Carrie’s size, but Peter Pan costumes seem to only exist for kids Sam’s size and older, which makes no sense to me, but I only ever did B2B construction marketing, so maybe I just don’t know the market.

    1gsq

  • The tortoise and the hare. Cute, but what statement is it making about the child we dress as the hare?

    legitimatesaneitaliangreyhound-size_restricted(flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, you’re an asshole)

  • Literally any famous male/female pairing in history. They are literally all romantic couples, and I cringe out of my skin whenever I find pictures of twins dressed as, like. Danny Zuko and Sandy or Fred and Wilma Flintstone or Mickey and Minnie Mouse. No offense intended, because finding boy-girl twin Halloween costumes is WAY harder than you’d think, but my twins are not Lannisters.

original(if you’re not up to speed on Game of Thrones, first: you are luckier than I am; and second: these are the Lannisters, Jaime and Cersei, and they are twins and they have three children together. My twins are not Lannisters)

I keep coming back to Carrie being a princess of some sort, which narrows things down basically not at all. She loves princesses and all things sparkly and traditionally girly, and a princess costume would serve possibly quintuple duty at Renaissance Faires and Disney World and a couple of Halloweens. Theoretically, I like dressing her as Rapunzel, and I like dressing Isaac as Pascal the chameleon to match…

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…BUT then it ends up getting to the heart of the issue, that being Isaac not having a lot of identifiable interests yet. Well, no, that’s not true. He has interests. He likes climbing and cleaning. He’s a voracious eater. He loves laughing and exploring and going into and out of things. He likes things being where they belong, whether it’s a shoe on a foot or toys in a toy box. He likes it when I sing “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” to them at bedtime. 

But how do you costume any of that?

With Carrie, when someone asks me to describe her, I have the easiest time ever. Picking her up is like picking up a baby made of cotton candy and bubble gum bubbles. She’s a princess with delicate aires and a constant song, a love for sparkles and prettiness and animal companions, a need to have things Her Way Or Else. She’s a gremlin, picking up dirty things off the floor to eat, hiding in dusty places, making weird collections of stuff. She’s a bottle of Diet Coke and Pop Rocks shaken up. You can’t help but adore her.

But Isaac. He almost defies description. He’s determined and needs things to be in their place at all times. He needs his routines to be followed and will get genuinely upset if the Thing that usually follows The Other Thing does not follow The Other Thing. If he wants something, he will get it, no matter how much you try to deter him. He’s fast, voracious, and beyond clever. And then when he smiles, you just absolutely melt, because his smile is incredible, the kind of smile that makes you feel loved to the core. 

Which… I guess is a fine description, but honestly, which one is easier to costume: stereotypical bubblegum candy princess or a clever, determined, fast, voracious sweetheart? 

I think he can be a dragon. 

I know it doesn’t matter a TON one way or the other because they don’t even understand Halloween yet. When Sam was their age, I dressed him as an owl because I told myself, “oh yes, he likes owls!” which he didn’t super like owls, but whatever. He refused to wear most of the costume and cried about it a lot, and I got zero pictures of him in the full costume. It wasn’t until the following year, when he dressed up as Darth Vader, that he really started having fun with Halloween. 

So I know it doesn’t matter, and they won’t care, but I still feel a bit like I’m letting Isaac down because finding a costume that matches who he is and what he likes feels impossible.

So maybe he’ll be a dragon.

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In other decisions news, over the last week, I’ve been asked more times than I realized (at first) if Kyle and I were planning on having more kids. 

Honestly, I have no idea, which is what I’ve said. Whenever people asked me during my pregnancy with the twins, I’d say “NO” and wax eloquent about hysterectomies, but twin pregnancies are awful, and when you’re in the middle of one, it’s hard to feel positively about growing any more humans. Kyle and I were talking today about one incident during the twins’ pregnancy, when Sam told me “Mommy, the poop is everywhere!” and he’d gotten poop all over his bedroom and I was so pregnant and so exhausted that I couldn’t deal with it and begged Kyle to come home from work to save me. 

So I can say with confidence that, given a choice in the matter, I will never have more twins. Absolutely no, not ever, never. 

no

And there’s plenty of reason to have an overall “NO” on the books. Three kids is a fine number. I have my girl. Our bedroom setup works very well with three kids. A fourth kid would be a wild ride, financially speaking. I don’t know how my body would handle it. I’m just starting to get my body back into normal person shape after spending upwards of seven years either trying to get pregnant or being pregnant (that’s an additional +60 lbs that came from those seven years, too, which is fun). I want to gain some sense of identity and self outside of making babies. I want to have days with all my kids at school and me writing (or playing video games or, like, cleaning I guess). 

But on the flip side, there’s seven embryos on ice, and I went through hell to make them. No, I don’t want seven more kids, but I’d love one more girl someday, if we’re speaking from an emotional sense. I’d like to go through a pregnancy where (a) I know what I’m doing (like I didn’t with Sam); and (b) I’m not high risk solely because I’ve got more than one baby in me. I’d like to just do things normally and not be in a blind panic and then do the newborn days on Comparatively Easy Mode (because after you do twin newborns, any singleton anything is Comparatively Easy Mode). I’d like to have a matched set, two boys and two girls. I’d like to go into a delivery room knowing what I’m doing and how I’m doing it and with a playlist that I didn’t get to use with the twins.

Also I love babies.

So. I don’t know. And we’ve got time to make a decision. As long as we keep paying the $85/month storage fee, our embryos will be stored indefinitely. It’s the only way we CAN grow our family again, if we decide we want another child in the future. But I’m not thinking about it now (and I very much know Kyle isn’t), not more than off and on, as a back of the mind kind of thing. I’ve earned a respite from thinking about what my uterus is doing outside of my once-a-month adventures, from spending money on pregnancy tests and obsessively charting everything my body is doing. And I’m going to enjoy that respite. 

Starting with the Halloween costumes.

Mushroom & Mustard Pork Chops + Communication

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MUSHROOM & MUSTARD STUFFED PORK CHOPS
I have no idea where this recipe originally came from–I learned it from my parents, and I think they learned it from a magazine somewhere? Maybe? It probably dates back to around the 1970s in this incarnation, but it’s still good… if you like pork. And mushrooms. And mustard.

Ingredients

  • 1 boneless pork chop for every person eating (i.e., two for two people, three for three people, etc.)
  • 1 lb pasta of your choice (we always use tri-color rotini, but see below for notes)
  • 1 can cream of mushroom soup
  • 1 cup heavy cream for every person eating
  • Butter to coat frying pan
  • Mustard
  • Mustard powder
  • Tarragon
  • Parsley
  • Pepper
  • Salt
  • OPTIONAL: As many or as few sliced mushrooms as your heart desires.

Directions

Preheat oven to about 175 degrees F (should be the “keep warm” setting if your oven has one). Melt butter in frying pan over medium heat.

Use a fork to STAB THE EVER LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of each pork chop. Coat the stabbed side in yellow mustard. 

Place pork chops in frying pan, mustard side down. Use fork to STAB THE EVER LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of non mustard side and coat that side in mustard. Now there are two mustard sides.

Let pork sit for 5-7 minutes before flipping, then cook on opposite side for another 5-7 minutes. Remove pork from frying pan and place in warmed oven. 

Add can of cream of mushroom soup to frying pan without rinsing (gotta keep all those good pork bits in there!), along with yellow mustard (to taste; I like to taste a LOT) and cream. Add mustard powder, tarragon, parsley, pepper, salt, and mushrooms as well.

Combine ingredients and set to simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes.

Serve pork sliced into bite-size pieces over bed of pasta and sauce. Enjoy.

NOTES:

  • You can use whatever pasta you like for this dish, but I’ve found it works best with short cut pastas, usually either tri-color varieties (rotini, penne, and radiatore are perennial favorites) or with egg noodles to make a sort of pork stroganoff. If you use a longer cut pasta, you’ll want a pappardelle or else a spinach linguine/fettuccine for best results.
  • Your pork should cook thoroughly between the frying pan and the oven, but make sure you check it for doneness! Pork should not be consumed when it’s under 145 degrees F. Unless you’re super into parasites and salmonella poisoning, in which case, go nuts.
  • I’m a bad Millennial and use canned mushrooms when I make this dish, usually just a can of sliced mushrooms that you can pick up at pretty much any store. If you’re a fancier Millennial than I am, you can slice your mushrooms yourself; just make sure they have time to cook down to a nice tender consistency before serving.

*

Sam has been in school for a grand total of two weeks now, which seems both like an eternity and like no time at all. We’ve all sort of slid into a routine of getting things done at night or in the morning, of going to the bus stop for a certain time in the afternoon and spending the school hours on various baby things until that afternoon time when Sam gets home. Of setting out clothes the night before so I don’t have to get up super early to help him choose an appropriate outfit and making sure everything he needs is tucked neatly into his backpack before he leaves. Of newly enforced strictness about the TV (after all, his pre-K didn’t care much if he was a couple of minutes late) and less screen time.

He’s come home with plenty of stories for us. After a particularly rough day last week, his teacher made him star of the day the next day, which mostly meant that he helped out more around the classroom, but it still made him happier about being there. He’s had to hang out on the wall at recess twice, once by himself (for pushing another kid in line while they were heading outside, which he knows not to do) and once with his best friend Hunter, together but far apart (they were… “blowing on each other” he says? And weren’t mad about it? But were still on the wall? Sigh, I miss getting daily reports from his teachers). He’s doing well, as far as we can see, where academics are concerned, but then again, academics thus far consist of sorting things by color and shape and spelling the words “the” and “red,” which he’s been able to read for about six months now. 

(small personal victories: I was determined that he’d have the basics of reading down before kindergarten and HE DID! Now to try that with the twins…)

So it’s… a process. A transition. I hope he doesn’t end up being That Kid, who always starts recess on the wall (I’m pretty sure most of it’s just that transition period between the sort of relaxed structure of his old school and the stricter one of the new school), which has mostly meant just trying to talk to him when the day is over.

BUT as any parent with kids in school will tell you, that’s harder than it seems. Instinctively, you want to draw out every detail about your kid’s day the second they step off the bus. You want to know everything. Who did they talk to? What did they play at recess? Did they like their lunch? What new words did they learn? What new books did they read? (They read “Red” and I’m so excited about it!) What special class did they have today? What did they do in the special class? 

And then your kid is like “I don’t want to talk about it” or their post school answers end up being one-syllable grunts. “Stuff. I dunno. Yeah. Fine. I guess.” And you wonder if they actually were at school or if they’re leading a secret double life as a teeny tiny international super spy. 

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What we’ve mostly discovered with Sam is that he needs time to decompress at the end of the day, and that we’re most likely to get the full story of his day at bedtime, after the twins are in their room and he’s had a chance to wind down with some screen time and ruckus and little boy things (ranging from Legos to “WHY ARE YOU THROWING THAT???” to “STOP TRYING TO SUPLEX THEM THEY’RE BABIES”). That’s when he’ll say, “Okay, I’m going to tell you,” and Kyle and I listen and affirm his feelings and help him to feel better about the day. If he has a rough day, we tell him that we’ll try again tomorrow. If he has a great day, we tell him that tomorrow may be even better. We try to end the day on a positive note.

We’re not always successful, but we try.

Most of his communication nowadays is about science, and I’m dying to chat with his teachers about how much he loves science, because I completely forgot to list that on his “things he likes” paper (I listed “Minecraft” and “Legos” and “Star Wars” because those are his top three Things, but science legitimately trumps all of them). He’s so incredibly curious about the natural world, and he loves learning everything he can about it. Mostly, he focuses on space–it is, after all, the scientific gateway drug–but thanks to Octonauts, he’s also been really into animals lately; and then he’s also been really into weather the last couple of days. 

(today, we watched a bunch of Weather Channel augmented reality videos–I can’t recommend them highly enough–and Sam just fell absolutely in love with Jim Cantore, which is the cutest damn thing)

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(I also adored a weatherman when I was five. His name was Dick Albert, he was my parents’ age, and I once made him a Christmas tree ornament that I labeled “For Dice” and my mom still has it)

I maintain what I think is a healthy amount of worry about his schooling. I hope that he’s challenged but not so challenged that he loses interest. I hope he behaves himself but doesn’t lose his spark. I hope he makes new friends but doesn’t lose his old friends (so far so good on that one–we are, per his reports, batting 1000 in terms of playing with old best friends Hunter and Kaia at recess)

(they had one day last week where they were, apparently, all Spider Man: Sammy as Peter Parker, Hunter as Miles Morales, and Kaia as Gwen Stacy)

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Then there’s the little ones. 

Isaac, in particular, has me gnawing my fingernails in worry. He’s right where should be with his fine and gross motor skills–he’s our little runner, and he never stops moving. When it comes to communication, though, well…

You’re not supposed to compare babies, which is 100% impossible when you have twins because you have another baby RIGHT THERE, so even when you don’t mean to, you end up just looking at the one who’s ahead and then looking at the other who’s behind and being like “…well? Aren’t you going to do that too?” You don’t mean to and you’re not supposed to, but the dumb part of your brain that doesn’t listen to what you’re supposed to do does it anyway.

Communication-wise, Carrie’s doing great. She’s slowly moving into my favorite phase of language acquisition, which is the parrot phase, where your child just repeats everything you say right back to you as a question, and you want to get mad because you’re trying very hard to explain that they shouldn’t bite other children, but when they look up at you with big eyes and repeat, “We don’t bite our fwends?” in that high-pitched voice, your willpower crumbles. She’s got a good dozen or more words consistently (to either my shame or my pride–not sure which yet–three or four of those words are Disney princesses), and she’s got hand signs for two or three more words. She’s frequently able to tell us when she wants something and what that something is. It’s very nice.

Isaac, not so much. At best, he has three-ish words: mama, dada, and Wubba. He also makes kissy noises at the cat. The trouble is that he doesn’t do any of that consistently or in a way that’s helpful for literally anyone, least of all himself. If he loses his Wubbanub (which is his pacifier with a stuffed animal attached, they are perfect, buy one for your baby today!), instead of saying “Ba! Ba!” like I know he can, he’ll stand in front of me and yell, constant long “AAAAH!” sounds at higher and higher volumes. 

Worse than the yelling, though, is the expression on his face. I don’t want to read too much into it, but it seems like pure frustration that I’m not understanding what he needs and that he can’t communicate it back to me. The longer he yells without me getting it, the more distraught he looks, the more his eyes fill with tears, and the more my heart breaks. 

I want him to have words or some way of communicating with the world. If it turns out he’s autistic, I don’t want him to be neurotypical or anything but himself, but I also don’t want him to be unable to express his wants and needs. I don’t care if it means he has a sign with pictures on it or sign language or a computer or what; I just want him to be able to express himself because I can see how much it hurts him when he can’t.

Anyway, I say all of this because he has a meeting with a speech and language pathologist on Friday for an evaluation and sort of game planning session, hopefully to move forwards into speech therapy for him. Which, again, I don’t want to force him into a mold he doesn’t fit, but I want to see that pain and frustration go away when he’s able to actually communicate that his Wubbanub is missing or that he needs a diaper or wants a bottle. 

As for Carrie, she’s just an absolute peach. She’s honestly dangerously cute, always posing with her chin on her hands and saying, “Cheeeeese!” for me. It should be illegal, really, being that cute, but I can’t complain. 

She and Isaac have started bonding together more now that Sam is in school most of the day. They bring each other their respective lovies when they see the other is upset, or they’ll bring each other clothes and try to get each other dressed. It’s a relief; I was wondering if they’d ever like each other or if it would always be World War III between them. And battles still break out very easily, but they’re usually because we have one of something and they both want it. 

(this even applies when we have two of something but Carrie’s is prettier–Isaac, for instance, is not terribly impressed with tortoiseshell sunglasses but adores Carrie’s sparkly rainbow shades)

They’re sweet. And they’re good. All three of them. And as always, I just hope I’m doing right by them, overall.

 

First Day of School Stuffed Cookies

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FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL STUFFED COOKIES
Recipe borrows liberally from Tasty’s recipes for The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies and Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. Check out the notes below for variations! 

Ingredients
1 ¼ cups bread flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp baking powder
¾ cup white sugar
¾ cup dark brown sugar
1 cup butter, toasted
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 ½ cups chocolate chips
Stuffing (hot fudge, Nutella, peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, caramel), chilled

Directions

  1. Melt one cup (2 sticks) butter and bring to a boil, stirring constantly to ensure an even brown. Once you notice dark flecks in the bottom of the boiling butter, transfer to a liquid measuring cup and allow to sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes. *note: if liquid butter does not reach the 1 cup marker, add water until it reaches that line*
  2. Sift or whisk together flour, kosher salt, and baking powder in a medium bowl. 
  3. Cream cooled butter, white sugar, and dark brown sugar in a large bowl. 
  4. Add vanilla extract and eggs to the large bowl and combine thoroughly. 
  5. Gradually add dry ingredients to the large bowl (about ⅓ at a time), mixing until just combined. 
  6. Fold in 2 cups of chocolate chips and other add-ins. 
  7. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours (overnight if you’re an A+ student!). 
  8. Preheat oven to 375°F. 
  9. Use 3 oz. ice cream scoop to form large balls of cookie dough. Flatten balls between the palms of your hands and rest on cookie sheet.
  10. Place fillings (about ½ tbsp per cookie) in the center of the cookie and seal cookie dough around the filling. 
  11. Top each cookie with chocolate chips and other toppings.
  12. Bake cookies for 10-13 minutes. Allow to cool 2 minutes on cookie sheet before transferring to cooling rack. 

NOTES:
I use salted butter for my cookie recipe because I really like the contrast of a saltier cookie with sweet chocolate chips (using unsalted butter is a bit too cloying for me), but unsalted butter will work just as well!

I usually only mix standard, semi-sweet chocolate chips into these cookies, but other add-ins can really boost them to a new level! Try any of these: 

  • Chopped dark chocolate. Use a bar of dark chocolate (not bitter chocolate, unless you’re REALLY into that) and give it a rough chop before folding it into your dough alongside the chocolate chips. 
  • Mini chocolate chips. Substitute for about a cup of regular chocolate chips to give some texture contrast to your dough.
  • Espresso powder. Add one tsp after creaming your butter and sugars. 

The possibilities for fillings and toppings are absolutely endless! I tend to stick with just chocolate chips and rainbow sprinkles (to give the cookies a celebratory flair!), but you can top and fill with any number of things! Experiment; that’s what fun in the kitchen is about! 

*

I always hate when I’m looking for a recipe for something and I have to scroll through hours of reading on somebody’s life before I get to the actual recipe. I get that it’s a THING, and I get that it’s all about self-expression, but look. If you’re coming to my blog because you googled “chocolate chip cookie recipe” and this somehow popped up instead of the Food Network or Epicurious or something, here you go. The recipe is at the top, and if you want to read about my life, you can keep going while the cookies bake or something.

67396929_10156380619950592_4343912859269332992_o(they’ll look like this after they bake, for reference)

It’s early August, and Sam is less than three weeks away from starting kindergarten. I’ve got all his supplies here in my office, still sitting in Target bags (more supplies than needed, because I was a bad student and tried to find his supply list online… and the list I found was The Most Wrong, so now I have a bunch of pencils and erasers and things that he’d probably need at some point, just not this year). I’ve got his metaphorical Hogwarts letter with all of the instructions and a little fish with his teacher’s name on it. I know his best friend from daycare is going to be in his class with him. I’ve no idea what bus he’ll be taking home in the afternoons, but if this year’s routes are similar to last year’s, he’ll be getting home a little past three in the afternoon–hopefully while the twins are still napping. 

We’re winding summer down slowly with trips to the beach and company picnics. This past weekend, we packed everyone up in the van and drove up to Hampton Beach in New Hampshire, an experience that fell squarely in the middle of the stressful things scale. On the one hand, Isaac got carsick three separate times during the drive and then had a huge diaper blowout after about two hours on the beach. On the other hand, he, Carrie, and Sam seemed to have a blast despite the sickness. Sam and Kyle built a sandcastle together, and the twins huddled with me under our beach umbrella, experimentally playing with sand and eating Goldfish crackers (and sometimes eating sand, too, because they’re babies). 

It was a typical outing for a family with young children. Kyle and I looked at it as a balanced affair, with frustration that having young kids meant we couldn’t do as much around Hampton as we otherwise would have (they have some great arcades and candy shops, and even though I’m trying to lose weight, I have a hard time turning down a beachside candy shop), relief that things went smoothly aside from Isaac’s bodily fluids, and happiness that it was a good day overall. It lasted just long enough that everyone was happily tired when we got home, not so brief that the hour and a half drive seemed a waste of time, not so long that we were exhausted.

And today was Kyle’s company picnic, at a conference center about 40 minutes from our house. I say “conference center,” which makes it sound like it was some sort of buttoned up meeting space and very dull; really, it was more like a summer camp-slash-carnival, with lawn games and bounce houses and cotton candy and face painting and so on. They had some great typical cook-out food (not quite barbecue–hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken, plus a bunch of sides) and some free ice cream, and all-in-all, it was a nice set-up. 

Trouble was that it was LOUD. This is par for the course at every company event I’ve attended for every company ever. The DJ always has the music turned up to 11, the fans are always going to keep the tents cool, there’s a lot of talking and buzzing and noise. I gather that this isn’t something that bugs most people, but it makes it hard for me to engage with anyone–my brain just won’t filter out unimportant sounds like the conversation way over there, the constant roar of the fan, the faint buzz of some fly that wants my lunch. 

Basically, I spent most of today staring blankly into space and probably looking really strange. 

The times I didn’t spend staring blankly into space were fun. The babies enjoyed their cook-out fare, mostly (good: chicken, corn, pasta salad, hot dogs; bad: bell peppers, zucchini). Sam played in the bounce house and obstacle course until he was too sweaty and exhausted to do much more than whine at us. Kyle and I split a cherry cotton candy, and Sam and I giggled our way through a pair of ice cream sandwiches. The twins were adorable, my hair and lipstick were awesome… it was mostly good.

But I am tired. 

So is Isaac, for that matter. He didn’t nap at all today, which meant that the afternoon following the picnic was flavored with his exhausted sobbing at all points, with him nearly nodding off while standing on my lap and then crying when he realized he wasn’t actually completely asleep. I wish we had a clearer picture of what’s going on with him, if only so that we could plan for days like today, maybe with noise cancelling headphones or with frequent breaks or with one of us staying home with him.

He can’t go for an evaluation most places until he’s 18 months old, which is frustrating. He and Carrie turn 17 months old less than a week from today, but the Early Intervention autism specialist can’t test him until he’s 18 months old, and I really want to go through them because otherwise, wait times for an autism screening are many, many months long. And like I’ve been saying, if it turns out that he’s autistic, I’m not bummed out or even slightly disappointed; it’d be nice to have another brain that works like mine in the house, someone to sympathize with me when everything is just too much. 

BUT I also want him to have better coping skills than I have, and to know from a decently early point if he’s going to need more assistance in any area–if he’s going to be like me and deal with frustratingly heavy executive dysfunction and sensory overload issues; if he’s going to need help communicating with us; what accommodations he’ll need to live a happy and healthy life. And I’d like to know that stuff sooner rather than later. 

Sigh. I don’t know. It’s not a super rough waiting game, because at the end of the day, we’re probably only waiting another month, and the screening centers our service coordinator suggested to us haven’t gotten back to me yet anyway. But it’s still frustrating to have no news whatsoever, not in a good or bad way, just because we’re waiting.

And then there’s Carrie, just running laps past every milestone, perfecting her toddle, adding new words to her vocabulary every day. She’s frustratingly cute; she’ll say ‘uh oh!’ or shake her head while saying ‘mm-mm!’ if she’s caught doing something she shouldn’t be. She has her stuffed Bear that she found after my mom brought some boxes to our house a couple of weeks ago; said Bear is now her constant companion, and between him and her stuffed Ariel doll, she’s constantly on about her favorite little friends. She’s impish and giggly and basically everything you’d want out of a little girl, almost stereotypically so. All she needs are the little pigtails and she’ll be sitting squarely in the “Platonic form of Daughter” box. 

She and Isaac get along better these days than they used to, though they still fight over toys and books and my lap. They give each other kisses pretty frequently, team up to accomplish whatever baby feat they’re working on, hide in their “clubhouse” (which is underneath and behind their high chairs, against the wall), and find each other’s lovies whenever the other is crying (Carrie will actually toddle around calling “Wubba! Wubba!” when Isaac loses his pacifier-slash-Wubbanub; Isaac throws Bear at Carrie whenever she cries). I think that’s my one fear with Isaac having autism; I worry that it will affect their relationship. I don’t think it will, but I want them to be close, or at least as close as they can be. 

But. But but but. 

School starts soon, and there are cookies to bake. Good night.