parenting

Unmasked

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I was born in 1983 and grew up in an age when girls weren’t really diagnosed with autism unless the symptoms they presented severely interfered with their daily life. A girl like me, quiet and awkward, a little weird, a little too obsessed with the Thing Du Jour (American Girl dolls, Mandie books, My Little Pony, Barbies, spooky stuff, etc.), mostly gets good grades but really struggles with homework in subjects she doesn’t like… I flew under the radar. I didn’t stim or do anything that would make me seem weird. I didn’t freak out when the sounds in the cafetorium/cafeteria were too much for me to handle, I just got really quiet and didn’t participate in the lunchtime conversation. I excelled in certain subjects and flailed in others. I was flawless when it came to standardized testing, but then got an 8/100 on a math test the same week I soared into the 93rd percentile for the NMSQT. 

I could talk, and I took care of myself physically, enough that I didn’t usually warrant a second glance. Oh, I got bullied and made fun of in junior high–brutally at some points–but I flew under everyone’s radar for the most part. I don’t think anyone ever clocked me as weird enough to maybe be autistic, because back then, in the 1990s and early 2000s, autism wasn’t as well understood as it is today, so my cocktail of manifestations didn’t alarm anyone.

That and I masked. 

Masking is pretty common in our world. We all wear masks sometimes to hide certain aspects of our personalities depending on the situation; for example, if you’re at an important job interview, you’re not exactly going to be showing off the part of your personality that likes to do keg stands or the part of your personality that likes to lounge around in the nude on weekends. There’s nothing wrong with either those traits or the masking of those traits. It’s just something that you do to survive socially, because your new boss does not need to know that you like a gentle breeze ‘round your privates on Sunday afternoons.

Where autism is concerned, masking is a lot more… consuming, let’s say. Autism isn’t a personality trait that shows up in certain situations (like even if I do like to run around naked on weekends, I don’t do that in the office); it’s the way your brain is wired. Not wrong, just different. The trouble is that different can be socially damning. 

I remember when I was younger, there was a kid on my school bus whose autism manifested much more noticeably than mine. While I would sit quietly and stare out the window, focusing on the cool sensation of the glass against my forehead, he would talk and flail and laugh, and the kids from the back of the bus bullied him mercilessly, sometimes going so far as to sexually harass him. He stood out too much; it was social suicide. 

And, well, I learned from that and from other small situations as I grew up that letting those weird parts of you show is too dangerous. That it’ll get you made fun of and torn to shreds. That you’ll be alone. I saw the girl who came from a lower income family, whose clothes and hair were always dirty, who always sat alone. She was too different; she was alone. I saw the kids who I now regret not befriending, who went on and on for days about D&D and all of those fantasy stories, and I saw how people avoided and laughed at them, and I learned a lesson. They were too different; they were mocked. 

You hide things, you know? Don’t talk obsessively about Disney World, that’s weird. Are you excited about that thing? Don’t flap your hands or bounce or do a little dance; that’s weird. Are you too tired to think? Don’t play with your hair; that’s unhygienic (Mrs. Dube, if you ever read this, I hope you feel like shit for what you did to all of us in your class). Everyone is having fun at this party, and even though it’s too much for you, smile anyway. People think it’s weird when you talk to them without meeting their eyes; make eye contact, even though it hurts. 

In a way, I sometimes felt like an alien, trying to learn the way that the world was supposed to work. It’s part of why I loved being onstage–it was like an evaluation of my ability to act like a human being. “SEE?” I could say, as I got into one of my character parts (I had so much fun with those). “LOOK AT HOW GOOD AT HUMANING I AM!” And I wasn’t weird or different, I’d unlocked the secret to being human like everyone else. 

And then the lights went out, I got offstage, and I was right back to being bad at being a person again.

(this all sounds very sad, but I promise, there’s good coming)

But one thing nobody talks about, when they talk about masking and autism and all of that, is the beautiful freedom of unmasking: of finding someone or several someones who catch a glimpse beneath your mask, show how much they love you anyway or even because of what they see, and help you feel comfortable enough to remove your mask completely, to say, “fuck it, I am who I am.”

My most obvious example of this is Kyle. Over the early years of our relationship, he peeled back layers of my mask bit by bit, knowing what was underneath but letting me take my time to show him. And now, my god, how comfortable I am around him! We were watching The Mandalorian a little while ago, the episode where Moff Gideon reveals that he has the darksaber, and I shrieked and started flapping my hands, which I never do because I know it’s a weird thing, that even if I have the instinct to do it, people don’t like it when you do it, but with Kyle, it just hit me that maybe it’s okay, that maybe he loves that about me, and he does, and he smiled at me and just said that he knew I’d love that, and that was that.

GOSH I love him. 

And I’ve been thinking about it, and I realized that my first intentional unmasking came when I did my semester at Oxford back in 2004. Away from people who knew the masked me, away from anyone who knew the big long plans I had for my life and the narrative strand I wanted my life to take, I felt free to just… be. Not to the extent of flapping my hands excitedly about things, but I went in exhausted, torn down from a shitty relationship right before I left, and basically stripped down to my essentials to a point where I just… couldn’t be bothered. After all, it was only 100 days, and if my housemates thought I was too weird, we’d all be going to different corners of the world after that anyway.

But they didn’t think I was too weird. Pretty weird, I’m sure (I am pretty weird, after all), but they liked me, the me with only the barest of masks on, and the best part about that was how it allowed me to solidify who I am, not just which mask I’m wearing. And since that point, I’ve been a lot less interested in hiding any part of me: autistic, neurotypical, pleasant, unpleasant. I am who I am, warts and all. 

I also look back and think about the handful of “ones that got away,” you know, the people with whom you know you could have had something special, that even when you’re perfectly happy in the life you’ve got now, you regret the way things ended. And I realized that the ones that got away, the ones I wish I had actually connected with for longer than a millisecond, they all peeked beneath that mask and tried to let me be myself… and I got scared and ran, because even with that reassurance that hey, I love you for who you actually are, it’s hard to trust. 

Because you know, you get people who want to remake the mask into something more to their liking or you get people who trust the mask is reality, but when someone genuinely wants to see what’s beneath the mask before you’re ready, even if they like what they see, you get scared. 

Anyway.

Isaac, so far, has no mask. He looks to his brother and sister for information on how he should behave as a person–it’s fascinating to watch in real time–but he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than who he is. And he is an absolute delight of a child. He’s creative and funny and an absolute little shit in the best way possible. 

(parents know that when you’re calling your kid a little shit, it’s not because you don’t love them; it’s because they figured out how to do something they weren’t supposed to do in a way that you can’t help feeling a little bit proud of. Like, no, you’re not supposed to have eaten 32 cookies before dinner, but the Rube Goldberg device you built to access the Oreos is technically amazing and I’m sending in your application for Mensa while also sending you to your room)

We call him our little rogue, because we are a D&D family, after all. Sam, with his strong sense of personal rules and tendency to charge headfirst into everything (walls included) is our paladin. Carrie, always performing and able to reduce you to giggles or tears with a single look, is our bard. But Isaac, climbing and sneaking and figuring out every possible puzzle, is our little rogue. 

He likes to build and set things up in particular ways. He uses the books in his bedroom to make smaller rooms–setting them up at the foot of the bed or against the wall to make into a room with a door that opens and closes. And sure, he tears the pages out and tosses them around like confetti (we are down to about 3 books that he hasn’t destroyed, save for the older ones that come into the room for bedtime and leave afterwards), but the amazing creativity and cleverness he exhibits to build his own little rooms like that just astounds me. 

And then his cars. He’s doing the stereotypical lining up cars thing, but he does it in such a way that the cars all face out of the window through which he watches cars coming up and down our street. And I just flail because what a guy! What a clever little dude! What an amazing mind at work! 

We never discourage him from stimming; instead, we stim with him, the whole family gets involved. We turn on his favorite music, and the five of us just rock with him, and he has this HUGE smile on his face because he’s not alone. His family gets him. We’re not going to stop him from being who he is. 

I think the fact of him eventually masking is inevitable; even in a more enlightened world, 30 years after I was a weird kid combing her hair with a fork in the first grade, you can only deviate from the norm so much before people start giving you a wide berth. He’ll have a teacher scold him at some point for rocking too much during a test or he’ll get teased for talking too much about cars with another person. He’ll learn to hide those aspects of himself for a while, around people who don’t know him well enough to love him for who he is. And I hate it.

But.

I hope that Isaac understands this: that he doesn’t need to mask around us. That we’ve seen the way he’s made from the very beginning. We know why he does what he does, and we love it about him. Isaac, unmasked, is the person we love and always will. 

November

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This month has been here for roughly two weeks, and it’s already established itself as wild, even by 2020 standards, and as a month that nobody understands why it’s here already, as if the rest of 2020 hadn’t lasted for 70 years. But here we are, November 12, and I’m overwhelmed with all of the things I’ve accumulated in my mind this month.

(the arrows are the things I’ve accumulated in my mind this month, for reference)

We’ll start with the end of last month.

On October 26, I went in for laparoscopic surgery to see if I had endometriosis and, if I did, remove as much of it as possible. The surgery didn’t make me nervous in the least; when you’ve been through as many cycles of IVF as I have, things like anesthesia or the usual surgery worries kind of roll off you like water off a duck’s back. I was actually kind of looking forward to all of it, because it meant a day where I wouldn’t have to juggle the kids and everything about the house but could just rest and heal.

The surgery itself went about as well as I could hope, though my doctor didn’t find any endometriosis. He did find a non-zero number of adhesions in my abdomen—basically scar tissue glueing my organs together—from a previous surgery, probably my C-section, and he removed those. And honestly, that seems to have done the trick? My only pain right now is from sciatica, which is a BITCH, but the abdominal pain seems to have utterly vanished, and I’m LOVING it. It’s a good step on the road towards eventually yeeting my uterus and ovaries into the sun, because those bitches have been nothing but trouble for me. Couldn’t even manage their biological function without scientific intervention, stab and crush me on a monthly basis for the past 25 years… fuck them utterly.

Even though my adhesions likely came about as a result of my C-section, I’m still glad I had said surgery, and I still look back on it with a lot of fondness. It was a really good experience, genuinely—from it being 100% my choice to the way I was cared for before, during, and after the procedure, I wouldn’t change a thing. But that’s a rant for another day. 

So I’ve been recovering from that surgery for about two weeks now. I’m at about 85-90% functional most of the time, though I still get tired way more easily than I did before the surgery. I also have had to get creative with twin parenting, since I wasn’t supposed to pick up anything heavier than 10 lbs for the first two weeks after the surgery, and the twins are much more than 10 lbs. And they’re two, which means they’re getting into EVERYTHING and living life on the edge. Isaac’s latest game has been getting as close to the television as possible, despite the playpen fence we have around it, and my only tactic for dealing with that is to pathetically holler for Kyle until he’s able to come and rescue our son from trying to pick Donald Duck up from the TV screen.

Carrie, meanwhile, doesn’t need to be picked up because she merrily plops herself right in my lap at all times, sometimes to disastrous effect. The other day, I was sitting on the couch, minding my own business, and Carrie pranced up to me and proceeded to throw herself—elbow first—right on top of the incision at my belly button, popping it right open. Fortunately, it’s since closed back up (laparoscopic incisions heal pretty quickly, and I got on it with a bandaid right after), but oy. Recovering from literally anything with one toddler is difficult; recovering with twins is basically impossible, and it’s a miracle that I haven’t been eviscerated.

In the midst of all this, an election happened. 

Fortunately, Kyle and I had requested absentee ballots when our state offered them to everyone in light of the pandemic. We voted sometime in mid October, with me telling Sam how important it was to choose political leaders with good character (because we were studying good character in social studies and still are—citizens with good character are respectful, responsible, kind, and honest, per his curriculum). And then the surgery happened, and wouldn’t you know it, I was sound asleep at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday when the election was called for Joe Biden. 

Thank God. Like I am not religious, but thank God.

It’s hard to emphasize how difficult it’s been the last four years to raise kids to be proud Americans, to be citizens of character when the leadership in this country was so desperately lacking in it. I imagine it was similarly hard when Bill Clinton was off being a sleaze bag in the 90s (before anyone gets on me for “tribal thinking” or what the fuck ever). You want to tell your kids that character matters, that it’s important to be respectful and responsible and kind and honest, but then you look at the leadership in your country, and the people in the highest offices are the opposite of those things and, what’s more, so many, so VERY many people who voted them in have merrily embraced hatred and spite to the point where they’d rather see their fellow citizens die than listen to them. How can you teach your kid not to be a bully when the bullies seem to have all the power? How can you teach your kid the power and value of respect and responsibility and kindness and honesty when the world seems to reward the opposite?

Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice of candidate, but it’s refreshing to see someone who’s treating their colleagues and fellow citizens with respect, regardless of political belief, who’s responsibly planning his transition into the presidency despite all of the obstacles being thrown in his way, who goes above and beyond to treat individuals with kindness, and who, while not 100% honest, is at least not telling me that my eyes and ears are the ones lying. It feels good to be able to envision telling Sam about the president next year and not biting my tongue. 

But I don’t want to dive into it too much, mostly because I just don’t want to deal with the people bitching about this whole thing. They can all go hang out on Pander or Parlor or whatever-the-fuck, and I’ll be over here, sleeping a little bit easier these nights.

And there’s light at the end of the pandemic tunnel! I was already feeling better because of the election news, and then boom, the Pfizer vaccine is over 90% effective. I’ve been reading up on it, and this translates to only needing about 60% of the population vaccinated for herd immunity—how awesome is that? My biggest fear with any vaccine was the sheer number of people who wouldn’t take it—not from justified concerns but because it might give them 5G or something (ha! I wish! I could use a personal hotspot!)—negating its benefits. But here’s another area in which I’m breathing so much easier.

I’ve been thinking so much about what I want to do once things have cleared up, and I think one big thing will be taking the kids down for a three or four day weekend in Philadelphia. It’s educational, what with the Liberty Bell and all; it’s close to Sesame Place, with its autism friendly atmosphere; and I 100% need to find and hug Gritty, avatar of chaos that he is.

And then, I think, a road trip down to Texas again, with stops in Philly and Atlanta. Let the kids see their grandparents again, finally, see more of the country again—GOD, how I’ve missed being outside this little bubble. 

The twins are past due for their first trip to Boston, so that’s on the docket. We’ll take them with their stroller, probably down by Quincy Market and the Harbor, and we’ll ride trains to get there. Sam wasn’t old enough to appreciate being on a train the last time we took one into the city, but he definitely is now, and I can’t wait to take him. 

We’ll go to the mall again, eat in the food court, get truffles from Godiva, and browse the shops slowly and without worrying how crowded they are. The kids can go to the indoor playground and run around to their hearts’ content; they can go to the new outdoor playground down the street and do the same, no masks or worries. 

Kyle and I will have a long overdue anniversary date at the Melting Pot, and maybe another date at Chili’s, not because it’s exactly fine dining but because those are our places.

In September, the kids will all go back to school, Sammy to second grade and the twins to preschool. I’ll have precious quiet hours in the house to write more, to clean up more, to feel my own skin again. I’ll run errands without wondering if I’ve got enough masks or enough clean masks. We’ll go to the movies and eat popcorn and not care if the theater is packed. 

(…well. We’ll care a little)

We’ll see our extended family, my aunties and uncles and cousins that we’ve missed since last Christmas. I’ll see my cousins’ new little babies, and we’ll celebrate being together again with Feasts. 

(I feel like all of our third generation kids need “cousin crew” shirts for that inevitable meeting)

Sam wants to go to the beach, and of course we will, and build sandcastles and not mind that it’s crowded on a summer day. Maybe I’ll even wear a bathing suit this time. Like, it’s not LIKELY, but it’s possible. 

In other words, November has done to me what I never expected any month in 2020 to do: it’s made me back into an optimist, someone who’s looking forward to 2021, not just because it’s no longer 2020 but because it seems like it may bring something good after all. 

…but we’ll see. Until next time!

Something I never thought I’d say…

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Little known fact about me: I was homeschooled for a year.

If I’m remembering correctly, the reasoning went something like this. My grades had been slipping for two years at that point, due to what I now recognize as my first ever bout with depression (because no, eleven-year-old me, wishing that you’d get hit by a car is not normal). I remember a lot of talk about me not knowing how to study, which is fair enough I suppose, and a lot of blame being cast at the decision of the school district to put me in a fourth grade class that was, charitably speaking, a disaster. 

(the same fourth grade class in which a boy gave me an index card with pee on it, in which I was so bored by the material that I took to drawing on my desk for hours at a time, in which I was a permanent member of the “100+ club” because I’d learned two years before that 0x0=0)

(if I’m casting blame for my depression, it falls at the feet of puberty hormones, a pair of abysmal school years in a row, and plenty of bullying)

So I was homeschooled for eighth grade. My sister was homeschooled the same year, because the district was thoroughly messing up the accommodations for her learning disability (at one point, someone caught her closing herself in her locker during a break in classes because she didn’t want to do her assignment). My brother was homeschooled the same year because it wouldn’t be fair to leave him out. 

It was a weird year. I know that, at the start, I was… reluctant, to put it gently, and by “reluctant,” I mean that I remember having some screaming afternoons for no reason beyond that things were weird; but I eventually got the hang of learning at home, especially after we got into a routine that largely consisted of schoolwork ending by 12:30 every day and plenty of free time afterwards.

My parents used mostly religious curricula; I don’t think it was all A Beka, which was the In Thing at the time, but I feel like I used A Beka for math. My science book talked a lot about how evolution wasn’t a real thing and came with some supplementary materials on that subject, including a book I loved called “Dinosaurs by Design,” which had lots of informational pages on dinosaurs sandwiched between illustrations of, for example, Adam and Eve hanging out with a parasaurolophus. 

(I had to look up how to spell that, don’t judge me, when I was in my dinosaur phase, everything got its name from The Land Before Time)

The history text wasn’t terribly memorable. The English/language arts stuff was great, but then again, I’ve always been an E/LA person. I had to memorize a bunch of poems, and while I don’t remember how any of them went, I remember the act of memorization. For math, I did Algebra I, and I cheated so very much. Whenever my mom would leave me alone to take a test, I’d grab her answer key and input everything, which she must have known about, but it happened anyway. And then in June, as I was preparing to head back to public school (having apparently learned how to study), I had to take the Algebra I final at the high school and panicked because I’d been cheating all year and now my inability to math would be public knowledge and my parents would be furious and it was the end of the world…

…and then I got a 93?

Oh, and then every week or so, we hoofed it up to the nearest Christian school for my sister’s in-school therapy (I think? I don’t remember much because I spent the entire time reading Baby-Sitter’s Club books and longing after the smell of pizza in the other room), and most of what I remember about that was sitting in the front seat of our van singing off-key along with my Sound of Music CD.

Even 20 years later, I can’t decide if it was a good or a bad experience; honestly, I mostly settle on neutral. I don’t know if I actually learned to study or if my depression just ebbed somewhat. I was in honors and AP classes throughout high school, so something went right somewhere. And I remember, my first day back at high school, being beyond surprised when the friends I’d last seen in June two years prior not only remembered me but were incredibly happy to see me. 

(hahaha, thirteen-year-old me was such a miserable child, someone please go back in time and help her and also please de-frizz her hair)

*

Meanwhile, in the world of today, we’ve decided to homeschool Sam for the school year. 

I’m excited for it and simultaneously terrified and worried, because I don’t want to pull him out of school this year, but it honestly seems like the best option. Even in Massachusetts, where a lot of people have been doing really well social distancing and wearing masks, we’ve started seeing Covid-19 cases creep back up, which bodes incredibly ill for the school year. Had we kept up with the low numbers of the summer, I’d have been happy to send Sam back for at least a few weeks so that he could’ve had access to the school’s counselling services and learned to use the distance learning tools they’d set up for the students. 

But the numbers started to creep up.

And ultimately, Sam is… not the best at being self-guided. If we set him up on my computer or on a laptop and said “you need to do your schoolwork,” it wouldn’t take very long for him to end up on YouTube watching Markiplier play a game in which he’s a piece of bread (this is a thing, apparently). I don’t blame him for that, because he’s six. I barely know any adults who, when presented with doing work versus watching videos on YouTube, will easily choose the former. 

It’s the rock and the hard place I’ve been talking about. School isn’t safe. Distance learning won’t work for him. What are we supposed to do?

Well, it turns out that the answer is homeschooling. 

Just for a year, mind. I still think that Sam really needs that social aspect to his education, and that if Covid can get under control by next September (please please PLEASE), I want him to be back in a classroom for that reason alone. He needs kids his age. He needs socialization. He hasn’t had that in ages. 

But for now, homeschooling.

A friend of mine in the next town over posted a link to the curriculum we’re using; it’s called “Moving Beyond the Page,” and it’s largely literature-based and customizable. Sam’s a pretty smart kid overall, but he’s definitely far more advanced in math than he is in reading/writing, so we’re doing a first grade curriculum for reading and writing and a third grade (!) curriculum for math (because he can multiply and divide, and I listen to him do it and think how are you doing this, I couldn’t do that in my head until I was an adult). 

In my fantasy dream world, I’d want to grab one or two of his friends and their families and just do a small group working on the same curriculum, but that almost feels too risky and seems impossible. I wish there were a way to make sure he keeps in touch with his friends, but they’re all so young that the Messenger Kids app ends up being a “sometimes I remember to message my friends but mostly, I play games” thing. And I know that, if he’s anything like me, he’ll spend a lot of the first couple of months in screaming tears over our new normal. 

But. If he’s anything like me, he’ll adjust and come away better for it, having a good and fun (albeit very weird) year and blowing his future second grade teacher’s mind by asking them, “So when do we start square roots?” as everyone else is just getting into their times tables. 

School Shopping

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The Fourth of July is behind us, we’re not quite to the point where people find it acceptable to go all out on Halloween (at least some people, I’m more of the mindset that spookiness should be a year-round thing), which means that it’s time to think about going back-to-school.

Our town has come up with some plans, though they haven’t shared the full details with all of us yet because their plans aren’t completely finalized, and they’re going to be getting them approved by the state first. What they did, since we are a small town of less than 10,000 people, was hold a series of town hall meetings with the principal of each school explaining the way things will likely look in the fall.

Because yes, by some beautiful miracle, schools aren’t starting until after Labor Day. I am so relieved. I hope that this remains the case for the rest of forever, even when there isn’t a deadly global pandemic.

But our town is small, and Covid cases here are few and far between–no clusters, just a person here, a family there, that sort of thing. Easily traced and manageable. And the Commonwealth wanted school districts to have three separate plans for back-to-school, so they came up with three separate plans, with the caveat that (a) the full in-person school just was not going to happen this year and anyone trying to insist on it can suck the big one; and (b) regardless of plans made, we’d probably be switching to remote learning again at some point during the school year.

The plan they want to implement, at least to start, is a hybrid remote-distance plan, with half the kids coming into school for two days, a half day of Zoom calls for everyone, and then the other half of the kids coming in for two days. On days they don’t come in, kids will have day long learning assignments, which I hope won’t translate to their time being monitored, because Sam finishes his stuff in less than an hour, and I genuinely cannot devote a lot of time to handholding; not because I don’t want to, but because other things are happening. 

I’m definitely leaning towards sending him in during the hybrid days, partly because I just don’t have the ability to give him the guidance he needs five days a week, and partly because I think it will be good for him, emotionally and mentally, to be around kids his age again, even if it’s only for a little while. 

I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it. I’m furious that we, as a country, shat the bed so profoundly with this pandemic (like, come on. Wear fucking masks. It’s not hard. You are all just whiny babies), because we shouldn’t have. We should have just been able to put on our big kid undies and socially distanced and worn masks for six weeks and then moved on. We should have had a government that cared about people instead of lining pockets.

But we don’t, and like I told Kyle earlier this week, should is irrelevant. You need to focus on what is.

And in that line of thought, I went school shopping for Sam today. 

It’s early to do it; last year, school supply lists weren’t available until around August 1, if not later, but because of the pandemic (I think), our district is trying to offer everyone a little more wiggle room, so they released the school shopping list last night, with another caveat that we needed to get double supplies–half to keep at home for distance days, and half to have at the school for in-person days. 

I honestly always have fun with school shopping; it makes me feel like a kid again. You know that really great feeling that only comes with smelling brand new, sharp and never-used crayons? The perfectly sharpened pencils, all in a row? The erasers, still pearly pink and perfect? I popped open Sam’s pencil case from last year today to see what of it we could salvage for school, and I got immediately overwhelmed with the scent of pencils, crayons, and erasers. For just a moment, it was like I was back in my first day of first grade.

This year, classrooms are going to look like they did when I was in school, too. I think we had some classrooms where teachers arranged the desks in something besides rows, but I also know we had more than a few teachers who were pretty old school and kept desks, even for first and second graders, in carefully distanced rows, not groups or circles or anything. 

But things will be different, too, because each classroom will only have less than 10 kids in it at a time. Things will be different because if your kid’s friends are in a different class from them this year, they won’t get to play with each other at recess–they’ll be outside, running around in little cordoned off yards, staying six feet away from each other. Things will be different because there won’t be a holiday concert or birthday parties or parties for holidays or anything that would be dangerous. 

And I wish that I didn’t feel like Sam needs that in-person interaction to really succeed at school and to be mentally healthy. 

They’ve told us that we can change our minds at any time, though, so I’m giving it something of a trial period. For the elementary school, they’re using the teachers the kids would normally have for distance learning instead of using an outside agency like they are for the upper level schools (which is just one of the six billion things the district is doing wrong, according to Random People On The Town’s Facebook Page). We’ll see.

And in the meantime, I buy supplies. I stocked up on two things of number 2 pencils, and six erasers. Fourteen sticks of glue, three pairs of blunt end scissors, two boxes of 24 crayons, two whiteboards with markers, lots of paper (colorful and plain white). Every time I go into the back-to-school aisles, I feel this enormous pang of sadness for the teachers having to deal with this mess. They deserve so much better pay and so much kinder treatment than they’ve received. I’m grateful beyond words that I live in a state where our elected officials are taking this pandemic seriously; I feel horrible for teachers in other states who are being forced to write living wills as they go back to school, a time that should be exciting and fun, so that they can help keep the cogs of the economy turning. 

I was feeling sulky today and saw that the coveted box of 96 crayons was on sale for less than $5, so I bought it, along with some drawers for all of my various craft supplies purchased in better times (I have about 3000 stickers and pens and washi tape and markers and so on). It helped for a minute, but just that minute of “wow, being six was awesome!” that quickly melted into “being six is less awesome right now.”

My therapist has gently been reminding me that this, too, shall pass, which is such trite advice, but it’s something I need. I need to know that this isn’t forever, because it’s not. People are going to continue to be dumb about it, but a vaccine will come soon enough, and if they don’t take it, that’s on them. Kyle will have a job soon (he has to), the twins will start school soon, things will go back to something resembling what we knew, though hopefully a little better for us having learned some harsh lessons along the way. 

(part of my plan for this year, back before it became 2020, was to get my first tattoo–something small and simple to see if my skin would scar horribly. If my skin didn’t scar horribly, I’d want to get something more complex later, and it would probably be a crocus)

And I ordered Sam ten more cloth masks so that he can cycle through them all as he needs them. He inexplicably wanted ones with pizza and tacos on them, and I say inexplicably because he does not eat either pizza or tacos.

We paid bills yesterday, not worrying at all whether or not we could afford it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to say that again for a long time. 

But I have 96 crayons, and Sam has school supplies. Kyle has job interviews, the twins have therapy, and this will not last forever.

Stuck

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Like nearly every parent in the country right now (shh, homeschoolers, you can gloat about not having to change anything later), I’m facing a dilemma right now: do I send my kid to school in person this fall or do I try and do at-home learning for him?

It’s a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, this pandemic is a serious thing, and I don’t believe that schools should be opening right now. Our state is doing pretty well by the numbers for now, but I look at sites like CovidActNow (www.covidactnow.org) and I see the states around us creeping back up to ugly numbers. I see people carelessly heading down to Disney World on a vacation–it can’t be that bad if Disney is open, right??–and wonder how much they’ll adhere to quarantine practices when they come back. I see things from the Federal government that make me wonder if they aren’t actively trying to make things worse, and also that something as simple as wearing masks to protect yourself and the people around you has inexplicably become as much of a political statement as open carrying in Walmart. 

(who are you going to fight in Walmart, anyway, the deep discounts?)

I read our state teachers’ union’s ideas for reopening, and they sound theoretically okay–phased, slow, paying attention to the numbers–but none of them want to risk their lives like this, and we shouldn’t be asking them to. Some people say that oh, it doesn’t spread among kids, so it’ll be fine! Other people still think that the whole thing is a hoax to get us all implanted with 5G chips so that Bill Gates can take over the world or something (I wish they’d implant me with a 5G hotspot; I’d take my family and my Netflix and go ride this nonsense out somewhere very far away from other human beings). 

And then there’s that… look, have you met kids? Schools are absolute petri dishes, and unless you’re going to be putting them in little bubbles for the whole day, they’re going to be getting themselves sick and getting each other sick. I remember Sam’s first year of daycare, he had a cold and ear infection every three weeks. Literally, every three weeks. And it put my job in danger because he couldn’t be at daycare with a fever and ear infection every three weeks, so I had to take off to take care of Sam, but that wouldn’t matter now because I don’t work anyway, BUT ANYWAY, the point is that any given virus will go around a school like wildfire.

Like another example. I remember when I was six, the chicken pox went through my school. This was before the vaccine, back in the days of ill-advised chicken pox parties (my parents did not have one of those; I just happened to sit near a kid who was patient zero for that particular outbreak). Even without the chicken pox parties, though, you couldn’t avoid it. If the kid next to you had the chicken pox, you were going to get the chicken pox. And that was doubly true for the everyday viruses that marched through the school like a faceless army on a mission. In the winter, we’d all rotate being out of school for days to weeks with whatever yuck was going around. Stomach bugs, colds, flus, all of it.

So the idea that Covid-19 won’t spread through schools like wildfire is kind of silly to me. The idea that it’s a risk worth taking is also kind of silly to me. I don’t want to get this disease. I don’t want my two-year-olds to get this disease. I don’t want my parents to get this disease. I don’t want my kids’ teachers to get this disease. 

The obvious answer to all of this is to keep Sam home from school until there’s a vaccine (please please please let one of the three or all three work, I don’t care which one, just please give us a chance to focus on fixing our inherent issues instead of watching the world burn down around us). It’s theoretically possible. We finished out last year entirely online, with twice weekly Zoom calls, new boxes of crayons as consolation prizes, and gosh I miss the first half of last school year.

Even if I didn’t follow the school’s inevitable plan, homeschooling is easier now than ever. A lot of my friends currently homeschool (dear international friends: the school systems here in the state were wonky long before the current disaster timeline, that’s why), and they’ve got kids Sam’s age, and they’ve all been sharing helpful link upon helpful link. So it’s a thought.

But.

Here’s the hard place.

The hard place is mostly a picture of my average day. The morning, from 8:30 until 11, is all about the twins. On any given day, I’m coordinating ABA (they still come into our house because they’re considered essential, thank goodness), plus 1-2 other therapies for each twin, all of them at random times in the day that have nothing to do with any logic that I’ve found beyond “this is what time I’m free.” Afternoons are free of coordinating, but that’s when I dive into trying to get Stuff done (as in, house management stuff: bills, trips to Target, making sure we’ve got the things we need, doctors’ appointments, etc.). And all of that before 5 p.m. so we can get the kids to bed at a normal time. 

Earlier, when this was all starting, Kyle took charge of a lot of Sam’s school stuff–he didn’t stare at Sam and force him to do stuff, but he was able to coordinate Sam while being a little light on stuff at work. He was also able to help set Sam up on Zoom for those calls, and when he lost his job about two months into this nonsense, he was even more able to help–he was a lot more hands-on, helped Sam with art and science projects, etc. 

BUT. Kyle will absolutely be in a new job by September (please please please or else we’ll have more to worry about than just Sam’s schoolwork), and while I didn’t worry about the impression it made when he was stepping away from waiting for his computer to load a build when he was at a company he’d been at for six years, I do worry about it at a new company. Whoever he works for will likely be “understanding,” but it’s still not a good look to get a brand new job and then spend most of every morning away from your work. 

All of this creates the hard place. Who’s going to teach Sam? He’s not old enough that I feel comfortable leaving him to his own devices–I know that if he’s left alone with the internet, he’ll be through with schoolwork and diving into Let’s Play on YouTube, which he’s not supposed to do, but he does when left to his own devices. This isn’t kindergarten, either. He’s actually going to have subjects to study this year, beyond just learning to read and write and very basic stuff. He’s going to have things that he needs to be taught, not just things we can throw at him and say “here, color this.” 

That’s not even getting into the social side of things, the other intangibles that come with in-person learning. Sam hasn’t seen other kids his age since May. He hasn’t spent time with people outside of the family in about as long, and I know that’s affecting him. He’s more anxious, more nervous. He wakes up at night at least 2-3 times a week, sometimes with nightmares and other times just wanting to be with us. He doesn’t want to go and play by himself at all, so his playtime has mostly devolved into video games, which I hate because I’m like–dude, stop playing video games. You have six sprillion Legos, you have such cool toys all over the house, play with those so I can stop feeling like I’ve been flushing money down the toilet the last six years. Every day, he checks his Facebook kids messages, but that’s a sporadic form of connection at this age. 

There’s no good answer. I still don’t know what we’re doing. And I’m angry that it’s come to this: that the alleged “greatest country in the world” couldn’t get our act together four fucking months ago so that, come the start of the school year, we could send our kids back safely. Because it’s not safe right now, but the costs to not sending our kids back are pretty high, too, and as a parent, I’m feeling entirely lost.

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.

nuuu

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.

imapotato

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.”

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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.