ninanevermore

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It was a huge relief to cancel all those interviews with the potential babysitters who were interested in watching my son over the summer. Huge. It’s always a pain to interview people for a job to start with, but there is the whole "full disclosure" part of asking someone watch my son that I dread. Ideally, it’s best to have him along on these interviews, so he can play quietly and look angelic while I tell them about the behaviors that got him thrown out of daycare when he was 4 and that earned him a "special education" classification shortly after he started kindergarten this last year. You can’t just ask someone to watch a child and not warn them that he is capable of throwing screaming, kicking, throw-down tantrums that last for an hour and a half. Perhaps I could have skipped over the part about how the school quit having the kindergarteners hand the ladies in the lunchroom a wooden clothespin with their lunch account number on them after my son tried to stab another child in the eye with his clothespin after the kid bumped into him in the lunch line. We got a note asking us to please help him learn and remember his lunch number after that. Because he likes eating, he learned the number easy enough and the whole clothespin program was disbanded for all of the children.

Everyone wants their child to have an impact and be remembered. My son will be remembered as the reason wooden clothpins are now classified as potentially dangerous weapons that are no longer allowed on his elementary school campus.

( You know that kid from The Omen? Well, he’s nowhere nearly as bad as that kid. )

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ARD stands for Admission, Review, and Dismissal. It’s what the state of Texas calls an IEP meeting. IEP stands for Individualized Education Program. I will attend my first one tomorrow to go over what his school things might help him learn and function a little better. I am neither looking forward to or nor dreading it. I guess, to borrow a phrase from Pink Floyd, I have become comfortably numb.

Sweet Pea is suspended from the YMCA After School care again for throwing a Lincoln Log at another child and hitting him in the eye. Jeff is on vacation this week, so we are okay as far as childcare goes. When I got the call from the Y today, I didn’t even ask what was wrong, I just said, “Oh, God,” and the girl spilled the beans on what had been going on. I called my husband and told him, “You need to go pick up your son.”

And then the numbness set in.

( No one here is practically perfect in any way at all. )

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So I had one really good day where really good things happened to me. What the heck made me think this might be some sort of new norm? How quickly things rebound. When I said Fate likes to flirt but rarely puts out, I meant it; she is what guys would call a tease.

I start a new job on Monday. At least that part is still in the works. But there is always a wrench that Fate throws into the works. In my case, it is that on Monday and Tuesday I have no before or after school care, on account of the fact that Sweet Pea, exactly 24 hours after he had an incident free day at school, bit a child in the YMCA after school program and was suspended for 3 days.

( What goes up, must come down. )

Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind
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There were lots of little signs that my son might process the world a little differently, but they did me no good because I didn’t know what I was looking at.

You know those messy baby pictures everyone has of their child, where the wide-eyed baby sits covered in food from head to foot? I don’t really have any of those. When my son’s hands had food on them, he held them out to be wiped clean and would cry if I didn’t hurry up and fix it. The sensation of having food or anything else on his hands drove him nuts.

The little handprint pictures his school sent home were often smeared, because he was so distressed when they put his hand in paint that instead of letting them make a clean imprint, he would try to wipe the paint off of his hand onto the paper they pressed it against.

“Sorry,” the staff would say ruefully, “We tried. He doesn’t like anything on his hands, does he?”

( Stepping back to take a look: the big picture is made up of a thousand small pictures. )

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I think Tuesday’s call from my son’s school was such a nasty shock to my psyche because it came later rather than sooner, so I was unprepared for it when it finally hit me. His whole first week of school I was tensed and ready for that call, but it never came. I had a hope that it wouldn’t, since he had done so well with his babysitter in the last year and a half. I got used to getting good reports on him every day; about how sweet and well behaved and good he was. It was a nice hiatus from the reports I used to get from his daycare that he was a little hellion that could not be controlled. I was aware, though, that after having been out of a group environment for so long there might be a period of adjustment.

For the first week I was tense with worry, but the dreaded call never came. I was prepared for it, though. After the next week began and Monday passed without incident, I let myself relax and let go of the breath I felt like I had been holding. That’s when they sucker punched me.

( Live and Learn )

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My father called last night to ask how my son’s first day of Kindergarten went. After my son’s forcible expulsion from daycare a year and a half ago and the behavior problems that took him almost a year to resolve afterward, my dad worries. Since the last year hasn’t been too bad and did so well with his last babysitter and her kids, I was less worried.

“Is he close by?” my father asked.

“Yes, but he’s stuffing his face with pizza.”

“Oh. Well. I guess I don’t have to talk to him…”

“No, hold on.” I held the receiver to my son’s ear. “Tell your grandpa how your first day of school went.”

( Stalking the Gingerbread Man )

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My son’s babysitter left me two voice messages (one on my house phone and one on my cell) and a text this morning while I was in the shower, asking me to call her as soon as I got it. Hoping she wasn’t going to bale on me today (which she’s never done before), I called her up to see what was the matter.

“I was just wondering,” she said apologetically, “I know you usually pay me on Monday afternoons, but could you drop off your check this morning instead?” She went on to say that her cell phone bill was due – she had been putting it off - and that she wanted to pay it today.

( A man has to have his priorities. )

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"Hey, Kris," my son asked his babysitter today, "Did you that babies grow up to be people?"

I guess he thinks of babies as being more like dogs or cats. After all, they crawl around on all fours, they pick up your toys and try to put them in their mouths until you yell at them and tell them to stop (and you have to take the toy away when they don't listen), they eat their own special food that is different from everyone else's, and they sometimes make a lot of noise for no good reason.

You have to look it from his point of view: babies, on the face of it, are kind of pointless. They talk, but they don't make any sense. They often smell yucky. Several times a day they scream at the top of their lungs without provocation, but instead of being put in time out for it like would happen to him if he did this, the grownups will pick a baby up and talk in squeaky sing-song voices to it. It's amazing that such silly, useless things will grow up to be people that you can play with and talk to. People who enjoy watching Phineas and Ferb just like he does. To think that every useful, interesting, fun person he knows started out as one of these things: a stupid little baby! I can see how it boggles his mind.



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I ran into my 4 year old son's would-be fiancée in the grocery store on Sunday evening. Admittedly, the courtship only lasted for the 2 days she was his nursery school teacher. And sure, she turned him down flat when he proposed marriage to her on that first day on the playground. But even the most fleeting of romances leave a lasting impression. For the most part my son has moved on and is now actively seeking a little girl his own age who will let him kiss her (without luck, I might add). Ironically, it was Miss Makinzie who seemed to be smitten with Sweet Pea after all this time.

( To The Power Of Three )

Wednesday – Passionate About Kisses
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Sweet Pea brought up his failed attempt to kiss his playmate, Carlie, again last night at dinner.

"I tried, but she didn't like it," he said with resignation. "She only likes kissing other girls."

My husband and I exchanged amused looks.

"That could explain why she likes playing with his helicopter and his cars," Jeff said. Sweet Pea and Carlie constantly bicker about whose turn it is to play with his toys.

"In that case, I'll let you be the one to explain to him that he's barking up the wrong tree," I said. I turned back to Sweet Pea. "I think Carlie's daddy told her that kissing boys is yucky and that she shouldn't do it."

"But why?"

( You Shall Know All Kinds Of Joys, If Only You'll Beware Of Boys.* )