7 things to be aware of this Autism Awareness Month

So, April is autism awareness month.  I imagine everyone is pretty well aware by now that autism exists.  But there is still a lot of knowledge that people aren't aware of, so I thought I'd put together a post of things I wish people knew.

1.  Autism is a spectrum.  What that means is that there is a wide variety in how severe people's delays are -- and even what delays they have!  This is even more true today than it used to be, since Asperger's was redefined as a subtype of autism.  If you know an autistic person, try not to make assumptions of what all autistic people are like based on that one person.  Some autistic people can speak, for instance, while others can't.  Some have excellent fine motor skills, while fine motor skills are Marko's biggest struggle -- he can barely write at all.  Because of all this, there's no secret to dealing with autistic people in general, except perhaps to be patient and adaptable while you find out how that particular person can communicate with you the best.

2.  Autistic people grow and change over time.  I was reluctant for a long time to admit Marko had autism because I thought it meant he'd never grow out of the behaviors we were struggling with at the time.  I didn't want to give up hope that it was just a phase.  And you know what?  It was autism and it was a phase.  Autistic children may reach some milestones later than other kids, but it doesn't mean they will never reach them.  Some autistic people finally grasp a key concept or skill in their twenties or thirties that opens whole new opportunities for them.  An autistic person will always be autistic, but with patience and hard work, they can achieve things others thought they never could.  A child who was completely nonverbal till five or six might grow up able to live independently and start her own business at thirty.  So never assume what someone's going to achieve based on what they're able to do now.  And never, ever assume an autistic adult -- even one with very obvious delays -- is like a giant child.  Adults, regardless of disability, are still adults.

3.  Autism can coexist with high, low, or average intelligence.  It's wrong to assume that autistic people are retarded or dumb simply because they are struggling in specific areas -- they might be perfectly intelligent and simply have trouble communicating their thoughts to you.  On the other hand, it's also wrong to assume that all autistic people are super-geniuses like in the movies.  It's very difficult to test an autistic child's IQ at all because of this.  Marko tested at 104, but we were told this result was completely invalid because his vocabulary was so high and his scores on a shape-rotation test were so low.  Is he a genius or not?  Well, does it really matter?  Like the rest of us, he has strengths and weaknesses.  And it's best never to assume based on a person's performance in school or on an IQ test -- those may or may not assess the person's strongest skills.

4.  Autism isn't an epidemic, and it isn't caused by vaccines.  Diagnostic criteria have expanded hugely over the years, so more and more kids qualify for a diagnosis, but that doesn't mean more kids have a disability than before.  What it means is that more children who before were labeled "difficult," "disorganized," or "retarded" are now able to access specific help for autism.  I wrote about the vaccine-autism thing before.  Suffice it to say that Marko had autism before he got a single vaccine.  He inherited his autism from his dad and me, who were carrying the genes for it.  If we really wanted to prevent autism, I suppose we should prevent nerds from dating each  other . . . but what kind of terrible world would that be?

5.  Autism Speaks is controversial, and a lot of autistic people don't like it.  I heard it compared to an organization called "Women Speak" which was run by a board made up of only men.  Because they're not letting autistic people advocate for themselves, they've blundered into some really offensive statements, and the money donated doesn't necessarily go to support autistic people.  A better charity is the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.

6.  Another controversy is what sort of therapy is best for autistic kids.  Some people insist ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) is absolutely essential, while many autistic adults say it was traumatic and unhelpful for them.  The real question is, should the goal of therapy be to extinguish all external signs of autism -- training kids to stop any behaviors the rest of us find annoying, such as fidgeting -- or to help the child overcome any barriers between him and his own goals?  This is extra difficult when a child can't communicate what his goals even are.  As a parent trying to navigate this with my child, there's a lot of listening and empathy required . . . and sometimes some tears, either mine or Marko's, as he struggles with something that's difficult for him.  The important thing, as I see it, is to equip him for his own life -- trying to give him all the tools he'll need to graduate school, live independently, and achieve any dreams he has.  If he does all this while remaining quirky and obsessed with fantasy . . . all the better.  That's part of who he is.

7.  My kid isn't badly behaved, and he's not defective.  He's dealing with bigger feelings than the average kid, with less emotional regulation, and he's doing pretty well.  He's got lots of talents and a ton to offer the world -- not that his worth would be any less if he didn't.  Sometimes I worry that people will look at our family and think I'm too permissive, that I need to somehow make my kid look like their mental image of how a kid his age should be acting.  But more often than not, people take the time to engage with him, to listen to his obsessions, and to make an effort to enter his world.  And I love every single person who does it.  I know they have to put a little extra work into getting to know him, but they are rewarded with a chance to know a sweet, quirky, intense kid.  Getting to know autistic people is always worth it, just like being the mother of an autistic child is worth it.  I wouldn't trade him in or send him back.  I love the trip he's taking me on, and every person who joins us for the ride is very welcome.

7 busy takes

1

Remember how I said this year was going to be super tough and I wasn't going to be able to just sit back and survive it -- that I was going to have to put on my big girl panties and do all the things?  Yeah, that was accurate.  There has been a LOT of stuff I've had to get done lately.  I feel like I've been more energetic than I have been in awhile, but it doesn't matter because there's just more to get done, so I'm exactly as behind as ever.

Take this week: I have had to go out of the house every day so far, and skip two homeschool meetups I would have liked to go to.  Last week was the same, and next week promises to be similar!  Gone are the days when my only real commitments were grocery shopping and returning the library books.

2

Monday's adventure was getting the kids their shots.  Yes, I am finally vaccinating my kids.  It's been hard for me ... I've never had a legitimate reason not to vaccinate them.  I knew that reactions were rare, that if vaccines had ever caused autism, they no longer have thimerosal in them, so that shouldn't be happening now at any rate.

What it was, for me, was mistrust: a feeling that the medical establishment could not be trusted to have my best interests at heart, that if there were a serious danger in vaccines, they would surely cover it up and perhaps even punish the scientist who had claimed there was.  I do not know why pro-vaxxers think, "Dr. Wakefield's study was retracted and his medical license was revoked!" is evidence in favor of their position.  It is clearly the opposite, to anyone who was against vaccines in the first place.  EVERYONE KNOWS the medical establishment says they are safe, so why do people keep saying "but here's a CDC page saying I'm right!" is some kind of slam-dunk?  But I've become a lot more pro-establishment lately.  While no one is to be trusted absolutely, people who have dedicated their lives to the study of a certain topic are probably more to be trusted than those who haven't.  And as far as corruption goes -- I've been deep enough into the natural-health community to find that it's not immune from the same thing.  If you can follow the money in the CDC's recommendations, you can also follow the money to find out why Dr. Mercola sells what he does.  There is a lot of money in alternative medicine, and a lot less oversight.  And it's easy to see a contradiction in people who automatically shoot down any claim made by their doctor because they don't trust him, and then immediately share any ridiculous claim made by a random lady with a blog.  And I've realized that when a treatment has been shown with actual evidence to be safe and effective -- somebody patents it and your doctor prescribes it.

The other issue is that I always felt, on some level, that it was better for my kid to get sick of a disease that I didn't prevent than to get sick of a shot I actually gave him.  Part of the Catholic "actions matter more than omissions" thing.  I'm now a lot more of a consequentialist (though I admit there is at least some difference between an action and an omission) so I feel like I should be choosing, not the option with the least personal involvement, but the option with the smallest chance of my kids getting sick.  Yes, I would feel way more guilty if they got sick of a shot than if they got sick of a virus.  Yet that's not really the morally significant part of the equation.  The morally significant part is that I would have done what had the best chance of keeping them well, regardless of how I felt about it.

3

The night before we got the shots, I lay awake awhile worrying about it.  John joked that I don't need to worry because "what are they going to do, give Marko MORE autism?"  But, silly or not, that was how I felt ... I mean, given that he's already autistic, what if that means his system is super fragile?  I know that autistic kids massively regress for all kinds of reasons; I even read of a child who regressed and lost his language ability after the chicken pox.  And it's not impossible that Marko might regress after the shots.  I was also scared about the pain for them ... both boys had to get three shots this week, and those hurt!  I personally have a massive needle phobia, not just of the pain itself, but of the thought of foreign substances inside my body.  To get a shot, I have to think about it as little as possible.  And there I would have to be up close and personal, and put a brave face on so I didn't give the boys my own fears.  I would a thousand times rather have had all six shots myself than have to put my kids through it.

But they did fine.  Neither kid was scared about it.  Marko yelped at each jab and sounded indignant, but the second they were over he was fine.  Michael, seeing Marko's reaction, suddenly panicked and tried to fight the shots, so I had to restrain him.  That was not fun at all.  But again, the second the last shot was over he was fine, and bragged about how brave he had been.  (NOT.)  Then we all went for ice cream, and I had one of those perfect parenting moments, eating ice cream with them at the gazebo in town, feeling like, for once, we were all happy at the same time and could just enjoy being together.  (Which lasted until Miriam threw a fit about a bite of ice cream she'd given me and then wanted back after I'd swallowed it.  OH WELL.)

They have to go back next week for the other two shots (MMR and varicella, which are both live, ugh) and then after four weeks we go and get more doses of all the same things.  The frustrating part is that, since two of the shots have to be given over six months, they will not be caught up by the start of school.  I believe that this won't delay them from starting school, so long as I can get a doctor's note.  I certainly hope not; after all this effort to get everything set up for Marko to start school at the beginning of the year, when things are starting slow, it would be terrible to have to make him wait till October and then try to catch up.

4

The other thing I did this week that tore me up was signing up both boys for school.  John and I have talked the issue to death and we've pretty much reached agreement to at least try it.  It used to be that he was for it and I was against, but when we did a school tour, Marko actually looked pretty interested in everything.  And when we went back to pick up some paperwork, he was upset that we didn't get to stay and play with the special ed teacher's cars.

This is a kid who used to sob if we turned down the street the school was on, because he was so terrified of the place.  Multiple visits for various meetings have taken away the dread for him.  He's also having speech therapy there, and he's enjoyed that.  He still insists he'll never ever go to school, but it almost seems like a pro forma objection -- he likes going there and he seems pretty interested in my stories of what goes on there.

I don't think he'll learn better at school than at home.  He will almost certainly fall behind a bit in school stuff.  But what he will gain are the social skills that are his weakest point: he will get lots of practice talking to other grownups, he'll be encouraged to socialize with other kids, he'll learn about following directions.  This is stuff that a kid should know, at least a little bit.  I used to not worry about his shyness, feeling that he'd eventually be ready to talk to more people and till then, he didn't need to.  But then there was the time last year that Michael poked him in the eye with a popsicle stick.  We took him to the doctor, and he could not communicate with him or with the nurse about whether he could read the vision chart.  And I realized, a child needs to be able to ask for help from adults that aren't his parents.  He doesn't need to do it all the time, but he needs to be able to.  And Marko, probably because of his autism, is not able to and it doesn't look like he's going to just start doing it without being pushed.  He's gotten better at this in the past six months, just from all the assessments we've put him through.  There has been complaining, insisting he won't go, lying on the floor refusing to move, but in the end he has gone to all of them and talked with the professionals who are assessing him.  He just needs practice.

Of course in theory I could provide all this, by doing more homeschool groups and more library story times and maybe piano lessons or dance lessons or something.  But ... that's kind of in the alternate reality where I hadn't had a baby this year.  It is really hard for me even to keep up with his homeschooling.  I have to admit I'm not really able to provide all he needs, not this year.

And Michael will be going too, because unlike Marko, Michael actually wants to.  He's super excited about the idea of school, of playing with other kids, of getting a backpack and a lunchbox and books of his very own.  It would seem kind of unfair to send his brother, who doesn't want to go, and not send him.  Plus, I figure one year of school, right at the beginning when it's easy, will give him the social skills he currently lacks and reassure me that he doesn't have any issues.  Then, hopefully, next year we can get back to homeschooling with a bit more confidence.  I know it was very hard for me to switch from homeschool to traditional school, in part because I started so late (fourth grade) when all the other kids knew each other and a lot of the rules were unspoken.  If Michael has a year of kindergarten under his belt, then he will easily be able to transition back into school at whatever year he wants to -- whether that's fourth grade, ninth grade, or college.

I'm trying not to be dogmatic about this, to take it one year at a time, rather than mapping out our entire education.  But I'm really hoping everyone has made a ton of progress by next year, while at the same time wanting to get back to homeschooling, so that there will be no reason to keep them in school another year.  I like homeschooling.  I like being together as a family.  And as overwhelmed as I am right now, by next year Jackie will be older and I expect I'll be better able to handle everything.

5

But the school thing is so far not making my life less stressful, but more.  I have to get birth certificates for the kids; that's been a big runaround.  I have to get them shots.  Everyone needs a physical.  Everyone needs school clothes.  Marko needs to get on board with wearing underwear before August.  Of course this is all because we haven't started yet, but then once we do start, I'll have to walk the kids the two blocks to school every day.  That's a lot more leaving the house than I'm used to.

The bright side is that other things are actually getting done that needed to be.  I got my chicken application submitted at last, over a year after the urban farming ordinance was passed.  The shots, of course, had to be done anyway and I'm glad we're finally getting them done.  (I'm waiting on Miriam because she is completely unmanageable now -- there is no way I could get a shot into her without some backup.)  I bought a cherry tree yesterday, which I'm going to plant today.  I feel .... better about adulting than I have in a long time.  I'm realizing the truth of what I've read about anxiety, that the best way to get over it is to push yourself through it and then realize after the fact that it wasn't so scary.  And that's been true for both Marko and me ... when we don't have a choice to back out of the scary thing, we've done it, and been less scared about it.

Maybe I'll actually go to the dentist this year!

6

Warm weather has meant lots of pleasant time outside.  I always feel better about everything in the spring.  Except, one night, the first night we slept with the windows open, I couldn't sleep and was racked with feelings of anxiety ... because last year, when I last slept with the windows open in the spring, I had just found out I was pregnant and lay awake for hours having panic attacks.  It is going to take me a long time to get over that.  Even though I think the worst is behind me and there is nothing left to be afraid of, I still remember the fear and dread and feel terrible.

But in the daylight hours, it's all good.  I've been planting lots of stuff in my new giant garden.  Jackie has reached the age where she actually likes lying on a blanket in the grass .... though I can't let her do it for long, because I have so much anxiety that someone will step on her.  I am not sure how much of that is good sense (my kids are so oblivious!) and how much is just brainweasels.

Miriam and Michael love Jackie so much.  Especially Miriam, still, but Michael also is pretty interested now that she's a bit more responsive.  She smiles, looks at them, waves her arms around, and they always interpret this as "she likes me! she's trying to talk to me!"  I love it.

And even Marko has finally unbent enough to play with her.  Nobody else was interested in his ponies (which he got for his birthday) so he flew them around in front of her face to entertain her.  And she really did look at them, so he was perfectly content.  I've noticed lately that he plays more with Miriam, as well, because he needs playmates who will follow instructions rather than expecting to be equal creators of the game.  I'm not sure if this is entirely positive, but hey, he's not ignoring 2/3 of his siblings, so I'm going to rank it in the "win" column all the same.  Especially for a kid who, up to a month ago, was insisting Jackie was NOT his sister and NOT part of the family and he was not EVER EVER going to look at her.

7

This reminds me that I haven't mentioned yet that Marko is seven.  Hard to believe.  His current obsession (added onto his past obsessions -- he still plays Minecraft and Harry Potter a lot of the time) is My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.  It's actually not as obnoxious a show as I thought at first blush -- they clearly made an effort to include some humor and pop-culture references for the parents.  I like that it breaks down the concept of friendship into manageable, explicit skills.

For his birthday, John wanted to take him out on an outing of his choosing, just the two of them.  He picked going to a movie, but Michael was all upset that he wasn't going along.  Marko looked at Michael crying for awhile, and then came to me to say, "I know how Michael feels, because I would feel the same way if he were going to a movie with Daddy without me."  I was extremely impressed at this insight from him, which isn't common, and suggested he talk to John about it.  John told him he could bring Michael along too, and both boys were thrilled to get to do their special birthday outing together.

Michael's birthday is tomorrow; he'll be five.  He remains the sweetest boy you'll ever meet -- coming over to me often to give me hugs and kisses.  And recently he's become quite polite, since I decided the best way to curb whining was to suggest polite phrases he could say instead.  So when I give him something that isn't to his liking, he'll now say "Thank you for giving this to me, Mama, and can you please cut it in half?"  That's a huge improvement over, "I WANTED it to be cut in HALF, waaaaaaaah!"  And he's great about all the "hellos" and "good mornings" and "I love yous" that Marko generally does not say.  It makes me appreciate all these things just that much more.

Miriam is going through a very tantrummy stage.  John calls her the Destroyer of Souls; I don't think it's as bad as all that, but then, I'm not the one who has to be up with her from midnight to four a.m. when she has a bad night.  That would probably destroy my soul too.  It's clearly causing her to be a lot less amiable in the daytime; the tiniest thing causes sobs and hitting.  Letting her hug and kiss her sister often helps; hugs from us parents are loudly rejected.  The other day she asked to nurse again, after about a month of not asking.  A part of me wishes we were still nursing, because it surely would help with the tantrums, but .... it's a very small part, compared to the part that's glad to be done.

Jackie is three months today -- the magic number, in my mind, when a baby starts to get easier.  She took a two-hour nap today.  That's not an all-the-time thing, but good naps are definitely becoming more common.  And when she's awake, she's a lot more willing to sit in her bouncer or lie on the bed and just kick around, looking at stuff.

She reminds me of Marko, as a baby, which of course worries me a lot.  She's not comforted by being held unless she is also being walked around so she can look at stuff.  She won't nurse if she's upset, and screams bloody murder if you try to nurse her when she's not interested.  She does make eye contact and smile, but ... I am not entirely sure she makes eye contact as much as other babies do.  It's more of a brief glance and then she smiles over your shoulder.  Of course I know I've got autism on the brain and see it everywhere, even where it's not.

That's it for this week.  How has yours been?

The parenting spectrum

Parenting comes along a spectrum: from the strict parents with a lot of high expectations for their kids, to the looser ones who want to let their kids be themselves and figure things on in their own time.  It's safe to say my own impulses are firmly in the latter camp.  I have got on so far with very few rules -- I don't care if they jump on the couch, if they say please and thank you, or if they wear underpants.  I was hoping to unschool -- to learn each subject when the child was interested and drop it when they weren't, thus never having the schooltime battles other homeschooling parents have.

This has mostly worked pretty well.  The kids eventually grew into things.  Marko started wearing pants eventually.  Michael started saying please and thank you quite reliably in the past month simply because I told him it makes me happy when he does.  Miriam ... well, Miriam's still feral, whatever.

But I feel like this autism thing changes everything.  I read a book a few months back, The Loving Push, by Temple Grandin.  Grandin, autistic herself, explains that autistic kids automatically reject challenges and changes, and they need to be pushed out of their comfort zone.  She herself says she'd never have achieved all the things she has in life if she hadn't been forced to try new things.  And it terrified me because I really, really hate pushing kids into things.  Is that going to be my life from now on, forcing Marko to do things he is scared of?

Well, it turns out there is just as much of a spectrum in autism parenting as anywhere else: some are into huge amounts of work and therapy to get their children as close to "normal" as they can, and others mostly want to relax and let their children "be themselves."  The differences are boggling: my friend says ABA therapy is a must, an autistic person I talked to online says it is basically abuse and just about making children "look" normal while doing nothing for their inner issues.  Some people say school is basically required so that Marko can gain necessary social skills; others say it will just iron the individuality out of him while making him miserable.

I looked up "unschooling with autism" and all the results were full of "autism acceptance" -- that is, a lot of, "It doesn't matter if my child isn't toilet trained and lives in my basement the rest of his life playing Minecraft -- I accept him As He Is."  No one I could see ever made the claim that other unschoolers make, which is that children will in fact develop the skills they need on their own time, when they're sufficiently motivated to do so.  Everything I can see suggests that autistic kids will not.  And this upsets me so much -- it basically destroys any hope I had to be the kind of parent I meant to be.  I don't want either to push Marko into things he doesn't feel ready for, or to have him grow up never overcoming the challenges he has today.  But it seems I have to choose.

But, of course, it's not a toggle switch -- it's a spectrum.  Just as there are some parents of neurotypical kids who are so radically accepting they don't enforce bedtimes and let their kids run around completely stark naked, and others who are still unschooly but have a few hard limits like I do, there are a million possible points between "I must make my child appear exactly normal regardless of how many tears it causes" and "therapy is child abuse."  I've been learning how to balance pushing and backing off with Marko for some time.  I know, for instance, that if you push too hard he locks up and will refuse everything, while if you don't push at all he just sort of drifts away into his own world and starts ignoring everything you say.  It's really, really hard to strike the right kind of balance with him; I second-guess myself a lot.  But it's not like the idea is foreign to me.

Because, of course, some limits are not optional.  My kids don't usually want to go to bed, but they have to, both for their own good and for the good of the rest of the family.  I'm not being arbitrarily mean here, but it's a limit that I've always stuck to because it really matters.  In the same way, even if I set the limits for Marko at "only those things that affect other people or your health," that still means there are going to be battles sometimes.  More than with another kid, unfortunately, even if I draw all the lines in the exact same places.  Yesterday was full of battles because he wanted to make a huge mess in the living room and not clean it up, and to attack his brother for not playing by the rules he'd made up, and not to sit on the toilet even though he's been having accidents.  I suppose I could have let two of those slide, but I wouldn't for another child, and I don't think the standards should be different for him.  I mean, I don't want him to grow up into a douchebag husband who says, "I have a diagnosis that means I don't have to clean up after myself!"  And while I have tried backing off the toilet issues, they haven't gone away on their own, so I've decided he needs me to take over the choosing-when-to-go thing.  Pooping his pants isn't a huge deal to him, but it is to me, so there we are.

In short, I don't really believe my goal is to make him "normal."  He'll never be normal and I honestly don't really want him to be -- his quirks make him, him.  But at the same time I can't just "accept him as he is" when some of his limitations are hurting himself and others.  It's a matter of basic ethics that he has to be taught to treat others with respect.  He has been known to say, for instance, that he shouldn't have to put on clean clothes when the ones he has on reek of urine, because he doesn't mind the smell and he doesn't care what other people think of it.  It's true that some social rules are optional and it's actually great not to care too much what other people think, but other people's feelings matter too and going around with that degree of stank is just inconsiderate of everyone.

My mom said something very insightful to me yesterday.  She said that autistic kids are like aliens from another planet.  You're never going to make them into humans and you shouldn't try; but on the other hand, they need to learn the rules of how we do things on our planet so they can get along well here.  Data, from Star Trek, is a perfect example.  He wants so much to fit in among humans, and he never can perfectly because he doesn't feel or think the way they do.  At the same time, he can learn what idioms mean and the social niceties which make people feel liked and respected.  They might make no sense to him, but since he wants to make those around him happy, he makes an effort.  In return, people do respect his originality and talents -- they don't say "we like you because you are a very close approximation of a human" but "you're our friend and we like all your quirks."  I really want Marko to have a chance to get to know people who will love him just as he is -- but he can't get much of a chance if he's hiding behind people saying "I don't want to make any more friends!"  (Especially when I expect his real meaning is, "I don't want to make friends enough to overcome how scared I am to try.")

But refusing to settle down on one end of the "spectrum" or the other means that I have to weigh a million decisions every day.  Do I make him do this chore or not?  Do I make him say hello to the librarian or not?  Do I let him wear the same shirt two days in a row because he thinks it makes him look like Harry Potter or not?  How many times per meal should I remind him to use his fork?  I'm always aware of a little meter in my head measuring how much I've pushed him that day.  I never know the moment when it's going to go into the red and he's going to dig in his heels and throw a fit, but I have to ration my demands or it'll happen by 10 a.m. and I won't get much out of him till the end of the day.  I really don't know if my efforts to keep pushing to a minimum are helping him in the long run -- will he recognize I respect his wishes and try to please me when he can, or would more pushing get him past a mental block eventually?  Sometimes I've seen him go ahead and try a new thing he was scared of after I've backed off with something like, "You don't have to do it right now, but you will have to do it eventually.  Let's think of a way to try it that you like better."  And sometimes not.

Bigger decisions are coming up in our future.  It won't be just "should I insist he read Pete the Cat today, even though he's randomly decided he doesn't like cats?"  It'll be "what kind of therapy, and how much, should he get?"  And "should we enroll him in school or not?"  School is such a tough decision -- it comes with big advantages, like a familiar group of kids he could see every day, and access to an occupational therapist who might be able to help him with the tasks that are currently a struggle for him.  But it also comes with big challenges.  The initial resistance he has to the very idea of school is only the start.  After that will come the thousand and one times in a day he'll have to do something other than what he wants and is comfortable with -- to read a book he didn't choose, to be in a room with people he doesn't know, to leave an activity he's just gotten engrossed in.  School is pretty much the hard opposite of how I manage things, where I carefully provide tons of time for free play and let him choose what books to do and in what order.  Maybe he'd quit being so demanding, realizing that people aren't always going to cater to your whims and that's okay.  Or maybe he'd become angry, stubborn, resistant, coming home with a heavy load of misery which he unloads on the rest of us.

John says that it doesn't matter how unhappy school makes him, if it helps him be a functional adult.  But I have never been convinced that you can train a person to be a happy adult with a miserable childhood.  And even if you could ... the child-Marko is a person who matters too.

The school is really the very best it could be.  The teachers are experienced with ASD and very kind.  They're willing to put him in the very tiniest special-ed classroom and ease him into the mainstream classroom a little at a time, with his own dedicated aide.  And they've agreed to let him attend part-time only, given that he's never done school before.  So it's not like it's "drop him in at the deep end, or nothing."  But it still scares me.  I've spent so many years carefully protecting Marko from situations where I know he won't succeed, respecting his fears and his wishes, that it feels very wrong to do anything else.  But I worry that I have held him back from success in some ways.  For instance, my experience of Marko is that he doesn't talk to other adults, because when I'm around he mostly does not.  Yet when he's been left with another adult without me to answer him, he magically manages it.  The first time he ever got up the nerve to talk to his best friend's mother was when I wasn't there.  He told me he'd never ever talk to the speech therapist who assessed him, but once I left the room he did just fine.  So while other people praise my rapport with Marko and my respect for him, I wonder sometimes if I'm protecting him too much, allowing him to opt out of things that scare him which, if he once tried them, he'd actually enjoy and feel proud of.

When we were discussing the school option, John said, "All I know is that this kid cried for an hour when I insisted on reading Harry Potter at bedtime because he was sure he'd hate it, and now he's riding around on a broomstick playing Quidditch all day."  And it's true.  Just as Grandin's book suggests, he automatically says no to new things and will often love them once he's been pushed over the hump of trying them out.  It's just that it isn't possible to tell the difference between a no that means he'll really hate something and a no that's just the default reaction to something new.  I guess he himself doesn't know, and that's why he's scared.

Autism makes me doubt myself.  I feel like this is a Special Case and therefore my gut can't be trusted.  I should find an expert and trust their judgment instead of mine.  Yet how do I know which experts to trust if I can't trust my judgment in the first place?  And also, they might be the experts in autism, but I'm still the expert on my child.  I might not understand him, but no one else understands him any better.  That's kind of terrifying.  Are we really saying no one knows if putting him in school will be the best thing that's ever happened to him or a total nightmare?  It just feels like I'm totally in the dark.  Trusting my gut was easy in the past, because on the one hand there was so very much out there about kids raised in various ways, and I could clearly see that people who did what I do had kids who turned out fine; and on the other hand, normal healthy kids tend to grow up normal and healthy as long as you're a reasonably okay parent.  With autism we know so much less.  Heck, a generation ago a kid like Marko never would have been diagnosed, but considered just "odd and quirky" or maybe "rebellious" or "emotional."  So it's not like there's a lot of long-term data on different therapies and parenting techniques for a child like him.  But everything I can find suggests that how we react to him now is absolutely crucial and may have long-reaching effects, because his brain will never be as plastic as it is now (and already it's not as plastic as it used to be).

Huge stakes + tremendous uncertainty.  If that's not a recipe for parental neurosis, I don't know what is.

7 one-month takes

1

So apparently Jackie is five weeks old today.  They certainly have not been racing by, but it still seems kind of startling when I do the math.  Five weeks is too late to change my mind and start spelling her nickname "Jacky," right?  Especially as I can't change the spelling on the tags in my sidebar.

This is the stage where you stop thinking, "Wow!  I'm recovering so fast!  The worst is over!  Every day gets easier!" and start thinking, "I'm as recovered as I'm going to be for a long time yet, and I can't believe it's still so hard."  That is, that's what I'm thinking this time around, and I remember it from last time.  I don't really remember this at all with Michael, and Marko was so much easier because there was only one of him.

Jackie (Jacky??) is firmly established as Not an Easy Baby.  All of my babies have had the unfortunate habit of waking up from naps while they're still tired -- usually after about 45 minutes.  With Marko it was easy, I simply nursed him or rocked him back to sleep and he'd take another hour or so.  But that's an option not open to me now that I have other noisy kids -- once the initial edge of tiredness has been taken off, the slightest noise gets the baby interested in what's going on and they won't go back to sleep for two more hours, no matter how tired and cranky they are.  With Michael my solution was just to have him take 45-minute naps four times a day, which was inconvenient and left him cranky and tired much of the time.  With Miriam I gave up and just held her for all her naps, which about made me lose my mind as well as causing me to neglect my other kids terribly.  And with this one, I haven't yet come up with a solution; I refuse to hold the baby for all her naps again, but I'm not keen on her constantly being cranky and tired all the time either.  I guess the only real solution is Keep Trying, because she occasionally does take a really solid nap of a couple hours.  I love these, but of course I spend the whole time worrying she is crying and I just don't hear her on the monitor, or else perhaps she is dead.  It's just so unusual that I can't quite believe a child would actually sleep that long in the daytime.

2

But she is worse than all the others in one respect, which is that she won't even GO to sleep.  Instead, she drifts off while nursing and then wakes up five minutes later with big bright eyes.  You can rock her to sleep instead, which will work for five minutes before she starts thrashing herself awake.  All the baby advice (besides the idiotically unrealistic "put the baby down awake") says you should hold the baby until they pass into a deep sleep before you put them down.  This is impossible anyway because we never ever get the half hour of relative quiet that this would take, not in this house -- someone always comes right up to me demanding a snack or having a fit or wanting to give the baby "just one kiss!"  But I know it's not just that because she spends all evening doing the same thing after the big kids have gone to bed: nurse, doze, thrash, wake up, fuss because tired, nurse ....  And she can do this for hours because the little snatches of sleep she gets are just enough to tide her over.  Eventually she doesn't even want to nurse anymore and then you're really screwed.

Obviously this doesn't happen every time because she does sometimes sleep.  But for the life of me I don't know the secret.  More awake time before attempting a nap? (Possible.)  More burping?  (Burping wakes her up.)  But the long and short of it is that naps are totally unreliable and also she stays up till eleven pm or even later every night.  She's sometimes willing to sleep in a little late, but that doesn't matter because of course the other kids are up by seven.

The one bright spot is that she reliably sleeps a good three or four hour chunk in the middle of the night.  In fact last night it was almost six hours!  This is truly delightful, especially on those nights when she actually sleeps in her crib instead of on me, but it also has the awful downside that we're not ecologically breastfeeding if she sleeps that long.  I cannot wake her, because I desperately need the sleep, but I fear the eventual result will be an early return of cycles, which, for me, means a nasty hormonal mess as prolactin and progesterone fight for supremacy all month long.  Oh, woe.  But the thought of willfully ending my nighttime bliss, the ONLY time I get to myself, and possibly triggering hours of sleep-wake up-fuss-sleep is just unbearable.

3

Despite how awful she is to deal with, I think I am beginning to bond with her somewhat.  The first week or two I was treating her like a hungry lump, but I realized that if I talk to her and treat her like a person -- even though she does not understand or care -- it helps me feel like she is a person.  I'm also taking lots of pictures, both to help me remember to appreciate her now, and to look back on later, after I do have a relationship with Jackie and want to remember what she looked like as a baby.

Miriam, of course, helps with this a lot by adorably trying to interact with her baby sister.  It seems obvious to me that Jackie either does not care or actively dislikes everything Miriam does -- I mean, getting kissed to within an inch of your life isn't exactly fun for anyone -- but Miriam insists that "her baby" loves it, so, whatever.  I don't mind playing along so long as she's not actually smashing the baby's face.

4

So Marko has been assessed by the school district now.  I didn't know this before, but thanks to IDEA, a federal law, even homeschooled kids are entitled to the same services for disabilities as the kids in school.  This includes assessment for disabilities, provided the school agrees that the child is suffering educationally from them.  That was a little scary because I had to explain to a table full of teachers why I thought Marko needed to be assessed.  Since most of his issues are social, I wasn't sure I'd be able to make my case, but when I pointed out the large number of adaptations I make to our schoolwork (like hanging over his shoulder every minute to keep him on task, and designing our entire curriculum around his obsessions) they said that this was definitely an educational problem as well as a social one.  Especially when I pointed out that he mostly will not talk to grownups and he might want to go to school someday.

This process was full of trials for Marko.  He had to have his eyesight and hearing assessed, read to a reading teacher, get assessed twice by a speech therapist, and have two long assessments by a psychologist.  In addition, both John and I filled out lots of questionnaires.  We got all the results from these assessments in writing, and then I had our eligibility meeting with a big panel of school professionals.  The whole process was scary for both Marko and me, but we got through it okay.  I was impressed with how well Marko did actually manage to communicate with the adults, despite the crying and rolling-around-on-the-floor meltdowns he had beforehand.  We could see, though, from the reports of the different professionals, that he had been very anxious and not done as well as we know he can with us.  Though really I don't suppose it matters -- if he scores low because he can't communicate very well, that's still a problem even if it's not the problem they were testing him for.

In the end they decided that he has "symptoms consistent with autism."  This is not an official diagnosis, but it is enough to make him eligible for special education if he were enrolled in school.  However, there isn't really anything they can do outside of school for him.  Speech therapy is available to homeschooled kids, but the therapist actually said it would not help because his speech problem isn't really a problem with speech itself, but something further inside his head ... she thought it was anxiety, but the psychologist thinks it's in his mental processing.  He has a lot of knowledge but has trouble accessing it quickly when he wants it.  So he might volunteer the information "two plus two is four" on Monday, but that doesn't mean he can produce the answer for me when prompted on Tuesday.  In the same way, it takes him extra time to put together and say a sentence, even if he knows all the words he wants.

At any rate we're assuming, based on this, that he does have ASD.  But that leaves us still stuck on what to do next.  I want to get him officially assessed, but that costs a mint and our fake insurance won't cover a penny of it.  I want therapy for him, but that's also not covered.  If he gets diagnosed, he's eligible for Medicaid which will pay for the therapy, but we can't afford the first step.  It may be that a regular pediatrician will diagnose him on the strength of all the assessment results we have, but they might not think it's enough and then we're out the money we spent for the appointment and are back to square one.  The whole thing is doggone frustrating.

We are seriously considering putting him in school, for next year at least, just so he can get some special help from someone who does know something about autism.  The sad fact is the "one-on-one attention" that is supposed to be the benefit of homeschooling isn't really available at home right now.  His siblings hang around and distract us both.  I've tried giving them work, too, but Marko is always way more interested in what they're doing than in what he's supposed to be doing.  Michael wants to be wherever Marko is, and Miriam wants to be wherever I am, and Jackie is of course attached to me like a tumor half the time.  So ... it's not what you would call an ideal learning environment.  We are making progress all the same, but all these assessments have really taken away my confidence that I'm doing it right, or that even if I'm not, no problem because kids are resilient/there's plenty of time to catch up.  Normal kids might be great at naturally challenging themselves and going for new things, but that's specifically the sort of thing autistic kids struggle with.  They want to stick with what's comfortable and familiar.  There have been times when Marko has a big drive to learn about something, but he hasn't felt that way since we've moved ... and I can't afford to let him learn nothing for a year, you know?  Not if he's already behind.  At the same time I know pushing too hard makes him shut down, and I dread even suggesting to him that we might make him go to school.  He hates the very concept.  I did want him to go to school someday, like in high school maybe, but he does not seem ready now, and he is terrified of other adults, large groups of kids, and being without me.  It's tough.  On Monday we are going for a tour of the school and to watch the special ed classes, so he and I can both see what he'd be in for if we did enroll him.  I think it might be great for him, for his confidence and his social skills and so forth ... but first he'd have to get past that initial terror of change.

I feel very mixed-up about this emotionally.  On the one hand, I love homeschooling.  I don't want to stop.  He's my little boy.  How can I trust other people to take care of him as well as I do?  While on the other hand, I can't help but admit it does kind of appeal, to have one less kid to worry about during the day, and to know he's getting the sort of extra help he needs without my having to neglect the whole rest of the family to give it to him.  And maybe we could go back to homeschooling another year.  I just don't know.  I don't want to be wedded to the idea of homeschooling if it's not working ... but on the other hand, I'm not sure it isn't working.  Yes, there's stuff he struggles with, but would he be doing any better in school?

5

I should say, though, that Marko seems to have pulled out of the rough patch he was in throughout December and January.  He no longer cries a dozen times a day "because he misses that lamp we used to have" or "because he's not excited about anything like he used to be."  I can't remember whether or not I've blogged about that.  My feeling was that he felt upset and sad about the changes in his life and was latching onto small details to explain it.  But he seems a lot happier lately -- fewer tears and fewer meltdowns.  He and Michael have a healthy balance of different obsessions that they pretend about all day -- Harry Potter and My Little Pony mostly, but Minecraft is still getting plenty of attention, and yesterday they surprised me by playing Redwall again, after about a year since it was a major interest.  Another reassuring thing is that he's stopped having so many accidents ... which, given that he has been potty trained for four years now, certainly worry me when they happen.

My friend with two autistic children, who has been a major resource to me right now, asked me the other day what behaviors Marko has that he most needs help with.  What things would we address in therapy, if he had access to therapy?  And I wasn't sure what to say.  He's mostly really great!  I don't actually have a lot that I think he needs to change.  But on the other hand, there are lots of little things.  I wish he would at least try to stay dry at night.  I wish he would more reliably use his fork at meals.  I wish he wouldn't say things "don't even exist" when he doesn't like them.  I wish he would introduce himself to other kids or say hello or goodbye to his friends.  I wish he wouldn't run and hide when a strange adult comes into our house.

Perhaps I should try to encourage these things more -- arrange more playdates, with prior coaching about how he can say hello to the other kids.  Go to story time at the library and ask him to say hello to the librarian.  The trouble is that he just doesn't want to try these things, and I'm not sure how to get him to cooperate.  He told me the other day that he has one friend and that is enough, he doesn't want to meet any more people ever.  Yet I suspect he would really enjoy having more friends if he would get past the initial fear of meeting them.

It's just so hard to know when to push and when to give him some space.

6

Michael is my relaxing child right now.  He has no real issues.  He's not even a little bit anxious or neurotic.  Sometimes he throws a fit, and normal decent parenting works to de-escalate it.  He had a tendency to be rude, I have been reminding him about please and thank you, and he's started saying those things very reliably.  He often gives me a hug and kiss for no reason, or a big smile and a hello.  He's suddenly taken an interest in letters and seems to know a great deal more than I've ever consciously taught him.  I do not worry at all about him.

And Miriam, aside from her tendency to maul the baby with love, has been doing fine as well.  She occasionally asks to nurse, I offer a book instead, and she's fine with that.  I really wish she could talk in a volume under a shout, or play independently EVER, but, well, she's two.  She's slept through the night for many nights recently, though not for the past couple.  Anyway it seems she is making progress on that.

We've had some really nice weather for a few days, which is such a help.  I can kick the kids outside while the baby naps and rid myself of all the stress I normally have about the noise they're making.  (I am not sure the noise they make makes any difference to how much the baby naps, but I always worry it will.)  So they run around being completely bananas, the baby naps for her brief moments, and I get some peace and quiet to drink tea and read mystery novels.  (Dorothy Sayers; highly recommend.)

Jacky giving big sister the stiff arm

7

And how am I doing?  Eh, I've been better.  I've also been worse, so, bright side there.  Sometimes I am totally fine.  Days when Jackie naps are delightful.  I do some chores, lavish attention on my big kids, and then have some wonderful time to myself.  Days she does not nap are horrible.  I get so touched-out, I want to crawl out of my own skin.  I start feeling irrationally angry at the world.  I put all my hopes on Jackie actually napping later on, and then when she fails to do it, I get even more angry because of the disappointment.  I am very proud of myself that I haven't yelled much or hit anybody at all, even when they are totally responsible for waking the baby.  I figure so long as I can keep my ticked-off feelings from affecting anyone else, they're no different from a headache -- just something I have to get through.

I just wish there were a cure for them other than long periods of quiet and no-touching.  Exercise does help, but since I'm not fully recovered from childbirth, I probably shouldn't knock myself out with long walks or vacuuming or whatever.  At any rate hopefully I can start some exercise soon, and then maybe I'll feel better.

When I'm not feeling angry, I cycle through all the other bad feelings.  I've had a few days of inexplicable sadness, a few days of excessive anxiety, a few days of intrusive thoughts.  The intrusive thoughts are probably the worst: I can't seem to get my mind off the possibility of some gruesome thing happening to the baby, or the fact that I will someday die.  Or I think about how great my life would be right now if Jackie had never been born, and then feel overwhelmed with guilt.

But the anxiety has been bad some days too.  I always thought religion was no comfort in distress until I lost it; now I can see just how crippling anxiety is when you don't think there's anyone to bail you out, or any long-run plan which will make it all worthwhile.  Basically it means there is no one looking out for your kids besides you, so you have to make sure you worry about All The Things, certain in the knowledge that if you fail, it means the extinction of everything your child is or could someday be, which will be 100% your fault.  If it were just a matter of my preferences, I'd love to believe this stuff were out of my hands.

Despite all the various kinds of sadfeels, I also feel happy sometimes.  This nice weather is great, and every time I am able to spend some time just sitting under the open sky, I feel very happy and relaxed.  Of course it's only five minutes before I hear the baby cry on the monitor, or Miriam starts demanding I go into the magnolia tree with her and play house, but it's something.  I also find a lot of relaxation in reading; I might not be able to knit or spin while holding the baby, but I can read for hours and it helps distract me from the "ahhhhhh someone's always touching me!!!!" thing.

As during pregnancy, I have to focus on either the moment or the long view.  I can't think of the months ahead when I will still be dealing with all the same things I am dealing with today.  I have to remember that by midsummer I will have a baby who can sit up in a high chair and let me eat my dinner with two hands.  Or that within a year, my little girls will be playing with each other for real.  Conversely, I can stay in the moment, and think "hey, right now the baby is sleeping and I am able to write this blog post!"  Nothing worse than a whole nap going by and you realize you never appreciated it, but only scrolled mindlessly through facebook getting mad at strangers.



And how have you all been?

7 quick grievances

I hear today is Festivus, the day for the Airing of Grievances! I don't have many grievances from this year, because most of the things that have gone wrong aren't personal, but let's see if I can come up with seven, in honor of the day.

1

My uterus. Seriously, I hate that dang thing. Not only does it get pregnant when I don't want to, it's giving me Braxton-Hicks contractions all the dang time and I hate those.

My pelvis is also as out-of-joint as it's ever been, so grievances for that too.  I take good care of it, and it just does not return the favor.  The big thing that kills it is lying down with Miriam at night, which I have to do half of every night because it takes her a lot longer to fall asleep than it takes me ... so long before she's still enough for me to creep away, I've drifted off on the floor mattress beside her.

At this point I have some really painful separated abs -- every time I bend over to pick something on the floor (an activity I can't easily avoid) it feels like the baby is going to clamber right out the front.  Hurts like the dickens.  And my stomach is too squashed to eat much of anything, and yet somehow I can't quit snacking all the time.  Especially if it's dry Cheerios, which I've oddly become addicted to.

Anyway, I won't be dealing with this much longer, because I'm 36 weeks today. And yet, I'm not to the point yet where I want it to be over, because I know what comes next.  Hint: it involves screaming.

2

Miriam.  Don't get me wrong, she's still sweet and cute and hilarious, but she is in the thick of a difficult stage.  She wants to nurse every half hour or so, which I won't let her do, so there is wailing.  (She is on my lap wailing right now.)  She can't bear to be more than about twelve inches from me, and even when she's right on top of me, that's not good enough unless I am nursing her, feeding her, reading to her, singing her a song, or otherwise giving her my undivided attention.  If she's not getting that, she'll go deliberately break something in front of me in the hopes of getting it back.

This is either the effect or the cause of her terrible nighttime sleep, which ranges from one wakeup a night to five or six wakeups.  Or sometimes an hour in the middle of the night where she can't go back to sleep and just kicks the wall and whines.  I wanted to nightwean her but I honestly don't know what else I'd do -- she always wakes up a little panicky and if she doesn't get to nurse she screams.  No reasoning with a half-asleep child ... but of course if you get her fully awake then she might stay that way for some time.

John is going to be taking over her night waking soon and I am not sure what he's going to do.  I don't think he knows either.  He can get her down for her initial sleep better than I can, but in the middle of the night she only wants me.  It's something I worry about a lot.

3

Michael.  I'm pretty aggrieved at Michael just now, which mainly isn't really his fault. He just whines a LOT.  See, he likes to play with Marko, but he is about done with Marko dictating all the rules of every game and yelling at him for any detail he attempts to improvise on.  And he likes to play with Miriam, but she's gotten very grabby and pushy lately.  So there's a lot of him either lashing out at one of them or running to me screaming and wailing that they're being mean. And they are.  It's just, I used to be able to count on him to be the mellow kid who'd adapt to his demanding siblings, and he just isn't right now.  Instead he flips out long before they've actually done anything to him, because he's so sure they will.

What he really wants, more than anything, is to run around wild, screaming and roughhousing.  In the summer there are ways he can do that that don't make me lose my mind ... in the winter, not so much.  So I find myself telling him to SETTLE DOWN and BE QUIET 47 times a day, and I feel bad because he needs to get that energy out somehow.  Sometimes I allow some craziness downstairs while I'm upstairs, or upstairs while I'm downstairs (yay big house!) but he really can't moderate his wildness so often he or someone else gets hurt.

Also: did he really need to spend half an hour sobbing this morning because I poured the milk into a measuring cup (to sniff it and make sure it was still good) before I poured it into his oatmeal?  I think not.

4

Wouldn't want to leave Marko out! I'm aggrieved at his extreme rigidity.  Hard to say if I'm noticing it more now that we are working on his assessment, or if he's stepping it up to match with his siblings' demandingness, but it feels like anytime he's crossed at all, there's yelling.  He throws a fit if I ever serve chicken.  He throws a fit if anyone says something inaccurate.  He throws a fit if someone pretends differently from how he's pretending.  Last Saturday he screamed and cried and tried to hit people for half an hour because, I kid you not, Michael said his lizard, Swampy, was made of scales, and Marko says no one is allowed to pretend that because lizards in real life aren't entirely made of scales.  I feel like I'm walking on eggshells, and it's not fair to his siblings either to have to always be telling them "just don't talk to Marko, you're upsetting him."  (Though that's something I have to tell every kid, because every last one of them seems addicted to repeating over and over whatever phrase they have found makes their sibling scream the most.  It's the worst.)

About Marko's assessment: the bad news is, our stupid fake insurance will not cover him seeing the specialist he is supposed to see.  The good news is, the school district will "unofficially" assess him on their own.  By law it doesn't matter if a child is homeschooled; if a child has or may have a disability that is affecting their ability to get an education, the school must provide him with whatever it provides the other children in the district -- whether assessments or specific educational help.

The further bad news to that is, they're taking their own sweet time setting it up, and that's not great for us because now is a great time for me to be taking Marko to appointments and a month from now is not.  Legally they have to move on this by February, which, hello, is no comfort to me at all.

John recently introduced the boys to Minecraft, having heard it's really educational and so on, and Marko latched onto it with the full force of his obsessive personality.  He talks about it so incessantly I fear my brain will leak out my ears.  He's only allowed to play on weekends, and only if he's done schoolwork every weekday (which means we are being a lot more consistent about that, and no real power struggles about it), but the rest of the week is all taken up with talking about it, asking questions about it, flipping through the Minecraft books he got from the library, playing "real life Minecraft," refusing to wear any clothes but dark pants and a blue shirt like the character in it wears, etc.  He's suddenly amazingly cooperative, but only if you remind him that only good listeners get to play Minecraft.  So much for my self-motivated, no-rewards-or-punishments approach to education.  And every time I try to do something else fun with Marko -- convince him to go outside, read a book to him, get us all playing a game that another kid wants to play -- he tells us he just isn't excited or interested by anything else anymore but Minecraft.  He even spent a few days hating Christmas  because he was afraid he'd miss the chance to play Minecraft because we were opening presents and eating cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  I kinda hate Minecraft by this point.

Yet, when an obsessive kid has an obsession, you have no choice but to read up on it and try to take an interest, so I have.  And Marko is getting a Minecraft action figure for Christmas.  I have hopes that it will make him appreciate Christmas at least a little -- and that he'll use it for some creative play instead of just following me around reciting different rules of Minecraft.

6

Might be cheating, but my sixth grievance is all of my kids together.  They just are all going through difficult stages at the moment, and these stages work together synergetically to result in a massive cluster of awful.  They spend their time antagonizing each other, winding each other up in wild games, or fighting over who gets to be closest to me.

That last is probably the most annoying.  You know how you can go outside and it seems pleasant and not buggy at all, but within five minutes gnats are swarming around your head?  That's what the kids do whenever I attempt to sit down.  They all want to sit next to me, and of course three kids can't all sit next to the same person.  So they either start pushing and pinching one another, or they try climbing on top of me to stake out my lap.  But of course once one kid has done that, the others get jealous because someone else is closer to me than them, so there is screeching and pulling at each other.  A couple of weeks ago we all had the stomach flu and every time I tried to lie down on the couch, they would actually pile on top of me like a rugby scrum, kicking each other (and me, accidentally) and wailing.  Mothers should never have to be sick; it is simply not feasible when you have children.

The funny thing is, I was looking at old posts the other day and saw that at this stage of Miriam's pregnancy, the exact same thing was going on.  Lots of fighting, and lots of clinginess and jealousy.  What is it about being massively pregnant that makes children misbehave?  A few months ago I felt a lot worse than I do now, was crankier and more prone to neglect them, and they just played downstairs half the day and left me out of it.  I know that pregnancy makes sensory stimuli more annoying to me, but I'm pretty sure that objectively, they really are being more overstimulating now than they were then.

One possibility is that we just aren't leaving the house enough.  It's too cold and wet for them to want to play outside, and there are very few places around here to go in winter.  And, of course, every time we do go anywhere they come home with the plague, so I'm not eager to try.  Once I hit 37 weeks I'm planning to cloister myself because they pick up germs so easily and you all may remember what a disaster it was giving birth with sickness in the house last time.  But that always does leave the kids bored and bouncing off the walls.

Another is that I'm feeling a lot less willing to treat Miriam as the baby lately.  I do hold other children on my lap now, even when she throws a fit and tries to pull them off yelling "MY Mama!"  So instead of the peaceful coexistence of "Mama belongs to Miriam so everyone else had better go find something else to do" there's jockeying for more lap time.  And Miriam gets super needy because she's not getting the attention she's used to.  I could just go back to open season on nursing and hold her 100% of the time she wants, but ... that just would be pushing back the inevitable, and I'd rather get it out of the way now so it's not a new-baby thing.  Though experience with Michael was that it took him over a year to get over the not-the-baby-anymore wailing and clinginess.  I certainly HOPE Miriam doesn't react the same way.  She certainly is excited enough about everything baby-related.

And maybe it's just a matter of them all just happening to be having a hard time at the same moment, or one kid's hard time spreading to the others, and therefore not really my fault.  I may be able to help -- I think adding a bit more structure to our days has been good, when I've done that -- but in the end the kids might just have to struggle through it and hopefully be done with it by the time the baby gets here.

7

You know what?  Six is enough grievances and I honestly don't feel that negative about life.  So I'll cheat and talk about good stuff that's going on.



First, I still have a pretty decent energy level.  While it's true that I can't do much of anything without putting my hip joints in excruciating pain, I still would pick that over the horrible dragging feeling that I dealt with a few months ago.  When you have energy but lack mobility, you can still knit, spin, read challenging books, write emails to friends, and come up with activities for the kids.  And I am getting more housework done than I was then, albeit at the price of some pain.  And the thing about pain is, you can kind of get used to it, especially if it's not one of the really bad kinds like headaches or labor.

Second, I've been getting a lot of good crafting done.  No time like the third trimester to knit hats.  I even dug out my loom for one special gift.

Third, everyone has been extremely nice to me lately.  Friends keep showing up at my house to listen to my problems and sweep my floor.  I was in a panic about childcare for labor and a post to the local parish's Facebook page got me a ton of responses.  The person we've found is so perfect I want to adopt her.  I remember having all these doubts about being the "heretic" among the tight Catholic community here, but the reality is that these are great people with an actual functional community and that's not the sort of thing one should give up.  Maybe I don't fit in perfectly, but I am being welcomed and treated with kindness even by the people who know my Awful Secret.  Whereas the other friends I've made in the past year or two?  I still like them, but I wouldn't call them up in a pinch because I just don't feel like our relationship is up to favor-exchanging yet.



Fourth, with the leaves off the trees I get gorgeous sunrises and sunsets every day.  I really like living here.  Still puzzled by the radiator -- why does the thermostat downstairs read that it's set to 66, the actual temperature is 76, and the radiator is on, while the thermostat upstairs reads it's set to 70, it's actually 68, and the radiator is not on?  Or why, in the middle of the night, is it boiling in our room and freezing in Miriam's room, even though the thermostat in the hall supposedly controls both radiators?  But propping doors open is mostly taking care of all the weirdness.  Our fridge also started to fail recently, but it turned out it was covered in our home warranty and we got a whole new fridge for a $100 deductible!  Not too bad at all, even though it took them forevvvveeeerrrrr to get to it.  Home warranties are pretty cool, and I'd recommend them to anybody who doesn't have a lot of savings.  If you've got the savings to buy new appliances as needed, you'll save money just doing that, but if not .... the amount of panic that you are spared when you realize that you pay this month exactly what you pay every month, even though a major appliance broke, is definitely worth the money.  It means that one terrible month can't wipe you out.

I would have liked to visit family for Christmas, but of course that isn't feasible at 36 weeks pregnant, and it looks like we are going to have a very nice Christmas at home.  And it's nice not having to stress about travel.  Our plans are very simple and relaxing; no 12-hour drives or plane flights or anything.  I've baked cookies a lot lately. Tomorrow we're having bacon and orange juice and some kind of sweet bread for breakfast, and then for dinner a beef roast which hopefully everyone will enjoy.  (ONE DAY where no one complains about the dinner would be delightful.)  Our tree is set up in the living room, where it does not dwarf our entire living space, and I have a wreath outside.  It's all very low-key, but that's kind of how we roll.  John even has the next week off, so he and I can knock out some new-baby chores and maybe go for one last date.

I hope you and yours have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Guess that baby!

 Round two!

The rules are easy: guess which baby is which in each group.  Some groups have only two babies.  They are not necessarily exactly the same age in these photos, just roughly the same size so they could fit in the same outfits.  Click to enlarge.

If you can't tell, don't feel bad -- I'm their mother and I don't see any differences either.

Group 1 - stripey shirt

Group 2 - baseball outfits

Group 3 - smashed newborn faces

Group 4 - blue jammies

 Group 5 - robot shirt

More Markoisms

"Buckle you out" -- unbuckle my seatbelt

"Should I hold you both of guys" -- Hold both Michael and me, please.

"You are having trouble tooting."

"Daddy comed home, and the kitty farted."

(Acting out a dialogue between two trucks) "Did you lost your mama?  No.  I fell down."

(Doing the fingerplay for "Here is the church, here is the steeple")  "Here is the store.  Open the doors and here's all the bananas!"

"Here.  I buyed this for you.  It's a ticket.  Get on the train."

"How-are-you-ya."  (Hallelujah.)

Onomatapoeia:

"The train says "'BOO BOO!'"

"Game with letters [Words With Friends] says 'cock cock cock cock cock.'"

"The phone went 'leeder leeder lert.'"

"Airplanes go OOOOOOOO!"

[When the dog yawned] "Gilbert said 'yaaaaaaIwanttogetonthebuuuuuuus!'"

* * *

Marko still calls himself "you" 90% of the time.  No, it's not something to worry about.  Yes, I am worrying about it anyway.  Yes, we are working on it.