Taking My Ego For A Ride

I got my racing bike off the trainer, dusted it off and cautiously pumped tires that have been flat since last spring, when my OB laughingly informed my non-stop puking self that I was pregnant.

Here's what I learned:

A) Headwinds still suck.
B) Holy shitballs Batman, I am out of shape.
3) See A and B.

This was the conversation between my legs and cadence computer about 3 minutes into the ride...

CC: You suck.
Legs: But... but... complicated pregnancy! Puked every day for 9 months! Pre-eclampsia and bedrest!  Emergency c-section!!
CC: You TOTALLY suck. Now HTFU and give me 85.

Also? Postpartum bellies and aero bars are mutually exclusive concepts.  And what was I thinking signing up for a triathlon that is somehow only 9 weeks away?!

There was some good news...

1) I can still clip in without wiping out.
2) I still remember... mostly... which gear levers do what.
3) I can, technically, still pull 21 mph into a headwind while hauling 100 extra pounds on this poor, tired ass.

It's not gonna be pretty, but I'm fairly confident I can finish the Danskin sprint in August. Even if I have to hold hands with Sally Edwards to do it.

Bottom line? Time to spend less time pounding big girl martinis and more time hammering in the big girl ring.

Nostalgia in B Flat

Got my clarinet out today because my dad wants to play it again. It's a beautiful instrument he entrusted to my care many years ago - I was always aware of how lucky I was to have it. 


Opened the case and the scent hit me like a nostalgia bomb. Walking upstairs, the weight of the bag on my shoulder took me back 20 years, to when it was practically an appendage.

There's a new box of reeds still tucked into a pocket from a few years ago, one I bought before Bear was born and I was trying to find time to play again.

I love this time while my kids are small, but things like this remind me of what I've been missing.  I plan to audition for the local city band once it becomes a reasonable thing to commit to. 

It's no Marching Illini, but at least it will put my instrument back in my hands where it belongs.

Opportunity for Growth

Bear has trouble identifying what's alive and what's not.  I'm told it's not unusual for kiddos on the spectrum.

I've overheard him talking himself through it... "OK, my nuggle binkie doesn't have eyes. Or a mouth. And it can't hear. So it's not alive."

I asked his teacher if he'd learned that at school, maybe in the Social Skills group he participates in, but she said no.  So I was really proud of him for working that out on his own.

Child labor makes berries taste sweeter!

Then a few weeks ago he comes to me with "Miss P says carrots are alive." 

This came up many times over the last few weeks. Because it is very confusing for him - he thought he'd worked out the whole "alive" thing.

The conversations got even more interesting when he connected the dots and came back at me with "Animals are alive. Do we eat animals?"  But, I digress.

Shortly after the whole "carrots are alive" thing, the class planted grass in styrofoam cups. Thus, I found myself at Home Depot this morning buying potting soil and a planter for the carrot seeds I picked up at the farm stand when we went strawberry picking yesterday.

Because it's important for kids to understand where our food comes from, yadda yadda yadda. And I'm definitely not going to put in a strawberry patch, even though I've thought about it because my Grandma had one.

We pulled buckets of these worms off our tomato plants.

Here's the thing: I grew up with a big garden. I mean, a hayyuuuge garden. Some of the first houses we looked at when we were engaged had less square footage than this garden.

We grew loads of veggies and canned most of them to eat through the winter. Very Little House on the Prairie. I hated it as a kid - I have to say I don't know if it's worse to pull weeds or tomato worms - but now I appreciate how lucky we were to have such wonderful food literally in our back yard. I mean, to this day I can barely choke down a grocery store tomato.  In fact, I appreciate it so much that I stole  reappropriated borrowed my mom's old stash of canning stuff and started doing it on a limited basis with my friends.  Mostly dependable stuff with apples from local orchards or tomatoes from the farm stand, with a few haphazard pickling experiments and one hilariously botched pickle relish situation.

He planted hundreds of carrot seeds.

I want a garden here, but I live in the real world.  OK, suburbia, so not actually the real world. What I mean is I have to pay a sitter 10 bucks an hour just so I can email my clients to tell them I'm still on maternity leave because I don't have time to work. Which means the last thing I have time for right now is putting in a garden.  I was hoping to do it next year, when Bear will (hopefully) have a better attention span and I don't have drop everything to nurse the baby every 2 hours.

Besides, suburbia is this weird alternate reality where you have to buy dirt and there's no way to dispose of the sod you have to cut out in order to put in the dirt you bought. 

But. The Bear wants to grow carrots. So today, I worked it out and he planted some carrots.

 Certified organic carrot seeds.  In organic potting soil.  Hear that sound in the distance?  That's me, hugging a tree.

Now I must locate the Curious George episode where he grows carrots. Because I'm hoping the monkey will have an easier time making Bear understand they won't be ready until August.

Better Living Through Chemistry

We're a few days into The Great Melatonin Experiment, and we're definitely starting to see progress that goes beyond bedtime improvements.

To recap...

- bedtime had gone from an hour or so (assisted by visual checklist) of frustrating but more or less manageable predictability to 3-4 hours of crazy making, dysregulated, screaming, sobbing, nonverbal insanity

- it's been getting worse for several months, with him not falling asleep until roughly midnight (that's with starting the ritual around 8:30 and attempting to coach him through visual checklist)  (And no, we can't start earlier, husband doesn't get home from work until at least 7. This already has him brushing his teeth for bed moments after eating his last bite of dinner.)

- this disaster included him losing all of his potty training and starting from scratch with him basically in diapers again

- about three weeks ago he started waking up dysregulated and nonverbal on a daily basis. A recent 90 minute screaming breakdown upon waking up prompted my husband to have to rush home from work and an emergency call to our family therapist.


One of the first things she said was that he's not getting enough sleep (Uummm, yeah. Tell me something I didn't know.)  But rather than the predictable lectures about bedtime routines and visual schedules, she suggested we try melatonin.  I was more than ready to hear some new advice, and I'd heard that melatonin it was a common supplement in the spectrum community.

We followed her suggestion and called the pediatrician for dosage advice first thing the next morning. Because?  We were close to cracking. If we could get him on it THAT DAY, we were gonna.

It took another day to hear back from his doc, and then we were On. It.

Gave him the smallest dose per his neuro (1 mg).  Gave each other a hopeful look and went our separate ways - each with a child in hand - to begin what we assumed would be another long, hideous night of screaming misery.  Sometimes it's Bear screaming, and sometimes it's the baby screaming because he's overtired on account of his big brother won't be quiet for more than 3.2 nanoseconds and OMFG it's 11:13 PM we've been at this for hours please for the love of everything go the fuck to sleep.

Anyway.

Gave Bear his first dose of melatonin around 8:30 pm.  Around 9:45 my husband wandered into our room (where I was still attempting to get Baby T to sleep) with a goofy look on his face.

All I could muster was disbelief that Bear was actually asleep. And that it only took an hour.  And? AND?!?  There was no screaming.

That first night he slept nearly 12 hours, with only a brief wakening for his regular pre-dawn trip from his bed to ours.

Until now he'd been sleeping maybe 8 or 9 hours.  Some nights, 6 or 7. Or even 5.

His therapist also recommended a full meds eval because she's concerned about his overall behavior - particularly the increase in obsessive/compulsive behaviors.  But I was squeamish about trying melatonin... really really really not ready to discuss heavy duty medications with side effects significant enough it's made me unwilling to take them for my own OCD and anxiety.

We told her we'd put that idea on the back burner, hoping that if the started sleeping better the dysregulated behaviors would diminish.

Within 3 days (hell... within one day), things looked like they'll be moving in that direction.  We  even made an impromptu trip to the park, and he was able to cope with an abrupt "the baby's crying, gotta go right now" transition so well I was still in shock an hour later. 

Because a week ago? We wouldn't have even attempted the park. Or if we had, leaving would have taken 30 transition, and we'd have still had to carry  him out screaming, and he'd have been nonverbal for a couple of hours.

And this morning? He woke up with a smile and said "Good morning, Mommy."  No drama need apply.


It's been so deeply awful for so long I haven't been able to acknowledge the depths of the awfulness for fear I'd lose my resolve. It's been a non-stop pressure cooker of overwhelming stress as I've watched my poor Bear spiral out of control.  It feels like I've been clinging to the outside of a runaway train as it heads toward a cliff, and nothing I've tried has helped. Until now.

Now that it's been almost a week and it's getting better every day, my husband and I are starting to let our guard down.  Starting to think that this might actually be getting better.  That our family might get to come out of all-crisis-all-the-time mode and start to heal. 

And all thanks to a little blue bottle of liquid that cost less than 7 bucks.  

Whether Pigs Have Wings

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"to talk of many things:
of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax..."
 
and that my kid has Autism and Sensory Processing Disorder and Language Processing Disorder. 

And honestly? Would be so. much. happier. talking about shoes. Or even cabbages.

My brilliant little Bear is catching on. To, I dunno. Something.  He's noticing stuff and asking questions.  Questions with very difficult answers.

Like - after recovering enough to notice his Daddy and I discussing a meltdown - "Mommy, what's dis-reg-oo-ated?"

And a couple of weeks ago, when he finally noticed this:

It was in plain sight for ages. He just never noticed.  Until he did.  And one day about two weeks ago he presented it to me while I was making dinner and asked what it is.  Because while you're stressed out at the end of a long day with a knife in one hand and a dead chicken in the other is the perfect time to explain autism to a 4 year old, right?

The nice (?) thing is that I have sensory issues of my own.  So far, what we've said to explain things like him being the only one wearing headphones in a restaurant is that "our brains are a little bit different" and that can make some things like being in a noisy place uncomfortable for us.

I also have compulsive issues, so I've been able to genuinely understand where he's coming from when we're stuck in some awful loop, like when the bus is coming and he really needs to get his shoes on RIGHT. NOW. but he can't because the kitchen stools aren't lined up in a perfect diagonal and OMG MOMMY YOU CAN'T PUT THE LEFT SHOE ON FIRST.  Sometimes a simple "I understand that you need to finish this, can I help so we make the bus on time?" works wonders.  He may or may not let me help, but he calms down because he's no longer on the defensive.  And I can do it because I understand that awful "must do this crazy thing or the world will end" feeling. 

So. Back to that night in the kitchen.  I took a deep breath, thought fast and came up with this...

You know how sometimes things are a little harder for you? How you get sad and don't have your words? And how sometimes you need your headphones or to line up the chairs to feel better? That has a name.

Loooong pause. Because OMG OMG OMG don't make me say the name.  Please, for the love of pasta, don't make me say the name. Because I wasn't ready to say it to him. Not like that.

And he didn't make me say it.  He just said "ok" and wandered off to put the magnet back where he found it.

I know I got off lucky. And I know now that it's time to have this talk with him.

It was surprisingly easy to have that other "talk" with him. The one where you have to explain female anatomy? Yeah, piece of cake. He asked recently what girls have if they don't have penises (again, out of the blue and while I was making dinner).  I was too busy to overthink it, so I told him just as blandly as if he'd asked me if it tomorrow was a school day. And it was fine.

One of Bear's "things" is that a noun is not, apparently, happy all by itself.  That's why ketchup is "ketchup made out of tomatoes" but all rushed like one big word - ketchupmadeoutoftomatoes.

Why is why he will tell anyone who will listen that girls have a fachinathatbabiescomeoutof.

Which is to say... I need better material before he asks about autism again. Because he will. Because he's catching on, and I want to be ready next time he asks.

And because we just got this totally awesome shirt from ThinkGeek and I can't wait for him to wear it with pride.

 

If you had the autism talk with your child, please drop me a comment and either tell me how it went or link to your blog if you wrote about it.  I'm not interested in what a book by a clinician says I should say. I want to know what real moms said to real kids.

So Late It's Probably Irrelevant Easter Post

I wasn't going to do an Easter post this year. I said what I needed to say about this holiday last year, and other than having another child in the house to corrupt with our heathen ways, nothing has  changed.

But I realized that the decisions I made about this year's Easter activities had nothing to do with atheism and everything to do with Autism and SPD. So, I decided it was worth writing about after all.

Dying Easter Eggs
Not. Gonna. Happen.

Hard boiled eggs are gross. I won't eat them, my husband won't eat them and I think it goes without saying Bear won't eat them.  And I refuse to waste food.  So, no egg dying at our house.

My solution is for us to bake and decorate egg and bunny shaped sugar cookies.  Baking together is a favorite activity that's full of opportunities for sensory stimulation - as long as you don't mind a little mess!



Easter Egg Hunts
Not. Gonna. Happen.

Our neighborhood does one. The latest newsletter bragged that at last year's Easter Egg Hunt, 3000 eggs were found in under 10 minutes.  I thought "that's supposed to make us want to go?!"

How much chaos does that mean?  More than I'm willing to subject my kid to.  And have I mentioned I'm a sensory avoider who suffers extreme anxiety in crowds?

I made the decision to pass on hunts before my friends talked about events where they saw older kids shoving toddlers out of the way and parents interfering so their darling could get the most eggs. No. Thanks. 

My Bear can barely make it through a quiet board game without freaking out if the other players don't play their turns the way he scripted in his head.  I'd rather not see how he'd handle being pushed aside while he was sighting the next egg with binoculars and triple counting how many steps it takes to reach it.

The solution? We had Easter brunch at Grandma's house and they very thoughtfully hid a few eggs around the living room.  He got the egg hunt experience in a safe place at his own pace. He got to do things like count and recount the eggs in his basket. And we got pictures like this.

The grandparents both eat hard boiled eggs, so when the hunt was done the eggs were quietly returned to the fridge and Bear happily went home with a small packet of organic jelly beans.


Easter Baskets
Not. Gonna. Happen.

Insert inappropriate zombie carpenter joke here.

I don't want my kids to associate any holiday with boatloads of cheap candy. (For Halloween we pick a few favorite pieces and the Halloween Witch visits in the night to trade the rest for a small gift.)  Besides, my OCD can't stand the messy plastic grass or bunny themed tchotckes that are worse than McToys.

Plus, I can't afford the vet bills if my cat ate the plastic grass (a guarantee) or my dog got sick from eating all the candy (so common that vets call it Easter Basket Syndrome).

Did I mention I lovingly baked sugar cookies from scratch? And then let my child loose with big bowls of colored icing?  I was scraping icing drips off the counter for two days. I think that's more than enough sugar for one holiday.


Easter Bunny
At our house the Easter Bunny is a cheap, lazy version of Santa. He brings one modest gift (under $20) and leaves it - unwrapped - on the coffee table.  There's no unnecessary drama involving the perfect technique for unwrapping a gift, no meltdown when we won't let him open other people's gifts, no extra cleanup. Just happy kids. 

And really? If carefully limiting how we participate means we navigate the minefield of another overstimulating, overcommercialized, sugar laden, peer pressurized holiday and wind up with happy (regulated!) kids? That's all I can ask for.

More Effective Than a Blue Light Bulb

This morning Bear was moaning, twitching, flailing and crying before he even opened his eyes - I don't think I've ever seen him wake up already in a full meltdown. It took all I had to restrain him so he didn't accidentally hurt the baby, who was sound asleep next to us.

He finally woke up enough to stop thrashing, but was nonverbal for a good hour after that.  All I could think about was the fact we were supposed to pick up his glasses today and how on earth was THAT going to happen now?

Eventually he calmed down and I decided we might as well go for it.

The fitting was quick and easy.  I was relieved. We were turning to go when she noticed there was a small balance due to discrepancy with insurance.  So, we got in line to pay.

I could tell right away he wasn't going to make it.  After chasing a random customer trying to leave so he could explain that his glasses had a special chemical that made them dark, he started vocal stimming and touching all their (fragile) Easter decorations.  Then he started doing chin ups on the reception desk (a favorite sensory seeking stim for him in boring doctor's waiting rooms). 

He wasn't even close to being in a place where verbal prompts were going to reach him, but he was starting to get That Look from several people in the lobby and I needed to look like I was trying.

Thankfully, the receptionist noted my dilemma and made short work of my small transaction just as he was really starting to ramp things up.

I picked him up, cheerfully announced to those staring at us "It's Autism Awareness Month! Look! Now you're aware of Autism!" and got the hell out.