July 11, 2007

summer has swallowed me whole: the sequel

Henry has been able to read for a long time, but has been convinced that he can’t do it. This has driven me berserk because OH MY GOD HE READS BETTER THAN I DO! But he’s a worrier, so there’s that.

(One night, when we were snuggling in bed, he tried to tell me that reading was boring. “Daddy and I love to read,” I told him. “How many books have you read?” he asked. “Oh, gosh,” I said, “Thousands. Easily.” Because with the multiple graduate degrees in English, that is a totally true statement.

“Well,” he told me, “one day, you will realize that reading is BORING.” I told Wade this and he said, “Did you tell him that you’ve read Clarissa* TWICE? If you didn’t think that was boring, then you’re pretty much good to go.”)

Last week, Wade had lunch with a friend who has a son Henry’s age. The friend confessed that in an effort to get their son to read, he and his wife had agreed that their son could have unlimited access to Captain Underpants books, as long as he read them himself. When Wade told me about this, he said, “It doesn’t sound like such a bad deal.”

“I would sell my soul to Satan if Henry would read,” I told him. And that’s basically what we did. We told Henry that for every chapter of a book he read on his own (Henry and Mudge books, mostly, not War and Peace, although that’s tempting) he could earn ten minutes of computer time. Because I’m willing to bribe the kids to make sure that they will be literate enough to move out of my house one day.

Henry was pissed, but he agreed, after much moaning. And dammit if the boy can’t READ. Well. Fluidly! With proper inflection and everything!

Sheesh.

So today, I have this conference call, for a freelance job. The kids and I had gone to the pool, but we came home in time for me to be on the phone because it seemed more professional to be in my kitchen, where it’s quiet, instead of at the pool, where kids are SCREAMING non stop. And then after the call, I thought maybe I would grab a shower because I was STILL in my swimsuit, which is was kind of damp and just not comfortable.

Did I mention that while I was on the phone/in the shower Henry was playing on the computer? With my blessing? Because you do what you have to do, honestly.

This afternoon, I took the boys to get some puzzles (no, I’m not going to explain that) and then we came home and HAD to put them together in the living room even though we have a perfectly good playroom which is the LARGEST ROOM IN THE HOUSE and the only room with furniture that doesn’t make me feel like crying. Henry asked if he could have more computer time and I said no, we’re doing puzzles and he pouted a little and half heartedly tried to work a Goodnight Moon puzzle and then said, “I’m going upstairs to do something. I’ll be back.”

“No computer,” I said. And he rolled his eyes and said, “I KNOW.”

A while later he comes back and looks at the puzzles and then goes back upstairs, and I start to think that I should check on him because while I’m fairly sure he’s not playing on the computer (if only because he’s a terrible liar and I can always tell when he’s fibbing) I don’t want to be that mom who cannot for the life of her figure out how her child–who had an unsupervised computer in another room–wound up in a CHAT ROOM for god’s sake.

Not that I think my seven-year-old is frequenting chat rooms, although now that I know he can read I should probably think about that. I just thought I should go check on him. Anyway.

I leave Charlie putting together a Rainbow Fish puzzle and I tiptoe upstairs to find . . .

Henry laying on the floor of the playroom READING. To himself. Out loud. READING READING READING!

And my heart exploded, and I picked up the pieces and went back downstairs to finish puzzles with Charlie. And it is possible that I made myself a cocktail to celebrate the fact that I am NOT the Worst Mother Ever and that my kids HAVE learned something this summer.

Even though Charlie still won’t wear pants.

*Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa is the longest novel ever written in English. And yes, I really DID read it TWICE. It’s good, I promise! How could the thrilling story of a girl who accidentally runs away from home and then dies of a broken heart NOT be good? And it’s written entirely as LETTERS! I know! Fabulous!

July 10, 2007

summer has swallowed me whole

Today was the day I decided that I have HAD IT with these kids. I do not want to talk about Bionicles or play with Playmobil or listen to any complaining about how HE HIT ME or HE TOOK MY ROBOT. I am tired of being asked when it will be time to go to the pool or play on the computer or watch television. I am tired of kids who ask to go outside in a thunderstorm and then refuse to leave the house when the rain stops. I am tired of listening to complaints about what we have to eat at home and complaints about leaving the house to get something good to eat.

I am tired of juggling work and play, and tired of waiting for the damn rain to STOP ALREADY so we can go to the pool.

I am TIRED.

By lunchtime today (which was late because I somehow lost track of the time, what with all the whining and raining and refusing to leave the house) I was swearing that NEXT SUMMER the kids will go to SLEEP AWAY CAMP for the ENTIRE SCHOOL VACATION. I was having a hard time finding a nice way to say simple things like “Please clean up the playroom” and “Don’t hit your brother” and “Find your swimsuit and we will go to the pool.” I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through the afternoon, much less the rest of the summer.

And then the sun came out and I yelled until everyone was in their damn swimsuits and covered in sunscreen and we went swimming, which was fun and cool and calming. And when we came home, we played Clue for an hour and everyone was cheerful and kind and peaceful and somehow the boys remembered the rules (Clue has a LOT of rules, you all) and we laughed a lot and FINALLY figured out (with only minimal cheating) that it was Professor Plum in the hall with the candlestick.

Charlie came home from the pool the other day with a rash on his legs, where his swimsuit rubs. He’s had this before (he has delicate skin, my baby boy) and after he got dressed, he was fussing about his shorts rubbing on his legs. So I told him to take his shorts off, which he thought was the Best Thing Ever and now I am fighting to get him to put some pants on, already! every day.

Today when we came home, happy and hot and damp from the pool, he asked if he could put on what he was going to sleep in. Sure, I said, why not. And he ran upstairs yelling, “HENRY! I’M GOING TO PLAY CLUE IN MY UNDERWEAR!”

I have moments where I lose sight of what really matters here, when I get so worn out by the daily grind that I forget that when you’re almost five, the best part of summer is playing board games in your underwear. But then, always when I am at the end of my rope, one of my children reminds me that summer is short and that it is important to jump off the diving board and touch the bottom of the pool and eat popsicles an hour before dinner and not wear pants.

I think tomorrow I will yell less and play more and maybe eat a popsicle for lunch. But I will probably put some pants on, for the sake of the neighbors.

July 9, 2007

Monday, 8:15 pm

Charlie comes into the living room for about the fifth time since we tucked him in. “Daddy,” he says, “are you and Mommy going to stay downstairs? Or are you coming upstairs?”

“We’re staying down here,” Wade says, “now GO TO BED.”

“Okay!” Charlie says cheerfully. “Goodnight!” And he scampers back up the stairs.

“Doesn’t that question worry you AT ALL?” I ask Wade.

He looks at me for a moment and then says, “Well, NOW it does.”

July 6, 2007

time flies when you’re agonizing about furniture

We spent all day yesterday furniture shopping. And when I say all day I mean we left the house at 9:40 am (my parents are here and they kept the kids) and came home at 4:00, and then went out again after the boys were in bed.

All. Damn. Day.

We picked out a chair and an ottoman and a loveseat for the study, a sofa and a loveseat for the living room, a dining room set (table, six chairs, sideboard), and fabric to recover our cocktail ottoman. I wanted to feel good about making all these decisions in one fell swoop, but there were a couple of moments when I thought I might cry or throw up, and they were all before the nice Sales Associate added up the damage and told us that we would need to come up with the GNP of an emerging third-world country to pay for all of this.

We came home and measured the office and realized that the loveseat was going to be too big. We breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn’t actually ORDERED anything yet.

We went back out and ordered the chair and ottoman for the study, which (hooray!) came out to be $500.00 LESS than we anticipated AND (also hooray!) will be delivered on Tuesday.

We came home and went to bed.

At 2:30 am I woke up thinking I HATE THAT DINING ROOM TABLE. I laid there for a while trying to put my finger on why I hate the table and if I even really DO hate the table or if I was just still overwhelmed from the whole day of shopping and the 3,000 fabric swatches we looked at and the fact that somehow we picked out chairs that cost SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS EACH (what the hell?) and what the best wasy would be to say, “Honey, you know that table you really REALLY like? I hate it.” Finally, at 3:00 I got up and went to look at the table on line.

I hate the table. Good thing we hadn’t ordered anything yet.

Fortunately Wade is not particularly attached to the table and agreed that we absolutely should keep looking because if we’re going to spend that much money (chairs! for six hundred dollars! each!) we really should love the dining room. Also maybe it shouldn’t cost QUITE that much.

The whole day was a little overwhelming, particularly the 3,000 fabric swatches, because sometimes it’s hard to explain what EXACTLY you mean when you say “blue” (Very Helpful Sales Associate: How about this one? Me: That’s not really blue. VHSA: Sure it is! Me: No, it’s green. VHSA: Well, it’s sort of an aquamarine. Me: It’s green. VHSA: Okay, how about this one? Me: No. Green. VHSA: How about thi– Me: No. VHSA: Okay, so no green. Me: Yes. BLUE.)

I told Wade later that he got a taste of what it was like to shop for houses with me. I can’t tell you what I want until I see it, but I sure as hell know what I don’t want. Which apparently is ANYTHING GREEN.

Today I’m just really tired and really unexcited about new furniture. I love the chair that Wade picked out for the office, and I love the blue and brown color palette (ooh, listen to me!) that we’ve decided on for the living and dining rooms. But the last straw yesterday was when we got down to accent pillows for the brown sofa and the Very Nice Sales Associate told me that they would be $150.00. Each. Wade said cheerfully, “What’s one more torpedo to a sinking ship?” mostly to distract the sales associate from noticing that my brain had exploded and was leaking out my ears.

Actually I’m a little sorry that DIDN’T happen; it would make this whole furniture shopping process a whole lot easier. Tomorrow: Round Two, in which we try to find a dining room set that I don’t hate.

Wish us luck.

July 3, 2007

hey, don’t write yourself off yet . . .

Every six months, I take the boys to the pediatric dentist. And every six months, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth and questioning the judgment of the universe and my fitness as a mother.

Because the dentist is incredibly difficult for Henry. Lots of things are difficult for Henry; he’s just like that. But recently, things that used to be catastrophically difficult have become . . . less so. When I took him to the pediatrician this last time, he had a throat culture; in the past, he had to be restrained for the swab. This time, he sat up on the counter and wrapped his arms around his knees and took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I’m ready” and opened his mouth.

Just like that.

Wade and I have been talking about how much Henry has changed in the last year, particularly how he has grown out of some of the behaviors we worried the most about. He has gained confidence, socially and academically; he has stopped living so much in his own little world. He is doing things that the doctors told us he would never do–understanding puns, for example, and solving word problems (which I still can’t do most of the time). He worries about Charlie when he is sick or sad and clearly has a strong empathetic bond with his brother.

He hugs me, and lets me kiss him, which he hadn’t done for a long time. He laughs, a lot. He has conversations, where he talks and then he listens.

Henry is still quirky and anxious, but he’s not stuck (for lack of a better word) in the frightening ways we thought he would be. And I find myself, as I watch him move through his days, wondering if he really is anything at all beyond that, or if, honestly, he is just quirky and anxious.

I think Henry was overdiagnosed. I think he is different from other children–I think he feels and senses and perceives the world differently–but I don’t think he falls on any spectrum. He clearly has ADHD, but beyond that? Beyond that, I think the doctors were looking for something more, I think WE were looking for something more, I think as a culture we’ve fallen into the trap of looking for something more, something that would explain why some kids are different.

Instead of just saying, some kids are different.

Before we went to the dentist today, I decided that we were going to start small: there would be no X rays, for one thing, and Henry would take his own toothbrush and toothpaste. And we would go from there.

He let the hygienist brush his teeth. He waited patiently for the dentist, who was running late. He opened his mouth and let the dentist examine his teeth and his dental work and he was polite and friendly and calm.

He didn’t cry or scream.

The last two times we have gone to the dentist, I have cried the entire way home. Today, we turned the radio up and sang along with Jimmy Eat World (because how can you NOT sing along to The Middle?) and talked about where we might go for a snack and what time Nana and Papa’s plane was landing and how many turtles live in the lake. I won’t say that today was just a normal visit to the dentist–normal kids, like Charlie, have X rays and have their teeth cleaned with the Special Spinny Toothbrush–but it was the most normal visit we have ever had.

And if this is what the rest of Henry’s life will be like–being a little quirky and a little anxious and a little bit more sensitive to the world than his peers–I think that’s okay. In fact, I think it’s just fine.

It just takes some time, little girl
You’re in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right.

July 2, 2007

five minutes ago, they were tiny little babies

Every night, at bed time, I go in to snuggle Charlie. He wraps his arms around me and says, “Mama, I’m NEVER going to let you go.”

And every night I think, “Aren’t I supposed to be the one saying that?”

Yesterday, in the car, Charlie said, “Mama!“

“Charlie!“

“Can you get me a SNORKEL?”

Wade and I started to laugh. “Yes,” I said, “I think I can get you a snorkel.”

“Good,” he said, “because I can’t breathe underwater.”

Henry has finally started reading. He has been ABLE to read for a long time, he just hasn’t been WILLING. But last night, he read me a Henry and Mudge book, and he laughed until he could hardly breathe because Mudge! had his head! in a trash can! Today he read Charlie a Berenstain Bears book and the two of them laughed themselves silly over the chicken with handcuffs on.

Apparently nothing is funnier than a chicken in handcuffs.

Whoever took my babies, please return them. These big kids? Can’t possibly be mine.