Sick

We are all sick here. Actually, my husband is not sick, but I attribute that to him rarely being here now that he is actually opening his improv theater.

I, on the other hand, estimate that I spend an average of 23 hours per day in my house, which gives me ample opportunity to soak up all the germs that my children thoughtfully bring home with them from school. Ew. Really, I'm not that sick. I'm more an annoying type of sick - the kind where your nose runs and you feel generally worn out and somewhat light-headed when you talk too much. I think Owen is there with me. Aidan, on the other hand, has an upper respiratory infection.

We kept him home all week and then today I really thought he could go back to school (and he wanted to), but, of course, I got the dreaded call from the school nurse where she makes you feel like you should be ashamed of yourself for even considering sending your child to school in his condition. The cherry on top was the way that, on our way out, she reminded me that he couldn't come back to school tomorrow, either, due to his fever (which I SWEAR he didn't have when sent him to school). Ah well...it probably sucks to be a school nurse.

I suppose it all worked out because thanks to the nurse's insistence that we should really bring him to the doctor because he could be developing pneumonia (due to my negligence, I'm sure), we found out he doesn't actually have the flu (or pneumonia), but an upper respiratory infection, which can be treated with antibiotics.

Cross your fingers that we're all recovered enough to walk the Walk Now for Autism Speaks on Saturday because not only do we have the cutest shirts in all the land, but Team Owen met its $1000 goal! Many thanks to everyone who contributed!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I started this post intending to talk to you about television because I am so thrilled with the onslaught of season premieres. My brain went another direction (which part of my body was thinking about TV?). That means I will have to save my praise for Just Desserts and anticipation for The Amazing Race for another post...get excited.

Baby, I'm Amazed

At the risk of being totally annoying and bragging about how smart my kids are, I wanted to share this image.

It's the math assessment Owen brought home the other day. You can see that he was supposed to write the fraction for each part of the hexagon, which was divided into thirds by the dotted line.

He got it wrong, writing 1/6, when the answer was 1/3.

His teacher noted: "1/3 but I can see how he thought of it as a 3D shape - so I didn't count as wrong."

He got it wrong because he assumed it was a 3D drawing of a cube and indicated that each side would therefore be 1/6 of its surface area. I'm pretty sure they don't teach that in first grade.

When I went into full-blown labor at 26 weeks 5 days gestation, the nurse in the antepartum ward -- seeing how frantic I became when told that I would be delivering that morning -- told me that her neighbor had her daughter early, too, and now that kid was grown up and graduating from high school. "And that kid is smart!" she insisted, presumably to reassure me that my preemies weren't doomed to fail in life (had I been in my right mind, I might have explained that my children's future intelligence was not my most pressing concern at that moment).

So when I get these little demonstrations of how smart they really are - added to the fact that their recent standardized test scores indicate that they're not just smart, but good test takers, to boot - it makes me more than proud. It amazes me. They amaze me. And I am so excited about where those big brains will take them.

Party Politics

When I picked the boys up from school today, they were all aflutter. "It's XXX's birthday today! We're going to Chuck E. Cheese tonight for his birthday party!" Um...what?

I was forced to explain to the boys that we had received no invitations anywhere. As I grasped for a way to tell them it was possible that they just weren't invited to this kid's party, Aidan began to cry, insisting that the kid himself had just invited him...and really, in the mind of a 5-year-old, how much more of an invitation do you need?

Now, this particular kid is one of the few we've actually had a playdate with, so I have to admit I was a little surprised to hear that the boys hadn't been invited to his birthday party...surprised enough, in fact, that I began to wonder if I'd maybe overlooked an invite that had come home amongst the 5 zillion pieces of paper the school sends home every day. 

So I did the unthinkable...I called the parents and actually asked if there was, in fact, a birthday party and if my children were, in fact, invited (or not). SO awkward! If I'd stopped to think about it a bit longer, I probably wouldn't have done it, but the boys were upset and I was confused and...whatever.

Two incredibly awkward conversations later (first with the stepdad, who claimed to know nothing, and then with the mom), the outcome was that my children did go to a birthday party tonight and I found myself eating Chipotle, drinking a beer and watching a Food Network Challenge (Dr. Seuss cakes!) in peace. Did I overstep my bounds? Probably. It still remains unclear whether they were supposed to be invited in the first place.  

I guess all I know for sure is that the birthday boy wanted my kids to come and my kids really wanted to go, so all parental politics aside, I'd say all is well. Have I damaged my reputation among the mommy set? Maybe. Should I care? Probably not. 

The moral of this story is: Be pushy. Pushy wins. 

FYI, Your Kid is Trouble

My sweet little Owen has been getting in trouble at school. He's received two of the dreaded pink slips in the last month. The title on the slip says "FYI Ticket," as if they just wanted to pass along a little info, but the checklist of "violations" is a bit more sinister...

My favorites are "Body out of control" and "Sitting inappropriately," although the grammar geek in me also likes the strange use of quotes in "Out of seat 'repeatedly'," as if the word repeatedly is some kind of jargon and not just a regular old adverb.

As you can see, today he got the "Disrespectful" box checked. (Btw, I also like how they write "Parent" above the signature line, as if he might attempt to sign it himself.) It's not funny, of course. He shouldn't be disrespectful to anyone, but I wish they'd provide more of an explanation because, based on his retelling of the story, it sounds like he was in one of his silly moods where he doesn't focus (vs. his spacey moods where he is silent, but also doesn't focus) and he ended up arguing with his more studious classmate, who told him to knock it off. 

Did we get slips like this when we argued with other kids? I don't remember. Plus, I usually just kept my mouth shut as a kid, so although I don't ever want him to be rude, I do appreciate the fact that he stands up for himself. I think it's a trait that will serve him well (and I think we have his twin brother to thank for instilling it in him). I do, however, think his autism makes (and will continue to make) it much harder for him to gauge when he's crossing over from honest to rude. 

Still, it seems we need to step up our efforts to teach him the different between standing up for himself and being standoffish or insubordinate. But, really, even if he was old enough to really understand the difference at this point, I'm afraid that my threshold for acceptable disobedience (the kind with a valid argument behind it) won't jive with the school's quest for unquestioning deference...I predict there are many more pink slips in our future. 

Princess Mania and Recovering from It

The boys got their first classmate birthday party invite of the year! As much as I don't really enjoy the uncertainties of buying gifts for kids I don't know and then having to go through the whole "Do I have to stay? Or can I go enjoy 2 hours alone?" aspect of classmate birthday parties, I don't take those invites for granted. I worry that as they get older, those invites might not always come. Or worse, that they might come for one and not the other. 

It's really hard to say which of them will have a harder time socially. Obviously, Owen is expected to be socially awkward -- that's pretty much the definition of high-functioning autism -- but on the flip side, one of the gifts of autism is that even if he doesn't make a lot of friends, he probably won't care all that much. My little Aidan, on the other hand, wants to be everyone's friend but doesn't realize that he alienates people (yes, already at age 5) with his extraordinary intelligence and inability to stop talking. I often find myself worrying more for him just because he takes everything so hard.  

So maybe the best scenario is that the invites just stop coming for both of them...okay, so I'm over simplifying, but it would make it a little easier if they were equally as socially awkward, wouldn't it?  Maybe they'll actually feel less awkward because they're both so awkward. And I know a parent's unconditional love only means so much to kids at a certain age, but at least they can always count on us to embrace their weirdness. 

But I digress...back to the birthday party. This party is for a girl, which at least meant I got to shop for girly toys! And yes, we always buy two gifts (one from each kid) because we try not to treat them as a single entity in hopes that no one else will treat them as such when their birthdays roll around. 

I know it's considered gauche or whatever to assume that people will give your kid gifts, but I've never been to a birthday party where gifts were not expected, so I wish we, as parents, could all agree to simply provide a little direction on the invite. Like, "Billy is obsessed with trucks but is terrified of Bob the Builder." Or, "Sally is totally into painting and she hates Barbie." Or even, "We don't allow guns in our house and yes, that includes squirt guns." You know, something. 

But no, I was left to fend for myself. The boys, of course, could provide zero insight on what this girl likes, but I managed to find out that they think she has a Disney Princesses backpack, which is something at least...I mean, if it's even true.

So anyway, I went to Target ready to buy some princessy things, but the aisle of pink boxes paralyzed me. And there I stood, thinking: How much does this girl really like princesses? Does she want to be one? (but, really, who doesn't?) Would she like to dress up in a gown and carry a wand? Or is that too obvious and she already has enough gowns and wands? (I imagine that if I had a daughter, she would be fully stocked on dresses and wands.) Does she want to play with tiny Cinderella figurines? Do little girls even know who Cinderella is these days or is it all about Ariel and Belle? Should I get her the princess make-up kit or will her mother recoil in horror at the thought of her 6-year-old being given make-up, even it's made by Disney? Will she balk at the little fairy playset because she already has the super-giant fairyland mansion? 

Then I stopped and reminded myself that these gifts were to be from my boys. Even if they weren't actually picking them out (because I've learned that no good can come of that), they should still be things that my boys would realistically be excited to give their little friend.  So I grabbed the fairy lantern that my boys have been eyeing since last Christmas and then I went to the board game aisle and picked out Scrabble, Jr., the Dora the Explorer version. 

And now I feel slightly less crazy, because even if the kid hates her gifts, at least they're purchases we can stand behind. 

Potlucks R (Not) Us

While I try to shake the intense anger and sadness that I have about our recent events with the teenager, I thought I’d tell you a story that I meant to tell you last week, but which got lost in the election euphoria.

Now that the boys are in elementary school, requests to join the PTA or, at the very least, give them money, bombard me. To assuage my guilt at constantly ignoring these requests, I volunteered to make something for this teacher appreciation dinner. (Truthfully, the dinner happened to be the same night as our parent-teacher conference, so I figured that if I was going to be there anyway, I might as well bring something.)

I got assigned a dessert. Awesome! I’ll make brownies! I thought. (Interestingly, we can bring homemade food items for the teachers, but not the kids.) But then I realized the brownie mix I had was for peanut butter brownies and since the school is peanut-free, I thought that might be a bad idea. Why I didn’t just go buy a plain brownie mix, I have no idea.

No, instead, I got this ridiculous idea to make something seasonal…pumpkin bars? Pumpkin cheesecake? No, because, you see, I already have tried and true recipes for those items…no, I thought it would be much better to Google a recipe for pumpkin cake (“The Best Ever Pumpkin Cake”) and then make said cake for the very first time and serve it to my children’s teachers.

So I did. The universe was trying to tell me not to…first we ran late at our playdate that day, so I didn’t think we’d have time to make the cake, but then, just before turning to go to the grocery store to simply buy some cookies, I convinced myself we had just enough time.

Once I was one-third of the way into making the cake, I realized the recipe called for 3 eggs and I only had 2...Oh well, I thought, how big of a deal can one egg be? (I still really don’t know the answer to that question, but I clearly was less concerned because I knew I wouldn’t be eating the cake.)

So I mixed all the ingredients – including the whole stick of melted butter that the recipe called for – and it was a weird recipe where you mix all the guts of the cake, but then sprinkle the actual cake mix on top. I had read ahead enough to know that. However, I had not read carefully enough to realize that the melted stick of butter was supposed to be dumped over the dry cake mix just before putting it in the oven. Well, maybe some of that butter will make up for that missing egg, I reasoned.

But you see, dry cake mix is just dry cake mix no matter how long you bake it, and naturally that was my last stick of butter, so I thought maybe melting some margarine and hastily dumping over the top of the cake once it was already in the oven might be good enough.

So the cake baked and, surprisingly, it came out looking fairly cake-like. However, it came out of the oven approximately 3 minutes before we had to leave to go to the boys’ conferences, which meant there would be no time for cooling.

It occurred to me that I could simply bring the frosting separately and one of the teachers would probably be kind enough to put it on later when they were ready to eat it…I remember thinking that, but next thing I knew, I was attempting to spread frosting on a burning hot pile of cake mix…it didn’t go well, but hey, it was done! All I had to do was throw on some plastic wrap and get out the door.

Any of you familiar with physics (or baking) might know what happened next…having trapped all of the heat in with the plastic wrap, the frosting proceeded to melt into a pool of bubbly froth. As an added bonus, that stick of butter that wasn’t supposed to be in there began seeping through the foil cake pan, leaving a slick, fatty film on everything it touched. Yum.

At this point, it would have been easy to just pitch the thing. To pretend I forgot my volunteer duties entirely or even go explain to the woman at the front desk that I simply f*ed up the cake I was supposed to bring. But no, by this point I was determined to get that damn thing inside that school. I mean, it smelled pretty good.

But here’s what it looked like:

As I set it down in the school office, I muttered some embarrassed apologies about not having enough time to let it cool (no need to mention the butter incident) and then I fled. They don’t know who I am! I thought. I didn’t give them my name!

Do I think anyone ended up eating the melting cake of buttery death? No, I have a feeling that if anyone dared to cut into it, they were met with a pool of oily orange slop. For all I know, it made them all vomit up all of the delicious food that the other parents were nice enough to bring. I’m kind of hoping it just got thrown out based on appearance.

In retrospect, I should have given them my name, as it would have ensured that I was never again asked to provide food items at any event. But who knows, maybe next time I’ll redeem myself…maybe next time I’ll attempt my first soufflé...or flambé! What could possibly go wrong? 

Catching the Wave

As many of you know, I have this fantasy of striking it rich and then "homeschooling" my kids while traveling the world. You know, studying the rainforest in the rainforest, etc. 

It's not just that I want to travel all the time (although I do), I also wish I could save my kids from the trauma that comes with school. I think we can all think of some way we were traumatized in school, be it by teachers who valued obedience over intellect or by kids who preyed on whatever it was that was different about us. 

Anyway, because I have this traveling family fantasy, I was particularly interested in seeing "Surfwise," the new documentary about the Paskowitz family...the family with nine kids who traveled the country in an RV and surfed. These kids never went to school. In fact, their father forbid it. They just surfed everyday. 

Obviously, it wasn't all sunshine and smiles. They lived in a 24-foot RV. The father was a dictator, the mother just kept her mouth shut and kept having babies and the kids grew up with no life skills. However, they all seem to agree that there was something amazing about it. And most of the kids actually have gone on to do pretty well for themselves. Very interesting.

Don't worry, I have no plans to pile the family into an RV and drop off the grid, but I still recommend the movie just for a different perspective on life. It's so easy to go along with the social norms that are handed to us that we don't always step back and go, "Is this what I really want?" We can probably all be more conscious of the choices we make for ourselves and for our kids. Something to think about. 

*Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Please Hold

While the teenager situation appears to have plateaued for the moment (and if we’re being positive, I’ll take a plateau over a continued descent any day), my little Owen has mysteriously developed an aversion to school.

He used to be all gung-ho about it – he’s even been known to throw his extra two days of school per week in the face of his more-typically-but-still-exceptionally-brained brother, who has developed a rather intense jealousy over the possibility that Owen might be learning more than him. But for the past week or so, it’s been nothing but “I don’t love school,” and “I’m not going to school.”

So I’m trying to figure out what’s bothering him, because my little concrete-thinker doesn’t tend to make things up, nor does he manipulate – if he says he doesn’t want to go to school, there’s a reason.

I tried speaking to his teacher about it today. She didn’t seem to get that I was trying to determine what had caused this attitude switch. Her assumption was that there really wasn’t any explanation, so why not just try to incent him to go to school with stickers or some such nonsense…the kid has gone to school happily for two years, so it’s not like this is a new concept he needs coaching on.

She also suggested maybe a social story* would help but then added, “I’m not very good at writing those, but I could try to put something together.” You’re the person charged with teaching children with autism and you can’t put together a social story? But again, that assumes that he’s somehow having trouble with the idea of going to school, when I still think something at school is bothering him.

All of this serves to further my belief that my children and I would all be better off just traveling the world and learning as we go. I am all for education, but the more I experience the public school system, the more I think that it more closely resembles a holding cell than a place to learn. I just don’t ever want my kids to confuse obedience with intelligence. I don’t want them to get bored and mistake that boredom with school for a disinterest in learning.

If I could just travel back in time and become an heiress of some sort, we’d be all set...Maybe I can get Owen into Physics; he'll have that whole space-time continuum thing cracked before he hits middle school.

*For those not entrenched in autism jargon, that’s a narrative exercise commonly used to help kids with autism learn what to expect in a situation