not that you asked...

I'm guessing my dad will LOVE this story

At first I thought the low point of my day was going to be the hour of screaming and the general helpless feeling known as watching your 11-month-old try and try and try – in SEVERAL DIFFERENT POSITIONS – to crank out a stodgy turd. Oh, it was awful, the way she clung helplessly to the edge of the couch, knees bent, tears rolling down her cheeks, and worse was how, after I put her in a warm bath, she crouched down on all fours and assumed a stance reserved solely for women delivering FULL-TERM BABIES and cried pitifully some more, and eventually I just couldn't take it any longer; couldn't take the tears and the moaning and the obvious discomfort and so, yeah. The low point wasn't the crying.

No, the low point involved (and I do apologize if you're eating dinner or have delicate sensibilities or are currently childless and ever entertained the thought that you might want to have a child at some point) my finger. I don't think I need to say any more, do I? Except to tell you that an unfortunate side effect of being your child's very hands-on Poop Advocate is that no matter how many times you wash those hands afterwards, you're never REALLY SURE you've got the all-clear to go forward with dinner prep. I mean, measuring out minced garlic and grating carrots and my hands were just WHERE, NOW?

I've said this before: Prior to having kids, I don't think I could have ever imagined the kinds of things parenthood would require of me, emotionally AND physically. But maybe even crazier than that, I never would have believed that I wouldn't hesitate – not even for a MOMENT - to do them. Today, for example, I was a crazy, non-hesitating human enema.

Let us all collectively shudder.

Poor Lucy. But after five minutes of snuffling onto my shoulder, she was fine, and back to toddling around the house gnawing on her burp cloth (a million handmade loveys and she adopts a raggedy burp cloth) and tearing apart the bookshelf and rolling around on the dog's bed. And I bleached the entire bathroom and washed my hands a thousand times and performed the exhaustive nightly ritual of trying to find one solitary thing in the entire house that she will eat more than two bites of before turning up her nose and slapping it away. Tonight's attempt included: peas, pears (both pureed and... well, non-pureed), apples, applesauce, yogurt, clementines, chicken nuggets, and graham crackers. (GRAHAM CRACKERS. WHO IS THIS CHILD.) But that's a post for another day, a day when I've gotten more than four hours of sleep the night before, and can put together a coherent thought or two instead of just leaving you with this:

OMG DO I LOVE MY FLIP CAMERA.

Also, my dad told the MOST INTERESTING STORY at the Thanksgiving dinner table and I am going to tell you it as soon as I get some sleep and wipe my memory clean of what happened today. Not my hands, though, MY HANDS ARE ALREADY CLEAN. (And so is my bathtub.)

Your tax dollars at work

I was going to write a post tonight but then I got all excited about Elizabeth's gift guide over at Style Lush, to the point where I was INVENTING people I needed to buy gifts for. And then I got all excited about writing my OWN Style Lush post, so I did that, and now it's 10:28 and it's not that I don't have the energy or lack of content to write a post, it's more that Hoarders is on and I need all that energy to clap my hand over my mouth every thirty seconds and say things like YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. (Which I just said approximately six seconds ago when they unearthed a DEAD CAT FROM SOMEONE'S LIVING ROOM.)

So here. Have a video. Of my daughter holding an enormous hissing cockroach at the Smithsonian. Unfortunately we did not capture the special moment that occurred a few minutes before this one, when she grabbed a big green caterpillar and got it halfway to her mouth before someone whose job it is to manhandle enormous bugs wrenched it free of her grasp.

(OMG, in the span of time it took me to type that last paragraph, they have now found an additional dead cat. TWO DEAD CATS IN HER LIVING ROOM. Two!)

Right. The video. I know. Sorry. Here.

We don't use the word "pervy" enough, in my opinion

I spent this morning at the Newseum with Lori. And you know what? No one asked me any weird questions when I mentioned I needed to find a babysitter for the day so I could meet my friend from the Internet down in the big city. ALONE. Oh, didn't I tell you about that? A few months ago when I was headed out to the Blathering, Dave thought he was being funny when he mentioned to our couples' small group that I was going out of town to meet people from the Internet, people I'd NEVER MET BEFORE, who said they were young moms but who would likely turn out to be old pervy 60-year-old men. And I know Dave was joking, and I know he never thought I was in any danger of thinking I'd be meeting Manda and coming face to face with, I don't know, Rodney Dangerfield or something, but people who don't blog or read blogs or know anything about the Blogging Community (oh barfity barf barf) immediately assume a blog is the '90s equivalent of a random chat room and I'm pretty sure they all thought I would board that plane to Sacramento, never to return again, except possibly dismembered and in a styrofoam cooler.

But obviously, I survived Sacramento (no, wait, Sacramento survived ME), so I think everyone trusts my judgment now, for the most part. No one said anything about Lori or whether it might be weird to meet someone whose VOICE I've never even heard before, and just as I expected, it was perfectly normal and we talked the whole time about things we would never tell the Internet and we shared a huge chocolate chip cookie at lunch and we laughed and I was further convinced that I would very much like Lori to live right next door to me, and not just because she has a lot of books I want to borrow.

And everything went well on my commute home until I got off the bus and started the half-mile walk to my house, which is when I had to call Dave and make him stay on the phone with me while I attempted to pass a very drunk man staggering down the sidewalk in front of me. I just don't see a lot of drunk, staggering men out here in the suburbs, ESPECIALLY not at two in the afternoon. And this guy wasn't just weaving. I witnessed a total collapse on the sidewalk THREE SEPARATE TIMES, and twice I saw him TEETERING and on the very brink of falling into the path of oncoming traffic and I almost couldn't bring myself to walk past him because I was pretty sure he was going to topple over and land on me and I didn't want to get my new pink coat dirty when I fell off the curb. I guess I was also worried that he'd grope me or something. But okay, I was way more worried about my coat. Things I Don't Want On My New Pink Coat: chewing gum, dog hair, TIRE TRACKS.

Yeah, I bought a pink coat. I have always professed to hate pink, to LOATHE pink, and I even refused to give into the Girly Pinkness when I found out Lucy was to be a she, so her nursery was decorated in yellow and green, which I think just about killed my mother. But the coat! I found it at the J. Crew outlet a couple weeks ago and the fit is perfect and it has these adorable pleats in the back and I wanted a BRIGHTLY COLORED coat, so pink it is. I like it, okay? I LIKE IT. And this is as good a time as ever, I guess, to go ahead and tell you that I'm now contributing over at Style Lush along with a bunch of talented bloggers who I know and love, so I hope you'll stop by over there and check things out. I've written only two posts so far, but I hope to post a couple of times a week from here on out. I confess, I have never thought of myself as a stylish person (AND STILL DON'T, although you should see my coat!), but Jennie has a way with flattery, and I could not resist. Look up “peer pressure” in the dictionary, and BEHOLD! A photo of ME.

And now it's 10pm and I have to go to bed because Lucy, as delightful and wonderful and scrumptious as she is when the sun is up, is still absolutely craptastic at sleeping even though we are three weeks shy of her first birthday. Right now I am thinking about how much I would like to kick my pediatrician, the first person of many who told me that if I just managed to cut out that middle-of-the-night feeding, she'd start sleeping through. Oh HA HA HA, and also SUCK IT. Lucy hasn't had a bottle in the middle of the night for more than 10 days now, and yet she still wakes up two, three, four times a night most nights, and sometimes (and this is the HONEST TO GOD TRUTH) all she wants us to do is flip her over. Like, seriously, I'll go in there when I hear the screaming and she'll be lying on her back in the middle of the crib with her eyes closed, and all I have to do is flip her onto her belly and she goes back to sleep. Also HA HA HA to all of you “why don't you just let her cry?” people, because I DID LET HER CRY the other night, I let her cry and moan for TWO WHOLE HOURS and she never gave up until I went in and flipped her over, and then? SILENCE. People! This is an 11-month-old who has been walking for well over two MONTHS now, and she can't roll over in her own bed? I mean, HONESTLY. She's a stubborn little mule, that one, and at this point I am just plodding alongside her, waiting for her to make up her own mind about sleep and how it is actually glorious and wonderful and while I wait patiently for that moment, I am dreaming up all kinds of ways to get her back for this someday. I promise you it will not involve a dead squirrel. 

Have a really happy Thanksgiving everyone. Wishing you safe travels and good pie and the bigger half of the wishbone.

Tenterhooks! I know you were waiting on them!

First of all, might I suggest you make a Thankful Tree with your preschooler?

It took us about 15 minutes to make ours, mostly because I printed it out at Nickjr.com (because we are SLAVES TO CHILDREN'S PROGRAMMING MARKETING), and then had Dave help me cut out the leaves. Asher was excited that we were doing a project involving (a remarkably well-dressed for the season) Dora (seriously, a cardigan), and also that he was allowed to sit on the countertop to do it, so he was a willing participant for 95 percent of the time, until we got to the last one or two leaves. That's when he wandered into the living room to play with his flashlight. That stupid flashlight has provided HOURS of enjoyment, although I find it kind of odd that his idea of having fun with it is excavating dusty forgotten toys from underneath the sofa. Well, when he's not shining it directly into people's EYES. (Perhaps he has a future in archaeology.)

Anyway, we have had several talks over the last week or so about thankfulness and what it means to be thankful, and I tried to keep in mind during these talks that this is a three-year-old I'm explaining this concept to, a three-year-old who is petrified of blowing his nose and who only figured out the concept of sleeping under a blanket about two weeks ago, so I simply explained that things we're thankful for are usually the things that make us happy. So when we sat down to do the Thankful Tree, Asher had already been briefed and understood what I was asking and immediately started rattling off his list.

The first thing he announced he was thankful for? Asher. Yes, himself. NATURALLY. After that followed trains (DUH), and Dora, and Dada, and Mama, and Lucy, and then he pointed to the picture of Boots standing next to Dora at the bottom of the page and said, “That monkey.” OMG, people, this is a child who watches an episode of Dora EVERY SINGLE DAY and he can't for the life of him remember the name of that freaking monkey. But I wasn't about to change his wording, so That Monkey got his own leaf. Next up was “spinning.” Spinning! In circles! I mean, really! What's a life without spinning until you're so dizzy that you're threatening bodily harm by thwacking into something head first? I DON'T KNOW EITHER! He was also thankful for puzzles, and his grandparents, and the outside train we ride as much as we can every spring and summer.

Hilarious answers aside, it was really fun and rewarding to watch him think. Ok, and really REALLY fun and rewarding when he pulled some of that random stuff out his butt. (SPINNING! In CIRCLES!) Lucy has yet to try to rip it all down from the wall, which is a whole different kind of miracle, what with her general feelings on destruction, which are yes, please, and also that nothing is sacred.

But you're not here for heartwarming stories about my delicious children, are you? You want to know what the heck my father does with stink bugs that my mother saves for him in plastic bags.

HE FEEDS THEM TO A FROG.

Which wouldn't be so weird, if, as commenter beyond suggested, it was a pet frog. But it's not a pet frog, you guys, it's a frog that lives in a hole next to their driveway, and my dad waits for that frog to emerge at night and then he wanders outside with either the bag of collected bugs or some fresh ones he catches himself and he FEEDS THEM TO IT. My mom said one night they opened the front door and the frog was just sitting there, on the porch, WAITING. Waiting! For my dad to appear with a handful of insects! HOW WEIRD IS THAT?

Of course, it's not weird at all if you KNOW my dad, a man who used to routinely freak us out as children by letting various kinds of insects crawl around in his mouth and by picking up dog crap and throwing it at us in the backyard. With his bare hands, I might add. And some piles were... fresher than others, if you know what I mean. But perhaps he is most famous for the incident that occurred while driving me and a friend home from softball practice when I was in sixth grade. He slowed to a stop at a stop sign, opened the driver's side door, and picked up a dead squirrel from the road which he DANGLED IN FRONT OF MY FACE while he continued to drive and while I pressed myself against the passenger door and screamed in terror. When we got close to our house he tried to throw it clear of the car out of the sunroof but it just splatted onto the windshield and slid down, leaving a gruesome, bloody smear. When the car finally stopped inside the garage, I bolted and he picked it off the glass by the tail and chased me around the cul-de-sac with it. He tried to figure out a way to stick it to the garage door on the side of the garage my mom parked in, hoping for some magical moment wherein the door would lift up and the squirrel would hang from it and my mother would pass out from fright inside her Dodge Caravan but it never panned out and he ended up throwing it into the garbage can.

And then getting it out later that night and spreading it across my mom's car seat before she got in.

And then one more time to chase my brother down the basement stairs.

And THEN he threw it in the trash for good.

Huh. Yeah, so maybe the frog thing isn't such a big deal by comparison. 

I know you do this. (Also! Super Fun Friday Guessing Game!)

So let's say there's a pair of jeans in the laundry basket. Recently washed, recently partially air-dried, then finished off in the dryer on the lowest heat setting, so they don't mildew. But because they were in the hamper for a while, and then because it took a day and a half to air-dry them before I chucked them in the dryer, I haven't worn them for a bit. Five days, maybe? Six? And even though they're my absolute FAVORITE JEANS, and I have been wearing them for YEARS, I am nervous about putting them on. So I hang them up in the closet instead, and wear the same pair of jeans I wore the day before. Even though I don't love them. Even though I would rather be wearing my favorite pair.

I threw out my $7 scale over a year ago (some days I weighed 130 in the morning and 210 in the afternoon, and something about that just didn't seem right) so I mostly use my clothes to gauge whether I've gained or lost weight. And when I haven't worn something in a few days, like my favorite jeans, I start to panic that I'm going to try to put them on and not be able to pull them over my knees or something. Like perhaps I've done exactly what my scale always tried to convince me I was doing on a daily basis. And it gets exponentially worse if I've WASHED them, because it's possible they will have SHRUNK, and gotten STIFF, and I will be able to feel even the most MARGINAL OF CHANGES IN SIZE.

Am I right? The worst feeling is when I finally put them on, and they feel... off. You know? And the whole time I'm wearing them, I'm thinking, should they really feel this snug across the hips? Am I imagining that they're pulling a little across my butt? Did I dry them for too long or did my suddenly enlarged thighs turn them into DENIM LEGGINGS BEFORE MY VERY EYES? And usually I'll wear them for a couple of days, until they're all loose and baggy and should not be worn in public unless I want someone to take pity on me and hand me a sandwich and some loose change. And I feel WAY BETTER about myself when they're all stretched out and saggy; sometimes, I even FORGET that they're stretched out and saggy, and I put them on and think, “holy crap, Self? You should have a COOKIE or two! DANG but these jeans are getting WAY TOO BIG!” And then I eat those cookies, and maybe a pizza, and maybe some fries, and maybe some of Asher's fries, and then it's time to wash them again after I wipe my greasy hands on the legs, and then? After I wash them? It's time to do Paragraph One of this entry, ALL OVER AGAIN.

I do this all year round, but it's particularly painful in the winter, when the rain and the darkness and the cold keeps me from running five miles a day, or pushing the kids around the lake in the stroller. I'm trying to work up enough enthusiasm to break out my 30 Day Shred video for the days I can't get outside, but it is so hard to eat dinner and put the kids to bed and not want to just collapse on the couch with my laptop for the remainder of the night. I am trying to get up and run in the morning, but I am having this Major Sleep Issue where it doesn't matter whether the baby wakes up one time or 2500 times a night, I cannot fall back asleep. I have never struggled with this kind of thing before, so it is KILLING ME.

Also, my back hurts.

So yeah, it scares me when my favorite jeans are clean and I might have to put them on. Because I haven't been exercising like I was in the early fall, or the summer, or the spring, and exercise is my foolproof way of staying out of my old size 12 (OKAY, 14, YOU GOT ME) pants. Good eating habits are not. TRUE STORY.

I don't know how to wrap all of this up and end this entry so LISTEN TO THIS. I was over at my parents' house a couple of weeks ago, and it was a warmish kind of day, and there were bugs EVERYWHERE. (Yes, these bugs.) Mostly the bugs stayed on the outside of the screened-in porch, but some of those creepers lucked into flying through a crack or a hole or something, so there were three or four inside the living room. So I told my mom about them, and she got all irritated, you know, “WHY do we pay an exterminator if we're going to have to exterminate them OURSELVES,” and she dragged a chair over to the wall where the bugs were clinging so she could reach them and then, instead of smacking them with a rolled-up newspaper or a shoe, you know, like a normal person would, SHE SCRAPED THEM INTO A PLASTIC BAGGIE.

“Mom, what are you doing?” I asked. My first thought was that she was trying to SAVE them, which is RIDICULOUS, and I am a professed Saver of Many Animals, including mice and turtles and worms. But she wasn't. She was going to collect them and give them to my father.

I don't think you would ever, in a million bazillion years, guess what my father was doing with those bugs. And it just occurred to me that maybe you might want to take a stab at it? For a prize? Go ahead, guess in the comments. If anyone gets it right, I'll gladly scrape together some kind of delightful care package. But I won't have to, because OMG, you guys, WHO ON EARTH WOULD COLLECT BUGS FOR THE REASON MY DAD DOES? Dude, my family is so weird. No seriously, go on. GUESS. (I'll tell you on Monday, unless someone guesses, and then I'll just update this post with the winner and the correct answer.)

Book Review: Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD, by Beth Alison Maloney

 

I was offered another opportunity to do another book review for the same company that offered me the chance to read and review The Curse of the Good Girl, so I took it. As a general rule, I don't turn down free reading material, ESPECIALLY if it is memoir-ish, so a few weeks ago, I was sent a copy of Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD, by Beth Alison Maloney. I read it cover to cover in the span of two evenings. Sammy had just turned 13 when, out of the blue, he began exhibiting bizarre behaviors that corresponded with the some of the hallmark symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The synopsis (because I can't write them for crap, remember?) lifted from the TLC Book Tours website:

“Sammy’s mother, Beth, already coping with the overwhelming responsibility of raising three sons alone, watched helplessly as her middle child descended into madness. Sammy was soon diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and later with Tourette syndrome. Unwilling to accept the doctors’ prognoses for lifelong mental illness and repeated hospitalizations, Beth fought to uncover what was causing this decline. Racing against time as Sammy slipped further from reality, Beth’s quest took her to the center of the medical community’s raging debate about whether mental illness can be caused by infection. With the battle lines firmly drawn, Beth searched until she found two cutting-edge doctors who answered that question with a definitive yes. Together, they cured Sammy. Five years later, he remains symptom free.”

There is no doubt that Beth Maloney is an amazing woman. She was already a freaking superhero for being a single mom raising three boys and working full-time as a lawyer. So I don't even know what to call her when she took on the additional full-time job of caring for and finding a way to treat a son with a crippling mental illness. And when I say “crippling,” I mean CRIPPLING. Sammy was so sick that he couldn't go to school, couldn't leave the house, couldn't get up the stairs and into his room sometimes without it taking HOURS. I recall at one point, the family stayed at a hotel, and it took Sammy more than two hours to walk from the van in the parking lot to the hotel room simply because he had to perform so many rituals and compulsions along the way. Sammy was a really, really sick kid. So in addition to taking care of two kids who were functioning normally and needed to go to school and get help with homework and be shuttled to activities and oh, I don't know, FED MEALS, Beth Maloney was working full-time, caring 24 hours a day for an exhaustingly ill child that no one knew how best to help, and whenever she got a spare moment, researching ways to make him better.

Dude. Think about that. I complain if Dave is home late from work, and I don't have someone to corral the kids so I can finish getting dinner on the table. I get frustrated when I have to get up three times a night with Lucy or when I can't get Asher to eat what I've made for dinner or say thank you when I hand him a sippy cup of water. And she held it together – well, okay, she did way more than just hold it together – with a situation a thousand times more dire than anything I've ever experienced as a parent. I think about how lucky Sammy was to have a mom who fought for him the way she did. Maybe this is going to sound awful, but I have to hope I would do the same thing for my kids. I mean, I know we all say that we would do anything for our kids, ANYTHING, but I really do lack an empathetic side. I have this sinking feeling that in Beth's place, I would have gotten angry, and frustrated. And not at the disease, as she did, but at my child. I have a history of having a hard time seeing past the circumstances and laying blame at the right place. I worry that I would be the kind of person who said, Buck up! Shake it off! instead of finding a way to redirect my frustration toward the disease. I'm thankful that I married someone whose talents and gifts fill in the gaps I leave open as we parent our children together. But if I was a single parent? I shudder to think about where I would be had I been in her shoes.

Anyway, the coolest thing about this book is that SAMMY GETS BETTER. I'm not spoiling it for you, the ending is splashed all over the cover. Sammy was eventually diagnosed with PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcus Infections). In layman's terms, this basically means a strep infection was the root of Sammy's disorder. PANDAS research is still relatively new, so Maloney wrote this book (which she says was a painful journey) to try to educate others. In fact, one doctor estimates that there may be as many as 500,000 children in the United States affected by PANDAS. Half a million kids suffering from behavioral disorders, some of them SEVERE, all possibly caused by a strep infection. That's incredible information that apparently, most doctors are still unaware exists.

If I had one complaint about the book, it would be that at times it seemed a little disjointed; it doesn't always flow nicely. I understand that Maloney isn't a trained writer, and it isn't like the book is poorly written or anything, I just would have liked more detail and more background in some areas, and less in others (for example, each chapter begins with a descriptive page or two about Maine weather, and while I could see that those descriptions were to give us some sense of time, I sometimes felt they got in the way of me getting to the next part of the story). And I never felt really and truly MOVED by the writing. It's an amazing, awesome story, don't get me wrong, but it didn't inspire a lot of emotion in me. And it doesn't usually take much for me to turn on the waterworks. I cry at commercials.

That said. I think it's a fascinating read. I love medical mysteries (one of my favorite television shows? MYSTERY DIAGNOSIS) and I loved the happy ending, and as horrible as it was, it was really fascinating to get a first-hand account of what severe OCD is really like. I hope this book does what Maloney hoped it would – gets the word out that PANDAS exists, and that it can be treated.

Humor Genius

Have you seen that commercial for the next episode of House? I mean, I don't watch House – not regularly, at least, though sometimes if I'm flipping through channels I'll stop and watch because I have this weird fascination with British people doing believable American accents – but the ad was on during a football game, and I wasn't really paying attention until Dave said, “Hold on a minute... did you see that?” and pressed rewind on the DVR so we could watch it together. The gist of the episode seems to be that House shows up at an '80s theme party in a powdered wig and frilly blue costume, because he's dressed as though he's from the 1880s. Get it? It's still an eighties costume! JUST FROM THE WRONG CENTURY!

“That's YOUR joke!” Dave exclaimed. And he is RIGHT.

Back in my junior year of high school, which I'm sad to tell you was FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, our youth group held a '60s theme night, and there was a prize up for grabs for best costume. So I wore a big, floor-length patchwork skirt and a pair of boots and a ruffly blouse and a bonnet – YES, A BONNET – and went from the 1860s. People, it was the BEST COSTUME OF THE NIGHT, but I was disqualified because it was “understood” that we were talking the NINETEEN SIXTIES, even though no one had actually specified it.

My mouth hung open. “I must be a humor GENIUS,” I said to Dave. To have made a joke that well-paid television series writers came up with? And to have done it fifteen years ago? WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN? Why did I not get offered a free ride to HUMOR WRITING COLLEGE? If a place like that EVEN EXISTS?

And then Dave said, “That's why I fell in love with you,” and I don't know about you, but any man who professes to have been attracted to you simply because you wore a bonnet to a public function for the sole purpose of creating a scene and making people laugh is a keeper. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the only reason he fell in love with me (in high school I also lost a bet once that resulted in my wearing a camouflage hunting outfit out in public, complete with orange netted cap, sure to make a man's heart skip a beat) but it's good to know that if I continue to act like just like myself, he will most likely stick with me. And he will LIKE IT.

Sometimes I think he's got a screw loose, but whatever. Dude thinks I'm hot in a bonnet. Guess it doesn't hurt that I'm a humor genius, too.

In other news, and I Twittered this earlier so excuse the repeat if you already heard, but about a half-hour into what was supposed to be Asher's nap this afternoon, Dave heard him calling from his room. So he went in to see what the problem was, and Asher actually requested some pants. I had put him down for his nap in just a shirt and a diaper, and he wanted PANTS. Pants! And Dave had to put them on him! While he laid in bed! JUST LIKE HIS MOTHER. It was almost the most hilarious thing I'd heard all week, and then I remembered I had explained the word “booty” to Asher the other night.

I try to video the cutest parts of my day, so that I can watch them and remind myself they actually DO exist after watching one of my offspring throw a shoe at the other one's head.