Life's been good to me so far

I've realized there are a lot of people out there who seem to love our family and love reading my lj but not understand certain things, probably because I haven't explained them well/enough/while they're reading. Usually when this happens my opinion is, "Yeah, it's a blog, how can you assume you have the whole picture?" For whatever reason, though, this is different and makes me want to actually explain some things so people DO get it. In as much as people really can actually get it when they don't even know you.

So.

Ananda is not a brilliant amazing beautiful girl we've robbed of her chances at success by homeschooling her. She is brilliant, and amazing, and beautiful, but she's also complicated, and when I say that it's not me judging her or favoring Aaron - it's my way of shortening some of the following:

She has major social anxiety issues, and has since late infancy. She was a very delayed speaker because she was afraid to perform - when she did start talking, she had what gradually became a severe stutter, that intensified around anyone but us. I freaked about this, I changed pediatricians, I coached my in-laws on how to interact with her, because anytime anybody got impatient or tried to finish her sentences it got drastically worse, and when you could stay totally neutral and pretend it wasn't there, she would "warm up" over the course of a conversation. Thus, speech therapy would have been about the most horrible idea in the world. The ped we switched to was amazed at how well we got her out of stuttering - she continued to do it when she had a developmental leap for awhile, but not in between those leaps.

She was a brilliant artist, incorporating things like long distance perspective and facial expressions into paintings when she was only 2. I used to scan her art in all the time.

Those two things, now, clearly fit into the larger picture of dyslexia, which is not - as many people who are unexposed to it believe - as simple as reversing letters in your mind. It's a whole different way of thinking, her brain works differently. Dyslexic babies can spin objects in their minds to study them from all perspectives. Dyslexic children CAN'T think in words, which is really radical when you study it and consider it - it alters absolutely everything about their experience of daily life vs other kids. Often in good ways, like the artistry and the intuitive understanding of situations - but often in frustrating ways within our society because not thinking in words just does not fit with most traditional schooling methods. It took me a long time to understand that Ananda actually saw letters and numbers (and anything else) moving around on the page. And, of course, whole words and math problems and sentences...

Ananda had amazing visual and listening comprehension and a crazily off the chain attention span from very early, and she was artistic, and she soaked up things like recipes and science and history very easily. I was convinced because of how well she could understand complex things, and her vocabulary, and her exemplary behavior and mature manners, that she was far ahead of the curve when she was 3-5 years old. And she WAS! In those things. But when we started homeschooling she stayed at the same 4 year old level with recognizing and writing letters and numbers, and phonics skills, the whole time she was 5...and 6...and then she turned 7 and still wasn't even beginning to read. As a kid who had poured over book illustrations since infancy and loved to sit at the table and draw it was really counterintuitive to me that she was starting to hate schoolwork. As a well mannered and totally EASY little girl, it was strange to the extreme the way the tears and battles would start over something like, "let's go try to sound out some words". At this point Aaron COULD read, and I was getting kind of freaked out. We were beginning to understand dyslexia after I got a whole thing from PATH about dyslexia, and then talked to our ped about it, and remembered that Bobby (her biological father) is pretty severely dyslexic and it's hereditary.

I believe I helped her conquer her dyslexia and learn to read by systematically applying different approaches with great patience over a period of several months at a time until something worked. I don't believe she would have gotten that sort of treatment in public school. Ultimately, I don't have the foggiest fucking idea how she finally learned to read - she just DID one day. It was like something clicked into place, and bam, she could do it. It was also like a switch was thrown - she started reading, and stopped creating. Before this she was incredible with clay, obsessed with paint, went through crayons like mad...and it switched, no doubt about it. Now, she burns through several chapter books per week at an advanced level but she almost never wants to do any form of art. It still pops out when she's grieving or working through something, but that's kind of it.

I believe the patience, love, and breaks I gave her - along with the consistent chapter per night of reading aloud she's had basically her whole life - while we were working on reading are why she can love it now after such a long struggle, and also why she still feels good about herself and sees herself as a smart kid, even when her little brother was reading first and she would literally sweat and tremble trying to sound words out for years. I have my doubts about whether her self concept and enjoyment of books could have been preserved the same way in a school environment, particularly a school we could afford, in our town.

I have a great book called "The Gift of Dyslexia" that helped me to understand this as not a positive or a negative - but just how she thinks, why she is who she is. I also talked to her about it with an emphasis on the talents and positive quirks and famous dyslexics and read her the book My Name is Brain Brian.

This is one piece of the puzzle I label "complicated".

Then, there is some attachment stuff that is...intense. She lived with Grant as Daddy for months and then it switched very abruptly to Bobby, and then it switched back a year and a half later. My mother lived with us or visited constantly for the first 3 years, and then that stopped abruptly. My sister lived with us for the first year and a half and then Annie saw her twice the following year. I am the constant.

And she has had to deal with me dissapearing into the hospital and coming home incapacitated for weeks five different times during the first 8 years of her life. Most recently, she saw me dying and full of tubes in ICU and walked in on Grant packing my wounds. This was the same year the sister she was so excited about nearly died and we had to tell the kids about her brain and then backtrack and so on.

This shit is partially my fault, partially beyond my control, but all horrible. From the mornings when she wouldn't talk, make eye contact or get out of bed to the clingy and weeping over going to a Girl Scout Camp she loved and enjoyed, EVERY MORNING, and then admitting it was great that afternoon...Annie is different because of this stuff. She spends the night at her friend Christina's and goes over on Saturday afternoons, but Christina's parents needed to have an hour to just talk to me about her after the first time because they were really worried. This is the same for the girl who's house she used to go to all the time when she was younger. It seems like she can go somewhere a time or two or be in a big group like in science classes or at dance or camp or PATH events without attracting attention but anytime adults are around her one on one for awhile - like Grant Sr - I get a lot of "Is she ok?"

When I explained selective mutism to Christina's parents they IMMEDIATELY GOT IT which was a huge relief because I didn't have to explain much more. Their neighbor's boy is apparently the same way and so it clicked right away and they went "oooooh, just like ____, that makes total sense!"

Copy and pasted from Google Health:

Overview
Selective mutism is a condition in which a child who can speak well stops speaking, usually in school or social settings.
Symptoms
•Ability to speak at home with family
•Failure to speak in certain social situations
•Fear of people
•Shyness

Keep in mind this was a professional diagnosis from a licensed therapist, who then worked with her for several months and met with us together to get me to stop being mad at her for a seeming refusal to talk. Which I now feel terrible about. Some more:

Parents often think that the child is refusing to speak, but usually the child is truly unable to speak in certain settings...

This syndrome is not the same as mutism. In selective mutism, the child has the ability to both understand and speak, but fails to speak in certain settings or environments. Children with mutism never speak.

My daughter who just shakes her head and refuses to make eye contact when her friends call on the phone. Or her Grandma for so many years.

Ananda's is not just situational, though, she can participate in a group fairly well under certain conditions, but she absolutely cannot talk about certain things or when she's been thinking about certain things - namely traumas and separations.

I was incredibly proud of Ananda the other day, like crying from happiness holy crap proud, because she was talking about when Elise was in so much danger and then she said, "I didn't use to be able to talk about that. It was like my jaw was just stuck and I couldn't open my mouth no matter what I did." I told her about selective mutism for the first time, then, and gushed to her about what a huge breakthrough that is and how crazily happy for her I am. I saw the lightbulb in her eyes.

Also, three weeks ago I was checking her math work and something was completely changed. It took me a second - she still got something wrong here or there in her work (4 digit subtraction and multiplication, it was separate assignments), and her handwriting was still a bit messy, but...then it HIT ME - nothing was backwards! NOTHING. Not a single digit in either assignment. I blinked and started searching the pages and then went and showed Grant, who was as surprised as me. It's continued since and after the first week I told her, with a strong emphasis on hugs and pride. And she was all giddy-joyful-grins about it.

Both of these breakthrough make me feel very assured (along with her copious reading and her good self concept) that I am very much doing the right thing for her.

I'm sure she would figure out coping mechanisms to eventually deal with life at public school, and get by. I'm sure it would be torturously stressful for her for a very long time, and rob her of the opportunities she has every day to both explore and excel academically in areas she's interested in (because the amount of child-led learning that goes on around here is staggering) and work through and get past her emotional issues.

If you continue to think she would do fine/well/better in public school, good for you, we'll agree to disagree. But this crazily ignorant hoohaw of "kids adapt!" and "your whole family revolves around Aaron!!" (? this is not something anyone who knows us irl would just EVER think, it is so freaking out of left field) I'm seeing was starting to make me want to explode - dyslexia and selective mutism are not things homeschooling causes or that are just magically overcome by a desire to fit in, in a classroom. This is not a case of, "she's behind in some areas now when she would have been ahead in school", it a case of (as much as anyone can reasonably make an educated guess based on evidence at hand) "she's only a little behind in a couple of areas because she was homeschooled, and ahead in everything else, that's so awesome!". When I said I thought she would be the scholastic kid (out of her and Aaron...Isaac is clearly the scholastic kid at this point) was before we understood the things we do now - like, when she was 4. If you've been reading that long, I'd expect more of you.

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On a lighter note, when we got to my friend Kristin's tonight, she was like...

Kristin: If you want to try some of that cake out there, it's got rum in it, and rum in the topping, and I poured rum all over the whole thing.
Me: Ah, right, so it's basically tres rums.
Kristin: Is there a spanish word for "rum"?
Keegan: I think it's just (rolling the r and flourishing her arm) Rrrum!!
Me: Sounds good to me. Tres Rrrums.

It was a banana rum cake and O_O it was soooooooooooooooooooooooo good, I was sitting there playing Candy Land with Elise and 4 year old Aidan and Kristen walked by and I was like...

Me: OOS ESS OOH OOT!
Kristin: *lol*
Me: *finger up, swallowing* Really! This...mmm, this is so good.
Kristin: You know WHY it's so good?
Me: ...because it's basically floating in rum?
Kristin: because it has a whole pound of butter in it. Like four sticks.
Me: O_O What have you done to me?
Kristin: Rum on it's own just makes a cake taste like rubbing alcohol but when you mix it up with enough butter and sugar WOO BOY!
Me: *looking warily at my plate*

I really ate too much of it. But. Om nom nom.

And, when we got home (without all the boys, who are spending the night at Kristin's along with about 15 other kids) it was so sweet to sit up with Ananda and Elise cuddling in bed for an hour just reading (D'Aulaire's) Greek myths and the I Love You storybook Nancy gave us as we left Boston ♥

We were wrong about Vimeo's maximums, so we ended up uploading the Formspring Video as FIVE separate videos, all embedded in order behind ( this cut )

( pictures from PATH this afternoon )

There were a lot of pictures I wanted to take but couldn't, because not everyone in PATH is ok with pictures of their kids appearing publically on the internet :p So I had to steer clear of big group shots and things with people in the background.

Anyway. I was talking to this new woman today, and she shocked me again and again. I think I managed to keep it together and she is nice, but...what?
-she's new to homeschooling, granted, but REALLY FREAKED OUT by things like her daughter doing one side of a worksheet one day and the other side the next day. HOW DO THEY FILE THAT? WHICH DAY DOES IT COUNT AS? Also, any sort of lesson that doesn't involve written work is just being skipped because "THERE'S NO END RESULT!" for record-keeping. She claims to be ultra-paranoid because her daughter got an IEP while still in school, and so she thinks, as a result, that "they'll be examining her more closely". She's planning to try to file her evaluation at a precise peak day so it arrives with as many others as possible to catch as little attention as it can, and all this...really weird stuff. I mean what you submit from an evaluation is a paper that says, "I, _______, a certified teacher (see attached) have found this student _________ to have satisfactorily completed x grade on this date _______". "Signature". I'm so used to extremely laid back parents - who do tons of hands on and interactive stuff and write things like "played outside for one hour - P.E.; "counted their money and shopped for half an hour - math" on their daily logs if they even keep them that it was really o_O
-she paid $18,000 for a 9 week tutoring course prior to resorting to homeschool...even though her child was attending school on scholarship. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A NINE WEEK SUPPLEMENTARY COURSE.
-she is Catholic and kept saying really exclusionary things to me, like I was explaining that I wasn't raised Christian at all and am in the process of converting to Catholicism and she was like, really gaspingly aghast that I could have agnostic parents and even said "Thank goodness you turned out alright!!" with this obvious shock. I didn't have the heart to tell her she was sitting in a group of very mixed-belief people at that moment.
-at the beginning of the meeting, it was "oh, your daughter's in a tie dye shirt. I think I saw someone else in tie dye..." and towards the end, "Wow...two kids in tie dye, huh". She also made a point of talking about how her daughter had said how she would love pink hair after seeing Annie last time and she told her NO WAY. This was not a laughing haha thing, it was a firm decree that no child of hers will have pink hair.
-she was very upset that I let any of my kids out of my sight at all, at this upscale playground that is completely fenced and where they know, like, every other adult and kid there. She kept jumping up out of her seat and yelping about Isaac riding his bike on the part of the sidewalk that is parallel to the parking lot. Which nobody was even driving in.

It's bizarre, I really want to like this woman - she is a really committed parent and was super nice without being at all wack the first week I talked to her. She cried when somebody told her about our 2007 after some reference to Elise wasn't understood! I am definitely not used to having anyone at park who I think it crazy. Whatevs man. Believe it or not, I don't meet "weird" homeschoolers very often. It stands out to me when a kid seems stunted or sheltered or a parent is neurotic or judgemental.

Speaking of homeschool, A and A started this science enrichment class on Tuesday that will be every Tuesday afternoon for 6 weeks. I am psyched about it, a former middle school science teacher - the same one who organizes the Physical Fitness Testing - is teaching it and the curriculum is awesome, it's all stuff it would be hard to do at home. Dry ice and liquid nitrogen, simple machines, all kinds of cumulative tie together things that amount to "mini physical science". A and A are saying things like, "Can you believe every single thing we can see right now is made out of atoms, and all the electrons are MOVING?" randomly. Asking me to research whether this or that could be true since electrons speed up when things heat up, I love watching them. I debated this because between the two of them it came to $90 and while that is a great value (they're renting a space, using tons of materials and obviously Katie is taking the time) we are SO STRAPPED right now...I'm really glad we went for it.

AND, I highly reccomend Brain Quest workbooks. The big fat grade leveled multi-subject ones. Ananda is claiming her new favorite subject is Probability and Data because of Brain Quest, and they helped me realize that Aaron had completely forgotten how to read "regular" (non-digital) clocks since he never sees them IRL, apparently. They have so much real information, the kids have to actually learn interesting things in order to complete the assignments - say, it's a grammar assignment, but all the sentences involved are about a historical event. Or the word problems all relate to real astronomy. They're kind of pricey ($11 each) but FAT and come with stickers and pull out maps.

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I'm in a transitional place, personally. Struggling to make ETL work. Returning to a deeper faith life. Getting back into regular touch with some old friends. Waiting to hear from agents and contests and editors...

I got triggered really badly a month ago and realized I do still have PTSD, after all...on our way back from our anniversay date, we drove past the place I was tortured and ridiculedJackson Hospital. I silently untied the straps to my wrap dress, as the knot presses against the spot on my back where I had epidurals done, and had a hematoma. Only slightly frantically. I used to not be able to wear that dress at all, back when I couldn't sleep and cried too often and didn't have any patience for my kids. Grant had the good grace to acknowledge that I did not want to talk about it as the car swerved (I was driving) and the belt things slapped over his lap (they're really long). We went on about other things and I was like, "See, I forgot all about it, I'm not even thinking about that anymore" to myself most of the way home. Then we got home and I really did forget about it, as I'd had a great night and we had a lot of happy people to greet us at the door.

Two nights later on LOST that damned Jack had to be doing spinal surgery on somebody, and I hate OR scenes, and I hate the idea of backs being opened up, and I really hate when Grant is like "Can you handle this?" or "Don't look" because I am FINE, damnitt, I am just fucking fine, it has been a long time and I'm not, like...crazy, or something. I'm not some little kid who can't handle scary movies!

So then I spent a couple of nights dodging sleep and a couple of nights having nightmares - albeit not THAT nightmare - and finally I realized all this stuff was connected and ever since then I've been like, does my hernia seem to be bigger to you? Do you think my belly is sticking out further? How do I turn off images so I can google things without seeing horrible shit? And then Death Cab For Cutie comes on and they're like, "And it came to me then, that every plan is a tiny prayer to father Time - as I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409", and I'm like fuck this song, fuck this band, fuck this whole iPod.

That happened in the parking lot where I was buying, like, the fifth (dollar store, at least) pregnancy test in a week when my period wasn't even due yet, because I had this mad terror I could be pregnant and if I WAS! Then what?! Then fucking WHAT?! And everytime this anxiety would start I would rush off and get one so I could just KNOW right then and not lose my mind completely...even though there is, like, no way I could actually be pregnant.

I wrote a lot, I wrote, of all things, the preface and the epilogue to my surgery book (main body still a work in progress).

So. That seems to have mostly passed, for now. More of a swell than a big wave, Thank God. I'd really like it if PTSD weren't so much like being an alcoholic, where even if you haven't drank in 10 years...you're still an alcoholic. I am really not so keen on having a diagnosed mental illness. Condition. However they term it.

On the way to Anne's Beach on Elise's birthday it was beginning to fade away again, and Grant and I talked about it a lot. PTSD is when traumatic memories are stored in the short term memory part of your brain, rather than the long term memory part, such that when you are reminded of them it FEELS as if you are back in the situation - currently experiencing it. For instance when I talk about Elise's birth or the sponge incident, it gives me pause, it makes me somber, it really kind of bugs my eyes out how bad that year was.

But when I remember anything about Jake's, I immediately start uncontrollably crying, and getting waves of nausea. As such my subconscious does all sorts of tricks to keep that from happening, like I blank out and can't find words to talk about it or to write down. Over and over, even when I'm concentrating hard with my eyes shut and my fingers on my temples.

It makes me analyze...I've been through a lot of potentially traumatic things. Epic weather disaster that leveled my town, molestation, my mother leaving me as a teenager, abuse of my infant, DEATH of a second trimester fetus that came out of me decayed in a bathtub. I have a little bit of street cred here and I wasn't crazied up from any of that other hoohaw.

I think that being in (hard, intense, 90% on a monitor, every couple of minute contractions) labor for 3 days and 3 nights, with Jake...all that pain, the extreme sleep deprivation...I think it completely stripped me of all my normal mental defences. Such that I walked into that hospital raw, and vulnerable in a way I hadn't ever been in my life. And so...

I was going to talk about details of what happened at Jackson to do this, but my mind is blanking out so badly I can't find the words or memories. I am not going there tonight, I guess. I don't really want to be crying anyway, honestly, I feel nice and analytical right now.

It's just interesting. And pissy. 2007 compounded things for sure because I already had surgery related PTSD and...well, it was horrible...but judging from the levels of reaction I have to it now and how I've worked through so much of it, I think I would be a heck of a lot more ALRIGHT with 2007 if it weren't for October of 2005.

EMDR, the type of therapy I was having when I was in therapy, really helped me tremendously. The theory is that it moves the traumatic events from your short term memory, where it is misplaced, to your long term, where it belongs. You still remember it all, but as a memory. Not as something with any current power over you to where you sweat and your stomach clenches and you get a sudden headache, in the grocery store, because it passes through your mind.

When I do get triggered badly enough for it to disrupt my life in some way (loss of sleep, altered state of dress :p), it reminds me that it's been months since that happened, and...well...years since the Really Bad Time. That seems almost impossible, but it's true, it's been about 2 years now since I was terrible screwed up and unable to function to normal capacity. I think back to the nightmare I was living in the first half of 2008 and it only makes me glad I get reminded of all this, because I take the time to appreciate how far I am from that wrecktastic bs. I can't even imagine calling G at work hyterically, now, begging him to come home, telling him he had no idea how bad it was, how hopeless I was...and I was doing that on a regular basis. I can't imagine interpreting every approach of my kids as a chink in the thin facade holding me together, and just doing whatever I could to get them to leave me alone.

So yeah. I don't know how much of EMDR was placebo for me, because I did (do) really believe in it. I don't think this really matters anyway (placebo or not). Damn it was awesome either way. I had extremely consistent, distressing physical symptoms that just DISSAPEARED after some guided visualizations!

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Grant's weeklong trip to the Smoky Mountains starts in just over a week. I am excited for him, and also feeling sad...he is amazing and I don't know how to sleep without him. In a sweet testament to how groovy long term relationships can be, he somehow found some new magical spot on me a few nights ago - basically he can stroke my inner wrist in a way that almost instantly takes me from chatty/insomnia to so sleepy I can't do more than grunt. He also helps me channel all my frazzled, stir crazy, creative/sexual energy and I don't know how to GET RID OF IT without him, sometimes...it gets really big. He can bite me and surprise me and give me goosebumps and make all my thoughts dissapear until I'm a happy pile of mush. A WEEK IS A LONG TIME!

As I'll be taking Aaron to NYC at the end of July (assuming we magically manage to afford it all somehow), we'll be spending two different entire weeks apart this summer. It makes me furrow my eyebrows, even though that NY trip is also something I'm excited about.

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I cannot get enough of this. I will never get enough of this. It is one of the best cinematic ventures of the twentieth century:

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And. Formspring. I think I'm closing it down soon, because it takes up too much time in addition to other crap I do online, and it's too much typing for a format that isn't searchable or tagged or archived in any decent way. I've been asked several times if I would consider doing something where I answer questions on video. So yeah sure. I'll actually do it this time instead of just saying "ok". Basically at some point in the next 24-48 hours I'm going to take all the questions in my inbox and answer them on video. Exciting, I know :p I'll probably post the video here and there, now that I know YouTube videos will embed in a formspring answer.

This should be obvious, but I somehow feel I have to say, anyway, that I reserve the right NOT to answer your question. If you come masquerading as part of babyslime's family, if you are just blatantly being dumb like the person who said Quick! What's 9x9? Can you really teach your kids? and then baited me "You really didn't know 9x9??" - your question might not get posted ;) In general I am ok with sincere honesty even when it's challenging or potentially offensive.

I am also not likely to talk as much as I type because that's just how I am.

Grant should be here any minute. That's a wrap.

1. I bought a cheapo flat iron at Target while I was there exchanging Elise's dresses, then when I got home, I straightened my bangs. Straight down this is not an improvement, as they are already too long that way. But pushed to the sides it's a HUGE IMPROVEMENT. Then, because it was hot already and a novelty and Ananda was standing there with me talking about my hair, I straightened it all for the heck of it. It's interesting; Aaron said I look really pretty in this awed tone and I know it's a more socially acceptable look in general. BUT. I really prefer the wild curly mess. I have a portion of wild curly mess on my bathroom vanity from when I cut my bangs, simply because I like to look at it, and by comparison? Yeah, even dismembered for more than a week, I like that better.

2. I understand a few of you have major problems with my informal, slang-ridden grammar. That's fine, and you can talk it up if you like. But I do not care and am not going to change. If I have to put up with reading things like "Jesus Fucking Christ", which I can barely even type, and "Crimmus" and "Giftmas" and things, you can deal with "Grant and I's last date" and "whatevs". I used to chronically mispell certain words without being aware: in those intances it was actually helpful for someone to say "Do you realize _____?" I don't need it to be pointed out to me that, say, I use "like" a lot or sometimes feature run-on sentences in my blog - I KNOW. There are surely some english professors our there recounting their days for your reading pleasure with a more appropriate level of smugness. I actually love a mixture of great vocabulary, metaphors, cursing, made up words and laughter - I think that's probably my ideal to listen to or read, so there you go. Do you know what gets ME worse than anything? When people lengthen the wrong part of a word. Like if people say they "loveeeeeeeee" something. I think you mean "looooooove", come on people!

3. My healing finger is weird, weird, weird. The actual wound where the incision was made is tiny and looks as though it might not even scar, at this point. The surrounding area is pink, as the old skin that was stretched by the swelling has since peeled away. But then my cuticle itself and some areas around it are ultra yellow, and I think I might lose the nail, as it moves far more than a nail should. Occasionally I wonder if it bad that my antibiotics have already run their course, but everything is at least the right size and shape again.

4. Jake keeps making these bizarre "jokes" today. He'll say something like, say, "Isaac, I dipped your toothbrush in poo water!" or "Elise, I'm sorry to tell you this, but your mom is dead. You can't have parents anymore." When someone acts shocked or offended, he goes "That's just a joke! Isn't that a great joke?!" and then laughs hysterically. He and Isaac were playing Truth or Dare (wth?) earlier and Isaac was daring him to do innapropriate things. I told him this, and so Jake said "Nevermind, I pick Truth". Isaac replied, "Ok, I TRUTH you to take off all your clothes and go outside yelling."

5. I have to step away from this formspring thing. Grant got one - http://www.formspring.me/theneolistickid and I'm having more than one three way conversation in the form of questions...it is EATING MY LIFE!

Whoo, life feels like a whirlwind now that the holidays are really over. Yesterday was Grant's first day back at work. It involved:

-being like, oh, I got almost no sleep because Elise the threenager* kept us up from the wee hours but so what - and then nursing her and acting like, what, who's tired? as the day began
-put away a ton of laundry
-micromanaging my brother's schedule for the day and keeping him on the computer and phone being productive
-dragging children over coals to get them to actually do their chores for the first time in over a week
-beating my head against a wall to get them doing schoolwork for the first time in over a week
-running 15 minutes late after a SERIOUS headache because we're out of practice for all getting out the door to take the kids to dance class, particularly bulked out in cold weather clothes, which is unusual here
-taking the three littles to Whole Foods while A and A dance for strictly bulk bin and only-sold-there items, since we're budgeting, which was fine except for the traffic jam on the way there that drove Isaac insane, and Elise being a threenager...and getting some hot soup to share in the cold was nice
-picking A and A up, sharing food in the van, driving to BJs (wholesale club) for a whole list of things with everyone, which was fine except I was getting tired and all that stuff (like cases of canned beans and canned tomatoes, huge case of canned cat food, etc) is heavy..and Elise was being a threenager, and it's COLD outside.
-getting gas at BJ's where it's cheaper...did I mention it was cold?
-coming home and getting all this stuff inside from two stores and everyone bundled into pajamas (it really was actually down to 34 last night, it was a record) and cooking for everyone and sitting around the table talking and praying
-opening up iTunes with Annie and helping her register her new iPod shuffle (she used her $50 from Nana and Pa and her $15 Target giftcard from my mom - it's lime green) and use the iTunes giftcard that came with it to buy a bunch of Taylor Swift music (she is thrilled)
-brushing Jake and Elise's teeth, making everyone else brush their teeth, telling people to go to bed 57,000 times, pairing them up in beds for warmth (we really hate the heater air quality and smell and try to avoid it) and reading a bunch of chapters of "Caleb's Story" to children.

And now it's a new day and I've already made oatmeal for them and gotten socks back on Elise 4 times and went on a massive hunt for where the heck all the spoons have gone and forced Ananda to brush her freaking hair...now people are school-working behind me and I'm getting ready to cook what will be our dinner and bake oatmeal raisin cookies, while they do this, and Bob dodges me, until we have to leave to take Aaron to hiphop.

Bob is actually doing great in some ways. Like he put all the groceries away, AND ORGANIZED THE HELLISH MESSY cabinets for me last night when I got home. He also went out night and put a bunch more hay in the chicken coop so I would have to (it's cold for them, too!). These are things I don't even ask him to do. Like he got up and put away the clean dishes this morning without anyone telling him. It's the things like calling JobCorps to confirm that the tour really is this Thursday at 8 and sitting on hold with the adult center about GED requirements that are like pulling teeth for him. You can see the stress come on. I try to explain to him that while help is appreciated, I didn't bring him down here to make my life easier - he has to refocus some of the energy he puts into building the perfect bonfire that he's not even allowed to light and gluing a cheap shield someone got for Christmas back together. He looked aghast the other day, realizing he's going to be 20 this year.

Anyway. I have about an hour and a half to cook and bake and burn a CD for the road and get these 3 biggest kids done with their assignments and find everyone's shoes and, oh hey, the 3 youngest are all still wearing pjs as they play out in the yard :p

*Threenager: adolescence 1.0, when kids are majorly torn for the first time between their strongly burdgeoning independence and desire to be "big" and their babyish desire to be totally dependent on you. This often means, among other things, demanding to do EVERYTHING - including many many things you both know they CANNOT DO - themselves, to the point of snatching things from your hands or jerking away from you saying "No, me!!" (only to hand it back and ask for help a minute later when they've seen they really can't do it themselves - this goes for opening string cheese, buttoning their jacket, strapping their own carseat, etc One out of ten examples they will gradually learn to do if you keep giving them these maddening tedious chances). Also kids this age seem to suddenly need to be physically dominated to obey, i.e., you can only get them to come by going and GETTING them, or to stop by going and TAKING whatever it is out of their hands, and so on. You have to get up and be bigger and stronger than them to establish your own authority all day long as they test every single request you make to see if it really matters enough for you to bother. They suddenly will not simply hold your hand in the parking lot - now you have to either make some deal about staying close while on a hair trigger, drag them while they lift their feet and wail, or threaten them effectively enough that they grab your hand out of fear. This threenager crap strikes good children who never previously acted like tyrants, and then it also passes, just like later adolescence, only leaving a latent kid rather than a college aged adult.



Also, a lot of my e-time has been taken up by facebook, AIM and that formspring thing, which has been surprisingly active - http://www.formspring.me/altarflame