not that you asked...

Not that any other bread product would have sufficed

I am exhausted. I've taken on a bunch of freelance work and stayed up too late watching football games and practically reorganized the entire house to get ready for all the Big Changes that are happening over the next week – Asher is getting a brand-new big kid bed (and because I can't stop myself, an entire room re-do as well) AND we are getting a new couch delivered on Friday. Also, I've heard that when you get a new couch delivered, you're supposed to find a way to get rid of the old one and yet, here I am, SITTING ON IT, with two days to go and only one prospective person to give it to. (I know, I know, I see the Free section of Craigslist in my future, too.)

And I could totally handle all of this stuff and more (oh wait, I AM! The bathroom renovation IS ONGOING) if it weren't for the very minor thing of having to be involved in a perpetual, ongoing battle of wills with Asher for every single moment he is awake. I am trying to do that thing where you tell yourself it's just a phase, but it isn't working very well, and I am getting angry with him – really really ANGRY with him – at least three or four times a day. I know that he's transitioning to preschool and I know that he's got a cold and I know that he's short on sleep. But seriously, at this point, I can't drum up any sympathy for the kid – THAT'S HOW BAD IT IS.

A few months ago I suspected a lot of Asher's behavioral crap was due to him starting to move into the phase of life that most kids are already into when they hit two: trying to assert control. Before that, he never cared much about anything; he's always been a go with the flow kind of kid. But now here we are, in the thick of it, and I am having difficulty not spending the majority of my day yelling, “YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!” at him.

On Monday the weather was beautiful, so I took the kids for a walk around the lake in the stroller. We stopped to play at the playground, we stopped to feed the ducks in the lake, we ate lollipops, we were having a SUPER FANTABULOUS TIME. On our way back to the house there is a nice-sized hill I always run down – the kids love it. Except on Monday, OF COURSE. The minute I start running, Asher starts whining, “But I don't WANT to go fast down the hill! But I don't WANT to go fast! I don't WANT TO!” Well, dude! Now we're already at the bottom! What am I supposed to DO about that situation? Run back up and do it again? It's over, I'm sorry, I DIDN'T KNOW. But he just keeps at me. He didn't want to go fast, he didn't want to, no no no, he didn't want to go fast. I am finally able to just distract him from the subject but not before I got really really frustrated and yelled, “YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!” (Yes. Yes I did. And there were people around.)

I get frustrated not only because of the annoying factor of hearing a three-year-old tell you repeatedly that what you just did made him unnecessarily unhappy, but also because this is what my life is these days. I spend my entire day wondering if the next thing I do is going to set him off and start an argument. And I have no idea how to win an argument with a three-year-old - I've had HUNDREDS, and I feel defeated at the end of every single one. So I have to be on my toes and ready to figure out a way to prevent them at every given moment. If I'd known that hill was going to be a point of contention, I'd probably have paused at the top of it, and given him a choice: Fast? Or slow? But I can't possibly foresee every single potential argument. I mean, some of these arguments are just him getting into an argument with me for the sake of it, I think.

Case in point: yesterday we went on another walk around the lake. And without really noticing (daydreaming about picking out new curtains for the living room, probably, like the lame housewife I am), I walked down the Hill of Contention – again, without pausing to ask for opinions at the top. Not that I really thought I needed to; after all, I'm the one in charge of this stroller. I'm the one who smells like a gym sock when we get home. I'm the one pushing your sorry butts for almost four miles. BUT SURPRISE SURPRISE, guess who pipes up from the peanut gallery? “I wanted to go fast down the hill,” he whines at me.

You guys, I kind of lost it. One day he wants one thing and the next he wants the opposite and is this how I have to live? Am I doomed to speaking in multiple choice questions for the rest of my life? On Monday I helped him pull down his pants - “But I didn't WANT Mama to help me with my pants!” So on Tuesday, I didn't offer and I got, “But I want MAMA to help me pull down my pants!” And I feel like if I just do exactly what he wants me to do, that he's somehow CONTROLLING me or something. I actually wouldn't mind if he asked nicely and politely, but it's all whining, all the time. We even have these completely irrational conversations like the one we had on the way home from preschool today, where Asher demanded a bagel for the car ride home. I told him I didn't have a bagel with me, and that he could have one for lunch when we got home. But he wants one NOW, MAMA, NOW. And I'm all, dude, do you see a friggin' BAKERY in this car? Do you see a bagel or any other baked dough product ANYWHERE around us? If you don't see one, I can't make one magically appear. YOU HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL WE GET HOME. And he's still saying, BUT I WANT ONE NOOOOOOWWWWWWW and then I strongly consider running the car into a tree and GIVING UP ON LIFE.

You guys were right about preschool on three counts: yes, he loves it; yes, it gives me some much-needed time away from him; and yes, it is absolutely MADDENING knowing that he is on his best behavior while he's there and is just saving up all the CRAPTASTIC behavior for when he's home.

Book Review: Naked in Eden, by Robin Easton

  

Okay, so let me start by telling you that I am not in possession of a particularly active imagination. Before I even really knew that about myself, I must have suspected it: I am creative, but I am not imaginative, and there is a big difference. I consider myself creative in that I am a writer, but I am not a creative writer – I know nothing about writing novels or short stories or anything with a plot that you might have to diagram on a white board. You know why I stick with journalism and blogging? They're true stories. I DON'T HAVE TO MAKE ANYTHING UP. I can be creative with how those stories are told, yes, but I don't have to make anything up. Which is good, because I SUCK AT MAKING THINGS UP.

You are asking, what on earth does this have to do with a book review? I will try to explain – when I read this book, I didn't get the dangerous aspect of it. The story is of a woman named Robin and her journey into the rainforest of Australia with her husband, where they lived for over a year. Did you get that? THEY LIVED IN THE RAINFOREST. Like, ALONE. Just the two of them. In the middle of nowhere, so far away from civilization that the journey to get there took days and could only be made if the RIVERS WEREN'T HIGH. And yes, she talked about snakes and saltwater crocodiles and plants that burned you so badly if you touched them that some people actually cut off their own hands because of the pain, but I didn't really get it.

But then! There was an episode of Man vs. Wild? Where Bear Grylls goes to the Australian rainforest and does ridiculous things like throws itty bitty rocks into calm rivers and giant horrible crocodiles just appear out of NOWHERE to eat his legs off? And because I do not have an active imagination, I was appalled to see what kind of place the Australian rainforest actually is, and my respect for Ms. Easton went up about 6,000 percent.

You guys, the Australian rainforest is not somewhere you want to be without, I don't know, a helmet and a hazmat suit for starters, and this woman went into that place and lived – HAPPILY – for more than a year, and she did most of it NAKED. I absolutely kid you not. Robin felt “disconnected from life” and decided to spend time away from civilization in order to reclaim her connection with nature as well as (and I hate this term but it does really apply here) to find herself. The result is pretty fascinating, in a lot of respects – Robin gives a lot of detail about her surroundings and the animals and plants she encounters. She is emotionally overcome by being surrounded by nothing but wild, untouched nature. She is also – I may have mentioned this already? - mostly naked.

But she has some incredible stories about things she saw in the rainforest – things that she was able to recognize as beautiful instead of scary or terrifying. Specifically, I am thinking here of the fact that she would take long walks in the forest and sometimes snakes (SNAKES) would drop out of trees onto her shoulders (ONTO HER SHOULDERS!) and she would just KEEP WALKING LIKE IT WAS NO BIG DEAL. No shrieking or screaming or tearing off into the forest so fast she collided with a tree! She was so one with nature that she saw herself as part of the forest – she knew that a snake didn't want to hurt her, and somehow her body had overcome that Fight or Flight mechanism that so many of us have when it comes to creepy things like snakes or spiders or leeches. (Yes, LEECHES.) (Thinking about skipping Australia on my world tour, YES I AM.)

I also appreciated her honest take on things. She didn't even leave out the part about what she did when she had her period (I totally would have wondered). She left in the hard things about her relationship with her family and living with autism. I liked the informative side of it – I didn't know anything about the Australian rainforest before I read this book.

That said, it was really hard for me to love it, because she has such a Nature Is God mentality, and I really really don't. I see God in nature, but I don't believe nature is God. Robin believes the trees and the animals and the earth were what were speaking to her (conversationally) and healing her while she was in the rainforest, and while I definitely see how being alone with nature and not being influenced by the real world would be refreshing and eye opening to the soul, I don't believe that nature speaks to our hearts; I believe that God does. That's my own personal belief system talking, though, and it's fine that what I believe is different than what Robin believes – it just made it more difficult for me to read. I rolled my eyes a bit, I confess. I tried to be open-minded about her story, I did. I'm not JUDGING her for what she felt and I am sure she felt it and believed it to be real. I just don't have a similar belief system, and religious beliefs are such a personal, individual thing so it was hard for me to identify with that part of the story. And that was a LOT of her story. I think I would really like Robin as a person, I'm just not sure this book does her adventures justice. A lot of it struck me as really out there, and I wonder if maybe her story comes across better through the spoken word than it does the written one.

It was a decent read and I am definitely curious as to where Robin's life has taken her now. Also, I remind you, I am never ever going to Australia. LEECHES. SNAKES FALLING FROM TREES. AIIIIEEEEEEEE.

There are few things worse than chocolate milk barf; I see why he remembers it so clearly

Preschool continues to be a raging success. Asher has yet to protest the notion or sulk over having to turn off the television to get into the car or even (GASP!) willingly leave the playground when I arrive to pick him up. HE WANTS TO STAY, MAMA. And dropoff in the mornings has been an absolute dream. Whatever hell we went through getting him accustomed to Sunday school (FORTY MINUTES OF SCREAMING EVERY WEEK) turned out to be the best thing we ever did. He runs into his classroom every morning and because I seem to be lingering in the Still a Little Bit Sensitive About This Whole Thing camp, I stand outside the door and yell at him until he comes back over and gives me a kiss. He does not WANT to give me this kiss – not because he's embarrassed because I left the house without brushing my hair or a bra (WHICH I DON'T) - but because when we arrive at school, he wants to PLAY and he wants to play NOW and he would like to get started with the dinosaur bin, please, Mama, enough with the kissing.

So fine! Off with you, then! Lucy and I will just be over here, walking casually down the hall and wondering what the heck we're going to do together for three straight hours without our Fight Instigator and Toddler Entertainer. I know it will take some time to settle into a routine together, but the last week has been mostly the two of us just bumbling around like total newbies, trying to fill up the time without spending it (and all of our money) at Target. Tomorrow we're taking a music class together (I have this fear that we'll be the only people who show up and I'll be doing the equivalent of a solo performance for the entire class, you know, since Lucy still doesn't string two words together) and I'm looking forward to finding some sort of special activity that we can do together while Asher is in class.

Also because an activity would take my mind off of Asher, and wondering what he's doing in class, specifically, if he is making sure to pull his pants up before he leaves the bathroom after he pees.

You guys. This is a serious concern. It's one of those mantras I continue to repeat to him, but that never quite soaks in. Without a doubt at least twice a day, he strolls into the bathroom to pee and waddles out with his pants and underwear around his ankles so he can carry on the conversation he started with me in my actual presence. He doesn't have TIME to pull up his pants before he comes out of the bathroom! He needs to TELL ME SOMETHING and he can't HELP IT, and he gets so distracted sometimes when he's walking and talking and pulling up his underwear all at the same time that he pulls way too hard and his... well, his stuff starts poking out the leg hole and I have to rush over and rearrange the whole danged situation and I just cannot imagine this happening at preschool and then having it be the subject of a parent/teacher conference. I CANNOT.

“Well, Mrs. Cassee. Your son can't seem to remember to pull up his pants BEFORE he leaves the bathroom, and some small children have been traumatized by his waving wang as a result. PARTICULARLY when it escapes out the leg hole.”

I tell him all the time to please pee, then pull up his pants, then flush the toilet and wash his hands, THEN EXIT THE BATHROOM. I'd say this particular sequence of events occurs six percent of the time. This is not a great number to be working with. It's just that now he's not under my control for nine whole hours a week and WHO KNOWS what he's going to come up with in there. I'm not really and truly worried (what four-year-old really cares about someone else's wang anyway) but it is so bizarre that I can't be there to explain away his actions when he performs them. For all the teachers know, it could be a behavior we ENCOURAGE at home. “Asher! Come on out of that bathroom BEFORE you pull your pants up, son! What God gave you ain't no sin in this house!”

Also, Asher seems to have the absolute worst conversatonal timing lately. Sure there's the Wang And Friends out the leg hole trick, but in the last few days we've been out walking and TWICE, just as we're passing a nice, normal person (hey – we walk FAST), Asher breaks out a Bizarre Topic. The first time it happened we were walking just to the right of a very nice older woman when Asher, completely out of the blue, pipes up in his outside voice to announce, “Hey Mama! Remember that time I barfed on the porch? Do you remember? And the barf went everywhere? The chocolate milk barf? And we had to clean it off with the hose? Remember that? Do you remember that?” And the lady is kind of chuckling, which is probably her polite way of covering her gag reflex, and I am saying, yes, yes, I remember the barf, OF COURSE I REMEMBER THE BARF, who forgets sudden and copious amounts of barf? NOT ME. Also I am speeding up because REALLY, Asher, could you hold off on the barf stories until we're out of earshot of most people? And then he's quiet for the next two miles, which makes me totally think he did it on purpose.

The next time it happened was just yesterday, and as we were walking by a man I have a passing acquaintance with, Asher busts out with, “Mama, Ya-Ya's cat doesn't live with her anymore. Why doesn't Ya-Ya's cat live there anymore?” And I'm thinking, OH YES, PERFECT, this seems like an excellent time to explain the sudden decline and death of a pet to a child! While I'm burning calories and carrying a bag filled with my dog's excrement! So I say something about the cat getting sick and having to go to the vet (“What's a VET, Mama?” as if I haven't ever explained that one before, you little shady TRICKSTER) and that the cat was now, ahem, living somewhere else, remember? and that man we were passing turned and gave me this big smirk, like, dude, BEST OF LUCK WITH THAT ONE, you big fat liar! As if your cat is really LIVING SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Yeah, so. At least the wang out the leg hole has a definitive answer, you know? There's no skirting around that one.

About Asher

He held my hand up the stairs and through the main entrance, all the way down the hall to a sunny classroom. And then we stepped through the doorway and he let go. He let go and I instinctively stooped down to reassure him and that's when I saw that he was grinning. A big, confident smile that stretched from ear to ear; a smile that wavered for the briefest of moments – and only when he puckered up to kiss me on the lips before turning back to his teachers and his classmates and a whole new world he'll live in apart from me for nine hours a week.

I am so proud of that boy. So proud that I had to pull the car over into a strange neighborhood on the way home and put my hand over my aching, happy heart and weep with gratitude that his care has been entrusted to me.

***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***

I haven't said anything about this here, but a couple of months ago, Dave and I met with a developmental pediatrician to discuss Asher and some of his quirkier tendencies. We laid it all out there on the table for her – it felt traitorous and underhanded, talking about him behind his back like that – but we wanted to be honest and forthcoming about our fears; about the things we had observed that we worried might not be in the appropriate normal range for a child his age. We wanted to know if there was something we needed to do. We needed to know if there was something we should seek. A therapist. A special program, maybe. Resources, books, brochures. A diagnosis.

She listened. She asked questions. She listened some more and she smiled a lot and she asked more questions and then she listened again. She was attentive and kind and knowledgeable. She was comforting and confident. She was a lot of things, but the most important thing she ended up being was Not Concerned. Asher is normal, she told us. He's quirky, yes. Oh, but he's quirky. He's also just fine. He's got a temperament that is different from most other children but it doesn't mean we should be worried. And then she happily signed our preschool forms and handed us a list of recommended reading material and we all shook hands and Dave and I finally let out the breath we'd been unknowingly holding for six straight weeks.

It's weird how the day before that appointment we were consistently looking at Asher through autism-colored glasses. Everything he did was suspect; anything that seemed remotely different than what we thought he SHOULD be doing lined up with a symptom that could point us to a spectrum diagnosis. And then the next day, with a professional opinion under our belts, it all looked so different. That's not to say that I didn't have flashes of worry still, though. I held many an internal struggle wondering if we needed more than one professional opinion. But even during the times of mental unrest, there was also an undercurrent of peace. I wanted to trust our doctor. I DID trust our doctor. I didn't want to run all over the place looking for someone who might upgrade my kid's situation to something that could be categorized; something that could be filed away in his permanent records. But was it really okay to believe her?

Many weeks later, I am more convinced than ever that she was, and is, right. Asher is not a little social butterfly. He is timid and shy. He takes a while to warm up to people. But he DOES warm up eventually. And he is thoughtful, always making sure that when he gets a cookie or a candy, everyone else around him does, too. “Can I give one to Lucy, too?” he asks. When we went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, he packed three identical Thomas trains in his backpack. “One for me, and one for Jaklin [his cousin] and Lucy, in case they want to play with one, too,” he told me. I was touched by his simple, thoughtful gesture.

If Asher had been diagnosed with something, it wouldn't have changed how we felt about him. He is no different - no better or worse, no less amazing, NO LESS LOVED - with a diagnosis attached to him. A diagnosis is nothing more than a word that defines what he needs, not who he is. I confess that it was scary thinking about all the things we might have to do – all the money, the time, the effort, all that time on the phone, scheduling appointments and wrangling with insurance reps and all the confrontation required – to make sure he got his best chance at living a happy, healthy, high-functioning life. Because isn't that all a parent wants for their child anyway? But I would have done it, if it had needed to be done. I would have done it. No regrets. No questions asked.

I watched that little boy walk into that classroom this morning and I thought my heart would burst with the emotion of watching him succeed. He is shy. He is timid. He gets anxious and nervous and he is still afraid of going too fast down a slide but he walked confidently into a classroom filled with strangers and he smiled and waved goodbye to me and I wondered why I'd ever worried about him at all. Why I'd ever saddled him with my own insecurities and frustrations about how he'd survive without my ever-present protection.

Sometimes it feels really, really good to be wrong.

Prove me wrong, Asher. Keep proving me wrong.

Teary Preschool Post coming Thursday, I just know it.

Within the first hour of our vacation, we had a Barfing Situation. I suppose, as far as Barfing Situations go, that it was exactly the kind of Barfing Situation you want to have, if you are going to have to have one. We had been driving for about 45 minutes and were about to pull off I-95 for breakfast at Chick-fil-A when Dave happened to glance into the back seat and see that Lucy was hornking all over herself. It turns out that Lucy – who up until that moment we'd NEVER seen puke – is a barfer of the Extra Silent variety. There she was in the backseat, quietly ejecting her stomach contents while we continued blissfully unaware down the highway at 80ish miles an hour. If Dave hadn't turned around and spotted her, we would have pulled into a fast food parking lot ten minutes later and pulled her out of the car without the knowledge that she had VOMIT all over her and then I would have needed a change of clothes as well.

Of course, she had barfed all over her blankie, so we needed a replacement for the drive, and NATURALLY, the suitcase with the kids' clothes and supplies was buried under all 18 metric tons of vacation necessities, so our 15-minute stop turned into a 45-minute stop and then there was the ensuing mental anguish of WHEN WILL SHE BARF AGAIN? And also OUR VACATION IS ALREADY RUINED, wasn't it bad enough that last year we had the non-sleeping baby and the rocking chair-less house that gave us the gift of the persistent backache? NOW THIS YEAR WITH THE BARF. Seriously.

But then two hours went by and not only was she barf-free, she was HAPPY, and we figured we were in the clear. So we rolled happily into a gas station for a fill-up only to notice... oh HA HA HA HA HA.

A FREAKING FLAT TIRE.

 

I laugh about this because I remember that the worst thing for Dave wasn't that he had to change a stubborn tire, or that he had to change it in 95-degree heat in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina, or the fact that he had to take everything out of the trunk to get to the jack and the other tools. No no no, in typical male form, he sighed heavily and remarked, “We were making SUCH GOOD TIME.”

The rest of the week was a joy. No, Lucy didn't sleep very well (SURPRISE) but I am hoping that next year she'll be sleeping in a real bed and not in that awful pack n play, that I padded with every blanket I could find but STILL had a big uncomfortable ridge in the middle. Poor Lucy, she got the equivalent of an ancient hide-a-bed for a week of vacation, complete with that iron bar that goes right across the small of your back. Plus we had the added bonus of an ACTUAL ROCKING CHAIR, so putting her down for naps and back down in the middle of the night (oh how I loathed seeing you, middle of the night) was a breeze. Well, 75 percent of the time it was.

The days, though... the days couldn't have been easier. This year, they played in the WATER. Together, even! AND NOBODY ATE ANY SAND OR MADE A GIANT TURD MADE UP SOLELY OF SAND IN THEIR DIAPER.

 
Also, our house was fantastic.

 
On the sixth day of vacation, we actually called and reserved it again for next year. The back deck alone was worth the price.

 

And call me sentimental, but I love the idea of coming back to the same place year after year. I love the idea of the kids thinking of this house as THEIR beach house. I confess, before we left on Saturday morning, I took them to a discreet corner of the porch and marked their heights very lightly with a pencil. I don't even know if it will last until we get there next year, but I love thinking that it might be, and that we'll be able to compare them to the kids they were last year. In height and a million different other things.

After all, one of them is starting preschool on Thursday. He could have a GIRLFRIEND next year, for all I know.