An Easy Catch-All

Warning: whiney post. Read at your own risk.

I could so identify with Jen’s recent entry about whether to chalk up not so loved behavior to the Down syndrome or to Terrible Twos (or in my case, Frustrating Fours).

Lately Leo has had a hard time with the morning drop-off at daycare. It usually takes a good five minutes to get him from the car to the inside of the daycare. There is a lot of pleading on my part. I’ll try anything-counting (“I’m going to count to three and then we’re going to go inside and eat waffles, OK Leo?”) and just general, ridiculous (futile) reasoning. This morning, Me: “Leo I have a lot of bags, can you help me?”

Um, no.

Yes, adding to my frustration is that I am weighed down with Leo’s backpack, Ellie’s lunch box (more like a small cooler) and on Mondays, Ellie’s newly washed bedding and Leo’s nap blanket. And did I mention the nearly 25 pound toddler in my arms? (thank goodness she is content for me to carry her for now, what will I do when she wants to walk?) It is almost becoming a safety issue. It is not easy to run for Leo as he dashes into the parking lot while I’m balancing Ellie and many bags. Luckily he doesn’t dash like he used to but he does do it once in a while just to keep me on my toes. Mostly, it’s just the fact that he won’t move. And then there is the going limp.

Sometimes it’s adorable, how Leo takes his time, how he stops to “smell the roses,” examining every leaf and blade of grass, peeking in the building windows, needing to say hi to each and every child and parent.

But it can also be maddening. Usually I can at least get him inside the building but today, he actually layed down by the steps outside and began the whining. And he went limp.

I wanted to cry. I felt the tears coming. And what's even worse is that I felt myself really begining to lose my patience and this does not help matters. I watch the other parents with their kids walking in quietly and cooperatively, lunch boxes in hand, backpacks planted squarely on shoulders, and I wonder does it have to be this hard? Who knows if it’s the Down syndrome. Does he just not like Mondays? Does he just not like mornings? Does he suddenly hate daycare? Maybe it’s because he can’t precisely communicate WHY he’s upset. I know there are other kids who have a difficult transition time. They cry when their mommies leave. But for goodness sake at least can we get inside the building before the meltdown?

And he is fine five minutes after I leave. I get him settled in his class, his breakfast set out in front of him and he is whining, crawling under the table. As terrible as it sounds I have found the best remedy for this is for me to just go. I hate leaving him on that kind of a note but the teachers tell me he recovers quickly without me. And sure enough, after I drop Ellie off at her side of the building I like to peek into Leo’s class. And there he always is sitting in his little chair, sipping his smoothie, slowly and methodically, eating his oatmeal.

There are certainly plenty of maddening four year olds out there with just the right number of chromosomes. But it’s so much easier to blame that extra one. It’s my catch-all.

So Tired: Must Be Time to Go Back to Work

The end of a three day weekend (I took Friday as a vacation day although it was more of a get-all-the-errands-done day.) But still, it was nice.

I'm exhausted. It must be time to go back to work where I can get five minutes of peace!

All in all, a lovely weekend. Crisp, sunny, and full of lots of quality time with the Hooligans.

We went to the pumpkin patch today--sadly it was spur of the moment and therefore, no camera. But it was a lot of fun. A live blue grass band (Ellie was complimented on her dancing by one of the band members), an opportunity to paint pumpkins, and best of all, a kid's hay maze: a maze made of small stacks of hay rather than those tall, creepy corn stalks. It was Leo-sized and perfect for the claustrophobics in the crowd (me).

And the leaves are changing here. It's definitely, finally fall.

Leo gave me a lot of unsolicited hugs this weekend. He would be sitting at the kitchen table eating pizza and I would be standing at the sink washing dishes and suddenly I would feel his little arms around my knees. I guess other kids can just say "Mommy I love you," when they feel a wave of affection. Leo just hugs. I'm not complaining.

Fall Saturday

Do you know that scene in "Thelma and Louise" where the Geena Davis character keeps stealing bites of a candy bar that she keeps in her refrigerator (or is it the freezer?). No matter. But that is me, tonight. But with wine. Red wine. Multiple, tiny glasses.

Today was basically Leo's dream day. Leo and I played in the playroom. Leo and played outside. Leo and I colored. Leo and I played Candy Land. Leo and I played his fishing game (his OT would love it). Erin had to work, a rarity for the weekend. So it was just the Hooligans and me. Ellie took a long, midday nap.

And now it is after 9 p.m. and Leo is attempting to dismantle the heater in his room and will not go to sleep.

Oy.

PS. Do not go to Costco because you are bored. A bad, bad idea.

Reading is Fundamental. So is Sleep.

As I write this Leo is whimpering in his room. It is almost 9 p.m. and my goodness were those children wound up tonight.

Erin is stuck in horrific Friday night New York City traffic so I was on my own for this round.

Bedtime has become an Olympic Sport in our house. It involves a lot of acrobatic manuevers in Leo's room where there is not one, but two beds, much to the delight of Ellie. Her favorite thing is to climb Leo's toddler bed and stand on it, giving me several small heart attacks a night (I DO NOT need another emergency room visit). Leo has graduated to a twin bed and inertia has prevented us from doing anything with the toddler bed. Afterall, Ellie will need it...eventually.

I have been trying hard to read to both of them before bed but when they're together they seem to egg each other on with their energy and books are absolutely the last thing on their minds. But on Sunday I heard a wonderful program on This American Life where they said the single most important thing you can do for your child's intelligence is to read to them (Little Einstein and black and white baby mobiles be damned). Not exactly news to me, but validating nonetheless, as well as inspiring. Reading is easy and fun and cheap!

If this is true, Ellie is in trouble and she's well on her way to becoming an illiterate gymnast (she much prefers tumbling off that toddler bed to flipping through books by Boynton).

Leo has always been such a good reader. He loved to sit in my lap and flip through board books, almost from the start. Now, with the the two of them together, reading is a disaster! I will persevere. What else can I do?

PS. Erin finally came home. We caved and she went to lie down with him. Out like a light. When did bedtime become such a battle?

Not the Kind of Excitement I'm Looking For

Apparently Leo didn’t feel that my “31 for 21” posts should be as mundane as descriptions of Ellie’s shoes or the color of the living room walls.

He wanted me to regale you with tales of an emergency room visit.

Excuse me while I extract my heart from my throat. The good news is, he seems to be fine. If he was trying to make me appreciate him more than I already do (I guess he didn't read yesterday's post), it worked. It was unnecessary, but it worked.

It began benignly enough with the nightly bath. I took Ellie to her room to get dressed and read books and then settled in to nursing her (she’s back to nursing before bed for now). I heard a horrible thud, a house-shaking thud. I thought, what the? It couldn’t be…then, Erin calling for me. I dashed into the next room to find Leo sitting on the bed, crying, blood pouring from his mouth. At first we couldn’t even figure out where the blood was coming from but I was pretty sure he had bitten his lip or tongue.

Erin said he’d been playing/jumping on the bed (and our bed is tall, when they say deep pocket they aren’t kidding) when he just fell off. She said when he hit the floor he let out a scream and then held his breath which is what she thought then led him to pass out for about four seconds. She had to shake him to get him awake.

Good Lord, the drama!

To make a long story short, we mopped up the blood with a washcloth and consulted good old Spock who directed us to call the pediatrician. Since he’d lost consciousness, our doctor said we should probably take him to the ER.

My heart was pounding and my limbs felt like noodles from the adrenaline. Of course Leo thought it was great fun to put shoes on and get in the car and go for a drive with Mama at 9:30 pm (he even got to watch the in-car DVD, we figured it was the least we could do).

While they were at the hospital, I could not sit still. I did laundry (see, I knew I could get a mention of it in somehow) and paced around the house. I had, horrible, morbid thoughts and made Leo’s bed, tucking in the corners of his quilt, praying and willing for everything to be ok. I know, I know, he just fell off the bed, but if you could have heard that Thunk of his head hitting the hard wood. It was BAD.

At the hospital there was a cat scan, which came out normal, and a diagnosis of a concussion.

Erin and Leo arrived home shortly after midnight and soon after that an exhausted Leo passed out in our bed. I moved him into his bed around 2:30am. I fell asleep with Leo’s arm around me, a comforting end to a very stressful night.

Leo seemed fine this morning. I let him sleep in and he woke up in a good mood but starving, eating a breakfast fit for a lumber jack. Good appetite = OK, right? Since he got up late I took him to school myself, rather than having him catch the bus from daycare as usual. I was so grateful that everything seemed to be fine, I held him in my lap and read him books for a few minutes extra, rather than hurrying everyone into the car like most days. As he turned the pages, I rested my chin on his head, smelling his sweet hair.

That saying, “Hug your babies,” it’s corny but it’s so so true. It’s terrifying how something can just happen in an instant.

Please let this be the most exciting post I write for 31 for 21 because I may talk big, but I do not have the heart for this.

31 for 21: I'm In!

October is National Down syndrome Awareness Month and so for the next 31 days (gulp) I will attempt to blog every day in an attempt to bring more awareness to Down syndrome. Some posts will be about Down syndrome, some posts will probably be about laundry, deep thoughts about why Leo won't pee on the potty, descriptions of the cuteness of some new shoes I bought for Ellie and what color I wish I could paint my living room walls.

I hope you'll join me.

31 for 21 Post #1: What's in a Name

Everything Happens For a Reason. You’d think I was some kind of cloying, insufferable Pollyanna with a blog named that. I guess I can be, (I got called spunky the other day-that was a first!) but I can also be moody, sarcastic, dark and mean. Can a person be both negative and hopeful? Because I think that’s me.

I named my blog that, because that is sort of my mantra for life. With my journalism background, I am constantly asking questions. Why? What’s the meaning behind that? Why is that so? What I’m learning is that sometimes there is no answer.

As the old Yiddish proverb says, “We make plans, god laughs.”

***
As regular readers of my blog already know, my mom died of colon cancer eight years ago when she was 49. In the months and years after she died, I felt some sort of stupid shield, a protective cloak, covering me. As though Bad Stuff is somehow doled out in this world in equal portions, as though my mom wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me ever again. After all, I met my wonderful partner only a few months before my mom died. I thought that somehow, my mom had helped Erin find me. That even though my mom had died, everything else was Going To Be OK. I’d had my One Bad Thing happen. I was safe. What can I say? I was young.

And then Leo was born. And I saw my perfect, screaming, wriggling, red-headed baby boy held up in front of me. And I was so relieved, because there had been a scary emergency c-section and some very tense moments. But he was finally here and everything was OK.

And then three minutes later the attending pediatrian leaned over and told me our baby boy most likely had Down syndrome. And then I wanted to die.

How was it possible? How could something so unspeakable happen to me again?

We all have challenges in life, but some people seem to get bigger servings (and don't get me wrong, in no way am I implying that Down syndrome is unspeakable-if anything I've learned that in the grand scheme of "awful" things, Down syndrome is practically like winning the lottery).

I have no explanation for why certain things happen, I can only chalk it up to “everything happens for a reason.” Does it sound passive? I don’t think so. In my journey through the not so wonderful (as well as the many wonderful!) things that I’ve experienced in my life, I am trying to find the meaning behind them, but I am also learning to accept that some things just Are.

When we found out Leo had Down syndrome, I did not feel “blessed” with an extra chromosome. I felt robbed of the perfect baby I was expecting. I felt furious at all the people in the hospital that day who got to hold their babies while mine was being stabbed and tortured in the NICU. I did not feel that Leo had “chosen” us because we could “handle” it. No, I felt like the unluckiest, cursed person. I felt like at some point I must have done something very awful, for something like this to have happened. Mostly I felt that nothing would ever be OK again.

Of course, I’ve come a long way from those dark first days and months after Leo’s diagnosis. When people told me it would get better I couldn’t imagine how. Now I know.

Is there a “reason” Leo has Down syndrome? Is there a reason the little egg that he was was a little sticky on that November day when he was conceived in a fertility specialists’ office on Madison Avenue? We’ll never know. And it doesn’t matter.

What matters now is that Leo, now four, brings a smile to nearly everyone he meets.

And this is what else I know about Leo: A group of people who work at the Trader Joe’s we frequent stop working when they see Leo so they can get hugs (I know, we’re not supposed to encourage this but it’s so hard-Leo was born to hug). Leo hates to see other children cry and is usually the first to console a peer with a stuffed animal and a tender hug and pat on the back. He eats vanilla ice cream like it’s an endangered species and he’s the only person I’ve ever met who can smile and whistle at the same time.

And what I know now, that I didn’t know on that gray, insufferably humid, July day that Leo was born, is that no one is perfect and yet at the same time, we are all perfect. Because we are all exactly who we were meant to be. With all our faults, our bad habits, all the things we don't excel at (I for one am a disaster at math and complicated science and don't even get me started on my inability to put even the simplest piece of "some assembly required" furniture together). And that's just the beginning of my faults.

No, Leo doesn’t have the “right” number of chromosomes. It breaks my heart to think there are people who look at him as a "mistake." Sure, he didn’t sit indepently until he was ten months old. He didn’t walk until he was two. He can be as stubborn as a donkey and he’s stronger than a college wrestler (try getting him upstairs when he doesn’t want to go to bed). But he’s perfect.


Leo, a few weeks old, August 2004

Leo, age four, August 2008

Leo is perfect, just as he is.