October 27, 2008 @ 22:35

Last week, Puppy went on his first field trip to a pumpkin farm.  It was a week filled with anxiety.  For him.  And regret for me.  For not figuring out earlier what was going on in his little head.  On Monday, they did a practice run with the bus and all the kindergartners.  There are about a hundred of them at Puppy’s school.  Now imagine them all crowded onto two big yellow school busses.  Fun?  Yeah, for about a minute.  And for Puppy, not even for that long.  The noise and the rowdiness was overwhelming.  He had what I suppose you might call a little boy version of a panic attack.  He curled up into the fetal position and began to rock with his hands over his ears and cried.  He had to be carried off the bus.  When I picked him up that day his teacher took me aside and told me what had happened.  We agreed that the bus was not an okay place for him.  Not for now, anyway.  I would take the day off and we would go to the farm with his class, but we would follow the busses in our own car.  No problem.  Except for one thing.  It didn’t occur to me to explain this to Puppy.  For the most of the remainder of the week, he seemed to be just fine.  I didn’t talk to him about the trip.  I had made the decision with his teacher, problem sovled.  Right?  But what I hadn’t thought of was that for the rest of the week in his class they would be talking about the trip.  Building it up, getting excited.  Wednesday afternoon a meeting ran late at my office.  I normally pick him up at his class so that he doesn’t have to wait in the crowded cafeteria with the K through 4th graders.  As you can imagine, it’s not good for him.  But I was too late for the early pick up.  When I arrived he had been in the cafeteria for 15 minutes.  He was sitting against a wall by himself away from the other children crying softly and had worried a tear into the leg of his jeans from knee to ankle.  Lately he’s been fidgeting with tags and strings and any little thing that is “off” with his clothes.  Those little side tags inside t-shirts actually comfort him.  He holds the tag between his thumb and first finger and continuously rubs a tiny circle.  It makes me think of Linus with his blanket.  But this tear was a self soothing moment gone on too long.  A boy having to work too hard to hang in there.  Still I didn’t make the connection.  Thursday night, at around eleven, he woke up terrified.  He has frequent nightmares, so I wasn’t surprised, until in an uncharacteristic moment of clarity and in words that are usually beyond his ability, he began to talk to me.  He gripped my shirt collar into his two little fists and with his head tucked under my chin he told me what was wrong . . . 

“Mommy, they won’t be quiet and leave me alone.  And my feet won’t stay on the ground.  The world is spinning and I can’t find it with my feet.  It won’t stop spinning!  Please make it stop, Mommy!  I don’t want to go to the field trip.  I don’t want to ride on the school bus!” 

Suddenly I got it.  There it was.  In words that perfectly (and not a little bit frighteningly) described his panic moment on the bus on Monday.  It hit me like a train what he’d been fearing all week.  I quickly explained to him that we didn’t have to go on the school bus.  That I would take him to the pumpkin farm in our car.  His reaction was immediate.  The tension ran out of his little body.  He tentatively asked me a couple of questions.  As we talked I realized that all that week, in his mind the tension had been mounting.  As the field trip day was getting nearer he was growing more and more afraid.  And all I had to do to make it better was just to talk to him.  He began to get excited about the trip.  And by the time we were sitting in line behind the busses on Friday morning, safely buckled into our car, he was beyond happy to be going.  So we were able to go and enjoy a hayride, a nature hike, a visit to the one room school house and the 1908 cabin, a class taught by Tahwilla about our Native American heritage, farm animals (including a very stinky goat and some beautiful gooses), a treasure dig for dinasaur eggs, water pump duck races, panning for gold and of course, the pumpkin patch.  This was a really cool field trip.  Lesson learned by Mommy, fun had by boy. 

Do these things ever get old?  I think not. Just a hole cut in a painted piece of plywood.  Awesome! 

Mr. Donkey 

Tahwilla 

The water pump, for which we almost managed to wait our turn patiently. 

And of course, the punkin loot. 

October 17, 2008 @ 07:01

I’m still here.  I didn’t fall off the planet.  But I’m still eyebrow deep in Puritan clothes.  But I did take a break last night to bake.  The weather turned.  And I couldn’t help it.  The punkins call to me. 

Sara’s Pumpkin Pie

1 1/2 cans of pumpkin puree’ (not pumpkin pie filling)
3 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 deep dish pie shell

I’m not a pie crust purist.  I have two kids and one of them likes to wear one of the plastic parts from the food processor as a bit of armour when he’s being a knight.  I think the heavy cream makes up for the store boughten pie shell, yes?  Yes.  Mix the filling ingredients well, pour into the unbaked pie shell, bake at 350 degrees for approximately 1 hour.  The center will seem a bit jiggly.  Have it for breakfast.  Tell ‘em I said it was okay. 

And that in the background, those are Kitty’s jumbo pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, her reward for spotting the obscure movie bits that I leave here frequently, as I haven’t had an original thought since 1989.  You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.  They’re on their way, sweetie. 

October 09, 2008 @ 18:21

Me:  Puppy, do you want chips or pretzels with your hotdog?  (hush with the nutrition talk, I know . . .  )

Puppy:  Princells! 

Me:  Princells? 

Puppy:  Princes plus souls make prince-souls. 

Well, alrighty then . . .  so, if my kiddo eats up all the prince souls, does that make him an ogre?  Ah, better the ogre than Prince Charming.   Did you ever see Into the Woods? 

October 07, 2008 @ 21:36

My dining room looks like the answer to the Roanoke Island mystery.  It’s littered with pieces and parts of Puritans.  Sunday afternoon I watched The Scarlet Letter again for further inspiration.  Not that I’m building anything quite as beautiful as the 1995 version with Gary Oldman and Demi Moore.  I didn’t see it for the first time until I began this project and it was recommended.  It is luscious.  So much so that it actually made me a little sad as I sat in these deep piles of earth toned linen and wool for the last several days.  This coming weekend however, I get to the good stuff.  This weekend will be dedicated almost in it’s entirety to Hester Prynne, Hester and Pearl.  Friday I will be ordering several tall hats from a custom hat maker, boots and shoes, the last of the things for the remainder of the cast.  And then I am off to buy the last of the fabric.  Yards and yards of it, all for Hester and Pearl.  I haven’t looked forward to a project with this much creative enthusiasm in I can’t remember how long. 

October 05, 2008 @ 07:47

I got the most awesome letter in the mail on Saturday.  Bear’s violin is finally paid off.  I don’t acutally know much about musical instruments.  I took piano lessons for two years when I was a girl but that is it, the sum total of my time as a musician.  Any lingering yearnings, I believe, have been killed off quite recently by Charlie having chosen a little stuffed duck that plays “In Your Easter Bonnet” as his new favorite toy.  He walks around the house with it in his mouth, somehow cleverly pressing down the little magic button inside continuously.  At first I couldn’t figure it out.  I would just suddenly hear this tinny awful music and not be able to pinpoint where it was coming from.  Sometimes it was in the kitchen, sometimes in the living room.  One night it even woke me up from the foot of my bed.  This was not my best moment.  It was compounded by my usual October mistake.  Watching haunting television.  I know I’m not good with it.  I know I’m a fraidy cat that will watch one or two episodes of A Haunting (complete cheese, if you don’t know, btw) and end up a basket case in the house alone on the boys’ Daddy weekends.  But, I’m drawn to it.  I’m interested in it.  And it’s HI-larious!  Come on, admit it, you’ve watched Ghost Hunters at least once and thought, What Crap!  Except for that one in Eureka Springs.  Dude!  So anyway, being awakened in the middle of the night by phantom music?  Not. Fun.  Then on Friday night, alone on a Daddy weekend, I’m doing some math for the opera project and the music walks by me.  And then it jumps into my lap. 

The Culprit . . .  Think that’s cute?  It used to be a stuffed dalmation that is as tall as he is. 

And he won’t give it up.  Note the little warrior’s stance.  At some point today I’m taking it from him and tossing it into the washing machine.  Because it’s getting icky.  If I’m lucky, the music wil go away.  Wow, I really drifted off point, which was that for the last two weeks I think I’ve only listened to NPR and no music at all.  And I’m blaming the financial crisis and Charlie.  Back to the violin.  I’m no musician, but I was so happy for Bear to be interested that when the Orchestra teacher and the salesman at the school’s “pick out your instrument” night two years ago both recommended that we get him the nicer instrument, I said okee dokee.  Two years of payments later, it’s finally done.  Yay!  Along with the statement  was a letter recommending that I buy an extended “peace of mind” plan.  Now I don’t ever buy extended warranties.  Not on cars, not on appliances.  I buy Hondas to drive.  And I research all other major purchases.  If I thought I needed an extended warranty, I’d go back to the research.  But as I entertained that first knee jerk reaction to the letter, an image of Bear, the boy who has been known to trip over his socks, flashed across my mind.  I could just see the violin splinters flying.  So, yeah, I’ve already filled out that form.  Thankfully, it’s pretty cheap.  So one simple payment and done.  So now we just pay off the car, that’s coming soon, and then the mortgage, not so soon, but still . . .  I can see light ahead! And I’m pretty sure it’s not the Lady In White. 

October 01, 2008 @ 22:18

Me:  Puppy, dinner’s ready. 

Puppy:  I’m not hungry, I’m too busy working. 

Me:  You’re working?  (how cute, I’m thinking) What are you working on? 

Puppy:  I’m making science.  Yellow and blue make green!  (punctuated with a great big grin)

A mad dash down the hall to the bathroom thankfully ended with finding only one yellow beach pail, one bottle of spring water and one spoon.  Whew!  Oh, and one very wet bathmat.  But we can live with that. 

There have been some really fabulous moments in the last couple of weeks.  Long conversations full of real words and real understanding.  Less robotic speech.  More connection to his words.  I feel like we’re approaching another corner.  About to go around it.  Last Thursday afternoon we went to the grocery store.  Just the two of us.  We only had to buy one thing.  A missing ingredient for the dog cake.  Usually I would have let him stay home with Bear.  But he asked to go.  I paused and debated.  The grocery store for us usually involves some negotiating near the toy aisles.  And depending on how wound up and focused he is, it can get pretty ugly.  I’ve left more than one basket full at the door with the greeter and apologized while dragging a boy out the door that’s screaming to high heaven.  The worst one I can remember happened before we got our diagnosis.  It was part of what led me to start seeking answers.  He had become fixated on something, I can’t even remember what the thing was now.  But I’ll never forget the way he screamed all the way home.  Long catterwalling sounds.  Keening.  He didn’t stop for two hours.  Finally falling into hiccuppy sleep.  His skin pale with red blotches, spikey wet eye lashes.  It reminded me of those nights of colic when he was tiny.  That helpless feeling that swells inside you while your rational mind chants reassurances to your emotional self as you pace the floor and rock the boy and pray for it to end.  When Bear was little he had colic.  The only thing that would calm him was the hair dryer turned on high, hanging from a hook on the bathroom wall, rumbling against the tiles.  I have a fantastic picture of his father sitting in a rocking chair wedged into our tiny bathroom, Bear bundled in one arm, college text book balanced on the other.  It wasn’t so scary when there were two grown ups in the house.  When Puppy went through his colic stage, I was alone.  For him it was swaying to Hall and Oates in combination with vaccuming the carpet.  We had the cleanest carpet in the city.  We got through it.  And the Hall and Oates part has become a sweet memory.  But some of the melt downs are just scary.  Especially when I’m feeling unsure because of other things.  So, as I was saying about the grocery store, I debated.  And because he’s been on such an even keel lately, I said sure, let’s go.  And it was great.  He talked to me throughout the entire store.  But, we did not have a single negotiation.  He read labels and signs to me and I helped him with the big words.  It is amazing to me how he has become a reader.  It seems almost overnight.  And somehow feels like a part of the new connections he’s making.  All the new paths in his mind.  Everything getting clearer and clearer for him.  It’s a miracle every day.  I want to shrink down like Tuck Pendelton and ride around in his little brain and watch it all happen on the cellular level.  I’m not really sure how I don’t just wander about all day bewildered by the mystery of the boy.  As we stood at the check out he read the sign over the entrance to me.  “Welcome to the Market!”  He nearly shouted it.  Yep, welcome back to the market, Puppy. 

And just in case the Hall and Oates reference wasn’t enough, here’s another 70s gem, oh and double points if you know who Tuck is . . .