Twinkle Little Star

A Letter for my Children

I was thinking today about the little story I told below about using figure skating to snag me up a professor to date, and some criticism that I'd heard about through D from guess who? (First word I, second word L, and with a dash in between). It was that I *gasp* talked about old boyfriends on the blog!!!!!

D just laughed about it when he told me. He's heard all my boyfriend escapades (not that there were that many) and I've heard all of his girlfriend escapades (not that there were that many.) Hell, he even lived through some of mine with me, due to sort of the way our relationship has ebbed and flowed over the last 12 years. He made me laugh at myself when I dated a guy named Dean and constantly gave him the daily play by play in hyper tones that went something like, "And then I go 'quote'." And then Dean goes, 'quote'. and then I'm all 'quote', and then Dean goes, 'qoute'...." And then D replies, "Well, you know what I think? Pause. Maybe the Dean goes ate yo baby." So we've joked around a lot about it. We've talked about past experiences with people we've dated in pretty excruciating detail. Why wouldn't we? Those experiences are part of who we are and what makes us, us. I don't hate anybody I've dated. I'm not the "rip your boyfriend out of all your pictures before your next boyfriend sees them" type. I'm still friends with them. If I hated them, wouldn't it make me kind of stupid for dating such hateful people? You break-up mostly because your lives are going in two different directions. Or you just don't enjoy each other anymore for whatever reason. You can still have and keep the good memories (such as my cheesy-ass skating scenario), and you don't have to feel all hateful and victimized for the bad. It is hard to find a match that stays your match for a long period of time. And there is no reason to get jealous of people that you've already found out aren't right for you. So, yeah, with a level of sensitivity to them, I think I can write about old boyfriends.

"But the title of your blog is, "A Letter to My Children!!!" Do you really think it is appropriate to write about all this kind of stuff on your blog that is for your children????"

Yes. And this is why:

My mother died of a brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme when she was 54 years old. When we first found out about the cancer, they told us it was a grade III astrocytoma. The prognosis for that was that she would probably have surgery and radiation and chemo and it would remiss, then she might go a year or two before it returned and then when it returned there would probably be very little that could be done. So my mom asked me to think about what I wanted to do with her in the next two years. We talked about maybe this was a gift in a morbid sort of way. She knew how she was going to die. It was, relative to a lot of other illnesses, a peaceful way to die. And we could plan to enjoy each other and the family in the time she had left. We talked about vacations to Orlando, spending time together at home, things like that. But what I realized that I would miss out on was the chance for us to get to know each other as people, rather than as a mom/daughter. We were starting to do that. My mother and I had a falling out when I was 18 and left a 3 day week at my college to hang out with my boyfriend. She got so mad that she threatened to cut me off financially if I didn't break up with my boyfriend. So, I decided to let her cut me off financially and keep the boyfriend. (It was the principle of the thing. Jimmy Carter taught me in the 4th grade not to succumb to extortion.) And lo and behold, several years later, I eventually broke up with the boyfriend (though we are still friends) and still graduated from college. It was rough for a while, but slowly, over time, my mom and I were starting to have a better and better relationship. But partly because of our distance geographically, we just weren't all the way there yet. There was so much about my mother that I wanted to know and I didn't.

My mother was always this perfect person to me. She went to work every day. She was never late. She never got lazy with the housework or the laundry, it was always done every week on Saturday morning. She kept getting promotions at work and so must have been a winner there, too. She never had a weak, procrastinatory, push snooze too many times, moment. She always had the right answer. The sensible, responsible, logical answer. She never left the house without looking all put together. Make-up on, nice coordinated mature clothes. Everyone complained about the struggle women have to have it all with both career and motherhood. She didn't ever seem to have a problem with it, and with a husband who was almost never there to boot. She did everything that adults were supposed to do. This is what I thought being an adult was.

When I became an adult, I wasn't like this. I never kept up that perfectly with the housework. I pushed snooze and missed class sometimes. I went out looking sloppy sometimes. Wasn't I magically supposed to turn into this perfectly together adult? All this pressure all my life to keep it together as well as she did and I never could cut it. Of course by then I realized that my mother did make mistakes, she wasn't perfect, and she didn't have all the answers. But I never learned too much about how she dealt with all the pressures in her life.

It turned out, after she had her first brain surgery they found that she had a grade IV glioblastoma. She only had months to live. She became somewhat brain damaged after that surgery and wasn't ever quite like she used to be again. There was no remission, she was so sick from all the radiation and chemotherapy, and she died about ten months after the first diagnosis. She was still her, and she still had some good days where she was mostly the mom I remembered, but there just wasn't the time or energy or ability anymore for her to talk to me about everything I wanted to know. There just wasn't time.

I became pregnant about six months after she died. It was a very hard thing not having her there. Especially with the in-law rejection who I'd thought had become somewhat of a second family to me. I realized that I didn't even know my own 'birth story,' nor my sister's all that well. I wondered everything. Did she have morning sickness? Did she have a general anesthesia like they all did back then, and so what does she remember? How bad were the contractions? I knew my sister was an accident, but I was supposedly planned. What led to that decision? How did she decide to work and not stay home? What did she have to sacrifice? How much did she clear off her own paycheck after daycare expenses? How did she feel when she found out I had vision problems? My mother was 20 when she had kids, I was 34. How did her youth help her or hurt her? I think I remember that she breastfed my sister but not me. How did she decide that? I knew none of the answers. And the only person who knew them was gone.

I also wanted to know other things about who she was. She talked a little bit about her childhood growing up, but I wanted to know who she dated, how long she played the cello, was there really no way in hell she could have reconciled with her mother? Were there ever attempts? I wanted to know about the decisions she had to make in regards to us. Did we move to Omaha for better schools? What information led her to that decision? What really was said in all those private conversations she had with my doctors? What was her goal/thinking behind taking me to all the doctors? How hard was that? How hard was it to raise us without my father around (who traveled a lot for work.) How was their marriage? Did she ever think of leaving him?

Its not that we never talked about any of these things. But there is a protective way that a parent gets used to talking to a child about all of these issues. Slowly, as that child grows up, I think parents shift to a more honest, balanced recollection and reflection of events. And things happen, like having a baby or two, that bring old things up fresh again.

We were getting to that point. but there just wasn't time.

When you become an adult and finally settle in to who you are going to be, you find faults with yourself and you trace some of them back to your parents. Because no parent is perfect. So much of who you became, good or bad, is from them. If you want to understand and change yourself, it sometimes helps to understand the elements of where you came from. I have a personal rule that after you get to be about thirty, you own your own strengths and faults and although you may still recognize that your parents might have a lot to do with them, you can't hold them accountable anymore. You have to go on and be what you are. But that doesn't mean that looking back and tracing some of these things isn't beneficial.

But now, for me, there is no more time.

So, that is why this, "Letter to my Children" has everything in it. Old boyfriends. Bad mistakes. Stupid rants. Analysis of decisions I've made. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I know I will screw up. I know that the kids will have a lot of questions because of the uniqueness of our family. And I want to document it for them. My hope is that they will see, throughout the good and the bad, that the one constant is the love I have for them and the effort I do make to try to do it right.

Its not like I'm going to start reading this to them when they are six. It will be something I'll archive for them and save. And when something comes up that requires that we reflect on our past or the decisions I've made for them, we can look and try to find out where I was at the time and what my reasoning was right then. Or, should I die young and my children run out of time with me before they get a chance to know me as an adult child knows his parents, they will have all my lengthy, run on sentenced, bad grammar and spelling, tirade ridden writing to still have a piece of me on the other side.

And yes, I want my kids to know that I am prone to a tirade or two. I want them to know I can be bitchy when it is called for. D and I face many injustices daily, and they will too by default. I want them to know that there is nothing all that wrong with us, we are just living in an imperfect society. And the only thing you can do about that sometimes is speak up, Speak Up, Speak UP! Make a scene! Stand up for the way it should be. Don't make nice with how it is. I actually don't want them to see me as a perfect person that they can't possibly reach and live up too. I want them to see us as a family that tried our best to be a good family, even when we struggled against several natural and artificial forces working against us.

So I'm perhaps not so much writing to them as for them. I abandoned the awkward pronoun nonsense of writing directly to them after about a few posts. But I might do it from time to time. Why write on-line? Because it keeps me motivated. You all do. Because as I said earlier, it keeps me honest. And because I think your comments and the integration of some of the other blogs I've linked and quoted will give my writing some of the zeitgeist that might be helpful or at least entertaining  in the future. Also, because typepad makes it so easy to archive.

So...

Dear Children,

Mom has had boyfriends and mom has had sex with a few people. But mom picked your dad to be with. And dad picked you to be a dad to.

Mom has a bitchy streak and mom can be tactless. But mom would fight for you and our family with her voice, her strength and her ability to make an annoying scene when needed and she isn't ashamed of that.

Mom has been hurt by the in-laws and mom has made mistakes with them, too. But mom will never say to you that they are bad people or that you can't love them and spend time with them.

Mom gets worn down and tired with dad's health. And often mom has no one to support her when dad is sick. This is frustrating and sad sometimes. But mom has not given up on him and mom still tries to be there for him.

Mom has trouble finding work quite often, and mom went on disability so you all would have a more stable, yet less fancy, life. But mom is good at many things, and tried hard to go to college and have a career. And mom will continue to try hard to work. But, she will try even harder to be a good stay at home or working mom. That is the most important job she has.

Mom doesn't have a lot of money sometimes and sometimes mom will have to tell you that you can't have the things your friends have. But mom will always make sure you have enough to eat, a safe place to live, the best health care she can find, a good education, and are warm and loved in your home, even if she has to walk the streets to make that happen.

Mom doesn't have anything to go on here, as far as making this unique little family work. I don't know anyone whose done it quite like this before, so mom will screw up. But mom will also walk through fire for you. Words cannot express the love I have for both of you. This, you should never doubt, even if mom is being a stupidhead. I love you more and more and more and more and more each day we spend together. I can't wait to watch you grow into who you will be.

Here, I'm writing a letter for my children. For you I write all of it. Because it is complex and you are complex and I will not pretend to simplify it or paint it in roses for you. I have a feeling you are not going to want that.

Love, love and more love,

Mommy.

Figure Skating Memories: Lexie Represents

Since many of you may have watched some figure skating from the Olympics this week, I thought this might be a good time to talk about my absolute love of the sport, both as a spectator and as a recreational participant. One of the seriously hardest things about deciding to become a mother was that I knew I would lose figure skating, at least for a long while. And it has been a long while. I have not skated in about 2 years.

When I was about 10 weeks pregnant, I went to a mall where I did most of my figure skating as an adult. It is the same rink Tonya Harding trained in, so its a bit notorious. Dan Rather actually did several newscasts from there. And if you watch the E! True Tonya Harding Hollywood Story, you will see my friend, J, skating in some of the shots. I have many good memories there, and when I went to this mall where I hadn't been for a few months, I found that the rink had been cemented over and replaced with really obnoxious shopping mall merry-go-round rides with really obnoxious children running around screaming where I once felt the joy of floating over the ice. There it was, my youth cemented over by the overwhelming wants and needs of children. It hit me with such a shock that I was practically crying when buying a pair of maternity pants. Even now, it physically pains me to see that space where ice should be.

I know that many people only watch skating when the Olympics roll around every four years, and don't see the years and years of performances and competitions in-between. There is this conception that a skater drudges herself to the cold, damp, lonely rink every morning at 5:00am and suffers through hours of practice only so she can have those 7 minutes on the ice at the Olympics. And if she doesn't get Gold, then it was all not worth it. But skating (and I'm sure any sport a person loves) is so much more than that. When you look at the arc of the career of someone like Michelle Kwan with a true appreciation for skating and her controlled edges and line, you see how amazing she is despite never winning Olympic Gold. I'm sure if you asked her or Nancy Kerrigan or Sasha Cohen, or Roslyn Summers, or Linda Frantianne, or Janet Lynn or any of the other second, third, or other place finishers at the Olympics who went on to have great careers, they would not say they wasted 10+ years of their lives because they didn't win Gold. They are probably proud of what it took to get there. Michelle Kwan, for example, essentially was a good enough competitor to make 4 Olympic teams over a 12 year period. (In 1994, she was the alternate even after having placed 2nd at Nationals due to the whole Tonya/Nancy business.) This is amazing. Not to mention her multiple National and World Championship Titles. I personally have enjoyed watching her skate, even without the Gold. I would rather watch Sasha Cohen skate the performance she did the other night, with the fall, and appreciate her balletic ability and extension than watch a million Tara Lipinski programs where she basically throws her body all over the ice with absolutely no attention to line. Sure, the Olympic Gold medal is great, but in a skaters career, there is so much more to it than that.

But even those who are not and will never be Olympic level skaters, such as myself, my friend J, and the very persistent and lovely Sara Skates, are asked questions such as "Do you fall?" and "You know you'll never be good enough to go to the Olympics." When I started skating at 9 years old, I was most likely out of any chance at Olympic style success the second I set foot on the ice. I was too tall, too old, and too poor to ever be able to be highly competitive. Most people thought it was cool, but people would say to me, "You're not good enough to make the Olympics." At NINE! How come we understand that people of all athletic abilities can ski, snowboard, play softball, or jog around a track for the sport of it, without everyone thinking that the only kind of athlete worth being is an Olympic Gold Medalist? (I remember once my BIL said to me, when I was discussing my ballet training that I only did to support my skating and he said, "But you'll never be good at ballet." I just looked at him and laughed. Yeah. I didn't know that! You burst my bubble! I was thinking of auditioning for the Bolshoi.

But rather than rant, as you all already know I can do, I wanted to share with you some of my joys of skating. For me, skating is freedom and flow, and control over your body. I loved the feeling of coming out of a jump (tiny as mine were) on that right back outside edge. I LOVED spirals. And I loved Moves in the Field, which are a series of step sequences or connecting moves that replaced the school figures. I hated spins. Never could do them worth a shit. I also started loving the most unappreciated of all skating disciplines, ice dancing. Since I wasn't a great jumper and a terrible spinner, and loved moves in the field, I started working on ice dance. I didn't even have a partner. (I tried to twist J's arm countless times, but I've learned that his arms will not twist for nothin'). I bought the USFSA rule book for ice dancing where they have all the diagrams of the compulsory dances. I just started from the beginning and taught myself some of the steps. I loved the outfits, the boots, the blades, the blade sharpeners. I loved my whole OCD routine of lacing my skates just right.I loved hanging out with the little kids who were already so much better than I would ever be. I loved hanging out with a very supportive group of adult skaters. I loved competition, I even loved tests.

I loved--okay--got to like--getting up and getting to the rink at six-thirty am and then going to work and changing out of my skating clothes into my work clothes. It is a peaceful time in the morning. Invigorating. There was a period of a few years when I had enough money to pay for lessons and an easy enough job that I could take some time to train. I skated 3-5 times a week, took Pilates twice a week, and took ballet once a week. I loved going from ballet class, where we worked on line and extension, straight to the ice. I was already loosened up and felt great. I could just step on the ice and go.  I loved being in (my) top physical condition. Taking my body as far as I thought it could go. I loved watching the elite skaters on TV and being able to feel in my legs, what they were doing. I think most spectators only see jumps and falls. I could feel how hard that simple 3-turn with free leg extended high over Michelle Kwan's head was. I don't think people realize the sheer difficulty of some of those connecting moves.

I read Sara's blog and am so impressed with her (and so jealous) that she is doing this still with a job and two kids. She is involved in the vast opportunities available for adults. She trained at a camp at the Lake Placid Olympic Center with some of the top coaches in the field. She competes in the USFSA adult sectionals competition. [Update: Sara WON her division in Ladies Silver Sectionals and now will be going to Adult Nationals! Woo Hoo!] (My competitions were ISI competitions. The recreational track of figure skating.) She is so unbelievably cool and she gives me inspiration. Maybe I can go back to skating. Maybe I'm not done. Maybe, when the kids are a little older, I can work it in. My sight is worse now, and my hearing, too, but I'm not going for Olympic Gold. I'm going for that magical speed, power, and flow combination of freedom that I feel when I skate.

One of the first big purchases of my life, were a pair of $400 boots and blades. I used to say that if I was in a fire, the first thing I'd grab would be my skates. Now, I'll say that if I am in a fire, I'll grab Aaron and Naim, and then my skates. I had to try them on tonight and walk around the house in them. Cuz' I'm just that geeky.

OK, since I just showed you my pasty, Oregon white legs, I'll share with with y'all one of my most best-est, yet most cheesiest skating memories. I was in Indianapolis on a business trip and I decided to go skating at the World Skating Academy rink. (Yes, I brought my skates on business trips when I knew there might be an opportunity.) I was also in the beginnings of interested/flirty stuff with someone I worked with. (Not in the same office, but a long distance project partner. Still not a good idea--but I digress.) Anyway, off I went to the rink and he went to dinner with some other people. I went to this rink with my skates and my tight leggings and strappy t-shirt and my oh-so-hawt self (oh, the memories....) and my guide dog. Well, these folks didn't know me from Eve and were a little apprehensive when I said I wanted to skate a public session and could I have my guide dog wait with them behind the counter? There were two rinks, and only one was in use. They offered to let me use the empty rink all to myself! My FANTASY! So I'm skating around, doing my thing, and a bit later I see the guy I'm crushing on come through the door and sit quietly on a bench; he'd skipped out on his dinner plans. He'd never seen me skate, so I start showing off of course. The song that was on the PA...get ready to vomit...was Cheap Trick's "The Flame." I was doing really well, just improvising along, when the big moment in the song came up..."I will be the FLAAAAAAAAAAAAME!" So I do this spiral, and it goes okay until I go to end it, and my skate blade catches in my sweatshirt I had tied around my waist. And I go down big time. One of those spectacular falls where you just slide 20 feet across the ice and smack into the boards. I cut my shoulder, I cut my calf, and blood was just streaming down. But still, in true figure skating style, I get up and keep going. Then I skated over to him and pretended that I just noticed him. He said I was a beautiful skater...but he was most impressed with my crash! This 'pick-up line was all I needed! You know that moment with someone when it becomes apparent to both of you that you are going to start dating for real? This was that. And then we went to dinner somewhere. Him in a suit, and me in my skating things with blood all over me. And then we broke up the next year. Good times. Good times.

Besides the kids and the money and the time...the other thing holding me back is how out of shape I am now. But that is for another post called "Let's Share With the Internets How FAT Lisa is Now" But for now, if you're interested in reading about skating with a disability, I'll leave you with this post from the archives of the old blog. It is dated May 24th, 2002. Apparently someone wrote and suggested that there was no way that I/blind people/deaf people/ deaf blind people, could skate. I don't remember the email exactly now, but I remember it was kind of obnoxious. After writing this entry, someone else wrote in and reminded me that there was a deaf elite skater on the national scene named Eve Chalom. So that was cool.

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

I really don't mind when people ask me questions such as "How does a blind person do such and such?" "Or how does a deaf person _____?" Some of the questions are the usual, such as "cross a street," "pick out clothes," "know when the phone rings..." Some are tedious and mundane. "How do you brush your teeth when you can't see the mirror?" (Answer: Don't you know where YOUR teeth are? Do you accidentally stick the toothbrush in your ear on camping trips?" Or my all-time favorite in tedium: "How do you know which side of the milk carton to open when you can't see the arrows?" (Answer: You feel the score marks that are provided for the carton to fold back. Check it out...they're there.)

I figure that people are trying to learn about diverse ways to do things, and I can possibly educate them. I get tired of answering the same questions over and over again, but I do if I have time, and I usually respect the person for asking.

When I hit the roof is when people say to me, after I've said that I've done something already, "Blind people can't possibly do that." Or "YOU can't do that, you are making that up." Or the same thing said in disguise, "You can only do that because you can see a little. If you were REALLY blind, you couldn't do that."

So apparently, I can't possibly skate and be blind/deaf at the same time. Sheesh. Thanks for telling me that. I don't know what I was thinking all these years. Now, many coaches and fellow skaters may tell you that I can't skate. But not because I can't see or hear well, but because, as I've said before...I ain't no Michelle Kwan.

Now, I've thought about this statement like I've thought about many others that fall into the same category that I've heard before, I should not let this get to me. I should not have to prove to some stranger on the Internet that I can skate as a deafblind person.

Aw, fuck. But then I think, "but then this person will go and have a blind daughter who wants to learn to skate, or play basketball or join the track team or become president of the United States or whatnot and she won't let them because she doesn't think its possible." As a member of a minority, I feel strongly the pressure to represent. I gotta do it for all the other blind skaters out there and for Associations like SABAH (Skating Association for the Blind and Handicapped), and for any other little blind kid who sees that damned "Ice Castles" movie like I did and wants to learn how to skate but has an unenlightened mother.(And yes, they did call me 'Lexie' at the rink way back when). This means that I go digging through boxes of crap in the back corners of my bedroom to find any good pictures that might actually prove that I can skate. If I knew how to put video up, and my computer had the memory for it, I suppose that would be better (yet more embarrassing). But though I have several pics of me standing around in skates, I don't have many performance pics of any quality. It is very hard to take good skating pics because of the movement and speed. Here are a couple of the top pics I found. (Top not so much because of quality as top from the pile of hundreds of various loose pics thrown in a box...I don't have all day to be doing this.)

Those are some pics from just a local competition in 2000 right before I got sick. I got third out of I think eight (or four?) competitors in my division. So of course, I competed just for fun and to challenge myself, I'm certainly not a top level competitive skater by any means. But that doesn't mean that someone who is blind couldn't be. But who cares? Most skaters aren't. Most skaters just compete at the local level for fun and for sport.

There are certain challenges that I faced as a skater that others didn't have to face. In these photos, I have the whole rink to myself, something a skater usually only gets in competition (hell, that was half the reason I competed. The whole rink was like paradise). As a blind skater, it isn't hard to get used to the dimensions of the rink. I've taken Sven skating, and he had it down in 5 minutes. The hard part is not running into everyone. I cannot really practice at a public session. I can skate around at one if I have a friend with me, but I can't practice anything substantial without the fear of wiping a kid out. This leaves a lot of cheap ice time unavailable to me. I can skate at a freestyle practice session if its not horribly crowded, and even then, I am able to do better with a coach with me. And yes, I did bump into people, but so does everybody else. Maybe I did it more often, I'm not sure. At my rink, everybody knew I was visually impaired (The skating school director even knitted my guide dog her own blanket to lay on when I practiced) Everyone was pretty good at staying out of my way. My coach and I were probably somewhat more hands on than most. Showing or yelling something at me from across the rink is pretty futile. I think if a blind skater was going to be good enough to compete on a national level or higher, they would need to have a lot more financial resources available than the average skater. The extra coaching and private ice time necessary would demand it.

When I was younger, skaters were required to skate the school figures. This is when you meticulously trace figures on the ice and the judges actually get down on their hands and knees to look at your tracings. When I was younger, I practiced school figures with a scribe (A big compass) but I could never really be competitive with them, I could never see my own tracings. Now, skaters don't have to do school figures anymore. Instead, they do "moves in the field" which are a series of step sequences you do across the ice. These, I can do.

I also have trouble hearing my music on the PA system. (but our rink had a terrible PA system.) I could hear music OK using headphones. There are Deaf dance troupes that can dance using vibrations of music as their cue. I have a good understanding of how this is done and can dance and hear music using vibrations only. The ice really doesn't pick up vibrations at all like a dance floor would. So as a deaf skater, you have to practice a lot on the floor, but this can screw with your timing when you transfer floor work to ice. Its something you have to work out with your coach to give you cues and things.

So, yeah, there is stuff to consider...but its all doable. I don't know if I will see a deafblind (or a deaf or blind) skater at the national or Olympic level in my lifetime, but I wouldn't rule it out. But can disabled people enjoy competitive, integrated skating? Hell, yeah. To prove it now, I've done everything but invite you out here and take you skating with me...so don't make me have to do that. With all my blindness and deafness, I may accidentally skate over your face when you fall down on your ass like you know you will.

Heh, heh, heh...here is another pic I found when digging. If you are worried about me as a deafblind skater, you should have seen me in high school when I twirled a rifle and Flags for the Marching band! (So geeky, I know...). Yup, I had to hurl the (obviously fake, but very wood and very heavy) rifle over my head and catch it without seeing it and whilst marching closely with guys whose views were obscured by tubas and such. It was kind of funny, they let me out of the Physical Education requirement in high school because of my disability, but they let me do this! If I had been more civil rights minded then, I would have fought that discrimination and hypocrisy of it--but no way--What's a little discrimination if it gets you out of gym class?

Happy 1st Birthday, Nat! I Got You a Thesis!

In honor of the Beautiful Ms. Nat's birthday today, I'm going to do a request from her mother, Shannon, entitled "Your 6-18 month-old Child: Some Tips from a Montessori Teacher." I'll do a small bit of Montessori philosophy first, then I'll try to remember and think up some activities to do with this age group. Feel free to scroll down to the bullets if you want to skip the philosophizing and find something to actually keep that little critter of yours busy for 2 minutes.

First, a disclaimer or two.

I'm not a certified Montessori teacher. In my master's in ed. program, I  had a zealot faculty advisor who was trying to turn public schools into Montessori schools...one charter school at a time. It turns out, it is significantly easier to include a disabled child into a Montessori program vs. the public classroom. It is also much more successful. So I was a GRE and worked closely with her and other Montessori teachers in private and charter schools specifically with children with disabilities. I absorbed a lot, and I also stole a lot of books. Incidentally, one of my favorite endorsements of Montessori came from this professor's 5 year-old daughter who spent her mornings in Montessori pre-school and her afternoons in a public school kindergarten. When I asked her how she liked Kindergarten, she said, "Kindergarten is dumb. It seems like preschool should be kindergarten and kindergarten should be preschool."

Second, there are a lot of good books, websites and information out there on Montessori methods. But they are all written in this pristine, antagonizing, paternalistic way that will drive you insane. They also expect you to be a robot mom that will sacrifice everything to carefully maintain the environment and observe your child in order to teach to his "sensitive" periods or what not. They use the words 'must' and 'shall' a lot. Try to get past this, if you can. Ignore what you think is ridiculous, and just take what makes sense to you. (And that you as a normal, human mom/dad, who has bills to pay and work to do and blogs to write and maybe even sex to have cannot be expected to carry out everything they say you 'must' do.) There is good information in there if you can get past the writing style. Actually, much of what Montessori revolutionized in the 1800's is becoming the new 'best practices' of today. Which is cool in a "Microsoft Windows does now what Mac OS did in 1984" kind of way, but also means that this stuff may elicit the "well, duh" response. So, I like the method, I hate the books, and I do whatever the hell I want with it.

Finally, I'm not preachin', here. My kids are no smarter than your kids, I'm no better than you. These are just some ideas and the way I get me and my kids through the day. There are lots of ways to do that. I'm just going to spew out information here and not worry about the tone of it, but hopefully I won't be as bad as the Montessori books.

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Okay, Maria Montessori was an Italian pediatrician who studied child development in the 1800's. She wanted to "free the child's mind and spirit." Here is a little tidbit for you to chew on: Supposedly, the Nazis ordered Montessori based schools to be closed because the method taught the kids to think too independently. Basically, Montessori method is based on five ideas. I'll try not to bore you here and instead try to put in some tips as it applies to infants and toddlers.

1. The Absorbent Mind.

In the first three years of life, children's minds absorb everything. More than they ever will again. Repetition helps develop and maintain strong neural pathways and these early neural pathways are the strongest and most stable than any thing else the child learns in his/her entire life. Montessori method tries to take advantage of this time and expects children to be capable of learning a lot more than is traditionally thought. So everything you do matters. And the best way to teach during this time period  is to model and encourage imitation and to let the child explore and direct his own learning. Also important here is that infants and toddlers will absorb everything, but not necessarily put it together well if there is too much going on. So the idea is not to inundate a kid with stimuli all at once, but to have activities and environmental elements available one at a time. TV--out. Crazy electronic toys--out. Background music--out. To be clear here because I do let the kids watch a small amount of TV, it isn't that all TV is so bad, but you want to limit it as much as possible because there are way better things your kid should be doing. My kids will occasionally watch a Baby Einstein video, some things like Dora the Explorer aren't all that bad, either, but the commercials are too overstimulating and awful. Personally, I'd try to keep it to maximum one half hour of TV a day, and then only if you're desperate. Also, background TV or music on all the time when the kid is trying to focus on something else actually lessens her ability to learn. (This is supported by new data that correlates ADD and homes with constant background TV or radio.) Music is fine, but if you are going to spend time listening to music--listen to music, or do a quiet activity while you are listening. Or do activities with the music, such as singing or dancing or banging on pots to the beat. Don't have TV or music on when you're trying to read a book. I'm sounding preachy here and I don't mean to be. It's not like you could never come to my house and find the TV on while the kids are eating (I do have to strike balances with my dad). Just keep it in mind that research shows kids learn more with a limited amount of activity.  My dad thinks that being surrounded by lots of stimuli will train them to get used to it, but research shows the opposite to be true. Kids who learn in calm, quiet environments learn better focus and concentration, and are better able to multitask later in life. It is just best to provide a lot of varied stimuli one at a time rather than bombarding the kid with everything at once. (i.e. Gymboree!)

2. Sensitive periods

This is the idea that there are windows of opportunity to teach children things that they will learn easier than any other time. For example, I see parents all the time that really want their kids to walk and work and work on having their kids walk. Well, meanwhile, the kid is actually really blossoming on language. He's starting to name things (even if its just "bah") and although it is hard to see, he is starting to have a widening receptive vocabulary. But when the parent focuses on walking, the kid's attention turns to that and his language lags. Many kids lag in language while they learn to walk, and that is fine, but you don't want to miss out on that language op with ten weeks of struggling to walk, when your kid really wants to do language for the next six weeks and then only take four weeks to learn to walk. So, the idea is to follow your kid. See where they are really blossoming and go with that. Don't worry if they have a weakness in an area, because most likely, they've just put that on hold. There is a lot that is going on behind the scenes in your kid's little brain, at this age, sometimes you don't see much output yet, but its there.

Montessori believed that the body and the brain develop at a logical and parallel rate. Meaning, babies hands won't even attempt to pincer grasp until the eyes have developed enough to focus. Babies won't learn to crawl until their brains have processed at least some amount of 3-D spatial understanding. You can't do it backwards. People forget how much babies have to learn and the utter simplicity of it. If your baby is fighting you on learning something, chances are she doesn't have the prerequisite cognitive skills to go there yet. The lesson? Don't fight the baby. Instead observe, observe, observe. Follow his lead, but most likely things will occur in a sequential order. Look ahead to the next step and have it waiting in your mind, but don't push it.

3. Prepared Environment

Montessori is big into the environment the child spends her time in. A quiet, calm environment with things set up for the child at his/her level promotes learning. If you ever go to a Montessori classroom, everything will be kid height and made out of wood or metal or fabric and natural materials. Hardly any plastic. Of course plastic wasn't even invented yet in Montessori's day, but I think the idea is that most plastic crap is crap. It's loud visually and sometimes literally. Many plastic things have only one specific use and deter imaginative play. A lot of loud plastic crap that requires batteries say that it promotes cause/effect learning. Meaning, you push a button and things light up and a midi quality song plays. There are 18 billion things around your house that teach cause/effect--namely you. You don't need the loud, bright annoying plastic eyesore. Also, plastic is often a fake version of a real adult thing, and kids like and do better conceptually with real things instead of play things. How much do those TyCo plastic kitchens really resemble a real kitchen anyway? I try not to be anal about this. Plastic is cheap and I've bought it. I have some plastic crap mostly from gifts and hand-me-downs that the kids enjoy and that's okay, but the upstairs toys (where we spend most of the day) are mostly natural materials. Another reason is that kids like the weight and feel of natural materials better. All that molded plastic looks and feels exactly the same. Don't underestimate what your child is learning through touch. Varied natural textures give the child more sensory stimuli than all that generic plastic.

Also, Montessorian's are big into teaching kids to respect property and keep it nice and as intact as possible. This is not so much a 'prioritizing material things' deal as much as respecting what the environment has given us to use. It is a good lesson in environmental sustainability and appreciation for our natural resources. Accidents happen and things get lost, but I try not to allow any major damage from the kids. Plastics are hard on the environment and easily damaged. I don't allow my kids to abuse books or toys and have them participate in putting everything away. As well as that goes, sometimes. But I try to model care for their toys, especially their books and dolls, and not just throw them around and try to discourage them from it.  Besides, I'm poor. Their toys and stuff are not disposable.

One thing we do sometimes that you will see in a Montessori environment is utilize a work mat to play on. I doubt I would bother doing this if I didn't have twins. But giving them each a work mat seems to be helping them define their personal space (and not invade their brother's personal space.) This mat thing (I just use place mats or sometimes a tray) took forever for them to get. And still some days they don't get it. But it is one of the ways I'm trying to teach them to have and respect personal boundaries.

4. Control of Error

This idea is to give kids activities that have natural, built in error control so you are not correcting them all the time, and they can make mistakes at will and know when an error happens on their own, and then actually achieve a fair amount of success.

OK, here is an example. Many people give their kid a shape sorter of some kind. They will put all the 8 or so shapes in front of the kid with the box or whatever you are supposed to put them in and then show the kid how to do it by putting the shapes in the holes themselves, and hinting or correcting the kid when he tries it. There is nothing all that wrong with this, but a better method might be to buy the shape sorter, and take one shape (the circle is the easiest) and then get a box with a lid or a canister like a coffee can and trace the circle in the lid and cut it out. Then give the kid the one shape and the canister, show him once or twice how to do it, and let him go at it. The success and failure factor are inherent in the activity. And it is simple enough that usually within the first or second sitting of this activity, he will have found his own success without your intervention. Then, add another shape and make another hole in the lid, and so on until you can just give him all the shapes and the real sorter box. This way, he will be able to learn from his mistakes and experience success in a relatively short period of time, and he can gain confidence on his own without mom budinski making him think that she is the end all of all answers in the world.

5. Practical Life Skills

This is basically just that kids will learn more, be more confident, and feel more a part of the family and later community if they participate in their own care and the care of the family as soon as possible. Practical life skills are what we call ADL's or activities of daily living in the rehab world. Dressing, brushing teeth, eating, preparing food, cleaning, etc. All that fun stuff.

Montessori method basically says you should not be your child's servant but his teacher. Every time you care for your child, whether you are cooking, feeding, cleaning, diapering, dressing, laundering, your child should be included in the activity and have some responsibility for it. Of course, we all live in the real world and we know that including our 8 month old in every activity that we need to do for them would cause either the kid or the mom to wanna jump of a bridge or at the very least have to run around nekkid for lack of clean laundry. So I just do what I have time to do when I can and try to bring them into it when I can. At the infant/toddler stage, this is a definite partial participation thing, of course. Or it can be a "my turn, your turn," thing. But basically your kids are never too young to have a bit of responsibility for themselves. It not only helps them with fine and gross motor skills, language, problem solving, everything...it gives them the confidence to want to learn more about their own self-sufficiency instead of crying for mom all the time. As much as they may hate it later, most kids really like helping adults do real life stuff.

So what do my 14 month olds do now? Lets see. (This isn't every time, but I try to work it in.) Taking clothes out of the dryer and handing them to me, putting their blocks and some other toys away with me. Taking silverware out of the dishwasher. Wiping off their highchair trays. Climbing the steps and shutting the gate at the top (with my supervision.) Brushing their teeth and hair. Pulling their pajama shirts on and off and pulling up their pants once I've gotten their feet in. Grabbing a Kleenex and handing it to me to wipe their noses, then throwing it away. Throwing some of the recyclables in the recycling tubs. Stirring the oatmeal cereal when I make it. Stuff like that. You get the point. I know most of you already do a lot of this, but then I'm always amazed at how many men go off to college not knowing how to cook or do their laundry.

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Okay, bored out of your ever loving mind, yet? Said, "Well, Duh," enough yet? Well, here is some more. I'm going to just bullet through some activities you can do with infants and toddlers.  I'll divide them into the six main Montessori areas. This is our routine: After breakfast, we usually go upstairs and they play, mostly doing whatever the hell they want, for about three hours, with me breaking in with activities from time to time. We kind of have a routine with this, but it depends. Activities can be listening to music, coloring, or reading books, and then usually two or three little 2-5 minute planned activities that I've thunk up. I usually have the materials ready elsewhere, and come and sit down and get my materials out and just start playing with them myself. They know when I do this that something terribly exciting is happening and usually come running. Then, I show them the activity, play with them for a few minutes with it, then let 'em have it for as long as they want. Sometimes I separate them and just do something with one kid, but usually I play with both of them. When I write these down, you are going to think they are the simplest activities in the whole world and it doesn't take a rocket scientist. And you are right. But I know the feeling of just being tired and racking your brain trying to come up with something for the kids to do, so it is in that spirit that I offer 'em up. I'll try to put them in ascending order as far as skill level. Oh, and when you do these things with your kid, just go with the flow. They aren't going to do it right the first 67 times you do it; they'll be too busy sticking stuff up their noses or whatever. Then one day, when you aren't looking, you'll notice that all the blocks are sorted by color. They were paying attention!

Cognitive

• Pots and Lids, lids and pots. Anything with lids. Matching them together. Start out with just one, then two, then go on...
• For some reason, my kids like this. Take a straw or two and a piece of construction paper or two. Cut the construction paper into about four inch squares, circles or triangles. make a hole in the middle that the straw can fit tightly through. Show the kids how to take the shape on and off the straw, then give it to them to figure out. It'll take them, like, forever. Which is a good thing.
• Put a toy the baby likes just out of her reach, like on a shelf and give her a straw and show her how to use the straw or small stick to bring the object closer to her.
• This is a cognitive/language activity. Take three different toys and put about a two foot length of string on them. Lay them in front of you with the strings laid out towards you. Say "Rattle" and pull the rattle towards you, then repeat for "car" and "block" or whatever you've strung up. Then say the words, slowly and without much other conversation, and encourage the child to pull the correct toy towards him.
• Anything with object permanence. Hide a doll under a blanket and pretend you can't find the doll, then find her. Repeat and encourage your child to help you.
• Get two or three transparent dishes or glasses and put something like a cracker or cheerio beneath one (turn it upside down, like you're going to play that street betting game where they hide a ball under one of three cups). Show your child where it is and let him eat it. Then do it again and encourage the child to find it. Move on to opaque glasses or cups after this.
• Get a bunch of different shoes. Your big shoes and your child's little shoes. Shoes of different colors and styles. Then sort the shoes by size, color, pairs, styles, etc. (You may want to start with just two pair of very different shoes.) The practical life extension of this is to have the kids round up their shoes and put them away. Any sort of simple sorting with blocks or toys or spoons and cups and bowls is good.
• Any sort of nesting activities. Measuring cups are good. Montessori teaches to do everything from left to right to promote reading readiness. Like, lay out the measuring cups from left to right and then move from left to right to stack them. But, you know how things go.
• Big knob, simple puzzles are great, but expensive. You can try to cut out simple shapes on sturdy paper and then have the kids put the shape back in the hole where you cut it. But this is really hard sometimes for kids to do. Just matching the shapes to the hole (even if they don't really get them in it right) works, too. Or, you can take a photograph and just cut it in half with a wavy line and have the kid put the picture back together.
• Anything that matches real life objects to their pictures. You can do this with simple shapes, as well. If you have a napkin ring and you trace it on a piece of paper, then, say a...what?...a small square Tupperware dish and trace it on a piece of paper and then match them. Different shaped real objects and a tracing on a piece of paper.
• "Which of these things is not like the other?" If you remember the song, sing it! Get three identical objects, like three baby bottles, and one totally different object, like a diaper and ask, "is this a bottle?" yes. yes. yes. NO! That's a diaper! After a while, try getting more similar items. Like, three baby bottles and a cup. It gets tougher if you start using pictures of objects.
• When your child can start to name a few things, you can hold a blanket or piece of paper over part of it and see if she can guess what it is.

Motor

• To work on rolling over, sit behind your child's head and hold a toy she likes just out of her reach over her body. Wait for her to reach for it, then slowly move the toy to one side and try to get her to roll or at least reach to the side for the toy. Have fun with it and always let her have the toy after a few seconds of her trying. And it is OK to give her a little gentle nudge behind her hip if it helps.
• Grasping smaller and smaller objects. Napkin rings are a good start, or toy rings. Then get it down to cheerios or even little bits of rice.
• Putting desirable toys just out of their reach to encourage crawling.
• Pushing a nice, big heavy walker wagon (Radio Flyer has an excellent one.) This is a better start to walking than holding your kid's hands. If you do hold your kid's hands to walk, let her hold on to you, not the other way around. And do not hold her hands over her head, this completely throws off walking practice. It's killer on the back, but get your hands down to at least her shoulder width. (You can get down on your knees and walk with her, too. Better for the back.)
• Take canisters (we seem to have a ton of canisters around here, coffee cans, formula cans, hot chocolate cans, whatever. But any box or container will work as long as the lid fits tight enough to create some resistance.) Make a small hole in the top (size of a nickle or quarter at the most.) and stuff the can with napkins or scarves tied together. Leave a bit out the hole at the top, and have the kid pull out the scarves. You can also do this with chains, rope,  yarn, etc.
• Kids love to put things in and take things out of a bucket or container. Any activity where you are putting blocks or balls or whatever in a container, and then take them out. To make it more challenging, find a container that is just a bit bigger than say, a tennis ball (like the cans they come in), and put the tennis ball in it. This takes more concentration than just throwing something small in a big container. Kids like to wad up paper and throw that in the trash (or recycling!) too. Oh, and small objects in each cup of a  muffin pan? Fun, fun, fun.
• Shape sorting as mentioned above.
• Stacking blocks, of course. Keep making those towers for your kids to knock down. Eventually, they will get sick of waiting for you to build them and start building their own. Blocks are one of the greatest toys you can have for your kids. They are great to sort with as well.
• Pouring. You hate to do it, it makes a mess, but your kids will love it. Do it in the bathtub. Or start with dry materials such as cereal or pasta. Have a small pitcher of some sort and a bowl, and let them go at it. Or transfer items from one bowl to another with a spoon is quite a challenge. You don't need to go crazy with a water or sand table. Just put a box or two of rice in a storage tub and have some things to pour with and spoon. Try to involve your kid in cleaning up the mess afterwords, too. Those little whisk brooms are perfect for little people.
• Stuff like sliding clothes pins on to the rim of a container are good. The kind of clothespins that are like little people with heads are easier than the pinching kind. I see them in craft stores sometimes. You can also make a very small hole and try to push the clothespin through the hole in a container.
• If you have any kind of box with a lot of compartments, like a Christmas tree ornament box or some sewing boxes, kids will spend forever putting in and taking out items from the compartments. Toilet paper rolls, whatever. Doesn't have to be fancy. More advanced is using one of those pill boxes with lots of compartments and cheerios. I would only do this if someone around your house doesn't actually use one of those pill containers routinely with real meds in it.
• Pockets. If you have a shirt or purse or apron with a kind of tight pocket, kids like to take things out and put things back in.
• My kids like to take those little clear caps that are sometimes on spray bottles  of hairspray or whatever and take them off or put them on. I know, most of those spray bottles are toxic, but we have a few things that are just water and lavender kinds of stuff. Oh! you can take unsharpened pencils and put those pencil erasers on and off of them. This is fun if you have a few of those cute little erasers for kids, but plain ones will work, too.
• Let your babies unwrap things around the house. Like when you go to the store and you have to unwrap plastic off boxes. Get it started and then give to the kid to unwrap. Or, if you've nothing better to do, you can wrap a few items up and let them be unwrapped. Just a Kleenex box with a newspaper, don't even bother with tape.
• Magnet activities are fun. Get a big magnet and let your kid play around with a few safe magnetic items. Your keys or whatever.
• This is a bit advanced, but lacing things is a great activity. Big yarn with big beads or even toilet paper rolls again. You can create a "needle" by tying the end of the yarn to a popsicle stick or a pencil or something.
• You'll notice I went off on fine motor stuff and not much on walking and crawling here. That is because if there is enough fun stuff in the environment to go to, and opportunities to go (meaning that the kid isn't being held all day long and things aren't always brought to her) this stuff will come without much assistance from you. Fine motor skill activities are sometimes neglected by parents.

Sensory

• Sensory activities are just giving your child as many things to experience with all the senses as possible. And add language by talking about what you and your child are sensing.
• Give your child pictures to look at at his level. Change them every so often. There are frames out there where you can slide pictures in and out. Or just put them low on the refrigerator or bulletin board. Find some interesting real life photographs and also some fine art. (posters or even just printed out from your computer are fine.)
• Picture books, lots of picture books.
• Just get together a bunch of things to smell and then only bring out two or three at a time. Unlit candles and incense, perfume, different types of food, herbs, plants and flowers, vinegar, even talk about that smelly poop.
• You can let your baby experience different tastes and textures by giving him very large pieces of food, not meant for him to eat, just experience. A pickle, a large apple slice, lasagna noodles, spaghetti, large sections of melon, avocado. Watch him so he doesn't choke, but just let him touch it, smell it, play with it, taste it. etc.
• Get several small containers, such as baby food jars, and put different things inside that will make different sounds. Cotton balls, paper clips, dry beans, pennies, erasers, sand, etc. Shake 'em up and talk about what you hear. Categorize them by softness or loudness.
• Sing a song to your baby very loudly, then whisper it. For some reason, kids get a kick out of whispering.
• Bang! Bang! Bang! Find different things around the house to bang a pan with. A metal spoon vs. a plastic spoon vs. a feather.
• Run around your house and find things with all different textures and put them in a basket. Um, lessee, silk scarf, a wool hat, a rubber something, some sandpaper, a bristly brush, a soft brush, a glass...glass, velvet, bamboo, anything interesting to touch. You can sort these as well, soft and hard, smooth and scratchy, heavy and light, etc.
• When you go out for walks, stop and touch things. Collect a few things to bring back home. Leaves, pine cones, grass and flowers, etc. Wash 'em if you need too, but don't get too hung up about dirt.
• Experiment with temperature. Get a bowl of warm water and a bowl of ice cubes and cold water and put your hands in while talking about warm and cold. Go around your house and touch warm and cold things like a heating pad, the freezer, a warm register, a warm lampshade. (We'll get into hot when they're older. They'll actually probably figure it out by accident.) What you can do with hot is when you go on your house tour, you can mention that some things are hot even if they aren't on. Don't touch it. Just say, Hot stove, Don't touch!
• Talk about color and read books that talk about color. Gather real items of whatever colors you are reading about and stop and show real examples of things as you read.
• Put some common objects in a bag and have the child reach in and guess what they are touching by feel. Start with just one object at first. If they don't have the verbal skills to guess, you can still do the activity. Ask if they are touching X and see what their response is. Is there a look of understanding?
• Play Doh, Play Doh, Play Doh. There are recipes online where you can make your own. I think you can add something like vinegar to make it bitter and less likely to end up in the kid's mouth at this age. Start by just giving them a hunk of it, save the toys for later.
• Identify the source of sounds. There are toys out there that will help with this, or you can go record your own sounds of things. Melissa and Doug Toys have a lot of sound puzzles and blocks that are good. Basically, you have a sound and you have the child identify with a matching picture. Examples of sounds might be dogs barking, firetruck siren, plane taking off, birds chirping, car starting, toilet flushing. There are also some CDs and books that have nature sounds that you can use. Or, if you have some typical neighborhood sounds that you hear every day, you can have some pictures ready and stop and listen and find the picture that goes with the sound.

Language

• Talk, talk, talk to your baby. You've heard this before, I know. But try to always talk in the present about what you and your baby are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, doing. It's OK to imitate your baby's babbling and make a back and forth conversation out of it, but also try to use a lot of normal, correct talk.
• When you play the naming parts of your face/body game, get the dog, the doll, the teddy bear, the brother, the iguana involved, too. Name everybody's nose! This helps kids learn that its not that they personally have this unique nose thing on their face, it is a common classification of a lot of different looking noses. Then, find noses in pictures as well.
• Make a book, or just take a bunch of pictures of stuff your kid uses every day. The bottle, the toothbrush, the blanket, the diaper, the spoon, etc. Take the real item and match it to the picture. This is beginning language and reading. To represent something real with something else. i.e. A real toothbrush, a picture of that toothbrush, a word "toothbrush," The letters that spell "toothbrush." You can also make a book of faces of people your child sees often, and when they come over, Get out the picture and say the person's name.
• When you choose picture books for your child, it is great to have beautifully illustrated books, but also make sure to have some books with realistic photography of real things. Make book reading fun by adding sound effects and voices and facial expressions when you read.
• More categorization and sorting. A big part of language is learning classifications of items. No, not all four legged hairy things are cats, some of them are dogs, horses, and sheep. Talk about what distinguishes a horse from a dog. (Aaron always points to a picture of an elephant in his room and says, "Dah!" for dog. I always say, "Yes, It's a little like a dog, but look at its LOOONG Trunk. Its called an elephant." Any sort of sorting can help with this. If you can sort items into piles and label them CARS, ANIMALS, and BOOKS (And later, maybe, farm animals, neighborhood animals, jungle animals), kids start to classify things.
• Watch your baby to see what words she knows. Her receptive language will advance ahead of her expressive language. When talking to her, give her a bit of wait time before you take action. If you say, "Let's put your socks on now," Does she look or touch her feet or the socks? Give her opportunities to go after what you are telling her about rather than just giving things to her. Put a few things in her reach and then ask for a particular thing.
• Play hide and seek with items. Make it really easy at first, maybe even having the hidden object not quite all the way hidden just right in front of him under a blanket. Ask where the ball is and wait for him to grab it. Later, hide two or three different items and ask for him to find a specific one.
• Put two toys in front of the baby and ask for the one that is yellow, or square or some other word that describes it without saying what it is.
• After having some success with receptive activities, move on to expressive. Ask the child to name the items you've picked up, etc. Parents do this naturally. One thing you can do to tweak their pronunciation and help them differentiate phonemes is to get a few items with the same beginning phonetic sound that the child knows how to say. For Naim, I would get a rubber ducky, a dog, a picture of his Dad, etc. Then play a game where you do something amusing with the items. Like for Naim, I would put the duck on his head and that is, of course, hysterical. Then, I ask him, "Which one should we put on your head?" Pick up what you think he wants and watch his reaction to make sure you've got it right. Make it an important choice for him. After you've got this down, every once in a while pick up the wrong one and say what it is. The point is to get him to further differentiate his speech sounds so every thing that starts with a D is not Duh. If he wants the Dog on his head and I pick up the Duck, he knows I have misunderstood and he will try to say DAW. This is one of those activities that sometimes works great, sometimes doesn't. Just have fun with playing with the different sounds of D words.
• Counting activities are great, but remember that before counting comes simple ideas of math and quantity. Work on the concepts of full and empty, more and all done, short and long, big and little, A lot, some and none. These concepts are essential to go on and count and be ready for math. Then I would start adding and taking away similar objects. Get a bunch of something you have a lot of, spoons, for example, and practice adding and taking away spoons to a bowl. Use words like more and less and empty and all gone when putting different number of spoons in and out of the bowl. When these concepts are down, then start counting them.
• Give your kid choices whenever you can. First, just between two similar and inconsequential things. The blue bowl or the red bowl? Ernie or Bert to take to bed with you? Pointing will come first, but try to get them to also verbalize or sign it. Give wait time! These are big decisions!
• Take a matching pictures walk, either inside or outside. Give the child a few pictures of items, and when he sees them, match the picture with the item. I spy games are great, too.
• Try to get the toddler to finish off those words that are all DAH and DAW and DUH by finding rhyming objects. Use real items or toys or pictures of things that have the same beginning sound, but a different ending sound, and do some of the same above activities by asking the child what it is and try to get that ending consonant going. (It doesn't have to be perfect or correctly pronounced, just there.) i.e. duck, dove or cat, can. These are sometimes hard to think up.
• Sign! I'm partial to sign, and this isn't a Montessori thing per se, nor is it a hollywood fad. The research is pretty overwhelming as far as how sign language improves the language development of toddlers. It will help you get through some temper tantrums as well. I also do it because my hearing impairment does not bode well for understanding baby talk that is completely without context. You do not have to know much sign or take a million classes to do this. (Although there are a million classes out there.) Get a good baby sign book, or some videos and you will catch on in no time. Just start signing nouns your baby uses everyday. (Milk, bed, diaper, ball, etc.) Always say the word, too, as you sign it. Give your child that all important wait time as well when trying to get him to communicate with you. Don't worry if it takes weeks or months for your kid to respond, keep it up. I suppose it is OK to make up your own signs as well, but to me it seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to have access to a little bit of the language should you or your child ever run in to a deaf person. Also, daycare staff and teachers and other child care professionals are likely to know at least some sign, not your child's personal made up signs. Your child will probably really enjoy signing, and really flip out if she is ever able to use it later on the playground with other kids. (www.signingtimes.com has some good stuff and a public television show available in some areas.)

Social

• The point of social activities at this age is just to give your kid the idea that sometimes playing with other people is more fun than playing with just yourself. That even if another person takes attention away from you, the added fun is worth it. You are trying to get a back and forth going, to get your kid out of her own self. All this helps with language as well.
• Games in front of the mirror are good to start with. Imitating your face when you stick out your tongue or make funny faces. Looking at the difference between which face is Aaron's and which in Mommy's. Stuff like that.
• Anticipation games are fun. Sing a song like "Freire Jacques" a couple of times, then don't sing the last word. ("Ding ding dong. Ding ding....) This will drive your kid nuts and she will usually wait wide eyed for you to finish. Then, she will start to finish for you. (It may not be "dong" but let any attempt be success.) Also, make up a song where you hug or tickle at the end. (Here's one of mine: "There was a little boy named Naim, and he was cute as a bug. And every time I saw him, I wanted to give him a .................HUG!) Hug him first a few times, then wait for him to hug you. You won't have to wait long.
• Any participation songs or rhymes. You all know these. Pat-a-cake, Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, etc. We have a little tiny minute of pre-pre-yoga we do every morning which is basically "Reach up high to the sky! Reach out wide to the side! Reach down low to the flo'. And wiggle your toes and reach for those!"
• If you've gone to Gymboree or something like it, you've probably seen parachute activities. You can pay $30 to buy a huge unmanageable parachute for home, or you can go to the fabric store and buy a couple manageable yards of some different types of fabrics for much less. I have a few saris that I got at a flea market. They are super colorful and have fringe, and as a Stevie Nicks fan, I've gotta have my fringe. The kids love these. We each take a part (or just two of us take opposite ends) and play Row Row your boat will alternating  pulling back and forth. You can play peek-a-boo. You can make a tent and all hide underneath. You can raise them up high and down low, all kinds of stuff. Top, bottom, under, over, etc. Major giggling, and all kinds of excitement when you bring these out.
• Musical activities are great social activities. Use some kind of percussion instrument to keep the beat to music (or just bang on a pot) and encourage the kid to join in. You can get fairly cheap percussion instrument kits from Melissa and Doug that have all the stuff you remember from grade school. Castanets, triangles, maracas, xylophones, hand drums, etc. Trade instruments and have fun.
• Trying on mom or dad's hats and shoes is always fun at this age. You put on a hat, then let her do it, take turns. Any kind of activity that encourages taking turns. With twins, their whole lives have been taking turns, so they've got this down. But you can do it with food. Eat with your child and alternate taking bites.
• Dolls and puppets are great. Get out there and buy your boys some dolls, already. (Go ahead and buy your girls some trucks while you're at it, but for the love of all that is holy, Boys need dolls!) Model how to care lovingly for the doll. Take turns holding and feeding the doll.
• Get a small basket of about six toys or interesting items together, and share the items with your child. This does not mean that you give your child whatever he wants. Pick up your toy and play with it, when your child inevitably thinks that whatever you are holding is more interesting, say "I'm playing with this toy, why don't you play with this other toy," and hand him the other toy. Wait as long as you think she can handle it before temper tantrum mode, then suggest a trade. The next test is to get another actual live kid in the mix. If you can, start with a child a few years older first, then go for a similar aged child. (It may help if your toys are new or neutral toys that your child hasn't already claimed as hers. They're like dogs, sometimes!)
• Rolling a ball back and forth, or passing any object back and forth. Once you've got this down, get another kid and sit in a triangle and do a V pass. (You to kid A, back to you, you to kid B, back to you.) After you've got that, try for a real triangle. (You to kid A, kid A to kid B, kid B back to you.)
• Take pictures of people that your child sees on a regular basis. Make a poster, or just magnet them to the refrigerator. Designate a place for people that you saw today, and another for people you didn't see today. To start off with, you might want to do this in real time. For example, When your partner goes to work, you move his/her picture into the gone section of your poster, or just put it aside in an envelope or something. When he/she returns, put it back out.
• There are books out there, or you can take your own pictures of your own kid if you can catch him when he is happy, sad, mad, shy, etc. but that's hard. And talk about feelings. When your kid is having one of these emotions, talk about it and show him the picture that shows that emotion. (Of course, take care of what needs to be done to make him feel better, first...but then when he is 'recovering'--you know, the sniffle stage...you can talk about it. If you see other babies (or adults) expressing emotions, talk about them, and if you can, explain why they feel that way and what is being done to make them feel better. When you are just playing, you can pretend to be happy, mad, angry, silly, shy in the mirror. You can utilize dolls and puppets for this, too.

Practical Life

• I described this a bit above, and I'm not going to go crazy telling you how to include your child in cooking, cleaning, and all the other stuff you have to get done all day long. It is a very personal thing that depends on each family. But here are a few suggestions.
• Let go of the control a bit. Let the kid make a mess, and then have him help you clean it up. Let him fold the diapers or washclothes all crooked, because what does it matter? Let her brush her hair completely sloppily, who cares? (Or you can say, great! now it's my turn!) Let her put the silverware in the silverware tray all wrong. You'll still find your fork. Let your child have some breakable things--not your bone china, but garage sale shot glasses or salad plates. Breaking things are great inherent error controls, and will teach him more than a hundred plastic sippy cups. Let them have a cup without the sippy lid sometimes, and let them spill. Then let them help clean it up. Let them have a butter knife and slice a banana, they aren't gonna die. Let them participate in life, and let them screw up, and then teach them to fix it. Give them some opportunities to help you, even though for a long time, it won't really be helpful. Try to balance what you need to get done now already with a little bit of a lighter attitude to let your kid try some things.
• Once you've gotten over your big FAT control issues (smile) and found a bit of time each day where you can stand having your little hellion help you, the next step is to task analyze. Look in minute detail at all the little crap you do all day, and break it down into the tiniest of steps that you don't even ever think about doing, and there you will find one or two steps that almost any child, 6 months or older can do. Then, expand on those little steps and gradually give your child more responsibility. Start with things she's already interested in. My kids were magnets to the dryer and dishwasher and were already throwing stuff out and making my life a living hell, so I taught them to hand me the clothes and really empty the dishwasher. They will slowly get better, and if allowed, will probably just start taking on the next steps as they imitate you and are ready.
• To give your child a chance in hell at success at some of these things, look for child sized, yet real working items. Find a small broom, or just cut the handle off a big one. Let your child vacuum small messes with a cordless portable vacuum cleaner. Cut sponges into small baby hand sized pieces for wiping her spills. Get her the kind of cooking equipment that might be small, but that you can really use. Use small bottles of soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, etc. Have your child pour her own beverage with a tiny pitcher (like a cream pitcher) into a tiny cup (like a candle votive) and with a tiny amount of water (like an ounce). Have her little sponge ready when she spills. Have a hook at her level where she can hang her coat. Put her dishes where she can reach them so she can get them herself at mealtime. Little one year olds can participate in this stuff. They think its the most glamorous thing EVAH!

And this has to be the longest post EVAH! so I'm going to STOP TYPING NOW! I got a bit carried away, no? But I used to write up stuff like this for parents of disabled kids, so it's kind of like work and I guess I kind of miss work.

More Great Things from Twisty

Read this, and the comments, too. Please. For me?

A Few Lite Thoughts On Bucking People Up at I Blame The Patriarchy.

I should just copy this off and past it on the UU Church Bulletin Board and call it a day.

P.S. This is not directed at you readers, personally, for anything you've said to me, personally. I've managed to have cool enough people comment on my blog that get that I/we don't need this. This is more for, you know, mankind.

P.P.S. But if you do happen to ever be at the old folks prison and happen to stumble upon an unshaven 31 year-old one-legged quadriplegic with a hole in his butt, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD please don't go off on his spirituality, his inspirationalism, his saintliness, his strength, his superpowers to endure lying there in that bed for going on six weeks (he's trying really hard not to get up and go clubbing, you know. Such discipline.) Please. I beg of you. Because guess who has to witness the verbal snark carnage after you go off on that and Jesus and Angels and Nobody Said LIfe Was Going To Be Easy self-help mumbo-jumbo?

P.P.S. Ok, I lied. I love verbal snark carnage about D's Saintliness. Go ahead. It provides us with hours of entertaining ways to make fun of you. And what better is there to do at the penitentiary, anyway?

God, I Love Bitchy Smart Women

I escaped my house and my napping little darlings today, and left them in the care of their grandfather, which should give you a clue as to how desperate I was to escape. One doesn't know what state ones children will be in when given to the 63 year-old aphasic and chauvenistic retired railroad worker who may have welded railroad wheels (or whatever you weld in the railroad) a little too close to his grey matter. And I say that with love, but he only babysits when they are napping, ok?

So where did I escape to? A day spa? A department store? A quiet indie book and coffee house? BETTER! The nursing prison. Where D and I complained in boisterous and sarcastic terms the suckity suckiness of our predicament and tried to listen to and decipher the other inmates screams in the cell across the hall (we figure she found the solution to the quantum physics/string theory problem but no one will bother to write down her equations and she's pissed about it); all while consuming bags of Cool Ranch Doritos and a big brick of Hersheys Chocolate and Coke. (See? I support his nutrition. I'm doing my womanly duty.) Anyway, it was quite a funny afternoon and quite a quiet (comparatively speaking) afternoon as well.

I came home to bloggity goodness, where Shannon has declared me a QUEER and says I'm completely non-heteronormative. (I think that was from an email, actually, but I plan to use that word at least 200 times in the next 5 days.) That has got to be the best compliment I've gotten in a while.

Also, I was looking through one of my most favorite blogs when I'm feeling bitchy, which is Twisty's "I blame the patriarchy" which never ceases to reassure me that their are others out there like me as far as radical pinko commie feminist anti-oppression bitchiness goes. The only difference is she can write it waaaay better than I can. And way funnier.

She has cancer, which is another thing I like about her. Not the fact that she has cancer, I'm not liking that at all. But the fact that she handles her illness much like me and D do most of the time. With humor, snarkiness, and with both feet (or one foot as the case may be for some of us) grounded in reality. She cracked me up today with this little nugget:

[Talking to a girl next to her in the infusion room.] “That looks like it sucks,” I addressed her brightly. This gambit was not without risk in the infusion room. A lot of the patients, mostly the breast cancer ones, have been brainwashed to manifest a pink teddy-bear attitude, the one where they’re bravely “battling” their disease and can’t resist putting a positive spin on their godawful torture. OK, whatever bangs your box, but I can’t say shit to those Stepford girls who think Jesus never gives’em anything they can’t handle.

Link: Tales From the Infusion Room at I Blame The Patriarchy.

I love her! Go read her. Now. You'll laugh AND you'll learn something!

Being Outed, In the Blog Sense...that is

I've had a blog post rolling around in my head for weeks now about being outed as a blogger, blogging anonymously vs. not, writing personal things vs. not, and all those tough issues we who blog have all faced. I have been stalling because I've been waiting for the "ANSWER" and it hasn't come to me. So I do what I do when the answers don't come to me, I write about them.

First of all, this is as good of place as any to thank my Internet bud, Kerri, for this gift she gave me a couple of weeks ago that cracked me up so hard it made my day:

It says, "Blogging Well is the Best Revenge." I'll note that she got a large and it is too small, because it is a large in a Britney Spears world and not that of a 35 year old single mother of twins. So, let me just say that I'm too fat to wear it right now, but its something to work toward! Also,there is no way in this holy rock we call earth that my chest is really that big. The camera must add 2 cup sizes. But still, it cracked me up!

So, blogging and how it meshes with your real life (or as I like to say, your 'local life', because I resent the implication that bloggers aren't real anymore than a pen pal isn't real.) It is a tough issue. Two people have said to me about my writing fairly recently, "it writes like a diary." They said this as a criticism of sharing my life on-line. To me, it seems like they are really saying, "I don't want to know you that well." And/or "I don't want to feel like I have to share that much with you about me." To which I say, fair enough. No one is MAKING you bookmark, click through, or READ my site. I tell everyone in real life, "here is my blog URL. It is not required reading. But if you read it, say so. If only because you won't have to hear me repeating the same damned stories you just read about." So, if you are going to have a blog, I think you can't get mad at people for either reading it, or not reading it. And they can't get mad at you for writing it. This, I think I'm pretty set firm on.

Min Jung Kim talked about the life cycle of a blogger in this post. It's pretty amusing. But I think I have done things the opposite way. I had an anon blog and then went with naming myself on the blog. I think how you do this is a personal decision, and I'll tell you how I came to my decision.

I did an anonymous blog when I was new to blogging and I also worked in a children's hospital and wanted to talk about my patients without breaking patient confidentiality. More than that, though, I got into a habit of combining stories and changing details to further protect my patients' identities. Then it seemed I went to combining stories and changing details (mostly smashing together chronologies to save time and space and to make a point.) in other areas. Don't get me wrong, mostly my blog was pretty straightforward and honest. But it had enough detail in it to not make total sense to those people who might read it in real life to raise eyebrows. This is probably why the James Frey story interested me so much. Where do you draw the line from complete and utter honesty to tweaking the truthiness a bit for the sake of brevity or to make your point? I felt like I was getting too lazy about this and it was becoming a bit of a habit. But with a truly anonymous blog, it wasn't like I had any accountability.

Then, I got outed. Right after my mother died, I went home for three weeks. My sister found my blog by going through my surfing history on the home computer that everyone shared. I knew she had found it almost right away because of my stats, and she told me she found it about two days later. We were having issues anyway because of my mother's death, and she was mad when she found it and proceeded to call me on one or two stories that were combined stories. One involved a cat. I combined the story of how we got Scrapper with another story that happened at a different time with a neighborhood feral cat that was killed because certain neighbors thought it was a nuisance. So, stuff like that. It turned out that my domain registration was up within a few weeks of that, and I completely neglected to re-register it. When I tried to register it a couple of days later, some other company had taken it and now it was one of those shopping sites where all domain names go to die. So, I decided to end my blogging for a while till I decided if I wanted to do it again. I knew that if I blogged again, I would not be combining stories again. I would keep myself accountable to the truth.

So, then I was pg and had kids and things happened, so it took me a good year and a half to start blogging again. This time, I decided to just say, "the hell with it" and use my name. I did that to keep me accountable. And also, I have a hard to understand story. I need more understanding from people and with people, not more secrecy. So, I decided to keep a nice, low-key blog. I had many more readers on my other site. But I'm fine with the amount of readers I have here. I still have a few from the old site and some great new ones. And that is fine. I know people can Google me and find it (I'm sure my sister already has), but really, I've done nothing to pimp the site and solicit readers. I feel like fate has a hand in this and if people find the site and find something that is interesting to them, well, then that is what is supposed to happen.

So, my second outing came very shortly after I started this blog on typepad, and it was with the in-laws right after I wrote this post. To be fair, they don't like me for a lot of reasons, but this blog is one of them and I haven't mentioned that before. And I'm really wrestling with my part in this. They found the site, I'm pretty sure, through snooping through D's stuff while he was in the hospital. I had printed out the Dear Daddy post for him and gave it to him when he was in the ICU last summer. And I believe they found that. I only mention this because both times I was outed not through surfing through to my blog, but by things lying around and snooping, so be warned! I'm not at all concerned with HOW they found it. If you have a blog, you cannot get upset at people for finding and reading it. You take that risk. And I also do understand why they are upset about it. It is an unfamiliar concept to them. You know, us bloggers are considered an odd, geeky bunch by many folks, and I get that. They feel like I have broadcast personal family things TO THE WORLD (they haven't seen my tiny little stats), and technically, it is TO THE WORLD, even though such a minuscule percentage of that world will ever read it. I understand that, too. Also, my rule (and in almost all situations, this still is my rule) to never blog about something you haven't already discussed with the parties involved was followed on my end...but they differ in opinion about that. They believe that I've never talked to them about any of the stuff I've discussed here and I contend that I've talked about it with them ALL the TIME. Specifically, the post about D's father and the enabling issue I said almost verbatim every word of that post not two days before I wrote it. Not to mention many times I've talked to him about it and wrote letters to him about it over the years. (But then, they never heard me or D talk about having children before I got pregnant and we talked about that for years as well, So whateryagonnado? Just because you  talk, doesn't mean anyone is listening.) So, my point is...after all my ranting about them, it isn't like they don't have legitimate reasons to be mad at me as well and I think it only fair that I'm up front about that.

So what to do about it? Well, this has vexed me for months, off and on. Although I do understand their issues with the blog, I can't understand their way of dealing with them. At the time I was outed, I'd only written the one post, the one in which I thought all of those issues were open. Should I have gone on to write the post? Probably not, but I don't think the punishment befits the crime. This would have been the time to talk to me about it and perhaps come to some kind of compromise. But instead, I heard things third and fourth hand from people, some are giving me the silent treatment, others decided that this was a good time to accuse me of about 50 other unrelated crimes such as the cutting off of D's foot. (Actually, I don't know if the 50 issues were always there and now they had something to point to and say, "Look! Concrete evidence that she is evil! Or What?) All of this includes rejecting my children. Even if they do not specifically feel any animosity towards my children, if they are going to refuse to see them for now going on eight months, that is rejection. They are kids, eight months is over half their lives. You either want to have a relationship with them or you don't. Hate me, fine. But I am a direct and reasonable person who knows that sometimes there are conflicts and misunderstandings in the world and you need to have the maturity to take care of them. Especially if there are children involved. So, things happen like the fact that my kids can now (sometimes) sign 'grandfather.' Do I even bother to teach them grandmother? Probably, no. Because the only one they have is a woman they don't even know.

If this silent treatment had been a one time thing that had never happened before, I may have been more accommodating. But it has happened several times before, it is a pattern of behavior. We were given weeks and months of the silent treatment last year when we told them I was pregnant with the kids. Dwight and I spent weeks and weeks trying to make everyone comfortable. We were in the middle of moving, my pregnancy, he had broken his leg, and we took out several weekends of our lives to reach out go to them and talk and answer questions and listen and put everyone at ease. Millions of times over the years Dwight and I have played counselor and soother and been the ones to take the high road. (I don't know if people realize, we are happy to try but it is not our responsibility to make others feel better about our disability, nor make them feel comfortable with how and why we had children.)The only thing I asked for was that if there were any problems that would come up in the future that they come to us and give us at least an opportunity to work things out. The first time something came up, again--silent treatment. I just don't have time to bandage everyone's bruised egos and insecurities anymore. I also don't want to sort of condone this way of dealing with things and be party to it. If you have a problem with someone, sure, take a few days to think about it, then do something about it, already. Don't just reject them and talk behind their backs, because they know. Hey, at least my blog is out in the open.

So, I did apologize to the two people who eventually did come to me and talk to me about it, one accepted my apology and one did not. That is all I can do. So that leads to the next question, what to do about the blog?

I decided right away that I was not going to stop blogging in general. Hey, I'm a deaf-blind single mom of twins through DI with a quadriplegic life partner who lives three blocks away. Its not like I can find my peers in quite the same fashion as some women who can go down to the playground and find people to relate with. As nice as they may be, it is still hard for me to even communicate with the ladies at the playground. I'm deaf, and I have to concentrate hard on supervising my kids. Blogging has brought me friendships and allies with people who are involved in fertility issues and third party reproduction, who have twins, who are disabled parents, who have chosen families, who are poor, all types of people.  I'm not going to mention them by name, because I haven't asked them if I could mention them, but I found a truly wonderful family through the blog world who've agreed to be the guardians of our children should D and I ever die. People get married through the blog world. Some people have built careers through their blogs. (Look to Heather Armstrong and John Scalzi, for starters.)

I've learned so much from bloggers that I would have never learned just in my day to day activities. I've met Jews and Muslims and people from the middle east and Iraq. Fascinating. My knowledge and views about adoption have totally opened up because of reading personal experiences of adoptive families, first/birth mothers, and the wild concept that, hey! you CAN have two (or more) mothers! I've learned a lot about how the laws prohibiting gays from marriage have reeked havoc on families with children. I knew about gay marriage before, of course, but I didn't really understand the issues on a personal level. I've learned so many things from people's day to day, first-hand experiences about their lives. How similar we all are, and how different. And how we can all support each other anyway.

And may I be so bold as to think I also have a story to tell? There is next to nothing out there for disabled parents. I want to show that it can be done, and we are more like you, more like parents dealing with the same joys and sorrows than you might realize. People email me and thank me for sharing my story. Disabled moms have surfed the net looking for someone who knows something about the alternative ways you might supervise a child when you are blind (tinkerbells on their shoes?) or whatever. And I have come up in Google, giving them an answer. I'm not the end all-be all of this topic, of course, but I think it is important that I am in the fray.

So the next issue is, should I stop blogging about the in-laws? And my gut answer is yes. I don't feel good about blogging about the in-laws. But why do I do it anyway? This troubles me.

My sister and I have some issues and differences of opinion. But you don't see me hardly ever blogging about her. I've asked myself why. And I think the answer is because, whether I agree with her or not, she is always straight up with me. She came to me within  a day or so of finding my blog and told me it upset her. She never asked me to stop blogging, never judged the fact that I blogged in the first place, just said I lied about the cats. (Which I did.) If I'm mad at my sister, I have at least some recourse to go to her and say, I'm mad at you. She might yell back, but she is not going to fall away to pieces or be manipulative or start acting like the problem doesn't exist, or be fake nice about it. Or give me the silent treatment indefinitely. She talks behind my back at times, but I know exactly what she says about me because she says it to my face as well. I can actually go to the relatives and say, I know my sister said this about me, but this is the way I see it. And they've been honest with me about it, too. I don't NEED to blog about her because we can take care of it ourselves.

For some reason, lately I've NEEDED to blog about the in-laws like some people NEED their next hit of coke. This is bad, and I NEED to come to some sort of resolution with it. But at times, I feel like I have no other recourse. Anything that gets blogged here does not go to D, at least in any on-and-on upset ranting kind of way. I tell him generally what I blog about, and he occasionally reads it, but I think he's glad I have somewhere else to dump my brain sometimes. I don't want to influence D or interfere in his relationship with his family, and I've tried very hard not too. This is one of the best ways I get away from doing that. He knows what is going on, he doesn't need me to tell him. I also know that they read the blog. They say they read the blog to get updates on D, which should tell you a bit about communication in this family...but fine. If they aren't going to talk to me in person about this, I'm going to express my opinions in the blog. I trust blog readers to know that you are, of course, only getting my side of things, and they could probably tell you all kinds of stories about my awfulness and my inability to feed D 3 homemade meals from scratch like is a WOMAN'S DUTY TO DO. But you all know how these things work. I'm not perfect, they aren't perfect. We don't even agree on what perfect is, so it should all be taken with a grain of salt and I trust you all enough to know that.

I suppose I could write things down in MS word and then throw them away. I have deleted two or three posts here and there. But there is one more reason I've been writing here about the in-laws. Many of the issues that we've been having (OK, maybe not the blog issue, but most others) are very common among families with disabled people in them. Especially adult disabled children. Disability is the only minority group where your family isn't even in the same peer group with you and come with their own value sets that don't necessarily support your rights and self worth and determination as a disabled person. [Edited to add: I guess this is true for GLBT children and family members as well...and look how great that goes sometimes.] Even in multiracial families, many times the family members had some choice in entering into a multiracial situation and thus understood some of the issues. You marry a person of a different race or you adopt a child of a different race voluntarily with the understanding that you may have things to learn about that (or may already know much of the issues.) When parents have a disabled child, they involuntarily have acquired a minority in the family of which there is little knowledge or understanding of what that means. Most of the time, the person is born or becomes disabled and it is the family's biggest tragedy they have ever lived through. Not a great way to start on a positive, equal footing.

These things need to be talked about. D's family is  not exceptional in some of the problems they have dealing with our disability issues. It is very typical. I wrote the enabler post in part because I was frustrated and wanted change, and also because this is a fundamental issue in many families with a disabled member in it. I guess it may not be fair that I'm using them as the bad-guy characters to prove my point, but if D and I can't discuss it with them personally, I feel like it is an issue that needs to be explored somewhere. Right now, this is all I've got. The root of the problems, as I see it, are very poor communication (which can happen in any family) and problems with their paradigm about disability. The disability issues are at root, I believe, in how they reacted to my pregnancy, their issues with supporting us, their issues with D's health and his amputation, their expectations for what we can accomplish, and many other things that are recurring themes. I don't think the in-laws are evil, bad people, I just think they need to either face some realities, or just leave it alone. Because living in your dream world and then blaming others who have to live in reality is not going to get you anywhere.

It comes down to whether my relationship with them is more or less important than getting what the blog gives me, and perhaps, what it can give to others. And since there is no relationship, and my reaching out to them did not reap any rewards and they do not for the most part, reach out to me, the blog has won. I wrote before about the need for me to forgive them, and I am working on it. I'm coming closer all the time. Writing helps. I doubt it will make the family dynamic any different, because it takes both sides to move closer together in understanding and I don't see that happening. Maybe I will write about them a bit more, maybe I'll do one long sorry rant and then stop. But my goal is to stop soon. I want to get back to what this blog and my life is supposed to be all about, mainly the joy and love in my family, and some of the challenges. The in-law stuff to me seems like a throw back to Jr. High. In any case, since they have cut me and the children out of their lives for the most part, soon there won't be much more to say. Sometimes I wish that I could be one of those people that can just shut up and make nice all the time, and live in the pretty bubblegum pretend world that some others do, but it just isn't in my make-up. Apparently I can't pull it off.

So, for me, the blog world and the real/local world are not separate hardly at all. There is no "Blog Lisa vs. Real World Lisa" because they are the same person. There is no need to be anonymous because I just pretty much lay it all out there. It is much easier for me this way, although I understand that others have different needs and ideas about this. When the kids get old enough to understand what I'm doing, I will seek their input as well. If it becomes a privacy issue for them, I'll make modifications or stop. Who knows what blogging will be like, then anyway. Although, many older kids like being the stars of their mom's blog. Welfare Mum posted a picture of one of her sons catching a big fish, and her other son protested. He wanted his picture of the fish he caught to be posted as well, and she complied. But we'll just wait and see. Everything changes, thank God.

What are your feelings about this and how did you come to the conclusion to do your blog as anon, semi-anon, password protected, or not anon at all. It is a tough issue, and  a new one at that. I'd really like to have some of your input.

I Wasn't Plannng on This, But Apparently, I'm Still Ranting.

Shannon's comment below about the failure of nursing homes to evacuate their patients following Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent decision to kill some of them has been a hot issue in disability circles for months. It is a tragedy on many levels, but mostly the tragedy is that there isn't much public outcry about it. "They were dying, anyway," or "They were better off" seems to be the crux of public opinion. I guess nursing home residents don't deserve an evacuation plan. Because that is what we are talking about here. Perhaps the medical staff really didn't have any choice after the fact and they really did what they thought was right. But that is not the issue so much as the issue that came screaming out about all of the overall tragedy of hurricane Katrina, Which is: Certain people don't matter and aren't worth saving. You could be poor or black or disabled or temporarily or permanently institutionalized. You don't matter and we don't care if you die. Nursing homes often do not have an adequate, or ANY plan to evacuate residents in cases of emergency. It is a requirement, but the requirement isn't enforced. Because they are just old, sick, disabled people who would be a bitch to evacuate, so why bother?

Here may be a good time to tell you about a guy named Larry McAfee, who was an engineer until he had a car accident and became a vent-dependent quadriplegic. He lived in Georgia, which is not a medicare waiver state (as is Kansas and Oregon, where D and I have lived since his accident). This means that there were no funds to keep McAfee at home, and he was thrown from nursing home to nursing home. He was even moved out of state at one point and away from his family so then he didn't even get visitors. Another time, he lived in an intensive care unit for eight months because no nursing home would take him. He became so depressed that he petitioned the court to allow him to commit physician assisted suicide. He won his petition, and the judge even applauded his unselfishness and said he wished more people like McAfee would realize their burden and step up to have themselves be killed.

This is a perfect example of a medical model vs. social model paradigm of disability. The judge, and almost everyone else, saw McAfee's depression and his desire to commit suicide as a direct result of his disability. His life had no value, he was a burden to society, and the only worthy and heroic thing he could do was to voluntarily end his life.

Fortunately for McAfee, a bunch of disability rights activists, i.e. disabled people, caught wind of the story and got together to help McAfee out. They helped him to realize that quadriplegia in and of itself was not the problem, but that society had basically sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole, or a death sentence. There were other ways to get support for his quadriplegia and have a meaningful life. They assisted him in moving to a Medicare Waiver state, got him accessible housing and home health care, and he eventually returned to work as an engineer and supposedly went on to live happily ever after, as they say.

Getting home-based supports for him was no easy task, but what if it were? It can be done, in general it is cheaper, and in some cases, if work disincentives are removed, the disabled person can work as well. Many people who have killed themselves or have been involved in physician assisted suicide have been in McAfee's position. Imprisoned. But not in their wheelchairs, but in a system that is run by special interest lobbying forces such as for-profit nursing homes and insurance companies. This is the social model of disability. That, sure, there are some medical/physical things that go along with being disabled...but they aren't that hard to deal with until you have to deal with the societal prejudices and devaluation that mounts itself on top of the mere physical stuff. Disability in and off itself is a natural part of being human. EIGHTY PERCENT (That's 80%!!! Are you listening?) of all of us will experience disability in our lifetimes. This is why disability issues matter to everyone. I guess, if you wanted to go crawl under a rock, you would not ever have to deal with a black person or a gay person. (And by rock, I mean Hayes Center, Nebraska. I lived there briefly once. Those people have managed to never meet a minority that they know of.) But no one will ever be able to avoid disability. Even if you are lucky enough to be hit by a bus and die before you ever experience disability, your mother or your grandmother will have. No one is exempt. Rather than supporting your right to be exterminated when times get tough, you could be suppproting your right to make your time (and everyone else's) more valuable and pleasant.

So, D's nursing home experience is not as dire as Larry McAfee's, but I will tell you a little bit about it, now. He's been there for almost four weeks now. He probably has a couple more weeks to go. His care has been...okay. Adequate. But not without him staying on top of every single thing that happens. There is one nurse and two to three CNA's, and there are many, many temps. The turnover is very high, so there is a matter of having to 'retrain' everyone each day. His IV antibiotic does get done every day, four times a day, but he does have to remind the staff, and it has not been done every six hours as is prescribed even once. His wound vac care has been a bit sporadic as well. Many times, the staff is not able to get the vac sealed properly and thus he goes several hours without it working before someone has a chance to come and try to fix it. D has a history of cachexia, or wasting disease, which is when your body just doesn't metabolize the food you eat and, even though you are eating, you starve. It's like the nutrition pours out the wound, or is wasted. So a high calorie diet is very important. Also, when healing wounds, it is very important to have a high protein diet. The food he has been given is in such small quantities and is so low in nutritional value and protein, that we (mainly the in-laws, but sometimes me) have been supplementing his food on a daily basis. We bring him meals and cans of high protein nutritional supplements every day. It goes beyond bringing him a meal out of kindness; we are bringing him food for his survival. What they serve there, (and you have no choices) I would estimate is about a 1100-1400 calorie diet, and D is 6'1". Dinner might be a sandwich of two slices of white bread, a slice of American cheese and a slice of bologna (no condiments), a tiny cup of fruit cocktail, and a glass of about 4-6 oz. of grape juice.

As far as "living conditions" go, D is in a room where you walk in and a bathroom is on your right and a small closet on your left. Then his roommate's area is to the right and D's area is to the left. The length of the room is about a foot or so longer than the bed. The width of D's area is enough for his bed and a small nightstand type table next to his bed. He has a large window that looks out to a wooden fence. He has an overhead TV that gets fuzzy cable. There is no phone. The more ambulatory residents can go down to a small lounge that is the size of a large family room. There is a TV in there and cafeteria style table and chairs. There is nothing like a microwave or vending machine or anything like that. All the residents share two cordless phones that share the same line. I've had to negotiate with many residents to get access to that phone. ("Okay, you use it now and I'll call back in, what? an hour?") Anytime anyone is using the phone, the TV goes fuzzy. It is common to have someone break in on your phone conversation on the other cordless phone.

There is a chapel service on Sunday given by a volunteer baptist minister (Who has already tried to 'save' D), but other than that, I've seen no evidence of any sort of activities or outings offered to the residents. Except for the baptist minister, no one from the nursing home has come to visit D except for the nursing staff.

There are other things. D needs assistance going to the bathroom and often has to wait for long, uncomfortable periods. Used to having the freedom to monitor his own drugs, he has gotten into several arguments with the staff about them demanding that he takes certain drugs in front of them. Many of D's drugs are PRN, meaning he can take them when he feels he needs them. But the staff insists that he takes all the drugs. Certain things like laxatives and pain medications or sedatives, D has outright refused and has had to argue his way out of them. Imagine being forced to take a laxative you don't need and then having no one to help you go to the bathroom. Not only that, but many times when he does ask for drugs (or even drugs that are routine and should be on a set schedule) are not given to him for hours. We have also snuck a stock of drugs to him so he can take them if they neglect to give him some very necessary medication.

I absolutely shudder to think of the poor people in there who do not have the wherewithal to advocate for themselves or do not have family to assist them. When I enter the building, it's like I've entered a shelter for homeless kittens. I'm showered with attention and longing, especially when I have the kids, of course. I always stop and talk to the other patients. Sometimes, it is hard to get away. There is always someone looking out of the front door. The locked front door. I always want to ask if they want the access code. D has changed as well. He is usually a pretty private, quiet introvert who is happy just to tinker with his electronics. He does not have Internet access or a computer there, which is basically like taking away his joy in life. And his income. D does work a bit. He is a sales partner for Horrible Satanic Software Monopoly, and sells their Horrible Satanic Substandard Software Products. (But, hey, people buy them and then he gets money, so I live with that.) He sells online, and without his computer, he is out of work. Anyway, now in the nursing home he has a lot more anxiety, he lives for visitors and phone calls, he gets a desperate tone in his voice when I call and he reports all the goings on for the day. Which nurse he bitched at, which nurse fucked up his meds. Its like he wants to make sure there are witnesses.

Oh, and earlier I reported that it costs $3000 a day for his care in the nursing home. But I found out since then that this is NOT COUNTING the base rent for the room. The room rent is...ready? $5200 a month. Okay, so at the very cheapest $9/hr. wage, you could hire me and two others to do three 24 hour shifts for less than the room rent. And they are paying the additional 90,000 for his care. Smart. (I realize that they are paying for medications and wound vac and mattress and etc. out of that money that we would also be paying at home...but, still!)

So, now we are tentatively planning for him to escape when the wound vac comes off in about two weeks. He says he can take it that long. Here is the deal though. Make NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT. The nursing home is a PRISON. and the people inside are FALSELY IMPRISONED INMATES. Most of them involuntarily and with no hope of escape. The only thing that makes this tolerable for us is that it is temporary and D is counting down the days and biding his time. Imagine if this was your life. You are locked in a small, bland space. you have little to no personal belongings, you do not ever get out of the space you are locked in, except for a small, fenced in patio that you have to ask permission to go to. You do not choose what to eat or when to eat it. You do not choose when to go to the bathroom. You do not control your own medication or health care. You are not a person. You are a thing that is barely cared for just enough to stay alive so that your captors will make a profit. You don't have any say in who your direct caregivers are or how they care for you, and really, neither do they. No one that controls everything in your life has really any concern for your happiness or well being. You are just a pawn in a corporation. You are a commodity that they want to squeeze as much profit margin out of, and the way to do this is by cutting as many corners on your care as possible. You can't go vote, you can't have any say in government or policy in your position because you have no opportunity to. That has been stolen from you.

This is NOT because you are old, or sick or disabled. It doesn't have to be this way. There are proven better ways that will offer you a better quality of life, and cost society less money. This is because society thinks you are worthless. You provide no value to anyone so, hey, if a corporation is willing to warehouse your sorry ass and make a profit doing it, well...you should be thankful that's even allowed in this country. Because otherwise, the only other option would be to kill you.

(A better essay than mine on this subject can be found here.)

A Follow-Up on the UU Thing

My post a few weeks ago on What is bugging me about UUism (aka my church) got a bit of action, mainly from this Chalice Chick woman, who as many people are (especially UU's) has good intentions but no friggin' clue about disability issues. (See her lovely post on the Terry Schiavo disaster.) I also got contacted by a UU minister who has CP and has written an adult religious education curriculum on disability social justice issues, which is being sent to me as we speak. She made me feel like I was not crazy because she agreed with me wholeheartedly about UUs and their complete ineptitude about disability.

Today, I went to church for the first time in a few weeks. The kids love the nursery, which is half the reason I go. I'm usually not too bothered by going places/doing things without D, but today I kind of was. I missed him there with me. I was tearing up throughout the service for some reason. I think it is what I call emotional incontinence, which we all get from time to time. Emotions just leak when you least expect it and for really no reason. Sometimes that hour I sit in church is the first and only hour all week where I get to sit in relative peace with no kids, father, D or work to keep me busy. Then it's like, "oh, I guess I'll check in on myself and see how I'm doing, now that I have a minute." And sometimes I'm not doing well.

One thing that bothered me, and this is really selfish and stupid of me, was this woman who came up during the "candles of joy and concern," where you can light a candle and, as implied, express a joy or concern. She introduced herself, and then said she was better known as the lady who was hit by a bus. She was a middle aged woman who walked with a limp. I did not know her, she said she was fairly new to the congregation. Apparently, she was badly injured at some point being hit by a bus (I don't know the story) and recently she was given thousands of dollars for her medical expenses and also given thousands of dollars worth of free dental work as a result of a benefit that was held for her. (This was not specifically a UU benefit, I gathered, but many UU's participated.) My emotions about this confuse me.

1. I'm happy for her, that she is recovering and that she got the help she needed, both financially and otherwise.

2. I wonder why D and I don't ever get that kind of help. This thought makes me uncomfortable. What the hell DO I want? It's not so much the money, I think, no. I think it is the support. I don't honestly think I could take people's money in a benefit like that. First of all, I don't think I could ever pay it back. Second, I would feel like D and I would have to stay free and clear health-wise for the rest of our lives and never have another problem again...and I know we can't do that.

3. Maybe she asked for it and accepted it, and I/we don't make people comfortable enough to do that. I don't want a benefit. I don't want that kind of attention, and that kind of charity. Yet, I want that kind of support. I want the support without the pity. I want the support and friendship without the sort of power inequity that comes from that. I think for her, she was in this temporary situation of need. She became disabled for a little while (as far as I can tell.) She and everyone else knew that this was not who she really was. For she was going to recover and go back to being nondisabled. To go back to being an equal.

Assistance is a funny thing. Read chalice chick's idea that disabled people are burdens. (And the implication that nondisabled people are not.) That if you are lacking the ability to do whatever in one area, you couldn't possibly be able to make up for it in another. You automatically are not on an equal playing field so your life has lesser value. Most disabled people I know can run circles around nondisabled folks in such areas as resourcefulness, multitasking, advocacy, public relations, managing risk, perspective, prioritizing, etc. Even many people with cognitive disabilities have skills that nondisabled people don't have. I once worked on a grant project where I was the administrative support for a woman with cognitive disabilities. I can't tell you how many times we sat in meetings full of PhDs who couldn't get past the politicking of a situation to find a solution and she would break through all that nonsense and tell us the exact simple and logical next step to meet our goals. Seriously, without her, that project would never have been as productive as it was.

Anyway, the church confuses me. Life confuses me. My in-laws confuse me. All about this 'support' business. Why can't we get the usual support in life that people get without the pity attitude. Why did I spend thirteen plus years taking care of my own damned self, and supporting D in taking care of his own damned self, with a little family help along the way, yet have it be slapped in my face when I became PG? "Oh, we did the dishes for you and gave you some rides the last couple of years. So I suppose now we have to raise your children? Because YOU can't do it! You're disabled! What are you THINKING! You needed HELP! Let's not talk about all the help we give to the other daughter-in-law who can't even sleep alone in her own home when her husband is out of town. That is just a little cute personality quirk of hers. You are disabled! You are responsible for none of your accomplishments because we assisted you with 2% of it."  I'm hard on the in-laws because they are just such an in-my-face example of this...but they are not unique in this. This culture surrounding disability is pervasive.

So back to the UU's. Everyone told me I should go talk to the minister about my concerns, so I tried today to just set up a time to talk to him about it later. To be fair here, I will tell you that our current minister is an interim minister that just started a few weeks ago. He is also a gay man and I mention this because he said something in his sermon today that gave me hope that he would understand me. He talked about a youth group for gay/questioning teenagers that he started in the 70's. How back then, this was just not done and the church was afraid it was going to get sued. He said it was tricky because they needed parental consent for everything, yet some kids needed to come to the meeting without their parents knowing, and how they had to arrange that. He said that some kids said that their parents told them that they would understand if the kids felt they needed to commit suicide. And there it was. There was the link I thought I had with him. Parents devalued their children so much for the fact that they were gay that they thought their lives weren't worth living. Imagine. How much all of you love your children. What condition could they possibly have that could make you almost go so far as to wish their death? Gayness? Disability? Where do you draw the line? I mean, even Jeffrey Dahmer's parents still cared for him after he was convicted. This is the culture that surrounds disability all the time. Death with dignity. Wrongful birth lawsuits. Abortions for such things as Down Syndrome and Spina Bifida. My internet friend, Shannon, mentioned to me once that she didn't really want a "gay gene" to be found because then parents would start aborting their gay children.

But the issue is the value of life when that life doesn't fit so well into the mainstream culture. And this is where I thought I could connect with this guy. And I think I still can. I think he is an intelligent, open guy. But my conversation with him showed me that I have a LOOONG way to go. And should I push that with an interim minister, just to start all over again when the new person comes? Anyway:

Me: I wanted to ask you if sometime we could meet and talk about some disability issues?

Him: "Oh. Is something wrong with the ramp?"

Me: No, the ramp is fine. The door is locked sometimes, but that's not what I really wanted to talk about specifically.

Him: Is it parking? Is something wrong with parking?

Me: No. Parking is fine. I walked here anyway, I don't have a car.

Him: Why don't you have a car?

Me: I'm visually impaired. I don't have a driver's license. With D in the hospital, I don't have access to his car. But we have been able to park here fine.

Him: You are visually impaired? I would have never known! You get around so well! (Note: I know he is trying to be polite here and compliment me, but this is not so much a compliment. It's like saying, you don't look like a blind person (inferior), a blind person bumbles all around and you don't do that. You PASS as sighted. --I don't always pass as sighted, BTW.-- It's kind of like, to use an overused analogy, going up to a light skinned black person and saying, "You're black?? Oh! You don't look black! I never would have known! I don't even think of you as a black person. You totally could pass for white! Lucky you!)

Me: Well, it depends on the day and stuff. Anyway, I was wanting to more talk about disability as a ---(I was going to say social justice issue).

Him: So, is there something else that I can take care of? How's the FM system working?

Me: (Since this wasn't turning out to be a good setting to talk to him about this, and since another lady who uses the FM system just complained to me about it,) Actually, it doesn't work. (went on to explain the problem.)

Him: Okay, we'll take care of it!

I might try to email him again at some point. I'm not going to break my back timewise on this issue, but I feel like it is only fair to speak up and take some kind of action rather than just bitching about it on the internet. Again, I think they have good intentions. I think though that they go off so much on praising themselves for how good they are doing sometimes, that they forget to stop and just...LISTEN.

(Brainstorming here...) A list of disability social justice issues that I would like people to be educated on:

• Just general oppression literature. i.e. pedagogy of the oppressed and "the birdcage" model of oppression.
• Basic medical model vs. social model paradigms of disability.
• Basic "how disabled people do things, and no, we don't all do it that way." And, yes, despite everything, they do have jobs as doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, EMT's, accountants, everything.
• the "mockingbird" effect. This is a term referenced from the book "To Kill a Mockingbird," where a black man could not get a fair trial, not so much because of the LAWS but because of the prejudice of the jury and the culture surrounding race. Many disability issues are compromised by the culture surrounding disability, such as:
• Abortion. I am pro-choice. However, the mockingbird effect affects and distorts the information women receive and decisions women make about disabled fetuses.
• "Death with Dignity." Again, a mockingbird effect issue. This isn't about the real deal terminally ill. This is about your "Million Dollar Baby," Your Terry Schiavo, and how economics and politics play a part in these decisions. A note on Terry Schiavo: Disabled people weren't mad about the religious right aspect of this case, nor whether she would ever recover, it was because the LINE moved. The LINE that allows a "brain dead" person to be allowed to die is moving closer and closer to the not-so-much brain dead. Because of the economics and prejudice of disability, this concept is frightening to many people with disabilities.
• The institutionalization issue and false imprisonment. MiCASSA and other homebound legislation.
• The health insurance discrimination issue. No disabled person will be underwritten and w/o dependable insurance, many disabled people can't work
• The severe watering down of the ADA by the Supremes and why Clint Eastwood is a Dick.
• "Quality of Life" and myths about disabled people's lack of it. AKA, If you can't piss and shit in the toilet like a dignified human being then your life isn't worth living.
• Ramps and accessibility beyond ramps, information access. And, "quit putting your damned grocery carts in the disabled parking spaces so Lisa has to get out and move them all before we can park," and other rants.
• Unemployment and the tricks employers use to get out of the ADA.
• SSA and the disincentives to working.
• Special Education. Lots of money, lots of labels, lots of segregation, lots of paperwork, and little expectations. (Or, How I taught a blind 19 year-old to tie his shoes and spell C-A-T while he taught me about Glasnost and Perestroika.)
• Disabled in the prison system.
• Housing. There is none.
• Christopher Reeve and the "cure" crowd.
• Marriage, family, sexuality. (They do exist.)
• Self Determination and people with cognitive disabilities.
• How the homeless problem would be reduced dramatically if there was anything out there for people with mental illness.
• Animus and hate crimes and "nobody is against the disabled"
• Caregiver abuse, i.e. the Kansas sex slave group home that no one investigated for 17 years. (Not to mention my little run in with the law regarding the mentally retarded child charged with second degree murder. I'll share that story sometime.)
• Jerry's orphans and the problems with disability charities. Support vs. charity. Natural supports.
• Human rights violations around the world, murder on a daily basis.
• Disability and poverty and the difference between the two.
• History of hate and fear, i.e. disabled people as possessed or demonic. Eugenics and the Holocaust
• Disability culture and celebrations.

Well, there's a start. That class will take 300 semester hours. Should get a lot of people to come to that! Sigh.

Funny Twin Comments

I'm popping in for just a minute to share the following list below that I completely ripped off from this blog. (I would have linked to it but I couldn't figure out how to permalink that specific post.)

Twin moms/dads are funny at first because they are  completely taken aback by the whole amount of unsolicited attention and stupid comments that twins bring out in public. They do cause a bit of a fuss sometimes, and I've heard most of the below comments, but allow me this: The attention you get from twins is NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING compared to the attention and dumb comments you get when you are a deaf/blind guide dog user with a quadriplegic companion. Having twins sans guide dog right now (and sans quadriplegic) is practically like being invisible. You ladies are just amateurs!

(And the attention you get being a deaf/blind mom of twins with a quadriplegic dad? Well, let me just say that total strangers have asked us on more than one occasion "Can you guys even do it or did those kids come from a test tube?" Oh, yeah. I am the champ of unsolicited, weird comments from the public. Go ahead, I challenge you! Try and one-up me! Heh, heh.)

Gotta laugh at these

Even though I didn't come up with these, I have heard all the following questions myself, except for #1. If you were thinking about saying one yourself, please refrain!

15 Dumbest Twin Comments (posted by Parents of Twins Journal)--
15. "I could never do it." (Oh, really. What would you do? Would you put them on the curb with signs around their necks that say, "Free to a good home. My mom can't do it."?)
14. "Do they have different personalities?" (No. They are the same human being divided into several parts.)
13. Said by a stranger, "They're identical, right?" Mom answers, "No. They're fraternal." Stranger response, "They are NOT!" (OK. You're right. I have no idea what I'm talking about. These are not my children. I thought it would be fun to borrow them from a mom down at Baby Gap. It's been more than an hour. I guess I should return them.)
12. "Are they 'paternal' twins?" (Yes. They have a father. There was only one virgin birth.)
11. "Just wait till they're older. It only gets harder." (Thank you. I woke up this morning hoping I'd receive a word of discouragement while pushing a cart of preschoolers down the cereal aisle.
10. "When one cries, does she wake the others?" (No. Multiples cannot hear each other's cries because they all communicate with their special telepathic language only.)
9. From a perfect stranger: "Were they in the same sac?" (Hello. Nice to meet you, too. Will you be sharing your gynecological history with me as well?)
8. "Are they developmentally behind?" (Well, let's see. They're 3 years old and thus far, all their graduate school applications have been denied. We'll get back with you on that.)
7. "How do you do it?" (Haven't you seen the Nike commercials?)
6. "Are they natural?" (Nope, their arms and legs are made of silicone.)
5. "You must be SO busy." (Are you volunteering to clean my house?)
4. "Did you take drugs?" (Well, there was this one time in college...)
3. "What do you do when they all cry at the same time?" (Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I go to Starbucks.)
2. Said to a mom of boy/girl twins: "Are they identical?" (Uh. Not exactly.)
1. Only one comment could be voted No. 1. Drum roll, please. After a stranger had been informed that the toddler boys were twins, she asked a simple question: "Are they brothers?" (Enough said.)

The Mucus Factory

At first Aaron, then me, and finally Naim all have been sick. The gargantuan amount of snot that can be produced and then wiped upon every surface of the house by such tiny people cannot be over-exaggerated.

I have about 15 bloggy ideas swimming in my head to type away at, but after dealing with the kids all day, I just get too tired to post. So, we'll be back in a few days, with more words, and hopefully less snot.