If You Don’t Have Kids, You Probably Don’t Laugh Enough

Posted on October 10, 2008 by The Daring One

You probably don’t want to tear your hair out as often either but I think it’s worth it for the laughter.

Earlier this week as we were walking to the bus stop to pick up Laylee, Magoo got an eyeful of a group of burly construction workers who had paused for their lunch break.

Magoo: Hey MOM! They’re having a snack time.
Me: Yep. Snacky time for those guys.
Magoo [leaning his whole body forward to scrutinize them]: Nope. I think they’re just having a tea party. I want to have a tea party with them!

Laylee and I recently got into a long and involved discussion about the election. Every answer I gave was subjected to a followup question. She wanted to know who I was voting for, why I was undecided, what I liked best about each of the guys. We even got into details about whether or not I thought Bush had done a good job and why. And what were some more reasons? When I tried to cut off the conversation after about a half an hour, she said, “Mom please! Tell me more. I really like this story.”

Hmm. Strangely I don’t. Anyhoo. As we were finishing up she got very serious.

Laylee: Mom, which one has the name that’s easiest to remember?
Me: Well, probably John McCain.
Laylee: Then you should probably vote for that guy.

Sweet. All my problems solved. And I should have thought of that myself because that’s exactly what I did when I chose to marry Dan Thompson. See that? Easy as pie. That’s part of his charm.

To hear about some not-quite-so-funny-but-more-violent times with my kids, check out today’s Parenting Post.

Posted in fun, fun, fun, kid stuff, parenting | 12 Comments

School Rulz

Posted on October 6, 2008 by The Daring One

“That guy’s DEAD!” Laylee blurted as Beethoven’s 5th symphony came on our car stereo.

“Who?” I asked.

“The guy who made that song. My music teacher said he’s dead and this song has themes.”

She proceeded to tell me that she “loves that guy.” She loves him because his music is beautiful. She loves him because he wrote a song for a woman he loved but never married. She loves him because he must’ve started composing music when he was really young to get all those songs written before he was dead. She loves him because he has hearing loss just like her.

There’s something amazing about sending her off each day and then having her come home with her little brain overflowing with knowledge. I have never seen a kid who loves school the way Laylee loves it. She loves everything about it. She can’t get enough.

It’s a little disconcerting at times to know she’s being taught things by people who aren’t me but it’s also exciting because she comes home and shares what she learns.
school-days
I decided today that helping out in the classroom is one of the top 8 best things of ever. I got to see what they do all day, things that Laylee explaaaained… sort of… in a language resembling English. Now it all makes sense. And I got to spy on Laylee. I’ll tell you what she does all day. She stares at Ms. Sweetsie with a look of absolute adoration and intense concentration and tries to follow her instructions with exactness. She bubbles over with joy. She is loved.

And she’s not the only one who does those things. Ms. Sweetsie has the entire class eating out of her hands. I have never seen such a well-behaved group of 5-year-olds in my life. And they’re not scared of her. They just want to please her SO MUCH. I’m sort of hoping that when she retires she’ll set up a Super-Nanny-style empire of parenting improvement courses. She could come live in our computer room and I would be her padowan.

I’m pleased to say though that as much as Laylee lerves Mrs. S, she’s even crazier about me. She bounced out of the classroom today holding my hand and squeezing it. “I’m so lucky to have you for my mom. You’re the best mom in the world. I’m so lucky that my mom comes to school and I get to have you all day at home and all day at school. This is the BEST!” When Dan asked who her special visitor was in class today, referring to the firemen who came to teach a safety lesson, she said, “MOM! She’s a room mom and it’s awesome and she got to spend the WHOLE DAY WITH ME!”

My heart could detonate.

In the classroom I observed that the other kids are not a group of miscreant crack heads, which is a great comfort unto me. For the first time in Laylee’s life she’s making friends independently of me. No longer do I drive her somewhere, plop her diaper bum down in front of another drooling toddler and say, “Behold. Your new friend.”

When she came home a couple of weeks into the school year twittering on about her new friends, I was skeptically pleased for her. “Hmmm…. Who is this Janie character? Really? Does she have any egregious offenses on her rap sheet?

Posted in education | 32 Comments

Dare to Simplify

Posted on October 5, 2008 by The Daring One

I’ve been working hard to simplify my life lately, but not too hard because that could complicate things, but just hard enough. I’ve taken some smart steps like saying no to things I didn’t want to do and getting rid of clutter and then some not-so-smart steps like ignoring my email box, ceasing any kind of quality blogging for days at a time and letting the house get super messy while I take the time to “enjoy life” by spending all day reading.

There’s just too much going on. I have my hand in too many pies. But they all taste SO GOOD! I am over-stimulated most of the time. I don’t like at least 1/3 of the things I’m doing and there are several things I want to do but don’t have time for. For a long time I tried so hard to go overboard with the little details of holidays, birthdays, and celebrations that I got burnt out and now I sometimes forget to do anything at all to mark special days. My to-do list has gotten so long that I’m afraid to look at it. I get a sickish feeling in the pit of my stomach when I see my planner laying on the counter so I just ignore it. At least 4 million trees gave their lives to create the massive piles of paperwork that are stacked all over my house waiting to be attended to.

ENOUGH!

I’ve been thinking “ENOUGH” for a while now but didn’t get up the gumption to actually do anything about it until I was talking to my brain doctor this summer and he suggested that I really focus on trying to say no unless I have a compelling reason to say yes to the various things that are asked of me. He’s a pretty smart guy and has gotten to know me fairly well in the past 3 and a half years since Magoo was born. (If you read the cover story in the NW Living section of the Seattle Times this weekend, you well know that I went a little loopy a few years ago and blog on the advice of my special doctor friend. No matter how open I am about my postpartum experiences, it will always be a bit jarring to see my mental health history in print like that.)

So for the next little while, until I’m as simple as Lenny from Of Mice and Men but far less violent, I am going to set a goal for simplification each week and I’d love some friends to join me. In the spirit of simplification, I don’t have a graphic or a Mr. Linky for this endeavor and the goals will be really small tiny embryonic steps to Lenny-ness.

I’ll post them on Sunday nights and we can all report back the following Sunday. You can leave your thoughts in my comments section or if you post on your blog, let me know.

Dare to Simplify Week 1 — Audio Input
For the week of October 5th I will play only classical music or none at all(besides when I’m working out — I’m just not sure Vivaldi will get my heart rate up enough.). The music will be calming and have no vocals. This includes all music played in my car, house or on my MP3 player.

This may seem like a strange way to start the experiment but I am over-stimulated and overwhelmed by the noise all around me, song lyrics, crazy beats, loud radio DJs and obnoxious political ads. It shouldn’t be that hard to calm down my audio input or even turn it off. I’m curious to see if this helps me feel more peaceful overall.

Care to join me?

Posted in aspirations, Dare to Simplify | 32 Comments

Buddy Walk – Help for Downs

Posted on October 3, 2008 by The Daring One

I’ve taken the week off from exercising. I’m nursing a chest cold and have had two extra little friends in the house for the past 2 days. However, if you’re still in peak physical condition or even a bit of peak, you should find out when your local Buddy Walk is taking place and get out and get moving.

Kath is a big supporter of Buddy Walk, an event that promotes the inclusion of people with Down syndrome and raises money for the National Down Syndrome Society. Seattle’s walk is this Sunday. If you can’t walk yourself, take a minute and a few dollars to support another walker.

Posted in get serious | 1 Comment

People-Gawking

Posted on October 3, 2008 by The Daring One

Laylee had plenty of people to watch at the hospital on Tuesday. And she had commentary. What’s the most embarassing thing your child has ever said about another person within earshot?

Read more of our experience at Parenting.com.

Posted in kid stuff, parenting | 8 Comments

Go for Launch

Posted on October 1, 2008 by The Daring One

It was a good day. A little sick. A little crazy. A little tiring. But good. We left the house at 7am and headed into Seattle for an early morning CT scan. I had so built Laylee up about how cool it was to go into a giant tunnel that was like a big camera that she practically jumped up on the table and grinned at the tech as she strapped her head down. When it was all done, she thanked the woman and gushed about how awesome it was and how jealous Magoo would be.

The pictures show everything to have developed normally. Everything’s where it should be and it’s all the right size and apparently the right colors, gray, white or black in the pictures. The good thing is that although her hearing loss is permanent, it doesn’t appear to be degenerative.

Then we met with an audiologist again for another rousing game of put-the-block-in-the-bucket-when-you-hear-a-beep. Super fun! Laylee loves that game even more now that we’ve read the book Oliver Gets Hearing Aids a couple hundred times. Her results were the same. It’s frustrating to sit in the booth and hear the beeps and see her staring straight ahead concentrating, straining to hear but not getting it until the volume has been turned up several times. I just want to wave or give her a sign, text message her, anything to help her win this particular game.

The truth is that it could be a lot worse. She is fully functional with a little trouble hearing some sounds and some volumes. She would get along fine without any help but will do even better with some understanding and in a few weeks some hearing aids. We took the molds today for a pink sparkly pair which should be ready in a few weeks. Very fashion fabulous.

In the 5 hours we were there, we also met with a geneticist, a therapist who hooked us up with a state specialist to help with school stuff, a couple of other doctors, and a cafeteria lady who sold us some un-naturally brightly-colored ice cream. The consensus is that Laylee’s a precious peach who probably inherited her hearing loss from Dan, also precious but somewhat of a culprit in this instance, and that it’s bound to remain stable if we don’t drop her on her head or start taking her to Rage Against the Machine concerts fortnightly.

It’s good. We’re blessed. Our insurance is with one of the few companies that will cover the entire expense of the hearing aids and tests, so far amounting to several thousand dollars. She’s happy, we’re calmer and everything’s gonna be alright.

Posted in ears, health | 33 Comments