The Po Show

The Mommy Monsters

I don't remember who on the list came up with the term "Mommy Monster" for a clingy, always-needing-Mommy-and-only-Mommy child. And I frankly don't find it monstrous, so I use it very tongue in cheek. But boy, did I ever end up with two Mommy Monsters.

Matthew of course is much better at six than he was at three, when everything was "NO! MOMMY DO IT!!" After Tessa was born, it was like he naturally gravitated more towards Ross, who was there for him as I was preoccupied with the baby. Even now though, there are many times when he really wants me, and gets disappointed when I say I can't help him with something that minute because I'm in the middle of doing something with Tessa. "Ohhhh, you mostly play with Tessa," he told me a couple of months ago, the one and only time he has ever verbalized any type of jealousy or displeasure at the amount of time I give to his sister. I really do try and play with him as much as I can, watching him play Gamecube and feigning great enthusiasm in the activity (he really is very good at these games), listening to him make up complex strategy games, talking with him about nature and science topics, and just cuddling. He's enormous, less than a foot shorter than me now, but he still wants to sit on my lap and have me kiss his cheek over and over.

Tessa thinks I am hers though. More precisely, Tessa thinks we're the same person. She is so mature in so many ways, it's easy to forget that she's still a baby, in that she sees no real separation between us. So when she wants me to do something with her, she rarely takes no for an answer. She is good about sharing, but not when it comes to Mom. She still wants me to carry her around ALL the time (all 33 pounds of her, with her feet dangling around my knees). She's started wanting to take showers with me instead of taking baths by herself, and she wraps her arm around my leg the whole time (not because she's scared; she loves the water splashing down). She goes to sleep, after nursing, snuggled into me; she takes my arms and wraps them around herself.

When she's tired or in even a slightly bad mood, all she wants is me. If Ross even looks at her, she buries her face into my shoulder. If he comes up to her to try and kiss her, she'll push him away. If he tries to take her from me (so I can, GASP, get dressed or go to the bathroom or something), she screams and cries and carries on. And she LOVES her Daddy. But there are many times during every single day when she has to have only Mommy.

"I have to go with YOU, Mom," she tells me as we prepare to go out. "Where are we going?," she'll ask. If I tell her she's going to school, she protests, "No! No school for me! I have to stay with you!" And mind you, she loves her school and has wonderful days there (once we actually get there).

As annoying as this gets, I remind myself that this is the last time I'm going to experience this kind of intense love. My kids are going to grow up and need/want me less. And it is a breath-taking thing, the intensity with which my children love me. I always say, no MAN could ever love you the way your baby loves you. And I have a man who loves me with all his heart. It just never could compare with the all-consuming, all-encompassing love my babies feel for me.

My Mommy Monsters. I love them back, with an intensity that physically hurts sometimes. It brings tears to my eyes and my heart literally feels like it is so full it could burst.

Spring Flinging

Yes, it's spring!! Really and truly!! Last week there was a day during which it LITERALLY became spring right before my eyes over the course of the day. I drove into work, the trees were bare. I drove off the campus toward home, the trees were blossoming and budding! There is GREEN! And that gorgeous pale green that only new baby leaves can be. Everywhere there are flowers coming up, trees bursting with petals.

See, the thing about living in CA is that you take color for granted. I used to scoff at people who said that they missed seasons when they moved to CA. Hah, what a thing to miss: freezing cold winters and humid summers. How could anything compare to year-round sunshine?

But oh my goodness, seeing this transformation is just marvelous. It's funny how you get used to the bare branches. It's dreary and sort of depressing at first, but then you just don't notice anymore. One time we really cracked up because I commented on how I thought it was supposed to be windy, but it didn't seem all that windy. Ross replied that with no leaves on the trees, it's hard to tell how windy it is.

So now, seeing all the new growth, new color, it's like an incredible treat. It's weird too, in that we lived in D.C. for a year and saw the seasons change. Maybe it wasn't so abrupt there? Maybe I was so much younger that I just didn't appreciate transition so much? Perhaps it was because we didn't have children then, and I didn't get the added thrill of little people being so happy to play outside again, to search for shoots pushing out through the soil, to wave their arms through the petals falling from the cherry trees.

Happy Spring!

Dear Faustine

Since I have time today :), I'm blogging twice. Yesterday as I emptied Matthew's backpack after school, I saw he had a piece of paper that said "Dear Faustine" on it. I was impressed. Matthew does NOT like to write, and here it seemed he was attempting to write a letter to a girl named Faustine, who is in his class. That was as far as he'd gotten, apparently. I asked him about it, and asked what else he would like to say to her, and he said he didn't know. He would think about it. I suggested that perhaps we could invite Faustine over to play, and he thought that was a great idea.

It's interesting to me. Matthew used to play with both boys and girls in daycare when he was very young, though his best friends were always girls. Then, when he reached about four, he started playing exclusively with boys. Then he stopped playing with other kids all together, as I've talked about endlessly.

This year, it seems, he's been playing exclusively with boys again. There is a big gender split with regard to activities in his class. Yet here he is, writing to Faustine, talking about how it would be great to invite her over to play.

It makes me think about the future. When he was very little, I used to joke about being worried about him and girls, since he was so obviously going to be gorgeous and he was so charmingly manipulative. Then, as the Asperger's became more and more apparent and he had a harder and harder time with social interaction, I began to wonder. Was he going to be interested in girls? Was he going to know that he was supposed to like them, want to talk to them, get them to like him? Or was he going to be as clueless as he is now? Is he going to ever get married, have children? Yeah, I know, even Bill Gates got married (to a gorgeous model no less), but I'm sure it didn't hurt that he's one of the richest men in the world. Billions can make up for a lot of awkward behavior.

All part of my worry about the difficulty I know Matthew will always have, navigating the world. Things that come more or less naturally to other people are so opaque to Matthew. I mean, he's just now learning how to talk to himself without saying the words out loud. It was the weirdest thing when I realized that he honestly didn't know how to think words in his head without verbalizing them (which accounts for his ongoing monologue). How is he going to figure out how to ask a girl out on a date?

Let the Good Times Roll

This is yet another "see how times have changed since we had kids" post. This is a topic that I guess I never tire of :). Just last night I was saying to Ross "It's very strange to think that my mother sees more movies than we do." Considering we see about one movie a year, that's not hard, and we used to see EVERYTHING that came out, even crap.

Anyway, this is about the Harvard Spring Fest, which was last Sunday. Ross just got an email advertising it a few weeks ago, one of the zillion university emails he gets and usually ignores. For some reason, he paid attention to this one, and we were so glad he did. Apparently the Spring Fest is a big event every year, an outdoor fair-type thing with live entertainment and an Earth Day component and activities for kids. Ross was attracted by the promise of free bounce houses.

Well, it was QUITE a production. Huge barbeque with burgers and sausages, drinks and cookies, cotton candy and popcorn. Everything was free. A big stage with continuous music playing. A big Earth Day event with recycling info and free spring flower plants. Rides for the "big kids" over 16. Free face painting and temporary tattoos and spin art. And a huge section for little kids away from the loud music, with tons of bounce house-type things. Traditional bounce houses, one with an obstacle course inside, one with kid sized climbing walls inside, one with balloons blowing around inside. A big inflated slide thing that both kids loved (it was really BIG! I was surprised that Matthew wanted to go down it, let alone Tessa!). Did I mention everything was FREE?

As we walked away from the event, both kids sticky and exhausted after all the playing and all the snacks, Ross and I just gushed about how wonderful it had been. If some subjective (probably kidless) person examined a tape of the day, he/she would have probably scratched his/her head in bemusement at our enthusiasm. Hadn't Ross and I spent the whole time in a state of semi- (and not so semi-) aggravation, dealing with the crowds and lines, and keeping both kids in sight and taking shoes off and putting shoes on, and standing in lines, and herding kids this way and keeping track of jackets and spin art samples and wiping cotton candy off faces and refusing demands for yet more cotton candy, and looking for a table that still had bottled water, and administering to scraped knees, and keeping Tessa from wandering off, and explaining to Matthew that he had to eat his burger even if the cheese wasn't fully melted, and standing in lines again, and dealing with kids whose parents weren't paying attention and were letting them cut in lines, and whew, you get the picture.

But this was a perfect, wonderful day, because the kids had a great time. And for us, in this time and place, that's all that matters.

(And yes, Harvard apparently has more money than god, to put on something like this for free. Coming from state schools, Ross is constantly amazed at the extravagance of this place. He went to a dinner last night with an open bar serving Bombay Sapphire and DeWars. Caviar everywhere, the works. Man, he could never go back to a UC now, let alone a Cal State ;-).)

Grown Ups' Night Out

Look, here I am, two days in a row! My subject today tested positive for a certain substance that is not okay to test positive for, so the study was scrapped. Bah. I spend literally HOURS setting things up for an experimental day, so it truly sucks when they end up getting cancelled.

Anyhoo, this gives me the opportunity to tell you about the dinner Ross and I went to last night. It's significant in that there were only adults there, and Ross and I have not been out without the kids since we moved here, back in August (we did go out with my sister and BIL in CA over the holidays, but have never left der kinder with anyone here in MA). Since Ross' dad is here, we took the opportunity to accept an invitation. He's never watched both kids before; in fact, he's never been alone with Tessa before, so it was a bit of an experiment. Luckily she pooped before we left.

Ross (and spouse, which in this case was me) was invited to a dinner at the Japanese Consul General's house, along with all the people in his program at Harvard and a few other Japanese politics professors from around the area. So this was a ritzy deal. He lives in an estate in Chestnut Hill, which is a ritzy area, on the Brookline side, which is the ritziest part of the area. (Why am I suddenly hungry for crackers??)

So yesterday evening we rushed home, ordered a pizza for the kids and Grandpa, and I looked through my clothes trying to decide what to wear. Ross had it so good: he knew he had to wear a suit so his only decision was what tie to choose. Guys have it so fricking easy. My problem is that I don't FIT in most of my fancy dress clothes, having gained 30 pounds and all. Also, I didn't want to wear anything sleeveless because of my tattoo. I finally chose a dress that was a bit bright (red flary silk with small polka dots) but still fit because it's high waisted (thus avoiding the bulge I refer to as my stomach).

Tessa was quite entranced when she saw me. "Mommy, you look BEAUTIFUL!," she said. "What are you wearing?" I told her I was wearing a party dress, for a grown up party Daddy and I were going to. I reminded her that she was going to stay home and have fun with Grandpa and Matthew.

"I want to wear a party dress too!" So we put a pretty dress on her and she proceeded to lift the skirts and twirl in front of the hall mirror. Jeez, is this stuff genetic?

She was a bit upset when we left ("I want to go to the party with YOU, Mom!," she cried), but we escaped fairly easily. Driving in the Boston area is always an adventure, but we made it there in a relatively short time (though Ross swore "I'm generally against the death penalty, but the designers of the roads around here really need to be taken out and shot as an example.").

Fancy schmancy town. Big estates, big houses, big trees. The Consul General's house was a French provincial, huge stone with turrets and everything. Inside was all gilted and antiqued (actually a sort of disconcerting blend of French antiques, Dutch paintings on the walls, and Japanese accents thrown in willy nilly).

So, on to the slightly uncomfortable small talk over cocktails. Then on to opening remarks (polite clapping for each person introduced). Then the dinner (which was good, as the Consul brought a chef from Japan with him). More small talk. Dessert. More small talk.

Man it was boring. And uncomfortable. And I wondered why Ross and I were using this rare opportunity to get out alone to sit around with a bunch of academics and talk in stilted English. I know why: he was sort of obligated to go to these events and he wanted me to come with him this once, since I was able to.

But I really would have preferred to go out to dinner and drinks, or to see a band play, or even just walk around and talk. A couple's night out, rather than a grown ups' night out.

Hello Again!!!

Did you miss me ;-)? I missed YOU! Of course, I doubt anyone except Auggie moms are reading this and you've seen me on the list anyway ;-).

Well, I had a reprieve from hectic hell (otherwise known as my job) today, because my subject was apparently arrested last night, so he wasn't available for his appointment this morning. I say apparently because his girlfriend doesn't know for sure. He didn't come home last night, and since there is a warrant out for his arrest, she just sort of assumed. He couldn't call her, because their phone has been disconnected. I got all this from the cab driver that went out to pick him up this morning (his girlfriend had called for a pickup from work last night).

Ah, the subject population I work with. Ya gotta love it.

Anyway, it's given me the MUCH needed opportunity to catch up on email and check my ebay auctions and come back to my blog :). Oh, and I will get to clean up my office, which looks like a tornado hit it. I've been so busy, I have just been tossing data and other pieces of paper on any given surface, and I really need to file it all (you know, just in case I need to find it again someday).

Time is such a luxury these days (even more so than usual). Ross was in Chicago for a conference from Friday morning to Sunday night, and I really tried to keep me and the kids super busy during the days to tire them out so I could get them both to bed by myself (Matthew stayed up till 11:00 on Friday night and then was up at 6:50!). I spent a ton of time taking pictures of my ebay items and listing a bunch of them. All of Monday was spent cleaning the house, as Ross' dad flew in for a week on Monday afternoon. Work yesterday was just one frantic thing after another, literally from the moment I came in to the moment I left.

But the weather is BEAUTIFUL and it really is spring, finally! It was astounding yesterday: the trees lining the driveway of the hospital where I work literally transformed during the course of the day. Driving into work: barren branches. Driving out of work: gorgeous light green buds swelling from the branches. Flowers are starting to bloom everywhere! Grass is growing! I truly never appreciated nature's colors so much. It's marvelous.

And allergenic (sniff, sniff). I use Rhinocort everyday, and I'm still a big old ball of phlegm. The last two nights I've lain awake trying not to cough (if I could pay someone to extract the mucus plug at the back of my throat, I would!!) and wake up Tessa. Speaking of Tessa, we had to put her on daily Claritin syrup because she was a huge snotty faucet. That stuff is nasty (the Claritin, not the snot. Which of course is nasty too)! The poor thing drinks the syrup, holds it in her mouth as I urge her to swallow (holding a jelly bean in my fingers as incentive), then she actually shudders and coughs after she gulps it down. She's a trooper though, and takes it. Matthew would have spit it into my face or let it dribble out of his mouth.

Well, better get to that filing... Or maybe I'll take a look at the Gymboree website first :). Additional 20% off all sale items!!!

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Whoop! Attention!! Freudian slip alert!!!! As I was just typing that title, I typed in Busy, Busy, Bush (????). Well, I guess he is busy these days, trying to save his ass. And here I always thought he couldn't find it with both hands...

But I digress. Yes, I've been busy, which is why I haven't posted anything in days. Friday and Monday are days off for me, spent running around with kinder, hectic yet happy (played to the tune of Tessa sing-songing "No school for meeee to-day!").

Then yesterday, back to the salt mines, busy every second of the day. This morning, busy every second. I'm currently typing as I eat my lunch at my desk (another luscious crab cake!!!). My research subject shows up in less than an hour, and I'll be frantic till quittin' time. Tomorrow, more of the same.

Umm, what's wrong with this picture? What happened to my slacker opportunities? Don't these people realize that it's my right as an American to get paid to read my email and check out my ebay auctions???

I think what I really realized is that I was previously doing three days' worth of work in five days. And now those two extra days are unpaid.

Oh well, back to it... hi ho...

Doin' It ebay...

I put up about 60 ebay auctions last week. Definitely not my record (I think my all time record for auctions at one time was 74, which I recognize was insane). Only 34 are still going, as many things ended on Sunday and Monday and many things went Buy It Now. But it was a lot.

I've wanted to talk about my ebay addiction for a long time now. Because that really is what it is. ("Hi, I'm Paula, and I'm an ebay addict." All together now: "Hi, Paula...")

It started out just realizing that I was getting squat at the resale store for Tessa's old clothes, nice things that I figured I could sell on ebay. So I did, and I did fairly well. I was surprised, actually, at how much I got for used clothes (most of them barely used, really). So I started putting up more, and started researching other types of auctions (being the researcher at heart that I am), and I discovered what really seemed to be selling was the NWT, new with tags, items, particularly Gymboree. Then Gymboree started having their Circle of Friends promotions, where everything was 30% off, and I bought things specifically to sell. Then I realized that I could parlay Gymbucks into more sales (in which I bought a TON of stuff to get lots of Gymbucks, which give you $25 off $50 worth of purchases at a later date. I would sell the stuff I bought to get the Gymbucks, and still have the Gymbucks to buy more stuff later at a greatly reduced cost, which I would then sell at higher profit. I then started selling the Gymbucks themselves, for pure profit). I was buying all the stuff with a 0% interest credit card, too, so I wasn't having to pay back the money for the purchases.

It became a sort of sick cycle. I would walk into Gymboree, spend $1,000 or more, and put it all up on ebay. I have absolutely no idea how much profit I made, since I didn't keep track from the beginning; then I figured, since I hadn't been keeping track from the beginning, there was no use starting to keep track later. I just relished the individual sales, the high of making $12 profit on one item. I loved checking my My ebay page to see how all my auctions were doing. I loved checking the individual auctions to see how many hits they were getting.

It's a lot like gambling, really. Which I love and would be completely addicted to, given the opportunity. What it all boils down to is that I have an addictive personality, and I was feeling very low at the time that I started doing ebay, and my brain has latched onto the thrill. My poor brain had been more or less dormant as I tried to adjust to stay at home momhood, and I loved the new stimulation.

Now, I still love going into the stores and looking for things I know will sell well. I love putting things up, unsure if they'll do well, and having them snatched up for a clear profit. I think about it all the time, what I have up, what I'm going to buy next, when the next promotion at Gymboree will be and what I'll buy then.

Ross hates it. He tries not to complain, but he hates it. He hates all the time it takes me to put up auctions and maintain them, he hates the time it takes me to pack sales up and take them to the post office. He gets a strained look on his face when I say I'm going to Gymboree. He looks pissed when I come home with bulging bags. "How much did you SPEND?," he asks. I smile sheepishly, and tell him, and he is not pleased. He HATES stepping over all my bags of stuff in the closet everyday. And I think he really hates that it occupies so much of my mind and energy. That it is an addiction.

But hey, I say it's still better than crack. And I DID make money, and that is all that saved us last year in Davis.

Looking forward to the Rise and Shine sale tomorrow at Gymboree (25% off all regular and promotionally priced merchandise!!)...

In All Fairness

I got an interesting lesson in fairness the other day. It's hard, when you have two kids who are almost four years apart in age, to be fair about "stuff." I mean, about getting them stuff. It was so much easier when it was just Matthew, and I would willingly buy him some little toy or book he saw while we were out shopping. Now if one kid gets something, of course the other kid wants something too, and of course he/she doesn't want the same thing, so we have to look for something equitable.

What has happened, really, is that I don't buy them stuff much anymore. We were really poor last year, and we're digging out of debt this year, so I am much less inclilned to shell out $5 here and there so readily. Whenever I can, I go shopping by myself, so I don't have to hear the clamor of "Can I have this???" And while I used to go hang out at the mall with Matthew on my days off just for something to do, I don't do it so much with both of them. I take Tessa alone, but it's usually just to go to Gymboree to buy stuff to sell on ebay.

For a long time it's sort of bothered me, that I used to buy stuff for Matthew all the time and I hardly ever have for Tessa. He earns money each week doing his "jobs," which are putting his socks in the laundry and getting himself dressed every morning. He gets $2 a week for these tasks, which always go toward video games. Tessa doesn't get a weekly stipend. She is just now seeing things on TV and asking for them, and just last Sunday she looked through the Target ad from the paper and fixated on a Playdoh set. But overall, she doesn't get a lot of stuff for no reason. I tell myself that she inherited SO many toys and books from Matthew that it makes up for it.

But this lesson was from Matthew. We were playing in his room the other day (an excruiatingly complex game with cars that he made up) and he decided he wanted to read instead. While reaching for a book off his shelf, he knocked open the bag in which he keeps his Gameboy games and I saw that there was a sheet of Strawberry Shortcake stickers inside. I was shocked, as these were Tessa's potty stickers, kept up in the bathroom cabinet. There was no way they could get there by accident, and no way Tessa could have put them there.

"Did you take Tessa's stickers?," I asked, appalled. He admitted that he had.

"You have to give those back! Those are her potty stickers! It is NOT okay to take other people's things without asking them!," I told him.

It turned into an all day event. He spent most of that time in his room, crying and angry. We talked at length, and I realized that he had been upset that Tessa had gotten stickers (purchased during a shopping trip with just the two of us) and he hadn't. I tried to point out that he had other stickers, including a big sheet on his dresser that he had had for over a year and half, and he usually never used them for anything. It didn't matter, though. It still wasn't fair.

I finally got him to put the stickers back in the cabinet, and he cried some more. I promised him that we would go to the store and get him some stickers the next day, which we did.

On the way there, in the car, he asked, "Do you know what kind of stickers I want to get?"

"Um, Scooby Doo?," I guessed.

"No."

"Rescue Heroes?"

"No."

"Justice League?"

"No."

"Okay, I don't know. What kind do you want?"

"It's a secret! You'll have to guess!," he replied. I told him that I would wait and see what he chose.

At Target, I pointed out all the different kinds of stickers, skipping the "girl" ones like Barbie that I knew he wouldn't be interested in. He rejected all my suggestions, and then pointed to the ones he wanted.

Strawberry Shortcake.

So it was completely fair after all.

Four Day Weekends

So I'm officially part-time now, which is why there was no post from me this morning. I am now working Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so every week features a four day weekend for me and Tessa. Matthew of course will go to school on Mondays and Fridays, but not to afterschool care.

Tessa was quite thrilled this morning, repeating "NO SCHOOL FOR ME!!!" several times. I told her we were going shopping and she was quite pleased with the prospect, telling me, also repeatedly, "I have to go shopping with you, Mom!"

So we dropped Ross off at school (he had taken Matthew to school before Tessa and I were ready, since we had that luxury), headed off to the mall (during which I promptly got lost, as I still do around this preposterously laid out landscape), and stormed Gymboree.

During the car ride there I was trying to look at the map, which helped not at all, and Tessa wanted a map too. I handed her a map of Connecticut and she had a tizzy over not being able to unfold it, then not being able to refold it. I tried to help her, as I tried to drive and simultaneously look at my map, but she kept whining and whining and finally I snatched the map out of her hand and flung it into the front seat. Devastated, she cried and cried. I apologized, and rubbed her little leg as I drove.

After picking up Matthew, getting lunch, and going to Trader Joe's, we headed home. Tessa fell asleep, but naturally did not transfer to her bed, so she ended up with a 20 minute nap. Later in the afternoon she wanted to go outside, despite the fact that it was cold and drizzly. I finally agreed, and we all went outside. Tessa wanted to take out the ceramic pot that Matthew had glazed in afterschool, but I was afraid it would get broken (and therefore spawn a fit on Matthew's part). We walked out to the backyard and Tessa cried and cried over the pot. We spent the next half hour or so walking back and forth from the backyard into the house, then out of the house again.

This evening, since she was so tired, she was cranky. When bedtime was announced, she was adamant about not wanting to go to bed. Instead she wanted a snack, though she'd been notified that the cheese crackers she'd already had were her last snack of the night. She cried and cried, and finally let me carry her to bed, where about five minutes of nursing knocked her out.

I'm thinking to myself, Tessa almost never cries, and here, on our first day of Mommy-working-part-time-in-order-to-spend-more-time-with-the-kids, she cries real tears three times.

Well, it's still going to be nice having our four day weekends, even if they don't go as idyllically as I had hoped. I realize it was silly to expect them to be anyway.

April Fool's!!

One hallmark of autism spectrum kids is that they have a hard time getting jokes, because they take things so literally. This has often been true of Matthew, though he does find some jokes very funny (when he gets them ;-). Then of course he has to tell them over and over, snorting with laughter, and expects us to laugh every time. But that's not exclusive to Aspies :).)

Today, though, he did find it funny when Ross came into his room and told him that there was a ton of snow outside. He ran out and looked out the window, and then laughed when Ross said "April Fool's!" He got it right away, even though he was still half asleep. He got it so well that he actually modified it later to "get" me :).

"Mommy, Mommy! There are flowers all over the backyard!," he cried. "Come to the window and look!" Then he ran to the back of the house, giggling uproariously, and pulled open the blinds on the back window.

I feigned confusion. "Where are the flowers? I don't see any flowers!"

"APRIL FOOL'S," he shouted, terribly pleased with himself.

"OH, you GOT me!," I said, pretending to be chagrined. He laughed some more and ran back to the kitchen.

"Did you get Mom? Good job!," Ross told him. Then we had a private chuckle about how pranks are somewhat less effective when you giggle as you carry them out.

But I still thought it was adorable, and noteworthy, that Matthew pulled an April Fool's joke on me.