The Po Show

Boo

I hate Halloween.

Well, I guess I don't hate it, but I don't really like it. I hate all the gory displays and frankly I have never, ever understood why people like to be scared. I get scared easily, and find it anything but enjoyable. I hate scary movies; they make me want to jump out of my skin and leave the room (hard to leave the room with no skin, though, I guess...).

Both of my kids seem to have inherited my aversion to scary stuff. But it really manifested itself strongly for Matthew this year. He got very freaked out yesterday at school when they read a scary story in class and listened to some scary songs in music. He couldn't stand that they showed Goosebumps on Cartoon Network all weekend (and he was adamant that NO ONE accidentally turn on Channel 32, because he could not bear to watch ONE SECOND of the show).

And today he decided he just could not go trick or treating. He couldn't handle the possibility of seeing scary costumes, or of there being scary sounds or special effects inside the doorways. He really wanted to go because of the candy, but he was scared. He had an appointment with his therapist this afternoon, and they worked out a plan in which he and Tessa would go out before it got dark, and if he was too overwhelmed he could ask Ross to go home. But he decided when we got home that he wanted to forego it all together.

In a way I thought it was good, a way for him to take control of his situation. But he was still afraid when he went to bed tonight, afraid of waking up and thinking about the scary stuff again.

Certainly the fact that he hasn't slept well in over two weeks now must be contributing to this anxiety, both elements feeding off each other like piranha. Last night I don't think he really slept at all. He said that since he couldn't remember when he was a baby (he's heard plenty of stories about how he never slept when he was a baby), last night was the worst night's sleep he's ever had in his life. Man, I didn't think it could get any worse, and hoped it would start getting better since his psychiatrist lowered his meds on Monday, but this is definitely worse.

Please, please, let him sleep tonight. Halloween is over.

Leafless

Sigh, this is the third weekend in a row that's gotten shot. We were going to drive up to Sugarloaf today and do the leafing thing on Bear Mountain (Ross HATES the made-up term "leafing," so I keep using it :D). Nothing too involved, just looking at leaves and doing a short hike and then having a nice lunch at one of the cute restaurants in Sugarloaf (cutesy artsy town). Then we were going to stop at the outlet center on the way home so I could go to the Gymboree outlet (only an hour away and I've never been there!).

But Tessa started running a fever of 102 last night, so going out today was obviously out.

I don't know why I'm so bummed about not driving to see leaves. It's not like there are no trees with changing leaves right here in the neighborhood (I'm reminded of 2 years ago, when we spent the day driving up to Litchfield, CT to see leaves. We'd "missed" them, as most of the trees were already bare, so we just had lunch and came home. When we got back, Matthew looked at the fallen leaves in our backyard and disgustedly said, "Ah, look at all these leaves! Why did we have to go all that way??").

I just feel like it's a fall thang, here on the east coast, to go see a forest full of changing leaves, to make it a bit of an occasion. Tessa has an outfit that I bought her specifically to go leafing, and hasn't worn it yet. Next weekend, especially after all the wind we've been having, the leaves will probably be much diminished. It's been such a weird fall, weather-wise. It was 80 degrees last Monday! Tonight's low is going to be 37. What happened to the crisp October?

Heritage Breakfast

Yesterday was United Nations Day at my kids' school (always cool, as they get to learn about lots of other countries). Today as a followup, Tessa's class celebrated with a Heritage Breakfast, in which parents were supposed to bring in a food item that reflected their cultural heritage.

Well, this was a problem for me, since traditional Japanese breakfasts include rice, miso soup, fish, and pickled vegetables :p. Yeah, I can see that going over real well with the kids. I've eaten these traditional breakfasts, served at traditional Japanese inns, and lemme tell ya, I wasn't too thrilled myself. (The funniest time was when Ross' mom and stepdad were visiting us and we took them to Kyoto. We stayed at a really nice inn and were served breakfast, which included fish with the head and tail still on. My MIL asked what she was supposed to do with the head, and Ross replied by picking up his fish and biting the head right off of it :D. She thought he was doing it for effect, but he just has no problem with eating the head off a fish.)

So what was I supposed to bring to reflect my cultural heritage? I wimped out and put "pastries" on the sign up sheet. But what Japanese pastries could I bring? Most of them (and they are never eaten for breakfast anyway) have stuff like red beans inside, and I don't even like them myself. I didn't want Tessa to bring in something "weird." I found some cream buns at a Japanese market, but they were prepackaged and really nasty.

So I ended up going to the Japanese bakery in Hartsdale yesterday and spending a small fortune on chocolate filled horns, raisin sticks, and mochi donuts. Not exactly traditional Japanese sweets, but at least they approximate pastries that people in Japan eat today.

So you want to know what the most popular item at the Heritage Breakfast was this morning? Halloween Dunkin' Donuts!! Hell, I could have done that, and saved myself a lot of worry and aggravation!

Perchance to Dream

Whew, Matthew slept basically from 9:15 to 6:00 last night. It was by far the best night's sleep he's had in a week. He did briefly sit up in bed (I heard him making snuffling noises) at about 11:15, but he wasn't really awake. He was semi-hysterical and rubbing his nose frantically though. I went in and got him to lie down again and he fell back asleep pretty quickly.

We went to the pediatrician yesterday and he doesn't have a UTI, though periodically he's still feeling like he has to pee every 3 minutes. This happened as we were trying to leave for school today, so again, I think it's a stress response.

But a good night's sleep was definitely what we all needed (though I did turn down nookie because I was afraid Matthew would wake up again!).

Evidently All that Worrying Paid Off

Thanks for asking Leila! :) Tessa's trip went perfectly. They learned all about the fish and other fauna that inhabit the river, about all the efforts that go into keeping the river and shore clean, and they caught some lovely specimens to take back to school. Then they walked along the "beach" (it's hard for me to think of the water's edge of a river as a beach :)) and gathered treasures. Tessa was thrilled with her huge catch of shells, rocks, and "sea glass." She was particularly entranced by the smooth glass, talking about how the green and amber pieces were especially rare. I really didn't have the heart to tell her they were fragments of old beer bottles.

And YES!, the rain didn't start till they had just gotten on the bus. Absolutely perfect timing, and I'm sure it was completely due to my influence.

Where my worrying has not made a dent is with Matthew's sleeping. He started the Abilify on Monday and has not slept since. Every night from Monday to Wednesday he was up at 2:00 or 2:30 in the morning and could not go back to sleep. Needless to say this did not do good things for his days at school. On Thursday I called his psychiatrist and she said to go ahead and give it to him in the morning. She said he might be hyper, but that effect should wear off in a couple of weeks. Hyper seemed better than angry zombie, so he skipped his Thursday night dose. He'd also increased his Topamax, so he slept all the way till 5:00 that night. Yay, I thought. But during the two nights since then he's gotten up in the middle of the night again. Last night was the worst: he got up at midnight, went back to sleep when I gave him a melatonin, but then was up again at 2:45 and never went back to sleep. And this was with a Benadryl on board too!

He also ended up in the nurse's office on Friday because he kept having to pee. He went to the bathroom 5 times in less than an hour. I called his psychiatrist, who said that urinary frequency isn't a known side effect for any of the drugs he's on. She suggested cutting down on the Topamax, just to see if it helps. My concern was that the activation caused by the Abilify was turning him into a ball of anxiety and it was manifesting into feeling like he had to pee. It happened again this afternoon when he was practicing clarinet (which makes him very anxious). So I'll keep him home tomorrow and take him to the pediatrician, just to rule out a UTI. In any event, he needs to rest another day after so many days of no sleep.

I guess my worrying doesn't solve everything.

Rain, Rain

It's just started raining in earnest (where's earnest?). I hope it held off long enough.

You see, Tessa is on a field trip to the Hudson River today. This is the first big first grade field trip of the year. The kids take a bus down to Croton Point Park and seine for fish that will go into the class aquarium. Then they look for shells and rocks and other treasures, which will be made into collages back at school. They learn about the ecology of the river, and they tour the tiny little light house by the Tappan Zee Bridge. In the spring they will go back and release the fish back into the river (provided they survive; I don't think the fish in Matthew's class that year made it).

This is a rain or shine field trip, with no chance for rescheduling. So I've been anxiously monitoring the weather forecasts for the past week. It was looking like rain. Then it was looking like thunderstorms in the evening, but a clear day. Then it was looking like a clear morning, but thunderstorms in the afternoon.

I've checked the radar 400 times today, watching the encroaching green overlay creep its way through Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I've hoped and hoped that the kids are able to do all the fun things they set out to do, without getting soaking wet. Tessa is wearing her raincoat, but it is POURING now. I hope they're safely back on the bus.

I realized that my obsession with her having a successful field trip is really symptomatic of my intense need for things to go well for my kids in life. I can't stand the thought of them being really unhappy, or disappointed, or disillusioned with the world. And while at times I think this may be a disservice, since life just ain't always a bed of roses, at other times I feel like I am just doing my job. If I, as their mother, can't be the one to shelter them from the injustice and pain in the world, who can? I know much of it comes from Matthew having sooooo many more challenges in life than the average kid, but I feel it for Tessa too.

I need to try to keep the rain off their heads, like a great big human umbrella. But even I can't control the weather.

Impermanence

twobuyfour asked about the background in my pic (thanks for all the sweet comments on my hair, everyone!! Heart you all!!). It's my dining room wall, which is covered with artwork that my kids have produced in the last 3 years. The flowers are gladiolus that Ross brought home last Friday (it wasn't our anniversary and he wasn't in trouble or anything! :D We always speculate about the guys coming home on the train with flowers from Dahlia in Grand Central, whether it's their anniversary or they're in trouble with the wife). Tessa has been bugging him to bring home some "tall flowers" to go into the tall vase the kids gave me for my 40th birthday.

Anyway, about the wall. It's covered with my kids' artwork because we never hung up any of our pictures on the walls when we moved here. I put four framed 8x10s of the kids on the mantle, but all the other pictures have stayed boxed up. We have some lovely things too, including the gorgeous calligraphy piece that one of Ross' students made for him when we lived in Japan. There are all of the framed pictures of us when we were young, our wedding pictures, some beautiful prints. All still packed away.

You see, this place was supposed to be temporary. We were desperate to find a place, and this house miraculously showed up on craigslist while we were still living in MA. Ross had to come here to hammer out some stuff for work, so he took the place without me ever laying eyes on it. He said it was okay, but ugly, and the owner's son lived upstairs and there was a basement apartment. Ewww, I thought, not too keen on having people living above and below us.

But it was going to be temporary. There would be no problem getting out of the lease when we found something better.

Only we never found anything better. And trust me, I've looked. There just aren't houses for rent here for less than $3000 a month (we pay $1950, which everyone dubs a "steal" when I tell them how much it is). There just aren't many houses for rent that are walking distance to the train station, which is a necessity since we only have one car.

Plus we really thought that we would be moving at some point. Of course the hope was that we'd move back to CA. Three years ago, Ross was also still sort of looking at the academic market. One way or another, we wouldn't be staying here.

But three and half years later, we're still here, in this ugly, inconvenient house with one bathroom and a crappy heating system that costs us $800 a month to heat in the winter. I think it wouldn't bother me so much if I hadn't come into this place thinking it was going to be temporary. I would have resigned myself to less than ideal conditions. But I was always waiting to move, for things to change, and they haven't.

I really hate change, despise not knowing what is going to happen. So having the advent of change prolonged for so long has been really difficult.

As Requested by Hilary...

We all know how GREAT pics you take of yourself come out, with you holding the camera out at arm's length so your face gets all angled and distorted looking. And I'm too damn lazy to photoshop out the moles and double chin :D. But here:

Spurred to Action! I Got a Haircut!

So I was so energized by the lovely comments people left in response to my poor-pitiful-me post that I decided to get out and DO something I've been putting off.

I got a haircut! Yay, me :p!!

Seriously, I've been in such a funk that it's been hard to haul my butt around and do anything but the bare minimum of grocery shopping (which involves constantly running to Costco and Trader Joe's and the grocery store because my children have so many food requirements that are not available under one roof) and mailing my ebay packages at the post office. I've been falling asleep on the couch after drop-off. I've been reading a book a day. I guess ya could say I've been on a downer.

But today I am coiffed and I look pretty awesome! I actually considered going to the mall and applying for a job at Hanna Andersson, which I've been talking about doing since last spring.

But then I thought, nawwwwww, that's going a little too far.

REALLY, Thank You for Being a Friend

I am sincerely touched and humbled by the comments for my last post.

Rich, thank you for the dinner invite. I am overwhelmed by your reaching out of the blogsphere and offering to become a real live friend. We'd love to come. Can we bring the kids (no friends/family=no childcare!)?

Tamar, I will definitely be emailing you and I would definitely love to get together! We've actually "known" each other for years, as we were on a special needs list together 5 years ago :). Thank you SO much for coming out of lurk, and for reading as well!!

twobuyfour, thank you for the commiseration! You are too kind, and your "shave the cat" comment almost made cappuccino go up my nose.

Leila and Hilary, I've only seen you seen each in person once (and Hilary, it was when the Auggies were less than ONE YEAR OLD!), but I love you both dearly. I realize now that it was wrong of me to say I have no friends, because I have those of you on the August List, who have known me and cared for me so very well for 10 years! You are my friends, in the truest sense of the words.

Thank you, my friends!

Thank You for Being a Friend (Travel Down the Road and Back Again)

Don't ask me why I seem to be stuck in crappy old songs. Anyway, Rich asked when my girls' weekend out will be. Hah. I've had exactly one girls' weekend out since I became a mother, 10 years ago (and I wouldn't have gotten that if a splendid plan to surprise Ambre during her 40th birthday excursion had not been hatched :)).

twobyfour, thanks for the invitation to come to Albany! And thanks for reading; I am thrilled to now have SEVEN readers :D! But you mention my dilemma: I don't have any friends here, to go out with on a girls' weekend out.

This continues to baffle me. I've lived here for 3 and a half YEARS and I have not made a single real friend. I have always had friends; even in my darkest, loneliest days of geek-childhood I had at least one friend. I'm a fun person. I can carry my end of at least a modestly amusing conversation. I have no obviously offensive body odor. WHY don't I have any friends?

One problem has obviously been exposure to new people. Most of my friends in life have been made through school or work. I met my husband in college; I met my best pals of my 20s while working. I met my best girlfriends of my 30s (and now 40s :)) through the internet, which continues to astonish me, but I see that still as some once-in-a-lifetime, correct-alignment-of-the planets-type occurrence. And it was the face time, the getting together on a regular basis and hanging out and commiserating, that really made them my best friends. But unfortunately, they are 3000 miles away, and face time has been pretty limited.

I do see other humans on a daily basis. I say hi to the other moms at pick-up and chat a bit. I go to my favorite Gymboree store and chew the fat with the store manager there. But I don't have any FRIENDS, people to go to lunch with or talk to when I feel like crap.

I did try, especially in the first year we were here. I'd invite kids over for playdates, and I'd talk with the moms. I'm sort of sorry to say that I chose the moms I thought I'd get along with, rather than the kids I thought my kids would get along with. But it just never really worked out and things always stayed on a superficial, if perfectly nice, level. The moms didn't realize that I was trying to become friends with them; they thought it was all about the kids.

And over time it snowballed, in that as my social isolation increased, so did my social phobia. I got anxious about approaching people, and I just stopped doing it. Then Matthew started completely refusing to do playdates, and I stopped trying to encourage him. I mean, how can you foster social skills in your child when you don't have any yourself? And poor Tessa suffered, since I stopped making playdates for her too, once she started going to school full-time.

This still grates on me. WHERE is the gregarious, extroverted person I used to be? Who will be my friend?

Stay at Home Blah

I spend the weekdays waiting for the weekend (come on, all you old fogeys! Join me in a rousing rendition of Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend!!" Complete with head-bangin' air guitar!!). Weekdays are a flurry of hauling my ass out of bed, serving precisely timed breakfasts to surly children (Matthew must eat in courses: a bowl of grapes immediately upon waking, followed by a bagel with cream cheese, and lastly a sliced mango), haranguing said children into getting dressed and ready, filling lunch boxes, making sure backpacks are packed. Almost always topped by a chorus of "Get your shoes on! No, you don't have time for that! What are you doing? We're LATE!"

I aimfully float through my day, running innumerable errands, cleaning, doing laundry, packing up ebay sales, spending various amounts of time on internet suckage. Always a bit on edge, waiting for that phone call that might come, telling me to come pick up Matthew at school due to another "incident." Then I pick them up, wondering where the hell the day went, and we come home to snacks and homework and dinner. Ross comes home, and it's baths and reading and dispensing of pharmaceuticals and bed. Ross has been traveling quite a bit in the last month, too, with some overnight trips, so a lot of additional pressure has been piled on me as well.

But weekends are nice. I'm fortunate that my husband almost never works on weekends. We do fun stuff. We go to museums and the zoo and to the playground to shoot baskets and kick around the soccer balls. We go out to lunch, we go on hikes, we go shopping. We get out of the house and we spend time all together. And I experience a real feeling of release, that I'm not the sole parent. There's someone else to deal with meltdowns and demands and questions. Just someone else to think of stuff to keep the kids occupied so they don't spend every moment playing video games or watching TV.

On Thursday, Ross sent me an email that he was going to the Penn State-Wisconsin game this weekend. He had "semi-committed" to it a long time ago, he said, but he didn't think our friend was going to be able to get tickets, so he never mentioned it. Well, tickets were indeed procured, so they all left at 6:45 yesterday morning. They'll be back later today.

So it was just me and the kids this weekend, and I felt (I feel) an irrational amount of anger and depression over it. This is the weekend; this is when I am supposed to get a break. I didn't want to have to come up with activities and prepare all meals and go through the bedtime routine all by myself. I didn't want to take Tessa to soccer in 49 degree weather (wasn't it 85 degrees just a couple of DAYS ago???). I didn't want to have to bring her along to Matthew's haircut. I wanted to take a nap in the afternoon.

Most of all, I didn't want to have to come up with activities so they didn't spend every moment playing video games or watching TV. So I didn't :p.

I really hate to begrudge my husband a boys-weekend-out, since he never ever gets to have them. I think if I'd had more advance warning, I wouldn't have been so annoyed. But mostly I'm left with the thought, "When do *I* get a weekend away? When do *I* get a break?"

I am Strong, I am Invincible, I am WRITER

For some unknown reason, TC has tagged me for a meme. Maybe this is her way of torturing, err, encouraging me. I say it's a cruel thing to do to a friend with barely enough brain cells firing to brew a cup of coffee.

So I'm supposed to talk about my strengths as a writer. I'm not supposed to point out the glaring complication inherent to this task: I'm not "really" a writer. I like to write, but I ain't never been paid cash money for it. I write here, in this blog, for my 5 friends who read it, but that's all. I've never finished a novel, screenplay, or article of any real length. I finished one short story back in 1991 (that was summarily rejected by every periodical I submitted it to). I would never DARE answer "a writer" in response to someone asking me what I do. But again, I'm not supposed to talk about that, so I won't.

My strengths as a writer are:

1. I think in words. As opposed to visual people, who often think in pictures, I think almost exclusively in words. More precisely, I think in narrative. Everyday occurrences filter through my consciousness in full sentences, like I was telling someone about what happened, as it's happening. I think back on things that occurred, and it's all like I'm relaying it to someone else, complete with auto-editing to improve the flow of the language. I think this constant attention to life-as-words is essential to my writing, because I'm really just committing to the keyboard what was already rambling about in my head, often word for word. I'm a story-teller, and I'm telling you my story.

2. I love language. I absolutely adore the English language, in all its incarnations and variety. I love colloquialisms, I love dialects, I love idiomatic phrasing. I've always had an ear for accents (if I had been born a white girl of unidentifiable European origin, I would certainly have become an actress, because I could do a million accents dead-on), and in writing I slip easily into using phrasing that really isn't a part of "my" language. I think it does make for better writing overall. I also have tremendous respect for correct language usage, and while I've never been paid as a writer, I *have* been paid many times as an editor. My internal editor is always in the "on" mode.

3. I have a kick-ass vocabulary. While it's certainly true that a lot of truly beautiful writing is deceptively simple in its use of language, I think that using a broader vocabulary opens up my writing. Of course not every sentence needs to contain a fifty-cent word, but there is something absolutely intoxicating about finding *just* the right word to convey what I want to say.

4. I'm a voracious reader, and I know good writing when I see it. I really believe that all writers live to read. I think we all grew up reading, everything we could get our hands on, every chance we could find. It's all a part of that love of language, that search for voices, that journey through other windows. I know that almost everything I read imbues what I write and how I write. And I appreciate good writing, more than almost anything in the world. I read something truly brilliant and elegant and *true* (in the sense that it touches something inside of me that recognizes its truth), and I sit back and smile and feel an overwhelming sense of satisfaction. It's as good as good sex for me (well, maybe not, but it's probably as good as what *most* people experience as good sex :)).

5. I'm funny. Okay, I'm not stand-up comedian funny, but I think that everything I write is lit and enhanced by my (wack) sense of humor. Even though much that I write emanates from a broken heart, most of it comes out with at least some wit, some wry twist. Whether this is over-compensation for the material or just me trying to cheer myself up, I think it improves everything I write.

And though I'm not supposed to say it, here's the one most prominent WEAKNESS in my writing: I cannot freaking FINISH anything!! So many great ideas, so little actual execution. Argh.

The Blessings of Health Insurance

I read a few years ago that the real difference between haves and have-nots has become quality health insurance. That's become abundantly clear to me lately.

Matthew's psychiatrist changed his meds. He's weaning off Seroquel and going on Abilify and Topamax. I don't know about Abilify at all (it being a new drug that came on the market after my psychopharmacology incarnation ended), so I've been doing the requisite web research.

So I picked up the prescriptions yesterday morning and was bummed to see that they are both off-formulary, which means they are $50 apiece. Sigh, I thought, another $100 a month. Add it all to the list, and there's no way I'm ever getting a new dining table to replace the piece of shit Ikea set we've had since 1994. (I don't know why the dining table has become a symbol of all the stuff I wish I had, but can't afford. You'd think I'd be more focused on having to live in a crappy rental house with one bathroom, instead of a house of our own, but I guess it's my mind's way of dealing. Anyway, I digress as usual.)

Then I got home and looked at the part of the prescription receipt that shows how much our insurance is paying for each prescription. On top of the co-payment, the insurance is paying ****$638.72**** for the Abilify! For one freaking month!! Big Pharma makes me want to puke.

So tally it up: just for Matthew, insurance is paying $490 per month for his therapist (now that we've shelled out $2000 and are on schedule for them to pay 70% of the visits), $140 for the psychiatrist (that's all they'll pay of her $250 fee), and $750 for his meds. $1,380 a month, for one kid. And we're paying $420 a month on top of that ourselves.

This is the reason we can't just ditch everything here and move to L.A. in the hopes that Ross'll find a job. This is the reason he has to be somewhat selective about the types of jobs he seeks out. High-level insurance coverage is just not an elective.

Count to 100

Last night as Ross and I were going to bed, we peeked in to check on the kids, as we always do. Both were out of their covers, but that was fine since it was 78 degrees in the house. Tessa was also way off her pillow, so I stepped into her room to get her re-situated (out of fear that she would wake up, uncomfortable, and find the need to run into our room and bump me off the bed and out to the couch).

As I walked up to her bed, however, she woke up, groggily bolted upright, and started to get out of bed. Not wanting that to happen, I coaxed her to lay back down, and I sat next to her so she'd stay put. She grabbed my arm and wound hers around it.

Inwardly sighing, I waited for her to settle back into sleep, for her breathing to slow. And then I counted to 100.

I've been doing this since my children were newborn infants. Matthew was such a poor sleeper and would simply NOT lay down to sleep. This was the baby who, at 2 WEEKS of age, once stayed awake for 40 hours straight. (Yes, we very nearly perished.) He seemed to fall asleep better when he was walked out in the hallway outside our apartment, so we (mostly I) spent innumerable hours walking him back and forth. I'd walk until he seemed to be dropping off, then I'd stand by the window at the back of the hallway, looking out at the 405 freeway, and I'd sway back and forth. I'd sway left, then right, and count that as one. I'd mentally count to 100, then ease back into the apartment. Then I'd sit on the couch, Matthew upright on my shoulder, and I'd slowly count to 100 again. Then Ross would pick him up off of me, gingerly carry him to the crib, and then lay him down. We said it was like trying to defuse a bomb. This was before we utterly gave up trying to get him to sleep in the crib at all.

With infant Tessa, I'd nurse her to sleep in my glider rocker, then hold her upright on my shoulder. Then I'd count to 100, and I'd lay her down. Repeat every 2 hours or so. As she grew older, I'd nurse her on the bed, wait for her to fall asleep, hold her in my arms, count to 100, then lay her beside me. As she grew older still, I'd lay down next to her at bedtime, wait for her to fall asleep, count to 100, then slip out the bedroom door.

There were rules for counting to 100. I could only start after they seemed fully asleep. If they moved and seemed less than fully asleep, I'd have to start over again. After I got to 100, I had to wait for a few more moments after disengaging myself, to make sure they didn't wake up. Sometimes after I counted to 100, I counted to 100 again just for good measure, since if they weren't fully asleep I was going to have to start the whole lengthy procedure over again.

Last night, I had to count to 100 four times. Each time I got to 100 and pulled my arm away, Tessa's eyes would open, she'd grab my arm back, and wrap it around herself again. Finally I slipped off the bed, out of the room, and in to my already snoring husband. But it felt sort of sweet and sort of painful, counting to 100 as my baby fell asleep, once again.

Two "Perfect Days"

Matthew had two "perfect days" in a row, yesterday and today. Two days in a row in which he got all his checks, both in the morning and afternoon, for all five elements on his behavioral chart. Just two days, but it's a start.

He calls them that, "perfect days." And I've been thinking about it, since of course they are not perfect days. No day is perfect, and I'm sure there are many bad, frustrating, difficult moments during those days. Times during which he gets overwhelmed, upset, on edge. But not so much that he can't recover, not enough to lose his check.

I'm wondering what my perfect day would be. It would certainly include not having to live in fear of my cell phone ringing with a call from the school every time I go out, no rush to check the answering machine as soon as I came home to make sure they hadn't tried to call while I was gone. No strained moment, waiting for Matthew to emerge from the hallway into the cafeteria at dismissal, no sad realization that all the kids have already come through and he was not among them (which means that he is in the office, after another major incident).

I don't know how long it will take for me to let down my guard and stop feeling so consumed with fear of what might happen, or if I should let my guard down at all (part of my devastation at his breakdown in the spring was that he had been doing SO well for so long; I never saw it coming). But for now, I will take two "perfect days," and take them gladly.

What I just learned

I just learned that yogurt that freezes by accident in the refrigerator does not taste like frozen yogurt. Especially when it's Light & Fit Yogurt, which has Splenda in it.

Then it's pretty freaking nasty, and is destined for the trash (known as garbage here on the East Coast).