Category Archives: Behavior

A Starbucks Kind of Morning

Posted on by February 25, 2020

It was a Starbucks kind of morning. I woke up to the sound of my kids yelling at each other, which meant that

1) They had been up before us long enough to get into a squabble (which even for them takes a few minutes) and

2) There was likely something wrong out in the rest of the house.

Oh baby. Little did I know. I popped out the retainer that keeps my bottom teeth from overlapping, pulled on some pants and lumbered out of the bedroom. For the next full minute, all I could say was “Oh my God”. Over and over again.… Read the rest

Sam Meets TSA

Posted on by December 2, 2011

I’ve been flying since I was three or four years old, flying alone since I was ten. I love airplanes. I went through a period in my early twenties when I feared flying. Some combination of motion sickness and tension over those thrill bumps at take off and during turbulence served to make me a less than confident traveler. And anxiety still tugs when the plane first starts to taxi. But after that bump when the wheels leave the ground, I’m usually OK.

I usually fly with my family these days, either sandwiched between Sam and Caroline or forming the bread with Scott on the other side.… Read the rest

Sam Part II

Posted on by February 25, 2020

In case you aren’t familiar with my situation, you should probably start here, with Sam Part I. It’s short. But highly informative.

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November 2011

I’ve blogged before about how much Sam loves ballet. And about my bipolar disorder. And about how, at its worst, bipolar robs me of the activities I love. Can you already see where this is going? Back at the end of September, Sam suddenly wanted to quit ballet. He went from one week loving it to the next week screaming and fighting over having to get dressed and dance.

It was that fast.

And he was adamant.… Read the rest

Sam Part I

Posted on by February 25, 2020

November 2011 — I still don’t understand what is going on with Sam. I know we’re looking at Asperger’s Syndrome. There’s never been any real question in my mind that he has the same form of high functioning autism as Caroline, even though it manifests in different ways in sister and brother. But I fear he also shows signs of my Bipolar Disorder. Things fell apart for him so fast this summer. In the space of three months, he went from being my happy little mischief to being violent and angry nearly all the time. I’ve seen some of this coming.… Read the rest

People who live in glass washers

Posted on by November 14, 2011

Yesterday, our friends Linda and Robert, and their son, Kristopher, came over for dinner. We fed the kids first, while we grownups visited in the living room, and then the adults took over the table to eat. Our kitchen table is too small to seat seven, and it works better for us to eat in shifts anyway. If we feed the kids first, then their demands are easier to meet, and they aren’t interrupting the adults.

After everybody went home, Scott and I put the kids to bed, and Scott started a load of wash. As he was getting ready to roll it over to the dryer, I heard him say, “Jessie, dearest?”… Read the rest

A Nightmare for Halloween

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I’m walking around Chatfield’s campus, down by the heart shaped pond, where the Canadian honkers congregate every fall. Sam is with me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a snake, but I don’t take alarm. It doesn’t look venomous.

In fact, I think I’ll have a closer look, so I pick it up, and only in that instant, when my hand closes around its middle, do I realize the snake is poisonous, the worst kind. It whips around and sinks its teeth not into me, but into Sam. He screams, and then the snake bites me. Sharp, bruising pain runs up my arm where the fangs sink in.… Read the rest

Hide and Go Shit Redux

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Hide and go shit got serious tonight, and I thought we were going to land in the hospital with this one. Hide and go shit is bad, but I think that “hide and don’t go shit” is worse. We’ve had to give Sam enemas for the last three nights in a row to get anything at all out, and tonight, he was pushing brown water around whatever was jammed up in his colon before he finally forced out the adult sized mass that was holding everything up.

Caroline had a playdate this weekend, and her friend’s Mom and I were talking about anal retentive kids.… Read the rest

Ladies’ Man

Posted on by February 25, 2020

We went out to eat for Father’s day, both children in tow. Normally, this is an adventure in death-wishes, as the kids either act like monkeys (and not the tame ones, either) or choose a restaurant that features cuisine whose quality is inversely proportionate to the presence of playlands.  But as a special gift to Daddy, they behaved wonderfully during a grown-up meal. It helped that Sam had just spent two hours napping in the car as we returned from the McWane center in Birmingham, but the real success was in his falling in love with our server.

One of the big excitements of the trip was that Caroline has started eating a meat product.… Read the rest

Sam and the Princesses

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I have a confession to make. I know I said I hadn’t been blogging because I was swimming with Sam, and I know I claimed to have been grading like crazy. And those things are true. But the primary reason I haven’t been online for the last several days is that we were on vacation in Orlando. Yes, that’s right, we did Disney for Sam’s birthday.  And then I’ve spent a week getting caught back up with the paying job, because, well, Scott and I aren’t wealthy enough for me to contemplate the alternative.

We had an awesome time with friends Dennis and Kristi and their kiddos.… Read the rest

Treasure Chest

Posted on by May 16, 2011

“I eawned my tweasuwe chest!”

This is how Sam wakes us up nearly every morning. It’s a huge improvement over “I SEE THE SUN. IT IS MOWNING TIME!” Although he was eighteen months old before he got there, once Sam started sleeping through the night, he was pretty good about it. For a year. Then, he discovered that his big boy bed was not the same kind of prison as his crib, that he could, in fact, bounce up and come find me at will. All. Night. Long. We tried several methods of stopping this, from the gentle “stand-at-the-door-and-wordlessly-return-him-to-bed” (he once jumped back up a hundred times, thought the whole thing was a game, and completely wore us down) to the slightly less polite lock-the-door-from-our-side (he just screamed –once for an hour), to the completely draconian unplugging-his-nightlight-routine (that one worked, but had to repeat it every single night, and we hated it.)… Read the rest