Langer Loksh

Our Family Has Far Too Much Fun at the Dentist

 

Be Gentle with Yourself. (And Eat a Lot of S'mores.)

This is a picture of me at a last-minute Girl Scout campfire that Jeff and I threw together when my other planned activity for today's meeting fell through. I'm really quite fond of the Hershey bars as you can see. 

When I realized I had to plan a super fun Girl Scout meeting in, like, three hours, I ran around town grabbing supplies, such as matching green bandanas for all of us, because as everyone knows, a Girl Scout must always wear a bandana at a campfire so she doesn't set her hair on fire. I completely forgot that Oscar had his annual physical at 2:30 today. I had received one answering machine message about it, spoke with a nurse on the second reminder call, wrote it on my paper calendar, and got a Google calendar alert about it on my phone and in my email.

I still managed to utterly whiff it. 

In the spirit of my Be Gentle resolution, I am not beating myself up. I rescheduled the appointment. Life goes on! I think the gentleness must start with my own self. Isn't it more important that I gave five Girl Scouts the most unexpectedly fun Monday ever? I mean, Oscar isn't sick or anything. 

And let me just add: this weather! GLORIOUS! A campfire, with marshmallows, in January, without, like, gloves? It's a dream from which I hope we do not awake. 

Charlie, Tiger Cub Scout and proud Girl Scout little brother. 

Summer. Actual Girl Scout. 

Oscar slept on the couch the whole time. Miss Lucy wore a bandana too but we forgot to take her picture. 

No More Two-Year-Olds Here

My littlest is now three years old! I can no longer claim a two-year-old.

(Please note that this does not mean that crazy meltdowns--his or mine--are a thing of the past.)

On Oscar's real birthday, he said he wanted a strawberry cake. So he and I picked out a strawberry shortcake at the grocery store. Then Summer and Charlie made all kinds of terrible faces about it. I handed Oscar a wrapped present--a magnetic fishing puzzle that I had in the closet from some long ago TJ Maxx stock-up. He could see that it was obviously not a car, because it was flat, so he said he didn't want it. But we made him open it. Then, he loved it so much that he wouldn't stop playing with it and never ate a bite of his strawberry cake. (See above.) But guess who licked their plates clean? The facemakers, that's who. 

Then over the weekend we had a ninja-themed party for Oscar. Charlie and his friend Liam made an obstacle course for the ninjas outside in the dark. Then we decorated headbands (strips of black fabric) with stick on foam stars, hearts, and custom yin/yangs cut out by my friend Maureen.

Look how tough Charlie looks. Then we threw rubber ninja stars and played freeze dance to the original disco version of "Kung Fu Fighting," and ate this yin/yang cake decorated by Summer. 

Also Charlie and I made this Rice Krispie treat sushi. Special thanks to my genius friend Lori for all her great ideas, including the sushi. 

Happy birthday Oscar!

Officially Crossing into "Weird Animal Lady" Territory

This is Lucy, my new dog. 

Dog!

So I am a crazy pet lady. "No, no," you might be thinking. "All you have is a dozen or so chickens, two cats, a turtle, and now, a 70-pound black lab!

Well that's because I never even told you about Francis and Cashew: 

We've had them since this summer, when Babysitter Ellen went off to college. They are mildly diverting, but since Lucy arrived last week, I am afraid Francis and Cashew will not even be getting what little loving they got. Because WE LOVE LUCY!

Those of you who know us outside the computer are probably shocked that Jeff has consented to a canine in the house. She's just so easy, so sweet, so soft, so hilarious when she tears down the path to the water...

I have to thank my sister Susan for the amazing gift of a housebroken, calm adult dog. Lucy was depressed at Susan's house, where there are some younger dogs who were hazing her pretty bad. I've always wanted a dog but couldn't possibly handle a puppy on top of the two puppies I already have, Charlie and Oscar. Now we have Lucy, who is calm enough for Charlie and Summer to walk on a leash--and for Oscar to basically poke in the eye. Plus she has a thrilling bark that will scare away all potential home invaders. 

I knew I was a dog person, and I knew Charlie would someday have a dog, but I was going to wait until Oscar got to kindergarten to even start shopping the shelters. But Lucy needed a new home now. And we're all going to live happily ever after. 

Marathon, Not a Sprint, Yadda Yadda Yadda

 

Rejected Holiday Card photo! Love the smiles, but the light is wrong.

Oh, I don't know. Am I being too picky? 

Yesterday I met with The Harsh One, Charlie's first grade teacher (so named because she made Summer cry multiple times in first grade). Things seem to be going very well. On Back to School Night, the principal came over to tell me that he didn't put tennis balls on the chair feet for Charlie this year--because the room is carpeted. So I know he was thinking of Charlie, which is good. And Charlie's seat is at the front of the room with his good ear facing the teacher--also good, but he will move throughout the year, because they all get to take turns at the different tables, and to first graders, that's a big deal. They would all notice and freak out if Charlie didn't move. The Harsh One knows to seat him in a way that will give him a good line of sight and acoustics. 

I set up the meeting to give my unilateral hearing loss spiel. I brought some handouts--"How to Help the One-Eared Listener"; "Relationship of Hearing Loss to Listening and Learning Needs." The Harsh One was very receptive, but she seemed to be leaning a little bit towards the "He's a six-year-old boy, sometimes he's not going to pay attention" side rather than the "I get that this is for rizzle and I will jump through flaming hoops to ensure that Charlie hears each and every individual vowel and consonant spoken in a ten-mile radius of my classroom" side. 

I explained that we'd decided not to go the hearing aid route at this time, and that the sound field system--a little microphone she wears, which wirelessly transmits to a little speaker she can set on a desk behind Charlie--is the most important thing for Charlie right now. Then, in the course of the conversation I discovered that the sound field system is not moving with Charlie to art, music, library, computer lab, etc. (It does not need to move to gym, because that teacher already has a Britney Spears headset that she wears all the time, even though her voice carries throughout the school even without it. Nor does it need to move to speech therapy, where there is only Charlie and one other kid. But I thought it was moving with him to those other classes, and I was a little dismayed that it wasn't. "He doesn't have that in every arena of his life," The Harsh One pointed out. As if the school librarian is not more important than, say, the guy at the pizza shop. I was a tiny bit shocked. "He needs to have it in learning situations," I said. "So, do you want to think about that and get back to me?" she said. I squirmed just a little, and then replied, "I don't think I need to think about it. I think it needs to move." The queen of the understated, backhanded, please-don't-think-I'm-confrontational-I-hate-confrontation, overly polite super tiny request!

I also discovered that the hearing loss consultant had not been in to observe how the room is set up and how the teacher and Charlie seem to be doing. The turf wars, unfortunately, end up hurting only the kids. 

What turf wars? 

Oh. I just looked back into my archives and see that I never posted about the awkward meeting I had with the hearing loss consultant and the speech pathologist in the spring. See, back in January, we had Charlie's big three-year IEP review. Only the hearing loss consultant never gave her report--she had to leave before we finished the meeting. I thought we were going to reconvene, but we never did, and then suddenly it was the end of the school year and I realized I never heard what she had to say. The town is paying her. Doesn't anyone else care what she thinks?

I tried to call a team meeting, but the kindergarten teacher couldn't get anyone to cover her class, and the learning specialist's mother had just died. Well can we meet with everyone else? No? Yes? I have to call the meeting? I can't call the meeting, but no one else will call it? I have to get permission for the hearing loss consultant to enter the building?

It took several emails in secret code--"I would be happy to share some of my observations but I have to be diplomatic and respectful of the school's expectations for my consultation," the hearing loss consultant wrote to me--but I finally secured permission to meet at the school with the hearing loss consultant and the speech pathologist. Who then demonstrated through gritted teeth and stiff posture that they can hardly stand each other. Hearing loss consultant wants speech therapist to do articulation drills ("Th th th th thuh, fff fff fff fff fff ffuh") with Charlie; speech therapist thinks this is a terrible idea that Charlie won't sit still for and it won't work anyway. Or something. I'm making it cartoonish, I know. It's months ago now. I remember Oscar sitting on the floor playing with cars and eating Goldfish crackers. Each of them heard the other one's view, but neither woman changed her mind, and we all smiled at each other and went off for summer vacation. 

Last night I emailed the hearing loss consultant and asked her to come in to the first grade classroom. She responded immediately: "The request/arrangements for classroom consultation come from someone in the school district, but I have not heard from anyone regarding Charlie and you certainly can initiate that request."

Today I telephoned the learning specialist, who is Charlie's team leader, to initiate that request. I wanted to tell her that 

1. The sound field system needs to move from class to class with him, and if that is not clear from the IEP--right now it says "Use of a sound field system in class"--then that part of the IEP needs to be rewritten. For example, "Use of a sound field system in all learning environments" or "in all large-group instruction situations." I don't know! I'm just the mom!

and 

2. She needs to arrange for the hearing loss consultant to come in and observe and, well, consult, with The Harsh One, and ALL the other teachers who see Charlie every week, about acoustics, seating, and THE SOUND FIELD SYSTEM. Right now the IEP says "As Charlie attends public school district will support consultation to that program by a consultant knowledgable in education of children with hearing impairment, who will make needed recommendations." Maybe that part of the IEP needs to be rewritten to say "District will call consultant in at the beginning of the year to consult with all staff." Or something. I don't know. Jeez! 

And she hasn't called me back. Granted it was just this morning. But I don't know why she wouldn't just call me back right away. I mean, I've gotten quicker calls back from surgeons.

When this stuff happens, all I can think about is--and I've said this before--what about those people whose first language isn't English? And this is in a school district that is known far and wide for being super duper generous to kids with special needs. In other words, we have it good. What is it like in the overburdened cities and less affluent suburbs? And what is it like for the families with kids with way worse problems? 

I'm going to have to fight this same little fight every year, and that's a tiny bit discouraging. But I can do it, no problem. I only work part time, I'm very smart and, thanks to our Early Intervention experience and my secret weapon, my friend Julie the speech therapist, very well prepared. What's more than a tiny bit discouraging is realizing that compared to most people, we have it really really good. 

O Canada, Part Deux

Campobello Island is Canada's version of the thumb of Michigan. You can only get to Campobello Island, New Brunswick, from Maine, United States. You cross a bridge from Lubec and stop at customs. We had crummy weather, but the people there were simply lovely. The woman at the motel where we stayed kindly washed my jacket for me with her own laundry because Charlie had handed me a shell in Bar Harbor and I put it in my pocket and then the whole car started to smell like low tide. (Once the shell was discarded and the jacket washed, the van regained its rightful Keebler peanut butter cracker odor). 

There are two very cool things to see on Campobello. The first is the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. Franklin and Eleanor's summer house is there for you to tour (above), with lots of great family photos and objets. They had a little scavenger hunt for the kids--find the fedora, find the model airplane, find the old-fashioned iron, etc.--as well as very beautiful gardens and nature trails. 

(I call this picture "The Equinox.")

At the visitors' centre the ladies were super knowledgable and enthusiastic. We told them that Grandpa Francis remembers hearing Calvin Coolidge on the radio when he was six, seven, or eight years old at the Fort Totten School in North Dakota, which was then Indian territory (his father worked for the BIA), which means FDR was not, per the park's lit-tra-ture, the first president to address the nation on the radio. We promised to get to the bottom of it for them. 

(Jeff takes better pictures than I do.)

Crummy weather continued, so we did not get to the other cool thing on Campobello, which is visit Head Harbour Light. We tried again on the way home, so you'll read about that... someday. I am so glad we did, because it turned out to be a top ten experience of our whole trip, but I don't want to get out of order here. 

We ducked back into the United States and then crossed over the border once again in St Stephen, where we visited the Ganong Chocolate Museum in an attempt to not go stark raving mad in the car. They gave us unlimited free chocolate. (True.)

We had never heard of this candy company, but we are not from Canada. One of their specialties is the "chicken bone," a pink, cinnamon-flavored hard candy with a soft chocolate center. Ganong has been making chicken bones since 1885. Above, Oscar tries the candy packing game. When I tried it, I was able to pack the box of big fake candies in exactly four times the time it took a Ganong chocolate packing lady worker to do it back in the day.

We then pressed on to Saint John, New Brunswick, not to be confused with St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. We stayed in a Howard Johnson's that had a pool, which was like, LAS VEGAS, as far as the short people were concerned. 

And then the new day dawned with perfect weather that did not break until--well, until we tried to go back to Quoddy Head two weeks later. We enjoyed our very first ever Tim Horton's breakfast and Oscar had a half hour tantrum because Jeff tried to hold his hand in the parking lot. 

Coming up next in part trois: red rocks and wild tides.

O Canada, Part Une

All five of us are now official Anne of Green Gables weirdos. "Official," because we had our souvenir Anne of Green Gables passports stamped at every single Anne of Green Gables location on Prince Edward Island. And we LOVED IT. 

We took 449 pictures with my big camera, and a couple more with my new "smart" phone that I'm not really smart enough to know how to use. We drove 2,560 miles in our van, which I think is more than we put on the rented van on the Alaska trip, but I'll have to check my archives. 

Let us begin at the beginning. We spent the first couple of days in Surry, Maine, at the beautiful home of our friends Gale and Bill C., with our favorite couple, Andy and Michelle. We bonded with Toby the donkey, swam in the ocean, and blew Summer's little mind when we met up with her best friend's family for a special boat tour in Bar Habor--Summer didn't know they were nearby on vacation too. 

The boat tour, Diver Ed, was AWESOME. Merry prankster Diver Ed dives down to the sea floor with an HD camera and feeds video up to a flat screen tv on the boat. Then he collects sea cucumbers, lobsters, crabs, sea stars (which is what we're supposed to call starfish now), and other marine critters, and brings them back up for kids to touch. We recommend it highly. 

We proceeded to the easternmost point in the United States, West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Lubec, Maine. The weather turned on us, and we did not get to see any whales, or anything but a bank of fog. No matter! Because after that, next stop: Canada. Did you know about the Atlantic Time Zone? We did not. Read on tomorrow, my fearless vacation photo viewing victims. 

 

 
 

So It Comes Down to This: Batman Pajamas

This is my baby Charlie in striped pajamas. 

He's six years old now. 

I've always assumed that Charlie would some day get bullied for looking different. I was so worried that some horrible other children would make him feel awkward or bad about himself because he looks a little different. It turns out I was wasting my time! Because instead, a horrible other child tried to make him feel awkward and bad about himself because he has Batman pajamas. 

This summer at day care, another boy--we'll call him Alexander, because that's his real name, and when you are mean, you give up your right to privacy on other people's mother's blogs--was trash-talking Charlie on the baseball diamond. I spoke to the teacher about it and I thought she handled it well. But then, about two weeks ago, it was pajama day, and Alexander trash-talked Charlie's Batman pajamas. "You're wearing Batman pajamas?" asked Alexander, who, it should be noted, was not wearing pajamas. Either he refused, or his parents don't love him enough to remember when it's pajama day. And Charlie made a sniffing noise and said, "No." Then Alexander turned to each boy in the room and said, "Do you like Batman?" and each boy, buckling under the social pressure, scoffed "No." 

What do we tell our kids about bullying? We tell them to tell an adult. Well guess what. I am the adult, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I was so upset by this little boy's behavior because we're talking about our day care center, where everyone is so so lovely and they spend all their time making sure the children are lovely to each other. Volcano Girl returned. "Charlie, do you want to come to work with me?" I asked, and he nodded. I grabbed Charlie's lunchbox and turned to the teacher, who was just far enough away that she hadn't heard or seen anything. "We're LEAVING," I said, "because there is behavior going on here that is NOT ACCEPTABLE." Shaking, I drove to the office, where at least five adults greeted Charlie with an enthusiastic "Hey! Batman! Alright!" Because, DUH! 

The teacher who had been in the room left me a very apologetic voice mail. But when I called and spoke to the head teacher--the one who had totally made the baseball bullying go away--I was kind of shocked that she didn't bend over backwards to make me feel better. She said she'd remind everyone of the classroom rules. "So you're thinking that you're going to handle this on the kid level?" I asked. I really thought she should call Alexander's parents and tell him that their kid is a sociopath. An evil teenage girl in a six-year-old boy's body. But the teacher said, "Pretty much." 

I asked every single person I came across over the weekend what they would do. The concensus was, bring Charlie back to day care, and if there is even one more problem, go straight to the director. So I brought him back the next week. He was a little balky, but I think I felt worse. And then nothing happened with Alexander, and that was that. We're going on vacation for two weeks tomorrow, and then school starts, and Alexander lives in another town, so we won't have to worry about him until junior high. But I did chat with another mom who has also had some issues with Alexander, and it made me feel better--like I'm not crazy, and also not alone. Alexander, who is adopted, told this woman's daughter, who is also adopted, that her mother is not her "real" mother. All of these six years that I have been blogging and steeling myself for Charlie to get bullied about his adorable face, this other mom has been steeling herself for her daughter to get harrassed for being Chinese with a white mom. And here we have Alexander, who is himself Guatemalan with white parents, parents who are genuinely nice people who have no idea that their kid behaves like this, or they wouldn't keep coming up to us at free outdoor concerts at our school and saying things like "Hey Charlie! D'ja play baseball today?" with accompanying mime routine of swinging a bat. Because yes, Fred, yes he did, and your kid tagged him out at third and then yelled "You're OUT! You're OUT!" in his face no less than 50 times, which wasn't very much fun at all, so thank you for reminding us of that.

I'm telling you all of this because I would like to know what I'm supposed to do the next time someone teases one of my kids for any reason--pajamas, freckles, little ear, Sesame Street Muppet name--besides flip out and drag them to work with me. I really don't know what we adults are supposed to do besides tear apart the nasty other children on our blogs. Please make suggestions in comments. Has your kid been teased or bullied? How did you handle it?

I have a cool new phone with the Internet right on it, but apparently Typepad, my otherwise awesome blogging platform, does not do a good job supporting the Droid phone customer. In other words, in theory, I could be live-blogging our endlessly fascinating family vacation, but I might not be able to figure out how. Write your comments so I'll have a big stack of suggestions waiting for me for back to school in two weeks! 

Cars... and Cousins

While I was in Las Vegas, Charlie installed a piece of his car collection in the library display case. He had the opportunity to show off his collection in the fall, but he was unable to part with it at that time. So I guess he's growing up. 

Summer is too. On Friday night, she bridged from Brownies to Juniors. Charlie had his name in the paper for getting a hit in T-ball; Summer's picture will be in the paper for bridging. And what is better than getting in the paper? 

Last week, at the third grade ethnic luncheon, watching Summer and her classmates do a French Canadian folk dance, I got that weird time tunnel feeling, and suddenly everyone was 18 and going to the prom and I had to take deep breaths. 

But then sometimes I feel like I'm going to be changing poop diapers until I'm dead. 

Speaking of poop diapers, meet Max and Hudson. We are so happy for Alissa and Eric, and for ourselves, because what is cuter than twin baby cousins? Max and Hudson, we have been waiting for you. We are plan to dress you in all sorts of mortifying matching outfits.  Then, when you're 12 years old, Oscar will teach you how to hotwire golf carts. 

They are tornado babies--Alissa's water broke the day of the tornadoes in Western Mass. So they are badass from the get go. We love them. A lot. 

Boston vs. Chicago vs. New York

The Chicago Cubs played at Fenway for the first time since 1918. That's just the sort of thing that gets us going. So we went. And during batting practice, Cub reliever Carlos Marmol gave Summer and Charlie something to smile about: 

Prior to this adorableness, we rode the Swan Boats, my first time. 

Then Summer turned nine, and for this, we went to New York. Here she is on the Central Park carousel. 

Doesn't she look nine?