Langer Loksh

Have Not Abandoned Ye!

 

Have had dreadful computer failure involving sudden invincible McAfee firewall preventing my computer from talking to the Internet; lovely tech support people in foreign lands wishing me "Good Karma!" but unable to fix computer; and heroic save by genius Uncle Eric. Thanks you Eric!

In recent news: 

Charlie accompanied Summer and me to the shower for Alissa and Eric's impending baby 

TWINS

(I'll just let that sink in)

and filled out his baby shower gift bingo card with such classic staple baby shower gifts as "chattering teeth" and "pet fish." Neither of these squares was a winner. 

This evening I pulled a horrifying engorged tick off of Oscar's swirl. We have now had so many ticks--and it's only April 21--that I have to label the ziploc baggies with the victim's name and date. DUDE. WHAT'S UP?

Summer acquired a pair of pink furry boots at Sears today for the gobsmacking price of four dollars and ninety-five cents. So that was awesome. 

ALSO: 

I have been thinking about the story about Charlie getting burned and saving his whole family, and it just didn't sound right. I mean, apart from the obvious reason that it isn't remotely true. Charlie just doesn't really make stuff up. And his friend Andrew does. Maybe it wasn't Charlie who came up with that story. Maybe Andrew made it up himself. So I asked Charlie, "Did you tell Andrew that you were burned in a fire and rescued your whole family?" And Charlie kept on stacking his Legos and replied simply "No." So I said, "What do you tell people when they ask you about your ear?" And he said, "I just say that's how I got bawned." By which he means "born," but by which I suppose Andrew could have thought he meant "burned," and then added the rescue part on just for some extra drama. So while I do like it, it's not ours, and we're not using it. We're sticking with the facts. 

Photo at top of post: peas-in-a-pod hats that I knitted for the two babies. *squeeeeeee*

Alaska Chunk by Chunk, Chunk IV: The Final Chunk! Kenai Peninsula

A friend has asked for advice on traveling in Alaska with kids, so I decided to ignore "make system backup discs for new computer" and "finish article due Monday" and "find Valentine's Day Brownie patch for vest" and skip down on the To Do list to "finish blogging Alaska."

 

Leaving Denali, we found our filthy rental van had been hand-decorated for us by some other travelers. Lovely! We headed down through Wasilla, the Framingham of Alaska. (Sadly, no Palin sightings. I would have loved to snap Piper smoothing down Oscar's hair.) After so long on dirt roads in the wilderness, I was utterly aggravated to have to sit still for a red light. It was during this leg that Charlie gave us the quote of the vacation. After we told him we were taking away all of his Fourth of July parade candy (I can't remember why), he said, "This is a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid focation." Which only made us laugh harder as we ate his candy. 

Our neighbor back home had told us about the Iditarod Center, a gift shop slash hall of fame for the best-known dogsled race in the world. Believe it or not, no web site to link to. Here is Oscar with Balto.

We paid, I can't remember, ten or twenty bucks for a 30-second ride on a cart pulled by real Iditarod dogs. We liked it so much, we used the money that Nana gave us to go again, since Nana had specified that the money was to be spent frivolously.

 

We traveled on to Seward, where it was cold and rainy. We visited the Alaska SeaLife Center and got to see Maxwell the seal, who I'd read about before we left for Alaska. 

We took a harbor cruise, which is the main thing to do in Seward, even though seas were rough. The kids did more Junior Ranger badge work (how hilarious is Oscar in the picture?). We saw some Steller sea lions, otters, and puffins, but Summer felt so sick she had to stand in the wind on deck and chew gum and pray.

As soon as we docked, we felt well enough to clown around on the fishing piers, taking many a rejected-holiday-card-photo.

Next morning, the sun came out for our ranger-guided walk to Exit Glacier. It was gorgeous.

 

Moving on, we stopped at this lovely little Russian Orthodox church and caught great views of Mt. Redoubt. At the beach nearby we saw as many as six bald eagles at a time. (Not pictured below; those are regular sea gulls. Obviously.)

Next stop: Homer, hometown of Jewel (from the '90s) and Time Bandit (from "the crab show," which, seriously, was on TV every time we turned on a TV for the whole two weeks.). We visited the small and lovely Pratt Museum, which had an excellent little exhibit about the Exxon Valdez spill, including audio from Captain Hazelwood's distress call. Overall, Homer was disappointing. When you are from New England and you hear that there is a quaint town with cute shops, you are expecting more than what you get in Homer. HOWEVER. The B&B where we stayed, Brigitte's Bavarian B&B, was--and I'm not using this word lightly--magical. It appeared to be hand-carved by fairies from driftwood; it was in fact hand-carved by Brigitte and Willie from driftwood. The place teemed with flowers. 

This picture made the back of the holiday card. 

 On the beach, we made friends with an otter. 

And then it was time to go home. Two weeks in Alaska--not nearly enough for a state so large that if you cut it in half, Texas would be the third largest state. 

We stopped back at Alyeska, the luxury hotel where we stayed during the wedding chunk of our trip (that for some reason I have zero photos of). After weeks of clouds, we hoped for clear skies as we took the tram to the top, and you know what, it wasn't too bad. And throwing snowballs in July is always good. 

 

We finished where we started, in Turnagain Arm, on the way back to Anchorage and the airport and home. We got to see a small bore tide, which is a really cool phenomenon of the tide taking the form of an actual wave. It can be much bigger and more dramatic, but this is the only place where you can see it in North America. 

I'm sure I've left out a lot. And I'm sure there's a lot we didn't even do. That's all I've got! If I ever return to Alaska, I'm going to go back to that barbecue hut with the fried pickles. And I'm going to get a telephoto lens so I can take pictures in which grizzly bears appear to be larger than apple seeds.

Thank you, Jeff, for an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime trip. 

This was the front of our holiday card for 2010. 

For the complete set, visit: 

Chunk I: Arrival, Anchorage and Girdwood

Chunk 1.5 The Musk Ox Farm

Chunk II: Kennecott (Jeff says this one is the best)

Chunk III: Denali

Regis Philbin - n - My Mom - n - Me

When I saw Regis Philbin say he was leaving his morning show, I had to make sure I saw him before he left. I'd been once before, probably in high school, with my mom, who was practically a regular in the '80s. So I wrote away for tickets, and the tickets came really fast. I quickly cobbled together a human chain of babysitters and drove down to my mom's in New Jersey on a Wednesday afternoon. When I got there, I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Kid free at my mom's house? First time ever. I drank a huge glass of white wine.

My mom set her alarm and woke me up at 5:45. I could not find my eyeliner or my barrette. I thought I was going to be a machine. I thought that without kids, everything would seem like I was dancing through a field of daisies. It turns out that 5:45 sucks with or without kids. But we got ourselves together and got on the train. 

Then we lined up at ABC (pic at top of post). I filled out an "audience spotlight questionnaire." I wrote that I had won $64,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire when it was still a prime time show hosted by Regis. A producer type guy came and pulled me and my mom out of the line. He whisked us into the studio and said we could sit wherever we wanted. Then he pointed me out to the camera woman. I guess sometimes, if there's time at the end of the show, they put the camera on someone in the audience and "spotlight" them. So the whole time, I perched on the edge of my seat, with an extra layer of nervous energy on top of my usual high-frequency vibration. And in the end, they did not have time. Which was fine. I did not want to be on TV. I just wanted to see Regis in person, and sometimes he takes the day off, but that day he was there, interviewing William H. Macy. 

Reege made a big deal out of the fact that Bill and Flick have backyard chickens. As a chicken owner myself, I found it a little annoying. I can only imagine how actual chicken farmers feel about chickens suddenly being the epitome of Hollywood glam. (I almost never get to actually watch Live! due to the time conflict with King Oscar's PBS cartoons, but I saw it once a few months ago and Reege was chatting Reese Witherspoon up about her chickens.) But it was cool to see Macy--he is an actor I've always liked. And Kelly Ripa--forget about it! She is very, very good at her job! Funny with the audience during commercials, very much at ease as the staff swirled around her, spraying Static Guard up her skirt. "It's a dirty job, Bill, but someone's got to do it," she said as the audience laughed at Macy making an attempt to assist. I have no good pictures of Kelly, on account of the double-shot of nervous. 

Towards the end of the show, during a commercial, the producers conferred with Regis about how to use the time left. "The guy watches from the hospital bed for 13 years, that's something," I heard Regis say. When the show went live again, Regis and Kelly gave a special hello and blew kisses to a viewer named Vern whose home health aide had written in to say that Vern makes sure she puts the show on every day. That was definitely a better use of time than putting me on camera; I still break out in a sweat if I even show the tape of my Millionaire appearance at home. 

After the show I got to say hi to my sorority pledge leader (or whatever it's called, I can't remember) who is a producer there. She was lovely but seemed really busy, so I didn't ask her to take me backstage to see Regis. Like I said, I was just happy he was there that day. 

My mom and I ate breakfast at a diner and then took the train back out to NJ. I got in my car and drove all the way home. Even without kids, I was totally done halfway up the Merritt Parkway. Ugh. But when I told it all to my neighbor Ellen, who has a two-year-old and a newborn, she was amazed. "So there is life after three kids!" she said. I laughed. "Yeah, for 24 hours," I said. I picked up Summer at her best friend's house, and came home to Charlie and to Oscar, who had held it together for The Amazing Cousin Julia, only to ooze into a human puddle as soon as he saw me. 

And that was my whirlwind, madcap Regis Philbin adveture. Final flourish: here's a nice picture of a fruit stand on a Manhattan street. Also, we went to Magnolia Bakery and bought Oscar a T-shirt.

The End.

Vaderina

 

OK, it's not as good as the Passat commercial, but the tutu adds a special something.

In other news, my computer died. It took me a week to get a new one. I have yet to attempt to recover my files. FIVE YEARS OF FILES. They are backed up on Carbonite, though, so in theory, they still exist. Wish me luck. 

How to Keep Your Toddler Busy Inside During a Snowstorm

Me vs. Storm. Early advantage: me, as I huffed the fluffy stuff easily. I went back inside for the occasional break. "Summer karate chopped me two times," Charlie reported. I swiveled on my Sorel heel and went back outside, because at least snow is quiet.

Alas, the freeze came too soon, with much of my driveway still covered. Jeff slid home in his pickup to find me scraping fruitlessly.

Our driveway is a marvel of bad engineering. It slopes down. So when I'm at the bottom and I pick up a shovel-full of snow, I have to throw it over my head to get it off the driveway--WAY over my head, since we already have a few feet of snow piled on top of the stone wall thanks to the Blizzard of '10 and subsequent storms. And so, that didn't happen. I'm pretty sure I will not be able to back up out of the slip-n-slide  driveway tomorrow morning.

BTW OMG REEGE IS RETIRING.

Here are some pictures of some of the winter fun we have had recently. At the top of the post: Oscar empties my pots-n-pans cabinet and sets up a kitchen shop on the coffee table while his big brother and big sister are off at ski lessons with dad. 

Below is a picture of "Bob," who Summer ate for dinner one night. Note that Bob was also the name of that one-ball snowman from a few posts ago. Odd, yes? 

Then we have the kids and the neighbors making some snow tunnels during the blizzard, and then, Summer and Charlie waiting for the bus the day after the blizzard. Charlie looks grumpy because Summer was telling him not to kick the snow off the walls and down into the path. I kind of love the grumpy face.

Finally, the last photo, well, all I have to say is, You know I have never been a big Brady fan. But that game sucked worse than shoveling my driveway all evening in the sleet. 

Hot Dogs with a Side of Phonemic Awareness Testing

(Should you need any calorie-free fake hot dogs that you can pay for with invisible money, Charlie is your man. This hot dog hut was a huge hit from Santa, however it is flimsy and has broken three times.)

On Tuesday I swung by the school office and picked up a manila folder containing the results of Charlie's across-the-board evaluation. Since he is on an individualized education plan (IEP), the school system conducts a battery of tests on him every three years, and this was the year. All through December a variety of specialists yanked him out of his kindergarten classroom and measured his IQ, tested his reading, math, and writing skills, and evaluated his listening comprehension and oral expression. He thought it was all fun and games, and he charmed every person involved. One of the testers concluded that she wishes to eat him with a spoon. 

I sat at my kitchen table and tried to read the reports. My eyes glazed over the jargon : "Ability to effectively stabilize materials is developing and Charlie grossly used his assisting hand to stabilize materialszzz... zzzz.... zzz... I skipped ahead to the conclusion and recommendations sections. Bottom line: on top of Charlie's hearing loss and mild articulation problems that probably stem from the hearing loss and a little bit of oral motor weakness, Charlie is having problems identifying shapes and letters and even more problems trying to recreate those shapes and letters with pencil and paper. As I write it now, it sounds simple, but reading that 30-page report packet overwhelmed me. Isn't Charlie better at writing letters than Summer was at the same age? Isn't it OK to write your threes and sevens backwards when you're only five years old? 

I checked my email and Facebook to distract myself. At the top of my Facebook news feed was an update from my friend Mindy, a mom of two boys: 

"Mindy's Most Humble List of New Year's Resolutions for 2011:
#4: Be receptive and positive about having Evan evaluated for sensory processing issues. See it as an opportunity to learn more about him, to help him be as happy and confident as he can be, and continue to use his amazing mind, energy, curiosity, and emotional connectedness to bring joy to himself and those around him."

How timely, I thought. I will do the same thing. I will not freak out. I will be more like my friend Mindy. I will look at this as an opportunity to support Charlie in his Charlieness. 

Then I mixed up a batch of onion dip and employed a family-size bag of Ruffles to deliver the dip to my belly. 

When Jeff came home, I handed him the report packet. After he read it, he felt the same way: a little confused, a little angry, a little hungry for onion dip. "Maybe we made a mistake sending the kids to that touchy-feely preschool," he said. "They're such lovely children, but they don't know any letters." 

I scanned the report into my computer and emailed it to Julie, my friend (and piano benefactress) who is a speech pathologist in a school in another town. After dinner Julie called to discuss the report with me. She helped me figure out how to ask the questions I needed to ask, like "What is this? Is this a reading disability? How will you address it in school? Are you really going to eat him with a spoon? Because that's my job." I said to Julie, "I am afraid I'm going to cry." She said "Oh, everyone cries at these meetings. Seriously, every time." 

And I did cry yesterday morning at the meeting. But only for half a second, when I was envisioning The Harsh One (Summer's first grade teacher) standing at the front of the classroom reeling off a string of phonics syllables (eh, ih, ah, uh) that A., Charlie will not hear clearly and B., Charlie will not retain because they are random and meaningless, resulting, of course, in Charlie never learning to read and consequently growing up to be one of those guys walking up and down the road begging for handouts at the Alewife rotary.

The special ed teacher handed me a box of tissues and then explained that she plans to pull Charlie out of his classroom during reading instruction and give him the same lesson his class is getting, but in a small group in a quiet room. He's also going to get help from the occupational therapist, an adorable young woman with a wicked cute haircut, whose face got all red and splotchy when it was her turn to talk (Julie says that happens to her in those meetings too). The OT will see Charlie twice a week, working with him on both the visual processing and hand-strength problems he seems to be having. 

To recap: speech once a week, OT twice a week, and reading support every day.

Jeff and I emerged into the very bright sun in the school parking lot. "Now I know why our town taxes are so high," Jeff said. Charlie has a full-on horde of specialists helping him to be as happy and confident as he can be, and continue to use his amazing mind, energy, curiosity, and emotional connectedness to bring joy to himself and those around him.

 

Alaska Chunk by Chunk, Chunk III: Denali

 

On the way out of Kennecott I did my part to uphold The Pipeline.

Then I turned 39. The less said about that, the better.

We spent the Fourth of July in the town of Glennallen. They had a parade with candy. They don't have fireworks. It never gets dark enough. But the Lions Club puts on a free salmon bake--OMG DELISH. They had pony rides, and the local kids showed Summer and Charlie the business end of a hockey stick.

  

Next we made our way to Denali National Park, on the Denali Highway, another dirt road that the rental car company did not want us to drive on. I snapped this bald eagle, the first of our trip.

 

About mid-way we passed a kid holding a sign that said "Free Hamburgers and Hot Dogs." Scrrrreeeeeeee! Jeff slammed on the brakes. Feed a family of five for free? Twice in one day? Thank you, Great State of Alaska! And thank you, fine folks of Alpine Creek Lodge, who generously shared with us their lemonade, baked beans, hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips, and s'mores, and let Oscar play with the toy trucks in the common room, just because it was the Fourth of July. My kind of peops.

I then held my breath for like four hours. For real. I kept expecting the 100% fog/cloud cover to suddenly lift and reveal el giganto Mt. McKinley looming over the car, all alpenglowy and Brad Washburny. Alas, it was not to be. However, the next day, on the eight-hour bus tour, we got, like, two and a half seconds of this:

 

FOR LORD'S SAKE DON'T BLINK!

You didn't blink, did you? Good, because that's all you're going to get. When we arrived at the lovely Eileson Visitor Center, with floor-to-ceiling glass looking right out at the tallest mountain on Earth, our view was once again a miasma.

No matter. We saw plenty of caribou and moose, and even grizzly bears, which are the animal most likely to make me faint from fear! Fortunately they were really far away (see fuzzy blonde dots below). But really, why would anyone camp in Denali National Park? To see what it would feel like to be EATEN ALIVE?

 

The bus ride was just a tiny bit too long for a five-year-old.

 

After that, the kids filled out some activity pages and became Junior Rangers, which makes me almost cry just to type, because it was just so blasted cute, and because if I am reincarnated I want to be a National Park Service Park Ranger, mostly for the hat, but also just because. Except not at Denali, because, you know. The part about being eaten alive.

Finally, outside the science center, we got up close and personal with this l'il gal:

 

Much less terrifying than a grizzly bear, but really quite large, and she definitely could have trampled us if she weren't just as friendly as everyone else we met during this chunk of our trip.

Evasive Birthday Maneuvers

Schmoodle Schmoo is two.

 

Here he is with the Big Top Cupcake that Summer and Charlie carefully decorated for him. The singing made him feel a little shy.

 

That was at the bagel brunch we had last week before his cousins went away to Florida. Today was Oscar's real birthday (well, yesterday, by the time this post goes up). I had no cake mix in the house so we brought cranberry bread to day care. No one seemed to mind. Then tonight, I replaced the dead batteries in a Hokey Pokey Elmo we've had since Summer was two and wrapped it up for the birthday boy. He loved it.

I remind you:  no cake mix. But we did have apples and a pie shell, so our neighbors came and we sang Happy Birthday over apple pie. Again, the spotlight was just a little too intense for Schmoods. He overcame his shyness; now we're calling him Your Highness.

 

 

He spent some time trying to blow out the Hannukah candles too.

Apropos of nothing, here is Summer with her sea shell collection on display at the public library.

 

The Nod

Until a few months ago, if you asked Oscar a yes or no question, the answer would either be "NO," or a priceless little giggle. As in:

Me: Do you want more beans?

Oscar: NO.

or

Me: Do you want some cake?

Oscar: Ha ha ha ha ha!

Then Oscar learned to nod his head up and down. Suddenly I found myself missing that affirmative giggle. Here is a video taken at the end of September, during the week when Oscar learned how to say "Oscar" and also, how to nod.

He has since replaced the nod with a spoken "yesh," but I haven't got that on video yet. We're also in danger of losing "ababoh," which has even more syllables than it appears to, and which is how Oscar says "water." The problem is that, as you can see in the video above, every time I get out the camera, he screams until he is allowed to see the playback screen, and therefore it is very difficult to actually film him doing anything.

Thankitude

 

My blog! My poor, neglected blog. So sorry.

How about a little Thanksgiving post?

I'm thankful that my kids have four grandparents and two great-grandparents.

I'm thankful that Charlie's surgery succeeded and we have not seen the Angry Red Bulge in a whole year.

I'm thankful that I don't have to drive to New Jersey today, but sad that I'm going to miss the lollipop turkey. (I'll let you use your imagination.)

I'm thankful for our new piano (thank you Julie and Tom!).

I'm thankful that my nieces live only two miles away, and like to make pillow forts as much as my kids do.

I'm thankful that my consolation prize when the beautiful leaves fall down is that I can see the pond from certain windows inside the house.

I'm thankful that you won't make fun of my lame attempt at an arty photo of my fogged up window before the leaves fell. (I hope.)

Happy Thanksgiving readers! What are you thankful for?