Or at least that’s the size my giant three year old wears. Just a little something I’ve been meaning to post… Black background, light saber blazing, cape billowing in flames. Awesome. And totally age appropriate. I had to buy it (besides – it was the only underwear in his size at Target). And of course, I couldn’t resist the photo op. That’s right – I’m the best mom EVER.
3:00 p.m. at my parent’s house
Splash Down
Well the news wasn’t particularly good, but it could definitely be worse. As much as it’s not going to be pleasant (to say the least), we’re just grateful that there is a treatment plan. So continuing in the vein of taking one day at a time, we’re looking forward to getting Mom home on Thursday if all goes well.
In the meantime, Oliver and I have been hanging out with Dad, going to the shop and playing in the pool. We saw my brother Matt when he got back from work yesterday, and we’ll get to spend more time with him since he’s not working on Wednesday or Thursday. Oliver was fascinated with one of Matt’s bicycles and I think I’ve finally gotten him to realize that if we touch it and anything bad happens, Uncle Matt may put us on the next plane off the island. He builds bikes entirely out of parts that were purchased on ebay and through other resources he uses. It’s more than a hobby – to me it seems like borderline obsession, but a cool one at that. I tried to take a picture, but I’m not the best photographer (except for that picture of the twist tie on the hook – that was a masterpiece). So I asked him to e-mail me one:
We’ve spent most of our time in the pool with Oliver, and my father has come up with some great new games for them to play. There is the one where he swims the length of the pool and back underwater while Oliver watches (because Oliver is so good at following directions and staying “right there” until Dad resurfaces), the one where Oliver pushes him into the pool, and a variation on a game that Oliver calls “jump down” at home. In “jump down” he will pick the highest point he can find and then leap into your arms whether you are ready or not (although he does warn you with a hearty “JUMP DOWN!”). In the new game, “splash down,” the goal is less one of altitude and more one of force. The players try to make the biggest splash they can manage – preferably when someone fully clothed is nearby. I just can’t wait to try these out at the community pool…. Here is a picture of that fantastic “push Grandpa in the pool” game:
Now a responsible parent would have put an end to this immediately, explaining that it’s not safe and that we never push anyone in the pool. My reaction was to say, “hold that pose – let me get my camera!” Seriously – I think I have about 50 shots of this. Yes – that is the number of times that this trick was performed (at least). But I think that today when I was home alone with Oliver, playing in the pool (for TWO HOURS, god help me), I made it clear that it’s the push Grandpa in the pool game, not the push Mommy in the pool game. So hopefully, he’ll reserve that activity for Key West – you know, as a special thing between them.
10:30 p.m. at my parents’ house
A Useful Talent
I’m sitting next to my Dad while he watches (well, while we watch) America’s Got Talent. The only time that I ever watch reality programming is with my parents. Apparently, it’s the only TV genre that they can both agree on. They don’t watch the scary ones where people eat bugs – but they just love anything that involves dancing – Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance – and singing – DUH, American Idol. And of course America’s Got Talent has lots of singing and dancing. Since this particular night is one of the early shows, it’s the first round of tryouts and the acts include a lot of bizarre novelty stuff. Right now a man is swallowing a sword. Earlier a 7’ tall man (named GEORGE – like my sweet baby boy at home) wrapped a long tube around a volunteer from the audience. Then he threaded one end through a nostril, pulled it out of his mouth and stuck it into a bottle of milk. THEN he took the other end put it in his mouth and started drinking. He’s going on to the next round. I was happy to hear that we’ll be watching So You Think You Can Dance tomorrow night.
Okay – I take it back. I just saw a tiny autistic nine year old who sang before he learned how to talk get voted up to the next level. The tears are flowing.
Many things today have made me feel a little misty. Seeing my mother’s strength and courage, as well as experiencing the support of their little community. Key West is much like a small town in that people who live here get to know each other in the shops, restaurants and daily comings and goings. A woman who has a baby gear rental company, Holiday Baby, found out while renting me a jog stroller that my mother was sick. She was dropping the stroller off at the shop and in addition to insisting that I keep it as long as I need it at no cost, she told my Dad that she would come sit in the shop for him whenever he needed some help. The wonderful young woman who works part time for my parents and a friend of hers that works at another home furnishings store are going to arrange their schedules to help my mother complete decorating jobs that she simply can’t physically do on her own now. A woman that my mother knows has offered to drive her to and from her treatments if my father can’t leave work. Every time we see someone that has found out about Mom (and news seems to travel fast here), whether they are a good friend or just an acquaintance, they all want to help. And it’s not just the, “anything I can do, anything at all,” kind of help – it’s tangible, practical suggestions for things they can do for us. It’s pretty inspirational, and it makes me feel good to know that when I leave at the end of the week, my family will have a whole community eager to support them.
At this point, we have a plan for treatment, an incredible amount of support from friends and family both near and far, and we have every reason to believe that we’ll get through this again. Mom made it clear that she wants nothing but “positive thinking” around her. And THAT I can do. Surprisingly, in spite of a somewhat unhealthy amount of insecurity, this is something that I’m really quite good at. I won’t be sad or upset one minute before I absolutely have to. You can call it dissociation, you can call it denial – I won’t dispute that, but I prefer to think of it as “positive thinking.” So with that attitude, we’re now moving on to the next round…
6:30 a.m. on the flight from DC to Miami
Bars Should Have Umbrella Strollers
I just walked into a parallel universe. Upon our 4:45 a.m. arrival at Dulles Airport, Oliver and I were both half asleep and more than a little anxious (as I’ve mentioned before, that’s just the way we are). All of the expected obstacles were there: the juggling act with bags and a stroller, the long lines, the tight time schedule, and of course the fact that even though we called yesterday to verify our seat assignments, my three year old and I were not seated together.
I kind of knew this would happen since we didn’t buy our tickets at the same time, and they were reserved on such short notice. But THAT IS WHY we (meaning Chris) called to actually talk to a person at American Airlines who could verify that we would be seated next to each other. Not across the aisle, not in adjoining rows, and not at opposite ends of the plane.
With a flight at 6:00 a.m. and check in lines wrapped several layers deep, I opted for self check in. So I was electronically informed of the problem. I was able to fix our seats for the connecting flight from Miami to Key West, but didn’t have any luck with the first flight. This is where I can’t get anyone’s attention for 20 minutes and then when I finally do get a frazzled ticket agent to look at me, I receive the kind of customer service that makes people pull out hunting rifles and start firing at will. Right? WRONG. The cheerful (at 4:45 a.m. no less!) and accommodating “Sharon G.” not only seemed interested in helping us, she didn’t say, “excuse me ma’am, please let me finish talking,” once. Alas, there was only so much she could do for us. Even Sharon G. could not find us seats together. The best she could do was to seat us across the aisle so that we could “ask another passenger to switch with one of us.” Oh Sharon G., you are so naïve… People traveling this early in the morning have their own agendas and priorities. And they’re cranky. I wasn’t willing to risk things not working out and have Oliver, who can change moods on a dime, have a grand mal seizure when he saw that I wasn’t sitting next to him. Besides, my neighbor had the same experience recently, and not ONE person on her full-size passenger plane would acknowledge her problem, let alone help.
So the one glitch in the process was that regardless of how much Sharon G. would have loved to charter a private jet for us, we had to pay to upgrade to first class. As you can imagine, I was devastated. Seriously though, I wouldn’t normally waste money on something like that – but I didn’t see any other option, and the upgrade charge was only $90 per ticket. I know, that’s not insignificant – but in light of the fact that we were willing to pay a lot more than we did for the reasonably priced tickets we bought, I considered it a wash. Since this upgrade fee would be higher if done by a ticket agent, it needed to be executed at a self check in station. And to put a cherry on top of what was already one of the best air travel check in experiences I’ve ever had, Sharon G. came around the counter and performed the seat reassignment for me. The world needs more people like Sharon G. I am going to write a letter to American Airlines. And I’m completely serious about that.
So far, Oliver has been an ideal companion. It’s kind of like traveling with a good natured drunk person. He’s a little out of it, but happy to follow wherever I lead. He can be a bit loud at times, but he’s also easily distracted by the action around him and utterly enchanted with any redirection I throw his way. He slumped in the umbrella stroller during the entire seat assignment process and I had to check him a couple of times to make sure he hadn’t passed out. There was a mild fracas when he had to relinquish his blankie at security (as in “give me my keys man – hey, I want my keys!”). But I was able to whisk him through quickly enough to avoid a full blown panic attack. He was generally happy enough to just sit in the umbrella stroller and go with the flow. With all of the check in hoopla, we boarded the plane minutes after arriving at the gate. And when we got to our seats, he flopped down and gave me a big goofy grin that basically said, “I love you man.” Yeah – aside from the initial confusion, it was pretty seamless. Makes me think that bars might want to invest in large umbrella strollers for their patrons who are saddled with dead weight drunk friends to carry home.
10:00 a.m. on the flight from Miami to Key West
Back Up In the Air, Please.
Okay – so it is actually closer to 11:30 a.m. now. But that flight was so short that by the time I thought I could take out my laptop, it was almost time to put it away. It has been a year since we last made this trip to see my parents. Oliver is currently splashing in the pool with my Dad. We’re going to the hospital at 1:00 p.m. to have lunch with Mom. She should have seen her cancer doctor by then – in fact he arrived on the same flight we did.
The first flight was absolute heaven until the moment we were told to turn off all authorized electronic equipment. I knew that when I informed Oliver that we would have to put the Wiggles away for a while, he would be most distressed. And if you’d call five minutes of hysterical screaming “distressed” then that pretty much covers it. He simply could not understand why I would pull the plug on Captain Feathersword like that. It was so uncool! In between exclamations of “Wiggles!”, “On please!”and “Boat!” – I decided it was time to be a responsible parent and end the madness. So I tried giving him candy. He must have been really upset, because he will usually come running if someone two floors away whispers the word candy. But he was so irate (that I thought I could BUY him like that!), he wanted nothing to do with the lollipop. Finally I managed to get him interested in the fact that we were landing, but that kind of backfired when he decided to associate landing with the end of his Wiggles viewing. So then he started pointing his finger in the air and yelling, “back up in the air! Please!” (though in between sobs it sounded more like, “back-gasp-up-gasp-air-gasp-please!”). Finally, the excitement of landing was just too much. All of those tiny houses and cars – how could he stay mad? He kept yelling, “uh oh – watch out!” to the innocent bystanders since it was quite obvious that we were bearing down on them. At this point, I offered him the candy again (why not? It was out.) and he said “Oh, a lollipop!” – like he hadn’t just thrown in my face minutes before.
Our next flight boarded fairly quickly after that, but I don’t even know if it would have mattered. Oliver was back to looking comatose in his stroller with his blanket wrapped around his head. Travel is exhausting. But he perked up when he realized that we were getting on another plane. That must herald the return of the Wiggles. Yeah planes!
Our connecting flight was on a prop plane – but NOT a puddle jumper. I will never fly on a cessna again – that was like being in Herbie the Love Bug. No, it was one of those little American Eagle planes. So this was also very exciting. We got to ride on a shuttle (look at ALL the planes!) and then walk up stairs (we LOVE stairs!) to get onto our little plane. As we all started boarding from the back of the plane, the pilot instructed us to sit in “the middle.” Since our seats were already in the middle, this worked for us. I guess they REALLY didn’t want anyone in the front of the plane because a formidable looking flight attendant was standing sentry at the threshold of what I assume must be “the front.” She very sweetly told everyone that they could really sit wherever they wanted since there were many empty seats (as long as we remained in the middle damn it).
Actually, our flight attendant was very nice and made a point of saying hello to Oliver before politely asking me to do a better job of tightening his seatbelt. But what was probably most interesting about our flight attendant is that she was (for lack of a better word), a tranny. That is to say that she was a man either going through transition or fully transitioned to becoming a woman (I’m not presuming that you don’t know what a transvestite is – I’m just trying to be specific about which direction the transition was taking). ANYWAY – I have to say, I just love Key West.
Oliver made a valiant effort to rally for round two of the Wiggles, but he started falling asleep as soon as we were in the air. I perused Us Weekly until I thought it looked like it was okay to use the computer (must have missed the announcement), and had just barely read through some things before it was time to shut down again. Poor Oliver, I had to shake him awake when we landed, and he was very anxious about where we were and what my Dad wanted with us (he’s still little – so when people are out of context, he doesn’t always recognize them right away). And he looked fairly stricken when we pulled into the driveway of my parents’ house (because you know – I might leave him there). But the minute he could see through the front door, he was home. And so am I. I don’t blame him for being apprehensive about landing in this initially unfamiliar place. He doesn’t know what to expect here. And neither do I. We don’t know what the doctor will say – but we know what we want him to say. We are past hoping for the best case scenario – but we’re now praying that it’s not the worst. But for the next hour or so, we’ll splash in the pool, enjoy the sun and rediscover all of the things we loved when we were here last year. For now, we’ll just live for now.
Just the other day I caught Oliver doing something that I now realize I do all the time. He wanted something out of the refrigerator and when I said no, he pretended that he didn’t hear me and opened the door anyway. Then he very seriously put an index finger to his chin and said, “Hmm. Let’s see….” And then I couldn’t escape it – every time I opened a door or a drawer to select anything, I’d catch myself saying, “Hmm. Let’s see…” He definitely got that one from me. He’s also taken up a quirk of mine that goes back to my college days. In my junior year, I lived across the hall from a group of lacrosse players. They were pretty friendly even though I didn’t know them well. A few weeks after moving in, I noticed that whenever I would see one of them, they’d always say, “Oh, HI Kate.” I’d just return the pleasantry – but after a while, I realized that they were making fun of me. When I finally asked what this “oh hi” business was about, they explained that I never just said “hi” or “hey” – it was always, “Oh, HI.” Since I’ve never much enjoyed being the butt of a joke, I made a concerted effort to stop saying that. Apparently it didn’t work. Whenever someone of note enters a room, Oliver will look up and say, “Oh, HI!”
All of these connections that I find between Oliver and me have been a pleasant surprise since before the twins were born we all thought he was exactly like his father. But that just goes to show how young personalities develop and change over time. I’m sure that in a few years, when he’s more of a little boy playing on sports teams and doing guy stuff, we’ll think he’s more like Chris again. And that can continue to change – it’s impossible to get everything from one parent. This is the reason that it drives me absolutely crazy when people insist that one of my twins is more like me and the other is more like Chris. George and Eleanor are still three months away from their second birthday and they have already changed so many times. I just let people say whatever they want and agree with them. It’s not worth the effort to correct them, but whenever possible I say that my children are going to try out a lot of different roles as they grow up and I’m always going to support them in that. Especially if they resemble me.
And I love now seeing the circularity of this in how I resemble my own parents. I swear that when I hear my never ending voiceover in the hours of video footage we take of our children not doing the adorable thing they were doing five seconds ago, I sound EXACTLY like my mother. In fact, while growing up I always identified more with my mother. I was more artistic and less athletic, I was a little reserved, I tended to think a lot about what I was wearing and I
was creative with my accessories (I’ll have to post some embarrassing photos of that sometime). But Dad had to get more than just his genes in there.Now that I’m older I see SO many behaviors that make me Terry Coveny’s clone. Just like my Dad, I must provide a solution for any given problem I hear. If you told him that you felt like you may have missed out on some opportunities in life, Answers Man will ask you a few questions and then take you through a step-by-step plan for how to think positively, take some risks and get more out of your future than you did in your past. There’s no venting with us – we are a strictly problem-solving operation. I also make it my mission in life to carry every shopping bag into the house in one trip. If I have a pile of ten items to transport from one room to another, I will engineer a construction that I can carry all at one time. I may not be able to see where I’m going, but damn it, I won’t waste precious minutes running back and forth. I need that time to clean up the mess when I inevitably drop everything. And of course, as implied above, I take myself VERY seriously . I will not be mocked (I’m getting a little better about that one – it’s all about growth).
Billy Joel could have written his tribute to change avoidance with me and my boy Oliver in mind. At a little over three years old, Oliver has fully dedicated himself to rejecting change whenever it rears its ugly head. For example, he loves school and he loves us – but god forbid the stars become misaligned and we happen to be in the same place at the same time. Chris and I brought him to an end-of-the-year preschool picnic at a new playground last month and he astonished us by throwing an absolute fit when his teacher and the other kids in his class began to arrive. You would think that they were all brandishing rifles or flame throwers or even worse – vegetables. He wanted nothing to do with them and repeatedly asked to leave. We could not figure out what was wrong with this boy who had been happily playing with us just minutes before. The answer of course was simply that they were not expected.
Oliver has some speech delays and qualified for our county’s early intervention preschool program. He started last October with a teacher coming to see him at daycare one day a week. But he didn’t like the infrequent disruption of his day by this “stranger,” and we all agreed that he would do better with more consistency. This meant that he would go to a morning class five days a week at a nearby public school. And as we expected, the change in routine was a bit rocky at first. He needed a few days to assimilate to the new classroom and new friends, and a bit longer to feel comfortable with all of the transitions throughout the day. Wouldn’t a child so adverse to this new hell hole be happy to know that his torture was coming to an end? Apparently not. For several weeks he would spend the entire “goodbye song” quietly sniffling with fat tears sliding down his cheeks. Finally, once he became accustomed to the new routine, he not only accepted it, but embraced it with the enthusiasm that he brings to everything he loves: dogs, finger painting, spontaneously leaping off the stairs into my unsuspecting arms – did I mention that he weighs 43 pounds?
One perk of his daycare situation – which has also caused me just a small amount of guilt – is that I haven’t had to be there for the early days of this drama. I drop the kids off at daycare at 7:30 a.m. (I have to get Chris to the metro by 7:45 a.m. – yes we are a very green family that commutes together, and it has absolutely nothing to do with gas prices or HOV lanes on the Dulles Toll Road). So he is there for a full hour before the bus comes to pick him up. Now that he loves school, he races to the door shouting “My bus! My bus!” when it’s time to depart – but this was not always the case.
The third morning of Oliver’s new school schedule, I was working from home and got a call from Gordana, our beloved and we suspect magical daycare provider. She said (and you must imagine a thick Eastern European accent), “Hello Katie, this is Gordana. Oliver does not get on the bus today.” To paraphrase, she took him out to the bus, he threw himself in a puddle and refused to get up, and then the bus driver said that they wouldn’t be able to take him like that. This is where I started to feel pangs of remorse for putting my baby through something so traumatic. Then Gordana told me that, “it was so cute when we go back inside. He says, ‘Bye Bus,’ and starts back to playing.” So who exactly is running the show here…? After I made a call to his teacher, it was agreed that reinforcing the little dictator’s behavior was not a great plan, and that I should pick him up from daycare and bring him to school myself. I won’t get into the details on that – it’s not my favorite memory. But after a quick trip to Target to buy a second booster seat (Chris had the “car seat” car), I made sure that he went to school that day.
Now, I am a firm believer in taking responsibility for my own decisions (well, most of the time), so I told Gordana that I would come the next morning to make sure that Oliver got on that bus. It was to be a stake out of sorts. I sat in my car outside of daycare at the arrival time and saw the bus pull up. Then I saw Gordana and Oliver walk out the door. Then I saw Oliver start flailing and protesting as Gordana led him down the path. Then – as expected – I saw Oliver pull out his power move of firmly planting his bottom on the sidewalk (I did mention that he’s 43 pounds, right?). That is when I swooped in, lifted him up, dragged him onto the bus and belted him in. I left so quickly, I can only assume that he said, “who was that masked woman?” Anyway – that seems to have done the trick. There were a few more mornings with tears, but his stubborn little butt was on that bus every morning until the last day of school.
