All Rileyed Up

It’s been a long day at school.

Dad is out of town.

It’s bedtime.

Yet she’s still trying to finish eating her late dinner.

Little No Limit is clearly reaching her breaking point [as are we all, my friend... as are we all] when it happens: the seat she is sitting in at the dinner table falls over. It is a bench, like, a picnic bench. That was the kind of seating I wanted at the dinner table. Don’t ask why. I just did. The bench fell over and while she started off sitting on top of the bench, she wound up being underneath the bench by the time it fell. How do children do that? Are they all as lithe as a friggin’ contortiontist/laser-security-decoder?

So Little No Limit wound up under the bench, at which she burst into tears. Huge, tired, loud tears.

As for me, I was tired. I was worn out from my day, not really in the mood to deal with Crying Child Def Con Four. But there is something about your own child’s cry that you cannot ignore. She may be five now, but when she makes that sound, I suddenly feel I ought to check my boobs lest they be lactating. Sorry if that was too gross an image — but seriously: I hear her cry that cry of “I can’t take this world no more!!!!!!” and I just want to reach out and pick her up and make all her problems go away.

So I pick her up.

She cries.

I wish that her problems would go away.

She still cries.

And without much thought to the next course of action, I start to sing.

The song is a made up song. I used to sing made up songs to Little No Limit all the time when she was a baby. The lyrics never changes. Repetitive of the phrase “baby girl” and then details creep in about her, like “she has a mommy who sings made up songs” and “she likes to wear pink.”

They kind of make me laugh, these lyrics, because the “baby girl” of my song is a quiet, calm girl whereas the real Little No Limit is a decisive, vocal, emotional, opinionated, and exuberant child who cries when she falls randomly off the dining room seating bench and hurts herself. But she’s still my baby girl and when I sing, her cries goes from loud to soft to none. And let’s face it, she’s proabably the only human in history, besides The Boy, who stops crying after hearing me sing (usually, my singing makes kids cry).

I’m sure if Simon saw me, he’d describe me as the “Worst singing mother halfway between San Francisco and LA” (I’ve always found it funny how he gives people geographical descriptions for their horridness, “worst in the world,” “worst in Miami”, “worst in the room”) So I’m glad I’m not singing for Simon. I’m singing for a much more important critic: someone whose very look in the eyes can swing my mood. Someone who after I cackle out my best-to-key performance I could manage, smiles at me and says, “Storytime?”

Yeah, I got a story for you, Little No Limit. It’s about a woman who never knew her singing voice. Until she found you.

***

And on the subject of our daughters, check out this babseball video my brother just sent me. A man, his daughter, and a foul ball at a Phillies game — HA! HA! Too cute.

This was The Boy’s calendar picture for April. I love the umbrella. There have not been many showers this month in Cali, but I suspect we will still see flowers nonetheless. In fact, I’ve received my first bouquet of virtual flowers from none other than The Boy’s recent IEP meeting.

Last year, at The Boy’s IEP meeting, I was very frustrated by the triennial review. What bothered me was the school psychologist’s assessment of The Boy. It was as if she was talking about someone else. Her assessment of The Boy was so foreign from the Boy as I knew him, and I honestly suspect it had to do with the first time she met him.

The first time she met The Boy was when he’d just started preschool and was still scared of attending. Not so unique, right? Plenty of kids go through a transitional period. The difference between The Boy and typical kids, though, is that he has severe eczema. And when he gets upset, the first thing he does is scratch. Everywhere. Face, arms, legs, anywhere he can touch, he will scratch. The first time the school psychologist met him, he was crying and scratching nonstop. I admit, it didn’t look good.

So at last year’s IEP, they recommended Special Needs Kindergarten. I debated back and forth on whether I was going to sign the IEP or not, whether I would fight for General Ed Kindergarten with a shadow or the Collaborative Kindergarten where half the kids are General Ed and half the kids are Special Needs. After meeting with the Special Needs Kindergarten teacher, I decided to agree to their recommendations. This is partly due to the fact that a personal friend of mine who was a teacher at the same school gave me the dish on the Special Needs Kindergarten teacher and how amazing she was and how she’d had students from the Special Needs Kindergarten with better handwriting and reading skills than General Ed because of just how wonderful this teacher was. Strong words, no?

So that has been this past year. Special Needs Kindergarten with the woman who turned out to be the world’s best teacher. I love his teacher. I hope all future teachers are just like her. And what I like the most about her is that she sees The Boy as I do. I just attended The Boy’s annual IEP, and she said she’d read the assessments of The Boy from the previous IEP and felt that they didn’t sound like The Boy as she knew him. The rest of the IEP was just like that. The therapists, the teacher, and the General Ed Kindergarten teacher, all saying what I’ve always seen: The Boy is in league with his peers and doing well. His test scores aren’t topping the charts and he is a tad slower to complete a task than his peers, but he is academically on par and with that in mind, they recommended he mainstream into General Ed the rest of the year.

The Boy came home from his first day of General Ed talking up a storm about his new teacher. I emailed the new teacher to see how things went, and he said it was no problem and that The Boy just dove right into the new class full of people with no hesitation.

Fittingly, The Boy camped at Joshua Tree National Park over the weekend with Y-Guides and among other things, climbed to the top of some very big rocks. I am reeking of Proud Mama because, well, look at him:

Stand tall, son.

Conversation at bedtime:

The Boy: Can you leave the door open?

Me: I’ll open it after you fall asleep.

Close door, and approx five seconds later:

The Boy: I’m asleep now!

Me: I can tell that you’re not.

The Boy: Oh, okay. (pause) Now I’m asleep.

I open the door.

Me: Buddy, if you’re still talking to me, then I know you’re not asleep.

As I am about to close the door, I hear a whisper: “What if I talk like this?”

Thanks to Scott Gale, for doing this interview with me about his upcoming book, Your Family Constitution. Sign up on his website to read the first chapter and be notified when the book comes out.

1. What is your book about?

The book is a road map that parents can use to identify their core values and build effective family structure around them.

2. What prompted you to write this book?

I had a Mother’s Day meltdown with my son that culminated with me walking 14 miles homes. It gave me a lot of time to think and made me realize the need for change within my own family. After completing the Family Constitution for my family and living with it for a while, I decided to share it with other parents through this book.

3. Who do you hope will read this book?

Any parents with kids in the home or anyone thinking of becoming a parent.

4. What are the top 3 messages you hope to get across to your readers?

1) Clarity, consistency and commitment are the three keys to effective family management
2) Failure to step back and plan because you are too busy only fuels the fire of frustration and chaos
3) Parenting is what you make of it. You have to make it fun for you and your kids. All the other good stuff will follow.

5. Are your wife and children excited about this book?

My wife is nervous because she feels like I’m airing our dirty laundry to the world; nevertheless, she supports me on this journey. My kids don’t really care, as they don’t sense any impact of the book to their world.

6. What was your writing process for completing this project?

I wrote a complete draft, then submitted to a few close friends for review. After I received feedback, I basically re-wrote the entire thing to provide a more personal voice.

7. Do you have any other writing projects in mind?

Kind of. I want to write a comedy screenplay about competitive eating.

8. How did you decide come up with the title?

I just described the product.

9. What was your favorite part about writing this book?

Even though I basically discarded the first draft, the initial writing process really allowed me to think. It was very therapeutic.

10. Least favorite?

Editing. It is like pulling teeth after you have read through something 100+ times.

11. What advice do you have for other first-time writers out there?

Start with a framework. Define your voice and your audience. Then start writing.

12. Where can readers buy/pre-order your book?

They can go on my website and download the first chapter for free. They can provide their email and I will let them know as soon as it is available for sale.

13. Anything else you’d like to say?

I want to reinforce how much effort it takes to make change in your life. It will always be inconvenient, as the life of a parent is by definition crazy. But, it is so worth the effort.

Go check out his website for more details. Thanks, Scott!

This post contributed to Thursday Thirteen.

The clavicle is a little bone in the shoulder area. It’s also called the collar bone.

The clavicle is the easiest bone in your whole body to break.

The clavicle comes from the Latin clavicula for “little key.”

The clavicle in the Boy’s body is fractured.

***

“Mommy!”

No one likes to hear this cry in the middle of the night. I stumbled into his bedroom and discovered that somewhere between sweet dreams and good morning, The Boy had rolled off his bed. He was crying rather fiercely, but I attributed the cries more to the confused arousal from sleep than actual physical pain. I swept him off the floor, gave him a kiss, and told him to go back to sleep. He did.

The next morning, he complained of pain in his neck/shoulder area. I figured stiff neck or some type of muscle spasm and gave him a hot wrap until he left for school. I sent an email to the teacher and asked that she not let him participate in PE. She told me after school that he was so uncomfortable, she wound up telling him to lie down and rest for the latter half of the school day.

He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in mild discomfort. I patiently administered kisses and hugs and all the frozen blueberries his heart desired instead of accomplishing anything on my To Do list (but hey, I usually ignore it for lesser reasons than this) and hoped he would be fine by morning.

Morning arrived, and pain was clearly still in-house. He cried to move, he cried to change, he cried in the bath. Husband, the man who never wants to go to the doctor, suggested we take The Boy in for a visit.

***

I take The Boy into the examination room where we have been so many times for eczema outbreaks he knows immediately that I will be reading Curious George to him. That George, calling the fire department, escaping from prison, and flying away with balloons. He so crazy.

Good Doc comes in, I brief her on the situation, and she says, “I bet he fractured his clavicle.” She touches him here and there until her prodding produces the six-year-old exclamation she’s looking for: “Ouch!”

She nods again. “Yeah, the clavicle.”

She puts him in a sling and sends me to the imaging center, where I excite The Boy with the idea of “cameras that take pictures of bones!”

The X-rays are taken and the doctors concur: yes, a clavicle fracture. The Boy is so awed by the X-rays they make photocopies for him as a parting gift.

I hold the black and white paper in my hands, these pictures of his bones. I have another stack of black and white copied pictures of him. His sonograms. Over six years ago, I spent hours gazing at blurred images of a head, a heart, a footprint. Whenever I looked at them, I felt incredibly aware of his life inside me, his movements, his kicks. I look at his x-rays now, and six years later, I’m still aware of that kick in my side, that extra flutter in my heart. He’s grown so much, but he’s still so fragile. Just like me.

We show up to school late, and I walk him to class. Just before we reach it, he lets go of my hand and says he doesn’t need to hold it. “You don’t need to come in,” he says, but he does give me a big hug. I watch from the doorway and he enters his classroom, arm in a sling, brandishing the x-ray copies, saying “these are my bones.” There are oohs and aahs.

He goes to class with a fractured clavicle and gets himself some street cred.

I go home with a fractured heart and get myself some mom cred.

***

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The other day, the kids were folding the laundry in the bedroom and ran to me in the kitchen, laughing hysterically, holding my underwear. They asked me, “Who’s big underwear is this?”

In other news, I’m adding squats to my exercise regimen.

Oh. And I’m also creating an exercise regimen.

***

Little No Limit and I were cooking scrambled eggs this morning. She enjoys most of the egg-cooking responsibilties, “Me crack the eggs!” “Me stir the eggs!” “Me pour the eggs!”

I stand around and supervise, and when the eggs are poured into the pan, I hover about anxiously saying “Watch the fire!” and “Don’t touch the pan!”

Today, she was demanding more responsiblity, saying she wanted to scoop the cooked eggs off the pan and onto the plate, but the problem with her doing this is that she is more likely to miss the plate and scoop the eggs onto the range top, which is, by most people’s standards, not clean. When I did not allow her to scoop off the cooked eggs, and instead performed the action myself, she declared, “Mommy, I said ME do that — and you’re NOT me!”

Thanks for the clarification.

***

The Boy’s 100th day of school is tomorrow and his teacher sent home a note saying he needed to bring in a collection of 100 things. I asked him what he would like to bring a hundred of to school, and he said, “Can I have one hundred dollars?”

You and me both, Buddy. Now take your box of 100 paper clips and be happy.

It is the early evening and I’m sitting in a lit kitchen while the rest of the house is dark. Everyone is napping. There is little noise except the occasional dog scratch (they’re suffering from a frustrating round of flea bites). This sound of the quiet house unnerves me. I feel restless and unreal, like the part in Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” when he says “And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”

I’ve taken to walking the dogs at night (because I run into fewer small dogs who bark thereby causing my dogs to yank on the leash – one of these days, I swear they’re going to dislocate my shoulder or something). I always bring along my trusty little SanDisk clip and listen to music while I walk because without music, every little sound startles me on dark corners. This particular Talking Heads song came on the other night and I found myself grooving to it, which is probably why it is popping into my head right now.

I’m thinking of the lines “And you may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house / And you may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife” and I feel like calling up David Byrne and saying, “Yeah.”

Did you ever find yourself thinking you live too blessed a life? Some people might look at my life and say, girl, you SO don’t have it too good, because, yeah, we’ve got our share of financial woes going on right now. But there’s also some really exciting things going on (I still can’t bring myself to talk about it), and then there’s the fact that Husband and I have each other, we have amazing, thriving children, we have wonderful [albeit crazy and food-thieving] dogs, and we have friends and family out the wazoo. And to me, that’s having things good. Today being Valentine’s Day and all, I think I’ll just bask in this moment of a quiet empty, house and appreciate everything there is to love about my life.

I hear roller skates in the hallway. The Boy is up. He is in the kitchen now asking for water. Little No Limit just followed him into the kitchen rubbing her eyes. Little No Limit just reached down and bear hugged Her Name is Rio causing a scurrying of paws on the tile. I guess I’d better stop typing. Life in the house of Riley is noisy again, full of life… same as it ever was… same as it ever was…

This is who Little No Limit brought home today from school:

“This is Princess Beard!”

I have many questions about Princess Beard, beginning with “Where are your other facial features?”

When I asked Little No Limit where the eyes and nose where (I figured the mouth would be hidden by the ginormous beard), she said “There,” and pointed to the blank spaces where they should have been. I didn’t see them but clearly Little No Limit thought I should have.

I guess Princess Beard is nothing more than another case of not noticing one’s normal features in favor of the odd one. Perhaps I’m particularly sensitive to this fact because when people see my son, they often jump to conclusions about his skin. People see what is different and focus on it (and in some unfortunate cases, comment on it), whether it’s the kid with bad skin, the guy with the big nose, the woman with the wonky eye, or this guy:

MOLE!

Poor Little Princess Beard. Doomed to only be noticed for her abnormal chin growth (though I do like that swanky striped fabric accessory) instead of her evenly spaced eyes and button nose. Here, Princess. Let me help you out:

This post submitted to Magic Marker Monday.

Little No Limit pronounces some words differently than others and also sometimes mis-hears the way words are pronounced. On occasion, this leads to interesting cases of “Do you think that’s what she meant to say?”

Lately, Little No Limit has shown an interest in singing. She particular enjoys the song about a certain spider that scurries up the water spout, and then rain comes (and you pound your hands down), and then the spider is washed out, and the sun comes out (and you wave your arms around like a lunatic), and then the spider, our undaunted champion, climbs back up?

You know that one?

Little No Limit calls it The Bitchy, Bitchy Spider.

I haven’t decided if I should put a stop to it or record it.

(By the way, there’s a nice review of my blog on Do You Digg It. Check it out!)