Who Else Wants To Live In My House?

The Children of ECT

2011-01-24T09:52:00.011-05:00

On Thursday, January 27, the FDA will open hearings on the reclassification of electroconvulsive (ECT) machines from Class III to Class II medical devices. Coincidentally, that is also the day my entire family leaves for Disney World, the first time in over four years all seven of us will get on a plane. Our oldest son Jonah, now 12, suffers from autism and rapid-cycling bipolar disorder. Until March of 2010, he was plagued by frequent, unpredictable and violent rages that countless medication trials and an almost year-long hospitalization failed to stabilize. Not only couldn’t we take him on a plane, but it was becoming increasingly clear that it wasn’t safe to keep him at home: his almost daily attacks left me, his teachers and his aides bruised, scratched and bitten.

Why is this such an ironic coincidence? Because it was ECT that finally stopped Jonah’s aggression, that finally brought peace to our home, that allowed us to plan the paradigmatic American vacation so many families take for granted. And at the exact moment we push through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, rabid anti-ECT activists will pour into the ballroom at the Washington DC Hilton to convince the FDA to further restrict access to, or even completely ban, ECT.

Estimates suggest about 100,000 people receive ECT every year, typically adults suffering from treatment-refractory mood disorders. But there is a growing group of patients whose quality of life depends exclusively on their access to ECT – developmentally delayed kids and teens who, like Jonah, suffer from aggressive, self-injurious and/or catatonic behaviors. I met several of these families over the past year – including a 14-year-old autistic boy who was so self-injurious he detached his own retinas, as well as a 16-year-old – born with half a cerebellum due to an in-utero stroke – who vacillated between periods of uncontrollable rage and catatonic stupor, during which he would remain frozen, unable to eat, toilet or communicate, for up to eight days. ECT resolved the extreme behaviors of both these boys, as well as those in other cases reported in the psychiatric literature by doctors at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and the University of Michigan, among other places. And it did so without any of the cognitive impairments or personality changes trumpeted by the anti-ECT movement – data collected by Jonah’s school, for instance, shows that his acquisition rates for new material are as high as they’ve ever been, with no retention problems that might signify memory loss.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone would try to keep ECT out of the hands of a group that so desperately needs it, but that’s exactly what will be happening at the FDA hearings, which will help determine whether ECT machines will be reclassified as Class II medical devices. Currently, the machines are in Class III, the riskiest group, which requires manufacturers to file a pre-market approval application (PMA), including large-scale clinical trials. Because ECT predates the FDA's regulation of medical devices, however, the ECT manufacturers were grandfathered in without the studies. But now the FDA is at a crossroads: they must either reclassify the devices or force the manufacturers to submit a PMA – and the owners of these small companies, who aren’t scientists, have already stated that they can’t afford to do these clinical trials (let me add there are dozens of studies in the literature over the past sixty years or so that document the safety and efficacy of ECT, just not ones done by the makers of ECT machines).

I know that when people think of ECT, they don’t think of kids like mine who, without ECT, would be condemned to restraints, locked wards, blindness, even death. They think of Jack Nicholson thrashing on a table – even though by 1963, when Ken Kesey published One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, ECT was already being performed with muscle relaxants under general anesthesia. I’m sure it comes as a tremendous surprise to many that ECT is used with this population. But that’s why I’m telling Jonah’s story now, so you do think about him and his terribly afflicted peers, and so the FDA doesn’t forget them under the onslaught of accusations from anti-ECT groups that ECT is torture, a human rights violation. So perhaps the public may begin to develop the constellation of associations we, the parents of these children, have with ECT: lifesaver. Game-changer. And even, as melodramatic as it sounds, miracle.

(The FDA is receiving electronic comments on ECT in its public docket through January 25.)

Surprised

2010-05-07T12:47:00.003-04:00

In 2002, Andy and I retired my mother in - if I do say so myself - a rather spectacular way. We bought her a brand-new, three bedroom condo in the "it" retirement community in South Florida. Then, Andy, Jonah, Erika, Matty, Keri and I all snuck down to Tamarac, and we threw her a big suprise party in it. She thought she was going to a little cocktail party thrown by a friend of a friend, and she walked in, and there we all were - her kids, her cousins, her friends. In an instant she learned both that she had a new house, and that she could quit the crappy secretarial work she had been doing since my parents separated when I was seven. It was amazing watching her at the party, speechless, trying to stay upright while her world lurched beneath her. Her life would never be the same after that, and I remember being just a little bit jealous, because I thought then that I would never experience that kind of life-changing moment.

Until Friday, April 16, when we went out to dinner with Keri and Matty and our friends Lauren and Brian to celebrate Lauren's birthday (I thought), which was that very day. Only I walked into a surprise party celebrating my 40th birthday (which isn't until May 24). Now, a surprise party on a big birthday like 40 wouldn't in itself be a life changing moment, but it was the faces I saw as I looked around that truly stunned me. First I saw Jessica, one of my best friends from junior high, who lives in Seattle, and with whom I hadn't spoken for more than a year. Next to her was Anne, another of my best friends from junior high, who lives in Chicago. And as I was hugging Anne, I heard a laugh I recognized instantly - Katrina, a dear friend I met in childbirth class when I was pregnant with Jonah and who now lives in San Francisco.

Everywhere I turned I saw incredibly special people I rarely get to see: Jamie, from DC, who was inadvertently left off the guest list until Andy called her in a panic the night before the party, but who came anyway; Hylton, one of my two favorite poker buddies, from Connecticut; Joey, the other one, from Maryland; my cousins Darlene and Wayne, who not only came from North Jersey but did so even though they were mired in preparations for their daughter's bat mitzvah the following weekend; and two of our favorite couples, Dan and Lynne, also from North Jersey, and Drew and Meera, from NYC. And that's not even counting all the wonderful local friends who were there. To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement of the highest order.

It's not that I didn't know I had good friends before that night. But I guess I hadn't realized, literally, how far they would go for me. Life is busy; my old friends and I don't gab on the phone like we used to. When we do talk, a couple of times a year, we have so much to catch up on, so many cute stories about our kids to share, we gloss over our frustrations, our disappointments, and our failures (or, at least, I do. It wouldn't surprise me if my amazing friends don't experience any of these). We just don't rely on each other the way we used to. And so, we don't have many opportunities to show the people we love how much they mean to us.

In February, I was invited to a surprise party for my college roommate, Alycia, who lives outside of DC. Andy and I had plans for that night, but no state dinners were involved, so I assume we could have gotten out of them. I didn't go because it seemed too far to go for one night, and because I reasoned it would be more fun to go on a day when I could have Alycia all to myself, rather than share her with 50 other guests, most of whom I didn't know.

Now, I'm sorry. From now on, I will make that drive, or take that flight. Because seeing as clearly as I saw that night, knowing with absolute certainty that, no matter what happens, I will never be alone in the universe - well, if it didn't change my world the way my mother's was in 2002, it certainly did change my worldview. And I can't wait to have the chance to do that for someone else.

Thanks everybody!

This Is Not My Beautiful Child

2010-05-03T15:50:00.003-04:00

Okay, you can laugh now.

Remember when I wrote this about how wonderful Molly was? How sweet? Easygoing? That Molly is gone, I'm afraid, replaced with a strong-willed, stubborn, devil-child.

Maybe I'm exaggerating. Slightly. But at just one month shy of her second birthday, Molly has entered the Terrible Twos with a vengeance. Only problem? Molly doesn't realize she's just 2. She thinks she's 8.

Thanks to my ~~sworn enemy~~ good friend Sally, whose own not-quite-2-year-old daughter Maeve is already in underwear, Molly has discovered the joy of the potty. The joy of sitting on the potty. The joy of throwing toilet paper in the potty. The joy of washing one's hands after going to the potty. And, of course, the joy of screaming "PEE ON POTTY!" at the top of one's lungs. She has, on rare occasion, peed on the potty. And I hate to discourage her when she asks to go. But I wasn't planning on potty training her for another year or so. The truth is, she still probably won't be trained for another year or so, but I'll be trained to take her to the bathroom every time she asks for the next 12 months.

Actually, I'm surprised she even asks to go to the bathroom; everything else she insists on doing herself. Getting dressed or undressed. Taking off her diaper. Buckling her carseat. Climbing the stairs, combing her hair, brushing her teeth, putting on her shoes... You get the idea.

In an ideal world, we would have plenty of time and patience and I could watch without cringing while she tried to unscrew the toothpaste cap by turning it first one way, then the other, loosening, then tightening the cap. But I have neither. And invariably, every time we're getting in the car we're rushing to get somewhere, so there isn't time for Molly to climb into the car herself... hoist herself into her seat... put her arms through the straps... etcetera... etcetera. If we do have time, and she screams that she wants to do it after I've already put one arm through the straps, then she'll remove her arm from the straps, then do it again herself. "Good job," I say to her through gritted teeth. Hurry the f**k up, I think to myself.

I love that Molly is independent and wants to learn to fend for herself. That will certainly come in handy later in life. But right now? It's really annoying. Can't she be sweet and pliable for just a little while longer? At least until she actually turns 2?

"Nope," says Molly.

Why We Do This, part 147

2010-04-27T19:20:00.004-04:00

Andy and I are very particular about the sports we want our kids to play. We love tennis, running and swimming because they're aerobic (unlike golf) and because there are plenty of opportunities to compete at any age (unlike, say, lacrosse or field hockey). Soccer requirs too many people, plus a soccer pitch, which makes it impractical . . .

. . . unless you live here. Our critical mass of eight kids makes soccer . . . practical. Additionally, we have a real, regulation soccer pitch not a hundred yards from our front door, courtesy of our neighbors, who probably spent more than most people spend on their houses to take their relatively flat field, flatten it some more, and install official goals and boundary marks. And they're happy to let us use it, since their kids, one of whom is already in college, rarely play.

Now that the evenings have grown brighter and warmer, we're trying to get the kids up to the field to regularly practice their mad skillz. Or rather, we're trying to get Matty to take them up there. After all, he is European, which makes him perhaps not as naturally gifted as a Brazilian, but way more suited for the job than the rest of us Russian/Polish Jews in the house. At least he knows what a "corner arc" and a "dangerous play" are.

And so far, we're satisfied with Matty's coaching. He organizes a few casual drills for the older kids, and when the younger kids start rolling around in the grass or picking flowers, he grabs their attention by kicking a soccer ball as high in the air as he can, and letting them chase after it. I'm not sure what the technical purpose of this last part is, but it certainly makes Aaron, Gretchen and Ronan shriek in excitement, as the ball plummets out of the sky towards their heads. Maybe this is what's meant by a "dangerous play"?

Disneyworld Redux

2010-04-22T12:52:00.004-04:00

For Hanukah this year, I convinced our mother to take Declan and Ronan to Disneyworld instead of buying them even more crap to clutter the house. So it was that in the middle of January the boys and I boarded a plane for "sunny" Florida. (Note use of air quotes to denote sarcasm. It was not sunny. It was cold. 50 degrees cold. Not lounging by the pool weather, which is really all the kids wanted to do.) Mom wanted the Disney part of the trip to be a surprise, but they were still plenty excited to go to visit Grandma.

In fact, after a week in Florida that included two expensive days in Disney, I can't really say for certain which part they liked more--the Disney part or the South Florida part.

At Disney, the kids were impressed by the majesty of the Magic Kingdom...

...then stood in line for an hour to meet some friends.

But their favorite part, by far? The hotel.

Did the kids have a blast at Disney? Of course. But they also had a blast on the beach... in the cold rain...

At the museum...

And petting an armadillo...

...after riding an airboat in the Everglades.

It's funny, because all the kids in the house talk about Disneyworld like it's some kind of mecca. But once there, the trip becomes like any other outing that requires planning and scheduling and demanding that the kids stop playing with all the toy guns on sale in Adventureland if they want to ride Pirates of the Caribbean five times. As much as Disneyworld is all about the kids, they still need the structure to get through the day.

I did, of course, let the kids sketch out our itinerary and choose which rides to go on, but if I really let them do whatever they wanted we'd never eat something that wasn't at least 50 percent sugar, go on any rides that had lines longer than three people (read: all of them), stray more than two feet from any of the 47 pin vendors strategically placed around the park, or go to the bathroom. In short, being in Disneyworld is pretty much like being any where else: They're whining, I'm nagging, and we're all getting annoyed with each other. We can do that in South Florida for a lot cheaper. We do that all the time at home for free.

So I don't see any further Disney trips in the near future.

(Molly says, "We'll see about that.")

Please, Can I Take Him Home?

2010-04-21T12:50:00.000-04:00

Athletes

2010-04-14T19:33:00.003-04:00

Ever since Ronan first rolled over, showing off his amazing core strength, everyone in this house pegged him as the one true athlete likely to come out of it. I have no idea where he gets it, but Ronan is seriously built. He's got a six pack, sculpted shoulders, the whole nine yards. Pretty sweet for a 4-year-old.

Declan, on the other hand, was never much of an athlete. So when he started devoting his life to dress-up, we weren't too surprised. When he (and I) suffered through one season of soccer and he vowed, at the ripe old age of 4, never to play it again, it wasn't much of a shock. And so we guided Declan toward the activities a child of his nature might enjoy: Art. Drama. Guitar.

But apparently Declan and Ronan never got the memos on what their respective roles ought to be. While in Ireland earlier this month, Declan got bit hard by the soccer bug. And the running bug. And jumping bug. Before Ireland it was the swinging bug, and he would hang from the rings on the playground, flipping himself over and over and over until he was dizzy from the effort. Now Declan never walks when he can run and begs his father to take him outside after dinner each night to kick the soccer ball around.

He has become, dare I say, athletic. Or at least, athletically inclined.

Ronan, on the other hand, has become... not-so-athletic. He joins his brother and father on the soccer field, but instead of chasing the ball down the field, he practices his superhero poses. Ronan is now the child constantly in dress-up, pretending to be Superman. Why run after a soccer ball when you can fly?

I'm constantly reminded of how wrong our early expectations of our kids turn out to be. Anyone who met Erika at the age of 3 would have seen a girl constantly in frills, destined for ballet classes and braids. But 9-year-old Erika has no patience for such things; she wears yoga pants and t-shirts daily and must be reminded to brush her hair each morning. Hilary has long seemed most at peace with her nose in a book; exerting any further effort seemed to exhaust her. But now she's fallen in love with soccer as well.

I'm confident that Ronan will outgrow his obsession with dress-up, just as his brother did last year and his cousin did years ago, and look to more age-appropriate, costume-less pursuits. He may not be the athlete we all predicted him to be, but then again, perhaps he will. He is playing Tball this season, with enthusiasm if not expertise. After all, in baseball you get to dress up.

Ronan's Ink

2010-01-29T15:35:00.002-05:00

The Apple (and the Crinkled Nose) Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

2009-12-02T13:06:00.008-05:00

When the kids were babies, it was fun to pick out our characteristics in their faces. Declan has Matty's eyes and my habit of crinkling my nose when I smile. Ronan has Matty's mouth and chin, though I have no idea where he got that alabaster skin. Molly has Amy's hair, oddly enough, with my eyes and the same shape face as Matty. In short, our kids got all of our best features, making them far more beautiful than we will ever be.

But now I'm starting to see myself and Matty in the kids, and not always in such a flattering light. Ronan has developed a tic, a rapid blinking of the eyes that comes and goes. This is all Matty, whose own tic manifests itself as a guttural grunt from the back of his throat, which also comes and goes.

Declan just got his first cavity, a chiseled hole in between his teeth that I cannot believe I didn't notice before the dentist did. Here we're both to blame, both victims of bad genes coupled with bad oral habits. Declan now brushes, flosses, and rinses his teeth with a vengeance, as I hope his habits can outwit his genes.

What amazes me so much is that this is clearly a case of nature over nurture. It's not like Erika's penchant for jokes or Jonah's habit of saying, "Okay, bye," both of which are learned behaviors from years of witnessing their parents do the same. I think it's cute when Declan announces, "Look, I'm like Daddy," when he uses a piece of paper to floss his teeth (don't ask).

But what about when the behaviors aren't so cute? Who else can I blame when Molly goes through her rebel stage as I did; frankly, I fear for the 2026 equivalent of shaving one's head and piercing one's tongue. Or what about the usually laid back Matty's occasional temper, signs of which I'm already seeing in Declan as he dramatically kicks the floor when he's angry?

And I know this will only get worse. And I worry, as all parents do, about the high school versions of my kids, the ones who are taunted and teased for any reason, but possibly all the more so for their facial tics and bad teeth?

There's nothing like a child to remind you of all of your myriad flaws. I've learned to deal with my own, I'm just not sure I'm ready to deal with my kids'.

Tomorrow

2009-11-16T17:30:00.003-05:00

Although Aaron has started wearing underwear to school, he is still more likely to poop in said underwear than in his potty. I've tried every threat and every bribe I can think of - I even promised him that he could stay for lunch at school every day (something he asks for constantly) once he pooped in the potty three days in a row.

It's not like he doesn't understand the concept. At almost three-and-a-half, he knows that big boys poop in the potty. And it's not like he doesn't want to stay for lunch, or earn a lollipop, or get a Lamborghini on his sixteenth birthday, or any of the other insane rewards I've offered in my desperation to end my decade of diapers. It's just that his plan is to poop on the potty "tomorrow."

"I will," he vows sweetly, his big brown eyes open wide. "Tomowo." (Both twins are still struggling a bit with their Rs.)

And even as my eyes roll back in exasperation, even as I dismiss him: "Aaron, you say that EVERY DAY," I realize that tomorrow is also my excuse for everything.

I'll write tomorrow.
I'll run tomorrow.
I'll stop eating myself sick on matzo toffee/peanut butter ice cream/leftover birthday cake tomorrow.

All this time, I've considered myself in the throes of a mid-life crisis, when in actuality I'm stuck in a pre-life crisis, dealing with my problems the way my three-year-old does. Anything effortful, anything that requires discipline, and work, and sacrifice, I'll do tomorrow.

And I know that has to change, otherwise I'll have a lot of regrets when I finally run out of tomorrows.

So, I'm going to try, really try, to start doing more today, instead of letting myself off the hook by shifting everything to tomorrow.

Starting, naturally, tomorrow.

Why We Do This

2009-10-16T14:28:00.002-04:00

I love driving Declan, Ronan, Aaron and Gretchen to school. They always have such entertaining conversations.

Take yesterday, for example. The four kids started talking about how they would all be neighbors when they're grown. "I'll go to your house, then to Ronan's house," Gretchen said.

"Then mine?" Aaron said.

"Then yours," Gretchen said. "Then Declan will come to mine."

Somehow, this evolved into a discussion on defense: "I'm going to have two guns, one for me and one for Gretchen," Declan announced. This isn't Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, I thought, imagining this little band of armed relatives: This is Waco!

"What about me?" Aaron asked.

"If the monster comes to your house, we'll come and shoot him," Declan said, confidently. "And if the monster comes to Ronan's house, then we'll go there."

Of course, then the conversation shifted to something even more unsavory, namely, how they would cut up the monster into little pieces and then eat him. Then they would drink his blood. And then they would eat his poop ("Ewwwwwww!" Keri and I shrieked, in unison). So I'll just focus instead on how happy it made me to imagine all the kids grown, and so close it won't matter whether or not they're really neighbors, because they'll still talk to each other all the time, and spend their holidays and vacations together. And none of them will ever feel alone in the world, because they never will be.

God in your Sippy Cup

2009-10-14T15:33:00.002-04:00

We were sitting around the breakfast table yesterday, when the conversation, as it often does, drifted towards the metaphysical: is God everywhere?

All the kids knew, from their years at Jewish pre-school, followed by (for Erika and Hilary so far) Sunday School, that God is, in fact, everywhere.

Is God in the kitchen? Yes, He must be in the kitchen.
Is God at the table? Yes, He must be at the table.
Honestly, I was only half-following this conversation, so I don't know which of the kids then shrieked: "God's in your sippy cup!"

And it occurred to me, not for the first time, that Jewish pre-school is kind of like a cult. The kids come in Godless heathens, and graduate true believers.

I'll never forget one day, when Erika was about three, and she and Hilary, who was one, were playing with a toy kitchen. Erika laid out quite a spread for her sister, but just as Hilary reached to pick up a plastic treat, Erika cried out, "Wait! We have to say the blessing first!"

Of course, we as parents have chosen to enroll our children in this preschool specifically for the brainwashing, I mean religious education, they are receiving there. And it is important to me that my kids understand their culture, and the history and traditions which have shaped their parents, and their grandparents, and their ancestors before that.

But then the kids come home singing about how tight they want to hug their Torahs, and I have to admit, it seems a bit extreme to me.

The God part, that's hard. I'm not really sure what I believe about God at this point in my life, but the kids are always trying to pin me down: Does God make babies? Does God make cities? Does God love mean guys?

And my personal favorite: Do you love God?

The kids are pretty easy to distract now, but I assume that won't always be the case. Still, I suppose that the older and more persistent they get, the better they'll be able to appreciate that God is complicated, and personal, and that each of the 12 people in our family will probably have a different relationship, or lack thereof, with that most abstract of abstractions. And no matter what conclusion each of them arrives at, it's all okay.

Except for dancing around with the Torahs. At some point, I'm really going to have to put a stop to that.

Goodbye, Aunt Rose

2009-10-13T15:28:00.003-04:00

I want to live, and die, like Aunt Rose.

Great Aunt Rose died last week at the age of 91, after having been married for 71 years. She was put under general anesthesia for gall bladder surgery and sadly, never woke up.

Or maybe not so sadly.

It's never happy news when someone you love dies, but considering that we all must, this seems to me like a good way to go. She didn't suffer. She didn't have dementia or linger through a debilitating illness. She lived on her own until the very end, depending on no one but herself. She went to sleep and never woke up, and I can only hope my own end is as peaceful and painless.

Aunt Rose lost her sweetheart 16 months ago, and she seemed a bit lost and lonely ever since. She spoke often of Uncle Bob, always on the verge of tears, always with a longing I wished I could satisfy. She woke up to his voice in the middle of the night and often saw him walking through the retirement home they had shared for 30 years. But this didn't make her happy, it made her sad. And I think more than anything she wanted to be with him.

And now she is. And that's nothing to be sad about.

Bad Dreams

2009-10-12T14:42:00.004-04:00

Molly has been having bad dreams.

I don't know this for certain, of course, since so far the extent of her vocabulary is, "meh," which can mean all sorts of things (cat! dog! Declan! fire hydrant!), but not, as far as I can tell, "Mommy, I just had a really bad dream."

But there are signs. The most obvious? The scream in the middle of the night. Yes, I have been blessed with a super baby, and can count on one hand the number of times she has woken up in the middle of the night since passing the three month mark. Seriously. And 95 percent of those times, she woke up because she had pooped, which, I can only imagine, makes her not so comfortable. As soon as she's changed, she's reaching for her crib and snuggles herself right back to sleep.

That's right, she snuggles herself. Which brings me to the second sign that she must be having bad dreams: she wants to snuggle. With her parents.

This may not sound so odd to you, but consider Molly's bedtime/naptime routine: Change diaper (hers). Kiss on cheek. Place in crib. Leave the room.

This isn't my choice, mind you. We tried for months to sit with her on a glider and read stories, or rock her gently until she was close to sleep. But it was always a struggle. She wanted to hold the book herself. The amount of time she would allow us to hold her grew shorter and shorter. Eventually, she began to cry out if we walked to the glider rather than the crib.

"For Pete's sake," I imagined her thinking. "Can I please just go to sleep?"

So we let her. We lay her down in her crib, where she wriggled herself into the mattress (I guess she was allowed to snuggle herself), stuck her thumb in her mouth, and closed her eyes. That was it. She didn't even open them when we opened the door to leave.

So when Molly woke up crying, and actually wanted to be held, we knew something was up. We rocked her for a few minutes until she calmed down, then lay her gently back in her crib. She was asleep again instantly, the dream quickly forgotten.

Of course it makes me sad to think of my poor Molly suffering through nightmares. But I can't help but savor these brief moments, when my fiercely independent daughter is cuddled up against me, happy to be safe in my arms. And it warms me to know that even though she now shuns my assistance in any endeavor (with a resounding, "meh!"), it's still me she calls out to in the middle of the night, my heart she snuggles up against as she falls blissfully back to sleep.

We're Still Here! And Still Cute!

2009-10-08T13:42:00.003-04:00

I wish I had a good reason for our appalling lack of posting--We were busy prepping Molly for her upcoming appearance on Toddlers and Tiaras! Ronan poured maple syrup inside my hard drive! Declan finally eloped with one of his many girlfriends!--but alas, I've no such excuse.

The start of the new year is always hectic, even though you always expect otherwise. I was literally counting down the days until school started, thinking that once the kids were back to their regular schedule, so too would I be back to a regular schedule of writing and working. As it turns out, back to school time is as hectic for the 'rents as it is for the kids.

Of course, that's always the case; as much as I often long for things to get "back to normal," the truth is that there isn't really any normal. Not for us, with our combined eight kids under the age of 11. And not for you, I'm sure, no matter what your household looks like. Besides, what fun is normal, anyway?

So, in response to our fan (Hi Gail!) and family, we are in fact, all just fine, and will soon be back to posting regularly and entertainingly about our brood. Until then, here's a photo of my breathtakingly adorable children on Rosh Hashanah.

Still here. Still cute.

Huzzah for Declan's 5th Birthday!

2009-08-31T06:26:00.000-04:00

Declan is growing up. I hate to say he's maturing, since his behavior is by all standards often very immature ("poopy" is still one of his favorite words), but I suppose he is maturing through the typical stages of a boy.

He now insists upon using the men's room by himself when we're out, rather than go into the women's room with me. He's not nearly as clingy or affectionate as he used to be; he's sometimes aloof and distant and will grace me with just a perfunctory peck on the cheek at bedtime (clearly he's already learning how to drive women crazy). He's got an attitude and isn't afraid to use it. He's become brazen and sometimes disrespectful. He randomly started calling me "Sweet Betty" on our vacation (the fact that I couldn't stop laughing only made it worse).

Of course, this new "mature" Declan isn't all bad. He's become interested in longer chapter books and has patiently listened his way through Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson. After three years of asking for guitar lessons, he'll finally start this year and couldn't be more excited. While on vacation in Colonial Williamsburg, he was held rapt by the historical reenactments and presentations while Ronan played in the dirt.

After we returned from vacation, Declan was playing with his cousins and raced by me, galloping on a "horse" and waving a sword in the air.

"Are you a brave knight?" I asked.

"No, I'm George Washington fighting the Indians!" he replied, recalling his history from our visit to Mount Vernon.

So while I may bemoan the cuddly little mama's boy I'm quickly losing, I do look forward to seeing the (mature) boy Declan will become.

As soon as he stops yelling, "Poopy!" all the time.

All American Vacation

2009-08-25T10:52:00.010-04:00

We took our first family vacation this summer.

It's not our first trip away, of course; we often travel to Ireland to visit Matty's family and Florida to visit mine, but until now our travels have always centered on family. This time we were on our own.

(Except for a few days in the middle when we visited my cousins in Asheville, NC.)

We went on a good ol' fashioned Road Trip, making our way from Philadelphia through Colonial Williamsburg, the aformentioned Asheville, and Washington D.C., with stops for real North Carolina BBQ, a great bowl of matzo ball soup, and some caverns along the way.

We came home with an $80 souvenir from Tennessee, a very dirty car, and a lot of wonderful memories.

Our trip did not start well. I forgot my shoes and we had to go back home to get them. Molly had a huge poop while we were crawling through traffic; by the time we stopped to change her it had leaked all over her carseat (and her). Ronan had to poop so suddenly and urgently that we had to pull over and have him poop in a plastic bag. This was all before we even hit Baltimore.

But things picked up. The kids fell asleep. And we arrived in Colonial Williamsburg tired but happy. We spent two days there, during which the kids dressed in period garb, trained to be a soldier, learned to work a farm like their forefathers, and marched in a fife and drum parade. They learned how to write with a quill and how to split a log. They watched Benedict Arnold ride into town and learned of his treason. They had fun.

From there we headed to Chapel Hill, about halfway between Williamsburg and Asheville. We ate some fabulous BBQ and pie and drove through the town, stopping to wander the stands of a local farmers' market. We were in Asheville after lunch, where we spent three days with two of my cousins and their children. They mined for gems, played on the playground, and went to a children's museum. They had fun.

We stopped in Natural Bridge, Virginia on the way to D.C. to break up the trip, and toured the deepest caverns on the East coast. The kids held up well in the car all day, "reading" comic books, listening to books on tape, watching movies, and coloring. But we were all happy to finally arrive in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside D.C. and where we stayed for two nights.

In D.C., despite the heat, the kids enjoyed the Air and Space Museum and American History Museum, though they were unimpressed by seeing the real live actual ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in the movie or the actual kitchen in which Julia Child cooked and whose refrigerator featured a magnet from our friend's former restaurant in Somerville, Massachusetts. But they had fun.

On the final day of our trip we went to Mount Vernon to explore George Washington's estate and history. It was probably the highlight of everyone's vacation, and not just because the boys got replica guns and we got to eat a very good meal in the colonial tavern. The boys got to dress up, Molly got to crawl around the grounds released from the confines of her stroller, and Matty and I got a chance to walk through history, something we both, though avid fans, don't get to do very much.

After a short three hour jaunt back to Philadelphia, we were all happy to be home, and back to playing with cousins and sisters and brothers-in-law. And Matty, who was opposed to the trip from the start, is already planning our next road trip to Florida. Or maybe Canada. Who knows? Maybe we'll even go somewhere we don't have any family...

Behold, the Amazing Walking Baby!

2009-08-24T17:57:00.004-04:00

At 14 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, I present to you, the amazing, the wondrous, the perambulating...

Silver Linings, Part 2

2009-08-22T07:30:00.002-04:00

Last night, Jonah, Erika, Hilary and I went to the end-of-summer "prom" at Camp Joy, the camp for developmentally disabled children and adults that Jonah went to for the three weeks he didn't have summer school. We got there a little late, and the party was already underway, but our arrival caused the kind of stir I would previously have attributed to celebrities on the Brangelina level. For once, it wasn't about Erika's beautiful red hair, or Hilary's radiant smile - it was all about Jonah. The campers and the counselors wanted to spin with him to the Macarena, or his new, second-favorite song, the YMCA. They wanted to hug him, tickle him, and bring him cake. I almost cried, I was so touched by the affection everyone clearly had for him.

Many well-meaning friends, acquaintances, and even strangers have complimented me over the years about how well Andy and I have dealt with Jonah's autism, and I've always chafed under their praise. We adapted, as all parents do - despite the many protestations I've heard: "I could never handle it." But the real admiration should be showered on those who choose to work with these difficult children. I can't tell you how many amazing people I've met since Jonah was diagnosed - those with incredible patience, perseverance, and love, love, love for kids who - believe me - aren't always easy to love. I could name them, but I'd be afraid of leaving someone out.

I took this picture of Jonah and Sam, a Camp Joy counselor, last night. Sam is off to his freshman year of college this year, to study special education and psychology, but another counselor told me that Sam started volunteering at the camp when he was about ten years old. Ten years old! If I had never had a child with a disability, I would never have met Sam and all the others like him, people whose passion never fails to sustain and inspire me. It's not a hermit crab, but this silver lining is infinitely more precious.

Pickle Diet

2009-08-19T08:30:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, Hilary informed me, "I'm going on a pickle diet."

"What does that mean?" I asked. "You mean, you're going to eat only pickles?"

"No," she said. "I'm going to stop eating pickles until I'm as skinny as Erika."

Wow. So many thoughts were swirling through my head - Is Erika really that much thinner than Hilary? This is all Hannah Montana's fault - I blurted out the first coherent sentence I could put together: "Honey, pickles don't make you fat."

In retrospect, that was probably beside the point.

This isn't the first time I've had a conversation like this with one of my daughters: when Erika was about six, she rejected her wardrobe of classic, little-girl dresses with empire waists because they made her, in her words, "look fat." It doesn't matter how careful I am not to lament in front of my kids about the ten pounds I just can't seem to lose - it's not big news that our culture is weight-obsessed. When Hilary was four, she had pneumonia and didn't eat for a week. When she finally returned to pre-school, the teachers couldn't stop gushing about how fabulous she looked.

But as much as I want my kids to have healthy body-images, I also don't want them to think that weight is unimportant. I never want them to have to deal with the social and physical consequences of being fat. They're not even close, not now, but frankly, virtually everyone in both Andy's and my families has struggled with weight issues at some point. It's unlikely that any of the kids (except possibly Aaron) will ever be able to eat whatever s/he wants, whenever s/he wants, without care.

Let me just say, it's an incredible fine line between raising healthy eaters and repressed, mother-hating anorexics. The best thing I feel I can do for my kids is teach them moderation, and praise them for making healthy choices. Sometimes, when they come to me for a snack, I'll ask them if they're really hungry. Needless to say, like every mother (especially of daughters), I carefully weigh each word that comes out of my mouth on this topic.

Or maybe I should just encourage them to eat more pickles.

Silver Linings

2009-08-17T08:30:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, we were driving in the car, when somehow we started talking about how tough life is for people with different disabilities. Then Erika pointed out that, although she would never want to be blind, it would be nice to be able to have a seeing-eye dog that you could take everywhere with you.

"That," Andy instructed from behind the wheel, "is what we call a 'silver lining.'" We then spent the rest of the trip explaining to Erika and Hilary about the bright spots that often accompany the most dismal situations.

That conversation seems so ironic to me, given that less than one week later, Erika knocked out her two front, permanent teeth when our boat, moving at a decent clip, hit a big swell none of us expected to encounter in the relatively placid waters of the bay.

I will never forget that moment when I picked myself and Aaron off the floor of the boat, and I yelled at Andy to stop, because I thought he was driving recklessly for the thrill of it (he wasn't), and I looked up and saw Erika in the bow of the boat, her face covered with blood. And then she was screaming, her mouth wide open, and I saw the huge gap where her teeth had been. We thought she lost three teeth, but it turns out one baby tooth was pushed back up into her gum by the force of the impact.

My friend Jodi and her three kids were on the boat with us, and the two of us hovered over Erika as Andy maneuvered back to the dock, trying to calm her down as she wailed that these teeth weren't supposed to come out, that she didn't care how much money she got from the tooth fairy. And Jodi and I both were on the verge of tears ourselves, because Erika was right, those teeth weren't supposed to come out, and they would never grow back, and how had it happened in an instant that my perfect daughter had, due to a completely preventable accident, been disfigured for life? I know that, on the scale of possible disfigurements, the loss of two front teeth barely registers - not compared to scars, burns, amputations, etc. I know that, if this is the worst thing that ever happens to Erika, she'll have lived a blessed life. But I couldn't stop thinking of her going through the painful self-consciousness of adolescence wearing a retainer with fake teeth on the front of it.

It turns out we may be able to avoid that retainer. Andy and Jodi's daughter, Jamie, found Erika's teeth, and, on the advice of my dentist, I pushed those teeth back into their gaping sockets (not easy to do when your hand is shaking like crazy and your well-meaning friend is standing right behind you yelling, "Don't touch the root! Don't touch the root!"). Erika saw three different dentists in the next four days, with many more visits to come. She may or may not need root canals in both teeth, and she'll need to have the baby tooth extracted. The most important question - whether or not the re-implanted teeth will last - is unknown. I get the feeling that it's unlikely they'll last forever, but the hope is that they last until Erika is old enough for permanent implants, 18 at the earliest. And sometimes they do last.

By the way, as if Erika wasn't miserable enough, she immediately had to stop sucking her finger - a habit she's been trying to kick for years - or risk pushing those very vulnerable teeth out of position. And she did it, with hardly any complaint. As I told her many times during the past week, I don't think I could have handled these events with nearly as much poise and patience and good cheer as she has.

And the silver lining? Andy felt so guilty he promised Erika the hermit crabs she's been wanting for the past three years. And, of course, as I heard her recount the story to a friend on the phone: "It hurt, but I'm getting a lot of attention."

Brothers

2009-08-15T09:33:00.000-04:00

Family Ties

2009-08-13T09:01:00.002-04:00

As I posted earlier, Amy and I spent brief periods at several camps before ending up at Blue Rill for the better part of our childhoods. What I remember most about camp wasn't the state-of-the-art facilities (not) or swimming pool, or the carefully orchestrated activities or the field trips to the roller skating rink or Color War or anything else that one might think is the marker of a great camp.

What I remember most is Herb.

Herb was the photography counselor, and though I don't quite remember how or when he became such a friend to us, what I remember is this: One summer, when my mother's back went out and she was confined to bed for a few days, Herb went out during camp to buy us milk.

That's what I want for my kids at camp.

I saw it at the camp I worked at this summer, Friends' Central, where Declan spent his second summer and Ronan his first. There were counselors who had grown up at Friends', and campers who were doing the same. All the staff knew and loved them. Camp was a family, open and inviting to everyone.

To me, that's much more important than the specialty activities or field trips or anything else. Because, let's face it, if there's one thing I learned as a camp counselor this year, kids find more happiness in each other than they do in anything else.

So that's why my kids will keep going back to the same camp year after year, to strengthen and build upon the relationships they've already begun. To extend their family far beyond the walls of their home. To have fun and be loved and love in return.

All from a camp.

Old Lady

2009-08-10T13:12:00.001-04:00

I feel old.

Not because of my three kids or the gray hairs that have sprouted all over my head or the fact that I'm closer to 40 than I am to 30.

It's because of camp.

I remember camp (that's me at one camp, above); we attended a series of day camps before settling in at Blue Rill, where we spent the better part of our childhoods. I was a young teen there, an assistant counselor who spent her days gossiping with friends and ogling the boys.

There were two types of head counselors at camp: the young, pretty ones who were on their college breaks, and the older ones who were, well, old. They seemed a world away from us then, so unlike the hip 19- and 20-year-olds I yearned to be. They wore bras (the college girls certainly didn't--it was the 70s, after all) and sensible shorts. They were over 30.

Now, I'm the old counselor.

I worked at a day camp this summer, heading a bunk of 24 6-year-olds, 21 of whom were boys. Suffice it to say that my summer was challenging. But the worst part wasn't the boy who pooped in the pool, or the one who gashed his head open and required seven stitches, or the one who simply didn't listen.

The worst part, by far, was how old I felt.

My co-head counselor was 26. My assistants were 14 and 15. The head counselors in the other 6-year-old bunk were both more than 10 years younger than I.

The young counselors and assistants ruled the camp. They were all great friends and chatted excitedly in between activities. They hung out together after camp and texted each other during the day. They were deeply tanned and wore dozens of string bracelets up their arms. I'm nothing like them.

I was once, a long time ago, but now I'd rather spend my nights at home with my kids than at the Phillies game or the camp barbecue with the other counselors. The fact is, I am old. Older than I was, anyway. And when I snuggle with Molly as she falls asleep or watch Declan jump into the pool for the first time by himself or lay with Ronan as he drifts off to sleep, there isn't any place else (or any other age) I'd rather be.

What Not To Wear, Junior Edition

2009-07-30T10:01:00.001-04:00

I've posted before about how proud I am that Erika is following in my footsteps, and developing a love of so many of my own favorite activities, including writing, reading, tennis and running. What I should also mention is that she has adopted my style of dress - if track pants, t-shirts and hoodies can properly be called a "style."

At first, I was thrilled to see Erika reject so many of the girly items she cherished as a toddler, when she literally wore dress-up clothes whenever she was in the house - out of the house, she would wear a dress, tights, and patent-leather Mary Janes. I could never understand where she had picked up such stereotypical inclinations in the first place - certainly I, a devout feminist, had never taught her that girls like pink, and skirts, and hair ribbons. But she had absorbed those cultural cliches anyway.

And part of me is still thrilled. I love that she has never asked me for Ugg boots, or Juicy jeans, or any of the trendy items that Main Line girls notoriously bug their parents for. But sometimes, when I watch Erika go off to school in her track pants, t-shirt and hoodie, I wonder if I've done her a disservice by being such a slob. I wonder if other girls will tease or ostracize her - if not now, maybe later, in middle or high school. Surely, there's a happy medium I could have modeled for her, somewhere between track pants and Juicy jeans.

But I've decided not to worry too much about it. Soon enough, I know my influence will begin to wane, and Erika will look to her friends for guidance in all things, including fashion. My strategy at this point is to take advantage of her Mommy-worship while it lasts, and nudge her so far down the right track that her friends will have a tough time derailing her.

Besides, if my biggest flaw as a mom is raising candidates for What Not To Wear, Junior Edition, then I think I'll be quite satisfied with my performance.

My Pet Shrimp

2009-07-24T16:12:00.002-04:00

I've had virtually every kind of pet imaginable, from a pedigree Guinea pig, to Siberian Dwarf hamsters, to run-of-the-mill gerbils, to dogs, cats, fish - you name it. I even had birds for one brief moment, when our nanny, Marina, surprised Erika one Hannukah a couple of years back with a pair of parakeets - which, we decided, would be happiest living in Marina's apartment.

But I can't remember ever being as enamored of any of those pets as I am with my three pet shrimp.

The shrimp - named, by Erika, Sunny, Bailey and Teeney, live in an eco-sphere I bought last week at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History when Erika, Hilary and I spent a few days in Washington last week. The eco-sphere is a completely sealed glass pod containing the shrimp, algae, gravel, bacteria, and a decorative branch, and it is entirely self-sustaining: the shrimp release carbon dioxide when they breathe, and the algae use the CO2 and light to make oxygen.

Here's the link, if you want to check it out.

I've been a huge animal lover my whole life - I still like animals, maybe not as much as I did when I was fourteen and spent my Saturdays cleaning dog and cat crap at the animal shelter FOR FREE, but enough to agree to add a new puppy and a new kitten to our household, both of whom will be arriving this fall (more on that craziness in another post). But I cannot get over the concept of the absolutely, totally maintenance-free pet. It's the plant I can't kill, the animal I can't neglect. It's all pleasure, no work - which, after a lifetime of hearing about how there's no such thing as a free lunch, and how I can't have my cake and eat it too, feels like as big an epiphany as Newton must have felt when the apple conked him on the head.

So, I highly recommend the shrimp to those parents whose children are constantly pestering them for pets the parents have no intention of ever procuring. They may not be as cuddly as, say, a dog, but they have many other advantages. Besides, they might have babies! Although the shrimp are specifically chosen for their slow and irregular reproduction (to avoid over-populating the pod), we can always hope. What's a good name for a baby shrimp?

Happy Birthday, Aaron and Gretchen!

2009-07-22T10:03:00.002-04:00

If it seems as if every other post of late has commemorated another birthday, it's not your imagination. Andy and I and all five of our kids celebrate birthdays between January and June (as do Ronan and Molly). By the time the twins' birthday rolls around on June 30, everyone is suffering so much birthday fatigue Aaron and Gretchen are lucky to get a dingdong with two candles in it.

I kid, I kid (in the immortal words of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog). What I meant to say is that not one child in our household gets even a molecule more of anything than the others, because everyone knows that would mean - in the irrefutable logic of kids since the beginning of time - we loved that child more.

This year, after two years of parties attended by family and my friends, the twins finally got a party catered to their little friends. And by friends, I mean the small individuals from their school with whom they'd been engaging in parallel play for the past year, and the 3-year-old goddess Margalit, with whom Aaron and Gretchen are both so infatuated they can barely speak in her presence.

I'm happy to report that a good time was had by all. While the kids bounced around to music provided by the twins' music teacher, the moms of the boys freaked out that their sons weren't potty trained to the moms of the girls, who all were. (Parenting boy-girl twins never ceases to fascinate me.) We then adjourned to the patio for hotdogs, hamburgers, and a cake that was, naturally, half orange and brown and half pink and purple.

As for me, I celebrated the end of an era: the baby era. I've always considered three the age of personhood, when you can start counting on kids to listen better, to talk better, to start thinking things through. Shortly (I mean it, Aaron), I'll be saying goodbye to diapers forever, just as I've said goodbye to nursing, bottles, baby food, and cribs. And I don't feel even the hint of nostalgia. Maybe when Aaron and Gretchen are learning to drive, I'll long for these days of complete physical and emotional dependence.

But I doubt it.

Home Alone

2009-07-11T11:50:00.002-04:00

I am all alone in the house right now. That might not sound so interesting, but consider this: It's the first time in 3 1/2 years that it's happened.

I guess that's par for the course when you decide to cohabitate with another family, especially one with five kids. And I can't really say that I've been longing for this day; the truth is, having a bustling house full of family, friends, and yes, chaos, has become such a part of my life that's it's only notable when it isn't there.

Like now.

Off now to enjoy it...

Happy Anniversary Amy and Andy!

2009-07-05T09:04:00.002-04:00

"You know what the worst thing about being a single parent to two teenagers?" a friend told me recently.

"There's no one to roll my eyes at during dinner."

So to Amy and Andy, on the 12th anniversary of your marriage, the best I can wish for you is that you'll always have each other to roll your eyes at.

Happy Anniversary!

One Crazy Weekend: Part 3 of 3

2009-06-21T20:00:00.000-04:00

Hilary's graduation wasn't the only excitement of last weekend. As Keri wrote in her last post, it was a busy one for Erika as well.

On Friday night, Erika made her musical debut in Seussical, a production staged by the drama school where she has been taking classes for the last three years. Only students in third grade and older could audition for the main parts, but the director of the program always likes to give the younger children a chance to participate, so she encouraged them to audition to play "mini-Whos." I was surprised when Erika decided to audition, for two reasons: 1.) we happen to be a musically challenged family, although she obviously hasn't figured that out yet, and 2.) the part involved about eight minutes of stage time, for which she would have to go through four months of rehearsals. In fact, last year, she declined to audition to be a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, because if she couldn't be Dorothy, she didn't want to be in the play at all.

But it seems as if Erika's grown up since then. In fact, learning that you can't always be Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz of life is a lesson many adults I know haven't figured out yet. Erika was happy in her role of mini-Who, and never complained about all the rehearsals, and all the waiting around she was required to do at said rehearsals. And she did great - especially in the final musical number, "Green Eggs and Ham," in which she made the best angry face of any Who on stage. Now she can't wait until the end of August, when auditions begin for the next production, Charlotte's Web. I'm just hoping for her sake that this one isn't also a musical.

I was proud of Erika's performances as a mini-Who, but not nearly as proud as I was later that weekend, when we ran together in her very first 5K race. We, along with Keri and Molly, ran as the "Cheetah Girls" team, and my friend Lauren and her daughter Abby (who was Erika's first real friend) ran with us. Three miles is very, very far for an eight year old (I didn't run one mile without stopping until I was in high school), so we took a few short walking breaks along the way, but the girls did amazing. It's so important to me that the kids grow up fit and strong, and I try to set a positive example for them (which is the only reason I play tennis three times a week, I swear), so I was proud, and Erika was proud, and I was proud that she was proud, as well as proud of her physical accomplishment - so let's just say that everyone was happy.

When it was over, as Keri already posted, Hilary, Declan, and Lauren's younger daughter Maddy ran in the track trot. Driving home afterwards, with everyone hot and sweaty and tired, I felt like a good mom. Heck, I felt like a great mom. I had spent the morning bonding with my kids, as well as exercising their bodies, bolstering their self-esteem, and laying a foundation for healthy, lifelong habits. How many days do you have a chance to do all that and still be home by lunch?

O, Beautiful!

2009-06-20T19:49:00.003-04:00

I'm kind of torn about the whole idea of "kindergarten graduation."

We celebrated Hilary's "commencement" last week, and it's true that she's now leaving behind the sheltered, nurturing pre-school/kindergarten she has attended since she was two years old (for the sheltered, nurturing environment of the wealthy Main Line elementary school she'll go to next year, but that's a topic for a different post). In that light, she is making a legitimate break. On the other hand, I would hardly call this the kind of achievement typically honored at graduations. No finals, no papers, no panic. Although she struggled with the subjects of swing sharing and glitter management, her "diploma" was never in jeopardy.

A few years ago, I read a study suggesting that all the effusive praise heaped on children today causes them to grow up with a poor work ethic and a huge sense of entitlement, so since then I've been wary about celebrating anything that required little effort from my kids. With Hilary, I've discovered, that can be said about most of her accomplishments - even her precocious reading ability, which has impressed both her father and her teachers. Although she was reading chapter books at an age at which Erika could barely read at all, I know deep down it wasn't because she worked hard to develop the skill. It happened very easily for Hilary, like it did for Jonah, because of the hard-wiring in their brains.

Of course, I'm still proud of Hilary, and I love her to pieces, but I think when your six-year-old decides to become an artist instead of a doctor because the latter requires "too much school," it's prudent to begin counseling her against always choosing the path of least resistance. I was, however, encouraged by the diligence with which Hilary applied herself to learning "O, Beautiful," one of the showpieces of the graduation ceremony. She walked around the house singing it (in a curious falsetto) so often that now, nine days later, none of us can shake it from our heads.

The pictures from the graduation all came out dark and blurry (serves us right for letting Erika take them), but you'll have to take my word for it that Hilary, as always, was beautiful.

Digging a Hole, Part 3

2009-06-18T17:15:00.000-04:00

What can I say? We're a hole-y family. (Ba dump bump.)

But seriously, what is it about kids and holes? It's like spinning in circles; an activity kids are almost compelled to do, though adults are seemingly immune to its charms.

Last month at the beach, the kids spent an entire weekend digging holes. Here's Aaron and Erika in mid-dig:

And here they are, showing off their work:

Of course, once your hole is dug, there's only one thing to do:

Fill it! Many times over:

Happy digging!

Sappy Days

2009-06-17T20:17:00.005-04:00

This past weekend was tough for me. Between Hilary's graduation, Erika's first theater production, and her first 5k, I was spent. Emotionally drained. Why?

I'm a sap.

This may come as a surprise, but I'm about as sappy as it gets. From the first notes of "Pomp and Circumstance," I'm sunk. Tearing away. Last week, I caught a glimpse of Hilary's class rehearsing their graduation ceremonies, and just watching all those little 6-year-olds file into the chapel was enough to make me start bawling.

Thursday night was Hilary's official graduation from preschool, and though I'm sure Amy will write about it imminently, I'll just share how unbelievably proud I felt sitting in the audience.

But frankly, I'm not sure why. I certainly had nothing to do with it; I wasn't in any way responsible for her being up on that stage. She did it herself (with some financial assistance and guidance from her parents). But something about seeing her walk down the aisle and sit beaming on the stage just made my heart swell.

On Saturday we saw Erika's first on-stage performance in Seussical, and I couldn't stop the tears every time I saw her on stage (thankfully, it was only twice). But it was more than just Erika. As the cast gathered on stage for their final curtain call, the tears kept coming. And not just for Erika, but for all the kids up there.

Then on Sunday, we ran in our school district's 5k. Afterword, Declan and Hilary ran in the "track trot," a short run around the high school's bus circle. They got "medals" (actually, they were buttons). They were thrilled. I was weepy.

I think it's similar to the feelings I get whenever I see one of my kids slighted in any way (like on the playground...). I feel their sadness, embarrassment, dejection. And when I see my kids, or my nieces, or any kid, for that matter, up on stage, accomplishing something, anything, I feel their pride.

Nothing makes me happier than when Declan comes running to me with a drawing from school, pride oozing from every pore. Or when Ronan shows me a page in a coloring book, his preschool scribbles (almost) contained within the lines. And if that's all it takes to inspire them now, I can't imagine the joy they'll feel when it's them up on that stage, getting their preschool "diplomas" or acting in their first play or scoring their first goal in a soccer game (or maybe not).

The truth is, I don't mind being a sap. I love every minute of it.

Strawberry Fields For... Yesterday

2009-06-16T20:18:00.005-04:00

Thus begins our first week of "camplessness," those weeks between school and camp and then between camp and school when the kids have nothing scheduled. This year they have just one week off before camp starts, but a full month off after camp ends. (Wish us luck with that.)

In the past, I've dreaded this week, trying to keep a house full of kids occupied all day long. But this year is different. This year I'm enjoying this week a bit more because next week, when the kids head off to camp...

...I'm going with them.

That's right, yours truly is going to brave the world of day camp as a head counselor for a bunk full of 6-year-olds. Heck, we practically have a full bunk of kids here at home, how different can it be at camp? (Famous last words...)

So this week began with a trip to one of our favorite places, Linvilla Orchards. They have pick-your-own-fruit from May through October, and this week raspberries and strawberries were ripe and ready for picking. And eating. I finally realized why pick-your-own fruit is so damn expensive. For every one that went into the basket...

...one went into each kid's mouth. So with six kids (Jonah and Erika were still in school), we definitely got our money's worth.

Tomorrow we're off to the Crayola Factory, with seven kids in tow (Jonah's the only one left in school!)... If the kids can each pocket one crayon for every one we buy, we only need to buy 10 to get a full set!

Adorable Boys! Now Stackable!

2009-06-10T15:20:00.000-04:00

Is This the Little Girl I Carried?

2009-06-09T13:47:00.005-04:00

While in Boston this past weekend, we stayed with an old friend, mother of two teenagers. I watched enviously as she slept late and discussed the family's plans as if her kids were roommates rather than children. "She won't be home tonight... He's going out... You might see him tomorrow." As I hovered over Molly as she desperately tried to tackle the racks of papers and stacks of books that seemed to be put right within her reach, as I wrestled pill bottles and fragile glass tchatchkes from the boys' sticky fingers, I thought to myself, this is what I'm moving toward. To a day when there are no diapers to change, no childproofing to worry about, to a day when I no longer have to literally hover over my eagerly exploring children.

But, as my friend wearily explained, when the literal hovering ends, the metaphorical hovering begins. She told me of dinners eaten in silence, her teens shooting her withering looks of condescension. She told me of rude comments and sarcastic asides.

But my friend also encouraged me to visit her daughter in her room, where I found a young woman, a person, not just someone's child. I saw her artwork, smelled her incense, admired her jewelry, and talked to her about colleges and photography.

This is what I've been thinking about this week as Molly turned one. Not her year of amazing milestones--sitting up, crawling, climbing, cruising--but her milestones to come--elementary school, braces, Bat Mitzvah, driver's license. Because if it seems that in the blink of an eye, she went from this:

To this:

Then how long will it feel like before she's taller than I am? How long until I worry about whether or not she's drinking alcohol rather than whether she's drinking enough milk? How long until the adorable baby who loves me best of all slams the door in my face and utters the most dismissive of teenage insults: "Whatever."

I know, I know, this is all a bit melodramatic for a simple birthday post. (The end of the school year always does this to me.) So I'll close with a simple, "Happy Birthday Molly!" and a note to her future self:

"Molly, I love you. And I'm much cooler than you think I am."

A Complicated Conversation in the Car

2009-06-04T22:22:00.004-04:00

This morning, I was driving Hilary, Declan, Ronan, Aaron and Gretchen to the pre-school/kindergarten they attend, when Hilary asked, "Can I marry Ronan?"

Ronan, really? I thought. Because of all the cousins, Hilary and Ronan have historically fought the most, although their relationship seems to have improved as both have gotten a little older and better able to articulate their frustration. Plus, he is half her age.

But I was afraid that probing her particular choice of cousin/spouse would take us too far off point, so I cut right to the chase: "No. You can't marry your cousins, or your brothers."

"Why not?" Hilary wanted to know.

I thought for a minute as I drove. How could I explain, in words a six-year-old would understand, about genetic diversity, and the increased risk of birth defects in restricted gene pools?

I gave up. "Because you can't marry relatives," I said firmly, hoping that if I spoke confidently enough she would accept my answer as the explanation it really wasn't instead of the re-phrasing that it was.

"Gretchen marry me?" Aaron asked, at this point.

"No, honey," I said again. "You can't marry your sister."

"Gretchen hug me?" Aaron asked.

"Sure, Gretchen can hug you."

"I dance with Gretchen," Declan piped up.

"You can hug Gretchen, and you can dance with her, you can play with her, but no one in this car is going to marry her."

"I going to marry my brother," Ronan said.

"You can't," I informed him.

"Boys can't marry boys," Declan explained.

This quieted the kids for the time being, and I wondered if I had missed a teaching moment, a chance to share my hope that, by the time they're grown, people will be able to marry whomever they want, without restriction, without stigma.

Except their cousins. And brothers. And sisters. But I'm glad they love each other enough to want to.

Jonah's Inner Life

2009-06-02T07:03:00.001-04:00

An essay I wrote on misperceptions of autism was published today on Babble. Here's the link: http://www.babble.com/Getting-Real-About-Autism-Its-not-a-discipline-problem-or-a-diversity-issue-its-a-disability/

Working on that piece, I spent a lot of time thinking about why it's so difficult to parent a child with autism. There are many obvious reasons in my case - the tantrums, the aggression, the self-injurious behaviors, the constant elopement. But I think an even greater barrier is my total exclusion from Jonah's inner life. That is, I don't really know whether or not I know Jonah that well. Maybe I do - maybe he really only thinks about water parks, and ketchup-and-french-fries, and Sesame Street videos. But maybe there's more to him than that. There are several documented cases of severely autistic individuals who - although completely non-verbal - wrote essays or poetry once they were given communication devices. Which has made me wonder: is there any poetry in Jonah?

I don't think so - not poetry, at any rate. Jonah can write, and spends a great deal of time with markers and chalk, and has never felt inclined to write much more than titles or characters from his favorite videos. Still, there have been moments. One afternoon he wrote in chalk on the driveway: EACH DAY I LIKE IT BETTER. I still don't know where that came from. Could that possibly be a quote from a Sesame Street video? I really thought I knew each and every DVD backwards and forwards, and that phrase didn't sound at all familiar. Was it an original thought? If so, what did it mean? Each day he likes what better? I was so moved by the potential implications of that one phrase I took a picture:

I'm sure it's because I'm a writer, but I can't help seeing symbolism in everything. Jonah loves to tell me, and his teachers, and his aides, exactly what to draw, and he goes through spells in which he asks for the same pictures over and over again. Usually, they're Sesame Street characters, or images or animals from Sesame Street videos, but several times he's asked me to draw a series of purple doors with hands on them. In each picture, someone different wants to open the door: Ernie and Elmo, an umbrella with ten drops of rain, Hilary, Kaitlin (one of his favorite therapists from Kennedy Krieger). And whenever I draw these pictures I think, is there anything more saturated with symbolism than a door? Is the door a metaphor for the separation between Jonah and the rest of the world? What's on the other side of the door? Why does Ernie want to open it so badly?

And then I decide that I am probably imposing all this meaning on the picture myself. Probably.

There are other clues to what Jonah's thought process must be like. When I let him, he'll play his favorite song, "The Macarena," on my I-phone while also running a movie on his DVD player and playing another song on the CD player. And while all three going at once sounds like a mess to me, I suspect it doesn't to him. Is it possible Jonah's mind is crowded with thoughts, twisted together into something too complex for his limited conversational skills to articulate?

I know Jonah's teacher is working hard to develop Jonah's use of language, and I'm anxiously awaiting to see what might come of it. My dreams for Jonah have diminished in scope so much since his birth: from Nobel laureate, to college graduate, to Wawa stocker, to our present dream that we can just keep him from hurting himself or someone else. It would give me a lot of hope, maybe even invigorate some of those old dreams, to be able to ask Jonah, What are you thinking? and have him be able to answer me.

Hilary's Retro Party

2009-05-29T08:40:00.001-04:00

When Hilary's birthday, May 13, was still a couple of months away, I asked her what kind of party she wanted. Did she want pony rides and farm animals, like Erika had when she turned 6 (and 7 . . . and 3)? No. Did she want a dance party? No. Did she want a magician, a musician, a puppet show? No, no, no.

Apparently, what Hilary wanted was for her friends to come over and play games. Crazy, huh?

Keri thought so. She brought home the card of a dance instructor who had facilitated a party Declan attended, as a not-so-subtle suggestion that I hire someone to run the activities. But, I kept repeating, how hard can it be?

And you know what? For once, I was right.

After all the money I've spent hiring entertainers for birthday parties, I have to say this was an enlightening experience. It turns out that kids are just as happy clambering over our playset, jumping on our trampoline, playing with balloons, and playing the exact same games we played as kids (sack races, egg relays, Simon Says) as they are with entertainers that cost two hundred dollars for a 45 minute show.

I do have some suggestions, if you're considering a party like this:

1. Six is really the perfect age. You want the kids to be old enough to dependably follow directions, and young enough to still think keeping a balloon up in the air with their elbows is really thrilling.

2. Avoid relay games. Although the sack races were hilarious, it was just too difficult to break the kids into fair teams given the age ranges we had. Also, as soon as you mention the need for teams, you risk having your party derail into a cacophany of, "I want to be on X's team!!" as every kid demands to be with his or her best buddy. Better to stick with individual games. One game we didn't get around to playing but that I think would be great is the one where you have the kids try to pass a frozen orange or tennis ball around a circle using only their chins.

3. Make a list of more games than you could possibly have time to play, just in case an activity or two falls flat. Other games I'd like to try include Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Red Rover and Freeze Dance.

4. Have enough back-up so when one of the adorable boys at the party pushes another boy into the noxious, overgrown fish pond, there's someone to take the soggy guest back to the house and, fortunately, find some only slightly large replacement clothes in the closet of the birthday girl's older brother.

We ended the party with, what else? Retro loot bags, with yo-yo's, balls and all kinds of cherished candy from my childhood: candy bracelets, candy buttons and Lik-Em Sticks.

Now, time to plan the twins' party!

Mr. Sensible

2009-05-20T13:28:00.003-04:00

I don't know how it happened, but Declan has become the most sensible person in our family. He reminds me that he needs to brush his teeth in the morning and that he needs to do his homework in the afternoon. He is the only child in the household who hangs up his backpack and jacket in the coat closet every day, empties his lunchbox and restores it to its proper place in the kitchen, and brings me all of his drawings, painstakingly smoothing out any wrinkles that may have occurred in transport.

He attempts to make his bed each morning, and carefully places his pajamas at the end of the bed if they're clean enough to be worn again. He then combs his hair with water to tame any flyaways.

He even takes pains to ensure that his t-shirt and socks match his pajama pants.

He's no angel--he still fights with his cousins and doesn't always listen and needs to be encouraged to eat his dinner and asks to watch TV incessantly--but he has definitely earned his new nickname: Mr. Sensible.

Actually, Matty and I just call him that behind his back. We don't want to give him a complex (not that there's anything wrong with being sensible).

The funny thing is, if you asked us when we were kids whether Amy or I would be more likely to have a child nicknamed Mr. Sensible, I think we both would have answered, "Amy." Somehow, over the past 30 years, Amy has gone from being an over-achieving do-gooder to being a completely disorganized procrastinator. (Erika's teachers, while praising her bright mind and likability, often point out her amazing lack of organizational skills.)

But if it's true that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, then where on earth did Declan fall from? I was hardly a sensible child, unless you call terrorizing your older sister and lying for attention sensible. Nor was I sensible during the, er, excitement of my 20s (I'll leave it at that).

I guess with kids you just never know how they'll turn out. Who would have expected that sweats-loving Amy would beget girly-girls with passions for pink? Hilary, an imaginative child and voracious reader, is clearly Amy's child, but how did Andy, a self-proclaimed former bully, produce Aaron, the most sensitive little boy you'll ever meet? Ronan's wild ways are clearly reminiscent of Matty's own unorthodox upbringing, but Declan... he's just not like us.

Which is good, I think. Without the Aarons and the Declans of the world, everyone would be remarkably similar from one generation to the next. And we, as parents, would remain steadfastly static.

So maybe Gretchen will help Amy get in touch with her girly-girl side, and Aaron will bring out the sensitivity in Andy. I can say with certainty that Declan has already made me a more sensible person. Now I remember to brush my teeth every morning.

Advanced Studies In Twin Development, part XXIV

2009-05-12T17:43:00.003-04:00

Aaron and Gretchen, as members-in-good-standing of the Terrible Twos Club, are both prone to irrational, persistent tantrums. However, I've noticed that they never actually pitch fits at the same time. To steal "Law & Order" jargon, their fits are consecutive, rather than concurrent.

Could it be they've figured out that if they both unleashed their impressive arsenal of shrieks, sobs, and dramatic collapses at once, I would be forced to retreat to my bathroom with a bottle of Bacardi Dark and a handful of Jonah's Xanax, and I wouldn't come out for three days?

Unlikely.

My current theory is that the twins' tantrums are polarizing - the farther one retreats into the dark depths of hysteria, the sweeter and sunnier the other becomes. And I didn't arrive at this conclusion from any serious application in child psychology. Both Aaron and Gretchen take great pains to point it out to me, i.e.:

Gretchen (flailing on the floor): No, Mommy! I don't WANT big-girl cup! SIPPY CUP! No, Mommy!! SIPPY CUP! SIPPY CUP SIPPY CUP SIPPY CUP SIPPY - "

Me: Gretchen, we don't scream at dinner. If you're going to pitch a fit, I'm going to take you out of the kitchen.

Aaron (proudly): I not pitching a fit, Mommy.

I'm always unsure how to respond in these situations. I know you're not supposed to compare siblings to one another, because it makes them self-conscious, paranoid and anorexic. But Gretchen's tantrums are particularly shrill. So I usually respond something along the lines of: "That's right, my good, sweet boy. You're not pitching a fit! See that, Gretchen? See what good, compliant, quiet children get - candy! hugs! toys! Good boy, Aaron!" (I'm paraphrasing here.)

I'm interested to see how this dynamic evolves as the twins get older. I'm hoping they'll up the ante, and instead of trying to impress me with an absence of problem behavior, their friendly competition will spur them on to greater and greater achievements: straight As, scholarships, lucrative patents, presidential commendations, those sorts of things.

Hey, whatever works.

Will You Play with Me?

2009-05-06T14:03:00.003-04:00

Yesterday Declan came into my office after school, looked up at me with his big brown eyes, and plaintively asked:

"Will you play with me?"

I think it might have been the first time he ever asked me that.

Between school, activities, and assorted cousins, caregivers, and friends, Declan always seems to be heavily occupied. He's never needed me to play with him before.

Of course, I do try to make it clear to him and Ronan that when I'm in my office I'm working, and that I stop around 4:30, though then I usually make dinner and perform other random household tasks (the other day I cleaned out and reorganized the pantry, which held, I kid you not, a can of Creamora that had expired in 2001).

It's not that I don't want to play with Declan, it's just... okay, it's just that I don't want to play with Declan.

Don't get me wrong; I love spending time with Declan, and would actually choose to bring him along on a day of errands or to go out for coffee and chitchat. I love taking him to the movies and on our weekly weekend outings to the zoo or aquarium or such.

But I'm just not good at the "playing with kids" part.

Declan likes to play games like "Pirates Kidnap a Princess and a Group of Sled Dogs" or "Robin Hood Fights the Mean Guys and Performs Magic Tricks." He's the poster child for imaginative play. Me? I'd rather write about it than act it out. I guess as an adult I've lost the freeing inhibition of childhood, the one that allows you to jump around pretending to be a sled dog without feeling stupid. I'm so glad Declan still has it. But I can't say I'm too sad to have lost it.

So of course, I caved to those big brown eyes and said yes, of course I'll play with you, and braced myself for the complicated world in which I was about to enter.

"What do you want to do?"

"A puzzle?" A puzzle! I can do puzzles! I guess Declan knows as well as I do that I would make a terrible sled dog.

So we sat at the kitchen table, I helping him with his puzzle, he helping me make dinner. And we were happy.

And the second Erika got home, he raced off to play with her, to an elaborate world of royalty and animal husbandry.

And we were happy.

Overheard

2009-05-05T17:27:00.002-04:00

Aaron (excitedly): Look, Gretchen, I did it! I did it! (points to puzzle he finished).

Gretchen (practically yawning in boredom): Yes, you did it, honey (one of my pet names for the kids, the other being 'monkeys').

Me: Did you just call him 'honey'?

Gretchen: laughs hysterically

Wow. And I thought the kids couldn't tell when I was dialing it in. Guess I need to work on my enthusiasm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(How's that for a start?? 33 exclamation points, that's enthusiastic, right????????

Our Multicultural Easter

2009-05-01T07:50:00.000-04:00

I know what you're thinking: You guys are raising your kids Jewish! Why the heck are you celebrating Easter???

(Actually, what you're probably thinking is: It's freakin' May already! Why the heck are you posting about Easter now??? But I'm going to pretend that you're thinking the first thing.)

Well, we started out the morning as many Jewish families do when Easter happens to fall in the middle of Passover: we ate matzo for breakfast. Again. Maybe we wouldn't have been so sick of it if Keri hadn't started buying it three months before Passover, because back then it seemed like a treat. By the time Passover actually rolled around, the seasonal excitement of eating matzo with cream cheese had definitely peaked.

Later that morning, we loaded up the big green van and headed out to Northeast Philadelphia to celebrate Thai New Year with Oat and her friends at a Thai temple complex. The kids got to see gold Buddhas, and monks in orange robes, and sample the incredible free buffet of donated Thai food (and, inexplicably, a tray of spaghetti and meat sauce). Unfortunately, the festivities mostly took place outdoors, and it was only about 50 degrees outside, so the kids especially were pretty chilly.

That failed to diminish their enthusiasm, however, when we headed over to our friends (and former housemates) Patrick and Rhea's home for an Easter egg hunt. This was the first egg hunt for my kids, but they caught on quickly. I thought Rhea had a clever strategy to deal with the broad age range (and scavenging ability) of the hunters: she hid eggs in different parts of her yard for the different age groups. The eggs for Aaron, Gretchen and Ronan were prominently placed in conspicuous locations. The ones for the intermediate group were slightly more obscured, and the ones for the older girls were shoved way back under a pricker bush, submerged in a drainage ditch and tucked into an abandoned bird's nest fifteen feet off the ground. But the kids found every last egg.

I suspect that, between the matzo, the monks and the eggs, we succeeded in covering the bases, religiously speaking.

But more than that, I love how many different cultural influences are kids are exposed to in our house alone. Matty is Irish. Oat is Thai. Marina and Iza (our housekeeper) are Georgian. Aaron is learning to eat with chopsticks, Erika sings Georgian lullabies, and Declan can let us know exactly who, or what, is giving him "the pip." From a very young age, our kids understand what a big world we live in. Unfortunately, Gretchen still believes it revolves around her, but we're working on that.

A Weekend Apart

2009-04-27T14:28:00.004-04:00

On Friday night, the Lutzes loaded up the big green passenger van and headed for the shore (or "down the shore" as they say in these parts) for their first full family overnight. (Ronan tried to stowaway but was quickly recovered.) Everyone was excited: the Lutzes were looking forward to being alone in their new shore house (Erika and Hilary cheered that 'just the Lutzes!' were going), and we were looking forward to being alone in this house. We were so excited, we bought real bacon to have for breakfast on Saturday (the Lutzes don't eat pork).

Saturday morning we were up and out so fast we forgot to cook the bacon. We headed to Washington's Crossing, a state park where, well, you can probably figure it out. The sheep shearing festival was on, and the kids watched an old-timey man shear a sheep with sheep-shearing scissors (as opposed to mechanically); the sheep sat quite still and the pelt came off in one large blanket. Then we saw how the wool was washed and combed, dyed, spun, and woven. There were colonial hearth cooking demonstrations, and the kids played with colonial toys.

Then we drove a few miles to Yardley, where I wanted to check out a water ice place for an article I'm writing. We had lunch in a local diner, then we ate the best water ice in Philadelphia. (Seriously. Go there.)

While walking back to the car, we all talked about what a nice day we had, capped off with some very tasty water ice. Declan informed us, out of the blue, that he wanted to move to our own house, one right next door to the Lutzes. Matty and I eyed each other nervously but neither of us knew what to say. Declan didn't seem to have anything else to add, so we let the matter drop.

By Sunday, however, the Lutzes were back and I don't think Declan ever wanted to leave. After he got home from an early birthday party and Erika returned from Hebrew school, the two were inseparable, playing in Erika's room for most of the day.

As much as our arrangement works for us, I think this weekend reminded all of us how important it is to take some family alone time as well. Not only do we all appreciate the time alone, but we appreciate each other all the more when we return.

Digging a Hole, Part 2

2009-04-21T21:40:00.005-04:00

I regretfully report a recent death in our family: Grover, one of our three cats, was hit by a car and died earlier this month.

Honestly, I was surprised he had ventured down to the road. We live on a hill, with a driveway 1/4 mile long separating us from the street. We're surrounded by woods and fields with all the mice, voles, birds, rabbits, and chipmunks a superlative hunter like Grover could ask for. I never thought we would lose a pet this way.

The kids, as you might imagine, had varying responses to this tragedy. Erika was devastated. The others thought it was a blast decorating the simple coffin Andy made out of wood from Home Depot. I couldn't help but find a morbid sort of amusement in the way Gretchen danced around all evening exclaiming, "I want to put Grover in the box! I want to put Grover in the box NOW!"

It's not that surprising, really. Not only are most of the kids in the house way too young to have any understanding of death, but death has become completely run-of-the mill to them. We're all used to stepping over the decapitated rodents our cats routinely leave on the doormat. Even the preschoolers understand that one animal's gruesome end is another animal's gift to his beloved owners. I often wonder whether this comfort with death will make them less fearful of it as they grow older. I have vivid memories of lying awake in the dark when I was about 12 years old, feeling the crushing silence of the night and trying to imagine what it was like to be dead. Frankly, I'm still terrified.

Still, our wildly ranging attitudes toward death didn't prevent us from orchestrating a very moving funeral for Grover. Andy and Matty took turns digging a large hole, and once the coffin was placed inside we all threw in handfuls of dirt, which is Jewish tradition. Then we took turns telling our favorite stories about Grover. I reminded the kids that Andy and I got Grover before any of them were born. Our friends' son found him as a kitten mangled in their fence ten years ago, and I, pregnant with my first baby and raging with maternal hormones, couldn't say no when they asked us to take him in. I used to joke that Grover was the most expensive free cat in history, since it cost us about a thousand dollars in vet bills to fix his injuries. Although the vet offered to amputate Grover's broken leg, and promised us the cat would adjust, we couldn't do it, and so we ponied up the money for the surgery, and the pins in his leg, and the cast. He was so pathetic, this tiny kitten with this enormous white cast on his leg. When it came off, he was completely healed, and grew into one big, tough tomcat - but not so tough he didn't enjoy a good snuggle.

Grover, we will miss you.

Digging a Hole, Part 1

2009-04-13T11:01:00.005-04:00

You'd think in a household with two chefs and more than a dozen eaters, a garden would be a no-brainer. So why did it take us so long to start one?

There were attempts in the past; a plan by Andy's friend Ed many years ago that never quite took root (pun intended), a donation of heirloom tomatoes from our friend Lauren that simply never grew, a row of raspberry bushes that produce occasional fruit, and an on-again, off-again plot of tomato plants that once bore fruitfully but then, suddenly, did not.

Last year, beaten down by failure, nothing at all was planted and only a handful of raspberries were harvested.

But this year is going to be different. It has to be, if the amount of time Matty has been spending researching different types of gooseberry trees is any indication. Matty has grand plans for the land, from a row of cherry trees alongside the new patio to hundreds of strawberry plants growing through the ancient stone wall.

It was all my idea, actually.

"Let's plant a garden," I said, innocently enough. I envisioned a few rows of tomatoes and cucumbers, maybe a small selection of herbs. It made sense from a practical standpoint, and it seemed like the kids were old enough to get involved and help out and learn about where food actually comes from. (We're holding off on slaughtering a cow, for now. Maybe next year.)

Well, that's all Matty needed apparently. He's been busy every night on the computer since, finding the best variety of blueberry and ordering obscure currant trees. At our first seder last week, he spent a disproportionate amount of time discussing the benefits of mushroom soil with our friend Michael.

We'll see what actually comes of all this planning. As of now we have a half-dozen blueberry and blackberry bushes planted, a few herbs, and even two grape vines. The first truckload of that magical soil arrived this weekend. Let's hope we have something to harvest this summer.

The Joy of Dumpsters

2009-03-27T08:11:00.001-04:00

There's a dumpster parked behind our house right now, and I LOVE it.

Because of all the renovations Matty's done for our house over the past three years, he's had occasion to rent dumpsters before, so I already knew how liberating it is. Now, whenever I see the pile of rotting planks, chunks of plaster, and rusty pipes that signal the imminent arrival of that huge green receptacle, I look around my home with a different sort of eye. I gaze critically at every knick-knack, every chatchke, every accessory - pretty much everything that isn't nailed down - and ask, Do I really need you?

If you've never had a dumpster before, it might surprise you how many things might provoke the answer, No, I really don't need you.

Here are some of the things I tossed this time around: a broken floor lamp; a stained, shredded mattress circa the Reagan administration; a rusty bicycle; a set of 20-year-old encyclopedias; several board games missing half their pieces; about a quarter mile of plastic track that went with a ride-on train that stopped working before Hilary was born.

Don't think I don't realize that we're committing some kind of environmental terrorism every time we fill up a dumpster with a ton of trash and let the dumpster company take it away. Maybe the dumpster company sorts it all out, and recycles anything recyclable, and refurbishes everything refurbishable before donating the items to needy tsunami victims in Malaysia - I sure hope they do that. But even if they don't, even if they just empty the entire dumpster straight into a New Jersey landfill, that still wouldn't stop my occasional purges. Because once in a while, it really helps to lose all that extra baggage, to get rid of all the detritus, to shake yourself free from all the crap that's weighing you down.

Now, it's time to tackle the basement, before I miss my chance . . .

The Great Potty Race of 2009

2009-03-25T19:00:00.002-04:00

We're deep in the throes of potty training, and though we haven't implicitly discussed it, I think we're currently engaged in a race to see who--Ronan, Aaron, or Gretchen--will be trained first.

Since Ronan is 4 1/2 months older than the twins, he certainly has an edge. But since Gretchen is a girl, she's got an edge too. And Aaron? Well, he looks really cute in the mouse costume he's taken to wearing all the time.

The twins definitely started far in the lead. We offer the kids a small piece of candy for peeing on the potty and a lollipop for pooping. Gretchen seemed to learn a remarkable amount of bladder and bowel control, pooping and peeing just enough to earn her prize, always holding back just a little bit of excrement so she could go a few times each hour. Bravo, Gretchen!

Aaron, the dutiful twin, followed suit with a strong start.

Ronan was tougher. I didn't start trying until he turned 3, which was early last month. I thought having an older brother would mean Ronan would train quickly, since he sees Declan using the potty all the time. Ronan did look up to Declan, but in a way that made it even harder for him to potty train.

Since Declan pees standing up, Ronan insists on doing this as well. When you're 37 inches tall, with a penis that's, er, proportionate to that, it's rather difficult to pee standing in front of a toilet. Until you get the hang of it, the pee tends to go wherever the penis is pointing; in this case, right up in the air, into the sink next to the toilet, or right onto the magazine rack. Ronan got frustrated very quickly, and abandoned the pursuit altogether, refusing to even try to use the potty.

Amy gloated. "Can you believe my little prodigy! She's not even 3! She's the bestest potty-trainer in the world! Ronan can eat her dust!" (I'm paraphrasing.)

But then, Ronan suddenly got the hang of it (maybe it was the goldfish crackers I put in the toilet to help his aim). He's got at least 2-inches on the twins--a clear height advantage--and soon started going to the bathroom by himself, even able to hoist himself up onto the potty if he needed to poop. His fierce independence kicked in and he no longer allowed us to take him to the bathroom. "I do it myself!" he yelled at us when we tried to help.

Gretchen seems to have plateaued, but is likely only one weekend in underwear away from being fully trained (you former potty trainers know what I mean). Aaron seems to have lost interest entirely, the candy rewards no longer enticing. And Ronan? He wears underwear after school, but did have an accident yesterday. His teacher said I could send him into school wearing underwear next week, so we'll wait until then...

...unless Amy decides to put Gretchen in underwear first.

Happy Birthday, Erika!

2009-03-24T16:08:00.003-04:00

This weekend, we celebrated Erika's birthday with a slumber party for eight of her closest friends.

Which did raise the chaos level in the house, but not as much as I imagine it would in other homes.

Overall, the girls had a great time. We took them all, along with Erika's siblings and cousins, to the Build-A-Bear Workshop, where they made adorable stuffed animals (although it was tough to convince Aaron to take a floppy, un-stuffed version of the bear he had picked out - he wanted the nice, plump, finished bear that was on display). Then, we came home, ordered pizza, and set the kids up with fabric paint, paint markers, and plain white bear-sized t-shirts to decorate. (Note to anyone considering such an activity: I highly recommend fabric markers over paint. Much less messy.) This was followed by the traditional Carvel ice-cream cake and a showing of the recently released, straight-to-video, instant classic, "Space Buddies."

So far, so good.

I didn't expect that getting nine girls to fall asleep would be easy. I was prepared for giggling, chatting, pillow fights, frequent trips to the bathroom, etc. What I wasn't prepared for was half the girls sobbing - including Erika, who made a speech about how this was "the worst night of her life," and how she was "never having a slumber party again, and if [she] does, [she] might invite completely different people."

The problem was that, although a couple of the girls did want to stay up and talk, by 10:30 most of them - including Erika - wanted to go to sleep. And every time one was moved to make a speech about why everyone needed to be quiet, another one would yell at her to be quiet, until things started to get ugly.

The result of this was a series of trips up to my room by a contingent of girls, including Erika, who actually told me the next day that she wished I had been "stricter" with them - which really surprised me. I had tried so hard to treat her and her friends like "big kids." (And I'm not even sure why I put that in quotes, because I do think of Erika as a big kid.) Matty had asked Andy and me if one of us was going to sleep down in the basement with the girls, and I had dismissed the idea utterly. But later, when things calmed down enough for me to go to sleep myself, I couldn't help wondering if my decision to let the girls resolve their problems themselves had resulted in Erika being traumatized for life, or at the very least, never speaking to one or two of her closest friends ever again.

Not to worry: by the next morning, they were all friends again. Literally, it was as if no unkind words were ever said. When I told one of the girls' mothers what had happened, and hypothesized that perhaps eight was too young for a slumber party, she shrugged it off. "Nah," she, also mother to a ten-year-old, said. "That happens at every slumber party."

Following In My Footsteps

2009-03-16T14:51:00.003-04:00

I wrote recently about the first time Erika cried at the end of a book, and how much more moved I was by that moment than I've been at more traditional milestones, like rolling over, or eating cereal for the first time, or cutting a tooth.

Here's another date for the record books: Saturday, March 7, 2009.

I was talking to Erika, who was playing outside. "Why are you so dressed up?" she wanted to know.

We had spent most of the day apart. In the morning, Keri and I took her kids and Aaron and Gretchen to the baby naming of a friend of ours, while Hilary and Erika went to their swimming lessons and Jonah attended his drama class. Afterwards, I had taken Hilary out for McDonald's and a manicure, to celebrate her recent good behavior in kindergarten.

"Aunt Keri and I went to Gavi's baby naming this morning," I said.

"Oh," Erika said. "I thought it was for your - " here, she hooked the index and middle fingers of her right hand through the air - "special outing with Hilary."

I stared at her, dumbfounded. "Did you just air-quote me?" I asked.

She giggled. "I call them bunny ears," she said.

I think of Erika as sweet and silly, not sarcastic. But it was good to see a bit of dry humor bubbling under the surface. I, for one, am a huge fan of air quotes.

So, I set her straight: "For your information, they're called air quotes, and to do them properly, you should use both hands." I proceeded to demonstrate.

She listened attentively to my instructions, then ran off to play with Declan. I smiled after her, thinking, it's so cute. At least, it will be until she does it about me.

Sometimes, Surprisingly, It's Easy

2009-03-11T08:00:00.001-04:00

Jonah has been taking medication to control his aggressive tantrums for the greater part of his life. This means that, twice a day, I would use a mortar and pestle to crush his pills, then mix the powder into some peanut butter, then try to scrape every last bit of peanut butter on to a slice of bread, which was the only way we could get the meds into him.

Not only is this an imperfect system, but as you can imagine, after going through this tedious process about five thousand times, it gets old.

When Jonah was at Kennedy Krieger, I asked them many times to teach him how to swallow pills. I knew there were protocols specifically designed to target this behavior - I believe most of them start with very small edibles, like tic-tacs, but I had no idea how they taught the kids not to chew the candies. The behavior team agreed it would be great if Jonah could swallow pills, but never had the time to go through the protocol, which I understand can take a long time. So at our last IEP meeting, I asked Jonah's teachers if they could do a pill swallowing protocol at school. They also agreed it was a great idea, and said they would look into it, but I haven't heard anything about it since.

Meanwhile, I crushed the pills, and mixed the peanut butter, and scraped the sides of the dish every morning and every night. I told myself that the amount left in the ramikin was negligible, even though Jonah's lithium levels dropped to barely therapeutic levels.

Then, a couple of days ago, something amazing happened. I gave Jonah a melatonin lozenge - which he gets every night to help him sleep - and instead of chewing it like he's supposed to and has been doing, he shoved it to the back of his throat and swallowed it whole.

"Wait, Jonah!" I said. "You need to chew that one - "

At that moment, the proverbial light bulb went on over my head. If Jonah could swallow the lozenge whole, surely he could swallow the lithium pills whole.

So, the next day, I tried it. At first, Jonah did try to chew the pills, but when I prompted him to push it to the back of his throat, he did it - and didn't even want any water to wash it down.

And that was that. All the years of crushing, mixing and scraping were behind us in a virtual instant. No long, frustrating pill swallowing protocol, no tic-tacs, no fights.

I just can't help seeing a lesson in all this. I can get overwhelmed sometimes, because so many things with Jonah are a struggle. But just like any other kid, he can surprise me. And who knows what other surprises are in store, how many other pieces will effortlessly fall into place?

Maybe it's just lingering optimism from the success with the pills, but I can't help but think there will be many others.

Communal Living at its Finest

2009-03-09T18:05:00.005-04:00

We don't spend all our time together, sitting arms linked in front of the fireplace singing camp songs and making s'mores, but there are times when we think to ourselves, Why don't more people do this?

Here's one of those times:

I was at a book club meeting. Matty was cleaning up after dinner (then grabbed his camera to snap this pic). Amy was reading to 5/8 of the children in this house.

And this is why we live the way we do.

Of course, not everything works better with more kids involved. Last night Andy filled the big tub with Erika, Hilary, Declan, Aaron, Gretchen, a gazillion bath toys, two scrubbies, and one gallon of liquid soap. It was a swarm of limbs and flesh the likes of which I'd never seen. Erika and Hilary were fighting. Aaron kept hitting Declan's penis. Gretchen was wailing, "Soap in my eyes! Soap in my eyes!" Five was clearly too many kids for one bath.

But for reading a book? Five is just right.

Surviving the Snow Day

2009-03-04T21:30:00.003-05:00

Here's my advice to parents whose children have been recently diagnosed with autism: get comfortable driving in the snow.

Snow days are tough. Jonah, like most kids on the spectrum, requires a great deal of structure - left to his own devices, he'll just stim in front of his video, raid the kitchen for thousands of calories in snacks, or sneak off to write cryptic messages on the walls. Without school and the aides who help me out after school to keep him busy, it's just me and him for 14 hours.

So we go out.

There's no better time to go out with an autistic child than in the middle of a blizzard. We had a great day - first, we grabbed a canceled appointment at the pediatrician's office and took care of Jonah's annual physical, which was about two months overdue. Then we headed to the Burger King with the best indoor playland, the one that's always crowded, and that I always take the kids to with some hesitation, afraid that one of these days Jonah is going to get stepped on or elbowed while climbing through those plastic tubes above my head and pitch a major fit.

Know how many other families ventured out to Burger King during the middle of the snowstorm?

That's right: zero.

Jonah had the playset all to himself for a good hour and a half. He would climb up, slide down, then announce to me, "99 more times," "98 more times," "97 more times," etc., etc. I think he got to about 52 before the snow stopped, and the roads cleared, and two other families had the nerve to intrude on what both Jonah and I had come to believe was OUR slide. When he started to show his resentment, we left. Still, we managed to break the day into manageable chunks.

If you've inferred from this post that Jonah has regressed somewhat since he left Kennedy Krieger, that would be correct. His psychiatrist has said that Jonah is showing signs of "breakthrough" - which sounds like it should be a good thing but isn't, because it means that his meds are no longer completely controlling his symptoms. And we are seeing more mood cycling than we saw when he was in Baltimore - agitation, crying, hand-biting, and yes, aggression. As much as I had hoped when he came home that we would no longer have to deal with the hitting, we do. It's very frustrating, because the thought of trying different meds that may or may not help, or may or may not make him worse, at home instead of in the controlled environment at Krieger - where, frankly, it was difficult enough - is an overwhelming prospect.

But we'll do it. Fortunately, we have great support, both at home and at school. And fortunately also, in just a few short weeks there'll be no more snow to keep that support away.

Homework

2009-03-02T10:21:00.004-05:00

I went to Erika's weather fair at school last week because Amy was, ahem, very busy. Erika was thrilled to see me and proudly took me around the auditorium, showing me her classmates' projects. There was quite a range of talent on display, and by that I don't mean children's talent, I mean parent's talent.

Here is Erika's project, conceptualized and written by herself (in case you couldn't tell), except for the giant hailstone, which Matty made for her (with her participation):

Here is the line to get into the project right next to Erika's:

Yes, you read that right: there was a line to crawl into this black box to see... something. Softcore porn? Tom and Jerry cartoons? Something having to do with lightning? In all likelihood the latter, but I wouldn't know, since I wasn't about to wait on line to see a second grade weather project.

Now I'm no expert, but I could tell from a cursory glance that most of the projects on display had a lot of parental input. And by that I mean the parents did the whole thing. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. When Erika was in kindergarten, she had to do a project on the 13 colonies. Since she could barely write, it was evident that the parents were supposed to help the kids out with their project. Amy and Andy spent a long time with Erika designing her project, helping her glue pictures and facts to the board, and coaching her on her presentation. Erika certainly learned a lot about the state of New Jersey. She also learned that school projects are important.

But Erika was only 5 then. Now she's almost 8. When are kids supposed to start doing their schoolwork on their own? Erika did her weather project on her own and was mortified when she saw how involved the other projects were. She didn't have any black curtains or wind-simulating fans to entice the other kids, so she spent most of the fair like this:

I tend to think that Amy was right to let Erika do all the work on her project, but judging from most of the other weather projects, she and I are alone in this belief.

What do you think? At what age should kids be doing their work on their own?

Erika

2009-02-27T12:10:00.001-05:00

Hilary's Story

2009-02-23T15:14:00.004-05:00

I just found this on my computer. It was apparently written on December 1 at 1:35:45pm. I vaguely recall Andy hanging out with Hilary in my office one Sunday, and this was clearly the result. I think the last lines are very telling, though I'm not exactly sure of what:

I want this story to be about a little girl who is running to a far away place.

Who is the little girl?

Her name is Jessica. She is six years old. She has red hair. She has blue eyes. She lives in Villanova. Her mother is Sarah. Her father is Sam. Both Sarah and Sam are doctors. Sarah is a gynecologist. Sam is the team doctor for the Philadelphia Phillies. Jessica has two siblings - her twin brother Corey, 6 and Justin 5. Corey has brown hair and blue eyes. He is very tall for his age. Justin has blond hair and blue eyes.

Why is Jessica running? Is she running away from something or is she running to something?

She is running away from a mean guy. He wants to steal all of her books. She is running to get help. She is trying to find her mommy or her daddy to stop the mean guy from stealing all of her books. Her mommy and daddy are in their room. Mommy is going to the bathroom. Daddy is fixing something.

The Propaganda Mill

2009-02-17T10:02:00.004-05:00

Erika's friend, Jamie, desperately wants a dog. So, she and Erika spent many hours of their Sunday night sleepover holed up in Erika's room with paper, markers, and various other supplies churning out projects designed to convince Jamie's parents they should get her a puppy: an illustrated booklet on small, cute breeds of dogs; a dog diorama, and my favorite, the informative poster featured here, "Good Facts About Dogs."

Jamie and Erika's arguments included the following, alongside appropriate pictures:

*Dog saveing a prsons life

*Minnie dog in pocetbook

*A lisining dog in a obeedieince class

*A dog in a animal sheter is cheep

*Dog getting redey to fall asleep for the rest of there lifetime because nobody got them from the shelter

I couldn't believe it when I read that last one. Talk about the hard sell!! I didn't even think Erika knew what happened to unclaimed pets at animal shelters - she told me later that Jamie clued her in.

Unfortunately, Jamie's dad will never see the poster, because Jamie's mom (who came to pick her up while I was out with Jonah) decided that it wasn't fair for Jamie to take home all the art projects (even though that was the intention, kind of like Air Force pilots blanketing villages with pro-American pamphlets during the Vietnam War), so she insisted Jamie leave half here.

I couldn't help remembering the campaign I waged, when I was about 10, to convince my mom not to spay our cat Misty. Instead of a poster, however, I wrote a poem. Shockingly, I still remember it: "I don't want coats or hats, or gloves or mittens. All I want is for Misty to have kittens."

That didn't work either.

Aggressive Girls and Sensitive Boys

2009-02-13T14:37:00.008-05:00

When Amy found out the twins' teacher this year was going to be Bracha, a stern but loving grandmotherly type, I asked my friend Tricia what to expect, since her daughter Avery had Bracha the year prior.

"She likes aggressive girls," Tricia told me, "and sensitive boys."

Which basically sums up Aaron and Gretchen. It's gotten to the point where Gretchen now reprimands Aaron for excessive whining or neediness.

This theme definitely seems to run through our household.

Last week, Rhea was picking up the kids to drive to preschool, and while Declan was getting into the car, Sophia stage-whispered to him, "Go tell Hilary you don't like her!" Declan, the dutiful soldier, complied. When I reprimanded him for being mean to Hilary, he looked up at me in all earnestness and said, "But Sophia told me to say it!" Needless to say, I didn't let him off the hook.

But I do worry about Declan, as a sensitive boy. Don't get me wrong, he's often the agressor, but in the end it's always Declan who comes crying to me, crying that Ronan kicked him (even if Declan kicked Ronan first) or that Erika was mean to him (ditto). And despite the trouble they seem to get him into, Declan cannot stay away from the aggressive girls.

Declan's BFF at school has long been Brooke; they've been in the same class at school and camp since before they were two. I asked him the other day if Brooke was still his best friend. He smiled shyly.

"She told me she's my girlfriend," he said.

Part of me worries how Declan will fare as the sensitive guy as he continues to befriend and eventually date (gulp!) aggressive women.

But at least he'll have company from Aaron and Gretchen.

(That's Declan and Sophia in the photo above at our New Year's Eve party last year. I expect I'll see similar photos in years to come: Declan looking silly, with a girl looking not very amused.)

Childhood, Redux

2009-02-11T14:41:00.003-05:00

Erika and I are reading Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing together. And it's pretty amazing, considering it was published over 30 years ago, how well that book has held up. It's still hilarious and poignant and incredibly relevant - despite the introduction of the internet and cell phones and Wii, I guess being nine years old isn't that different now than it was back in 1976.

So I get why the true gems of my childhood (and some from my parents' childhoods, as well) are still popular with kids today - Dr. Seuss and E.B. White, Star Wars and Monopoly. I think that "Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9," is a classic joke, perfect for kids just starting to learn about the creative uses of language, and I agree that, "I'm rubber, you're glue," is so catchy and condescending it will probably be around until the end of time.

But I'll tell you what I just don't get: nanny, nanny, poo, poo.

What is so freakin' special about that meaningless insult that it should survive from generation to generation?

Maybe I should ask Aaron, Gretchen and Ronan. They use it every day - when they jump into the coveted middle carseat, or get an extra segment of clementine, or commandeer one of the 14 doll strollers we own.

Honestly, I don't think they really need a reason.

Maybe nanny, nanny, poo, poo is onomatopoetic on some primitive level, embodying glee and superiority and plain old button pushing more perfectly than a more articulate taunt ever could.

Or maybe, "I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you, but I have a net that catches all the good words," is a little too much to expect from someone who can't yet handle the intricacies of "Frosty the Noseman."

What I want to know is, given that I've been hearing it my entire life, given its enduring and prominent position in our cultural lexicon, why is nanny, nanny poo poo still so excruciatingly irritating - not just to the kids, but to me?

Now I Get It

2009-02-09T16:21:00.002-05:00

Now I understand why crazy people like my sister have so many kids. They're just so friggin' amazing. Sure, they have their ups and downs, and they don't always act (or dress) exactly like you'd expect (or hope), but each child is unique and so, well, amazing.

Molly is really (I promise I won't say amazing again) great right now, she's just the perfect baby. She's beautiful and smiles all the time and is so good, and I can't help but wonder, what would the next one be like?

(Don't worry, it ain't gonna happen. It can't. Physically impossible. Let's just leave it at that.)

I know, it's the height of vanity: Look what I can make! Let's make some more! But what is parenthood if not vanity? We produce kids that resemble us, then fuss over how cute they are. Then we try to raise them in our own image. Of course, we don't always succeed. But we try.

Happy Birthday Ronan!

2009-02-07T09:00:00.002-05:00

Has it really been three years? Actually, it feels like Ronan has been in my life forever. I simply cannot imagine life without him. Sure, I'd probably get a lot more sleep, but I wouldn't be nearly as happy.

You might recall my ups and downs with Ronan over the years; sometimes he's a real terror ("a typical redhead," our old babysitter Kylie once said), sometimes a real sweetie. Nowadays, he's a bit of both. But I must admit, all my expectations of him have gone flying out the window.

Ronan, my little fireball, can now sit for 30 minutes working on a puzzle. He'll cozy up on a the couch with a book and look intently at the pages, all by himself. He'll sit and draw peacefully and quietly. We used to think Declan was the intellect, Ronan the jock. Now I'm not so sure. (Well, I'm sure Declan's no jock.)

Of course, Ronan will also steal Aaron's special bear, sneak an entire pack of gum and stuff it in his mouth while hiding under my desk, tackle his brother when he's not looking, and rip up a picture because, well, just because.

But all that will end today, right? The Terrible Twos are over, and good Ronan is here to stay...

...though that may be a little boring. I'll settle for pretty good right now.

The Real, Live Frosty The Noseman

2009-02-05T17:33:00.006-05:00

I don't like snow.

I don't like the beach much, either. In fact, I don't enjoy many of the things my kids love, like kicking a ball around, or squeezing play-do between my fingers, or ice skating.

I do think of myself as a fun person - it's just that my conception of fun is a lot different from theirs. That's not much consolation, however, when I imagine my children sitting around and talking about me when they're teenagers. It seems very unlikely the conversation will unfold this way:

Erika: Wow, how amazing was Mom's ability to sit and read by the fire for hours when we were kids!

Hilary: Yeah! And she could slow-play a flopped set better than Phil Hellmuth!

Aaron: Me, I just loved to watch her on the tennis court. She was the absolute definition of intermediate!

Gretchen: That's nothing compared to how she could appreciate a fine meal! I remember her making a reservation at Talula's Table a whole year in advance! I mean, what's more fun than a restaurant with just one table you have to reserve a year ahead of time, and just pray to God you're still married to the same guy and still friends with the same friends you made the reservation with!!

And so on and so forth.

Which is why I occasionally guilt myself into doing things like taking my kids out, at dusk, during the biggest snowfall we've had in the last two years, and building a snowman.

I have to admit, it wasn't bad. The kids were thrilled, and even Ronan, Aaron and Gretchen were trying to help, by which I mean they were grabbing mittenfulls of snow that crumbled in their fists as they stumbled through the six inches of snow, which pretty much came up to their waists.

When the snowman was done (and yes, he had a carrot nose, oreo eyes and a hat - we were freakin' ALL OVER IT), we held hands and danced in a circle, singing "Frosty the Snowman," which is Aaron's favorite song from his new favorite movie, which he - to everyone's extreme amusement, even his twin's - calls "Frosty the Noseman."

The best part? After dinner, when the whole family was in the kitchen, Ronan came up to me and said, "Remember we build the snowman? With you?" while his mother, who had remained inside, nice and warm in front of the computer, looked on forlornly.

A-ha! For one day, at least, I was the fun one.

No More Kisses, Dammit!

2009-02-03T09:39:00.002-05:00

My kids are too smart for me.

It took them all about five minutes to figure out that, while I have no problem turning off the lights and closing the door on distressing cries of, "One more story!" and, "I want a song!" and, "I need water!" I am immediately overcome by, "Can I have another kiss?"

Me: "Of course you can have another kiss, my sweet baby, you can ALWAYS have another kiss, mnum, mnum, mnum, mnum, mnum . . ."

And I wonder why my kids aren't asleep until after 9pm.

Hilary has become especially adept at working the kiss angle. We have a rule at dinner that the kids need to sit until all their siblings and cousins have finished, but Hilary has a tendency to wander. Sometimes, I'll look up from my plate and see her standing right at my shoulder.

Me: "Hilary, sit down! You know you have to wait for everyone to finish before you're excused."

Hilary: "But I love you, Mom. I just want to give you a big kiss" (imagine expectant five-year-old, tilting her puckered face upwards for a smooch).

It seems so heartless to say, "No kisses!" But after almost a decade of working with behavior experts who have helped us in our quest to manage Jonah's behavior, I've learned the importance of not reinforcing undesirable behavior. So, when it's clear that my children are stalling, when it's obvious I'm being manipulated, I'm going to put my foot down: "You can have all the kisses you want . . . later."

That Mom

2009-01-27T14:09:00.002-05:00

Today, I was That Mom.

You know: That Mom. The one who lets her two-year-old twins run laps through Starbucks, shrieking with laughter and chasing each other down the stairs and up the handicap-access ramp, just because it gives her a few minutes to enjoy her coffee.

(My friend was there, too, with her two-year-old son, who also joined the chase, so I guess it's more accurate to say we were Those Moms.)

After Starbucks, we proceeded to the library, where I was That Mom who let her twins tackle her during story time, then That Mom that had to bum wipes off her friend because she forgot to stock her diaper bag, then That Mom that had to wipe her son's runny nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt because she didn't have any tissues either.

Pretty impressive, how many failures I accumulated in one morning, isn't it?

My friend - who only had three wipes herself, so I'm not sure why she was feeling so superior - pointed out that you'd think, after five kids, I'd have the routine down by now: diapers? check; wipes? check; spare clothes? check; baggies of healthy snacks to distract moody toddlers while on line at the grocery store? check, check, check.

But the truth is, I could have a dozen more kids, and I'd still never be that organized.

Still, that doesn't really excuse the Starbucks rampage, and I apologize to any denizens of Chestnut Hill whose quiet morning was disrupted by the stampede.

But I'm not going to beat myself up too much about it. I suspect, deep in my heart, that most moms become That Mom, every once in a while.

Fashion Sense and Sensibility

2009-01-26T17:44:00.003-05:00

When Declan first started getting particular about what he wore last year, I pretended that I minded having to buy him a whole new wardrobe of plain long-sleeved shirts and button downs, but secretly I was thrilled that my son was so fashion forward. Shirts with giant pandas on them are for babies, I thought to myself, and smiled proudly when Declan went off to school each morning, hipster that he was.

Note that I said "was."

Declan is still as fashion conscious as ever, but now he insists on wearing all his shirts tucked in, his pants hiked up to his nipples. The button down shirts on which we conscientiously taught him to roll up the sleeves are now buttoned tight at neck and wrist. He wants to wear a tie.

Who is this kid? Where does this come from? I didn't really care where he got his fashion know-how before, since I found it so gosh darn cute, but now I'm getting worried. Who is teaching my son to dress this way and why won't he stop?

As a measure of precaution, I've moved his clothes into my room and keep them under lock and key, doling out the necessities each morning. When Declan objects to the outfit I have painstakingly put together, Matty holds him down while I force him into it. (It's kind of like dressing a Build-a-Bear.) He'll get used to it.

Okay, I don't do that. But don't think I'm not tempted. I try to gently encourage him to dress in the manner that I prefer (Declan, rugby shirts aren't really supposed to be tucked in so tight), but he always makes the final call. And every day after he gets dressed, he poses for himself in the mirror, does a little dance, and asks me, "Do I look handsome?"

No, I think to myself. You look like Urkel.

"Yes," I say to him. "You always look handsome to me."

TB or not TB? That is the Question

2009-01-14T08:16:00.009-05:00

When our mother quit smoking around Thanksgiving, just a few weeks after her yearly chest x-ray, we suspected the worst (though of course Mom denied it). And when I got back from Ireland a couple of weeks ago, those fears were confirmed: a small malignancy was found on her lung. After 53 years of smoking, this was hardly a surprise. But it was a surprise when doctors removed the upper left lobe of her lung and discovered that she didn't have cancer after all, but rather a "smoldering infection."

Since her surgery just over a week ago, my mother's condition has changed on a daily basis. Last Wednesday they thought it might be tuberculosis. So we all panicked and thought about the TB epidemic that Mom had brought to our neighborhood. Friday they were pretty certain she didn't have TB. So we stopped worrying about Aaron's nagging cough. Saturday she had it again. And now? Probably not.

Mom's still in the hospital, so I'm here in Florida trying to keep her occupied. She should be home later today or tomorrow, and Amy will come down tomorrow so we can both help her out at home. Whether or not Mom has tuberculosis, she did have her chest cracked open and still needs time to recover.

When I first saw Mom in the hospital, I couldn't help but picture myself in her place, my own kids coming to see me. "Did it seem like just yesterday that I was 4?" I asked her, and she smiled and nodded. Everyone always tells me it goes by so fast, one minute they're toddlers and the next they're getting married. Soon, it will seem, instead of getting the call that Molly won't take a bottle, I'll be getting the call that Molly's going into labor.

That scares me a bit, thinking that before I know it, my kids will be helping to care for me rather than the other way around. That Declan and Ronan and Molly will have to carefully coordinate their schedules as Amy and I have done, to come care for me as I recuperate from something. And that in the blink of an eye, I may not be able to care for my kids as I have for so long.

But what encourages me, what keeps me going, is that when I cannot rush to Ronan's side when he breaks his leg in a skiing accident, or when Molly has her appendix out, or when the TB Declan contracted when he was 4 becomes active, when I cannot be there, someone else can. With our combined 8 kids spread across the nation as adults and parents, there will always be someone there to help you when you're down.

And isn't that why we're doing this? To give our kids the support we all so desperately need, to insure that they never, ever have to be alone if they don't want to?

Milestones

2009-01-13T23:18:00.003-05:00

(Spoiler alert: if you don't know how Marley and Me ends, and don't want to know, then read no further!)

I couldn't tell you the first time any of my kids smiled, rolled over, or took their first steps. But today is a day I will always remember. I came into Erika's room to kiss her goodnight, and she showed me that she had finished reading her edited-for-young-people version of Marley and Me. I told her that yes, we could go see the movie, as I had promised her, and I tucked her in and turned off the light. Then she broke into tears: "It was so sad when Marley died at the end," she sobbed.

It was the first time a book made Erika cry.

That's a big step, when you learn that not all books have happy endings. Most of them do, when you're in second grade. They're happy stories about girls and their horses, and girls and their puppies, and girls lucky enough to have puppies AND horses (at least, these are the books Erika tends to bring home from the library).

I was just excited for Erika to discover the intense emotional relationships you can form with certain books. I've been a passionate reader my whole life, so for some reason I just assumed my kids would also be big readers. And although Hilary does recluse herself in her room with a book on a fairly regular basis, Erika's reading has mostly been at my urging. She's a good reader, and she likes books well enough, but she'd usually rather hook Gretchen and Declan up to a cardboard box and play dog sled team. Because, let's face it, one disadvantage (if you want to call it that) of living in such a big, chaotic household is that there are so many kids around to play with, the environment isn't that conducive to more introspective, solitary activities like reading.

I hope this is just the beginning for Erika. Because, although I can't even remember most of the books I read last year, I remember in great detail those books that moved me as a child: The Secret Garden and A Little Princess. The Shoes series by Noel Streatfeild. Judy Blume. The Black Cauldron. Maybe, when she's grown, Erika will feel the same way about Marley and Me - that it was the start of a lifelong love affair with reading.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-07T12:05:00.004-05:00

Whew!!! We made it! Christmas vacation is now officially over.

When I was a kid, I had no idea how much most parents dreaded Christmas vacation. Now, I know. It's one thing, I suppose, if you have two well behaved children who are in elementary school or older, and you can all get on a plane and fly to Vail - or even better, someplace warm, like Turks and Caicos (both places where families I know traveled over the break), but when you have an autistic child and two-year-old twins, there's very little incentive to take the show on the road. Which means entertaining the gang at home for two weeks. Two cold, rainy, icy weeks - so icy, in fact, that Andy had to deliberately crash our minivan into a post to keep us from careening down the ice slide that was our driveway on Christmas Eve Day.

Just spoke to the body shop, by the way. Apparently, the car requires 40 hours of labor to fix, and will be out of commission for a good two weeks. 40 hours! I feel like I could build a car from scratch in that amount of time.

Well, maybe I couldn't. But I feel confident that other, more capable people could.

That was a definite low point in the break. But there were many good parts also. Andy was off for almost the entire vacation, which was a huge help and enabled us to take some fun trips, like our outing to Hershey Park's Winter Wonderland, which we make every year. We usually try to pick a day with warmish temperatures, in the 40-50 degree range, but this year we had to go on a cold, drizzly night. Although I wasn't thrilled at the prospect, it worked out great, because there were no lines for the rides. We also took Jonah, Erika and Hilary to the Poconos to go dog sledding. I was so excited to give Erika a chance to do that, because she's been obsessed with sled dogs for years now. I thought Jonah would love it also, because he typically likes speed and cold, but he was having a difficult time that day, and was agitated and upset most of the tour. Which was too bad, because it really was a thrill. Arctic Paws is the only dog sledding tour (so they claim) that lets you be the musher, so Erika, Hilary, Andy and I all got to stand on the back of the sled and control the brake.

Then there was our annual New Year's Eve party, which expanded from four families last year to nine this year. Our theme this year was balls - get it, a New Year's Eve "Ball"? Everyone brought food shaped like a ball - which might not sound that appetizing at first, but which actually yielded awesome falafel, lamb balls, shrimp balls, cheese balls, rum balls and peanut butter balls. It's always a happy way to start off the year, with the kids bouncing around, absolutely inflamed with sugar, camraderie, and the excitement of staying up past midnight - which Ronan did no problem, although Jonah and the twins conked out.

I know most people go into the new year with high hopes, but last year really was a tough one for us - with Jonah in the hospital for the bulk of it, and Andy so unhappy at work as the finance industry was just crushed - so we definitely could use some good news. Here's hoping that 2009 is a great year for everyone!!!

Spoiled American

2008-12-24T11:57:00.003-05:00

Never before have I felt as spoiled as I do now, sitting in my father-in-law's house on Sherkin Island off the coast of West Cork. This small island (population: 100) is a short ferry ride from Baltimore (the original Baltimore, in Ireland) but is a completely different galaxy to Villanova, Pennsylvania.

To be fair, island living is simply different than mainland living. There are no garbage trucks to collect waste. There's no gas station, no Home Depot, no store at all as a matter of fact, unless you count the few necessitites like milk and bread sold out of the pub. So of course certain allowances must be made. But Matty's father takes it to a whole other level.

Take the trash (please!). There's a plate for the birds and a plate for the compost. Paper goes into one bin to be recycled; plastic is washed out carefully and placed in another bin. I've been coming here for 10 years and it's only this visit that I can actually remember what to do with everything; in the past I would simply hand my plate and/or trash to Matty to dispose of.

Matty's father is a recycler, through and through, and not just in the commercial sense. Last night he literally took Declan's Hanukkah present out of his hands so her could carefully remove the wrapping paper to save for another gift. Declan was too flabbergasted to protest. (Granda knew better than to try this with Ronan. He might have lost a finger.)

Everything in the house is turned off and unplugged when not in use. Matt Sr. doesn't even use the dryer, though it's been plugged in for our benefit (his clothes are laid out to freeze, er, dry on the bushes). Hot water doesn't actually come out of any of the faucets; there's a special box heating system for the shower. The oven is tiny and the fridge resembles the one from my dorm room in college.

Don't even get me started on the heat (or lack thereof). I can't tell you how many times we've been visiting some family member for a few hours, shivering in our flimsy American clothes, when our host will suddenly catch herself and say, "Oh, should I turn on the heat?" Turn it on? It's the end of December! Of course you should turn it on!

Worst of all, there's no such thing as Tivo here. Every time I turn on the TV Declan asks me to start the show at the beginning, and whenever there are commercials the boys point and stare as if the box is about to explode.

Okay, that's not really the worst of it. But it does make me realize how spoiled the boys, and I, have become.

Don't get me wrong. I don't actually have a lot of techie toys at home--our DVD player cost about $30, our television is shockingly thick-screened, and I have an Ipod shuffle only because Amy bought me one on the occasion of Molly's birth. But our lives do revolve around the technology we use: we're on and off the computer at home all day, keeping up on news both pressing and frivolous, trying to work, etc. Here the Internet connection is shockinly slow, so surfing the Web becomes more like a rough dog paddle. And at night, there's nothing I like at home more than collapsing into bed and watching the previous night's The Daily Show. Without commercials.

I'd like to say that being here will make me a more careful consumer, will make me appreciate all the luxuries I take for granted in my day to day life. But I'm sure I'll be blithely dumping unsorted trash before I've been home a week. And though Matty swears he'll never complain again about Andy keeping the heat so low in the house, I'm sure we'll start inching it up once Andy heads to NYC for the week.

The truth is, I am a spoiled American. At least for most of the year. For two weeks, I can be a careful-living islander.

But just for two weeks.

Independence Day

2008-12-21T13:02:00.003-05:00

I always thought the reasons I enjoy communal living so much were due to the more positive aspects of my character: namely, my flexibility, calmness and generosity.

Now, having spent last week with Keri, Matty and crew in Ireland and Andy in New York City (where he now lives during the week), I'm beginning to suspect my affinity for our living arrangement has much more to do with what I've recently accepted as a staggering degree of helplessness.

Case in point: the heat stopped working. I thought the heat was only working poorly, which isn't that uncommon with a furnace that for all I know may be as old as our house, which was built in 1924. But when Andy came home from NYC on Thursday night, he confirmed that, although the pilot light was on, the water was at room temperature.

????????????????????

Me (huddled in front of the fireplace, from which I had refused to move all day): Should I call Oliver [our heating/cooling company] to come out for an emergency call?

Andy: Nah, I'll figure it out.

It took Andy two expeditions to the basement to discover that a circuit had blown, and with one flick of the finger we were back in business.

It never would have occurred to me to check the circuits. If, say, the Apocalypse had come before Andy came home and suddenly there was no Andy and no Oliver and it was up to me to fix the heating - well, all of us would have spent the winter huddled in front of the fireplace. Which - given the incredibly minor degree of difficulty involved in this particular repair - is pretty depressing.

Second case in point: our neighbor left us a voice mail a couple of days ago, informing us that he and his family were heading out of town for the holidays, but he had connected the snowplow attachment to his pickup truck and left the keys inside, since snow was in the forecast (we live at the top of a big hill, with a quarter-mile driveway that actually belongs to the neighbors, and they typically maintain it). I believe Andy and Matty both know how to work the snowplow, but I've only driven our little tractor snowplow, and feel supremely anxious at the prospect that our ability to leave our house next week might depend on my ability to figure it out on my own.

Our friend Polk said, "There's probably just a lever to move it up and down. You can do it."

Which I've come to understand is a very male attitude. My thoughts were, "What if I damage it? What if I scrape up the driveway? What if I wait until there's too much snow and crash the truck? And so on and so forth.

I've always considered myself an independent person. I've lived alone, and I enjoyed living alone, but that was when I was in graduate school and only had to maintain a little one-bedroom apartment. Now, I look around my house - at the wireless network, the entertainment system, the heating system, the hot water heater, the plumbing, all of it - and all I think is, I couldn't fix that.

Which brings me back to why I like living communally - chances are, the more people around, the more likely it is that one of them will know how to fix whatever happens to break.

But, since it's unlikely the kids will set up such enormous households for themselves when they get older, I feel I should be more proactive - especially with the girls. Whenever Andy or Matty sets to tinker with some failing system, I should just follow them. Maybe then all the females in our household might end up more like my friend Lauren, who knows how to fix lots of things, especially technological things. And I know it will be more of an effort for me to learn, because I have no natural interest in technology, whereas she always has, but I suspect it will be worth it in the end. Because I can't stand the image of myself as Scarlett O'Hara, fluttering my hands and waiting for some man to save me.

Make New Friends, But Keep the Old...

2008-12-10T15:42:00.005-05:00

Our houseguests are gone. Mostly. We had to kick them out of their room when Jonah came home and a few dozen relatives descended for Thanksgiving. Now they just come here to eat and do laundry, since their house has habitable bedrooms but no working kitchen or laundry. It was great having Patrick, Rhea, Jazzy, and Sophia here, and not just because Patrick did the dishes and Rhea made kimchee fried rice for us.

As expected, Jazzy and Erika spent all their time together, in the room they shared at home and in the class they shared at school. What I wasn't expecting was that Declan and Sophia would become such fast friends. The two of them were thick as thieves, disappearing for hours on end to play elaborate games of make-believe or stare at picture books in Declan's room.

Unfortunately, Declan spent so much time with Sophia, he never had time for Hilary. Though Hilary didn't seem to mind--she seems to most enjoy playing or reading by herself in her room--I was sad that the two cousins weren't spending more time together. Now that Sophia is ensconced in her own room a few blocks away (where, I should add, she woke up the first night wailing that she was, "so lonely!"), Declan and Hilary are back to being best buds. This past weekend Matty took Declan and Hilary to the Please Touch Museum, and last week we took Hilary with us to the zoo.

It's been interesting to see the path of Declan and Hilary's relationship, and I'm happy to see we've just about come full circle. When we first moved here almost 3 years ago (gulp!), 18-month-old Declan and almost-3-year-old Hilary were inseparable. But after a while, they fought more than they laughed, and soon they rarely played together at all. Now that they're 4 and 5, they seem to have found their rhythm. Of course they still fight, like any brother and sister. But now it's the exception rather than the rule.

Next year, Hilary will go on to elementary school and Declan will stay at preschool, and I wonder how their relationship will continue to change. Will the two grades that will separate them drive them further apart? Or will they see so little of each other during the school day they'll seek each others company at home at night?

I can't wait to find out.

Holding Down The Fort

2008-12-09T22:13:00.003-05:00

In case I needed another reason to be happy Keri and Matty live with us, Andy resigned last week from the job he held for the past 17 years to join the wildly successful venture his two best friends are running . . . in New York City.

Which means that, from Monday to Thursday, he'll be staying in New York.

You might think this means I'll cherish the adult company Keri and Matty provide even more, as well as their cooking, driving, cleaning, and conflict resolution skills - all of which means I'm not captaining this chaotic vessel on my own. And that's true. But what I'm really so very glad about, more than anything else, is that they're here at night.

People generally perceive me as a pretty laid back person. And I really don't worry much about things like, where I'll sleep the 10 extra people coming in for Thanksgiving, or whether my house is spotless when guests arrive, or whether the pressure in my tires is low. But I have been known to worry about completely improbable scenarios, such as how I would get all my kids out in the event of a fire. Or what I would do if a homicidal maniac broke into the house.

A historically-minded person once told me that the layout of my house - in which many of the bedrooms are connected by interior doors - became popular after the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, so parents could lock the hallway doors to their children's rooms and still be able to move between rooms to check on them.

Thanks a lot, whoever that was. Now there's something else to lie awake at night thinking about.

But I don't lie awake at night. Because with Keri and Matty here, I feel safe. If there were a fire, I wouldn't have to get all the kids out myself. And if there were an intruder, he'd have to fight off all three of us (with all our mad skillz).

So, Andy, if you're concerned about how I'll get on while you're gone, don't worry. I'll miss you, but we'll be fine.

Thanksgiving

2008-12-08T14:18:00.005-05:00

Two weeks later, I can finally write about Thanksgiving weekend without feeling exhausted. Our first visitors arrived the Tuesday prior and left the Monday following. In between, eight of our cousins passed through the house, and one night 13 kids sat down to dinner (pizza, of course; I'm not crazy enough to actually cook dinner for 13 children). It was a wonderfully hectic weekend filled with family and friends, ending on Sunday with a bris hosted for our friend Lauren, who welcomed Henry Eliot to her family.

I was a bit worried about how Declan would fare over the weekend. All the visiting cousins were older--between 8 and 11 years of age--and, save one, female. As I've written before, Declan keeps one foot with the younger kids and one foot with the older ones. I had no doubt that with all the big cousins around, Declan would prefer to hang with the older crowd; but would they want to hang out with him?

I needn't have worried. Though 8-year-old Justin, the lone male cousin over the age of 4, didn't always get on well with all the girls, Declan proved to be a popular kid. I guess I underestimated the cute factor. Girls love cute little kids. Both Declan and Ronan fell in love with their cousins, especially Megan and Brooke, who live in Ohio. We're hoping we can make a trip out there in the spring so the kids can see each other again.

The whole weekend made me realize how lucky we are to have all the kids living together. I wish Megan and Brooke lived closer, so Declan and Ronan could spend more time with them, and so I could get to know them as well as I have gotten to know Jonah, Erika, Hilary, Aaron, and Gretchen. The thought of Ronan and Aaron only seeing each other a few times a year, instead of being the constant companions they are now, makes me sad.

As warm and fuzzy as I felt about seeing all the kids together, I'm sure it was nothing compared to how my great aunt Rose felt. Aunt Rose lost Uncle Bob, her husband of more than 70 years, last June, and this was her first visit up North since then. She couldn't stop telling us how happy she was, how she would remember this weekend forever.

I'll remember it too, because I'm sure it won't be long until Declan tires of being an adorable playmate and decides it would be more fun to tie Brooke's bra to the balcony railing or steal Megan's diary and post excerpts on the Internet.

Hopefully, the adorable playmate thing will work for a few more years.

Thanksgiving: The Menu

2008-12-08T14:15:00.000-05:00

So what do you feed 30 people for Thanksgiving dinner? Here's what we served:

Smoked Turkey (above, perched in Patrick's Big Green Egg)
Roast Turkey
Grilled Leg of Lamb
Chestnut Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Candied Sweet Potatoes
Brussels Sprouts with Turkey Bacon
Glazed Carrots
Challah

And for dessert...
Gingerbread Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
Bourbon Pecan Pie
Maple Walnut Baklava
Pumpkin Pie
Aunt Rose's Mandel Bread
Barbara's Brownies and Peanut Butter Cookies
Andy's Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

Jonah's Home!!!!

2008-12-02T12:46:00.003-05:00

After ten months and fourteen days, we finally brought Jonah back from Kennedy Krieger yesterday.

We admitted a child who was plagued by constant chemical surges in his brain that made him agitated, aggressive and sad. When he was discharged, Jonah's disruptive behaviors in academic settings had decreased by 99.7%. His rates had dropped so low that his psychiatrist determined there was no need to try adding a new medication, as was the plan the last time I posted an update.

As you can imagine, it was a very emotional day. Not quite as emotional as the day we dropped him off, but pretty close. I cried, Jonah's aides cried. We videotaped fond messages from everyone on his team and snapped pictures of him being hugged by his speech pathologist, his behavior therapists, his psychologist, and his aides.

It's hard sometimes to figure out what Jonah's thinking, but I'd say he was pretty happy. He wasn't thrilled that we had moved his room while he was gone, but once we showed him all the markers in his cabinet, he adjusted fairly quickly. Today, he started his new school, and we started re-adjusting to life with Jonah. And it will take some adjusting, even though we're all, down to the two-year-olds, absolutely thrilled to have him back. This morning, for example, was pretty frenetic. You wouldn't think getting eight kids up and ready for the day would be that much more work than seven, but it is. Especially when you have to make sure that eighth kid eats his medicine-infused peanut butter sandwich and doesn't take advantage of his new freedom to fall back into old habits, like writing on the walls.

But, if there's one thing I've learned as the parents of a child with a disability, you can adjust to anything. I adjusted when my beautiful baby grew into a toddler, then a boy, who would come after me every day in a blind, unreachable rage: biting, punching, scratching, grabbing, then five minutes later crawl into my lap for a hug as if nothing had ever happened. I adjusted when he stopped eating anything but pretzels and peanut butter and had to spend a month as an outpatient at CHOP's feeding clinic, where I watched therapists force feed him, after which I was taught to force feed him myself. I adjusted when my nine-year-old son went to live in a hospital two hours away, and now I get to adjust to having him back. I think, now, there is nothing that could happen to me that would simply stop me in my tracks.

And I don't mean to suggest there's anything special about me. I think, for the most part, people cope. Period. That's why it always bugs me when some well-meaning acquaintance says something like, "I don't know how you do it. I could never handle it." I think most parents in my position feel similarly: none of us thought we could do it, but we did it. We do it. And if you had to do it, you would too. I'll never forget something Andy said once, about seven years ago. Jonah hadn't been diagnosed yet, but the writing was on the wall, and one day while we were riding in the car, Andy said, "It would be okay if we had a special needs child." This was Andy talking, super over-achieving Andy, who had already decided that all our kids (3 out of 5 of which hadn't even been born yet) were going to go to Penn and become investment bankers. But what he was really saying was, "I love Jonah. Nothing can change that."

But, hopefully, all that bad adjusting is behind us, and we can look forward to more good adjusting: adjusting to a child who's finally thriving in school, who can carry on a conversation, who plays with his siblings. Jonah's teachers had always said that once his behaviors were resolved, there was no ceiling on what he can accomplish. Now, after a seven-year-struggle, we're so excited to find out how high he can go.

Marathon Day

2008-11-23T07:43:00.002-05:00

The Philadelphia Marathon is today. And I woke up at 5:00 in the morning, just like many marathoners, whose anticipation, excitement and anxiety kept them from sleeping.

Which would make sense if I were running today. But I'm not.

I trained for the Marathon. I logged training runs of 15 and 17 miles. But I kept putting off registering - I was pretty sure I was going to run, fairly certain I would be ready, but what was the harm in waiting? After all, I had run the Broad Street Run (10 miles) and the Philadelphia Distance Run (a half-marathon) this year, and both times I had signed up at the Expo the day before. That way, I could check out the conditions - after all, I wasn't one of those running nuts who would slush through 13 miles in a downpour.

Then, about three weeks ago, Keri told me that she had heard from a friend that the Philly Marathon was closed. They weren't accepting any new registrants.

I couldn't believe it, but it was true. Apparently, there are a lot more people in town who can run 26.2 miles than I had ever assumed. So, no marathon for me.

It serves me right. I've noticed this tendency in myself before - to have an idea, a plan, but not to commit to it fully. I always like to leave myself a back door. I could very easily have had a tubal ligation when the twins were delivered by C-section, for example, but I chose not to. I mean, five kids is more than enough by anyone's standards, and I honestly have no desire to have any more (and would probably have a heart attack if I somehow found myself pregnant, like what happened to Keri) - but I guess what it comes down to is that I don't trust myself not to change my mind.

Which is a shame, because I can't help but feel my life would improve enormously if I could throw myself into projects with reckless abandon. Instead of working in dribs and drabs on the novel revision that my agent has been waiting on for the better part of the last two years, what if I had stayed up all hours of the night, or gotten up at 4:30 in the morning on the days Andy went to work early? What if I hadn't spent so much time surfing the net or playing games on the computer or even blogging for Strollerderby (which I just recently gave up, recognizing it as the time-sucker it was, instead of the paying, identity-affirming, writing gig I liked to think of it as)? What if I had been able to eat healthily on a consistent basis, instead of constantly undermining myself by eating four bowls of Andy's homemade oreo ice cream? What if I had set aside the time every night to help Erika with her math and help Hilary practice her reading? Maybe by now, Hilary would be able to read to herself instead of just being able to read out loud - a mysterious gap in her skills I can't really explain.

On the one hand, I understand that kind of intensity is not really part of my personality, and in fact runs counter to the laid-back, flexible attitude that keeps me sane amidst all the chaos of my life right now.

But on the other hand, there's no reason I can't turn up the heat a little bit. So, there's my New Year's resolution, a month early: sustained commitment. My buzz words for 2009.

Decalin

2008-11-13T08:58:00.003-05:00

I'll always wonder what Declan would be like if he had grown up as the oldest child of three, rather than the middle child of eight, as he is here. Older children are generally higher achievers than their younger siblings and, from my experience, tend to have much stronger personalities. Younger kids tend to be pleasers, as I can attest.

But every time I lament the Declan I'll never know, something happens that makes me realize the benefit of having older siblings around to look up to. (No, Erika and Hilary teaching Declan to dress up in princess dresses was not such a benefit.) And right now, it's homework.

Declan is obsessed with homework. He sees Erika, Hilary, and Jazzy doing it each day after school and so desperately wants to be a big kid like them. So I printed out some worksheets and have him practice his letters in a spiral bound notebook. He does his homework each day like the older girls and beams with pride when he learns a new letter. He's getting better and better at writing his name, though yesterday he wrote "Decalin" at the top of his worksheet. That actually impressed me, because that's how some of his friends say his name and it means Declan might actually be sounding out the letters in his name rather than just copying.

Would Declan be so driven to learn if he didn't have his older cousins to mimic? I don't know. Perhaps he'll tire of the homework when he's actually required to complete it, as Erika has. But until then, I'll enjoy the huge smile on his face when I congratulate him on the proper execution of a "C" (it's harder than you think) or a careful printing of his name, all the letters in the right order ("I ran out of room," he says, when I question why he sometimes puts the "N" in front of the "D").

One Big Happy Family

2008-11-12T09:12:00.003-05:00

Being part of a huge blended family means that people tend to only see you that way: one big family of 12. Sometimes it feels like we've lost our identity as a nuclear family of five (or seven, in Amy's case). And while it's wonderful to be part of such a warm and loving group, its not ultimately what defines us.

Because of our branding as "that crazy Lutz/Fisher/Murphy family," no one ever invites us anywhere. I think many people assume that inviting one of us means inviting all of us, though of course we don't feel that way. There have been times that Amy and her brood have gone to parties or dinners at friends' homes that we haven't been invited to, and this coming Friday, in fact, Matty and I and the kids are having dinner at the home of one of Ronan's friends. But these outings are few and far between. We're much more likely to host our friends at our house.

It makes sense; there are a lot of us and we have a big house, so inviting another family over doesn't really put us out. And I realize that most people would feel slightly claustrophobic inviting four more adults and eight kids into their home.

But I hope our friends know that though we live as one big happy family, we're really two separate families that try to maintain our single family relationships. We try to schedule individual family outings on Sundays, and sometimes even leave all the kids with a sitter so two separate couples can go out with two separate sets of friends.

We've tried hard to instill in our kids the distinction between sibling and cousin, parent and aunt/uncle, and it seems to be working, as we've written about here . Now if only we could get everyone else to see the same distinction.

We Want to Live in Your House: A Guest Post from Rhea

2008-11-05T10:50:00.003-05:00

Everyone thought we were crazy. You really want to live with two other families???

Well, yeah. We have nowhere else to go! It was just perfect. Close to our new house, same teacher, class and bus for Jazzy and Erika, two chefs. Why not? Patrick and I are good sports. We can do this. It should only be for a few weeks.

Well, it has now been over two months and it looks as though it will be just a few weeks more. All in all, things have been good. Here are some of my deep thoughts, reflections and comments about communal living.

“Who the f--- is crying now??? It’s f’in’ 7am on a Saturday!!!”

Everyone (even Marina) is a little bit scared of Gretchen. (And you thought Imelda had a temper and a shoe fetish.)

We only get to watch TV on a 3” screen and only political shit since Matty has a coronary if we change the channel. The BIG TV is reserved for Eagles games and they won’t show us how to use it.

What the…? Where’s RoNo??? He is just the sweetest thing….

“Is Amy dressed to go out in public?”

“Molly spit up on me again.”

Hilary is a very WHYs child.

Iwanbeer actually means “I want my bear.” So should I not have given Aaron a beer? I put it in a sippy cup…

Thai hairdo’s are no-do’s. But the food is delish.

Andy can buy ANYTHING in bulk.

Erika totally gets her money’s worth from drama class.

Naked boy! is always followed by another Naked boy! and then another Naked Boy! and then a Naked Girl!

“Must we eat steak, again?”

Depo makes babies who have very sweet demeanors.

ALL men have the same sense of humor and only ONE topic of humor.

It takes a village to buy a boat.

“Someone’s crying.”

And those a just a few thoughts off the top o’ me head.

Two Angels, a Mouse, a Pirate, a Ladybug, Rapunzel, Tinkerbell, a Grey Furry Baby, and Robin Hood Walk Into a Bar...

2008-11-03T16:19:00.004-05:00

Update on the Uber-Commune

2008-11-03T10:09:00.002-05:00

I got an email from my friend Sarah last week, expressing mild shock that after more than two months, our mutual friends Patrick and Rhea and their daughters were still living with us, and everyone was still happy with the arrangement. Which reminded me that I hadn't posted any updates on that situation since Patrick and Rhea moved in.

In case you haven't been paying attention, here's our current head count: 3 moms, 3 dads, 9 kids, 2 kid helpers. When Jonah comes home at the end of the month, that will make an even 10 kids.

And I have to say, I love it. I think I was just meant to live on a commune. I love that my children are always occupied - Erika and Jazzy (Patrick and Rhea's older daughter) are in the same class at school, share a room, and are rarely apart; Sophia (their younger daughter) has formed a sweet bond with Gretchen. I love having even more smart, interesting adults around with totally different skill sets than mine - Patrick, who's an architect, has helped us immensely with the townhouse we're in the process of buying down in Atlantic City, and Rhea makes a completely addictive kimchee fried rice.

And of course, it's no small benefit to have more people around to share the chores: packing lunches, doing dishes, driving to school. I can honestly say that it's less work for me personally having Patrick and Rhea here.

What they think about the whole thing, I'm not sure. They haven't fled screaming to their shell of a house, choosing to live without a kitchen or working bathroom rather than stay here, so I guess it's not too terrible! Look for a guest post from them soon.

Politically Incorrect

2008-10-31T09:51:00.001-04:00

We're all fairly political. Not that we all agree—Matty is just left of center, while Andy is just Libertarian—but we always have the news on in the kitchen, where we tend to hang out in the early evening as Matty or I prepare dinner. So it's not surprising that most of the kids in the house know that there is an election going on, and those above the age of 4 can even identify the candidates. (Declan, however, misidentified the gentlemen on a recent Newsweek cover as Barack Obama and John McCain (it was actually Joe Biden), but who can blame him? Old white-haired guys all look the same to a 4-year-old.)

Erika, recently asked Andy a question about Obama, and Andy replied, "Barack Obama wants to steal our money."

Matty was appalled. "Andy, you can't say that," he urged.

"Okay," Andy replied. "John McCain also wants to steal our money."

Needless to say, this did little to calm Matty, who, rather than say something he might regret, scooped up the boys and retreated to our bedroom. Where, I should point out, Declan asked plaintively, "Why does Barack Obama want to steal our money?" I lied, "Uncle Andy was just joking."

Matty wasn't mad about the affront on Obama, but rather the overly simplistic and completely inaccurate characterization of both candidates. Kids are literal. They know what stealing is. People who steal go to jail. Collecting taxes isn't stealing.

Later, I heard him telling Erika that Obama and McCain were two different candidates with different positions on many issues and that some people liked Obama and some people liked McCain, just like some people like McDonald's and some people like Burger King.

Clearly, we want our kids to share our values and beliefs. And I sympathize with Andy, the lone Republican-leaning Libertarian in our liberal-leaning household. But painting our politicians as criminals is not the way to do it. Painting them as fast food franchises is a much better option.

I'm not being glib; a 7-year-old child has no concept of real politics. But she does know that Chicken McNuggets are better than Chicken Tenders, but that Wendy's burgers are far superior to McDonald's. In other words, she knows that there are some great things about each fast food outlet, but none of them is perfect.

As parents, all we can do is present our kids with the facts as they can understand them, and know that as they get older, they will make their own decisions and form their own opinions. Maybe they'll agree with us. Maybe they won't.

A few days later, Erika told me at breakfast that she didn't support Obama because he wanted to take her money. I started to correct her but she interrupted me, "I know what it is, it's called taxes." But what does a 7-year-old know of taxes? All she knows is that if she can't keep her money, that's one less Webkinz she can have.

Amy thought we should keep the TV news off in the kitchen when the kids were around, at least until the election is over, but I think that misses the point. Now is the perfect time to start exposing our kids to politics, in any way they can understand. And if that means a few more visits to Wendy's, that's fine with me. (It's much better than McDonald's, anyway.)

The Ghosts of Halloweens Past

2008-10-29T09:02:00.001-04:00

Sid and Nancy, 2005

Bee-ing There

2008-10-28T13:35:00.004-04:00

I like to think that I would do anything to protect my children, that I would sacrifice myself and my well-being to prevent any harm from befalling Declan, Ronan, and now Molly. I like to think that.

But I'm wrong.

Since Declan was born, there have been two instances where I feel that I have completely and utterly failed him as a parent. The first was more than three years ago, in Ireland. I was carrying him down some stone steps, lost my footing, and fell the last three steps to the concrete floor. I landed hard, with bruised knees and ego.

And I dropped Declan.

He was fine, a bit scared, and cried for a few minutes. But I was horrified. Here, when my son needed me most, I failed. My instinct should not have been to put out my hands to break my fall, it should have been to wrap my hands around my baby and hold him tight.

Then, last year, I was in the kitchen with Declan, Matty, and Andy, when there was a small explosion on the stovetop.

Did I throw myself on top of Declan to protect him from what turned out to be an exploding gas lighter, or dive to push him out of the way? No.

I ducked behind the sink.

I think that is in these moments, when pure instinct takes over and we cannot obsess or analyze how exactly to react, it is then when we see our true nature. And my true nature is clearly trying to tell me something.

I have my moments. When Declan was a newborn, some horrid creepy crawly thing darted into his carseat (with him in it), and I didn't run screaming in the opposite direction or call Matty and insist he come home from work straightaway. I calmly scooped out the bug and then washed my hands 17 times.

This past weekend, we took the kids to a birthday party at Linvilla Orchards, a favorite spot for pick-your-own fruit. Last year we picked apples on a particularly hot September day, and Declan got stung repeatedly on his wrist by a very angry wasp. Since then, we have picked peaches and blueberries, and even tiny plums, but each time Declan announced that he would not go apple picking.

The day of the party was very sunny and brisk, a bit cold for bees, I would think, but once the pizza and cake were served, so were the bees. They were everywhere, crawling into cups of lemonade, hovering over pizza crusts and resting hungrily on cake crumbs. Declan was literally shrieking with terror.

Now I must confess, I am terrified of bees and wasps. Not allergic, just really, really scared. Years ago, when I lived in Florida, I had to call a friend to let me into my house because there was a beehive over the door and I simply couldn't walk under it (she let me in the back door). So I know where Declan's coming from. And I can't say I was too happy at this party either.

But I didn't let Declan know any of that. I stood with him among the bees and stayed calm. And though my instinct was to scoop him up and hide in the car, I stayed strong.

If I can handle bees, I can handle anything. I hope.

No Riluzole Miracle For Jonah

2008-10-27T16:30:00.003-04:00

It's official: Jonah's Riluzole trial is over. The new, $13/pill drug that so drastically transformed two other patients on the unit had virtually no affect on Jonah's lingering irritability and SIB (self-injurious behavior; Jonah often bites his hand when he's agitated).

It's pretty disappointing news. It took half a bag of chocolate chips and an afternoon of mindlessly trolling the internet before I felt like talking to anyone again.

To be fair, Jonah was not in the same kind of desperate predicament those other children were in when they were prescribed Riluzole. Jonah's behavior, since he was placed on lithium shortly after his admission, has been pretty good - much, much improved over how he was before he left home.

But Jonah's doctor feels she can do better.

Which means another new drug, another trial - another few weeks, at the very least, until Jonah can come home. And it's hard to get excited about the new drug. Instead of something cutting edge, something experimental, Jonah's doctor is going old school, prescribing a tricyclic, which is a family of anti-depressants developed in the 1950s whose popularity with doctors has been eclipsed by the development of SSRIs.

On a more positive note, Andy and I had an amazing visit with Jonah this weekend. It was just us and him, no other kids, and he loved having our undivided attention. We went to Target, as he's been asking to do the last few weeks, and stocked up on markers. We had dinner at Chili's, where he was perfectly well behaved. (I can say with absolute certainty I would much rather take Jonah to a sit-down restaurant than I would Aaron or (especially) Gretchen.) We even got his hair cut, without a single protest - although, historically, haircuts have often required martial-type headlocks from Andy in order to get through.

So, our weekly treks down to Baltimore will continue. I have to say, I am so weary of making the trip. It didn't bother me that much for the first, oh, say, eight months of Jonah's admission. But all of a sudden, I started hating it. I can't wait to be done spending four hours in the car every Saturday, splitting up the family for the day (or listening to the twins scream in the car, which we do about a third of the time), feeling more exhausted on Monday morning than I did on Friday night.

But I guess I'd rather Jonah spend a few more weeks in the hospital, if it enables his doctor to find the perfect pharmaceutical cocktail. Because this is something I never want to go through again.

Fun

2008-10-22T16:47:00.003-04:00

I honestly feel that I could once again inhabit the mind of a child, and truly experience the wonder and mystery of childhood that I have long since forgotten, if only I could appreciate the joy of running in circles, the thrill of jumping down stairs, and the precarious pleasure of balancing on . . . anything.

We have a carpet in our foyer that I believe is about 10' by 14'. When Jonah was two, he loved running around the border of this carpet, and when he was diagnosed with autism, I figured this was just another stimmy behavior, like lining up his magnetic letters or flapping his hands. But every one of the kids has spent hours running around that carpet. Most nights, after dinner, someone turns on the CD player, and Aaron, Gretchen, Ronan and Declan (and sometimes Sophia) chase each other around and around until no one's really sure who's trying to catch whom.

Stair jumping is also very popular, even with the older kids. I've caught Erika leaping from the first landing to the floor below - eight steps down. The little guys test their bravery by escalating from the first, to the second, to the third step - we don't let them jump from any higher. And I have to say, the practice makes them better jumpers. I wish I had video of Gretchen when she first started trying to jump off the first step - it was about as graceful as falling face-forward. But Aaron could do it, and she was determined, and now she has perfect form, like a skier about to launch down the ramp: knees bent, arms back, chest out.

Sometimes, I feel as if I haven't aged at all, that I'm the same person I was when I was much younger. But then I realize how much I have changed. Hilary asked me just a couple of days ago, "Why don't you have any toys?" I thought about my iphone, and my ipod, but realized she wouldn't consider those toys. So I said, "Grown-ups don't play with toys the way kids do." And she said, "So what do you do for fun?" I thought, poker is fun. Tennis is fun. Running around in circles is definitely not fun. At that moment it seemed there was no greater divide between my young self and myself right now - or between myself and my children - than my definition of fun. And it was a little sad, because I can't even remember a time when running around in circles was fun. I wish I did.

Metaphysical Conversations With Hilary

2008-10-16T16:24:00.003-04:00

Hilary: I don't want to be a vet, because then you have to take care of dinosaurs.

Me: Actually, dinosaurs are extinct. That means there aren't any alive anymore, and there haven't been since before there were people on the planet.

Hilary: What happened? A giant rock hit the earth? [We had discussed the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction with Erika on a previous occasion.]

Me: Some people think so. Maybe a giant rock hit the planet, causing it to become really cold, and the dinosaurs died because they couldn't find any plants to eat. [This is me bullshitting my way through the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction. I'm actually not sure whether a colossal impact like that would cause severe climate change, or clog the atmosphere with dust, or maybe some other fatal consequence altogether.]

Hilary: What happened? [Repeating questions is definitely her m.o.]

Me: Well, we don't really know. But we do know there are no more dinosaurs.

Hilary: Is Uncle Bob extinct?

Me: Well, we don't really use the word 'extinct' to talk about individual members of a species, more like the species as a whole. So, Uncle Bob is dead, but the human race is not extinct.

Hilary: And that's why 'Tom and Jerry' is so funny!!!

Yet Another Reason It's Great to Live in a Communal Household

2008-10-14T14:08:00.004-04:00

You always have back-up for removing stubborn splinters...

What's Brown and Sticky?

2008-09-29T14:03:00.002-04:00

From what I can gather from Erika, my source for the current state of school affairs, the popular kids at school these days are the funny ones.

When Erika was in kindergarten, all the girls wanted to eat lunch with Kyle, who made the girls giggle so hard they snorted their milk. Now that she's in elementary school, Erika has no interest in Kyle—he plays with the mean boys, she says—and has moved on to David, who seems to be the apple in many 2nd grade girls' eyes. At the back-to-school picnic, Amy spotted David easily by the half-dozen girls surrounding him like a pack of hungry lions. I couldn't help but be surprised at how smug Amy was that Erika got the first play date of the new school year with David last week.

If David is any indication, my boys are off to a good start on the road to popularity. Even though they're just toddlers, they've already mastered…

Dry humor:
Me: Goodnight, Ronan!
Ronan: I not Ronan, I Declan! (rolls around bed laughing)

Slapstick humor:
Ronan: Getchen, look at me! (Smacks self in head and falls on floor. Gretchen laughs. Repeat.)

Sarcasm:
Me: You can play for 5 minutes before bed.
Declan: 5 minutes? Wow.

And, of course, political humor:
Me: Who do you think should be the next president, Obama or McCain?
Declan: Blabii da da goo goo! (drops to floor in fit of hysterics)

Humor plays a huge part in our household. The one joke Matty knows is a family favorite (What's brown and sticky? A stick!), and Andy begins teaching each of the kids jokes as soon as they can talk.

A three-year-old trying to tell a joke is always funny. Even if she can't quite tell it right. Actually, especially if she can't quite tell it right. Which is what happened at Thanksgiving four years ago, when Andy whispered a joke into Erika's ear, and she stood up at the head of the table to repeat it:

Erika: Two penises were walking down the street…

Stunned silence.

Andy: No! Two PEANUTS were walking down the street!

I'm not sure which was funnier, that Erika yelled "penises" in front of two dozen family members, or that each and every one of those family members believed Andy would actually teach her a joke that involved said penises.

Either way, with role models like these, I think Declan and Ronan are well on their way to popularity… or the principal's office.

I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours

2008-09-22T17:47:00.002-04:00

Erika wants a sleepover. With a boy.

So far, I've done a good job of deflecting the issue. When I picked her up the last time she had a playdate with this particular boy, and she asked, "Can David and I have a sleepover?" I responded, oh-so-smoothly, "David has an electric scooter? That is so cool!"

What I really want to know is, why can't she? Erika and David are seven years old. Their friendship is completely innocent, and based - as far as I can tell - on the kind of shrieking, chasing and general roughousing Erika's girlfriends are not typically interested in. Our houseguest, Rhea, asked Erika what she liked about David recently, and she said that he was funny, and "a weirdo, just like me."

So romantic.

Still, I can't shake this feeling that it's somehow wrong for a boy and girl to have a sleepover. Am I really afraid of what they'll do when the lights go out? Not really, despite the fact that Rhea also told me about another friend who found her young daughter in bed, under the covers, with her clothes off, with a boy who was visiting. Frankly, if that's what Erika and David really wanted to do, they'd have plenty of opportunities during the course of a regular, non-sleepover playdate.

Is it the where-do-you-draw-the-line issue? That is, if I let her have sleepovers with boys when she's seven, will I have trouble telling her no when she's nine, or eleven, or thirteen? I don't think that's it, either. I mean, there are a seemingly infinite number of activities that are appropriate at different ages, and kids understand that. Just because it's okay to shower with Daddy when you're four, doesn't mean it's okay to do it when you're fourteen. Just because it's okay to run naked on the beach when you're two - etc., etc.

So, although I'm probably not going to let Erika have her sleepover, I can't help but think that by doing so I'm sexualizing her to a far greater degree than exposure to Bratz dolls or "High School Musical" could ever do. And teaching her, from the beginning, that friendships between boys and girls are different, and more restricted, than friendships between girls. As if she won't learn that lesson soon enough.

A Question of (Preschool) Ethics

2008-09-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

Declan's recent birthday party presented me with two moral dilemmas. The first centered around the gift of a picture book. We already had a copy, but it was well-loved and well-worn, so we were all happy for the second copy. But when Amy opened it to read to Declan after the party, she found a very moving inscription... to the child who gave Declan the book: To "Pat," with love, Grandma and Grandpa.

Amy thought I should call the offending parent and innocently mention her "mistake," in the guise of wanting to return the treasured book. But I felt that any mention of her misstep would be extremely embarrassing. Matty agreed, and we kept the book.

The second dilemma was over the insane amount of toys Declan received. As you can imagine, in a house with 8 (10 for now) children, there are a lot of friggin' toys. So really, the last thing we need is another toy. Of course, Declan loves toys, and what else are you going to give a 4-year-old? Theater tickets?

After he opened them, I packed up Declan's presents and doled them out one at a time, so he wouldn't lose them all instantly to the general chaos of the house. Some of the presents, however, were remarkably similar to one another... and some of those same said presents had convenient gift receipts attached. Would it really be so horrible to return some of the presents and get Declan some shoes?

I hope I don't sound ungrateful. Declan truly loved all his presents, since almost all of them featured a pirate in some form or another. But even as we opened them, I couldn't help but take mental note of the tiny swords or gold doubloons or pirate hats, knowing that as soon as they came out of the box, they would most likely be lost in the void.

With preschoolers, moral dilemmas are made all the more difficult (or perhaps easier) by the fact that A) they have short memory spans, and B) they don't have a truly developed sense of morality yet.

I have the same quandaries about lying to the kids, even over ridiculous things (no, Declan, I'm certain you can't bring toy swords into the Renaissance Faire). I remember when Declan was just a baby and we were having brunch with another family. The father went out to the car to retrieve a few things and forgot to bring back his son's treasured bunny (or bear, or some other cuddly animal). When his son called him on it, Dad told him that Bunny was tired and just wanted to rest in the car. His son was momentarily placated.

I, however, was horrified. Why not just tell the kid you forgot? Tell him he can have it when they get back in the car? Why on earth lie to him?

But now I do it all the time, and I'm not really sure why. Sure, I could have just told Declan that I didn't want him to bring his toy swords (all 87 of them) to the Faire, since he'd likely lose a few and end up fighting with his brother and cousins over the ones they managed to hold on to.

Declan went through a phase recently where he would run up to tell me about every little transgression; this after I praised him for telling me the truth about a fight with Ronan.

"Ronan took my sword so I pinched him like this," and he would hold up his hand like a claw.

"Hilary wouldn't share the horse so I took it and threw it in the family room."

"Gretchen hit me so I took her baby away and gave it to Aaron."

The only problem was, Declan expected exoneration in exchange for his confessions. Once I explained that he would be punished for his crimes, regardless of whether I heard about it from him or the offending party, the admissions of guilt ceased.

Which I suppose is a lesson to be learned myself: Just because I am aware that what I am doing is wrong, doesn't make it any less wrong...

...no matter how badly I want him to leave the damn swords at home.

There's Something About Molly

2008-09-18T19:49:00.002-04:00

I knew this would happen. Even as I wrote about my ambivalence toward my pregnancy, even as I moaned about the failure of my superdrug, I knew that once I saw her sweet, sweet smile, once I watched her fall asleep in my arms, I would be hooked. And I am.

But there's something different.

I am in awe of Molly. I can't look at her enough. Every smile is mentally recorded, every move fussed upon. I don't recall things being quite this way with my boys. Of course I loved them, but their babyhoods were more of something to be endured to get to the good stuff--the toddlerhood, the point where they became their own people. I was never much of a fan of infancy; I find babies to be boring to the extreme. Especially my own. But Molly is remarkable.

Is it because she's a girl? Because she's my last? Or perhaps because her being is so improbable?

I won't deny that she's an incredibly good baby: she sleeps 12+ hours each night and rarely cries unless she's hungry or very tired. She's happy and laid back, and doesn't mind being carted around on my schedule and catnapping when given the opportunity. She'll swing happily for hours while I develop recipes in the afternoon, and can fall asleep with The Colbert Report blaring while I nurse.

But it's not just those things...

I can't believe how close I was to not knowing Molly, to not having her in my life. I can't believe I thought my life was complete without her. I can't believe that Ronan almost missed out on being such a loving big brother, or that Declan might not have gotten the chance to "help" me with his baby sister.

There's something about Molly. Something that makes me feel wonderfully lucky.

Jonah's Miracle?

2008-09-16T09:04:00.002-04:00

The very first book we read about autism - back before we got the official diagnosis, but knew it was coming - was Karyn Seroussi's account of how her son was cured of his autism through the implementation of a gluten-and-casein-free diet. So, for the next four years, we put Jonah on the same regimen: no milk or wheat products at all, which meant we had to buy special breads, pastas and pretzels made with rice or soy.

But it didn't cure him. It didn't help much at all.

There are many miracles in the autistic community. Kids have lost their diagnoses after being treated with vitamins, or chelation (a controversial procedure that removes toxins, such as mercury, from the body), or hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And we've tried a lot of those things. But none of them did for Jonah what they had supposedly done for other people's children.

I used to feel this incredible pressure to try every alternative treatment I heard about. Because what if Jonah's miracle was out there, but we never found it because I stopped trying? One thing Kennedy Krieger has done for us is relieve that pressure. Knowing that Jonah's tantrums were caused primarily by his mood disorder means that no diet, no B12 injections, no amount of oxygen could have "cured" him. Bipolar disorder is a medical condition, and requires medical treatment.

But now I'm thinking about miracles again. Because, although Jonah's aggression has virtually disappeared since he was prescribed lithium and abilify, his doctor at Kennedy has just started him on a new medicine that she hopes will help with the lingering irritability, crying and SIBs (self-injurious behavior, such as the hand-biting Jonah does when he's agitated) she is still seeing. This new drug, riluzole, is only FDA-approved to treat patients with Lou Gehrig's disease. But doctors have also seen amazing results treating psychiatric patients who haven't responded to traditional mood stabilizers - like Jonah, who has been on so many different medicines over the years, I lost track long ago. Clinical trials are going on at Johns Hopkins (across the street from Kennedy), and the psychiatrists at Kennedy have just begun prescribing it to their patients. The two who are now taking it, according to Jonah's doctor, have made enormous gains.

New drugs are exciting - so full of hope and potential. It's thrilling to think we may be part of the beginning of a great advancement in the treatment of kids like Jonah. Although I've stopped believing that Jonah will ever be cured of his autism, we sent him to Kennedy to solve the puzzle of his mood disorder. Giving him the gift of a tranquil mind would be miracle enough for us.

Happy Birthday Declan!

2008-09-03T14:31:00.000-04:00

Where have the last 4 years gone? How did my baby go from this:

To this, big brother to two little ones?

We took Declan to the Renaissance Faire for his birthday, and he got to wear his new pirate costume, complete with hat and boots. He was by far the most dashing young pirate there. He loved the magic and the shows and the 3-foot-tall slushies, though was devastated that he couldn't buy (or touch, for that matter) the numerous (real) swords on display.

As soon as we got home, I rushed to bake cupcakes and prepare his favorite foods for his birthday dinner: steak, homemade mac-n-cheese, and edamame.

So did he enjoy his celebratory meal? Not exactly. He fell asleep in the car on the way home from the Faire and we couldn't wake him for dinner, even with the promise of cupcakes. He slept right through the night.

So we ate in his honor. Happy birthday Declan!

Maybe He Needs A Map

2008-08-29T10:02:00.003-04:00

The other night at dinner, Andy was asking Hilary about her reading - a topic he talks about a lot these days, because he's so impressed with the fact that Hilary is reading chapter books and she hasn't even started kindergarten yet. (Me, I'm a big believer in the theory that reading is genetically pre-programmed, and that it's not necessarily a predictor of anything. Take Jonah - he was reading at four, before he could talk, and he was completely self-taught. We didn't even know he could do it until he started writing in chalk on the driveway. I mean, of course I'm proud of Hilary, but I'm not sure her skill reflects any particular initiative or effort on her part.)

Anyway, I digress.

So, Andy asks Hilary, "Where is your Wizard of Oz book?"

Hilary says, "In my room."

Andy asks, "Where in your room?"

And Hilary, mishearing him, tells him exactly where her room is: "Next to the twins' room."

Matty, Keri and I laughed so hard I don't think we actually made any noise. I mean, are there so many kids in the house, and is the house so much of a labyrinth, that Hilary could possibly think her father would forget where her room is?

I guess so!

They Do! They Do!

2008-08-28T16:13:00.004-04:00

After 2 years of positing the question, "Who else wants to live in my house?", someone finally accepted. No, Amy's not pregnant again. Family friends just bought a house close by and are staying here while the house is renovated.

For those keeping track at home, that's three moms, three dads, six girls, four boys, and the usual three cats and one dog. Though we briefly considered having some of the parents double up (anyone else watching Swingtown?), in the end we decided to donate Molly's room to Patrick and Rhea and have their daughters, Jazzy (8) and Sophia (4 1/2), bunk with Erika and Hilary.

It's only temporary (or so we keep telling ourselves). Hey, that sounds familiar...

Yes, we've reached maximum capacity. Yes, we're crazy. And yes, it will be fun. Look out for a special guest post in the coming weeks.

Back From Family Vacation

2008-08-21T14:21:00.004-04:00

Last week, Andy and I took Erika, Hilary, Aaron, Gretchen and Oat down to the New Jersey shore for five days of family bonding. We had an ideal set-up: a friend of Andy’s from work has a house in Margate that he let us use for free – plus, we miraculously found in the back of our minivan about two hundred dollars worth of two-year-old tickets to one of the amusement piers in Ocean City. All we really had to shell out money for was pizza and salt water taffy, which pretty much comprised the kids’ daily diet for the five days we were down there.

(And breakfast bars. Boy, did the kids enjoy breakfast bars every morning! Sometimes they even had two!)

This was Aaron and Gretchen’s first time at the beach – I didn’t take them last summer because I couldn’t deal with the prospect of spending the entire time scraping sand off their tongues (i.e., “Aaron, stop eating sand! Gretchen, stop eating sand! Aaron, don’t you know by now how gross that sand is!). But now that we’re successfully past that important sand-eating stage of development, I was excited to see how much the twins would love the beach.

Well . . . let’s just say they didn’t get it, not at first. Every time any part of Gretchen touched the beach, she would shriek, “Ahhh! I dirty!!!!!!!” It wasn’t until our second or third day that they were truly able to embrace the scratchy, itchy, gritty existence that is a day at the beach. After that, though, they had a great time – all the kids did. They loved the ocean, even if the water was freezing. They loved eating junk food on the Boardwalk and going on rides – boy, did they love rides. I think Aaron went on the carousel 25 or 30 times. No matter what you asked him all week – “Aaron, do you want to go to the playground?”; “Aaron, did you brush your teeth?”; “Aaron, can I have a kiss?” – the answer was always, “I want to ride the big horse!”

The kids had such a great time, in fact, that I can’t imagine taking a vacation any other place than the Jersey shore for the foreseeable future. I mean, sure, Andy and I have plans for grand family vacations – including a safari in Kenya, exploring the national parks, touring through Israel – but I can’t imagine actually embarking on an expedition like that until the twins are way less annoying – I mean, labor intensive. Until then, it seems like we can have a lot of fun while avoiding troublesome situations like long car or airplane trips and inconvenient accommodations (not too many hotel rooms sleep 7) if we just keep going down to the shore. And Jonah loves the beach and the rides even more than his brother and sisters, if that’s possible – so it really is the one vacation that’s equally appealing to all five kids.

Does this make us boring and predictable? I guess. It might even make us intolerably lowbrow – at least to our friend, Hylton, who hates the Jersey shore and all the sticky, sweaty crowds it draws. But at this point in my life – with two-year-old twins, an autistic son who is quite firm about what he likes and doesn’t like, and two other girls who are determined to claim their fair share of our attention – keeping it simple seems like the right strategy. At least for now.

Make New Friends, but Keep the Old... or Just Look Them Up on Facebook in 30 Years

2008-08-20T13:36:00.003-04:00

I'm addicted to Facebook.

I know I'm not the only one. I can see all my friends constantly update their status with ever more clever and witty comments. I get bombarded with emails to install the latest gizmo that my friends have installed.

I found groups for my elementary school (Bluefield) and summer day camp (Blue Rill). I found people on Facebook that I went to kindergarten with. Kindergarten! That was 30 years ago! These people look old. Some of them are bald. Some are chiropractors. Some both. I have vague memories of playing with these people, running wild through our apartment complex, playing hopscotch until dusk.

I'm excited when I find these people, or they me, and I pore over the few remaining class pictures I have, trying to match the face to the name, the face then to the face now. And we exchange pleasantries, one sentence updates--I'm a food writer in Philadelphia with three kids. You?--and then... that's it.

There's a reason it's been 30 years since we all spoke; we've all grown and changed and moved on. We're not the same people we were at 5. Now most of us have kids who are 5.

Last week in the car, I told Declan that his friend Josh wasn't going to be in his class this year. Declan didn't respond, and when I turned around I saw him sucking his thumb and silently crying. Declan and Josh have been in school together for all of their short school careers--more than 2 years. I'm sure Josh's mom and I will do our best to schedule playdates and possibly joint after-school activities, but soon both Declan and Josh will move on and find new friends. And Declan will struggle to remember exactly who Josh is...

...until 2038, when they find each other on Facebook: "I'm a pirate in Ireland with 5 kids. You?"

My Son, the Model

2008-08-18T09:56:00.008-04:00

It's weird enough having a not-quite-4-year-old son who's more into fashion than I am. It's even weirder to have said son work the camera like nobody's business.

While at the Baltimore Zoo last week, Declan lagged behind the others so he could climb up on some rocks. Great, I thought; a nice boyish activity. But he wasn't looking to climb and jump and possibly scrape his knee. He was looking to pose:

Back at home, when Daddy wanted to take some pictures of Declan to forever immortalize his first (of many, I'm sure) black eye, Declan took it as an invitation to work it:

I've been reading a lot lately about gender confusion; I've even contributed some of the reading myself (see the Little Boy Pink essay I wrote about Declan's princess phase last year). But I think the so-called gender confusion is displaced; our kids aren't confused, but maybe we are.

I remember when Erika was 2, the height of her girly-girl stage. She insisted on wearing dresses all the time, preferably garish and pouffy dress-up dresses. She would no sooner play with a truck than she would an electric fence. She was a girl to the extreme. The exact opposite of Amy.

I, of course, found this hysterical: here was Amy, who basically lived in track pants and oversized t-shirts (she's a little better now), with a daughter that longed to teach Amy a thing or two about fashion. Erika was the last thing Amy expected.

Then there's my cousin Darlene, who's pretty girly herself. Her first daughter, Nancy, however, preferred football to fancy dresses. Nancy, I'm sure, was the last thing Darlene expected.

I think it's only natural for us to have certain expectations of our children. From the moment we find out the gender of our child, we start to fantasize about his or her future, try to picture what he or she will be like as a toddler, a teen, an adult. And even though I consider myself fairly evolved, when I pictured Declan's future it wasn't as a fashion designer or male model. But why not?

Now, Erika has shunned dresses for jeans and is happy to play pirates with the boys or pick up frogs outside (something her macho father refuses to do). Nancy (willingly) got her hair and make-up done for her aunt's wedding, though she still spends Sundays at Giants games with her dad. And Declan loves to pose for the camera. And bake cookies. And he can't wait for gymnastics class to start in a few weeks. But he also loves swords and jumping and wrestling with his brother.

I know I harbor misguided expectations of my boys, and I'm trying really hard to let them go. I'm trying hard not to see Ronan, my rough-and-tumble tough guy, as a footballer. I'm trying not to be so surprised when I find out that little tough guy loves to draw, and at 2 1/2 can already draw representatively.

When I look at Molly, I try to see a blank slate. And it's working. I can't quite see her future yet, or even know what I want for her. Just happiness, of course. And that's gender neutral.