Lists

10 Things That Made Me Smile Today
1.  Jack singing the theme for Perry the Platypus (do be do be do be...).
2.  Playing in the snow with the kids.
3.  My hour long nap.
4.  Anna saying, "I like your popcorn jammies!"  Apparently the clouds on my new jammies look like popcorn to her.
5.  Playing Legos with both kids.
6.  Anna is getting more and more patient with using the stylus on her Explorer.
7.  Anna calling her Leapfrog Explorer her "batteries."
8.  My cheeseburger happy meal.
9.  The 20 minutes of cuddle time with Junior, the dog.
10.  Watching the dogs run around like lunatics in the snow.

10 Things I am Thankful for Right Now
1. My children and husband.
2. My parents, sisters--including Geri--, nieces, nephew, friends
3. My dogs (even though Brian was sick last night)
4. The fact that my husband bought me replacement diamond earrings, promising me that if I was good and didn't lose one, he would "upgrade" next year.
5. The new big screen, flat panel TV.
6. I have at least one friend who, when I announce that I want to go to a tikki bar, is ready to go along with me.
7. The fact that I have brought home only about an hour's worth of school work over this vacation.
8. Vick's Vapor pads.
9. My popcorn jammies.
10. VACATION!!!!!!

Things Are Looking Up

1.   I wanted to thank everyone for their support, both in person and on-line.  I appreciate it more than you can understand.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

2.  Tomorrow John and I are bringing Anna to a screening at the early childhood center.  I had called right after Thanksgiving, thinking I would have to wait for a while.  But they had an opening and wondered if I would be able to get Anna there.  Um...yeah...thanks.  We'll see what the story is.  At the very least she should be getting something for her speech. 

3.  My sister-in-law gave us the phone number and information for a doctor who specializes in pediatric psychology or whatever.  Before we take that route, we need to play the insurance game.  Since the city I work for changed to the state sanctioned health care program, we've been hit with bill after bill after bill with things that our old insurance covered that our new insurance does not.  I'll be able to get a referral--our pediatrician is very supportive.  We'll take the next step when we know what it is.

4.  Billy-the-Exterminator is sooooo bad I can't help but watch. 

5.  So tomorrow, after Anna's appointment, I'm dropping her off at the sitters.  I'm going shopping without the kids or the husband.  I already feel guilty about it.  Guilt is one of those things that I learned from my mother.  I'm not sure how much guilt she ever really felt in her lifetime, but she sure knows how to impart guilt upon the masses.  I feel guilty because Anna really likes to go shopping, particularly at Target.  Don't know why.  We don't usually buy the kids stuff when we go shopping, but she really likes to go there.  The other reason I feel guilty is that I should really drop Anna off and go to work--I should be able to get there by 11 or so.  I do feel guilty about it, but there would be no one to cover the three classes I would be missing.  Once upon a time, we would have an "extra" sub in the building to cover classes and help out in the office.  Even as late as last year, we would have teachers who would be able to cover a class here or there.  Now, we're so short staffed that's not even an option.  To cover my couple of hours would require paying for a sub anyway.  Might as well take the day. 

6.  The kids are so excited about Christmas.  Well, Jack is excited.  Anna is just happy.  She's singing Christmas carols at every single turn.  Yeserday was "The Little Drummer Boy."  And that was, quite possibly, the best.  Jack is watching more "big kid" TV ("Phineas and Ferb" mainly), and has access to commercials.  So every time he sees a toy commercial, he says, "I want that!"  It is incredibly difficult to figure out what he wants.  Hopefully he'll like what he gets.

7.  I have to get some things done!  I have to stop blogging!

Why I'm the World's Worst Mother and Other Thoughts

This has been a tough week here in the Bailey-Dumas household.  Perhaps it was tough in my own head more than anywhere else.

Those who know Anna know that there's something a little off with the girl.  The more we play around with the idea, the more we think it could be any number of things.  We're fairly certain that she is not autistic, but we've come up with a whole book full of possible issues.  Right now we're leaning toward an anxiety issue.  A severe anxiety issue.  We're starting the screening process next week.

This breaks my heart in so many ways.  First of all, I have a lot of great qualities.  I'm smart.  I'm funny.  I'm a hell of a writer.  I am also one big ball of anxiety.  It's the latter she got from me.  It pains me to think that my little girl is paralyzed by the things that make me pause.  I have lost my patience with her, thinking she was being stubborn or bratty, when she was really being afraid.  Fantastic mother.

On Tuesday, I brought her to the eye doctor.  She's got an eye--the right one--that turns in.  For a while, almost a year, I wasn't really sure if it was turning it in.  So I was delayed in getting her to the eye doctor.  We went in March, and the doctor prescribed her glasses.  I wasn't good at forcing her to wear her glasses.  We misplaced them a bunch of times.  When we went back to the doctor in August, he was frustrated with us because she wasn't wearing the glasses.  He wanted her to wear an eye patch for an hour a day.

Seems like a reasonable request.  And at first it wasn't so bad.  We called it her "Princess Pirate Patch," drew pictures on it, and ran around saying "argh!!" a lot.  We would put it on at dinner time and would give her dessert if she kept it on for the whole hour.  That lasted maybe a month, tops.  Then it turned into a fight.  When it got to the point that I was tackling her and pinning her down to put the patch on only to have her pull it off three seconds later and have to start the whole thing over again.  I gave up on it, but I was able to get her to wear her glasses more often.  And it seemed, really seemed, as if that was working.  The eye was not turning in like it had been.

So Tuesday, I took her to the eye doctor.  She freaked out.  The tech asked her to tell her how many little red lights she saw.  Anna said, "No."  The tech next asked me, "Is she speech delayed?"  Yes.  Thanks for reminding me.  Anna was bouncing around and off the walls.  The tech was out of her element.  So she called in the doctor.  The doctor did a really good job with Anna and was able to get a lot checked out.  He was very disturbed by the fact that her right eye just wasn't working.  He couldn't get her to focus on anything.  He said that if we couldn't get her to use it soon, she could lose the use of it forever.

After delivering that happy news, we decided to dilate her eyes so that he could measure them for a new glasses prescription.  That was a fight and a half.  I was holding her body.  This other doctor/helper lady was holding her arms.  The doctor had her legs and she was screaming and fighting.  So I started crying.  No seriously.  I started sobbing.  I just felt so sorry for her, for letting her down so badly.  She stopped crying, and asked, "Mama, what's the matter?"  So I started sobbing more.  She had run away from me, from all the adults, but then saw that I was crying and came running back to me.  She threw herself at me and said, "Aw!  Mama!"  So I sobbed all the more.

Then the doctor told me that she had, indeed, improved her eyesight.  It doesn't make sense to me, but it really perked the doctor up.  Then he left the room before I could start crying again.  That happy news and the fact that the eye drops that he prescribed in place of attempting the patch again is would be deadly if swallowed.  Thanks, dude.

So not only is my daughter one big ball of anxiety, she is not using her right eye and could quite possibly lose the vision it.  All because of me. 

The rational side of me understands that this is not totally my fault.  I can't fix everything.  I can't stop everything from happening.

The irrational part of me just wishes I could make it all better, because it seems like this little girl has so much going on.  It's amazing to think that her sweetness and her sense of humor is as intact as it is.

Unfocused at Best

A really good friend of mine writes a blog (the next installment of which I am waiting for most impatiently) called "Random Thoughts."  I didn't want to steal that title for this blog, but that's what you're about to read.  There is nothing here that resembles focus.

1.  We got the car fixed.  It took about a week and half, but the car is back to us.  Of course, the bumper is a completely different shade of red than the rest of the car.  Oh well.  I did manage to get rid of the world's ugliest rental car.  It was brand new and lovely on the inside.  It drove nicely, but it was the world's ugliest rental car.  As far as John's friend Craig said, "At least it's the right color."

2.  My glasses are lost again.  I simply cannot keep track of glasses for the life of me.  So I'm wearing a pair that's about 5 years old.  I can see-ish.  They'll turn up somewhere, sometime.  I need a new pair anyway.

3.  Thanksgiving was tough on Anna-banana--too loud, too crowded, no time for her to adjust.  I have, however, come up with a plan of action.  I know who to call within the school system to set the testing ball a-rolling.  I've been wondering how to approach this.  She doesn't have autism and she doesn't have an auditory processing disorder.  I don't want to approach the school system with the possibility of a label that will hurt her in the long run.  So Thanksgiving was tough, but she had a fantastic Christgiving.

4.  My family made up a holiday.  We found that we never got together--all of us--at Thanksgiving and Christmas--hence "Christgiving."  Two of my sisters split the holidays between their in-laws and my parents.  Another sister was a nurse in a hospital and worked some holidays.  So we would pick a weekend some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas and have a full meal and open presents.  Now we do it on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  It's nice.  The only one missing is my nephew who is stationed in Hawaii right now.

5.  I had my first parent-teacher conference as a parent.  It was actually at this conference that I got the suggestion of how to approach the testing with Anna.  The Jack part of the conference was great.  For the first term in kindergarden, they don't look at academic stuff, just at behavior.  Jack "exceeds expectations" for every category.  The kindergarden version of straight A's.  He's kind of done every one of the standards on the academic side, too.  They just haven't gotten to the point where they assess that.  He's a genius.  He is a little nervous Nelly, though.  He wants to make sure that he's always doing what's correct.  It worries him not only if he's doing something wrong, but also if someone else is.  Since he's so advanced with the curriculum, my goal is for him calm down and relax a bit.

6.  I'm watching "The Amazing Race."  Love this show. 

Enough rambling.

So a funny thing happened to me on the way to work...

I live about 20 miles from work--depending on which way I go.  Most of the time, it takes me between 20 and 40 minutes to get to work.  Twenty to forty minutes between dropping the kids off and pulling into the parking lot at work.  Not bad,  considering I have to drive towards Boston during "rush" hour.

This year (and remember, as a teacher, years always begin in September) has been an absolute nightmare.  Today was the first time all year it's taken me less than 45 minutes to drive to work.  I was so early, I had no idea what to do with myself.  The norm has been between 45 minutes and an hour.  Wednesday's drive was an hour and 20 minutes.  I had to call in and tell them to find someone to cover my homeroom.

The average speeds on I-24 have been about 20 mph and the expressway hasn't been much better.  I'm going this way because our day care provider lives so close to I-24 that to go any other way would add a ton of time onto an already long drive.  Traffic is so slow because there are so many cars on the road (obviously).  It's like the number of cars doubled some time between the end of June and the beginning of September.  The number of commuters has multiplied at least by two, quite possibly three.  It is absolutely amazing, and I'm sure not mathematically possible.  It's so frustrating.  It really is.  It takes so long to get to work and the drive is so boring.  I took to downloading books onto my iPhone so that I can listen to them while I'm driving in.

Maybe boring is the wrong word.  In the past month, I have been rear-ended twice.  I haven't been in a car accident in absolute ages, but over the course of a three week period I was rear-ended twice.

The first time makes for rather an amusing story, actually.  I was on the expressway at the last exit before Quincy, doing approximately 10 mph, when someone bumped me from behind.  I pulled over onto the grassy area between the exit and entrance ramps to inspect the damage to my car.  It was only a little bump, easily fixed.  I looked up to see who hit me.  It was a tall woman--early 20's.  There was something about her that made me wonder.

She started off by telling me she was sorry and that she didn't know what had happened.  We started to exchange information, but I couldn't stop staring at her. 

"I had you in class, didn't I?" I asked as it sunk into my head that I did, indeed, know this person.  It's just that the last time I saw her, she was sitting in my eighth grade honors language arts class about seven years ago.

She blushed and said, "You did, Ms. Bailey."

Turns out she's going to school to become a teacher.

I was, at least, chuckling about this before I pulled into the parking lot at work. 

It's one of those stories that just gets funnier because the poor girl's cousin attends my school and does running club with two friends of mine.  When they found out the relationship, one of them asked, "Hey!  Didn't your cousin hit Ms. Bailey's car?"

No harm done.   Just a little damage.  I'm sure the girl was embarrassed.  Imagine rear-ending your eighth grade English teacher.  Even now, I'd be mortified if I ran into Mrs. Coughlin.

The second accident was not so harmless nor nearly as funny.  This time I was rear-ended by a mail-lady; I'm not sure if this is important, but it's a fact.  She smacked right into me, and we were going a bit more than 10 - 15 mph.  She hit me so hard, I thought--just for a second--I'd popped the guy in front of me.  I didn't, though, and when traffic started moving, he put a distance between us.  I have to tell you that the damage to the bumper is not so little.  It looks absolutely ugly.  There's a bunch of damage that the insurance appraiser could see, and he promised that there was damage we couldn't see.  He says his damage estimate will go up.  He told me that the bumper has done its job well, but it certainly won't be able to do it again.

I walked away from this one--well, drove away.  The thing was that I wasn't even smiling just a little bit about this one.  And I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop since.  Bad things come in threes, right?  Let's just hope that it's not with the rental car I'll be sporting next week.

So Monday morning, I will be late to work because I have to drop my car off at the shop, get a rental car, and then try to get to work in time to teach my third period class.  Fingers crossed this will happen.

My Obsession with The Hunger Games

I'll admit it again:  I am a Young Adult Literature junkie.  I can't seem to shake the genre.  Don't know if the style matches my attention span (which is much like that of a young adult) or if it's a professional hazard.  Whatever the reason, I'll be the nearly 40 year old woman in the YAL section of the book store.

There are several authors I would recommend--and do on a professional basis; however, the only one I want to talk about right now is Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games Trilogy.  I went to a book signing in August after the release of the final book in the series, Mockingjay.  In person, she really didn't match the image of the woman who had written these books.  She is petit with a hippy-ish vibe to her, but as soon as she opened her mouth, there was no doubt.  I had been hoping that she would talk about her craft.  What did she do while writing the series?  What did her process look like from start to finish?  You know, typical English teacher questions.  Those questions weren't answered, but I was completely satiated.  What she did do was to read from two of the books.  She read with an accent that could have been so hokey had the writing not been so good.  Instead it was completely mesmerizing.

When I went up to get my book signed, I got completely nervous.  I thanked her for writing such engaging literature.  I also told her that in the audience that night were six of my students--and this was the truth--who had come on their own to see her speak and to have her sign their books.  I hadn't told them she would be there; I had just told them how much I had loved the first book in the series.  Her writing had done the rest!  Her writing and brought six middle school students away from their computers, pools, and televisions to come see a writer.  No small feat.  She was absolutely humbled and thanked me.    Then I got silly because I was so giddy.  I told her that I had been texting my sister all evening with updates--this was also the truth.  So she told me to tell my sister "hi."  That was nice.

Honestly, when I first read the first book, The Hunger Games, I wanted to teach it in my class right then and there.  I loved it.  I loved the voice, the tone, the theme, the style--all those English teachery things, but I also loved the story.  I got lost in the distopian world of Panem and how its government forced its children to fight to the death in a live televized extravaganza.  The political and social commentary was amazing, but I really just wanted an excuse to talk about the book and nearly begged to have it added to my book list.  Then I thought about it.

The Hunger Games is no Twilight.  First of all (and this is purely English teacher snobbery), The Hunger Games is better written in terms of grammar, mechanics and the shaping of the story.  Second of all, it provides readers (not just girls) with a serious topic to think about.  There's no fluff.  Even the romance in the book offers interesting social commentary, asking readers to evaluate whether the stories Peeta tells Panem about Katniss and his love for her are real or if they are a scheme to get him through the games.  It forces readers to take a good hard look at reality tv; how much of that is real and how much is fabricated?

It seemed good all around and I couldn't wait to talk about it.  The problem was that it is violent.  Characters kill one another or attempt to kill one another.  My students read Agatha Christie so I really didn't think it would be a problem--at first.  The problem sets in when I analyzed how and why the murders took place:  Children were killing children as a form of entertainment for the masses.  And the problem becomes how these deaths affect the people in the story, how it plagues them and becomes a part of who they are forever.  I was sure that the seventh graders I teach would like the story, but would they get it?  I could guide them through the social commentary, the satire, the historical allusions.  Could I walk them through the psychology?  I chickened out of teaching it, but pushed for it to be summer reading.

The trilogy haunts me.  At the end of the series, which I've read twice through now, I'm left thinking about the characters and how their adventures affected them.  There is no happily ever after.  The characters go through hell and back, and they have the physical, mental and emotional scars to prove it.  No one goes off glittering into the sunset, they are flawed.  They're not perfect.  They make mistakes.  And it is those flaws that make them so human.

If you aren't among the converted, pick up a copy of the book.  I'm dying to talk about it!

Introductions

So, um, blogging.  Or better yet:  a commitment to blogging.  I've tried over the course of the past three or four years to put together a somewhat regular blog; however, I have lacked consistancy.

The consistancy issues stem from working full time and having two children.  I would blog all the time if those two conditions were non-existant.  In fact, in the time it took me to write the last sentence, I had to go comfort my daughter twice.  On the other hand, if I didn't have those two conditions I wouldn't have anything to write about.

Life has a funny way of getting in the way of what you'd like to do.  However, while I'd get rid of the job in a heartbeat, I am honestly, whole-heartedly attached to my children.

It's Saturday morning.  Jack is walking around with Thomas trains in his pants' leg.  Whatever.  It makes him smile.  Anna is naked.  I made the mistake of putting warm jammies on her last night and she stripped off before 10 p.m.  I was able to get a diaper back on her, but when she came in my room this morning, the diaper was gone and she's refused to put anything on since.  Absolutely starkers!

A word about Anna...Actually, several words about Anna.  She's a bit old--she'll be four in March--to still be in diapers.  I know that very well.  It's a point of frustration for my husband and me.  We've had to choose our fights, though.  She has fought tooth and nail against potty training, and while we've tried to get her to use the potty, we've also tried to prevent her from flipping out.

There are extenuating circumstances, however.  Almost every time someone coughs or sneezes, she freaks out.  She screams, hits, pushes.  Throws herself on the floor and wails.  She develops a serious anxiety when she's around people when there has been sneezing and coughing.  If she feels particularly safe or less anxious, she just shakes when someone coughs or sneezes.  When she doesn't feel secure, she flips out.  It's gotten worse over time.  She used to be fine when her brother coughed our sneezed, even offering a squeaky little, "Bless you!"  Now not even he is safe from her fits.  Unfortunately, Jack has a form of asthma that induces coughing.  And then there are days when she's "off."  Any little thing--usually me telling her "no"--will send her into full flip out mode.  Then there are days when she'll scream when someone coughs, but then will not flip out over anything else.  We don't know what to expect.

We've ruled out autism.  It was a serious thought for a while, but we're confident that it's not that.  She doesn't fixate on any one thing.  She is incredibly friendly (so long as no one coughs) and she is very affectionate, dispensing hugs and kisses to pretty much anyone who asks--so long as she's not preoccupied by something else.  She loves to play dress up.  Has great imaginative play, to the point of having two "imaginary friends." 

Our pediatrician wants to persue a diagnosis of auditory processing, but I really don't think it is auditory processing.  As a teacher who has had a wide variety of students with a wide variety of learning disabilities, what Anna has does not match what students with that diagnosis have had.  I'm afraid to call up our school system and say that she has this.  I don't want her to carry around an inaccurate label.

I think it's more of a sensory issue that is triggered, primarily, by sound.  I've read through some checklists for a Sensory Processing Disorder, but she doesn't really have most of those "symptoms" either.  She has enough to make mornings and most afternoons difficult at best, but I'm not so sure it's that either. 

I can't get in to see the pediatrician for a consultation until December (!), but he was great enough to call me to kind of hash things out.  That was when he thought that auditory processing might be the way to go.  I'd like to get as much research as possible before then so that I can have a firm understanding and be ready to counter the auditory processing concerns.

I think I've figured out what I am going to write about in this blog!