move over Abbott and Costello

double standard

This photo is currently my computer desktop background- it's from our visit to the zoo last weekend. It says a lot about my sons: Thomas is wearing a Batman pajama shirt backwards on purpose and Henry is holding his Big Cats Zoobook.

My boss commented today on the picture and asked about Henry's magazine. As usual, I launched into a longer-than-necessary explanation.

You see, Big Cats is one of Henry's very favorite Zoobooks. Because he carries his very favorite things with him to school, the gym, the grocery store, L's house... sometimes the very favorite things get lost. Or they get ripped.

In the past few months, something happened to Big Cats. I can't be sure what it was, and it doesn't really matter. But Henry would ask for it and I would promise to look a couple places for it; in the cars, in the basement where I keep things that need to be repaired, I would ask L about it. When we went to the zoo he would look for it in the gift shop, and they would never have any copies.

As so often happens, I put Henry off and off and off until I finally focused my attention on the situation and thought ok, the Big Cats book is gone, let's figure out how to get a new one. So I ordered a new copy from the Zoobooks website. It arrived around Henry's birthday.

Then, last Sunday, as we browsed in the gift shop, Henry found what he wanted to get: Big Cats. (Sure, now they have it in stock!)
But we already have that one Henry. At home. I know because I ordered it special for you. Why don't you pick out a different Zoobook that we don't already have?
We do not have it at home!

Yes, we do. Remember, it came in the mail? I know we already have this one at home.
It did not come in the mail! We do not have it at home!
You can tell by the picture how this argument was resolved. We bought another copy of Big Cats. And it's not a huge defeat in the bigger scheme of things, I know. It cost like $3, made him really happy, and now we'll have a spare for the next time we lose one copy.

But the part that bothers me--and the part that my boss couldn't really understand, although he is well-intentioned--is... if it were Thomas wanting a duplicate of something he already has, I would not give in so easily. Of course, the flip-side of that is that Thomas probably wouldn't ask for something that he already has. He would decide that it made sense to pick out something different.

My boss was asking "what would happen if you just told him no and refused to get it for him?" Well, I would probably have to drag him out of the gift shop crying, and then we'd have to talk all day about the Big Cats magazine. And what it really comes down to is--and this goes along with what I wrote a couple posts back about spoiling my kids--I don't want to tell him no. I get how important it is to him to have his papers or his books or his magazines. I get how comfortable those things make him feel. And I'm happy to help my child feel comfortable. But I wonder sometimes if I'm doing the right thing.

No, strike that. I don't wonder if I'm doing the right thing. But I wonder why the "right thing" for one child can be different from the "right thing" for another child.

My mom told me recently about how she made my one brother take piano lessons. And not the other brother. Basically she knew that my middle brother would have flat-out refused to cooperate. The younger brother, he didn't like it, but he could be persuaded. So he took piano lessons.

Time Magazine's cover story this week is about birth order- the stereotypes and truths associated with being the first-born, baby, or somewhere in the middle. Although I don't feel that many of the issues apply to our family, it is still fascinating food for thought, and is making me examine my choices- will Tommy have it easier or harder because of his older brother and sister? Will I give in to him more or less? Will I celebrate each new skill he learns, or will it be old hat for this mom of three?

Maybe the thing I have learned from the other two that Thomas will benefit from is: to suggest the thing that seems logical (don't buy a magazine that you already have), but to be open to the idea that we don't always have to be logical.

huh? you mean this thing can take videos?

So, like three years after everyone else started including videos on their blogs, I finally realized that it's as simple as pushing the "video" button on my digital camera, uploading the video along with my pictures, and posting it here. Can anyone say DUH?
I have really enjoyed seeing moving pictures of some of my little friends, and thought you might like to see Henry in action too.

The boys and I went to the zoo yesterday, arriving just in time to see the scuba diver in the coral reef tank. Henry looooves this, as you will see. Because of the location, the video is a little dark and there is a lot of background noise, but I hope you'll be able to get something out of it.

As I watch it, imagining myself as someone who doesn't know Henry, I notice all the autism stuff that we never notice anymore: the flapping and kicking, the humming, the hopping, and the repeating things over and over until I repeat them back to him.

We had a great day at the zoo. Tommy got his face painted again and Henry totally blew me away by saying that HE wanted to get his face painted too!! But by the time I ran 20 yards away to get out more cash and ran back, he had changed his mind. We will be going back in a couple weeks for "boo at the zoo", so he is toying with the idea of getting his face painted then.

good friday

I've read a few posts that made me happy today (Conor's doing great in another new school, Niksmom is reminding us all about perspective, and Fluffy is skipping) so I thought I would toss one of my own happy stories into the blogosphere. If I were ambitious I would declare this a weekly event, but we all know that I won't be organized enough to do it every Friday...

Wednesday night I said no to watching a DVD. I don't do this often, and Henry was perplexed. I was a little perplexed myself, after he asked me 20 more times and I kept having to repeat my negative answer. Bill and Thomas were hanging out together somewhere, and Henry and I were alone on the couch. I want to play a game he suddenly announced.

I want to play a game. Did he really say that? With no prompting?

I tried to sound casual- ok, what game do you want to play? He studied the game shelf and decided on animal bingo. He set it up and we commenced playing a game together. We took turns, we marked off our animals as they were called.

I have a raccoon. Do you have a raccoon mommy?

Oh man, I don't. The next animal is an ostrich. I have one of those.

Me too!
We did this back-and-forth talk and playing a game, just like a regular old mom and kid. What a priceless night! I was enjoying myself so much, I may not have noticed that I had bingo 2 different directions and let Henry call bingo first. Then we played a game of ocean bingo and he won that game too.

We didn't even do homework that night.

thanks for nothing, global warming

Monday was Thomas' first-ever field trip! To the pumpkin patch! I was so excited to go along! It was hot as hell!

Seriously, it was like 80 degrees when we got there at 9:30 in the morning. I was sweating from my stupid green tea latte and besides the bees were swarming around it, so I just dumped it out.

We didn't linger long over the donut and apple juice they included with our admission because the bees were so bad. But the kids had a lot of fun in this cute "scarecrow cave" maze that was just their size:

The barn full of hay bales and slides was fun too (except that I lost my sunglasses).

What would my grandpa say if he knew you could charge people money to let their kids climb around on bales of hay??!! Brilliant!

Another first for us was using the port-o-potty. I don't think I've ever taken Henry in one of those, so this was my first time realizing that a little boy can use a different area of the facility, if you get my meaning. Thomas was very entertained by this also.

I guess it's a bad year for pumpkins, so instead of actually riding out into the field to pick a pumpkin, we were just funneled into this fenced area and picked a pumpkin from a pile. Then we climbed into the wagon with our pumpkins to bake in the sun as we rode through the fields to the parking lot. As you can see, Thomas was not nearly as irritated by the heat as I was:

The trip was actually very fun. I didn't became really bitter until the last leg. We left our pumpkin in the car and returned to do all the fun stuff one more time. That's when I lost my son.

He went into that cute little maze again and I swear I was standing there watching for him the whole time. Other kids came and went and then I realized that I hadn't seen or heard from Thomas in a little while. I started calling his name louder and louder and the teachers asked what color shirt he was wearing... after maybe five minutes, one of the other moms said "there he is", and sure enough, here came Tommy, casually sauntering across the lawn.

(I didn't even notice until we were leaving that there was a pond on this property too. Thank God I didn't know that at the time I couldn't find him!)

If you'll look back at my Easter post, you'll see that the weather was unseasonable for that seasonal outing also, so I guess we're par for the course this year.
_________________

Today was the darkest of days for my youngest son, for it was the first day he was required to wear... wait for it... are you sitting down?... long pants. Noooooooo!

I'm being a smartass, but really, he is completely traumatized by this. That's why last year I let him wear shorts almost every day of the winter. We would wear pants for the trip to L's house and bring shorts along to change. But this year he has preschool and I can't have him changing his clothes back and forth all day long. He needs to learn that there are rules of propriety in our society.

But wow, I really feel terrible enforcing these rules sometimes! He threw a major tantrum this morning.

Side note: I was really proud of Henry at this point. He got up from the table where he was eating his breakfast and said "I want to go upstairs for a little while." I objected "But the bus will be here soon." Henry explained "I want to get away from Tommy." I told him that was a terrific way of handling a situation- rather than shoving/pinching/screaming at Tommy. Moving away from something that bothers you is a great solution. So we sat out front and waited for the school bus. But I could still hear the little brother crying and crying inside the house.
During the course of his crying fit, Tommy also told me that he doesn't want to go to school, doesn't like school, and is shy there. He tells me this all the time: that he is shy at school. Most people (the teachers, L, Bill) kind of roll their eyes at this (because this boy is definitely NOT shy. Not with adults anyway). But Tommy says it often enough that it worries me a bit. Today I tried to suggest to him that he could play with some other kids in his class, and he replied "no- I'm too shy! When the other kids talk to me I'm too shy because I don't know them!"

I can't be sure whether he was over-dramatizing this because he was already upset about the pants. But I'd appreciate tips from any of you who've been through this with a shy kid. Or a kid who hates to wear certain articles of clothing.

It seems like I don't really write about Henry enough anymore: how he is doing and what he is working on. As he grows older the issues have become not as huge and so I don't feel as driven to write about them. But of course, the issues are still there.

This year, for the first time, he is continuing in the same school with the same teacher and at least some of the same paras and therapists. So, although I'm not hearing much about some of his more troublesome behaviors (pinching, arguing/refusing to do work), I can't kid myself that they aren't still there. They just aren't news to these teachers anymore.

We had a teacher conference a couple weeks ago in which I tried to brag about how Henry had apologized to Thomas one day, unprompted. His teacher was like "yeeeaah... we actually try to get away from saying I'm sorry, because the kids will hurt one another and then just say they're sorry real fast and think everything's ok."

Oh, ok. Well, I still think it's a good thing at home. We can have different rules at home. They seem to have a lot more trouble with the pinching and scratching at school, with what they see as no provocation. Bill and I figure that there are just certain kids Henry has a beef with, and he'll grab them if he gets a chance. I don't mean to sound flippant about it, but there's really nothing we can do about it at home. It's just something they have to figure out in that environment.

One thing his teacher did ask us to work on at home, though, was addition facts. Ugh. I really dislike math. To this day I add on my fingers certain numbers that have just never registered in my tiny little blond brain. When you're pregnant and raising little kids, all you ever hear is read read read to your child. So that's what I've always done and it's been great. But now, my kid is 8 and can read just about everything by himself and, oh, it turns out there's some other stuff we're supposed to help him learn also. Dangit.

Henry's teacher asked us to work on flashcards at home. Because Henry has such a great memory, she assumed he would have no problem memorizing math problems. But I guess movie lines and movie release dates have a lot more meaning to Henry than 1+3 does, and the stuff is just not sticking.

About a week after she had asked us to do flashcards at home, Henry's teacher asked in the communication notebook how it was going. So that night I dug out the flashcards and started working with him. Ooops. Yes, teachers, I'm that mom. The one who has to be reminded a week later.

The first few times he counted on his fingers for every single flashcard. I tried a couple cards involving numbers higher than 5, and he was at a loss. Although I was a bit discouraged by this, now, a little more than a week later, he is getting much quicker and much more confident. So I think we will master this also. But we're only on addition. I am dreading multiplication!

We are still going strong with swimming lessons, horseback riding, and gymnastics. His confidence and strength are improving week by week.

The movies in heavy rotation lately are the Jungle Book and Cars. It's funny about Cars, because we bought it last November, when it first came out, but he never wanted to watch it until this summer. Henry got the soundtrack for his birthday, and loves to sing along with all the songs. He seems to really like "Our Town, illustrated by James Taylor" (In Henry's words!) So I'm hoping to turn him on to some other James Taylor tunes.

Henry also got the Cars game for his Leapster for his birthday. We got the Leapster for Christmas, in the hope that it would make some social situations easier (no one at a party thinks twice about the kid in the corner playing his video games), he'd enjoy it on car trips, and just to have him in the same room with us while playing games, rather than tucked away on the computer in the basement. He has never shown a ton of interest in the Leapster- the only game he really played much was a Dora animal-matching game.

He asked for the Dora game this weekend, and we couldn't find it (it probably went home with another cousin after vacation?), so he grudgingly half-looked at the Cars game as I tried to figure out how to play it. Of course, it quickly won him over and he played for hours this weekend, not even stopping to eat. Bill and I were laughing that we suggested playing a game as an alternative to watching movies, but then he got just as absorbed in the game, if not more so. Are we varying his interests, or narrowing them?

I could swear that I wrote this spring about the Return of the Jedi storytape. But I can't find the post. So- our library has a book on tape of Return of the Jedi that must be from 1985. Henry has borrowed it so many times, and each time another page falls out. It was out of circulation for several months with the notation "damaged" listed in the database. I searched for a copy to buy on the internet, but did not have any luck. Finally, one day when I again told Henry that it was "still damaged", he took matters into his own hands and asked the librarian!!!! She retrieved it from her back room and let him borrow it.

Fast forward a few months, and the boys and I walk into the library. All the librarians smile at us. Our first stop is the movie area, and as we're browsing in there, the librarian from the children's department taps me on the shoulder. "Aren't you the family that likes to borrow this?" she asks, holding up the Return of the Jedi book and tape. Oh, great, I think, she's going to make us pay for it because she's had to repair it so many times. I nod. "Well, I just can't keep it in circulation anymore" she explained, "it's too damaged. But I would just throw it away. Would you like to have it?"

So we brought the story tape home to keep!!!! If Henry hadn't asked the librarian, we would never have seen that treasured item again. Instead, we get to bring it home to live with us!

See? New month, new attitude.

A couple Saturdays ago I tried to jot down notes as Tommy and I were playing. His imagination just enchants me- I think I am especially amazed by it because Henry's never been much into imagining things. So the stuff Thomas comes up with just always surprises me. At the time I think I will remember it to tell someone about, but then it flits right out of my head again.

This day I think he was Fastman, and rode in a thundercar. Before leaving to fight the bad guys though, he had to stop to put on his boy makeup and put in his boy contacts. (Can you tell that he follows me around in the mornings?)

I was instructed to ride next to him in the pinkcar, and he used a Wendy's coupon as a swipecard to start our vehicles.

We soon moved outside to easier battle bad guys by running around in circles around the front yard and jumping over things that daddy had recently planted in the yard. They were actually powerful plants that give you certain powers if you touch them.

Later that day we went shopping and, while he wasn't able to decide on a Halloween costume, (that's going to be a really tough one this year. We've already returned one Spiderman costume after the love was gone) he did get one of those little-kid backpacks that also have a pull-handle and wheels. He modeled that thing all over the store: see? You can put it on your back like this, and see? you can pull it on wheels like this. Wait mommy, I want to put my new jammies in my new backpack. Ooooh mommy, look at the Halloween decorations...

Here he has gathered all his Pooh buddies to watch a Winnie the Pooh video. (This is the couch in our basement- much as I would secretly like to, I have not hung a Harry Potter poster up on the main floor of our house.) Also included in the group are the ghost that makes spooky sounds (also found shopping that day) and a garage-sale St. Bernard dog. The dog makes a great superhero because he can carry all kinds of imaginary tools/weapons in the barrel around his neck.

If you're getting the impression that I spoil this kid- buying him unnecessary Halloween stuffed ghosts and backpacks-on-wheels, well, you're right. I do spoil him. I have realized that recently, as every day when I pick him up he asks "did you get me anything today?" It's pretty wrong that at least once a week I say "yes, I did! Some new socks, a Batman flashlight, a Winnie the Pooh video..."

I think I got into this habit with Henry, because his interests are so specific, and he is so hard to please, yet easy to please. I pick up Disney books whenever I find them at the consignment shop, or randomly order Star Wars coloring books for him on the internet to replace the ones that he can't find anymore and can't stop asking about.

But Henry has never seemed "spoiled" by it- he sometimes will ask if I got him something at the store, but I guess the difference is that he doesn't cry when I tell him I didn't get him anything.

So, I am trying to be more conscious of this and if I do pick something up for either boy, think about saving it for a later occasion.

Last night was just such an occasion- Henry's aunt had pre-ordered the Jungle Book DVD for him for his birthday. Today, October 2, is the release date, and of course we have it marked on our calendar. Well, it turns out that when you pre-order from Disney, you receive the DVD even before it is in the stores!!! Who knew? So it arrived yesterday, and Henry was over the moon about it!

It seemed like a good time to pull out the Ninja Turtle pajamas that I had picked up for Tommy last week, so he had something to be excited about also. Last night was a good night at our house!

And finally, relevant to none of this, here is a picture of the delicious salad I made today at Wild Oats:

I thought it looked so colorful and fresh that I would take a photo- I know, I'm weird. This salad cost enough money, I am hoping to make it last a couple days, and maybe I'll get this photo framed :-)