long days

About the new leaf. I found my first (four) grey hairs last night. I wonder what brought those on.

Oh, and threading hurts as much as waxing, but with somewhat less redness. And no icky wax. I give it half a thumbs up.

My sister came over today with her kids, looking for a little break after having been up all night throwing up from food poisoning. She looked kind of greyish and her voice was weak. I asked her how she was feeling, because she sort of looked like hell. "Well..." her voice kind of trailed off. "I always feel awful if I complain about my life to you."

Just so we're clear, the person who spent the entire previous night vomiting and barely had the energy to put the saltines I gave her in her mouth, feels that I have the worst possible existence she can imagine. Worse than vomiting.

If this isn't the sign I need that it's time for me to stop complaining and whining about my life -- when even vomit seems preferable to being me, well I don't know what is.

p.s. Did I mention TJ seems to be dropping her second nap? At ten months? In the spirit of my new attitude, I will simply express my gratitude that the universe delivered me such an energetic child, who simply laughs in the face of the sleep other, lesser, babies seem to need.

This week we had an appointment with L.'s "autism doctor" -- the pediatrician who specializes in the physical issues that are often present in kids on the spectrum -- to go over all the results from the various tests we've done so far. As fun as it is to find out exactly how much arsenic and lithium are present in your child's urine sample, it's even more exciting to learn exactly what the bacteria and yeast balance is in her stool. Almost as much fun as it was to collect those urine and stool samples in the first place.

For someone who opted out of chemistry in high school, starting down this road is a little daunting. There are so many therapists and practitioners, all claiming to be able to heal autism through the power of chiropraction or acupuncture or oxygen chambers or whatever. And there is always some parent on some autism Yahoo group testifying that those particular supplements or the dairy-free wheat-free diet made all the difference and now their kid is cured. Your head can get so turned around, it almost makes you wonder if Tom Cruise wasn't right about vitamins curing PPD.

I feel good about the doctor we are seeing. L calls her Dr. Singasong (her name rhymes with that.) She went to Stanford. She trained at UCSF. And, as I excitedly pointed out to my husband, she has a real doctor's office that looks just like every other pediatrician's office I've ever been in (with the exception of the slightly hipper Ikea decor.) He reasonably asked if I had expected her to conduct her business in a shaman's tent. It wouldn't have been that much of a stretch. And honestly, I don't know if it would have deterred me. She believes in homeopathy and herbs and vitamins as well as traditional western medicine, and as far as I can tell she doesn't seem bothered if you kind of think homeopathy may be an enormous crock.

We also had our meeting with the school district this week, where we found ourselves in the bizarre position of arguing with the special education department head about how super duper autistic and deserving of special education services our child is. Add that -- along with me telling Dr. Singasong that I would consider sneaking into her room late at night to inject her with a B12 shot; i.e., willingly mess with her sleep -- to the never-ending list of things I would never have believed I'd be doing and saying a year ago. The school district people offered us some, but not all, of what we asked for -- which means more evaluations by their people.

Every time I think we're reaching the finish line when it comes to evaluations and assessments and standardized tests and reports, and about to get to the part where we get to the therapy and the help, someone says, "Oh yeah, we'll have to do our own assesment." We've been waiting for or conducting one evaluation or another since November. Our file at the school district is stuffed two inches thick with various reports from various professionals all saying the same thing (and yet my mother and sister still say things like, "She seems just fine to me, I'm not sure I believe it." Oh yes, well, if you have a few hours, here's 100 pages that say differently.) I swear, at this point L rolls her eyes when she hears, "We're going to go meet Mommy's friend s- and-so who likes kids and wants to ask you some questions." She can do the Vineland and Preschool Language scales and instruments and whatever other standardized test you want to throw at her in her sleep.

Everyone says how important early intervention is and how critical the first 3-5 years are in brain development and how if you can just reach kids when they are young, you can make such a difference in their prognosis -- well, this is all true, but not if you are spending the first five years conducting pragmatic language tests and cognitive assesments. It's been almost six months since we first started calling and making appointments because we were worried something was not quite right, and we are just now starting the actual therapies without any end in sight to the assesments. And this is in the Bay Area, with all the doctors from Stanford within spitting distance, with fairly good insurance and one stay at home parent who has nothing better to do than schedule appointments and file insurance claims. Which is to say, we're probably lucky it's only been six months. What about kids who are not in such fortunate circumstances, and are even more significantly affected by autism? What happens to them? How long does it take for them to get even the most basic treatment?

So what's my point? I have none. I'm stressed and cranky. I'm sitting here with my ever-larger glass of red wine, wearing an aromatherapy neck wrap purchased from a mall kiosk trying to unclench my neck and jaw muscles. I need an eyebrow wax like you wouldn't believe, but last week I walked right up to the salon and then turned around without going in because I just don't have extra energy in my life right now for getting hair ripped out of my forehead. So I'm going to look into threading. Ah, the eastern alternative to waxing: I bet Dr. Singasong would approve.

I'm writing this less because I think it will be very interesting to the three people who read here who are not my husband, but because I want to be able to sit down and read this when we have a bad day. There are a lot of those, the days when you want to cry because all you want is a normal kid. Or you think there is really no way at all she will ever be able to make friends, let alone have a regular conversation with another kid. That she really will be wearing diapers when she enters college.

Today was a good day. She slept the whole night (well practically, and that one wakeup was completely Tessa's fault) in her own bed, until SEVEN AM. She ate breakfast happily, and drank her whole juice, which is laden with all her various vitamins and supplements and medicine and thus usually like pulling teeth to get her drink the whole thing. We went to one of those bounce house supercenter things, and she happily bounced, did the big kid obstacle course all by herself without me pushing her through it (like she usually does) and then was so proud of herself at the end that she let me high five her without acting like I'm a dork.

She let me change her diaper without too much argument. She pushed the kid cart all around Whole Foods without (intentionally) knocking anyone over. Then she put me to shame and actually put the cart away after we paid at the checkout (she didn't learn that one from me, unfortunately.) She waited patiently for her snickerdoodle, and then only ate half of it and saved the rest for dinner.

She napped. She napped.

She grudgingly shared her favorite doll and doll stroller with her younger cousin. She let her grandmother sew up the enormous hole in her favorite (as in, has never slept without it, ever) blankie. She told me, "The sewing machine scares me when it goes quack quack quack," and opted to watch TV in my room instead of having a meltdown because she was scared and couldn't tell me why.

She took one look at the bandaged up blankie, and simply went to her room and found a different blankie that will apparently now be the Blankie. No tears, no scenes, just "Please put that blankie away, mama."

She hopped in her bath, no whining or arguments. Let me wash her hair, no tears, no scenes. No screaming from the tub designed solely to wake up her sister. The PJs she wanted to wear didn't fit anymore, so after a calm discussion about what 2T and 3T mean, she laid out the 2T pajamas in front of TJ's door so that she can have them now. This, from a kid who screams when TJ so much as looks in the direction of her room or her toys.

She is sleeping soundly, cuddled up with the new Blankie. I don't know how long it will last, but I gotta say, today was a good day.

Da-da. Ma-ma. I think these are the usual first recognizable words out of a baby's mouth. L. started with Da-da, and moved on to "cat" pretty quickly. We're pretty sure TJ gave us her first word this weekend (9 months old, if we're keeping track.) Not Ma-ma, not da-da, not even cat. Tesssss-ssssssa. Tesssss-sssssa. And then clapping. I'm not sure what it signifies, but combined with the fact that the way to get her to stop crying is to park her in front of a mirror, I think it's clear we're going to have our hands full with her, too.

Here are all the weekly activities we are juggling for L. this spring: three mornings of carnie school, one session of occupational therapy, one session of speech therapy, one therapist-facilitated playdate and one session of family/parenting therapy/intervention. And her OT would like us to get her in a weekly gymnastics and swimming class. Until I typed all that out, I was also considering driving her 1.5 hours each way every day for three weeks to Walnut Creek for an audio processing treatment that is supposed to be (anecdotally) extremely effective... but I think there's probably no way.

I've been so gung ho on getting her into all these therapists offices for evaluations and getting all the treatment ramped up, but it's starting to dawn on me that maybe she doesn't have to have every single possible treatment this month. For one thing, right now if she starts making major gains, we won't know if it's the omega 3 oil supplements or the homeopathic zinc or the probiotics or the gluten free diet or the listening therapy or the one to one aide specializing in relationship development intervention or the pragmatic speech therapy or the deep pressure brushing to stimulate her sensory integration... the list goes on. And then we'll have to keep doing all of those things because we won't know which one to drop. And we can't keep doing this all, for the rest of her life.

T. is too little to realize what is going on, obviously, but even she has realized that it takes some major squeaking around here these days to get any grease. She started out as the most mellow, even-keeled baby ever -- or at least in comparison to L. -- but she seems to have figured out that if you want to get attention in this house you need to demand it. If you walk by her without picking her up, she now shrieks in outrage. If L. tries to take a toy away from her -- more outraged shrieks. And I think tonight she decided that if she didn't scream loudly every time baby food was offered, I might never get the message that she'd really prefer some of my chicken, along with bites of cheese and toast for dinner. Well, I guess we're done with baby food, then. Thanks for letting me know.

I'm so glad that she's learned already to make her voice heard (other than at 3AM), because I worry about her slipping through the cracks with all the attention that's focused on her sister. She is so adorable and charming and still just wants someone to laugh and talk to her just like she always has since the day she was born. And smart, too! She can clap -- already! She crawls with the determined intensity of Frankenstein or some other old time movie monster --the ones you could never outrace, because they will just keep going and going after whatever it is they want. I suppose it's too much to hope that by the time TJ (I just remembered she has cute initials, so I might as well use them) is big enough to play with her big sister, she will have a willing partner.

I can't decide if this is just what grown up life is like, if I am being paid back for some type of karmic debacles in a past life, or it's just the law of averages catching up with me, but the last few years have seemed like back to back to back bad news. My dad dying, L. and all her problems, all the stress and anxiety during my pregnancy with T., my mother in law's cancer, and now my grandma has had a stroke.

Of course, this is glossing over all the joy and happiness and just the day to day contentedness that has also been there. Marriage. Two healthy childbirths. Watching our kids and nieces and nephews grow up. Making a home. I'm not so gloomy that I can't recognize all that I've been given and blessed with, but come on now. Another funeral? 2007 was supposed to be different, a fresh start. When my sister called to tell me about my grandma, I superstitiously -- and selfishly -- let my mind hope for a second that she had had her stroke in 2006, so that 2007 wouldn't be tainted by my terrible jinxing luck.

All this bad news makes me realize anew what a charmed life I led up until a few years ago. No one ever died or got sick. My parents got divorced, but that doesn't really count because they still got along and we were all relatively unscathed. I had to manufacture my drama and angst. Now it is real, and I am sick of it. I'm ready to go back to being the shallow uncomplicated former sorority girl with no larger issues than what bar to go to this weekend or nail polish color to choose. Seriously.