long days

Lucy's preschool teacher has been bugging me forever to organize some playdates for her with some of the girls in her class. I have been dragging my feet doing this for months. I'll happily drive two hours a day every day this summer to the other side of the bay for some experimental auditory processing therapy treatment, but get on the phone to voluntarily talk to another kid's mom? Not that excited. Gosh, I can't imagine where Lucy's aversion to social interaction might come from.

But then one of Lucy's other entourage members started bugging me too, telling me how it will help her so much at school if she started spending time with a few of the kids in the afternoons. OKAY, OKAY, I get it.

So I e-mailed (not called) two parents. I guess I didn't think things out from their perspective, but for some reason they weren't at all averse to me picking up their kids from school, entertaining them for a few hours, and then delivering them home for dinner exhausted and ready to sleep.

We had our first two playdates with school friends last week. It was surprisingly fun, and somewhat eye-opening. The biggest thing I learned: don't tell Lucy anything I don't want the rest of the school knowing. These kids have big mouths.

For example, we have been doing another round of lab tests for which I needed to procure some, um, samples. I told the girls to go to the bathroom before we headed off for the pool, and I heard Lucy say to her friend as they skipped down the hall, "Do you want to pee in a bowl? Sometimes I like to pee in a bowl -- it's crazy!"

Later, in the car ride to the pool, her friend started chatting about her family. "My mom likes to go salsa dancing. She goes dancing every night in [the town three towns over.] She loves salsa music. My dad doesn't like to go so he stays home with me every night while she goes dancing."

I'm not sure I'm ready for Lucy to start going on unsupervised playdates at other people's houses, mostly because I feel like I need to be around in case she starts talking about how the waitresses at Chevy's get her mommy's margarita started when they see us walk in the door, or how we never had fruit in the house until Tessa came along and became the first member of the family to voluntarily eat produce.

"I am going to be Dorothy for Halloween," Lucy confirmed in the car today, for the twentieth time since she decided last night that it was going to be a Wizard of Oz themed Halloween this year. "Tessie can be a munchkin." This is an improvement from her original plan: Tessa as Toto. "Daddy can be the wizard. And Mommy can be the mean, evil, Wicked Witch!"

She was delighted with this last piece of casting. "Why do I have to be the Wicked Witch?" I asked. "Because, you have the little owie on your nose. The wart." I do not have a wart on my nose, and I told her so. "You do have a little circle on your nose," she argued. I think she may have been referring to a freckle, or unfortunately, an incipient zit. She could tell I was not on board with her plan.

"How about just a pretend wart?" she suggested. I guess I can live with that.

That last post left a bad taste in my mouth.

It was all true, but I haven't posted for weeks and things just haven't been so bad. In fact, they have been mostly really good. Insanely hectic and busy and crazy, but for us -- pretty good.

Lucy went to see Ratatouille with her grandma today. I was a little worried because of the aforementioned sound sensitivities, but she was fine. She still believes it is about a rat named Rata and his friend Touille, so I'm not sure how much of it she got, but she had fun and so did Grandma and I made it to the grocery store for the first time in weeks, so who am I to complain.

TJ is impossible to explain. You really have to see her to believe her. One of Lucy's somewhat hippy dippy teachers says she is a force of nature, and it's hard to argue with that. Her favorite thing in the world is 'azshie' (her version of Agua, which our Brazilian nanny has taught her to use for 'water' because she feels bad that other kids with Hispanic nannies are getting an edge in their Spanish skills that TJ lacks.) She will hand me a cup, point to the fridge, and yell for Azshie (I could be spelling it wrong.) Then she will pour the entire cup down her shirt, and hand the cup back to me. "Gone," she says, and it is a command not a description of the situation. "Do you want more?" I ask her, and she nods and grunts. "Da." So I fill it up for her. Again and again. She is drenched and so is the kitchen floor, but I am pretty much afraid of her and her wrath, so I am okay with keeping the game going if it keeps her happy.

Finally, when she hands me the cup, I ask her, "More?" And she grunts "da." She has so many words and is so good at communicating, I think she is ready to learn a new word. "More? Can you SAY more?"

And instead of trying to say it, she shakes her head. "More? Tessie? More? Mooooore?" She just keeps shaking her head. She refuses to learn a new word, even if it will help her get Azshee. I told my mom this story, and was like: "What kind of baby refuses to even try to say a new word? Won't even entertain the idea?" And she snorted. Yes, she did. And she said, "You."

Hmph.

There are days when I think I have it all together. I ignore the tantrums, acknowledge and praise positive behavior, stay upbeat and engaged. Sometimes I not only remember to wear make up - I even take it off before I go to bed.

But no matter how in the groove I am, there is one scenario that has me spinning around like the lady in the Calgon commercials from the 70's, frozen to the spot with my hands on my cheeks.

It looks something like this:

TJ: screaming for some reason - wants her sippy cup, I won't let her suck on Clorox, whatever.
Lucy: fingers in ears, wincing from the sensory overload, starting to lose it.
Me: runs to TJ, tries to get her to stop crying. Fails miserably and only makes TJ madder and louder.
Lucy: starts shaking with sobs.
Me: runs to Lucy, comforts her, as she cries that her ears hurt.
TJ: outraged that somehow her screaming has ended up with Lucy being the comforted party, so screams louder.
Me: Stares blankly at TJ screaming while I hug Lucy, paralyzed.

This doesn't happen all that often, but when it does nothing makes me feel more helpless and impotent. Watching all the sobbing and screaming feeding off of itself in a vicious cycle, it's kind of like an otherwordly experience where you see it all from above but can't affect the outcome no matter what. How can you possibly manage a kid with sensory processing disorder in a house where every so often someone will start screaming in her ear for no apparen reason?

I swear to god, the next time it goes down this way, everyone is getting M&M's until all crying subsides. M&M's are the closest thing I have in my arsenal to a tranquilizer gun.