(Insert hop here)

When I was little, I had pet rabbits. Notice the plural. It started with one, then one more, and then... a deluge of baby rabbits. They were coming out of my ears. They pillaged the backyard of anything green up to 24" high. My parents were very patient, and that poor backyard has never quite recovered.

One of the things I loved about the rabbits was their random movements. They had bizarre little twitches that would hit out of the blue. Sometimes it was while they were stationary-- a random popcorn jump that would make me giggle. Sometimes it was while they were in motion. In midair, they would change direction 180 degrees and head back the other way. Those moments would send me, laughing, to the floor. I loved those fuzzy little puffballs all the more for it.

One of the conditions that some autistic children have is difficulty with sensory processing. It's like their brain struggles with properly digesting all the input that they receive from the world around them. One example is tickling.

You and I know that tickling is a form of socialization and friendly physical contact. But the nerve pathway that transmits tickling input also transmits pain input. In people who have sensory processing difficulties, their brains might tell them that the person who is playing with them is actually trying to hurt them. You can imagine the social and relational problems that would follow a pain- rather than a tickle-reaction.

My five-year-old struggles with sensory under-stimulation. He doesn't get the same input from everyday actions like you and I do. Walking, for example. To get the same amount of stimulation as a typical person, he would need to stomp, stomp, STOMP along. This sensory need leads to uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing situations when we leave the house. He has created some coping mechanisms, some of which are socially unacceptable, and some of which are downright cute.

A recent addition to his repertoire is random hopping. Nothing elaborate, just a tiny hop. Sometimes he'll be standing nearby and I'll see him elevate for a moment. And sometimes it will be in the middle of a conversation.

"Mom, at school today, I used paints ^hop^
and made a pumpkin ^hop^
and it GOT ALL OVER MY ELBOW ^hop^ ^hop^."

This new habit of his is quite endearing. I hope he keeps it up for a while. It makes me want to hold him close and squeeze him tightly, a sensory experience that we both enjoy.

^hop^

Sticks and snails and puppy dog tails

Just yesterday, I was discussing with fellow blogger Akaemi about how I prefer boys to girls. Now, I could be a little biased. But I declared to her, "I prefer dirt and ER visits to the emotional games that girls play." Boy, have I got to be more careful about what I say.
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Before-school preparations consume my peak multi-tasking skills. I'm waking children, changing diapers, dressing children, checking homework folders, preparing breakfast, packing lunches, and trying to keep the house from burning down simultaneously. I've gotten pretty good at it. But I am not a superhero.

This morning I was helping my kindergartner put on his shoes while talking on the phone with my husband about paperwork. My two-year-old had just whomped me in the glasses with a large plastic stick and I think he was feeling guilty. So I didn't notice when he disappeared around the corner.

Suddenly I heard a cry. Not the "I hurt my foot" cry or the "my brother bonked me" cry. It was the "I'm really hurting so come to me right now" cry. And then he yelled out, "Dere's blood!" I hung up on my husband as I dashed into the kitchen. And he was right. There was blood. All over his hands. He held a knife in one hand while the other reached out to me pleadingly. The blood was already pooling on the floor. The poor penitent child had tried to help me slice an apple for the lunches.

I grabbed a paper towel and tried to staunch the flow. I checked his hand and saw just a slice across his index finger, but there was an alarming amount of blood. We soaked through one, two, three paper towels. I looked up at my other boys who were watching fearfully. I had to make a decision: take them with me to the doctor/hospital or send them off to the bus alone? My seven-year old helped put pressure on the wound while I finished packing their lunches and sent them out the door. He is my little hero, taking his autistic five-year-old brother to the bus for me so I could concentrate on the little one.

I finally stopped the bleeding and checked the wound. It was borderline stitch country. So I packed him off to the pediatrician. A nurse and a doctor both said he needed stitches, so I headed to the local pediatric ER. The nurse there wasn't sure and she brought in a doctor. He wasn't sure either so he brought in another doctor. All in all, it took one pediatric co-pay, one ER copay, and five medical professionals to decide that stitches were not an option. Apparently the skin on fingers heals differently than the rest of the body, especially on children. Plus, kids regenerate faster than a lizard's tail. They sent me home with a package of Steri-strips and a pat on the back.

After I strapped the little one into his car seat, I plunked down into my seat and heaved a great sigh. I was already exhausted at 9:00 in the morning. I turned to my freshly bandaged two-year-old and he smiled at me. Then he said,

"Thank you, mommy. Thank you."

Yep, I still prefer boys.

Wisdom in a Rolling Stone

While excavating the top of our computer desk today, I came across a petrified cocoon. I suppose that if I could carbon-date the thing, I could tell you exactly how long it's been there. But I'm pretty sure it's from this past spring.

The neighborhood was lousy with brown and yellow-striped caterpillars. They were everywhere, in every form-- alive and unmolested, or captured by the local children, or squashed to oblivion by a passing bicycle tire. My gaggle of boys decided to bring one home-- "Can we keep it, mom?" I figured it wouldn't poop on the carpet so hey, why not. The caterpillar got a leaf, an orange slice, and a little plastic bug box on a corner of the kitchen counter. Then we did what little boys do oh, so well: we waited.

Several days into our vigil I noticed that the caterpillar was spinning threads in its box. We gathered round and watched the caterpillar systematically spin from one part of the box to another. But the boys' attention span was gone in a flash so I tucked him back into his corner. The finished cocoon was a lovely pale green. Again, we waited, for about two weeks. It was torture for the little ones. I kept reminding them of the beautiful butterfly that we would soon meet.

Finally I saw movement in the box and once again gathered them around. We leaned in closely, hoping to catch the first glimpse of new color and life. And then, AHHHHH! Repulsion! We all recoiled. Instead of a bright, slender butterfly there was a fat, hairy, monochromatic moth. The number of antennae was WAY past the legal limit. Worst of all, from my vantage point through the magnifying lens on top, the monstrosity looked like something one would find battling Godzilla in the streets of Tokyo. I nearly dropped the box.

I muttered some lame "nature is beautiful" excuse for the poor thing as my boys made their escape back to legos and playdough. Then I took our new houseguest and ushered him out to the front yard. He found a place amongst the sprouting mums by the window.

As I walked back inside, these lyrics ran through my head, "You can't always get what you want..."

Labor of love part deux

I started this train of thought here but didn't finish it due to the length of the post... or maybe it was because I fell asleep on the keyboard. I can't quite recall...

I'd been up to my elbows in fuzzy fleece and stringy thread and flimsy tissue paper patterns for the week leading up to Hallowe'en. My clothes have a fine film of fleecy lint. My contacts don't let me focus close-up so I looked like an old lady squinting at the sewing machine needle as it threaded. My fingers are cracked and raw. It was only out of love that I didn't chuck the whole project out the window.

It's safe to say that I put every effort into this last-minute project, and I learned many things:

1) Don't do this again.
2) If you do do this again, give yourself more time. And find a stress-management technique that doesn't require your hands or your pedal foot.
3) Making Hallowe'en costumes does not give you permission to yell at your two-year-old when he plays with the needles or spool YET AGAIN. Your baby is more important than your project.

I also learned to step back and look at the costumes through the eyes of my children. They had a vision. So did I. Mine involved perfect seams and adorable little details. Theirs involved becoming characters from t.v. that do wonderful, impossible things. My vision did not matter. Theirs did.

I won't remember every mistake I made on these costumes, but I'll tell you what I will remember: the way my seven-year-old's body language changed when I put on the last bit of his outfit. The way he darted around the house like a little platypus spy. And what is seared into my memory is the smile that shone on my five-year-old's face as I pulled the costume over his head. His pleasure at becoming Ferb in that moment. I rarely see such a smile.

All my insignificant perfectionist worries fell away and made me realize that it was, actually, all worth it. I hope some day my children will have the same attitude about me as they do their costumes. I have plenty of imperfections and missing details that they may overlook. But I do my best, and at the end of the day, I do it for love.

From the mouths of babes

My seven-year-old tumbled off the bus with an "I voted" sticker on his chest. His school had held a presidential election and he was jazzed about it. I asked him who he voted for and he proudly announced, "Obamu! Or however you say it."

As we walked home, I mused over the landmark nature of this election. Our country will finally have diversity in the Oval office, whether it be a woman or an African-American man. The issues are incredibly divisive. I'm not old enough to remember the world before Reagan. And I take much greater interest in international politics than domestic issues. But let's face it, you have to be living in a hole to not understand how the world is changing and how this election will break ground.

I also marveled at how my children's generation may finally be growing up blind to the color of skin. My parents tried to raise me that way, but I still learned racial slurs from others throughout my childhood. I do my best to teach my kids not just tolerance but love for the diversity of human beings on our sorry little planet. So I was thrilled to know that the color of Obama's skin gave my child nary a pause-- it wasn't even a factor.

Later, when we were alone, I asked him why he voted for Obama. I imagined something simple and profound that I could share with all of you. His response?

"Well, this girl Elaine in my class, she said that he will be really nice to the kids who get off the bus."

Ah, proof as to why you have to be eighteen to vote.

Purim

You can read my summary of the Purim story here.

Purim is celebrated in the Jewish synagogue. Since one of the underlying themes of the story is "people are not always what they seem," many Jews wear costumes for the holiday (quite a few also get extraordinarily drunk, but I digress.) Some dress up as characters from the story, others simply dress up. And then there are the Americans.

There are a lot of American Jews living in Jerusalem. I attended a local synagogue for Purim that was largely attended by Americans. It looked... just like Hallowe'en (minus the glut of candy.) There were clowns and cowboys and railroad engineers. I heard people speaking American English everywhere. It was strange.

Jews commemorate the story of Purim by listening to the story as it's read aloud, in a sing-song chant called cantillation that I find haunting and exotic. Everyone sits and enjoys the story until the reader says the name "Haman." And then...

SCREAM! SCREECH! HOWL! :: STOMP STOMP::

The entire synagogue erupts in a startling cacophony of sound. I was caught off-guard, though not surprised. It's just that I don't speak a whole lot of Hebrew and I wasn't keeping up very well with the reading. I glanced around, wide-eyed and smiling as I understood that the pandemonium was just part of the ritual.

The idea is to obliterate the name of evil, namely Haman. So you stomp and clap and scream your heart out at each and every mention of his name. It makes for a long night.

As a side note, there is a neat little cookie they serve just on this holiday. They are called Hamantashen, or Haman's ears. It's a circle folded in on itself so it has three points, and it's filled with fruit preserves or seeds and nuts. Apparently the cannibalistic overtones of this tasty little snack don't seem to bother many (or they're too drunk to care.)

Labor of love

My recent escapade to create a costume for my seven-year-old has really started me thinking. Thanks to two fellow bloggers, Shelli and Akaemi (both of whom live on my street... I really need to get out more,) I was able to finish nearly everyone's costume in time for the Hallowe'en frivolities.

I completed the Perry the Platypus costume just in time for our church Hallowe'en party. And since I'm a glutton for punishment, and a sucker for my five-year-old's long dark eyelashes, I agreed to make a Ferb costume (another character from Phineas and Ferb.) One more trip to the fabric store. And more head-banging on the steering wheel, "What am I THINKING??? I don't have time or brain power for this!!!" I've been using Akaemi's sewing machine, which is missing its regular sewing foot (imagine that it holds the fabric against the machine) so I've used the zipper foot (yeah, meant for zippers!) instead. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Then I discover that the white thread I was planning to use was not the right kind. Shelli lends me this MASSIVE spool of white thread for people who know what they are doing. Sadly, I do not, and the little machine did not have a place for the spool. So I MacGyvered a contraption on top of the machine using parts from a broken-down Jelly Belly dispenser. My baby brother would be proud-- he's going to be a mechanical engineer when he grows up.

I finished the Ferb costume a few hours before dark. Then, of course, to complete the entourage, I HAD to make sure that Ferb's brother, Phineas, was well-represented. AAARGH! This time it was fanatical desperation. I cut out strips of orange fabric and basted (wanna-be stitched) the strips onto a white shirt. Combine it with a pair of jeans and Ta-DAA! Hey, the kid is two years old. He doesn't care.

My only regret is that I did not finish my husband's costume in time. He was going to wear a lab coat and be Perry's nemesis Dr. Doofenshmirtz. But I AM NOT A SUPERHERO and I did not get it done in time. Some day I will learn.