Posts from — March 2008

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

The preceding words whimpered forth from my ears after the haircut from hell today. We tried doing the right things – took J-man in at a time when he’s not too tired, but awake enough that he’s not grumpy, so not too early but not too late. We did brushing and joint compressions. We did big squeezes. We had balloons and bubbles. We brought along the Leah’s Farm Signing Time DVD.

I still ended up essentially holding the J-man down while Tim held his hands, and the AWESOME woman at JJ’s Kids Cuts snipped quickly. He screamed and cried and fought pretty much through the whole thing. Maybe next time we will just go for the clippers, because at least then she can just zip around his head, and it won’t matter where she hits as long as it all gets cut eventually.

The experience wasn’t pretty. The haircut looks good though.

Also not pretty? Trying to get clumps of wet hair out of your cleavage in public.

For some additional background on Mary’s above post, over the 2 1/2 years of J-Man’s life, the person in our family who has had the fewest haircuts - by far - is Mary. Until I started getting buzz cuts every two weeks, it was a pretty even race between J-Man and me. By our count, he’s had 14 haircuts in 30 months, with his first at 4 months. His hair grows like absolute mad.

About four weeks after it’s cut, it looks like a mop. We limp along as long as we can after that until we absolutely have to go. If it starts getting down in his eyes and ears, it drives him crazy. We can’t win either way.

We’ve been going to a place that specializes in kids’ haircuts. At first, the haircuts weren’t so tough to deal with. We’d just pop in a Dora video and we’d be OK enough to get through it.

About the time of the free haircut (get 10, get one free), things went all to hell.

If you have a sensory-sensitive kid, there’s a good chance you feel our pain and know exactly what we’re talking about.

It literally takes both of us pretty much sitting on him to get through it. If his hair wasn’t halfway to Cousin Itt status, we wouldn’t go through this. It’s pure torture on everybody. He screams the whole time like we’re killing him. He’s so unbelievably strong that it’s nearly impossible for us to hold him.

As awful as it was last time, this one was ten times worse. We used every sensory tool in our arsenal. If you’re a parent of a sensory kid, you probably know about these already. If not, we’ll go over them in a later post. We did brushing beforehand, followed by joint compressions. We stayed outside (which he loves) and walked around in the nice, spring air. We gave him lots of hugs and sang to him. I pressed him over my head a bunch of times because he loves that exaggerated motion. We even brought his favorite video to watch during the haircut.

It worked until she got his hair damp (which came at approximately 28.4 seconds).

We became the parents we always talked bad about, the ones who have to sit on their kid to get his haircut while he screams bloody murder - the parents who have no apparent control over their child. The kids there who were undecided on the whole haircutting issue did not find WildMan’s testimonial all that reassuring.

It simply was a total disaster. Getting his shots was way easier. It ranked right up there with when we all had to hold him down to get an IV in him when he had the norovirus last year. It was that bad.

Afterwards, we went to the local frozen custard joint for some self-medication therapy. Of course, J-Man doesn’t eat that kind of stuff, so it was a parents-only self-pity fest. I got a chocolate shake the size of my head. That would become my lunch. Mary got some chocolate/bing cherry concoction. I gave serious thought to stopping on the way home and seeing how well Kahlua goes with frozen custard. A whisky float - hold the ice cream - crossed my mind, too.

If there’s one good thing to say about it, it’s that the person who cuts his hair each time has limitless patience and is an expert at cutting hair on a moving head on a body that grows fifty extra arms in order to fight with her. It’s got to be like cutting Linda Blair’s hair in The Exorcist.

Well, at least his hair looks nice, which is an amazing feat.

Just so you know, if the vomit has big enough chunks of chicken nuggets, you should consider removing those chunks from the clothing/towels BEFORE you launder them. Otherwise you may end up picking freshly washed and rinsed chunks of chicken nugget vomit out of your washer, then feeling the need to bleach both the machine and your hands.

Also, it is a good idea to remember that you actually laundered those clothes/towels on Monday, and not leave them in the washing machine until Thursday. Otherwise you may end up picking not-freshly washed and rinsed chunks of chicken nugget vomit out of your washer, then feeling the need to bleach both the machine and your hands, and then having to re-launder those clothes anyway.

And, seriously son? Jeopardy, while the best game show ever invented (including Match Game, where they were always drunk or high), is just not on every minute of every day, and when you pick up the remote control and hand it to me, sometimes I can’t find it for you. We already DVR Signing Time and The Wonder Pets for you, and every “when nature revolts” show for Daddy. Can I please keep my 2 movies that I still haven’t had time to watch on the DVR, and not have them deleted for lack of space? Kthxbye.

It’s been 3+ weeks on the fish oil now. It’s probably still too soon to determine what, if anything, it’s doing. And this week hasn’t been ideal at all for making any judgments. He’s felt like varying degrees of dirt for most of the week, and everything usually takes a step backward during weeks like this.

Here are a couple of things I’ve noticed improving lately, though whether it’s attributable to fish oil or what he would normally be doing is hard to tell.

* Eye contact continues to improve
* He did really well with his new OT, so score one for comfort with strangers
* He’s following some instructions a bit better
* He’s asking for things with ‘more’ on his own without as much prompting
* He goes to his high chair when he’s hungry (or drags the chair around with him) - i.e. the high chair is a good place
* His tantrums, at least in my opinion, have actually been better the last several days, though I didn’t think they were that bad to begin with

Odd mannerisms of the week:

* He REALLY likes Jeopardy
* It’s not unusual for him to refuse to get OUT of his high chair - a problem we’ve never had

We’re just going to write off the downers for the week as due to him feeling ill (a lot more sensory defensiveness, decreased speech) and move on. We’ve cut back on the ‘homework’ this week to let him recuperate. This round of yuck has been short-lived for his usual coughs and colds (which are fairly rare anyway), so that’s a good sign.

Let’s hope next week gets us back on track.

For previous installments:

Day 14
Day 7
Day 1

Our occasional walk through the pictorial history of our pride and joy.

In other words, “show me some dang baby pictures!”

[From a couple of years ago]

Thank ya, thank ya very much.

There is no spoon…

We see a lot of medical professionals here at Chez Flashlight. Many of them are great. I hereby declare my now former dentist not one of them.

As I was having Thai noodles - yes NOODLES and not even the crunchy kind that go on salads - for lunch, which I later chased with a few corn chips, I suddenly felt something very crunchy that even steel-reinforced Fritos couldn’t achieve. I had no idea what it was until about ten seconds later when I realized my back molar was missing about a quarter of its toothiness.

I’ve had this filling for barely more than six months. Last I checked, they’re supposed to last longer than that…

I cursed the name of my dentist and demanded a hearing before the Court of All Deities One Might Call Out to In a Time of Great Need so that I would have all of my divine smiting needs covered. I’ll never know whether my pleas were heard and smiting properly carried out - unless it shows up on the news - but I think my request that he at least be cursed with endless tobacco-chewing, halitosis patients through all eternity will be granted readily enough.

Perhaps he was upset with me for wondering out loud why someone would root around in someone’s wet, stinky mouth all day regardless of how much they got paid for it. There’s a reason why every modern horror movie has a dentist’s chair in it.

I rank the “Top Medical Specialization Choices I Don’t Understand At All” as:

* Dentists
* Proctologists
* Male Gynecologists

Tonight, as I keep feeling that giant, gaping place where part of my back molar used to be, I’ve realized one important, common trait between those three groups.

They are all ‘orifice doctors’. That’s all I got for you there.

Deep thoughts from a guy with a literal hole in his head.

On the plus side, J-Man is a lot better today. I guess I’m the Yang to his Yin, or however that works.

Honestly, if we could figure out a way to use human gas as an energy source, the Flashlight household would never have to pay for electricity or auto fuel again. The J-man excels at passing gas – both loudly, and the silent-but-deadly (SBD) kind. His favorite time to use the SBD weapon is when I’m rocking him and he’s nursing before bed. He turns on his belly and turns his head to nurse, hunches up his little behind… and then it hits me. There have been times that I gagged. For a child who eats next to nothing some days, he can sure be a little stinker! Then, he laughs!

Today’s word was a variation on a previous word of the day: GaGoMaMo – which for those of you who don’t speak J-man-ese, equals, More Go Mama. I heard it a LOT when J-man was out on the swing for an hour this afternoon.

The cough and congestion seemed much worse this morning, but then seemed better this afternoon. He’s still eating very little, and not wanting to eat nuggets at all, so I’m wondering if his throat is hurting. Again, now would be one of those times when you desperately want your child to speak!

As a personal aside, I went into work last week to help out my old team. Annoying Coworker was there, and for some reason feels the need to ask me if I really disliked him when we worked together. He asked me this when we were still working together as well. The answer hadn’t changed… He truly seemed shocked when I told him that I thought he was annoying, and that he seemed to spend a lot of time trying to get under my skin. There was a time when I would have tried to “help him” understand what he had done, but you know, he’s 35 years old. If he hasn’t gotten by now that most women hate sexual innuendo and being told they don’t actually understand what feminism is all about while trying to work on a team of 95% men, he’s not going to get it. So, no, I didn’t like you then, and I don’t like you now. This isn’t going to change!

J-Man has some sort of chest congestion/cough thing going on so we rescheduled the autism evaluation for next week. He’s been dragging around today so we knew there was no way he’d be up to it, especially given how much he loves evaluations in general. [insert sarcasm]

Everybody seems to have bad mojo today. I have felt, as we say around here, “urfy” today and even our Civic is marooned at the dealership tonight to have the wheel bearings replaced.

Unfortunately, it’s the only thing still under warranty…

His word just before bed tonight - “love”.

He’s been trying so hard to say it. He decided that kissing us was going to be his ’sign’ for it in the meantime, but you could watch his mouth try to make the word. I don’t care how it comes out (”luh” with a slight ‘v’ sound on the end, in this case); he said it.

If you’re going through speech issues with your child, you know what one word can do to you. Some words - especially one word - go beyond what any of our own words can express.

Sleep well. I will.

Happy Spring Forward, the time of year when parents briefly might get to sleep some fraction of an hour later, if:

1. Your kid actually sleeps through the night.
2. You don’t have to be somewhere - like school - early in the morning.
3. Your kid isn’t a rooster who crows at first light regardless of the time of year.

This will last three days if you’re lucky. Enjoy it while you can.

No, I’m not talking about Tim.

J-man seems to be getting some sort of illness. Please let it NOT be the flu. I want him to be as well as possible for Tuesday’s evaluation. Of course, I should be used to this by now – every evaluation he’s ever had was prefaced by some sort of viral attack!

Coughing and whining. Whining and coughing. I’m not hungry. I’m starving! I need to sleep. I don’t ever want to see the inside of my crib again. Hold me and don’t put me down even when you desperately need to pee. I want to sit in my highchair all evening and will cry if you take me out.

Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives.

I went to Whole Paycheck today to stock up on J-man food. I bought 6 bags of Veggie Sticks. Yep, six bags. If WP were a 30 minutes minimum drive from your house, you would play the stock-up-game too. I also bought 459082371526 jars of organic baby food, but not the 2 soups that I was looking for, because they were out. Son, I would like for you to eat real food sometime soon. Like last Thursday.

Because of some potent fertility drug they pump through the water fountains at the therapy office, our occupational therapist (OT, for the uninitiated) recently went on maternity leave. We had our first session with our new OT this week and J-Man did extraordinarily well.

For the past few months, the OT sessions have been ‘home visits’ (therapy in your ‘natural environment’ - a.k.a. home where all the toys are), but we’ll be having sessions at the preschool until a home visit slot opens up with her. We shoved a session into the crazy schedule so he wouldn’t have to wait all the way until the 17th before we get into the new routine.

There was so much stuff in that kinda small room that I thought it would unnerve him, but he had a really good time. It helped that she didn’t make him do any eating work. It was motion stuff (vestibular and proprioceptive for those of you who know what that’s all about), which he’s been doing well with of late.

I was really impressed by how well he took to her and all the good eye contact he made with her. He’s doing pretty well with new people - and he loves him the ladies - which is a relief for us (the eye contact and comfort level more than the lady-lovin’). She read him well - a skill we always appreciate - and seemed to intuit well when to push him and when not to.

Hopefully she drinks bottled water. The new and expectant demographic there is impressive!

J-Man’s ‘inclusive preschool’ has taken its show down the road a couple of miles. We outgrew the little room we were in at the therapy office, which doubled as the community break room for the therapists. Not to mention, all the heat in the building apparently was directed into that little room. The combination of heat, body funk, markers, apple juice, and pee diapers proved to be a real motivator to complete the deal to move into a more spacious setting. God help them all if a kid ever dropped a diaper bomb in that old room…

So J’s preschool - a.k.a. The First Church of ‘Yes, We Can’ - has literally moved into a church. The room is huge, and they have a full-blown playground! The first day’s report was that Jonas - feeding issues and all - found the edible mulch at the playground reasonably palatable. Maybe if we shred some over pasta he’ll eat it.

With nine kids on the wait list for a class of just six, the new digs will let them split the class into two and add six more kids. They’re looking to group the kids in the class by developmental delays, so for instance the ’sensory kids’ will end up together.

The classes are team-taught, which is not only a good idea but an absolutely necessity! One of his teachers from before now has the other class and his developmental therapist has now joined in as the other half of his teaching team. J-Man looked a little confused about this for a while, with a temporary “Holy crap, what are you doing here?” look on his face.

He did his explore-the-room-off-by-myself-to-get-adjusted thing for quite a while, but he’s coped with the new environment much better than I thought he would. I think the size of the room really helps since he can go get some personal space if he needs it, something much harder to do in the old place.

They’ll add one new kid a week until each class gets to six so everyone - including the teachers - can get used to all the changes. It’s been great getting to know the other parents and kids, and I look forward to the new ones. They’re such a fun bunch!

So, a great first week! With the big autism evaluation Tuesday, we have no idea what this coming week will bring. More on that later…

It rained heavily today. It was wonderful for our area, since we are in the worst drought in recorded history. However, J-man didn’t understand why he couldn’t go outside to play. We actually have to spell O-U-T around him because if he hears the word, he wants to go! Personally, I have no problems playing in the rain; I used to do it all the time – as long as there wasn’t thunder or lightning.

J-man, though, refuses to wear “real” shoes. He wears those little leather-bottomed shoes (like Robeez) but protests wildly when we try to put shoes with a firm sole on his feet. If we can even get real shoes on him, he then spends however long it takes him getting them OFF. A doctor suggested Crocs, which J-man can then slip off immediately. So, playing in the cold rain isn’t an option, because we don’t have any way to keep his feet dry.

I’ve tried reasoning with him in this regard, and then I remember that he’s 2… and as everyone who has ever met a 2 year old knows, logic usually doesn’t enter into the equation.

Today J-man had preschool in the morning then took a long nap in the afternoon, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Tomorrow though will be interesting when he wants to go O-U-T.

Anyone have any ideas for shoes that could help him transition into “real shoes?” We’re hitting the limit on sizing for those leather-bottomed shoes from Target!

As an aside, let me just say that working from home rocks! I took a 1/2 hour power-nap on my lunch hour – in my own bed! I had hot cocoa with marshmallows at 2:30 this afternoon because I was chilly from watching the pouring rain outside the window. Yeah… I could learn to live with this.

I totally geeked out on this site when we were trying to name J-Man back in the day. (2 1/2 years ago, ack!)

The Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager is something to behold. Just type in a name (at the blinking square next to the “>”) and the chart refreshes like crazy to show you the popularity of a given name - or part of a name - over time.

No, we’re not expecting another one. I was browsing through some old bookmarks and saw this. It’s a classic!

Frightening fact: Lemon and Orange were popular enough to be ranked around the 1900s.