In Retrospect

I've lost my ability to see ahead for Princess.

I used to be so in tune with her. I could see a trigger a mile away. But it got to the point where everything was a trigger; it was too overwhelming, and I started trying not to see them, just so it wasn't constant. And the past six months have been so filled with hurt. Princess's new-ish doctor evened out her meds, which is an amazing thing, but what's left in the wake is Princess, fully aware of the pain and fear she feels. And since she can't process it yet, guess where it goes? All over the rest of us.

It's been a hard, hard six months. And it's harder now that it has ever been. Her doctor says he's seen a lot of families give up at this point, saying that they preferred the miserable they were before to the miserable they are now. I know in my heart (and her doctor agrees), that if we can just get though it alive, it will be better, livable on the other side.

But right now. It's just hard.

We had a family wedding to travel to this past weekend. One of us thought Princess should go, and the other thought she should stay with a sitter. Both of us were experiencing, er, "feelings" from our vacation traveling. The one who thought she should stay caved, and the trip to the wedding was without incident. The wedding activities were without incident.

We let down our guard.

Sunday was Father's Day, but it wasn't really on our minds. Buddy and Peanut had left Saturday night to spend the week with Gramma and Grampa, so we gave Daddy his five-pound gummy bear and his turkey made from compost pile gleanings (complements of the Cuddle Bear) Saturday morning. We were two hours into to four hour drive when we decided against fried chicken in the park and for Joe's Crab Shack.

What Were We Thinking #1.

The first thing I didn't see was that the restaurant was (duh!) full of men. At least half looked like the type of man Princess is frightened of. The wait was about 30 minutes, and about 20 minutes in, Princess insisted she saw a boy who frightened her two years ago by lifting her skirt while the class was in line for the computer lab, resulting in the first total meltdown the school had seen from her. It was obviously not the same boy, but she staunchly and unreasonably insisted it was.

Right then is when we should have gotten out of there like bats out of the seventh circle of hell.

But I've lost my ability to see ahead.

We sat down, and Josh and I consulted the menu to see what would be the best way to order. Princess promptly chose the most expensive dinner of the children's menu consisting of fried food with a side of fried food with some fat as a garnish, and began telling us emphatically and repeatedly what she wanted. Thinking about her food issues and not seeing what was really going on, we showed her the (gigantic, delicious) meal we were going to order and share.

Princess began to throw a tantrum that looked exactly like a three-year-old who is not getting her way.

Which really torked me off.

Even though I knew somewhere in my head that that wasn't really what it was.

While we waited for the food, she kept looking over her shoulder. It's "normal" for Princess to be hypervigilant, especially about food, but this was more like a tic. I actually started to worry she was going to hurt her neck. And usually the presence of food of any type would have snapped her out of a food-related funk, but when the meal came, even though it was all things she likes, even though I went without some things so that she would feel like she had more, she threw her food around complaining about how disgusting it was.

And she just kept escalating. She hid under the table. She flung herself into the seat behind her. She whacked the poor man whose back was to the other side a few times. And she kept insisting, loudly, that she wasn't.

And still I didn't see it for what it really was.

Eventually there was no choice but to remove her from the restaurant. I dragged her out of the booth while she ramped up the volume and walked her outside, where she slapped me and complained loudly about having done nothing wrong and how mean and selfish Daddy is.

Happy Father's Day.

I sat in her seat with her while Josh tried to concentrate on driving safely while she screamed, kicked, pinched, and bit. I am now the proud owner of an incredibly ugly bruise on my behind and a spasm in my back so painful I have to have Josh slide me out of bed this morning.

She just couldn't do it. And I should have seen it.

When she finally got tired enough to cooperate with some breathing exercises and a drink of water, she began to sob about how sorry she was. And I believe her. But now I am physically and emotionally sore, and Josh is really pretty depressed, and neither of us have the reserves to meet her.

And we just have to push through.

In Which Kerrie Congratulates Herself

You know that feeling when suddenly you turn around one day and realize: your baby has a "schedule?" Not one you made up for her, but her own. You've got a good idea of what she's going to do when, and you know what everything she does probably means even though she can't tell you with words.

Ok, so maybe it's not quite so exciting when your baby is nine. Or maybe it is. And that it's only Day Four of summer vacation and I figured it out makes me think I'm pretty awesome.

So here it is:

1:00- Rage
6:00- Rage
Bedtime- Rage

The thing about this schedule that makes me all tingly is that I CAN DO SOMETHING TO CHANGE IT!!!!!

Ideally, this is what would happen:

12:30- Nap
6:00 On! The! Dot!- vegetables or dinner stuck in mouth
Bedtime- Tucked in before Imminent Rage signs start to show

Realistically, this is more what it looks like:

12:30- Nap, but I let Princess take a book because usually she doesn't like to read but she likes to pretend she likes to read so she falls asleep right away only this time it turned out she was m$*#&@&^^g interested in the book so she didn't sleep leading to new factor
4:00- Rage
5:00- Kerrie realizes that, despite the unscheduled rage that actually enjoying a book is new and therefore a very, very good thing
6:00- Dinner is not ready yet, so Kerrie sticks carrots in Princess's mouth and offers them to everyone else because it is 6:00 and Kerrie can't take one more "no fair" without Josh home
Bedtime- Crapshoot
9:30- Congratulate self with glass of wine

Next up: what on earth to do about that 4:00 rage.

Mani-Pedi Fail

Hmm. I wonder what that is?

There are those things that I can't really put two and two together on, and I know asking questions will not get me anything useful. Or even close to true. So I file the information away for later. Cachink!

I cleaned the kids' bathroom last week (have I ever mentioned how estatic I am that this house has a master bathroom that no one! can enter! without permission!? Because, eeeeeew), and noticed these weird pink smudges here and there on the counter- but mostly in front of Princess's space- that didn't come off when I rubbed them with the cleaner. It didn't look like anything I could place. Cachink!

Thursday, Peanut asked Princess why Princess's fingernails were red. Princess said, "marker!!!" and stuck her hands behind her back. I looked, and she had kind of a reddish stain around the edges of her fingernails. Suspicious, yes. But Princess has been admonished before for drawing on herself (mostly by Josh, because me, meh. I have bigger fish to fry most of the time), so I didn't think much more of it. Chachink!

Yesterday, I removed Princess's laundry from the dryer. And there were two socks covered in the same color as the counter and the fingernails. A color that did not come out in the wash. Chachink clunk!

Princess?
What?
Please go get me whatever it is that you have that made marks on the bathroom counter and is covering these socks.

She brought me a marker. A washable marker. From the main floor of the house.
Try again, babe. The thing I'm expecting is from upstairs. Probably hidden in your room.

She brought me a bottle of nail polish. Which no one is allowed to have because they always spill it. Yeeeeeeeah.

Ok! Let's go get the rest of my stuff out of your room, then.

I started to toss her room, and she sat next to me. I was about half-way through when I said, "you know, you'd have a lot less to clean up if you got out what you have hiding in here and give it to me BEFORE I tear up everything."

She swooped in and immediately pulled out a bottle of nail polish remover. The brand new one. That was now empty.

I said, "what else have you got?"
Nothing.
I'm pretty sure that's not the same color as what's on your socks.
It is! See!

And she stuck out her fingers and toes. Which I hadn't noticed. Which were pink. And also pretty much the entire length of her legs. And her carpet. And her closet door.

Evidently she had been repeatedly painting her entire self, and everything around her, with my nail polish, and then taking it all off with my nail polish remover, for a week. At least.

I immediately went bat-poo nutso. It was the stealing. The stuff that I'm supposed to remember isn't a moral issue but actually a response to extreme stress and a cry for help always trips me up. I have not exactly been "slow to anger," as of late. It got a little surreal, because AS I was freaking out on her, I could still hear the Still Small Voice in my ear- I was just apparently to scalp-prickled triggered to acknowlege it. It went kind of like this:

She only steals your stuff.
Shut up.
Because it's you she wants to be close to.
No, it's because she has no respect for me whatsoever.
It's because it's you she wants to be close to.
Shut up.
She tried to clean it up. Usually she just leaves her illicit messes for you to find. Or step in.
Shut up.
She wanted you to catch her so she could stop feeling bad. That's why they're still painted. She doesn't know how to fix it with you.
No, she just ran out of remover.
She feels bad and she doesn't know how to fix it.
Shut up!

And it did.

I made a conscious choice to stay angry. You can imagine how the rest of the day went. I stomped around yelling. Princess had such a huge meltdown she got a hanger stuck in her hair from tearing up her closet from the inside

(because she's been painting her nails and removing the polish during the time she was supposed to be brushing her hair and teeth for the past week. The rat's nest look was starting to go on)

my anger upset the other children and flowed over onto Josh, making him feel depressed and helpless. It was not good. Not good at all. Very sub-par. Fail.

Thankfully, every day I'm given is a day to try again. And the Still Small Voice is louder after a two-mile run with really loud music.

Running Away from Big Girl Panties

I signed Princess up for Girls on the Run this year. Other activities I've tried with her have come to bad ends. With sports, she wants to do certain parts (being goalie, throwing in the ball, batting), but not the rest. She simply won't participate in 90% of said sport. She took tap. She was good. I mean good. But there was one girl who was better. So Princess quit. And by "quit," what I mean is, "started raging on the way home from school so she couldn't physically be forced into a leotard and transported to class."

But I saw her face when well-meaning people would ask all the kids what kinds of things they do and everyone would answer and Princess would say, "nothing."

This year she was old enough for Girls on the Run. It's a perfect program for her. It's as non-competitive as humanly possible with actual humans participating. It has all the girlie-girl stuff Princess loves. It would provide some level of physical activity for her. I would run the 5k with her: something we'd both enjoy! She would get a t-shirt and a medal. And, best if all, she wouldn't be able to use the same method of quitting, because she's bussed directly from one school to another.

Backing up to running the 5k.

I started noticing that whatever time I came to pick up Princess, she was standing around while other girls were running or walking the track. She wasn't the only girl standing around, but it was always. I spoke to her coach, and she said that Princess has very little endurance, but she's participating and doing fine. Ok.

This morning. This morning Josh discovered last minute that Princess had not done something she really, truly needed to do before leaving for school. Not a negotiable in any sense of the word. This event came on the tail of Princess being reminded to do several things she always needs to do, and having to stop something she wanted to do more to go fix it. Things were not pleasant as they were.

The other children and I had to leave to walk to the bus stop, so I asked Josh to make sure Princess ran to catch up with us. She ran until she was far enough from the house that she could pretend she didn't hear Josh anymore, and then she walked. She was closer to me than Josh by then, so I reminded her she needed to run, and if I got to her first, things weren't going to be pretty.

I got to her first.

It wasn't pretty.

I put my hand around her shoulders, grabbed a fistfull of sweatshirt, and started to jog. Slower than I actually run, which is very, extremely slow. Slower than I walk, in fact. We "ran" for 200 feet. The entire 200 feet, Princess screamed and wailed and gasped about how she couldn't breathe and how I was killing her.

Two hundred feet.



Divorce rates for regular people are through the roof. Divorce rates for parents of special needs kids, well, it could be interpreted as "why-even-bother percent." I read somewhere (to be honest, probably Reader's Digest- the foremost leader in bathroom information and bizarre jokes about dogs) that the best predictor of special-needs-parent-marriage-success is a very, very dark sense of humor.

Enter: why I think there's a darn good chance we'll beat the odds.

I came home from the bus stop, like I often do, disgusted and demoralized. I told Josh I was calling Princess's coach and pulling her from the 5k. That there was no point if she couldn't jog 200 feet without dying. He had a look.

What? You don't agree with me.
Maybe you should run it by her coach.
Why? She clearly can't do it. She hasn't even been training.
It can be walked.
Oh sure! Yeah. Three hours with Princess either moaning and complaining, yelling at me, or trying to get away from me. Yeah. That'll be fun.
It's three hours you'd be with her.
Great.
Put on your Big Girl Panties.
No! They're ugly!
I think they're beautiful.
Well you're wrong. They're hideous. They're the granny kind. The go up past my belly button, and they billow, and the elastic is overworn, and they're yellowed with weird stains.

That's only because you have to carry so much sh!t around in them.

Yeah. I think we might make it.

Another Installment of "Things You Probably Haven't Said"

Brought to you by Kerrie. Be jealous.



You know, I think it's really great you're excited about your new deodorant. It's ok to be excited about it: it's new, it smells good, and it's a clue that your body's changing into a grown-up's, which is pretty cool. The thing is...well, the thing is that it's not the kind of thing other people are going to get excited about. They'll get excited about their own deodorant, maybe, when it's time for them to use it, but they aren't likely to get excited about anyone else's deodorant. So if you want to tell people about your deodorant, that fine. Just be prepared that they're going to say, "oh," or something like that. Not do a dance of joy.

But the main thing to remember is, if you want to share the smell of your deodorant with someone, like maybe a sister, for instance, you really should ASK before you shove it under their nose. Because if you don't ask, it's fairly likely they'll snatch it out of your hands and throw it in the wastebasket. You know. Like just now. So it's ok to be excited about it.

Just ask first.

The Long Walk

There's a quarter mile between my kids and their bus stop. Much to their chagrin, we walk. Anyone who wants to complain about it gets treated to my lecture series: "Why This Is Good For Your Brain."

It also gives us time to work things out.

The day didn't start so well. It was one of those mornings where Princess took all my suggestions and ground them up in the garbage disposal. It was not one of those days where I could say, "oh well. Let's hug." It took one-eighth mile for me to be the one to say, ok, that's enough. Sniping at each other is not working.

While waiting for the bus, I hung out with her and cuddled her and told her how much I loved her and gave her really obnoxious smoochies, all of which she forcefully rejected. Mostly by stomping on my foot and trying to trip me. And then something new happened.

A spider ran up my arm. Not an actual arachnid, one that would cause me to do a weird arm-shaky dance, but Princess's hand. And she said, "look Mom, there's a spider running up your arm."

Honestly, it took me a minute to catch on. My initial internal response was that she was trying to annoy me. And then I thought,

wait. Is she being silly?

She was.

I am still struggling to be silly with her, but I did keep holding her in a casual hug, and we were both smiling when we hugged good-bye at the bus's arrival.

And then I had a quarter-mile to smile to myself.

And Yes I'm Whining About Homework Again

because I realize this blog might as well have the catchy name: "A Whole Bunch of Homework Interactions." But you know what? I embrace that. I accept that I bore random people to death with How Homework Went Tonight, by Kerrie. It's ok with me.

The real reason is that I don't think anything that happens with Princess harrows my soul more than working on homework. Not the pee. Not the rages. Not the police being called to our RV while on vacation.* It's the homework. I used to start shaking at 3:00 every day. I thought it had gotten better over the past three months, but it turned out that was just that Princess wasn't actually bringing home any of her homework. I hope I never, ever have to be exposed to her locker. Anyway. The homework. After two years of enduring horror that no psychopathic thriller movie has ever explored, I trigger as soon as her voice starts getting the "things aren't going well" tone.

Can I hear an "amen" from those of you whom have endured third-grade multiplication? It is not what it used to be. Now there's a grid, and all this weird multiplication facts and adding stuff you're supposed to do in certain places designated by a variety of textures of line. Buddy made up some worksheets for me so I could learn how to do it. Once you figure it out, it totally makes sense and is tons easier than the "that's just the way it is so memorize it and deal with it" school of thought that taught us. But I groaned when I pulled it out of Princess's folder. There are a LOT of steps. And steps are not Princess's cup of tea. I worked her through the first three problems, and it wasn't that bad. But the fourth problem did not have the numbers written on top of and on the side of the grid. You had to write them there YOURSELF. And this made it just go all to crap.

As soon as the whine started, my stomach churned and my hair stood on end (does anyone else's do that? Seriously. I like being reassured that I am not an entirely different species), and I suddenly had to fight myself to not raise my voice. Mostly, I did ok. I said a lot of things like, "really?" and, "well that stinks," and, "boy I'd be super mad too if one minute 7x9 was 48 and the next it was 72." And then I cracked.

By this point her paper was ripped to shreds. Mostly because whenever she asks me to explain something, she thinks she knows the answer after I've said three words and starts writing. Then, of course, since I WASN'T DONE, what she wrote is wrong and has to be erased. Do that eight times in the same spot and, well, paper just wasn't made to put up with that. She kept harping at the paper about how stupid it was, which, bullet point #1, SHE WAS NOT BLAMING ME!!!!! HAPPY DANCE!!!! But since I wasn't mentally equipt at that moment to recognize this monumental achievement, I instead slammed my can of coconut milk on the counter and said in a low growl, "it is NOT the paper." Then I caught myself and softened my voice, "it is not the paper. It is that you are frustrated. It's ok to feel frustrated. I feel frustrated too. She put her hands over her eyes, and, bullet point #2, CRIED. Then she bullet point #3 TOOK DEEP BREATHS.

That would be without prompting. Oh yes it would.

And if that were not shocking enough, she then finished the problem. With help from me. On another piece of paper.

Last semester, never. Never never never ever never. No way that wouldn't have ended with her screaming in her room and me crying over my stir-fry. Uh uh.

So yes, I am a hot mess. Yes, my healthy children are fried out. Yes, the third-grade teacher has been driven to drink. But good things are on the move.





*Josh keeps bugging me. When are you going to write about our vacation? You should write about our vacation. Haven't you written about our vacation yet? Why don't you write about our vacation. I probably will. But I only accept suggestions from Josh if they backed by at least three other people (sometimes just one, if said person has a PhD). So for now I think I'll just mention random bizarre parts here and there, and then eventually compile them. When I feel good and ready.