Recovered from Thanksgiving

It's been a challenging few weeks.

The kids's strep kept them home from school two of the three weekdays before Thanksgiving. They were maddeningly underfoot.

We had Thanksgiving dinner locally, not at our house, but I had to prepare food for it with the kids underfoot.

We had a second dinner the next day at our house with my in-laws: two lovely people with multiple food allergies. They brought turkey and cake. I made everything else. And of course we had major cleaning to do, what with the kids having been underfoot all week.

The following week--last week--Peter came down with strep. He'd been feeling unwell for some days prior and had been unable to pull his weight with the daily housework and child-wrangling, so I'd been doing more.

The middle of last week, I suddenly caught a stomach bug. It wrecked me for 12h and slowed me down for the following 72.

The following 72 hours, while I was still weak and slow, were an on-call weekend for Peter.

This week, Peter was out Monday night and Tuesday morning.

I hired Nancy to cover for me with the kids tonight so I could get out and write this. But I had to do grocery shopping and Hanukkah gift shopping before I could come into this nice quiet Starbucks.

Three Big Questions

1. Not long ago K called me from downstairs: "MOM! MOM!" like she was on fire.

i ran downstairs to her room. "What? What?"

She was sitting on her floor contemplating a pair of panties. She pointed to the pattern. "Are these butterflies or puppies?"


2. This morning Peter and I were sitting at the kitchen table, actually face to face for the first time in two weeks, desperately trying to make a battle plan for the weekend. M was waving his hands and jumping around. "Excuse me? Excuse me?"

Wearily, we said, "Yes, M--?"

He asked, "When can we go parachuting?"


3. I asked M, quiet a long time in the back seat, "What are you thinking about?"

He replied, "I wonder what the moon tastes like."

Dizzy

Both kids stayed home yesterday to let the antibiotic work. It's making them dizzy today, so I will reduce the dose by 25% tonight. (The pediatrician said I might have to do this.)

Speaking of dizziness, the other day K stunned me by saying she wanted to have a sleepover with her birthparents--"the people I lived with before Mama A--."

She had never mentioned them before. We had, of course, but she had never initiated a conversation about them. As far as we can tell, neither child can remember them. We have their names and last known address, and we have enough information about them to begin explaining why our kids don't live with them. But we haven't started searching for them, having been advised by our Russian friends not to do so. We have talked as a family about returning to Russia in a few years.

I had no idea what to say to K. I finally asked, "How do you think it would be?"

She said, "Fun," and changed the subject.

Then last night, K told me, "Sometimes I forget I'm home. i think I'm at Mama A--'s."

This was the first time I had heard this from her. I had no idea what to say, so I asked, "Why do you think this happens?"

"Because you look a little like her."

I thought about that. Mama A. was much older than I, and heavier. But her eyes looked like my mom's, so I guess they might have looked like mine, too. I said, "Do our eyes look similar?"

"You both have brown eyes. Yes."

Over this coming weekend, we will talk more.

Unstuck

Well, sort of. I'm out of the house alone in a good environment for writing. I spent the day very much with the kids and got in only about 45 minutes of real writing. I had to quit when the screaming downstairs reached a volume that indicated someone was probably getting hurt, which meant I had to snap off the TV and hang out with them. While I'm glad that they spent so little time crashed in front of the tube, I'm annoyed that the rare time I was willing to use TV, it didn't work. (K refuses to play board games with M "because he cheats," and they weren't in a mood to cooperate on a building or art project.)

It turns out they both have strep. Neither had a fever today, and both had plenty of energy, which is why I didn't get much done. I am allergic to the antibiotics of choice for strep, so I had better not get it. I have explained to the kids that they must not kiss me on the mouth, feed me from their fingers, or cough on me. They seem to like the idea of protecting me, but only in theory.

They will probably need to stay home tomorrow. Both of them are sneezing and coughing; neither has much of an appetite. Besides, they will not have been on the antibiotic 24h until 3 PM tomorrow. Yes, I love them. Yes, I love protecting them and taking care of them. But I want to think and write without interruption, and if I don't get to the gym soon I will smack someone.

Stuck

Both kids are sleeping late, thank G-d. They were up coughing during the night. K had a fever at bedtime, so she's not going to school today, and I am keeping M out because he has had a disgusting but fever-free cold for about a week and it's high time he either spiked a fever or got over it. I will take them to the pediatrician today for whatever tests she feels like doing, and I will put on a chicken soup and break out the popsicles. Poor sweeties.

And me? I'm screwed. I've been quiet here because I've been trying to get the first 20 pages of a book completed by--er--last week for a writing class. I'm thinning out the playroom and buying new toys for Hanukkah. I'm helping a single friend prepare for a child she's adopting from Ethiopia. I'm supposed to critique the first 60 pp of a friend's book. I'm supposed to prepare parts of two Thanksgiving dinners and host one. And I am instead stuck wiping noses and washing my hands a zillion times a day.

Sleep, my loves. Heal your little bodies and give me these last few moments of peace.

What have I learned, now, having parented for almost three years? In these circumstances, take care of myself first. Peter has learned it too. He knows I need support when someone's health fails, so he did extra work last night on the kitchen and laundry while i got ready for bed. I got eight-plus hours of sleep last night. I had a shower this morning before I sat down here. Nancy is out of town for Thanksgiving, but I have already called my mother to step in for a couple hours tomorrow afternoon so I can get out to the gym or a quiet writing space. (I will cover today alone because I don't want to expose anyone else to whatever is ailing the kids. If it's bacterial, they'll have been on antibiotics 24h by tomorrow afternoon.)(We'll forget for the moment that I am the only person in the family allergic to antibiotics, so I must not catch what they have. And I am the only asthmatic and have been wheezing.)

I plan to spend today at my laptop when I can and with the kids when i can't. I will make an appointment with the pediatrician ASAP. The kids might not want to do much besides lie in front of the television, and when they're sick like this we let them, seeing as they watch maybe 15 min/day of PBS the rest of the time. I think I will try moving my laptop to the playroom, which adjoins the TV room, so I can listen for coughing and boredom. If the kids need company but don't want to move, I will file papers in the TV room. (They will climb all over me if I sit on the couch, and I can't risk that.) I will make soup out of some chicken bones and put on an experimental crockpot borscht because we like borscht even though the kids don't. If i need exercise, I will rearrange the playroom or move some other furniture--pity we hired some local kids to rake our leaves. Peter left way early this morning so he can get home early tonight and I can go out to write or hit the gym. I am tempted to start prep on the Thanksgiving dishes, but I won't until we have a clearer prognosis on the kids' illness(es): I don't want to get stuck with 16 lbs of roasted root vegetables, 2 quarts of stuffing, and a gluten-free apple pie if I don't have to.

Wish me luck.

First Grade Help Desk

I assisted in K's computer class today. I help 16 first-graders use 20 iMac computers.

There wasn't much I needed to do. Each kid was instructed to login using their first and last name, Google on the name of a specific website, and then play any word games they liked on the site. I helped a few kids find keys on the keyboard, and one boy needed to be told to use his nickname instead of his full name for the login, but otherwise all I did was stride around with my hands behind my back and wait for someone to look like they were stuck.

K behaved beautifully while I was there, which was a first. She hugged and kissed me when I arrived, then at my direction returned to her place and got on with her work. I made sure to stop by often and ask her about what she was doing. True to form, she was using context cues and trial-and-error--not reading--to figure out what to do with each game. I let her teachers torture her over the words, but I watched to see whether I could learn anything.

At the end of 30 minutes, it was time for the kids to logout and go to art class. I paced one side of the room and asked the kids whether they needed any help. Imagine my surprise and amusement when I saw K doing the same on the other side of the room, leaning over and assisting those who needed her!

M's Fears

...came out all at once last night. I don't know why. He and K had both been behaving like circus animals all day. M has lately been exhibiting signs of anger, mostly by wrecking things other kids are building and taking K's stuff. Not major problems, I know, but he usually will desist once spoken to, and he's not desisting.

Anyway, when I put him to bed last night, he started to cry when I left the room. When i asked why, he told me he was scared to be alone. Then he drew me a picture with the following narrative. He would stop and then remember something else and add to it.

"Here's me and here's a mean guy breaking the door down and putting me in a bag and stealing me. I'm in the bag so you can't hear me screaming. He takes me away and shoots me and the police can't shoot him because he's too fast and I die and here's you crying; here's your tears. The policemen make a statue of me and everybody cries because I'm dead. And you make me alive again and we live happily ever after and then a bad guy comes and steals all your money and we don't have enough food."

A little while earlier, K had informed me that she'd been behaving badly all day because she didn't like me and didn't want me to be her mom. I felt kicked in the chest already. But I kept accepting M's fears: "Uh-huh. I see. Can you draw even more scary stuff? " I wanted to cry.

M has recurring fears of being stolen. When his drawing slowed down, I asked him, "Are you afraid someone will steal you because we took you away from Mama A--?" When he stared at me and nodded yes, I explained that it's the law that Peter and I are his parents forever, which means no-one is allowed to take him. He seemed comforted somewhat by this statement, but of course there's no calming anyone's fear of chaotic bad guys.

Eventually, when he'd run out of fears, M turned the paper over and drew our whole family having dinner at his favorite restaurant, a Japanese hibachi-style place where he loves to imitate the table chefs playing with knives and fire. When I asked whether I ought to take the paper with me to get the scary thoughts out of his room, he said yes and instructed me, "When you're angry, show the angry side. When you're happy, show the happy side."

("Angry"? We never discussed "angry." Hunh. I'll have to ask him about that.)

I drew him a big heart to place over his bed like a talisman. He loved it. He usually sleeps with a soft fleece sweater of mine and sometimes with a toy of K's.

Unlike home-grown kids, institution-raised kids don't know about waking their parents for dead-of-night problems. Sad as it sounds, there is often not enough staff at the institution to help them at night, so they learn to put themselves back to sleep. M will call us if he wets his bed, but that's it. He will tell us in the morning about his nightmares of being stolen and how he lay in bed afraid, but it won't occur to him to call out.

Therefore, last night I told M, "We're your mom and dad even at night. So if you're scared and you want to check that we're here to protect you, call us and we'll come."

"But what if you're sleeping too hard?"

"Come get us."

He looked genuinely puzzled. "Then what do I do?"

i said, "Well, first you can look at us sleeping and see if you feel better knowing we're in the house with you. If that doesn't help, just say, 'Mom, Dad, I'm scared,' and we'll help you. Okay?"

He said okay.

We expected him to test this system last night, but he didn't. Maybe just knowing it was in place helped him.

Achieved the Impossible This Morning

I had enough sleep.
I had a shower.
I put on clothes that I like.
I groomed my eyebrows and nails.
I put on makeup and earrings.
Peter fed and is minding the kids.
I fixed the problem with our printer.
I am at my desk writing.
I even filed a bug report on software I'm trying out, since the company is interested in hearing from me.

It took only 2 years, 10 1/2 months for me to have a morning like this.

Of course, I am afraid of what I'll find when i leave my office....