Ego

I decided some time ago that I don't believe in evil, or the devil, or Hell, or anything of the sort. There's about twelve years worth of reasons for this. God, for me, is not about punishment. Instead, he lets me do whatever it is I need to do until I'm all done. Like a toddler in a high chair who's spread berry smoothie all over my face and am now developing a rapid skin irritation as a result. God says, "All done? Say ALL DONE. Then I can wipe you off and get you up." It's a giant game of Love and Logic.

A few years ago, when saying the Lord's Prayer, I started saying, "deliver me from ego" (instead of evil). Cute huh? I've always had to be a little bit different (and it has NOT exactly served me well).

Ego, in the sense that I'm talking about, has to do with self-centered fear. It's the thing that puts distance between me and others. I'm resentful that "it" didn't go my way in the past, or I'm angry because "it" isn't going my way right now, or I'm absolutely terrified that "it" won't go my way in the future (my kids not getting help, for example, and me having to drop them off at the orphanage).

Ego is true evil and yes, I'm stealing this stuff out of all the books I've read. There's nothing new here. Hopefully I'm not outright plagiarizing. But, I might be. Anyways, one can always look at calamity and break it down and trace it back to ego. I look back through time and see extreme examples of groups of people behaving badly out of selfishness and self-centered fear. "They're different, therefore not human, OR they aren't doing it "right" and they're taking our stuff. So, we can hurt them and kill them," seems to be a re-occurring theme throughout history.

Being "right" people have been able to do terrible things "in the name of God." Less extreme examples of this happen every day and can look as simple as not helping someone out because they aren't doing things, "the right way". I'm guilty of it all the time when I try to run my life MY way. And I'm not saying I always think I know how it should go. Sometimes, I don't know how it should go but I DO know that it shouldn't be going the way it's going. SAME THING. I'm basically telling God that he (or they) is wrong.

The need to be right and make someone else wrong is actually a baby act of violence. This way of thinking has caused so much disunity and suffering throughout our time in this world that the bible (and other religious texts) actually refer to end result of it as evil. A literal person, place, or thing. Of course, they do. The pain it's caused has been tangible and real. In our daily lives, it doesn't look like evil. Instead, it looks like "No! MY child needs the help and I don't care if I have to be a bitch to get it!!" It's disguised as ambition, nobility, and a hundred other good things, but it's really me trying to get you to do what I think you should do because I'm scared to death of what will happen if you don't.

So, evil isn't a fallen angel. It's really our lower human nature. The part of us that won't choose God. Not that it's bad to try to get my children help. But, what are my motives? What is motivating this decision to do something or not? And what is governing the way I conduct myself in going about the doing or not doing? Faith or fear? If I'm doing something because I'm afraid of will what happen if I don't (or if I won't do something because I'm afraid of what will happen if I do), then I'm not choosing God. I'm choosing fear. The very same action can have very different motives behind it.

The consequence of not choosing God isn't fire and brimstone. Instead, it's being so focused on myself and my own life (thinking I know what's going "right" and what's going "wrong") that I don't notice others. It's missing out on life. And choosing fear will never, ever, in the long run, bring me what I really want (like getting out of the damned high chair). I want to chose God and what that means is that I don't get to be right about you, them, or it. I can only be right about me.

So there you have it. The simplistic philosophical view that I live by (stolen straight out of every religious and spiritual text from here to Timbuktu). So, what is the freakin' point already? Okay. This is the justification for the prayer change. The point is, that I've spent the last few years asking God to deliver me from ego.

Would you like to know what's happened since I started praying this? If not, I'll trust that you'll stop reading right now.

I moved away from my beloved home town and my closest friends and family. I live in a city that is becoming home against my will, with new people that I'm falling in love with against my will. I used to have a great bottom. Now, well...it's a thirty five year old mom bottom. I used to drive an awesome, old, green Toyota Land cruiser. Now, I drive a beat up, GRAY minivan. Chunks fall off of this thing as I'm driving down the road. We used to live in an adorable, turn of the century, little house (before we had what feels like 25 children). Now, I live in my worst nightmare. A tract house that is damn near identical to every other house on the block. I'd lose the place if it didn't have the numbers on it.

I used to be an art teacher in my own classroom with green and black checkered floors. The school is now a Walgreens, my students (who were alternative high school kids and couldn't succeed in the regular high schools) are possibly on the streets or in prison, and I am a stay at home mom. My life is all about the next load of laundry. I used to have what I thought were normal children and I have come to discover that I may have to care for them for the rest of my life. I have systematically lost, piece by piece, every single thing I thought I needed in order to be who I am. I've been delivered from ego (not entirely I'm afraid). And, you know what? I'm still here. Yuck? NOT AT ALL.

Here are some things I've gotten out of this process. My home town and closest friends and family are very, VERY important to me. The people that I love (both there and here) are what I live for and the kind of friend I am is very important. I've discovered that if I don't know what to do for a friend, that it is better to be too smothering and too loving, than not loving enough. They can always tell me to back off, but they may not be able to tell me to get closer. I've learned that my sense of home (and security) comes from within me and that cars, bottoms, and houses aren't important at all (okay, my bottom is still important to me and I'm working on that one).

My former students have a God in their lives too and don't need me to take care of them anymore. Laundry isn't such a bad thing to worry about. And my kids, well....I'm still trying to grow up and swallow that pill.

I heard a story once about a lady who had this dream about what it would be like to have a child. She talked about how it would be like taking a trip to Paris. She dreamed of old streets, cathedrals, and the Louvre full of parquet floors and breath taking art. But, when she had her baby, the child had Downs Syndrome and the trip to Paris was shattered. After she grieved the loss of the dream, the loss of the "normal child," her heart mended. She came to realize that it was like taking a trip to Holland, instead, and she grew to appreciate the green crops and wooden shoes. Not at all a bad place. Just a different kind of trip then she'd anticipated.

I'm still chewing on the being in Holland for the rest of my life thing. I really, really liked Paris. But, the greatest things in my life haven't been in "my plan" and I can't argue with that. Shane always says, "Perfection doesn't give a shit what you think of it." Incidentally, I am saying "evil" again.

Lighten Up!

Anyone who is sensitive to politically incorrect things may want to avoid reading this one!!

While Shane was going to Thunderbird, he met a man there who had a two year old daughter. This little girl was so familiar with her geography already, that all you had to do was name a country (ANY country) and she could point it out to you on a globe. He'd say, "Where's Uzbekistan!" and she'd whip the globe around and point to Uzbekistan. "Where's Paraguay!" and she'd spin it around again and stick her finger into the center of South America on Paraguay.

When he came home that day, he told me all about this little girl. He also said that he told the man that we'd feel lucky if we could get our daughter to locate her nose. I looked at Isabel (who was two and half years old) and said, "Isabel...ISABEL. Look at Mommy, honey! Can you show Mama your nose? Your nose, honey. Point to your NOSE. Where's your nose? Your NOSE, sweetie. Where's your nose? WHERE'S YOUR NOSE?" She finally poked herself in the eye.

When I started this blog, I told Shane I was starting a blog about our family and asked him what he thought I should call it. He thought about it for awhile. As he was thinking, I stared at him. I just knew that he was pouring all of his hard earned intelligence and sensitivity into a thoughtful, provocative, and meaningful title for my new blog. He finally looked at me, beaming, and said, "How about The Chronicles of Retardia?" I almost fell off the back of the couch.

Shane knows how to take it right over the edge of wholesome and politically correct and drop it straight down into outright sick and wrong. This is why God gave him to me. To lighten me up. I'm not hard to lighten up. But, when left to my own devices, I get wound up as tight as thread on a spool. Shane smiles all the time. ALL the time. And its not one of those fake perma-grins you occasionally see on people. It's genuine. He laughs at anything that's inappropriate or gross. He's actually brilliant. Give him any test and he'll ace it without studying. I met people at Thunderbird who paid tutors and studied for the G-Mat for two years before they took it. Shane flipped through the book a few times before bed and did well enough to get into Thunderbird on the first try. He knows his I.Q. score but refuses to tell it to me, insisting instead that, "Those stupid tests don't really tell you anything." He's a twelve year old boy inside. He giggles at boob jokes EVERY time. Occasionally, I'll catch him trying to teach Alden how to spell poop, "Okay now, son...it's P-O-O-P."

Shane has people in his family that are institutionalized because of their Autism. And my son Cale, is getting so so so hard for me to handle physically. I don't know what all this means, but I know my mind tends to go to the worst case scenario. The criteria for the agency that I'm trying to get us help through is "immediate risk of institutionalization" and Cale is gonna qualify. I'm very scared. We have to laugh at them or it breaks our hearts too much.

A New Kind of Mother

I'm a serious planner. I used to lay in bed on sleep over nights with my best friend and plan our weddings. We'd giggle and squeak and discuss our wedding dresses, what our husbands would be like, and who would be in the wedding party. She lived alone with her mother in a house that was filled with hardwood floors, antiques, and cat hair. I loved it there.

One time we had real tea out of a tiny little porcelain tea pot set complete with tiny tea cups and saucers with little baby flowers on them. Her mom gave us cinnamon sticks to stir our tea with and let us take the tea in her bedroom. We talked and talked over our tea party with her stuffed animals, and we decided that we'd be the only ones on our sides of our wedding parties. This would be a beautiful memory if it weren't smeared by the fact that I got drunk and didn't make it to her wedding. Ouch. Nice huh?

You know? Some things will never be "okay." The word forgiveness doesn't even paint the whole picture in describing what happened to our friendship after this. The relationship was severely injured. It required CPR, critical care, and eventually graduated to 'chances of good recovery with lifetime maintenance'. Yes, she forgave me. But the friendship became something different. Something new. And something deeper. I had to become a new kind of friend. Not that I'm recommending you get drunk and miss your best friend's wedding. I'm not. Not every friendship is capable of surviving such things. But, by some miracle, ours did and I'll never again be okay judging someone else for messing up. God uses what we give him I guess.

A couple of years after her wedding, she was the maid of honor at my wedding. She was, of course, the only one on my side of the wedding party. There were no bridesmaids. She was pregnant that day and didn't know it yet. We couldn't figure out why we couldn't squish her boobs into the peach colored dress (that was decided on at ten years old) that had fit her so perfectly just weeks before! Life is glorious isn't it? It is if I get my little plans out of the way and let it be.

I always knew what kind of a mother I wanted to be (another popular tea party topic) and, before I had kids, I really did have that all figured out. I'm a huge advocate of the book I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids and I highly recommend it to all struggling mothers (which is ALL mothers).

I wanted to demonstrate all the usual good mother traits. I would be present and patient and strict, but loving. I would be responsive and consistent. An example. I would teach them how to differentiate right from wrong for themselves and be true to their own hearts. I would feed them vegetables. Lots and lots of vegetables. I might steam them occasionally, but mostly they'd be raw and fresh and organic. I'd bake fresh bread weekly, kiss them thousands of times each day, and shelter them as much as possible from the pain of things not going their way. I'd keep a tidy house with fresh flowers on the table and no germs biting their little knees as they crawled by. I would thrill my children, empower them, teach them how to savor each moment with every cell in their little bodies. And I would do so while staying thin, beautiful, showered, and happy at ALL times. After all, I get to stay home with them. I SHOULD be happy, right?

Alden always made me look good. "Yes, please," and "No, thank you." Even as a baby, he could be fussy as hell at home, but take him to Target and he would attract bright smiles (even from tear filled eyes). He was delightful in public and had a big, fat, happy, glowing baby presence to show the whole world. I would think, "What a good mother I must be to have such a pleasant and well behaved baby." How I looked, as a mother, used to be very important to me. If he misbehaved or treated someone badly, only the tiniest bit of discipline would be required for him the change his little ways. Even when Alden was inappropriate, it was usually innocent and never malicious in any way.

There used to be a dwarf family that lived up the street from us. They'd be out in their yard on Saturday mornings, the dad struggling to mow the grass with his giant lawn mower. One time, when Alden was about three years old, he and Shane saw the dad in line at the grocery store. Alden saw the man and looked at Shane and said, "Look Dad! It's a little guy!" The fact that the man was an adult and not a child sunk in very quickly and he tried to recover with "It's a little daddy! LOOK DAD! IT'S A LITTLE DADDY! A LITTLE DADDY! LOOOK!!! HI LITTLE DADDY!! HI!!" Shane, trying to contain himself, finished paying for the groceries and then bolted, cracking up, out the door with Alden.

It was always easy to teach Alden the basics of life. He learned easily and quickly that people are all different and he knows how incredibly important it is that we treat others well, no matter how they treat us. These concepts came so easily to him, partly because he already knew these things intuitively. To this day, he cries if he hurts some one's feelings. The hurting is more painful than the being hurt.

With Isabel, well, she made me look bad. Very, very bad. When she started banging her head on the floor, all my ideas about motherhood began drastic re-arrangement. As it progressed, every idea I had about being a good mom was slowly replaced, one by one, with thoughts of whether or not I should be a mother at all. I couldn't even keep my child safe, let alone thrill and empower her.

Isabel had seen a developmental pediatrician who had pronounced her normal so I couldn't get the slightest reaction out of the regular pediatrician regarding the status of her "normalcy." They kept telling me it was a stage and that it would be over some day. She continued to scream as loud as her tiny little lungs would let her and bang her head into things for about a year and a half. She did it everywhere. The grocery store, other peoples' houses, our house if other people came over, EVERYWHERE. We did our best to avoid public places with her altogether.

We finally moved into a house that had wall to wall carpeting (the first house we lived in here had lots and lots of very hard ceramic tile that I honestly thought she might break her skull on). At least I could keep her somewhat safe while we were at home. If I had to take her into public, however, OH MY GOD. I did not understand for the longest time that it was eye contact that sent her into the tailspin. I knew she wasn't tantruming because she wanted a toy or candy like Alden did sometimes. I simply could not understand WHY she would get so upset. It was more than humiliating. It was down right excruciating.

While Shane was still in school, we qualified for Alden to go to Head Start. He could go, but they wouldn't bus him. I had to drive him there every day and get him to his classroom and then pick him back up four hours later. The school was a ways from our house. It took me a full hour to get him to the school and back home. Then, it took me another full hour to pick him up and get us back home. It almost wasn't worth it.

The process went something like this: I'd get everyone up early and out the door, drive for twenty minutes to get to the school, hope to find a parking spot, park, get out the stroller and load Isabel and Cale into it, walk around the school from the side parking lot and in to the front doors (the school was locked up like a prison and the only way in or out was through the front door), sign in, and walk through the school to the very back right hand corner of the building to his classroom (This was the equivalent of about a block. The schools here are huge.). We did this when it was 110 degrees out (Phoenix has outside classrooms, by the way, which means that you enter the classrooms from a giant court yard in the center of the building).

Isabel would usually make it until we got into the school. Then, someone would look her in the eyes. I wouldn't know what the hell had happened but all of a sudden she'd start screaming as loud as she could, violently thrashing her body around, and slamming her head into the back of the stroller. She did this all the way back to the classroom, all the way back out of the school, through the parking lot, and half way home. Once she got upset, it took a very long time to calm her down. Then, we'd go back four hours later to pick him up and repeat the process.

Occasionally, she'd be really good for a few days and act normal. Then, she'd want to walk instead of riding in the stroller. I'd think, "Finally it's over!!" and I'd let her walk. All would be well for a few days and then something would set her off and she'd throw herself, suddenly, onto the ground and start slamming her head onto the concrete. I learned fast to ALWAYS take the stroller so that, when this happened, I could wrestle her back into it (trying to carry the baby and drag her to the car at the same time only happened once).

One time, she made it all the way into the classroom with no problems. She started playing and didn't want to leave. When I called, "let's go," she went over to the tile in the classroom and hit her head on it really hard. She underestimated just how hard it actually was and she didn't get up right away. I ran over to her and knelt down next to her. Alden's teacher ran over and knelt down next to her too. Then, the teacher slowly looked from Isabel to me with these giant, scared, brown eyes. I'll never, ever forget the look on her face. She said, "Oh my God. She hit her head so hard." I, frankly, had become desensitized to it and had forgotten how much it must shock and horrify other people.

I felt like the most horrible mother in the world. I almost started to welcome the idea of CPS showing up and taking her away. Maybe I shouldn't have her. Maybe I shouldn't be allowed to have any kids. I can't even keep her safe. The sorrow and shame of this sunk so deep into my being that it hit the bottom of my toes. I just did not know what to do. Alden needed to go to school. We couldn't go anywhere or do anything fun because of his sister, so he needed to be able to go to school. But, actually getting him there was life threatening for Isabel since I only had two hands.

Sometimes (after she'd screamed all the way through the school for no reason, turning every head from here to Timbuktu), I'd lose my temper and spank her when we got to the car. Sometimes I'd scream at her all the way home. Sometimes I'd scream just for the sake of screaming. I thought I was losing my mind. I had no family here. No help. And this little demon was bringing out things in me that I really did not want to know about myself. We went through this, to take Alden to school, for the next year and a half.

Isabel was about three and a half when she stopped the head banging. I think the wall to wall carpeting just took the drama out of it. I, however, still have the trauma surface in me sometimes. Just last week, Cale's pre-school teacher called me to come pick him up from school because of a runny nose (no fever, just a runny nose). I told her I'd come get him but that she'd need to have the nurse run him out to the car because I had my daughter with me. She said she would. I knew better though. I cried all the way to the school because I knew that as soon as I got there, they'd ask me to go to his classroom and sign him out.

I called when I pulled up and sure enough, "Sorry, Ma am, you'll have to park and go to the classroom to sign him out." Something took me over completely and I said, "Listen. My daughter is autistic and out of her daily routine so her behavior is likely to be very unpredictable if I get her out of the car. You have two choices here. You can bring Cale out to the car OR you can keep him and send him home on the bus at his usual time." Wow. What a polite, yet assertive, grown up response. I've become very good at setting limits. Seeing as how I was parked in the fire lane right in front of the school, they brought him right out!

Isabel doesn't bang her head very often any more, but she does still stop in the middle of parking lots and throw herself on the ground. It doesn't matter to her if there are cars coming. It doesn't matter to her if my hands are full of grocery sacks, if I have a toddler to wrestle with, or if my thirty five year old mom bag feels like a chunk of concrete hanging from my shoulder. All she knows is that I'll find a way to pick her up again and take her home.

When I see other mothers at the store with screaming kids I want to say, "Do you need a babysitter?" I don't, of course, because I don't want to freak them out. But, I understand what it's like to need help. I also understand what it's like to have high expectations of myself as this ideal mother, only to have all that shattered by the horrified looks of others. I don't care what people think of me or my kids any more. If I have to put a leash on my five year old and get pissy with a few school nurses to keep her safe, I'll do it. I've had to become a new kind of mother. A real mother. I know more about myself today then I ever have before.

Traditional discipline doesn't work for Isabel or for our family. I've had to learn how to get creative, grow some serious patience, and learn how to say NO. When I get asked by the neighbors to take my kids to the park for a play date at a time I know my kids are exhausted, I say, "Umm. No." And I don't care if they think I'm a bad mom. And when friends say, "Do you want to come over and go swimming? You can bring your kids!" I say, "HELL NO!" I know my limits and my weaknesses. I also know my strengths. I know what will be fun for us and what won't be. I'm a good mom. It's a work in progress. I don't always teach my kids well, feed them vegetables, or keep a clean house. But, I do give them thousands of kisses every day.

Back to Isabel

So where was I? Oh yeah...Shane was going to Thunderbird and Isabel had just started slamming her head onto the floor.

Thunderbird is an incredible place. People from all over the world go to school there, and the really cool part is that they bring their families with them. We had just moved to Phoenix and I didn't know anyone so I focused on spending time with Thunderbird families.

I had the opportunity to befriend women from Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, Korea, India, China, Russia, Turkey, Greece, and Germany. The European women were beautiful. I mean gorgeous! They have a whole different level of skinny and sexy and perfect then we do here. And they nearly all had perfect breasts. It made me wonder if boob jobs were covered under their socialized medicine over there. Because, if they are, then Shane may get his dream realized after all (huh hum...the one about living over seas some day!). I lost 30 pounds of old pregnancy weight hanging with these girls.

These women put together a play-date sort of club for all the kids (they called it ThunderKids) and I thought it would be a fabulous opportunity for my kids to hear different languages and play. Alden had started pre-school so I figured it would be okay to take Isabel and Cale on a play date there. It did present some difficulties because I was nursing. Even though I could nurse openly around these women, I still worried that Isabel would horrify people with her head banging (which she did every time I nursed Cale).

When we got there, all the kids were making art projects. I put Cale down with the other babies and tried desperately to engage Isabel in making a project. She insisted, instead, on running around the room, getting in people's faces, and ripping other children's projects out of their hands and tearing them up before we could stop her. The little darling. When confronted she...you guessed it...started slamming her head onto the concrete floor that had the world's thinnest layer of carpeting on it. Right then, Cale started to cry because he needed to be nursed. So much for hearing other languages. We had to go home so I could feed Cale and hope that Isabel didn't knock herself out in the process.

I tried a few times to go to Thunderkids with Isabel and Cale. I tried making sure she wasn't tired, making sure she'd eaten at just the right time, and making sure we hadn't gone to the grocery store or anywhere else first (anything done in public wore her out fast) before we went. I was lonely in Phoenix and wanted desperately to make friends with other mothers from all over the world. I mean, who in the hell gets an opportunity like that? In the end, we stopped going to Thunderkids. I simply couldn't manage Cale and keep Isabel safe at the same time.

We ended up avoiding public places altogether with Isabel. If I took her to the grocery store I would run to grab everything we needed because I knew it was coming. Some well-meaning person would inevitably look at her and say, "Hi sweetie," and give her a little wave. In response, she would scream at the top of her lungs and start slamming her head into the bar on the front of the grocery cart.

I tried going to other clubs a few times. I did manage to do cooking club fairly successfully as long as it was at my house. The other women accommodated. They would agree to coming to my house for their cooking sessions and did so quite a few times. Isabel would slam her head, they would look at her horrified, and I would learn how to cook new things.

There were so very many things we couldn't do. They would have these big International Nights at the school. One month it would be China and they'd all dress in traditional Chinese attire, make Chinese food, and dance with the big wiggly dragon. They did a different country every month. We took the kids to one and remembered why we don't do that. I missed all the rest of them and I started to resent Isabel.

Baby Cale

Baby Cale

Sometimes I get mad at my baby. Not a fast, lose my temper kind of mad. It's more of a quiet and deep-seated "it wasn't supposed to be this way" kind of mad. Why? Well, mainly because HE'S NOT A BABY. He's three and a half. THREE AND A HALF. But he acts like a baby. Actually, that's not even really a good description because one can communicate effectively with a baby.

I just got done scrubbing fruit smoothie of of my walls, molding, table, chairs, and kitchen blinds because he threw an entire glass of it into the wall which promptly exploded onto everything within smoothie spray reach.

The words, "He's functioning at the level of an 18 month old," rang in my head as I scrubbed. This is somewhat acceptable behavior for an eighteen month. The difference is that a fairly loud, "NO," will usually produce enough bad energy that a normal child gets the idea. It doesn't usually stop the behavior right away but it does eventually. I've been telling Cale, "NO," (and using a variety of other disciplinary techniques) to throwing food (and other things) for two and half years now.

When I got done scrubbing, I heard the water running upstairs. Someone left the bathroom door open again so I ran double step up the stairs to stop him because he doesn't feel it when the water is hot. I've found him, before, sitting in a sink of water that was uncomfortably hot for my hands. I've got locks on the outsides of all the bathroom doors now but sometimes my other two kids go potty and forget to lock the door back up. I pulled him out of the sink, left his wet clothes on him (because maybe one day he'll get the freakin' picture), and then went back downstairs to sweep the floor (he had dug the dirt out of a plant earlier and it was all over the living room).

Mid sweeping I found him on the table again digging dirt out of the same plant (I had just swept there). I put the plant up in my room and locked the door and came back downstairs to find him up on the counter. He likes to climb onto the counter and throw glasses (and anything else that might shatter and make interesting sounds) onto the floor. His diaper was poopy so I took him upstairs to change him.

He'd destroyed his room at nap time. The changing pad was on the floor buried in stuff. He'd pulled open all his drawers and his toy box, spread his stuff out all over the room, and pulled his closet doors off their sliders again. I dug through the stuff (wrestling with him so he didn't escape me) and found his changing pad. I put it back on the dresser, put him on it (still wrestling), and pulled open the drawer (one handed, the other hand hanging on to him) to quickly get out wipes and a diaper. There was nothing in the drawer and I burst into tears.

Eighteen months is my least favorite age in a child. It's because, by this age, they're physically fairly sophisticated. Yet, mentally, they're still babies. They don't quite have a sense of safety awareness and they need almost constant supervision at all times.

By two and a half, they're usually well on their way out of this stage and verbal communication is in full swing. Even if they don't talk well yet, they can still understand you almost perfectly. Well, Cale is as physically advanced as that of a three year (he can open doors, climb, and really destroy things). Mentally, though, it isn't really even fair to compare him to an eighteen month old because you can communicate with an eighteen month old.

Cale doesn't understand differences in emotion. He can feel the intensity of an emotion, but doesn't understand the difference between angry and really playfully happy. Even really yelling, "NO!" and slapping his hands is consistently met with laughing. And it isn't a defiant laughing. He really, genuinely, believes that I'm playing with him. He looks at me with his sweet smile and bear hugs me. He's very sweet and very snugly but he NEVER stops moving. He also gets frustrated and rips kitchen cupboard doors off their hinges.

Sometimes I say to God, "Thank you for giving me such a sweet baby." It's really an honor that God thinks enough of me to think I can handle kids like this. Other times (like right now), I say, "I've had babies for six and a half years straight. I didn't sign up to have a toddler for the rest of my life."

A Snippet about Shane

Slowly, he turned the bottle of mustard over above his burger and gave it a tap. Tap, tap, tap. It wasn't one of those easy, plastic, just give it a little squeeze and produce a steady stream of yum all over your sandwich. Tap, tap, tap, tap. No. It was the old style in a glass bottle where it sits like concrete at the bottom in an atmosphere where gravity has no effect.

Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. There was no banging the damn thing onto the table as I would do. No anxiously shoving a butter knife into it setting free a golf ball sized glop. Nope. Just, tap tap tap tap. Tap, tap, tap. "Hmm, it's too hard," and he gently set the defiant thing back on to table. Shane is amazing. I mean, really amazing. Nothing seems to create anxiety in this man. A trait that has served us incredibly well as of late.

How can I explain this? Well, Shane and I had a rocky beginning. That's a lovely way of putting it, isn't it? When I met Shane, he was partying naked in front of a bon-fire and I knew he was for me. Unfortunately, we were uncertain about each other and our chemical induced eyes wandered a little. More than our eyes wandered, actually.

I am aware and ashamed of the fact that some of you were there. You saw what happened. My best friend today was Shane's best friend first. When Shane and I first got together, she told him I was bad news for him. This, I'm so sorry to say, put a slight rift in their friendship. One that, to this day, hasn't quite mended properly. She was right though. She loved him and was trying to protect him.

So what happened? What could possibly heal up damage like that? Well, a miracle actually. The details of which wouldn't be appropriate for me to go into in a blog. I'd like to use the word "saved" but that would imply something religious and Shane and I aren't really the religious types. But, something sort of like "saved" did happen to us and when we looked at each other with fresh eyes, we fell madly and forever in love.

And the no anxiety thing? I'm serious about that. Mustard is one thing. I'd flip a gasket over something like that so you can just imagine what our kids' problems are doing to me. Shane has stayed calm and kept a sense of humor through it all. Just a couple of days ago we were filling out the paperwork for Isabel's neuro-psychologist and it was asking us about family history. It asked us if anyone in our immediate family had any of the following and to check all that applied (we checked all of the following):

Neurological conditions - both sides
Problems with aggressiveness - both sides
Problems with attention, activity, and impulse control - both sides
Learning disabilities - both sides
Mental retardation - both sides
Depressive disorder - both sides
Alcohol abuse - both sides
Drug abuse - both sides

We got done with this and Shane smiled, looked at me, and said, "You know? We should've filled this out BEFORE we had kids!" We laughed and laughed and it dawned on me suddenly how much I love my husband. I would follow him to the end of the world and if he wanted to jump off I would plummet with him into uncertainty. I wouldn't change anything or give him up for all the dreams, all the money, and all the normal children in the whole world.

The Beginning

Shane and I started a family with the highest of hopes and expectations. It was gonna be great. Two kids (notice I said two), a house paid off (okay, that was MY idea), and dreamy bliss every day of the week.

We were supposed to be teachers, eventually ending up at the same high school (the one we both graduated from). We'd walk to school together every morning, have the best classrooms (we actually had them picked out), have lunch together in the afternoons, and walk home at day's end to our sweet little house that was built in 1917, complete with hardwood floors, original unpainted woodwork, and white hexagon shaped tile in the bathroom.

We'd ride antique bikes down to the farmer's market in the summer time, buy organic produce, and spend quiet evenings on the front porch sipping tea and waving at the neighbors. Our TWO children would eventually become architects or designers. They would NOT spend summer evenings in tall grass, smoking dope and playing the guitar like their parents once did (whether or not they'd be "normal" didn't occur to us at all). The perfect dream.

Needless to say, we are really really really far away from this now. God, the universe, Yahweh, or whatever you wanna call it, had other plans. We did both become teachers. We both had really good connections within the school we wanted to end up at and it definitely looked like we'd end up there eventually. We had the house. It was almost paid off at one point. We even had the antique bikes. I mean, it was ALL there. So, family planning began.

I did EVERYTHING perfectly. I quit smoking for six months, took pre-natal vitamins and went to the doctor BEFORE getting pregnant, got the doctor's ok to start trying, ate broccoli (blahc). I got pregnant immediately and the baby was due on 3-3-03.

Something went wrong however, and on August 3d of 2002, pregnancy number one ended in a miscarriage. To put it more accurately, my heart was torn out by it's very strings. Shane, the most wonderful man that ever lived, was an unbelievable comfort to me. Physically, I recovered quickly. My mentor (and spiritual guide of sorts) tells me that psychological recovery was much slower. It came out sideways all over the place for a long time.

After a not quite as perfect beginning, Alden came along. I had my boy. Next, Isabel and a slightly bigger 1917 Bungalow came along. I had my girl. We were teaching. We lived four blocks from the school we'd end up at. All was well.

Then all of a sudden (okay, not so suddenly) Shane started growing a new dream (okay, it wasn't such a new dream). One I had not anticipated (okay, I saw it coming for a few years) and one that I shushed for quite a while. He wanted to see the world. Shhh. No, no honey. Quiet little life, remember? He went to China on a Fulbright scholarship and came back with hopes of international teaching positions and living in, well, who knows where! I carefully swept all that under the rug for a few more months and then....no!!

I actually threw the stick at him (good thing the urine cover was on it). I was pregnant with number three. Three? Three? This was NOT in the plan. Money was tight and the slightly bigger bungalow was costing more than we were comfortable with in the first place. At least it destroyed all that silly talk of teaching over seas (they'll only send you to teach over seas if you don't have more than one dependent each). At least, I thought it killed the dream. Nope. It just changed it a little, and now (money tight and baby number three on the way) there was a need for more.

"Sweetie?"
"Yes," I was in bed with swollen ankles, eating pistachios, and getting comfortable with the idea of Alden sharing a room with the new baby when he asked.
"What would you think of moving to Phoenix and letting me go to Thunderbird School of International Management? I could get my MBA and make more money than the two of us together teaching. You wouldn't have to work all day every day. We could have all three kids and be still be comfortable and maybe even end up living over seas one day!

Shit. "Well," I said, acting better than I felt, "look in to it. Nothing's nothing until it's something." He flipped through the G-mat book a couple of times before bed and then went in and aced the test. Then, they gave him a scholarship (that paid for half of his over all tuition). Our house sold three days after we put it on the market. "Hmm." I thought, "I wonder if this is meant to be." I was eight months pregnant when we moved to Phoenix, Arizona in the middle of July. It was 117 degrees out the day we arrived and there were two serial killers on the loose. "Fantastic," I told him, "you've moved us to hell."

Shane is an incredible man. He got his MBA through sleepless nights up with a newborn, a frightened and misplaced wife, and really REALLY hard tests and projects. Not only that. He did it all with passion and love and an unwavering gratitude that I'd never seen in him before. He came back to life. I'd never really realized how stifled he'd been in that perfect little dream of mine.

Isabel started to have problems before we moved to Phoenix. At four months old she was hospitalized for constipation. She hadn't pooped in two weeks. Considering that she was strictly breast fed, the doctors wouldn't blame it on her diet and they were very confused. They ran every test they could think of. One doctor stayed up until 4:00 that morning trying to figure her out. I honestly couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. It was constipation for Pete's sake. Give her an enema and call it a day, right? But he knew something was wrong. Still, they released her without finding anything.

She was always an awkward baby physically. Babies learn how to move with your body. For example, when you pick them up quickly and start to walk, they curl their little arms and legs around your body and let themselves be carried. It's second nature. Isabel didn't have this second nature thing. She would stiffen at the wrong moment and it was just a bit difficult to get her onto your hip. She would always straighten her legs and waver with a disturbed look on her face, like she thought she might be dropped.

By eighteen months old, she still didn't walk. She saw a developmental pediatrician for this who watched her for over an hour. I could tell this doctor was wrestling with something but didn't know what. Finally, she pronounced her normal and sent us on our way. Isabel started to walk just before we left for Phoenix. She was nineteen months old. Two months later, just after Cale was born, Isabel became a different child.

Honestly, I thought she was just jealous of the new baby. And she may have been but that still didn't explain the extent of it. She started to scream and bang her head on the floor. She wouldn't do it on the carpet. No. She'd go over to the tile and bang her head on the floor for every little thing. "Be careful sweetie." SCREAM. Bang bang. "No, no." Bang. It was scary so we learned very quickly to not confront her in any way unless we were prepared to get up and stop her from banging. She'd do it EVERY time I sat down and started nursing Cale. Pretty soon the banging became slamming her head on the floor repeatedly with no confrontation of any kind. I'd have to put the baby down and go stop her. And she'd start it so quickly and slam it so hard so fast that I'm simply amazed she never split her skull open before I could get over to her. It was absolutely terrifying.

I took her to the pediatrician and told him about it. He smiled like it was cute and said, "Yeah. Two year olds do that." "Umm, Alden didn't," not wanting to question his professionalism. "Girls are harder," was the standard response. When I asked friends and family about it, people said things like, "Oh yeah, so and so had a tantrum and knocked herself out once when she was two." Our family didn't seem surprised or worried about it either so I figured it must be a stage. Still, I prayed every day for God to protect her head long enough for me to get over to her. We had a lot of very hard ceramic tile.

I stopped showering before Shane got home because I didn't know if she'd survive it. I heard every possible suggestion. "Put hot sauce on her tongue when she does that." Yes, but that requires getting to a bottle of hot sauce AND getting over to her before she breaks her skull. One lady told me to spray her with water when she did it. You know? Like a cat. I had to try that one for posterity. I started nursing Cale with a spray bottle full of water by my side. Sure enough, she started screaming and banging her head on the floor. So, I squirted her in the face. She stopped and looked at me then started to scream and bang again. I squirted her in the face again. She screamed louder and louder and I squirted and squirted. Pretty soon she was soaked and screaming so loud her whole face turned red and water was dripping out of her hair and off of her big red screaming dripping wet face. It didn't do her any good, but I sure felt better.

It feels so good to write about all this. What a release. But for now, I have to sleep.