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.