It’s somebody’s birthday!
So this mama’s spending the day playing with her girl.
We’ve come a long way, baby!
Categories
Category: Kids
I want to shout from the rooftops that we may have found a CURE for Blythe’s food allergies.
But I’m afraid to, because what if it doesn’t work? What if it’s just some quack peddling pipe dreams?
But what if it isn’t a hoax? What if it works and my girl can live a normal life? What if we can take her somewhere and not worry that she’ll be exposed to something that will make her miserable for days, or worse, force us to use her EpiPen?
What if, as the doctor promises, she’ll be able to start eating normal foods as soon as 24 hours after each treatment?
I close my eyes and picture what it will be like to watch her face the first time she tries
ice cream!
cake!
french fries!
bread!
scrambled eggs!
chips!
candy!
Or even the simple things, like
noodles with SAUCE!
REAL pizza instead of the stuff I make at home with rice crust and faux cheese
REAL pancakes, not the gluten free stuff that is flat and gooey
Peanut butter!
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich!
GRILLED CHEESE!
corn on the cob!
or the first time we take her to a birthday party and let her
eat what the other kids are eating!
keep what she finds out of the pinata!
choose something off the buffet!
Oh my goodness, just thinking about it is overwhelming.
Yesterday, I attended a class with a local doctor who recently began using a machine called the BAX3000, made by BioAllergenix. It’s a newfangled homeopathic treatment that uses frequencies delivered by laser to retrain the nervous system to stop attacking harmless substances.
It sounds hokey. It sounds too good to be true. It sounds…. worth a try.
As one of the doctor’s first patients, I promised to give our testimonial and spread the good word if this treatment works. In exchange, the doctor is giving us a two-for-one special so that I’ll be treated right along with Blythe. I’m relieved to be receiving treatment as well, so that I will know first hand how it feels, whether my allergy symptoms are abated, and more importantly, whether it’s safe to expose Blythe.
We’ll be undergoing 30 treatments over the next 6 weeks, and I will document them here.
I’m afraid to get my hopes up…. but honestly? Hope feels really freaking good.
Categories
Even
I read it often, and it has become one of my favorites.
The Lanyard – Billy Collins
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough
to make us even.
———–
Friday, when I picked Alison up from school, she proudly handed me a Mother’s Day card she’d made in class, along with a plastic cup filled with dirt. Protruding from the dirt was an inch-tall green stalk, a small plant she’d grown herself from a seed.
It doesn’t matter that her sister yanked the tiny plant from the dirt less than 24 hours later.
It doesn’t matter that Alison still sassed me and stayed up later than I intended.
Because while I know her efforts don’t make us even, I’m going to pretend, just for a little while,
that we are.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Last night I was on Google Chat with Meghan, and we started talking about Alison, my 5 year old.
me: She’s what they call “gifted” but I’m trying to come up with a better name for it than that
I’ve got a post in my drafts about it, but haven’t had the balls to publish
Meghan: If I can publish my post, you can publish yours
HEH
me: GAH, don’t go THERE
So, just to prove to Meghan that I’m not a huge coward, here it is.
——–
Alison is different.
No, it’s OK. I know she is. It doesn’t offend me when people notice. 
For the first few years of Alison’s life, I had nothing to compare her to. Not really, not in a way that was concrete. It was when she started preschool at age three that her difference became glaringly obvious.
“She’s so… different from the other kids,” the moms would say. They’d look from her to their own child (or children) and ask at what age she started doing this or that.
I became the queen of vague answers. They probably thought I had some sort of memory loss.
But the truth is, she’s not ‘normal’. She’s ‘gifted’. In her therapist’s words, “she reeks of giftedness”.
I cringe at the use of that word. Gifted. It is my belief that we all have gifts and talents to offer the world. So the fact that her brain works differently than the ‘normal’ brain, well… it’s different. But is it gifted? I struggle to find a more appropriate term.
If the ‘normal’ brain is a forest, a ‘gifted’ child’s brain is a jungle. You can’t turn a forest into a jungle, or a jungle into a forest. They are two completely different environments made up of the same key elements. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, they’re just different. People don’t go to Yellowstone National Forest and then complain that it isn’t a jungle.
So why do many other parents feel threatened by my daughter? She’s just a child, and she’s not trying to compete – she’s just being herself.
-Yes, my 5 year old reads at a 2nd grade level. She is capable of solving fairly complex mathematical equations. But she won’t wipe her own butt.
-She can grasp abstract concepts such as atoms and molecules, but she is too timid to go to a birthday party if there is even one person she doesn’t know in attendance.
-If we are having a problem with the wind blowing the door open, she will invent a door-closing mechanism in less than 2 minutes.
But she refuses to dress herself.
In other words, she is different, but she can still be a pain in the ass. There are areas where other children are superior to her.
How do I relate all of that to another parent when she (or he, let’s be fair) feels that Alison’s ‘gift’ makes their child inferior? Here’s one of the myths about giftedness that I want to print out and keep in my pocket:
Giftedness is something to be jealous about:
This is perhaps the most damaging myth. More often than not, gifted children can feel isolated and misunderstood. They have more adult tastes in music, clothing, reading material and food. These differences to other children can cause them to be shunned and even abused verbally or physically by other children.
Alison feels so alone. She already knows she’s different. The kids don’t yet hold it against her, but she knows. She knows.
I’ve only told a handful of people about Alison’s ‘giftedness’ because I learned very early on that it is one of the surest ways to ruin a budding friendship – for myself as well as for my daughter. It’s the main reason I’ve never written about it here, on my blog. Please know, I’m not bragging. Far from it. I know ‘gifted’ sounds like a blessing, but in so many ways, it’s also a curse. And also? Try parenting a child with a higher IQ than your own.
I had originally decided that I wouldn’t even tell Alison until she was in High School, and maybe not even then. College, perhaps? On her 30th birthday? She already feels different – would it help or hurt her to confirm that she actually is? It’s something I struggle with all the time.
Especially because, God help us, people are starting to make comments about Blythe being ‘different’, too. At least they can be different together.
Categories
The HEAT
I like heat. Hot is good. But even I have trouble transitioning from 50 degree weather to 100 degree weather with nothing in between.
My kids, however? They don’t mind it being 100 degrees in April, because they will jump on any excuse to get in the pool.
Me: Blythe, you want to go swimming?
Her: YEAH!!
Me: Oooh, it’s a little cold.
Alison: No it’s NOT! (cue shiver)
Me: Somehow, I don’t believe you.
Alison: OK, yes it is! A little. You should get in, anyway.
Me: No, thanks. I’ll just watch from here.
Blythe: I splash you?
Me: You’d better NOT!
Blythe: Is not cold. Feel, Mama.
Me: I did feel, and yes, it is col…. Aaaaak! Alison, you little….
Alison: What? I was practicing my kicks.
Blythe: Mama aaaaaalllll wet.
Me: You think it’s funny now, just wait till she gets YOU!
Me: That didn’t take long!
The nice thing about them swimming in the afternoons is I can wash them in the pool shower and skip the whole bath time meltdowns.
What, you don’t let your children bathe outdoors?