No, that's not my real last name, but you get the point.

WG: Hello, this is WG. I called about an appointment for my son D. with Dr. LongWaitList, and you said you needed a referral, and I asked my pediatrician to send one, so can I make the appointment now?

Lady with super-thick Spanish accent (LWSTSA): What is the last name?

WG: Tricky. That’s T as in Tom, R, I, C as in cat, K, Y.

LWSTSA: CKYRTI?

WG: No. T as in Tom, R, I, C as in cat, K, Y.

LWSTSA: Oh! Track!

WG: No. T as in Tom, R, I, C as in cat, K, Y.

LWSTSA: You know, I don’t think we got that referral.

I Wish I Could Just Complain More About My MIL.

D. had a bad day at school today.

He keeps breaking out of the classroom – they’re debating installing a lock on the door. Because of my kid. Because he keeps leaving, and there are seven other kids in the class who deserve some attention some of the time, so the teachers can’t spend the entire day chasing after D.

He threw a chair today. Thank God, he didn’t hit anyone. But he threw. A CHAIR.

He bit his friend A. What’s the protocol here? Do I call A’s mom and say, Hey, how are you? What’s going on? Sorry my kid BIT YOURS. Or do I pretend to know nothing and not notice when she is suddenly turning down my lunch invitations? (A’s mom is a friend, and I really like her.)

I strongly suspect that D. acted out today because he was overtired. I have noticed that if he doesn’t sleep well at night, he is an absolute nightmare the next day. So, when he came home today, we took him outside for a few minutes, then up for a nap. Whereupon he commenced screaming and screaming and SCREAMING. Did I mention the screaming?

Right now it is quiet, but it’s kind of like that eye of the hurricane thing. I’m just waiting for the storm to rip the roof off the house.

The best part is that D’s schedule is going to be thrown for an even bigger loop, as Mr. WG is driving his mother back to the airport this afternoon. Can I tell you how much my evening is going to suck?

I See Your Passive Aggressive and I Raise You Please Shoot Me.

Meredith recently spoke about her mother-in-law’s passive aggressiveness. I, of course, feel the need to regale you with a tale of my own.

MIL likes to clean when people are watching. She’s not the type to quietly take care of something and move on. No, she’s more the type to wait until you’re there, then comment loudly about what she’s doing, and to recap her actions when she’s finished.

Last night, Mr. WG, S., Z., Mr. WG’s three cousins, and I all went out to a basketball game. MIL stayed home wih D. and Baby J. We left the house at shortly after 7 – and Mr. WG had already put the boys in the bath. They go to sleep at 7:30.

When we left, we had finished dinner, and I had cleaned up most of the kitchen. One counter was still dirty, and there were a few dishes in the dairy sink. When we returned, everything was just as we had left it. It was close to midnight, so we went to sleep. Well, Mr. WG and everyone else went to sleep. I got into bed, then immediately got up again to get Baby J. who has IMPECCABLE timing. I nursed him for a while, then put him down. We repeated that pattern for a bit, and when he climbed out of my bed at 2:30 a.m. babbling away about needing to take out everything in my nighttable as part of a science experiment, I stuck him back in his crib and tried to sleep through the whimpering.

MIL awakens every morning at around 5. Or earlier. Not because of jet lag – that’s just how she is. You remember how she organized my closets on her first morning here, right? So, I slept in this morning. Till about 6:45. I took a shower and came out to find that Mr. WG had left for carpool. I could hear the vacuum running, and when I opened the door, I saw D. vacuuming. S. was playing computer games. I could hear Baby J. upstairs and MIL was with him.

I ventured out into the hallway, eyeing D’s trail of destruction. Mr. WG’s camera was on the floor. The shredder in his office had clearly been fed. And I didn’t even notice that his laptop was also on the floor. The kitchen looked just as it had last night.

I don’t even remember what D. did next, but whatever it was was enough to warrant a time-out. So I took him upstairs and sat him on the couch in the playroom. Sure enough, after a moment, MIL and Baby J. emerged from the room where they had been, and all three of them came downstairs.

By that point, I was cleaning up the kitchen. MIL sees this and tells me that Baby J. didn’t eat.

“Because he didn’t want to, or because no one fed him?”

“We tried to feed him a waffle. He didn’t want it. Yesterday he ate pita. Maybe I’ll give him pita?”

“No. Let’s go with some oatmeal.”

She sets him up in the high chair, all the while telling him that it’s OK, that Grandma will feed him. Yes, he’s SO HUNGRY. Yes, Grandma is here to rescue him.

I mention D’s actions. It is instantly obvious that she knew that D. was up to no good and went upstairs for that reason. She mentions that Mr. WG should get a lock on his office door. That way, nothing bad would happen to his stuff.

Of course, the rest of the house would still be at risk, but her son would be protected, and really, that’s all that matters.

I return to the kitchen and resume cleaning. She sets Baby J. up in the high chair and then asks me if I want her to wash the dirty dishes.

“No, I figured that we’d just leave them that way,” I said. OK, OK, I didn’t actually say that. But I wanted to. So I washed them and listened to her tell me how Mr. WG should really be saying his morning blessings and washing before eating.

“He has never done that,” I said.

“But he should.”

I said, “Well, I guess he was poorly reared.” OK, I didn’t say that either. I said, “He has never done that. In fact, I have seen you serve him breakfast many times before he leaves for shul.”

She shrugged. And then she rewashed all the dishes I had just finished cleaning.

Sometimes words have no power over me.

This morning, David came to do intake as a precursor to D’s private speech therapy. David is a southern boy, as evidenced by his “ma’am” and “thank y’alls.” At first, I thought that David was going to be D’s new speech therapist, and I was pretty psyched about having a male therapist for my son. But then David said that he was an OT, and that the therapist was named Julie or Priscilla or some other very girly name. OK. So I go through D’s history with David, knowing full well that I’ll just have to go through all of it again with the therapist in a few days. Fine. So he scrolls through his list of diagnoses and notes that he doesn’t have an entry for Sotos. Or overgrowth syndromes. But he does have “other congenital anomaly.”

I chuckle. Mr. WG says, “What’s that?”

I said, “birth defect.”

David said, “Yeah, it’s just a nicer way of saying it.”

I said, “Yeah. We’re past all the nice way of saying things.”

And David said, “Well, that’s good. That’s when we can actually get work done.”

Therapy should start within a week. For D. I asked, but they don't offer concurrent services for moms.

A Heartbreaking Tale of Staggering Stupidity

INT. Early morning in the WG household. Various CHILDREN are whining. The television is turned up just a bit too loud, filling the house with the lilting tones nasally whining of Dora the Explorer. MIL sits on the sofa. WG enters from stage left.

MIL

I’ve been chasing D. around the house trying to get him dressed. He’s wearing a diaper and pants. I can’t get his shirt on him.

WG

Okay.

MIL

He’s going to be really cold without a shirt. I keep chasing him around. He doesn’t hold still.

WG

Right, got it.

(Baby J. sees WG and races to grab her leg. WG picks him up and sits down in the rocking chair.)

WG

Good morning, baby.

MIL

Maybe he’s hungry. Maybe he wants you to nurse him.

WG

Maybe.

MIL

Aren't you going to nurse him? Maybe he's hungry.

WG

He's fine.

MIL

But maybe he's hungry. Maybe he wants to nurse.

WG

He is my FOURTH BABY. I have, over the course of rearing FOUR CHILDREN figured out a thing or two. Baby J. is NOT hungry. He is KVETCHY. There is a difference.

MIL

You know, he’s constipated something fierce. Isn’t there anything we can do for him?

WG

Give him a little prune juice.

MIL

We gave him that. You know what we do for constipated babies?

WG

No.

MIL

We take a little bit of oil. And we put it on a cotton swab. And we—

WG

Not necessary.

MIL

If he could just go, he’d be happy.

WG

Yeah. So, how’s that whole toilet training thing going with D?

MIL

No, we don’t toilet train in the winter.

WG

Oh, really?

MIL

Yes. We wait until after Pesach, and then we just take all the diapers away. You just have to take the diapers away and then ask him if he needs to go potty.

WG

Right, we discussed this. You said you were going to do it.

MIL

But maybe he’ll be cold. I mean, I don’t care, I’m willing to put in the work.

WG

But you haven’t.

MIL

D! Want to go potty?

Yes, I Do Know That I Sound Ungrateful. So What?

My mother-in-law arrived Sunday. “Arrived,” I guess, is not the right word. Several months ago, Mr. WG announced that he had a great plan.

“I’m going to pay for a ticket for my mother to come visit,” he said.

I was, somehow, somewhat… underwhelmed by the greatness of this plan. I would have preferred a plan where my MIL paid for her own ticket. I would have been over the moon for the plan where there was simply no visit at all and we could just be our happy family of six. But I would have settled for my MIL paying for her own ticket.

“You don’t understand,” Mr. WG explained helpfully. “It’s MUCH cheaper for me to buy her one ticket than for all six of us to fly to Israel.”

Yes, yes, that is true. But since we DID buy six tickets not even a year ago, I didn’t quite get the urgency. Whatever. Mr. WG took the kids and went to pick her up from the airport on Sunday morning. He made much of the fact that he was taking all of the kids, thereby leaving me entirely free.

Entirely free, with no car, and with a house that looked as though a tribe of monkeys had made it their nest for several years. I leapt into action, laundering, sweeping, scrubbing, and mopping. I didn’t quite finish before they got back, but I got pretty close. When I heard the garage door, I raced for the shower. By the time I got dressed and rejoined everyone in the kitchen, my MIL was unpacking her suitcase. In the kitchen.

You see, whenever my MIL comes to visit, she first spends a month or three cooking at home. She freezes everything she cooks, packs it into the suitcase, and brings it to America. Because we have no food her.

As she unpacked approximately 27 containers of various combinations of frozen meat and fried dough, a spool of thread and a needle fell out. “Is this yours?” my husband asked.

“Yes, the last time I was here, you needed a button sewn back on your shirt. So I thought that you might have some more mending.”

Good thing she brought that. They stopped selling such items, what, ten years ago in America?

Next, she began explaining to me about the proper care and feeding of my children.

“You know,” she said, “you need to toilet train D. You need to just take off his diaper and put underwear on him. Then, you just ask him every few minutes, ‘Do you need to go potty?’ And you put him on the toilet every twenty minutes or so.”

Well! Thanks for that helpful course. You know what? Knock yourself out. Go ahead. No problem.

Monday morning, the jet lag had her up at 4:30 a.m. So when I came out for breakfast, she said, “I figured, since I was awake anyway, I should get to work. So I organized all the kids’ closets upstairs. Also the playroom.”

“Great. Thank you. That was very nice of you.”

“Come on, I’ll show you what I did and explain how I did it.”

“I don’t climb stairs before I drink coffee,” I muttered. Understand, I don’t really like to speak before I drink coffee.

“But I want to explain it to you. See, I folded all the clothing and put it neatly on the shelves.”

“Fantastic.”

“And that way, it will all be neat.”

“Yep.”

“And I picked up all the toys and put them in boxes.”

“Excellent.”

“So now the playroom is clean.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And now, you just have to tell the children to make sure to keep it that way.”

“Right.”

Today, Mr. WG decided to go to a conference in the city. For the whole day. Which means that MIL will spend the day sitting on her bed upstairs. Just sitting, staring into space. That way, when Mr. WG comes home, she can tell him, “No, I didn’t do anything. She didn’t give me lunch.”

By far and away, though, my favorite part of her visits is that ALL OF MY HUSBAND’S SIBLINGS CALL HER EVERY SINGLE DAY. When she is here, I am like a secretary.

Deep, cleansing breaths. It’s all good. It’s all good.

I Am Tired.

I am so tired. I read about the progress famous Internet babies have made, and instead of feeling joy, I am bitter. The sentences! Answering questions! I am tired of waiting for my kid to do that. I want so desperately to say, “Hey, D., how are you?” and to have him say, “I’m OK.”

When D. wants to tell me something, he’ll say, “Are you tired? Are you hungry? You want apple juice?” I know he’s repeating what he hears – I get it. I know a lot of kids with these kinds of delays have that pronoun reversal thing. But I am tired.

I am tired of thinking so much. I am tired of praying that D. will be toilet trained by August for the kids’ program on our cruise and for school. I am tired of listening to children a full year younger – a full year! – rattle off speeches that rival the Gettysburg Address and glancing at D. only to see him staring off into space with that blank look on his face.

I am so tired of constantly measuring D. up to his sisters and his brother. I am so tired of not simply loving him and accepting our lives with grace. I am so tired of sitting around feeling sorry for myself and whining and worrying and watching.

I am so tired of calling specialists and waiting and waiting and WAITING for someone to CALL ME THE HELL BACK and GIVE ME A FREAKING APPOINTMENT and TELL ME WHAT TO DO.

FIX MY KID.

You take the good, you take the bad

* I take the kids to a friend’s house for an evening of women, children, and sushi. D. plays beautifully – he throws one toy down the stairs, but otherwise is terrific. He eats his mac n’cheese and drinks his water and has a good time. I am happy and hopeful.

* At a birthday party, all the children play happily. D. lies on the floor, clutching a truck in a death grip. I bite my tongue to keep from begging him to play.

* D. is tired. He lies down in my bed and listens to me read If You Give A Pig A Party. I finish the story. He takes the book, and falls asleep within minutes. I kiss him and feel my heart swell.

* Later, D. and Baby J. are looking at books. If I give Baby J. a book, he will turn it right-side-up to look at it, if necessary. D. will not. I pretend not to notice.

* I arrive at D’s school to pick him up. One of his classmates asks me, “What’s your name?” I tell her, “My name is WG. What’s your name?” She responds with, “My name is M.” She asks D., “What’s your name?” D. continues eating his sandwich. All the children begin announcing their names. D. just eats. I keep smiling, but I am screaming in my head.

* Mr. WG asks D. “What color is this?” D. responds properly, “Red!” I am thrilled.

* I ask D., What color is this?” and point to something red. He stares blankly. “Try yellow,” says Mr. WG. I do. “Red!” shouts D. I sigh.

Briefly

Um, Boston? Are you kidding me? Seriously, dudes, you’ve been watching a little too much 24 or something. I mean, OK, so you thought that the ads were bombs. I can see how anyone might make that mistake. Actually, I can’t, but let’s pretend that I can, for the sake of argument. But to arrest the two guys who put them up? Instead of, you know, the high-powered corporate types who conceived of the project? The lawyers who approved it? COME ON. What the heck did these two guys do except try to earn a living. (And, apparently, not get a haircut.)

Also, a HUGE shout-out to ADHD Mom for the LOVELY and THOUGHTFUL gift – Shabbos Sudoku! No, that’s not what they call it, but that’s my name for it. Also, ADHD Mom, just so you know, I am a CRAPPY CRAPPY thank you note writer. So, um, consider this your thank you note. Thank you!!!

Coming soon: An Update on D.