Day Camp Diaries, Week One

We decided to put all four kids in day camp this summer - it's run by the Day School that at least three of my kids are attending this coming year. We figured - and by we, I mean, I figured - that it would ease the three younger ones into the new school routine make my life WAY easier.

The girls go for a full day, till 4 p.m. The boys get picked up at 2 p.m., except that D. leaves early twice a week for therapy.

Sunday was registration. We arrived and the director, who is also the director of the early childhood program at the Day School, told me, "I have to tell you, I spoke to D's counselor, and she was very worried."

"What?"

"Well, unfortunately, when people at Other Schools are family members and they say things about problem kids and difficulties and special needs, well, you know."

To my credit, I did not break down crying and go home, although I REALLY wanted to for a minute there. I took a few seconds to process what she was saying - which was basically that the teacher’s daughter, who taught at the school D. previously attended, filled her mother’s head with crap about my kid. Great.

I went to talk to the teacher and I could see the sheer terror in her eyes. I kid you not. I stumbled through the conversation and went back to find the director. “Just so you know, she’s still terrified,” I said.

My super-amazing friend M. listened sympathetically as always and promised to put in a good word for D.

I got in the car and told Mr. WG everything.

M., because she is a super-amazing friend, called later to tell me that she had walked in on the director and the teacher having a discussion, and she put in her two cents, and they decided to assign D. a junior-high counselor as a shadow of sorts, and everything would be fine. Not to worry.

Monday morning, I drove the kids to camp. I spent a few minutes with D. in his classroom, then told the teacher I would be in the office. I left, to the sweet sound of my child screaming as though his beating heart was being ripped from his body while his eyes were gouged with ice picks. I collapsed on a sofa in the office and was disappointed to discover that the school had not planned well – there were no cocktails available.

Time passed. Random people popped in to tell me they had checked on Baby J. and “He’s doing great!”

“That’s nice,” I said. “I’m not worried about Baby J.” The director came into the office and inquired if I wanted to return to D’s class to try to calm him down. I declined, but suggested they get Z. from her class. She went, and that helped a lot, and immediately. She stayed there for a bit, and then she left, whereupon D. cried again, but not as much as before. And a bit later, he settled in, and I left. And he did OK.

Tuesday, my friend ADHD Mom drove the kids to camp. Z. walked D. to his classroom, and he had a hard time separating from her. ADHD Mom told me that the next morning, she would walk D. into class.

Mr. WG picked D. up for speech and DBB on Tuesday, and D. didn’t even want to leave. That’s a good sign, right?

Wednesday morning, D. walked into class just fine, no crying. He asked for me once about 40 minutes before carpool, but he was fine all day. One of the junior counselors told me that they were actually going to transfer D’s special shadow to a different class.

“Is that because D. is doing so well?” I asked.

“No, it’s because [the counselor] doesn’t do anything.”

OK, then.

Thursday was also good, and I picked D. up early for speech.

And today he was great all day, and I was even a bit late to pick him up and he was still in a great mood.

So. Week One has passed, and we all survived.

It's Always Good to Take Mental Retardation Off the Table

Thanks to Mr. WG, we submitted our paperwork to the developmental clinic with the year-long waiting list a while back. You'll be pleased to know that they still haven't called us. But that's OK, because my pediatrician told us that the director of the clinic, Dr. Amazing, also sees patients at The High Risk Clinic, where the waiting list is much shorter.

We called for an appointment a few months ago, and it was scheduled for this week. Last week, Mr. WG took the boys in for checkups with the ped, and he asked if we should keep the appointment, what with all the other developmental assessments we have been doing.

"You should see Dr. Amazing," the ped said. "She's worth seeing."

Now, it turns out that The High Risk Clinic is housed in a world-famous hospital that does some exceptionally cutting-edge work, but my pediatrician had told me that I would want to shower when I left the place. It was funny - the outside of the building, and the location, are fine. Even the open hallways are lovely. But when you step into The High Risk Clinic, you would swear you took a wrong turn and drove to some third world country.

I handed the receptionist my appointment slip, my insurance card, and my flex benefits debit card. She looked at me quizzically. "For my co-pay," I explained.

Her face brightened. "Oh! You're paying.

I hadn't realized it was optional.

Anyway, we waited a bit, and then we were ushered back into a room. A tech - there is just no way she was a nurse - came in to take D's vitals. Now, at The High Risk Clinic, you would think that some of the patients might have some special needs, right? Well, apparently this tech was brand new, because she just didn't get why D. resisted having his blood pressure checked, why he didn't want to open his mouth for the thermometer, etc. But we got through that part, and then Dr. NewAtThis came in to do a history and initial assessment.

Dr. NewAtThis mentioned that she had met D. once before, at the endocrinology clinic at Children's Hospital. So I new that she was REALLY new at this, but no problem. I am actually quite good at administering assessments, so I picked up the slack a bit.

When she dumped out the bag of stuff - toys and pictures and things - D. found the shape sorter and immediately stuck the square, circle, and triangle in the appropriate holes, naming each as he did so. But since the book lists the questions in a different order, Dr. NewAtThis ignored that and started with something else. A few minutes later, she returned to the shape sorter, but he was done with that. We struggled through the rest of the assessment, I handed her D's written history, we talked.

When D. reached his limits and refused to cooperate further, she said that she would be back shortly with Dr. Amazing.

Time passed. Slowly. D. began to let me know he wanted to leave. "I wanna go home. I wanna go see Daddy. I wanna go play Lynn. I wanna go see Nicole."

"Soon, soon," I told him.

After forty (FORTY!) minutes, twenty of which D. spent screaming and kicking me, I opened the door to the exam room and stood there, holding D. One of the nurses asked from her chair, "Do you need something, Mom?"

"I need to know how much longer it'll be. Because if it's more than about five minutes, I need to take my son home."

That nurse rolled her eyes, but another one said, "I feel you. I feel you. I do. You been real patient."

I actually had to ask her to repeat herself, because I wasn't quite prepared to hear "I feel you" from a medical professional. (OK, I'm a SNOB! I GET IT!)

Anyway, at some point, someone actually offered to try to speed Dr. Amazing along. I returned to the little room and tried to calm D. I was enjoying moderate success by allowing him to play with the otoscope and preparing my defenses (Well if you don’t want children to play with them, don’t leave them waiting in here for over an hour!) when the door opened and Dr. Amazing walked in.

D. held out the otoscope to her, and I very quickly figured out why they call her Dr. Amazing. “Would you like to check my ears? OK, go ahead. Very good. Can you check my eyes now? Good job! Can you check my mouth? Wow, you’re very good at this. Am I all better? What’s your name?”

At that point I softly told her that he wouldn’t answer that question. She nodded and continued with her patter, following D’s lead as he went to different parts of the room and touched and played with different things.

I have really never seen someone do that in an assessment – the way she immediately got on his level was amazing.

She took her time with the assessment, trying different things, letting me ask him questions when necessary. And then she told me that in his worst case, at the height of his tantrum, he was still using four and five word sentences, so that was good. She said that at his worst, he was still performing at above a 2-year-old level. At his best, he was at about a 33-month-old level with scattered skills to age level.

“If he’s performing at better than 70% of where he should be, that’s great, because it immediately takes him off the mental retardation scale,” she said, and I have to tell you that most of what happened after that is kind of a blur.

She wants to see him again in a year. She said that we are doing everything we can do, everything she would do if he were her child. And she’ll transfer us to the fancy clinic so that she can have access to all his other records via their super-cool computer system.

And that’s the story. Tune in next episode for the exiting Drama of Day Camp!

Epistle: To Z. on the occasion of her eighth birthday

Sweet girl,

Nearly nine years ago, your father and I decided it was time for us to have children. Several minutes later, I was pregnant with you, although I couldn't confirm your existence for another few weeks.

From the very beginning, you were perfect. I read every pregnancy Web site that existed (at the time, there were only three or four), ordered books from Amazon (and paid for super-expensive shipping to Israel), and took my multivitamin daily. When the book said I should feel something, by golly I felt it on the precise day suggested. Every test was perfect. Every part of the journey was exactly as it should be.

When I found out you were a girl, I was over the moon. As much as we say we don't care, we care, and I really wanted a girl first.

On Thursday night, June 24, 1999, I was already 2 days past my due date, so I invited two girlfriends over to help me pass the time. We stuffed ourselves on cheesecake and watched trashy shows on television, and every time I thought my stomach was hard, they'd poke me and say, "No, no, that's nothing. Wait till you find our what real contractions are." At 11:00 p.m., they left, and I sat on the floor and played with my brand-spanking new Powerbook computer.

Daddy was watching a movie on television, and he planned to go grocery shopping at around midnight, when the stores are surprisingly quiet. So at 11:50, he stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes. I said, "Hey, aren't you going grocery shopping?" He said, "Later." I kept using the computer, when suddenly, about five minutes later, I had a really sharp pain that lasted about a minute, and then -- pop! and a small gush of water.

I jumped up and said, "It's time to go the hospital." Well, darned if that didn't wake him right up. We took our time leaving the house -- I didn't want to run out in a rush and forget something. The pain was already pretty strong, but I could handle it mostly by just saying, "Ow. Ow. Ow."

We headed out to the car, and the pain was much stronger. In the car on the way, I was trying not to show that it hurt, because Daddy was already going 70 mph. When we got to the hospital, it was about 12:30 or so, and the receptionist told Daddy to take me directly to the labor and delivery area and to come back to fill out forms. The people in the labor and delivery area put me right in a room and brought the forms to me. When they checked me a few minutes later, I was already 5 centimeters dilated, and all I could say to everyone who came into my room was, "I want an epidural!"

The midwife -- and I use the term very loosely, because in Israel it means something totally different from what we think of as midwives in America -- who taught our childbirth class had spent weeks telling us that "Nothing hurts as much as labor, and that is why God invented epidurals."

The midwife who came in to check me at the hospital -- not the one who had taught me, suggested that I take an enema. At that point I was way too tired to argue with people, and she said it would help ease the pain of the contractions, so I agreed. They put us in a nice birthing room with a private bathroom, and Daddy started setting up my carefully-selected music and the portable stereo he drove two hours to borrow from his brother. Well, once I came back from the bathroom, about 1:15 or so, they checked me again and said I was about 5.5 centimeters. I told Daddy to just keep bothering them and make sure I got my epidural.

The nurses assured me they had called the anesthesiologist, and he was on his way. Several times Daddy asked me what music I wanted to hear. I was way beyond caring. I just kept saying, "Please make it stop. Please make it stop." He went out to check on the epidural and was told that it was on the way. The anesthesiologist walked in then, and I said to Daddy, "I want to push." He started trying to relax me, and I grabbed him gently and lovingly by the neck and said, "Go tell them I want to push!" So the nurses came back in and checked me, and lo and behold, I was fully dilated.

The anesthesiologist said he wouldn't give me an epidural if I was fully dilated. I started to cry, I think, and I told them I was scared and I couldn't do it. They switched the midwife who had been treating me with an American-born English speaker. She was unimpressed by my claims that there was no way I could do this without an epidural. "No woman who comes in here thinks she can do it," said the midwife. "And everyone gets through it just fine. Now don't push, because I have to open up the birthing kit." She set up her materials quickly and removed a triangular section from the lower part of the bed. I was actually glad to be lying down -- going from 0 to 10 centimeters in under an hour and a half is fairly draining. After what seemed like hours, but was really only about a minute, she said I could push. At this point, my overwhelming thought was that I was going to die because there was no way I could do this. Again, the midwife was entirely unimpressed by my sentiments.

She checked my amniotic fluid and said that it had meconium in it, meaning that they would have to suction you before they could let you breathe. Fortunately, my childbirth class had prepared me for that possibility, so I wasn't as terrified as I might have been if I had never heard about that potential minor complication. The midwife called in a pediatrician -- not all births in Israel are attended by doctors, but meconium in the amniotic fluid means they have to have a pediatrician on hand to check the baby immediately after birth.

So I pushed, all the while crying that I'm going to die and I can't do this and please make it stop. And then Daddy said he could see your head and that I was doing great, and the midwife said, "Do not push. Do not push." She and the pediatrician suctioned out your nose and mouth and then they let me push, and about 1 minute later, they put you, this scrawny little one, on my tummy. I think pushed a total of three times, over about 5 minutes.

They cut your cord and took you away almost instantly, to make sure you hadn't inahaled anything bad, but once they saw she was okay, they let Daddy make the second cut and brought you back to me. You really were a scrawny one, and we just played with your fingers and toes until they took you back to weigh you and do all the things they do to babies in the hopsital when Mommy isn't watching. You were born at 2:10 am, June 25, 1999, and you weighed 2.7 kilos (5.5 lbs).

Now here we are, eight years later, and it still amazes me that Daddy and I made a real person who walks and talks and has a sense of humor. You are so smart and beautiful, and when you are not being difficult, you are a lot of fun. You are an amazing sister, and we love you so much.

You Were Expecting Actual Excitement?

On Wednesday, I took D. for his re-assessment with the neuropsychologist. This time around, he started off really well. He identified pictures when requested to. He did a lot of the things he was asked to do. He behaved really well right up until about the last 15 minutes, which was really all we could ask of him. Well eventually get results.

The things I saw that D. could not (or would not) do:

Identify pictures of verbs. That is, when shown a picture of a baby sleeping, a baby eating, and a baby playing, and asked, “Where is the baby sleeping?” He doesn’t respond. Or he points randomly on the page and says, “Baby.”

Stack small blocks. He prefers to line them up in a straight line.

When shown a shoe, a spoon, and a ball and asked, “What do we use for eating?” He doesn’t respond.

Follow two part unrelated instructions: Close the book and give me the ball. He closed the book – twice, as the doc repeated herself a few minutes later, but never made any move towards the ball.

What does any of that mean? I don’t know yet, but I hope to find out.

On Thursday, I took D. to his second session of DBB. I thought he did quite well, although I was a little bit too preoccupied with learning the hello and goodbye songs to take careful notes. These songs are weird and the tunes are totally unfamiliar, although none of the other parents seemed fazed.

On Sunday, we had Z’s luau birthday party, which was like a luau much in the way that attending the symphony is like being murdered on the subway, which is to say, not so much. But there were tropical drinks with umbrellas and that was good.

Today, I took all four kids to one of those indoor playspaces. They had fun – D. LOVED climbing up to the top of the giant slide and sliding down. I took Baby J. down on my lap once, and he was terrified. I went down with D. a few times and we had a blast. And Z. whined about how it was boring and her knee hurt and she was hungry, and S. was happy all the day. So, the usual.

A long, long summer stretches out before us.

One block at a time

So, today was D's first session in the developmental/behavioral class. Mr WG took him. Mr. WG is going to take him every Tuesday. This is awesome for several reasons:

1. Mr. WG and D. will be out of the house while Baby J. naps, which means that WG can sit around watching Tivo work.

2. It is useful for all caregivers to participate in this class, because we'll learn strategies we can use at home.

3. Did I mention the free time component?

Seriously, so much of my life lately has been driving D. to therapy and being "on" for the session and then driving back home and fighting to stay awake -- it has exhausted me. And it will be lovely to share the burden.

Anyway, I wasn't at the class today, so I can't give you the play-by-play. I can tell you that there are 3 boys in the class, including D. The other two have no speech issues, according to Mr. WG. And when I asked, "Did D. do what he was supposed to, more or less?" his answer was, "Less. Definitely less." So.

A fuller report after I attend class on Thursday.

Tomorrow, I'm taking D. for a second attempt at a neuropsych eval. I'm not sure that I had the strength to write up the failed first attempt. It went something like this:

Dr. High Expectations: OK, D., please take these blocks and build a tower like this.
D: (leaves chair, heads for computer.)
Dr. HE: OK, D., please draw this pattern after me.
D: I want to go potty.
WG: I wish that were true. Sit down.
D: You wanna go see Aba?
WG: No. Sit down.
Dr. HE: OK, D., please calculate the square root of Pi to the seventh power.
D.: 54.9571945
Dr. HE: He didn't show his work, so I'm not giving him full credit.

So. Not really a ringing success. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Do You Hear the People Sing?

When I listen to music, I really listen. Like, I try not to listen to music around other people, because I would rather listen to the music than to the people who are talking to me, even if those people are totally cool and awesome, and even if I have heard the music many, many times.

I like to share music. Not in the file-sharing sense, but in the sense of, I like to play music for people and let them experience it the same way I do.

When I listen to music, I usually listen to a specific album, artist, or song heavily for several weeks. I get to know each note of the music, and I usually wind up thinking that I know a lot more about the singer than I likely do.

For example, lately I’ve been on a total Haverim Shel Natasha kick. For those of you who didn’t live in Israel in the 90s, I am basically pretending to be in my early 20s and full of angst. So, anyway, at the start of one song, Arkadi says, “Kesheani mitparaeh, zeh lo tov.” What, you haven’t all become fluent in Hebrew? Oh, FINE. I’ll translate. He says, “When I get wild, it’s not good.” And his VOICE, when he says it – man, I’d totally be gone with him in a flash. And I KNOW that he recorded the album a zillion years ago and he probably no longer feels all that emotion that goes along with trying to perform in a language you don’t speak as a mother tongue and being an artist and needing to be artistic, but OH. MY. GOSH. Please just give me ten minutes with this guy the year before I met my husband or something.

So, fine, when this happens to me when I listen to music in Hebrew, or Bruce Springsteen, or showtunes, it makes sense to me. I get it. I feel the music. It enters me. I’m OK with that.

Lately, Baby J. has been on a real Wiggles kick. By this, I mean that GOD HELP YOU IF YOU PLAY ANY MUSIC OTHER THAN THE WIGGLES IN THE PRESENCE OF THE CHILD BECAUSE IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. So we’ve been listening to a lot of Big Red Car and Elbow to Elbow, and I’m getting a little worried. I’m starting to find deeper meaning in songs like Rockabye Your Bear and Dorothy the Dinosaur. I’m starting to think I know things about the Wiggles. Particularly Anthony and Greg.

This worries me.

A lot.