Fabulous Miss S.

Savory and Sweet and Boiled Meat

I don't get out alone often and when I do it's usually to the grocery store or something slightly less glamorous like a quick run to the gas station to put air in the tire. I physically lurched at the computer to reply YES to an Evite for a night out at THE MELTING POT organized by the hilarious and uber-charming Jessica McFadden, also known as A Parent in Silver Spring.

This was my first night out in months. Many. Many. MONTHS.  I had some delicious Spanish white wine and some excellent conversations with some of the most awesome and supportive writers and friends I know.  And since I'm writing an entire paragraph of name dropping because I'm super classy like that: I sat next to Amalah.  Huzzah! And she actually talked to me!  Double Huzzah! Except that we both over-shared, so you know, par-tay faux pas and whatevs.  I remembered why I love this community and why I continue to write.

I know I definitely left some great people off this list and I totally apologize.  I am writing this, like, DOH! two weeks after the event happened because, that's just how I roll around here these days.  OMG. If I did accidentally forget to link to you, leave a comment and I will add you and I will also write an entire post about how great you are. Really. Inspiration doesn't come cheap these days! 

The Melting Pot is unveiling a new menu of delectable fondue choices aimed at us ladies looking to escape the diapers and the whining for a few hours one evening and have a little girl talk.  Perfect for a mother-daughter dinner, a book club gathering or any Girl's Night Out dinner, this menu is banging!  It's hard to find something wrong with cheese and chocolate on a stick, you know?  You can't turn down a chance to eat this dipped into this.

I was one mile from home, at a stop light and I got a text message from Marc:

When are you coming home? Both kids are waking up. 

For more pictures from the night, go here.

Abstract

It's been a head-spinning, forehead-slapping, caffeine-guzzling hella-week around these here Fabulous parts but it's finally Friday and I am breathing normally again and no longer desiring to mainline some fast-acting xanax.

I wrote a review! On my product review site, Fabulous or Not?

I miss writing and I'm getting back to it, slowly. 

Noah is going to be starting yet another school on Tuesday.  It will offer all day therapy and constant intervention, some inclusion and tons of OT work.  We have hope.  We have hope for the first time in about four months. 

I want to write about this but I don't have the time and mental bandwidth at the moment.  I want to talk about his visual helpers and PECS as well as the kinds of therapy I have chosen for him.  I want to post some adorable pictures of Noah and Mallory and my container garden and also post some recent recipes that I threw together that were both healthy and fast to prepare.

All this!  SOON. 

Promise. :)

  

Circus Time

It may not have been my smartest move, taking a kid with sensory issues to the Circus.  But, he loved it!  Really!  It was a small local, under-the-tent circus performance.

Noah ate two boxes of popcorn because it was the only way to keep him in a chair and still. And he wouldn't take his eyes off the camels, elephants and zebras. 

And the Guatemalan Trapeze Girls. 

I was very nervous that the kid next to me, sitting on his mother's lap (said mother was on her cell phone the entire time) was going to ram his circus light saber up his nose.  It was a close call a few times.  Like I said, low-budget circus.  Which I highly recommend when you have a toddler who needs to leave at intermission.  

Family Outing Success Rating: THUMBS UP!

OMG. OMFG! ELEPHANT!



Probably when the llamas and zebras were dancing in circles.


Me, looking disproportionately large next to my husband.


Watchin' the ladies on the trapeze.


Mallory, dressed as a turd with pink trim looking nothing like me.  Sigh.

Oh my hell

It totally figures that just as I resolve to write more often I get totally sidetracked with illness, oh my!

Last Saturday, yo, a full freakin' week ago, I came home from the gym to find that Noah was "clingy" ... or so Marc reported.  In fact, he had a fever of 103.9 and thus began a four day journey through the hell of toddler fever and caring for a three month old, ALONE. 

Marc boarded a plane Sunday afternoon and took off for sin city for a "conference" or "trade show" but I just see it as "full night of sleep alone in a comfortable king size bed" and "meals eaten without someone sucking on your boob," although, actually, I bet this happens all the time in Vegas, alas, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and thus, nobody knows just how common it really is.   I digress ....I suspect he was able to shower without a little ankle biter threatening to overturn the bouncy seat holding the infant who was sleeping.

Noah is on a 20 day course of antibiotics (holy poop!) for butt strep and belly button strep.  He has a strep infection of the skin, specifically, proctitis and omphalitis.  

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Mallory, in other news, is FINE!  Fine!  Totally perfect. Cherubic! Adorable!

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My mother in law is here for the week.  Ostensibly, to help, but she could be here to rob me blind and I'd still be welcoming here with open arms.  LIFE RAFT, Ahoy!  I appreciate the company and more specifically, it just feels not-as-lonely to have to witness the tantrums and tears alone.  Somehow we can share the pain of not being able to understand what in the sam hell Noah wants and for those horrific drawn out brief moments, I don't feel like the world's worst mother because someone else, another mother, is there and feels what I am experiencing.  I also end up feeling guilty and ineffective because I can't understand what my child wants and everyone knows bad behavior is the mother's fault.  Kidding. Sort of. She washed my kitchen floor last night and I told her I've never been happier to see her.  She played with Noah all day and it was fabulous and more than I can do because I have Mallory and I need to make meals and pee occasionally. 

I'm looking forward to a week of semi-calmer times.  Or at least a chance to regroup a little.

The Omitted Chapter

I used to know how to be a good mother.

Parenting came naturally to me.  Love, nurture, structure, it just made sense to me and I didn't need any of those books on sleep and discipline or those classes about how to diaper and take a rectal temperature.  I knew how to deal with cradle cap and how to cut those chicklet-sized toenails.  It was a no-brainer to wash gently in between those not-so-little thigh rolls. I didn't even mind getting up in the night to nurse again with my sore and leaky nipples because I understood the need and was happy to oblige with nurturing love. 

This is no longer the case.  When your baby becomes a special needs child everything you once knew, while still true, is not necessarily enough. The way you are raising your child is not enough.  Not good enough.  Not enough to keep them happy anymore.  Loving Noah, playing with him, feeding him, talking to him, it's not enough.  He doesn't understand what I say unless it happens to be in context or part of a familiar routine that he knows. I don't know what he wants and I can't decipher a five-alarm tantrum.  Not being able to calm him, help him, or understand him makes me feel achingly inadequate, superbly frustrated, and remarkably isolated.   

It took me years to learn how to use Excel, how to be a good assistant to high level executives and I never particularly felt great attachment to that role.  Being a mother was my born-role.  My god-given talent. This is what I have always wanted and these challenges were not part of the original contract. 

What I know doesn't work anymore.  I have to read books to understand how he sees the world and it's still a total crapshoot as to why those pants feel uncomfortable or why he must take his shoes off now even though we will be home in two minutes. I have to take classes to learn about his communication style so I can help him move along the continuum of communication with the hope of becoming verbal.  I have five books about going gluten-free which I plan to try later this summer but that means rethinking the entire way my family eats. 

I used to be a good mother. 

I'm still a good mother. Kinda.

I am having trouble with the fact that what I need to do now isn't necessarily what comes naturally. 

It's a real kick in the pants to HAVE to learn, re-learn, how to do something that used to be so inherent.

It's awful to not know how to help your kid.

But when something you do does help your kid you feel like a motherfucking rockstar.