OmegaMom

It’s Mother’s Day.  OmegaDad and OmegaDotter let me sleep in, and then marched in with breakfast in bed.  Whoa!  It was little Nancy’s quiches and strawberries, plus one of my Frappucinos…they then brought in their own and joined me, and presented me with a cardboard box which contained truffles (yum), three "flowers" made of pipecleaners and seed packets (some nice pansy varieties), a large abalone shell from the dotter (which I had given to her ages ago), a scarf from the dotter (which I had given to her ages ago), and another shell.

It was, actually, quite charming and loving, and I loved it. 

So much for being a "non-mom mom".  Har.  I’m cynically amused at how Teleflora and NBC scrambled all over themselves trying to recoup from that blunder.  At the same time, I’m glad that they did.

I’m sure they’d flinch at including birthmothers in any way in their motherhood tribute–too ambiguous for their tastes.  After all, they’d have to figure out how to present birthmothers as saintly martyrs who are gently satisfied with their choice, and avoid all the questions that even thinking about birthmoms brings to many folk.

OmegaDotter wrote a letter to her birthmother this morning.  She was happy to do it; she had asked me a while back if she could write a letter to her.  This entailed, of course, explaining that while she could write a letter, we had no way of delivering it because we didn’t know where her birthmother was or if she was okay.  But, I said, we could make a special box, and put letters to her birthmother in the box.  This morning, when she wrote the letter, she had completely forgotten that we couldn’t actually send it, and was all excited (momentarily) about getting a letter back.

::whimper::

But I explained again, and the dotter took it in good stead.

The letter was pretty short, but the first thing the dotter quickly wrote out was "I forgot your name."

::whimper::

She wrote that she can do cartwheels, and that she is good at learning.  And signed it, "Love, OmegaDotter".  Then she put it in an envelope clearly labeled "CHINA", and put it on the refrigerator, held by our very best, strongest magnet.

Then, that done, she merrily went on her way, demanding to help OmegaDad with building the veggie garden, helping me rake (yes, more raking), dipping into the house to build a picnic basket out of paper, and then dashing off next door to play with the kids there for a while.

I know that I have readers who simply don’t understand why we do things like this.  That it seems like a way to make the dotter feel capital-A-adopted.  That we make too much of it.  That our lives are all adoption angst.

First off, no, our lives are not all adoption angst.  In fact, there’s very little of it.  It’s just part of the tapestry of life for us and for the dotter; there are some things that remind her of being adopted, and we talk about them, and she chews on them a bit, and life goes on.  She goes to school, she has to do homework, we play with friends, we deal with Ballet Recital Madness, she practices her gymnastics, and on and on.

The thing is, she is adopted.  She’s our dotter, through and through, but somewhere out there is a birthmother and a birthfather, and a big question as to "why?"  From our readings of musings by adult adoptees, it seems that even the most happy, well-adjusted (female) adoptees think about birthparents and the circumstances of their adoption throughout their childhood, adolescence, adulthood.  And a lot of the adoptees who have written about it say that they were afraid to talk about it with their parents, that they feared hurting their parents by even thinking about another set of parents, by even wondering about their biological background.  Or that they tried talking about it, and their parents brushed it off, and they learned, very quickly, that it was a subject not to be touched.  And many of those adult adoptees said that they thought about the subject of birthparents a lot and were hurt and worried that they couldn’t talk about it with their parents.

Also, there’s OmegaDad.  OmegaDad’s mother died a week after giving birth to him.  He thought about her a lot.  He, too, learned early on that it was a sore subject; of course, it was because she died young, leaving a bereft husband and sons and parents, all of whom remembered her and were hurt by her early death.  So OmegaDad remembers wanting to know more about his mother, and not being able to talk about her.  So he feels it incumbent upon himself to make sure that OmegaDotter know that it’s okay to talk about her birthmother to both of us.

We’ve told the dotter her adoption story since we brought her home, too small to even understand what we were saying.  "Once upon a time, there was a lady in China who had a beautiful baby girl…" was how it started.  And "on the other side of the world, there was a man and a woman who really wanted to have children…"  And ending, "And they drove up the mountains to Small Mountain University Town in the little white car, and got home just a few days before Christmas, and that was the Very Best Christmas Ever."  As she’s grown older, the story has changed, gotten more detail, specifics have been fleshed out.

It’s all a little bit like sex, actually.  Well, not having sex, but talking about sex.  You want to keep the channels open.  You don’t want One Big Just So Story scene where you talk about sex when the kiddo is 17 and that’s that.  So you start out basic, you get comfy talking about the whole idea (omigod omigod i can’t even think about the dotter having sex omigod omigod), you try to not get tied up in knots when A Question comes up. 

I dunno.  It works for us.  Somewhere on the other side of the world is a woman who gave birth to our dotter.  Goodness knows why she had to abandon her–it could be that the dotter has an older sister, and her birthparents were trying for a son; it could be that her birthmother was a young, single woman who couldn’t keep a baby; it could be that there were in-laws who took her away and told her birthmother she was dead, in hopes of a future son to carry on the name; it could be that her birthmother couldn’t afford to keep her…We don’t know.  On a day like this, though, I think of her missing being able to watch this amazing girl grow up, not knowing her belly giggle, not knowing her artistic creations, not knowing her need to bounce and thump.  The least I can do for this other woman out there is to keep her memory alive and not flinch away when the dotter wants–or needs–to talk about her.

Adoption ranting alert!

Whoop!  Whoop!  WHOOP!  Brrrp…brrrp…brrrp…brrrp!

At this point in family life, I normally let the usual mainstream media faux pas (tell me how to pluralize that?  Please?!) about adoption pass me by.  At this point, life is less about Deep Musings About Adoption and more about how to survive the few weeks at the end of school year that are jam-packed with stuff like "Teacher Appreciation Week" (please bring a dish–Monday is breakfast, have it there by 8:30!, Tuesday is casseroles, Wednesday is sandwiches–but the staff are bringing the makings so don’t bother, Thursday is salads, and Friday is desserts) and "The Kindergarden Circus" (in which the dotter is being–natch–a "prancing horse"–and they really need volunteers to help sell popcorn before the circus) and ballet picture day (scheduled for the middle of the morning?  Oh, well, at least it’s not in the middle of school, since school ends two days before) and Ballet Recital Madness (update:  no, littlies don’t need to be there at oh-dark-thirty and stay for 24 hours straight, thank heavens!).

In other words, general adoption stuff has taken a back-burner to Real Life.

(Which is not to say "general adoption stuff" doesn’t happen, and isn’t important.  It does, and it is.  It’s just that what pops into the ol’ noggin to write about tends to be more on the panicky side than on the thinking deeply side.)

But when egregious mainstream media cluelessness attacks, I just have to sit up and take notice.

Brought to my attention by two adoption bloggers is this little lovely:  The category in the Mother’s Day TV special "America’s Favorite Mom" that is called–wait for it–"Non-Mom Moms".

I had a few "non-mom moms" in my life.  There was Aunt Lou, my mom’s best friend.  There was Mrs. Crysanthemum, who lived next door to my paternal grandparents, and who stunned me, absolutely stunned me, when she announced to me, at 16, that I should stop calling her "Mrs. Crysanthemum" and call her by her first name.  It took me years to be able to follow that request without feeling both awkward and disrespectful.  These were women who spent a lot of time with me, disciplined me, gave me hugs, fed me, let me have adventures with their kids, knew me from the time I was a wee chee-ild until I was a grown adult.

I never, ever though of Mrs. Libby, who lived on the other side of my grandparents and had an adopted kiddo, as a "non-mom mom".  Honest!  She was just Jarrett’s mom.

NBC and its minions, though, would place her (and me, and every other adoptive mommy on earth) smack dab into that category.

There it is, in all it’s glory, among the "semi-finalists" in the category "Non-Mom Moms":  "She was an adopted child who is now mom to her own daughter, plus six adopted children who started life as "meth babies"."

First off, even by their skewed standards, she’s a "mom mom":  she has "her own daughter".

OmegaDotter, of course, is not "my own daughter".  I’m just play-acting mommy for her.

Secondly, there’s that old cliche, the "crack baby", recycled as the "meth baby".

Thirdly, she’s not being a "mom" to those adopted children, oh no.  She’s being a "non-mom mom".

Sweet Kozmik All above.  Don’t these people think?  Don’t they have any concept of what "adoption" is?  Don’t they realize how they’ve dissed all the adoptive moms in their audience by that casual sweep of the semantic hand that dusts adoptive moms off into the "non-mom mom" dustbin?

Gah.  Get a grip, NBC.  My dotter has two moms, and they’re equally valid and important in my dotter’s life.  (Which I will talk about on Mother’s Day, I think.)

Frick-frackin’ rowrbazzlin’ dim-witted dismissive twits.

The dotter is losing teeth left and right.  The last one was one of the two top front teeth; this left the second one, also loose, all on its lonesome and able to stick out by itself when her lips were closed.  It was cute and adorable.  It also became quite wiggly.

At which point, it is my job to supervise the evening ablutions.  While both OmegaDad and I get the heebie-jeebies at really wiggly teeth, I have teeny-tiny heebie-jeebies; OmegaDad gets wigged out and has to leave the bathroom entirely.

Of course, it reached that particular point that parents the world over know:  it wiggled itself loose on one side and not on the other, and the dotter had reached the pinnacle of impatience.  I assured her it would come out over the next few days, but OmegaDad decided to promote the tie-a-string-around-the-tooth approach.

This resulted in severe dithering.  First it was "Oooh, yeah!"  Then it was "Ewwww, no!  Stop it!"  Then it was "Maybe I’ll try it."  Then it was tears and "I can’t do it!"  And all of this was before the string ever reached the tooth.

Like going zero to 60 and back to zero within a minute.  Whiplash!

So we abandoned the attempt and the dotter and I headed off to her bedroom for story time.

At which point, she decided she wanted to try it again.

This time, we avoided the bathroom, so she couldn’t see what was going on.  Apparently, it was seeing that was scaring her.  So we plopped her down on a dining chair conveniently scooched near the kitchen door, took the neat little lariat that OmegaDad had made out of cooking twine, and I slipped it over her tooth and cinched it down almost tight.

At which point, she decided she didn’t want to try it again.

Foreseeing an hour or two of this back-and-forthing, I reaching for the string, saying "Okay, okay, kiddo!  I’m taking the string off!" and surreptitiously yanked with one hand on the string while the other was making ineffectual forays at the string-encased tooth.

Pop!  Out came the tooth (of course).  (There was one moment of resistance, and I had a queasy fear that it wouldn’t work and the dotter would be both in pain and brokenhearted that Mommy was torturing her.)  The dotter had one moment of "Owww!" and then realized what had happened.  Much surprise and great swelled-headedness on her part:  "I did it!"  She totally thought that I had really been trying to untie the tooth…

Later on, in her bedroom, I whispered to her, "You know what?  I was sneaky.  I wasn’t trying to take the string off, I just yanked…"

She thinks it’s hilarious.  She has spent the last day giggling about it, and saying, "Ooooh, you’re so sneaky, Mommy!"  (Tee hee!)

She now has a two-tooth gap.  Another tooth is loose.  The Tooth Fairy is soon going to have to make another run to the bank for Sacajawea dollars.  I have it on good authority from the girls at gymnastics that at least one kid gets $20 per tooth, and another $8.  Whoa.  I got quarters.  The dotter gets the nice golden Sacajawea dollars.  And the Tooth Fairy is running out Real Soon Now.

You invited the dotter to your daughter’s birthday party.

The party was in Big City at the science museum.

WAY kewl!

Um.

But.

Um.

That’s a fifty mile drive.  One way.  It takes an hour to drive.  One way.

Sorry, we’re not going.

(Does it strike anyone else as a wee tad overboard to be having your six-year-old’s birthday party at a big science museum that is an hour’s drive away?)

When I was growing up, there was a saying:  "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

Of course, kids still called names, and it still hurt, but having that said often enough sort of conditioned one to think that being called names was an ephemeral thing.

Then there was the "turn the other cheek" philosophy, in which, if you were hurt, rather than hitting back, you offered a further target.  Sort of pre-Gandhi-ism.

So what’s changed?  What makes a nice middle-class mom decide to fake an online personality to gain friendship with a depressive teen, then yank the "friendship" away, all as a way of "teaching a lesson" or some such thing to a girl who had "hurt" her daughter–resulting in the teen’s suicide?  What makes fresh-faced cheerleader gals decide that a previous buddy’s namecalling on MySpace warrants a half-hour long smackdown to be posted on YouTube?  What makes the mother of one of the beaters go onto national television and say–in all seriousness–"This is all blown out of proportion"?

Of course, these incidents have caused folks to come out of the woodwork to blame the Internet.  It’s MySpace’s fault!  It’s YouTube’s fault!  My girl wouldn’t have done anything like that if the eeeevul Internet wasn’t there!  Or, I wouldn’t have done anything like that if the eeevul Internet hadn’t made me do it.

Seriously.  In these cases, the parents seem to have something missing.  Us old-fashioned folk would call it "conscience", I guess.  Or morals.  Or a sense of proportion.  Or something.  What happened to saying something like, "If that girl is trash-talking you, surely you don’t want to associate with her?"? 

Currently, the dotter is deep in the midst of the standard "If you don’t do x for me, I won’t be your friend anymore!" pronouncement phase.  I give her the hairy eyeball at such statements to me, until she breaks down into a grin and giggles.  She knows that saying those things doesn’t cut it with me.  And I’ve had to intervene once or twice at after-school care when one or another of the girls says something like that as well.

The idea being that it’s not what someone else thinks of you that’s important:  It’s what you think of yourself.  It’s knowing you’ve done the right thing.  It’s knowing when you’ve done the wrong thing.  It’s realizing that some of these great dramas won’t mean a damned thing when you’re forty years old.

These internalizations don’t spontaneously emerge, of course.  You have to work on them.  And it’s not faux self-esteem B.S. that we’re talking about here–the "I am Special" entitled attitude.  It’s the feeling that you’ve worked hard on something, tried your best, done the right thing, have stuff inside you that is worthwhile…

These girls–and their parents–seem to have missed the boat on all of this.  The jockeying for prestige and station becomes the be-all and end-all of their existence.  They’re judging their own worth by what other people say, in the heat of the moment, either to their friends or on MySpace.  Now, I realize that names hurt.  They sting.  You can, indeed, end up crying in the middle of the night over what one of your acquaintances said behind your back.  And it continues even when you’re forty-something.

But the thing to do is move on, concentrate on what’s good and going well in your life.  Not beat the shit out of your former best friend so you can toss it up on YouTube and get lots of comments.

There are days in my job where the constant nibbling to death by ducks routine leaves my ability to focus shredded to tatters.  First it’s push this thing out onto the website, then it’s figure out why the accountant is having that problem, then it’s chit-chatting with the boss about how to set up a virtual server for testing, then–whammo!–it’s adding someone to our maintenance management system, then it’s yet another thing…

Other days, however, fly by because I am so deeply focused on one thing that everything else fades away.  Those are invariably satisfying days, because at the end, there’s a feeling of accomplishment.  Things Get Done when you are that intent.

The dotter, being six years old, has the attention span of a six-year-old.  Which is another way of saying, "the attention span of a gnat".  She flits from this thing to that thing to the other, spinning around and chit-chatting as she goes.  It makes sitting down with her to ensure her once-a-week homework is done a rather interesting experience.  She skews the papers she is reading off to one side in a cockeyed manner that makes my I-like-straight-lines-intersecting-with-other-straight-lines soul cringe.  She fidgets and squirms.  She bounces on one foot, then swings around the chair holding one hand on the back, then crouches up on the seat, then slithers off, then squirms some more.  She gets distracted by:  the cat, the dawg, OmegaDad, a ribbon on the sofa across the room, a bird sitting on the bird feeder, a piece of her artwork sitting on the other side of the table, her snack, her toes, a song, the idea of K. coming over on Saturday, what book we’re going to read at bedtime, notes that are up on the refrigerator…You name it, she is distracted by it.

There are times when it’s very wearing.

We are trying to teach her the idea of "focus".

Hah.

The Karate Kid and Star Wars (the original), plus other movies, have been enlisted in this scheme.  "See how Mr. Miyagi is having Daniel breathe in and breathe out?  See how he’s doing only one thing at a time?  That’s ‘focus’."  "See how Luke is fighting with his lightsaber while his eyes are closed?  He’s trying to do it by listening, and by using his mind.  That’s ‘focus’."  "See how Lexi is doing the same figure skating moves over and over again?  She’s practicing hard, isn’t she?  That takes ‘focus’."

There I am, being a suburban mommy, taking the dotter off to gymnastics class.  Lately, I’ve been thinking, "Um…she seems kind of good at this stuff…(when she focuses)…"  Then there’s A.’s mom (A. is a day older than the dotter, and was adopted from the same city in China), who has been saying to me, "My, OmegaDotter is certainly very graceful!"  And S.’s mom, who has said to me, "She’s pretty good, isn’t she?  How long has she been doing gymnastics?  Really?!  My, she’s quite a natural at it…"

I tend to dismiss all this, though, as the maunderings of an overly invested mommy of a late-in-life dotter.

At the same time, this is the dotter we all know and love.  To wit:  the girls are lining up at the white line to start a crabwalk across the gymnasium, and the dotter, rather than listening for the coach to tell them to go, has crabwalked out a few feet and stopped dead to watch the cheerleading team practice in the opposite corner of the gymnasium.  Or there she is, on the balance beam, supposed to be traversing it backwards on tiptoes, making it halfway before getting distracted by me (oh!  The guilt!) and crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue at me and giggling, and then losing her balance and falling off.

But when she focuses…oh, my.  It really has struck me, like I say, that she seems pretty good at this stuff.

This week I had validation of that feeling.  Her coach swung by after class to chat with me, highly recommended that she move up to the intermediate level for summer or fall classes, said she’s "doing fabulously", and–oh, by the way–gee, she focused so much better since her buddy A. wasn’t there this week.

Practice.  She’ll get better at focusing with practice.  Right?  Because when she focuses, she does amazing things.

One of the things that really bugs OmegaDad and me is when OmegaDotter doesn’t respond when we say something to her.

Case in point:  This afternoon, after putting up still more drapery hardware (the office needs some more drapery rings, because I thought 30 of the darned things would be enough, but, hey, more are on the way and I’ve learned my lesson for the time, ten years from now, that we do this thing again), OmegaDad and I joined the dotter on the futon to watch the last 40 minutes of Karate Kid.

Cool movie.  All sorts of Good Stuff about focusing, and working hard to reach your goals, and not using physical prowess to beat up skinny boys, and how you Shouldn’t Cheat, all with a few things slipped in about the effect the Manzanar camps had and the ease with which some folks use racial slurs to put Asians down.  I know that there are oodles of Asian Americans out there who get grumpy about Pat Morita being a token Asian whose acting was full of stereotypes, but I actually think the Karate Kid can prompt a lot of good discussion.

("Focus" being one of our latest, not really related to this post.  I think.  Hmmm.)

Anyway, the dotter was on my lap, waiting for Daniel to do the Crane Kick and beat the Bad Boys.

Daniel does the Crane Kick, the bad boys are beaten, all is well with the world…

I say to the dotter, "Okie doke, up you go!"  Happy tone of voice, all ready to jump up and get to work on other weekend projects.

And she sits there.  Not a word, not a twitch, no response.

I say again, "Dotter, off the lap, I want to get up!"  Still happy, though less so.

And she sits there.  Not a word, not a twitch, no response.

We’re talking a minute at a time.

Dudes, I wanted to get up.  And I did not want to be ignored.  I wanted my lap back, thankyewverramuch.  So I got grumpy, announced I was getting up, and dumped the dotter off to the side.

After which ensued a (loud) discussion about how it behooves people in the family to respond when other people in the family talk to them, yadda, yadda, yadda.  The dotter sitting and looking sullen, which is her modus operandi when she knows she’s in the wrong.  Then a talking-to from daddy.  Then she got angry ("I was getting up, it just was taking me a while!"–coulda fooled me, and besides, this "taking a while" can last up to five minutes and was repeated over and over this weekend) and broke the reins to her new poseable stuffed horsie.  And then it was waterworks time, complete with a "Mommy, can you fix my reins?"

Oy.

So I ended up sitting down with her, asking her how she would feel if she asked me to stop tickling her and I just kept on doing it, not saying anything, even after she asked me multiple times. 

At wits’ end about how to get her to actually think about it, I made her write sentences.  "I will answer when Mommy or Daddy asks me a question."

Oy!  I felt like a Mean Mommy.

So:  Any really good suggestions?

It’s spring break week.  The dotter is at "camp" at her after-school care place, and they’re doing "Blast From The Past" as the theme this week.  Monday was the ’40s, Tuesday the ’50s, etc.  The kids are dressing up each day.  The dotter won for best dress-up on Wednesday–she had a mini skirt, a top with paisleys and funky colors, and a headband over carefully parted straight hair.

Tomorrow is the final day.  The ’80s.  Big Hair is my immediate response.  So we’ve purchased soft rollers and I plan to torture have tortured the child with them tonight, covered the result with a kerchief, sent her to bed, and plan to fill her hair with hair spray tomorrow.

From the back:

Looking winsome from the front:

Laughing:

Notice all the pink.  I spared you the picture of the dotter in her kerchief in her pink room.

I don’t really know how to do Big Hair, but we have a curling iron for Big Bangs and lots of hair spray.  I will display results tomorrow.

In the meantime…there’s talk of a Netherlands documentary about Chinese adoption, specifically that there are lots of folks these days who are having their kids kidnapped by government officials and dumped at orphanages.  There are those who are appalled and those who think it’s old news.  In the meantime, I sit here and realize that, while it was easier to think of someone reclaiming OmegaDotter when she was just a babe, she is firmly entrenched in my heart now and the thought of having someone tell me our adoption was null and void at this point would–yes–make me spend a lifetime and a fortune in court, fighting tooth and nail to keep her with us.  That aside, I will write up some thoughts on the issue tomorrow.

The dotter is quite mumchance about her days at school or at after-care.  Trying to get her to talk about it is…well, you either do a version of Twenty Questions, or wait until the Feeling Game at bedtime, at which point some info may (may) come out.  The Twenty Questions approach needs variation, so I can:

1. Ask whether she had gym, library, or music that day.
2. Ask who was teacher’s helper.
3. Ask what book was read today, and what it was about…

You get the drift.  It’s like getting blood from a stone, and I’m sure we’ll be getting the "Where did you go?"  "Out."  "What did you do?"  "Nothing." conversation when she’s older.

So the other day, when she said that she had had gym that day, I asked her, "So what did you do?"

She shrugged and said, "I don’t remember."

AAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!

Desperate to get some detail out of her, I asked, "Did you do cartwheels in gym today?"

Dotter shook her head.  "No, we’re not allowed to.  We might get hurt."

OmegaDad and I blinked at each other across the table.  After a moment, I asked, "Did you play games in gym?  Like…like Red Rover?"

Dotter shook her head again.  "No, we can’t play that.  Someone might fall down."

We blinked again.  OmegaDad said to me, in an aside, "Oh, goodness no, we can’t have that!" and then asked, "So what do you do in gym?"

Dotter said, "We do exercises."

Bleah!

I can report, having been at a school do in the gymnasium where there were oodles of youngsters with their families, that many of the girls know how to do cartwheels.  This is a relief.  Even though I am consumed with envy, because I was never able to do cartwheels, being too wussy to actually get my legs straight up and about.

And I am definitely not a fan of, say, Dodge Ball, which I remember as a source of stinging baps from balls hurled with vigor by the bigger and more bullyish of the boys.

But…but…sheesh, guys–these are five-year-olds!  Making them do exercises?!  Gak!  Way to go to make physical activity really appealing and a life-long passion, eh?!

I am tempted to go into a tirade that starts with, "In my day, sonny, we had to walk to school uphill both ways!"  It just makes me sad that some fear of litigation, or general dismay at kids being kids, has led to this.

ETA:  Sorry, everyone!  I really didn’t even consider that the last post was my "Stoned Cold" one.  I’m fine–I did toss out the Bad Drugs, I haven’t had a single twinge from my foot (though that will have to wait until I spend a day at the computer, working again, to see whether All Is Well), and I did not fall into a ditch or spin out in the snow or plunge down the stairs or any other disaster that may have popped into people’s imagination.  Thanks for asking, though!

I spent the entire week planning to write a post.  But each time I sat down at the computer and actually thought about a post, my mind would go wondrously blank.

Totally, completely tabula rosa.  Pure, pristine white.

So I’d shrug, read my bloggin’ peeps, and then return to the Bosom of My Family.

Unfortunately, part of the Bosom of My Family has decided, as usual, to get sick.  If it’s the New Year, dotter gets sick.  Really!  Go look at my previous end-of-year posts; you’ll see it’s true.

So my original plan was a wonderful, restful week off, with me being able to tackle a bunch of projects while the dotter was at her all-day after-school care place.  This went to hell in a handbasket as of Thursday, when we decided her constant crying over the sore throat (but no fever) warranted a visit to the doc, who posited a sinus infection and non-feverish tonsillitis.  When she seemed better on Friday, I sent her off to ADASCP, only to have them call an hour later requesting us to take her back because she had pink eye.

Then Friday night she started running The Fever.

Another visit to the doc’s today, and the dire news is that whatever it is is viral, because the slew of antibiotics that she was put on by the doc on Thursday are actually doing their job vis-a-vis the tonsils, and are broad-spectrum enough to hit anything bacterial.

Bah.

The dotter’s illnesses have a three point scale:

1. Temp between 98.6 and 101 - generally just fine, happy as a clam, but unable to go to school or other places if the temp is 100F or greater.
2. Temp between 101 and 104 - miserable.  Whiny.  Bitchy.  Petulant.  Any touch hurts.  Die-away airs…she can’t sit up to get her milk, she must have anything liquid handed to her, medicine is a major PITA to administer.
3. Temp over 104 - More than miserable.  Wants to spend her entire waking time on top of mommy.  No whining, no bitchiness, no petulance, just plain quiet misery.

She’s been at stage 2 for three days now, and it looks like she’ll be there for another day or two at least.

Christmas was a blast.  Dotter and daddy made sugar cookies on Christmas Eve to leave for Santa Claus; mommy and daddy duly ate bites out of the cookies and drank all the milk, which just blew the dotter away.  She’s at a stage where she suspects that it’s me and OmegaDad, but she keeps reassuring herself that it isn’t, but she keeps asking very practical questions that indicate she thinks it’s all a bit unbelievable.

We went cross-country skiing on Christmas Day, had a great time, and took the dotter out too far and too long.  The end result:  OmegaDad had to carry a sobbing dotter back after her plucky attitude gave out entirely.  Turns out she had sprung a leak or two or a thousand in her ski boots, and her socks and feet were entirely soaked and cold as ice.  Bad Mommy and Daddy Score:  -1000.

Some pics–First, OmegaDad and dotter showing off the wreath we made:

Next, the dotter as the chef, taking down orders (okay, so the waitress takes orders; she has the chef hat courtesy of Christmas).  Note, also, the array of horsies on the floor behind her; of course she got some horsies for Christmas.

Me, looking more like a fixture for St. Patrick’s Day.  The hat was because I had not showered, so my hair was stuck up in a mohawk.  The bow had topped off one of the dotter’s presents; we wanted to see what I would look like with it.

Skiing across the bridge in the foggy snow:

It was really a great skiing expedition, but generally too much for an almost-six-year-old.  We’ll be more cautious in the future; I was actually scared that we weren’t going to be able to get her out unless we dragged her behind us.

"Hi!  I’m Rachael Ray!  Today, I’m not going to be teaching you about food–I’m going to teach you about farms!"

She flourishes a pink cowgirl hat…whispers, "You’re a teenager…"

"Now!  You’re a teenager!  And you have a job.  And you want to be a cowgirl.  And you want to be married.  And you want to be a teenager."

Mommy:  "Hi.  I want to be a cowgirl."

"Okay!  You want to be a cowgirl.  And you’re a teenager!  And that’s okay.  Now, after you get married, you can become a cowgirl!  And go to your job.  And come back and be a cowgirl!"

She pushes the cowgirl hat onto mommy’s head.

"You need a cowgirl hat to be a cowgirl!  Now you’re a cowgirl!  But you are still a teenager.  And you’re getting married!  Cowgirls can be married!"

She gestures to the "stable".

"You have horses!  This is Kayla and this is Spot.  Kayla’s kind of shy, so be gentle!  You need to feed them some oats.  And some hay.  This is how they eat!"

Kayla (formerly Frankie) nibbles from her hand.

Mommy suggests that maybe they need a feed bucket.

She grabs a box from Lands End.

"Now!  This is for their food!  What are the oats?  The purple socks are the oats!  And the white–orange–socks are the hay!  And now we’re going to feed the horses!" 

She grabs a bright orange plastic school bus and drags it in front of "Spot" (the wooden rocking horse).

"Now, Spot is a pony, a shepherd pony.  But that’s okay!"  (For the uninitiated, "shepherd" is a confused Shetland.)

"Now we’re going to give them some treats!"

And on and on from there…

Rachael Ray, I have to say, is everywhere.  A few weeks ago, I had no idea who Rachael Ray was, or that she was everywhere.  However, a few weeks ago, we lugged the second TV upstairs to the living room and plugged it in to the cable.  The first station that showed up?  The Food Network.  The dotter was mesmerized. 

We haven’t bothered to figure out how to change the station.

She laughs at and with Paula (just watching Paula puts pounds on your hips, trust me; I think Paula could deep-fry everything), but she adores Rachael Ray.  And now, when we go out shopping, she sees Rachael Ray on everything.  There are Rachael Ray Triscuits.  Rachael Ray on cereal boxes.  Rachael Ray on magazine covers.  Rachael Ray being interviewed on TVs in department stores.  Trust me, this woman is everywhere.  And, trust me, the dotter sees her where-ever she is.

The dotter also announced this morning that Hannah Montana was "the grrrreatest rock star ever!"  We quickly disabused her of this notion.  Or tried to.  OmegaDad claimed Elvis.  I said The Who or Eric Clapton or anyone else but HM.  The dotter promptly said:

"Okay!  Elvis is number two!  Hannah Montana is number one!"

Ahem.  No, that’s not what we said…

So right now, the dotter wants to be a cowgirl/rockstar/cook/girl who does hair when she grows up.

In other news.  The doc-in-a-box xrayed me, did the blood test thing, tsk-tsked over my cholesterol levels, said my blood sugar was just fine, told me about his lead sled dog whose name is Paxil, wrote me some painkilling prescriptions and sent me on my way.  (Can I just say how neat is it that the doc-in-a-box has a sled-dog team?)

He kept insisting it was arthritis pain, and when I’d say it was an electric shock would repeat back to me that it was a stabbing pain.  No, that’s not what I said, dammit!  I know a stabbing pain and I know an electric shock type of pain, and I know the difference.  And I sure as heck know the difference between arthritic pain and nerve pain.  But, hey, I’ll give the prescriptions a try and rest reassured that I’m not about to explode with hypo- or hyperglycemia.

And in the biggest news…

The best news…

Today?  Today on the weather page?  Where it says how much daylight there is hereabouts?

Today, rather than a "loss", it was a "gain".  Of 2 seconds.

WOOT!!!  Yes, folks, today marks the solstice.  From here on out, until June 21 or thereabouts, we’ll be gaining sunlight.

OmegaMom does the Snoopy Dance out the door.

I found it first on Twice the Rice.  Then PAGent posted about it.  Then Figlet.

The gist:  a diplomat and his wife, while living in Korea, adopt a 4-month-old little girl (and choose, of all stereotypical names, "Jade" for her name).  When the girl is 3, they move to Hong Kong.  At that point, they have two biological children.  At age 7, they decide to abandon their child to the social welfare system in Hong Kong, apparently citing "culture shock" or "inability to integrate into our lifestyle" or "problem with our foods" or "inability to integrate into our family", depending on which story you read.  Oh, yes, and then there’s the fact that she hasn’t been made a citizen of the diplomat’s country, or of Hong Kong, so she’s still a Korean citizen–but she doesn’t speak Korean–but she’ll probably have to go back to Korea in order to be legally adopted out again.

Dudes, OmegaDotter is almost six.

I simply cannot imagine taking her by the hand, taking her to Catholic Social Services or the county borough welfare system, and saying, "Eh…she’s too much for us.  She doesn’t like to eat the same things we do.  And, geez, she still won’t sleep in her own bedroom, and does the Foot Thing, and bashes against us as a sign of love, and we can’t take it any more.  Find her another home."

I find myself desperately hoping that there’s more to this story, that this couple aren’t as clueless and obnoxious as it seems.  That the child was threatening their smaller children.  That she had RAD and this is the end of a years-long struggle.  Or something.  That the "she doesn’t fit into their lifestyle" commentary was made by a grumpy social worker without a clue, rather than coming from the mouths of the adoptive parents.

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The seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on a carousel of time.
We can’t return
We can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Painted pony number one:  Five years ago Saturday, we met our dotter for the first time.  It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been so long already.  We’ve gone from a tiny little baby coming home for the first time:

To an almost six-year-old full of creativity and vitality:

Her first tooth to come out is just about out–it’s at that stage where it can lie almost flat.  We almost thought it was out tonight, but it looks like at least one more day, after all.

Our trip to Arizona has blindsided us with some Issues.  The dotter decided–unbeknownst to us–that it meant we were moving again.  Um.  Oops.  Then, since OmegaDad’s job is still fairly new, we had decided early on that he would stay only a few days, while the dotter and I would stay longer.  So I spent this evening in the bathroom with her in full-blown brokenhearted weeping mode–Daddy was gone, she missed him, I would be gone on Wednesday (a trip to the office) and would leave her all alone, and she first refused to believe we were actually going home on Sunday, and then declared in tears that she wanted to go home now, and then told me that Sunday would never come.

Some kid point-of-view things just blindside you, y’know?

Painted pony number two:  A person who I have posted with for years on various debate boards died of colon cancer this week.  She was in her early 40s.

Painted pony number three:  Marguerite, coming up on her 104th birthday, had a bad infection that required her to be on antibiotics.  The infection and antibiotic combo, along with heparin, had her hallucinating and sleepless for three days and nights, unsteadily wandering the halls of her assisted living center and falling often.  No broken bones, but they finally hospitalized her, got the infection under control, figured out the right antibiotic, and got her to sleep.

But the assisted living center said they couldn’t handle her anymore, and she needed a nursing home.

Sigh.

So Great Grandma (my own grandmother) is now in a nursing home, and sad and confused.  Nothing tastes good.  She can’t hear well.  Her eyesight is going, with black spots in her vision that make her think there are black bugs wandering all over her food and her clothes.  And she, like OmegaDotter, wants to go home.  Imagine going to sleep in one place and waking up in another–with the intervening days and nights just vanished from your memory–and being told, "This is your new home."

I’m so glad that we had planned a party for Great Grandma, so that there were lots of folks in town to help my mom out during this extremely stressful time.  But it’s so sad for us all–we have been spoiled…Marguerite was still bowling up until 1999, she was still out playing bridge at the assisted living center two years ago, she has always been sharp as a tack and filled with tart commentary and memories.  Having her in this state is…heartbreaking.

This evening, at bedtime, the dotter quizzed me:  "Why is Great Grandma like that?"  And I had to explain to her that Great Grandma is 104 years old, that most people don’t live that long, that she’s wanting to go home and is having a hard time realizing that she has a new home, and that she’s just tired tired tired.  So in the midst of all the upheaval, all the worries about moving again, the dotter is learning some other things that are very difficult to process.

Parenting is hard sometimes.

Life is hard sometimes.

But I’m so glad we have the dotter with us.  I’m so glad my family can pull together like this.  I’m so glad we all have each other.  Because it makes the hard stuff more bearable.

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Remember, I didn’t participate (whew!).  But bunches and bunches of my regular blogstops did, and the whole slew of them are getting practically giddy with relief now that today is the final day and they are out of Blogging Durance Vile.

As a reader, of course, this sucks, because I’ve been happily seeing 25-30 new posts every morning by some of my faves.  And then 20 more as the day goes by.

But they’re giddy, I tell you!  Yelling “Whoopeee!” and “Hallelujah!” and “Thank GOD that’s over with!”  Dancing in the blogging streets.  Setting off fireworks.  Revelry. 

Bah.  Pooey.  Pbbbbbttt to the lot of them.  Harrumph.

Cast yer eyebones over to the left.  The Giving Tree is gone; all my Donors Choose projects were funded, though not all the way by my readers.  In its place is the Shameless Commerce Division (shamelessly cribbed from Car Talk), an experiment wherein I signed up with the BlogHer Ad Network.  We shall see; I’m hoping it doesn’t end up stalling blog loading.  If it does, please let me know.  Goodness only knows if I’ll get a few cents per month.

I need to send you on to Almost Quintessence, BlueGrassGirl’s blog, for a particular post all about having a dead bird in the freezer.  BGG is the sister of Jozet (of Halushki fame).  There’s obviously a hilarity gene, and the girls have got it.

The OmegaFamily is working very hard on the concept of “frustration” and how to handle it.  OmegaDad, in a fit of genius, came up with “The Attention Game”.  He told the dotter all about using her “ability”, which included listening and paying attention.  He tests her by giving her tasks, and if she does them, she gets a point.  If she doesn’t get it right, he gets a point.  They’re playing up to 30 points this weekend.

This has been prompted by the dotter’s absolute inability lately to deal with frustration, in any way, shape, or form.  She melts down and goes into stubbornness mode, wherein she keeps trying to do whatever it is that is frustrating her, and is crying and keening and whining while she does it, and is generally a drama queen about it.

This frustrates me to no end, and makes me snappy and snarky.  OmegaDad rode his white horse to my rescue this evening with this game.  I’m hoping it actually sinks in a bit with the competitiveness aspect, because the dotter’s response to her frustration is just irritating as hell.  I end up feeling like I want to run screaming into the street, far, far away.  The dotter, of course, thinks I’m abandoning her, and follows no matter where I go.  This makes me more uptight, and makes me want to retreat, and she gets more panicky and wants to cling, and it turns into a Spiral of Disturbance.  Bleah.

I go away now and play with Etsy.

There.  Is it so damned hard to say?!

No.

It’s not.

Jen, over at MimiBoo, mentions, towards the end of her post on anxious attachment, a discussion on a list she’s on about “what do you call your child’s birthmother?”  Much to my dismay (and Jen’s), the “tummy lady” term is still being used, as in “you grew in her tummy, so she’s your tummy lady”.

Oy!

(Aside from the objectification of the birthmother that the phrase embodies, I can’t stand the concept of teaching that pregnancy means “coming from someone’s tummy”.  It’s my own hang-up, and poor OmegaDotter will probably complain to her therapist when she’s 30 that her mother kept telling her how babies grow in uteruses whenever she tried the “I grew in her tummy” statement.)

In this house, we call our child’s birthmother ”your mommy in China”.  Or “your Chinese mommy”.  Or, “your birthmother”.  And it’s “your daddy in China”, and “your other grandparents, who you have never met”.

I made damned sure those words would come easy to me by the time the dotter really needed to talk about such concepts.  I practiced telling her them from the day we brought her home.  Maybe the first time or two it was difficult.  But as a result, these days we have a dotter who feels quite safe in asking questions about her birthmother while we’re eating dinner, and let me tell you, that’s mighty damned important to me.

A helluva lot more important than reserving the Sacred Word “mommy” or “mother” for my use alone.

The “Tummy lady” term has repulsed me since the day I heard that Rosie O’Donnell was using that as her term for birthmother to her adopted children.  It wasn’t because it was being used by Rosie (har!), it was because it seemed to be–and still does seem to be–a way of deliberately distancing yourself and your child from her family of birth, a way of giving lipservice to the idea of discussing birthfamily without having to actually deal with the emotional reality.  OmegaDad, when I discussed it with him in bed last night, wrinkled his nose at the phrase and called it “incredibly impersonal”.

Of course, I have to hold my scorn towards people who use that term in check right now–because I have no idea what I’ll be like if OmegaDotter actually finds her birthmother.  Here and now, the main reaction I have to terms like “tummy lady” is:  Being comfortable with the term, the idea, of “birthmother” is not about me.  It’s about my dotter.  It’s not my life that was yanked about without my consent–it’s hers.  And if feeling comfortable enough to talk about her birth family while her mouth is full of cheesy pasta helps her, then that’s what counts.

Long gone (for now, at least) are the nights when getting the dotter to sleep was a struggle.  These days, we have two routines, which we alternate. 

One routine is “eleven minutes”, in which the dotter and OmegaDad get rambunctious, play “Brother and Sister”, climb into the Thomas the Tank Engine play tent and march around the house uttering train-like noises (”Whoooo-whoooo!”), put on performances, etc.  It’s called “eleven minutes” because at one time in the distant past, it lasted 11 minutes.  These days, it can range from a true 11 minutes to an hour or so.

The other routine is Dotter snuggles up with mommy in bed and we read a story or a chapter or two from a chapter book.

Then it’s bedtime.  And every night, we play the “Feeling Game”.  We take turns telling what made us happy, what made us sad, and what made us angry during the day.  This is something that came from pre-school, and was supposed to help the kiddos learn to recognize their feelings, and maybe pass on a little bit of what went on during the day.  We take turns going first, because often the dotter copies what made me happy, which isn’t really the purpose.

And then we segue off into other topics sometimes, and then it’s Time For Bed, and I read a bit and the dotter (usually) sinks into a sound sleep within five minutes.  (I am terrified that even writing this will cause the Kozmik All to laugh uproariously and deem that it is time for sleep disturbances again…)

The “other topics” can range from blatant attempts to put off bedtime (”I need to tell you something, Mommy!”  “What?”  “What is that?”–pointing at something that she knows very well.  I give her the hairy eyeball.  She giggles.  “Let’s talk about that!”  Unh-hunh.  Yeah, right.) to social issues at school (”Marie is mean, Mommy!”) to adoption.

A few weeks ago, she wanted to talk about her mommy in China.  So we talked about her, and how she was adopted, and the story…and then she said something:

“Mommy?”

“Um-hmmm?”

“Y’know I have her in my heart.”

And she touched herself on the chest with an earnest look at me.

“My mommy in China…I have her in my heart.  Always.”

And then she went to sleep.

Now.  That’s a pretty standard thing to say as an adult, but I don’t think we’ve said anything like that to the dotter ever.  So she just came up with it on her own.

Which I thought was pretty cool.

Linky love tomorrow, really!

About a year and a half ago, the dotter insisted that she had a loose tooth.  I investigated, I was unable to find it, but she claimed it was there, and for a week or two I believed her.

About six weeks ago, the same thing happened.  Peer group pressure, I am sure; being exposed to multiple gap-toothed kids of varying ages reminded her that, hey, having a loose tooth is a sign of Age and Dignity and Wisdom.  Once again, I was unable to corroborate the story, and that “loose tooth”, too, faded away.

Last night, as we were eating dinner and chattering away about this and that, out of the blue the dotter suddenly stood up from her chair and proclaimed:

“Omigosh.  Oh.  My.  GOSH!  My tooth!  My tooth!  It’s LOOSE!  It’s really loose!  I have a loose tooth!  Omigosh!  Really, truly, I have a loose tooth!  You’ve got to see!”

She was breathless with excitement.

Being the mother, I was forced to insert my exploratory finger into her mouth right then and there to locate the aforesaid tooth.

Sure enough, it was loose.  Not “teeny tiny just possibly loose, I’ll-believe-you-but-I’m-really-dubious-about-this loose”, but really, TRULY loose.

Of course, a cause for celebration Chez OmegaMom.  The dotter was ecstatic.  OmegaDad was congratulatory.  I, on the other hand, was suddenly swept with a bittersweet sorrow.  Wasn’t it just yesterday that that very same tooth was just coming in?  That my baby was drooling all over everything and chewing everything in sight (including my hands)?  How on earth can she be old enough to have a truly loose tooth that wiggles wildly from front to back when she pokes it with her tongue?  No, no, it’s not possible–she’s just a baby.

Right?

I was almost crying there at the dinner table.  We had to explain to the dotter, once again, about being happy-sad; one of those more confusing concepts that become easier to understand as you get older.

So sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a picture of a gap-toothed girl.  And when the Tooth Fairy slips the Sacajawea dollar under OmegaDotter’s pillow that night, TF will probably also be shedding a tear or two at the passing of another small milestone in a child’s passage to adulthood.

(Not to mention the fear of future orthodontia.  The dotter has beautiful pearly whites right now; I am quite fearful of what her adult teeth will bring as they come in.  I see to recall a pediatric dentist giving me grim warning that those nice neat baby teeth, which look so pretty, are probably too close together for adult tooth spacing…)

This weekend, I purchased Uno for the dotter and me to play.

We’ve been non-game-players for quite a while, with a few forays into Go Fish and Candyland.  But I thought it was time to introduce the dotter to a slightly more complicated game, and figured she had reached the point where we would actually spend time playing the game, rather than me stripping it of the finer points so that she comprehended how to play it.

I was right.  We spent an hour playing Uno this evening, she and I, while OmegaDad cooked a delicious dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and carrot and celery sticks with peanut butter.  Yum.

Anyway, the dotter thought it was great fun.  But I had reached a point where I wanted a break.  She kept pleading for “just one more game!” and I did my stock model firm “No.”  No yelling, no storming, no frustration, just plain, “No.”

And when she realized that (as is my norm when I use that “No”) I actually meant it, she said:

“Oooooh, dammit!”

My eyes bugged out.  OmegaDad’s eyes bugged out.

OmegaDotter put a shocked hand up to her mouth, with bugged eyes of her own, then hid her head in my shoulder.  Giggling.  But, yes, she realized it’s a “bad word”.

It’s the first time she’s used a “bad word” with full intent, in the right context, and with feeling.

I don’t know whether to be appalled or proud.

So after complaining–mightily!–about how horrible Ms. Hyde has been visiting lately, yesterday was a day’s worth of Dr. Jekyll.  It was awesome.

First, in pursuit of the goat idea, OmegaDad had been corresponding with the Farm Lady With Champeen Nigerian Dwarf Goats.  He finagled an invite to her spread.  We went yesterday a.m.

Now, OmegaDad has an ag degree.  He grew up doing FFA and hanging with 4H kids, raised and showed pigs and bulls and other livestock.  Thus, OmegaDad knows all about birthing and hypocalcemia, the issues of thiamin deficiency, protein content of various livestock foodstuffs, how to inseminate a bull, fat-to-milk ratios of various cattle and goat lines, and acts nonchalant when a three-week-old kid starts sucking his finger.

I, on the other hand, am a city kid through and through.  I can navigate my way through Chicago blindfolded, can tell you what time of day to ride the El, where to catch the #36 bus, the free days at the various museums, and where the more obscure park statuary resides.

Everyone has his or her talents.

Anyway, the itty-bitty goat babies were adorably cute.  The older goats were pretty and laid back.  The Farm Lady was a font of information.  For instance, you need to insulate the goat stall, because goats like to huddle up together up against a wall, and when you have days on end of -20F weather, they can get frostbite.

Um.

I gave OmegaDad the hairy eyeball as we were driving away, saying, “You know I’m lazy.  I don’t want to end up having to take care of goats!”  At which he hastened to reassure me, once again, that the plan was to get the dotter used to small animals that don’t give a hoot how cute you are, but will butt or bite when you treat them roughly.

The dotter was enchanted.

Then we went searching for a new backpack for her, because her old one has bit the dust.  Just a note for the uninformed:  November is not the month to go looking for kids’ backpacks.  September is.  If your kid’s backpack goes belly up during any other month, you are SOL and your options are extremely limited.

So we had to go to Wally World.  (Cue foreboding music.)  At Wally World, the dotter and I both (for differing reasons) began getting crankier and crankier.

By the time we left, with plans to drop me off at home and the dotter and dad to go look at other stores for bacvkpacks, OmegaDad had Had It with the dotter, and laid down the law.  This included the line, “I don’t want to hear one peep or one whine or any crying.  And if I do…”  At which point, I mentally wondered what threat he was going to come up with that he wouldn’t follow through on…

“If I do, you will be dropped off at home with your mother, and I will go shopping for a backpack for you, and I’m going to find you a blue backpack, with Spiderman on it, and you’re going to use that damned backpack until it falls apart and you’re not going to complain!”

Oh, yeah, thought I.  Riiiight.  Of course, right away, the dotter starts saying something.  And OmegaDad roared, “WHAT DID I SAY?!” and OmegaDotter whines, “But I just–” and OmegaDad says, “That’s a peep.  That’s it.”

Sure enough, he pulls into our driveway, I get out, the subdued dotter sits pitifully in the back seat, and both OmegaDad and I inform her that she didn’t listen to daddy, she did continue to talk and whine, and she was staying home with me.  She followed me sloooowly into the garage, the very picture of abject misery.

Too bad, so sad.

And then, within a half an hour, she had flipped the switch from Miss Whinypants to Dr. Jekyll, my happy, helpful and cheerful companion, and she stayed that way all day long and into the night with not a single whine.

So, anyway, there we are.  We will muddle through.

Of course, the thing is, as Jean pointed out in the comments, to be consistent and provide boundaries.  There’s a certain amount of frustration in me about this; as an example, let me simply point out that the dotter fastens her own seatbelt without a fuss 95% of the time when it’s just me and her in the car, but she neeeeedsss heeeeeelllp 95% of the time when OmegaDad is around.

(Grammar hounds:  Should that be “it’s just me and her”?  Maybe I’ll just rewrite it to “me and the dotter”…”the dotter and I”???  Agh.)

Another big plus of the day is that I did not succumb to the cute little goatlets.  Damn, they were cute!

I said at the tail end of yesterday’s post that I had thought of, but discarded, the idea of doing a post based on “Teenage Wasteland”.

I have reconsidered.  I pulled that post idea out of the dustbin.

Please.  Please.  PUH-leeze tell me that almost-six-year-olds are demons sent to earth to torment us?  Please.

I love my darling OmegaDotter.  I really, truly do.

But y’know what?  Awful confession time:  Right now, I just don’t like being with her.

She is:  snotty.  Whiny.  Snippy.  Tantrummy.  Rude.  Disrespectful.  Mean.  Self-centered.  Sassy.

Just plain horrid.

Like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead…”When she was good, she was very, very good.  But when she was bad…

“She was horrid.”

She is being so horrid that even OmegaDad, in whose eyes she can (generally) do no wrong, has decided that she is whiny, sassy, mean, rude, disrespectful, etc.

I find myself thinking that we have utterly failed.  That we’ve raised a hellion.  A brat.  That we should never have been entrusted with raising a child, because we’re obviously so bad at it.

The worst of it?  Is that, apparently, she’s just a doll at school and at before/after school care.  She saves all this shit for us.  Bah.

Okay, it seems worst because it’s hurtful.  It’s actually not worst, because at least she’s not behaving like a snotty little brat with the rest of the world.

Then Ms. Hyde disappears for a while and Dr. Jekyll reappears, and all is sweetness and light and fun and pleasant.  She hands me notes that say, “To Mommy, Love OmegaDotter”, and that have little “I ♥ you”s scattered about.  She glows at me when she is done with her gymnastics class.  She sings silly songs at me when we’re driving from OmegaDad’s office to her before-school place.  She draws and builds elaborate creations.  Bit by bit, she’s reading.  She can make us laugh like crazy.

And then Ms. Hyde reappears.

My only hope is that I can recall a few younger relatives who were absolute pills at the age of five or six, and who have turned out to be model citizens and fairly nice all-around human beings as adults.

When we went looking at properties here in AK, OmegaDad wanted to find a place with more than one acre that was a horse property (i.e., zoned or HOA’d into allowing horses).

Lo and behold, we now have a greater-than-one-acre horse property.

Of course, a horse is far (may I reiterate that?  FAAAARRRR.) into the future.

However, OmegaDad Has A Plan.

The plan includes goats.

Ahem.

It goes:  We get two goats, cheap.  We feed them, we take care of them, we milk one of them, they have baby goats, we sell baby goats, we stash the $$ in an account, lather, rinse, repeat.  His plan has two prongs:  first, get the kiddo into the habit of tending to helpless animals; second, build up the $$ for a horse.

Now, me, personally?  I’d be more than happy to buy a horse and board it somewhere else.  Wandering around the back forty of our lot has reminded me that horses produce vast amounts of horse poop.  Vast.  We have large heaps back there of nicely decaying horse poop that will no doubt have a good future as mulch for gardens.  But it has driven into me the question:  What exactly does one do with all the horse poop?

Not to mention the thought of any poor critters being dependent upon the dotter for care.  Not to mention the corollary to that, which would be Someone Else Will End Up Tending The Goats.

All of that aside, OmegaDad and dotter are thinking goats.

OmegaDad purchased a magazine at the local pet store all about goats.

Yes, there is a goat magazine.

Cute little buggers, actually.

Anyway, the milking question came up.  The dotter refused to believe you could milk goats.  OmegaMom, ever the computer junkie, located a bunch of videos on YouTube about milking goats.  The dotter was fascinated and grossed out.  Her succinct comment:  “EWWWWWWW!”

So OmegaDad had her practicing on his hand.  That wasn’t really working, so he got out the hand condoms.

(What, you ask, are “hand condoms”??  Latex gloves, used in various areas in the house, such as when painting, when washing lots of things, etc.)

He blew one up.  It was a hit.  We are all sitting in my office, the dotter practicing “milking” the balloon-like latex gloves.  We are slightly giggling.  At some point, the dotter decides to be a goat, and positions the blown-up glove beneath her so OmegaDad can “milk” her.  Some Twister-like confusion occurs, in which the balloon-glove goes whirling around the room, emitting a fart-like sound.

“Daddy!  You pulled my udder off!”

All of which made us giggle even more.

So then OmegaDad decided the dotter needed a somewhat more lifelike imitation of udders.  He and she vanished into the hinterlands of the house.  Then a snickering dotter returned to the office to demand my presence in the downstairs bathroom.

The latest latex glove had been filled with water.  But not filled enough.  It drooped.  It stretched.  It wiggled.  It pointed udders in wildly varying directions.

It made me and OmegaDad howl with laughter.  So much so that my stomach hurt; I haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time.

OmegaDotter was not as amused, and thought we were very silly.  Which, of course, made us howl more.

Alas, the water-filled pseudo-udder popped sometime overnight.

We are such sophisticates.

(Aunt Jean says that L’s issues were due to a series of strokes, not Alzheimer’s, but that it was horrible nonetheless.  Noreen mentions that I should investigate drug side-effects–I think, however, that the memory issues are merely the mental fog of early menopause.  Johnny asks why no pics on the “Wah!” post about the painting job; I tried, Johnny, I really tried, but every picture came out looking blue.  That aside, the paint, when dry, looked better, we have done a second coat, and I think we are content.)

(Gah.  Forgot.  Two more things:

1.  Do please check out my DonorsChoose challenge, and donate $10 to my selected teachers’ projects.  They’re nothing major, just small potatoes.  Can you help?

2.  Is anyone else having problems with the side columns on my blog?  If you resize the browser widthwise, the side columns appear and disappear for me.  Does it do the same for you?  Does anyone have any clue what might cause that?)

Not mine, but a mini-rant prompted by two separate questions on two separate boards I frequent.

One was from the mom of a just-turned-4-year-old in preschool whose teacher had informed the mom that her child was “behind” because he couldn’t use letter sounds.  In other words, he was “behind” because he couldn’t go “buh, buh, buh” when presented with a “B”.  The kid did great guns with the alphabet songs, loved being read to, has a vocabulary that would befit a 2nd grader…

The other was from the mom of a just-turned-4-year-old also in preschool who was thinking of Kumon for her kiddo to tutor him in doing straight lines/curvy lines because, once again, someone made her think he was “behind” because he wasn’t drawing nice straight lines or nice curvy lines.

My succinct mental comment to both comments, in toto:  WTF?!

To expand:  Really.  What.  The.  Fuck.

I’d like to say that if one of the dotter’s preschool teachers had cornered me when she was just turned 4 and given me the same prognosis, I would have laughed in her face.  Unfortunately, I’m quite aware that as a first time mom I lean toward the “I’m clueless, you’re the expert, you must be right” approach.  My WTF is from my superior position as the older, experienced mom of a 5-1/2 year old, looking back.

In addition, I have the experience of knowing what the dotter’s kindergarden curriculum is like.  Right now, they’re doing…one letter per week, focusing on the sounds.  One number per week.  (All stuff the dotter got in her last year in preschool, but soaking in a bit more and beginning to “click”, IMO.)

I read those two questions and my immediate desire is to find those preschool teachers and read them the riot act.  Fer cryin’ out loud.  Kids in preschool are supposed to be having fun.  Circle time.  Playing with Legos™.  Dressing up.  Running around outside.

Everyone claims my dotter is smart, but I can tell you she certainly wasn’t phonemically aware at the start of her fourth year, nor did she do straight or curvy lines very well.  In my few encounters with Mrs. Footstool, her kindy teacher, the general impression she has passed on to me is that the dotter is doing quite well “academically” (socially?  Eh.), so it appears that her lack of those apparently essential skills hasn’t caused her any difficulty.

If any of my readers are preschool or kindy teachers, it would be nice to get a comment or two from y’all about whether my response is more the norm, or whether these two preschool education fascists pressing these kids are more in the know.  (Yes, I know my labeling them that way gives undue pressure to lean towards saying, “Yo!  OmegaMom!  You’re De Man!” but, hey, it’s my blog.  )

(SpaceMom:  Thanks for letting me know my email was down!

To all:  Does anyone know what note opens Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor?)

The past few weeks have featured tantrums of epic proportions in the early morning hours, as we seek to persuade OmegaDotter that she should be wearing socks.

Y’see, five years of living in Arizona have persuaded her that socks are a truly optional thing.  Only on the coldest of the cold days did she really need socks; aside from that, she was a happily sock-free child.  Sandals:  no socks.  Flip-flops:  no socks.  Sneakers, loafers, etc.:  no socks.  We would, of course, have preferred she wear socks with the latter, but it wasn’t a hill to die upon.

She’d wear tights with fancy shoes and dresses, mainly because they were frilly and appealed to the girly-girl in her.

But here we are in Alaska, and winter is barreling down upon us, twin guns of snow and cold aimed straight at the dotter.  I am not looking forward to real winter, and OmegaDad and I have been talking up -15F days and frostbite and cold wet purple toes to the dotter.  In the meantime, it’s been chilly and rainy and pretty miserable most days, and we have had an ongoing battle raging in the mornings to just get her to wear her damned socks.

We are talking so much tantrumming that OmegaMom found herself tired and weeping and really, truly (really, truly) wishing that she could go back five years or more in time, so it could be her and OmegaDad and no screaming shrieking flailing hitting tantrums every morning.

I am not at my best in the mornings.  Having the tantrums applied to my morning grumpiness just doesn’t help.

However, I had heard that socks was one of Those Issues that bedevil kids with sensory problems–and their parents.  So, at the end of my rope one day, I consulted Teh Google, to wit:  “socks sensory disorder”.

I followed links.  I found, at Amazon,

(Whoops.  ‘Scuse me.  While looking for my link to the Special Socks, I got sidetracked by some recommended titles.  Seems that one of my fave kids’ writers, Dianne Wynne Jones, actually has a couple of new Chrestomanci novels out.  I know what I’m buying today!)

…Ahem.  I found, at Amazon, TicTacToe seamless toe socks.   I ordered them.  I waited, yearning, for their delivery.

The dotter, after being informed that I was trying to find her socks that didn’t hurt, also waited, yearning.  She doesn’t like the morning scene, either.

I was, frankly, dubious.  But the reviews?  Holy cow.  Lots of parents who also had dealt with unending morning tantrums, and found the special seamless toe socks to be the only thing that would end the howling.  (What is, you ask, a “seamless toe”?  It is, actually, not seamless, but it is a sock where the toe seam is hand-linked.)

The socks arrived.  The dotter waited while I opened the package.  I eyeballed the socks.  I eyeballed the dotter.  I said, “Oooookay, kiddo, let’s try these things out.”

She tried them on.

She didn’t howl.

She put on her shoes over them.

She said they didn’t hurt.

She has worn them now for three days.

We have had no morning tantrum. 

(We have, however, had other tantrums, sigh.  And I can’t say she is in love with the things, because still her preference is sock-free.  But she puts them on in the morning and puts her shoes on and isn’t sobbing or shrieking.  This is a Good Thing.)

So.  If you’re dealing with a kid with sensory issues, and having the morning shoe/sock problem, I give these socks two thumbs up.

(On the donation front:  We have now fully funded the stapler gal.  Woohoo!  I regret to inform my readers that I didn’t do my donation before writing the post, or else I would have been able to tell everyone that the minimum donation is $10.  Sorry for that missing detail!)

So.  Doin’ the Snoopy Dance here.  Just proud and bustin’ out all over about it.

Jack and Annie #485,271 is called “Carnival at Candlelight”.

We finished it last night (our first chapter book!).  The dotter wanted to look at the cover.  She started sounding out the word “Carnival”.

“Kuh…kah…kaarrrr…karrrennn…karneh…karnehvvvv…karnehval…”

She sounded it all out on her own.  And then she sounded out “at” and “candlelight”.  And though she needed help with the “juh” sound in “magic”, she sounded that and “tree” and “house” out.

(It’s “karnEHval” because I was pronouncing it the Spanish/Italian way because it’s a specific holiday, rather than a carnival at the fair.)

Woohoo!

Don’t push, don’t push, don’t push, says OmegaMom to herself.  Let her do it at her own pace, says OmegaMom to herself.  Don’t push!

Speaking of pushing, Jiaozi has a great series of posts up about the kindergarden experience kids encounter these days.  Read ‘em and weep.  I am so thankful that the dotter’s kindergarden (so far) is relatively laid back–they’re doing a letter a week, a number a week, things that the dotter already knows, but they’re doing it slowly and gently and not pushing it which gives the kids time to just…be kids, get to know each other, learn the rules of the school game.

OmegaBro, my fuddy duddy brother, has a (gasp, it’s not possible!) 13-year-old and 11-year-old, and has been dismayed by the amount of homework and pushing they’ve gotten in all their school districts.  There’s a lot of debate about the role of homework and the necessity of homework and how much homework kids should do…but there’s my Ph.D. bro who doesn’t remember doing that much homework in elementary school and still managed to get three college degrees trying to figure out what is best for his kids.

I read to the dotter.  She loves to write words, so we’ve been working together on sounding things out so she knows what letters to use–”What sound starts ‘horse’?  Huh-huh-huh.”  “Rrrrr–what’s that?”  “What’s the last sound?  Horssssse.”  And suddenly she’s turning it around into looking at letters and turning it into a sound, rather than taking a sound and turning it into a letter.  I’m pleased as punch, and I’m pleased that we haven’t made it a chore or made her dislike it, and I’m desperately holding myself in check so that she discovers how much fun reading can be (once you practice it) all on her own.  There’s a small amount of dismay in the foreshadowing on her reading coloring page that she is to turn in once a month to Mrs. Shoehook–this year, the kids are just coloring in an item for each day they are read to or read; next year, we’re going to have to specify how many minutes we’ve read/she’s read, and how many pages.  Sigh.  I just want her to learn to love it.

We’ve been having drizzly rain here, and snow up on the mountains.  I took a few pics so you could see what we see down the street (alas, not from our house) and near OmegaDad’s office.

This is down the street that our cul-de-sac opens onto:

This is a view of the same mountains from OmegaDad’s office, about eight miles closer:

And a more panoramic view:

Dig those craggy peaks!

Onto the ethnic princess saga.  First, check out Richard Querin’s version of Miss Kenya, looking like an exotic belly dancer.  Then there’s my feeble attempt at an Asian princess.  Please note that it is a work-in-progress, that I am quite aware that the proportions are off, I realize the dress needs to be longer and flowy-er, and I don’t want to hear any commentary on the hands.  Do y’hear me?!  NO commentary.  And I don’t want to hear any sniggering from the peanut gallery, either.  I have a problem with hands, and think that I will just end up splicing on some model’s hands, a la Frankenstein.  I will simply say that I think that, right now, my AP is a cross between John Travolta (Stayin’ Alive) and a cheerleader:

Oh, yeah, and she needs feet.  And a crown or tiara.  And a magic wand or scepter.  And new hands (but we’re not talking about hands).

This evening, after I read a chapter from Jack and Annie to the dotter (The Magic Treehouse #9,357,381,220) and she was snuggling into her little pallet by the side of our bed, we were talking.  Someone is telling her she’s a “lucky girl”, and I tried to pry more info out of her, which didn’t succeed.  But I did tell her I was a lucky mommy.

Anyway, the conversation then veered off in