Cold Spaghetti

Friday morning, Oak Street.
About our costumes. We’re Mardi Gras Superheros: Will is Captain Mardi Gras, Kate is the faithful sidekick Lagniappe, and Paul and I are The Beignet Bunch. The idea came from Will’s obsession with Superheros and a purple cape he made at school.
We’re wearing about 8 layers of clothes each (it was a chilly morning) but the top layer is a purple t-shirt… which was incredibly difficult to find. I ordered from an online t-shirt place; working to find sizes in kids to adults that was going to be the same color was impossible. When the order came, half of the stuff was delayed and we ended up being some in long sleeves (Paul) and some in short. Paul and I are wearing scrubs for bottoms. Will is wearing purple tights from a girls Hello Kitty pajama set I found on sale in some megastore. Kate is wearing a purple glittery jumper that came from Clare. The capes were made by a crafter on Etsy who I highly recommend to any and all; the capes are fantastic (more pics of them to follow) and she was wonderful to work with. I made the embelms with sticky sided felt, glittery felt, and hot glue. Paul spray painted rubber boots with metallic gold spray paint. I was going to make golden shorts for Will but gave up after 30 minutes of hand sewing got really old and talked Paul into spray painting a pair of Will’s underwear. It worked perfectly. Paul’s Helmet came from MardiGrasOutlet.com and arrived the day after we ordered it. Will’s King Hat came from Jefferson Variety, a local hole-in-the-wall supplier of all the fancy fabric and trim for your Mardi Gras costuming needs.

View of the full regala… with Paul and I wearing Abeona’s signature throw: the Golden NuNu.
Kate, getting ready for her ride. She was pretty subdue for the morning.
Emmy lead the way as “Queen of the Boil” (complete with cajun spice and tiny crawfish in her big net skirt). Ana and Will eagerly dolled out loot to watchers. Fun moment: hearing people call out: “Throw me somethin’ Mister!” to them as they went by.
Our band: Panorama Jazz Band! TWELVE musicians! They were absolutely fabulous. It was a great!
There were concerns of how pulling the float would impact it’s delicate construction (and who could drill holes in that beautiful paint job?) — so Paul pushed it. We forgot to make a float sign to go in the front. Something to add for next year’s royalty!
The parade crossing Carrollton.
Back in front of the school… superheros compare their get-ups.
Will and Ana hold hands and smile… preparing for their entrance and Mardi Gras toast!
Entrance of the King and Queen. Notice Will’s face… he didn’t quite have Ana’s sense of drama in this moment. (She waved and walked demurely to her seat.)
Toasting! After watching the Mayor toast the King and Queen of Zulu this morning, I much preferred the sincerity of this toasting.
The Little Man!

When walking with Kate, one must be very careful. This is because she will move, as fast as possible, toward any animal she sees… especially if it’s a dog. This includes, but is not limited to, dogs walking down the street, dogs walking across the street, dogs in a house down the block, dogs whizzing by in a car, and dogs that Kate makes up in her imagination.

To interrupt Kate’s love-fest with a dog, you will need to physically remove her from the animal. This will result in THE POUT.THE POUT may last an especially long time, at least until she is re-united again with her animal love, or is found a suitable replacement. Her brother qualifies as a suitable replacement. As does her family “gato,” Scout. Her Daddy and Mommy do not.

When faced with THE POUT, one needs constant vigilance. THE POUT gives her certain super-powers aimed at circumventing all attempts of control. This includes, but is not limited to, kicking, running, fussing, wiggling, and going boneless. Note picture below: she is Assuming The Position. Prepare for defensive maneuvers.

On your birthday, you explained exactly what I should expect from a 4-year old:

“4-year olds are big boys. They don’t hit, or whine, or kick, or talk back, or have a bad attitude.”

Whoa.

I had my doubts. After all, you’d spent the months leading up to age 4 testing almost all of the above… lapsing into defiant stand-offs that involve my carrying your thrashing body back to your room for time alone. Perhaps all of this effort wore you out? Because honestly, so far, the reality of you at age 4 has been closer to your prediction (outlined above) than mine (continuing increase in maddening defying behavior and tantrums). I remain skeptical of a complete transformation but am happy to be in this place while it lasts.

One of the things I am enjoying most about you is that you love art projects. Ever since “Miss Georgia” came from the Bead Shop to teach you to make earrings, you’ve been begging to make jewelry. I am not sure you appreciate how incredible happy it makes me to hear you ask to do art and craft projects and I am doing my best to take it all in stride, lest you realize the power the request has over me. After we put Kate to bed, you and I share an hour each night doing these projects together. We paint, make jewelry, draw, make ornaments, and string Mardi Gras beads into garland for the Christmas tree.
This last activity was what we were up to when you sailed from the stool where you were perched holding beads, hitting the wooden armrest of the sofa on the way down. Rather than climb down (as you’ve done many times from this same stool you sit on regularly to play pinball), you decided to jump at an angle, as if to land next to the bag of beads. I saw the blood before you did, seeping out from between your fingers as you covered your eye. That sight — you holding your hand over your eye, screaming out while blood began to pour — definitely aged me as I considered the possibility of a serious eye injury. For the record, you only cried for a short minute. Either due to my immediate response, cradling you in my arms and speaking softly and quietly to calm you, or because you are like your sister and have a diamond-clad head. We were all very thankful to see that you missed injuring your eye, bursting open the tissue in your eyebrow instead. We are also very thankful that we had you fixed by a doctor, as the location and depth of your wound made a level of complication that we could not have addressed. Now you have one purple eyebrow patch over your right eye, making folks suggest you’re sporting a Drew Brees look. (Believe it or not, I still don’t have a picture of the injury. Coming soon, though.)
Speaking of right and left. You have begun to master these directional specifics. Although you are committed to getting them backwards. I explained how you use your fingers to make an “L” for left, but realize this is a mute point since you are similarly committed to writing letters backward.

Kate remains your biggest fan and your biggest bully. Rarely does a day go by when she hasn’t clobbered you with something. We are working hard on reigning her in, showing you that the behavior is no way tolerated, reminding you of how we all have to work together to teach her how to treat others. Still, we realize that what really needs to happen is for you to just clobber her back. Of course we will never suggest this, and if you were to take up such a position we’d correct you accordingly with much displeasure. But we think that a little dose of her own medicine would help her learn a bit faster.Despite the regular beatings, you adore your sister. At least, when she’s not playing with the toy you Just Had or taking apart the train track you Just Fixed or pushing the truck you Just Took Down or banging on the drum too loud when you Just Want To Play Guitar. All of these things are major offenses in your book and cause for incredible whining. In general, we are supportive of your arguments of injustice but the truth is that we have a hard time caring that much about it. If your Dad and I have learned anything about parenting, we have learned that parents don’t want justice, we want QUIET.In the face of our resolution that you Work It Out, you have actually begun to find ways to play with your sister for extended periods of time (i.e.: longer than 1 minute). Like the other morning, when your Dad was in the hospital and I was alone with you two, trying to get dressed in the back of the house. I could hear you, laughing and playing together up front. I was so proud, almost not believing that your playtime had gone so long without either one of you breaking the mood with an ear-splitting wail. When I finished and went to retrieve you both, I found that you were bonding over art — happily planting stickers all over your rocking chairs and supplementing the colorful menagerie with marker ink. This is now a common theme: that you and Kate find an uncanny comradery when the two of you are doing something you are not suppose to be doing.

In your 4-year check-up, you got FOUR injections. Two in each arm. You spent two days talking about how you were going to “get shots” from the doctor, so much that you seemed excited about it. When the moment came, you hesitated and then started to stutter: “B..b…but I d.. d.. don’t like to get POKED!” By the time you got out “poked,” Dr. Oates was done with two of the shots and you had an alligator tear pouring down your cheek. Aside from the time a nurse failed to hold your leg, causing you to kick and the needle to tear into the tissue of your thigh, this was the only time you’ve cried tears for an immunization. The good news is that you’re now immunized for just about everything we can immunize you for — so it will be awhile before you have to endure another poke.

At the same visit, you had the following stats:
Weight: 36 pounds, 7 ounces (75%)
Height: 42 1/5″ (90%)

These were very exciting numbers because it means you’re tall enough to ride most of the rides at Disney World. It also shows that you are actually thickening up; we’ve had to loosen the waist adjustment on your pants in order for you to button them up. Finally — eating Granna’s pie with PapPap (read: 16 ounces of whipped cream with each ounce of pie) is working to fill you in.

Each night, we still sing our songs. “Feed the Birds” remains the favorite. But when you’re truly ready for bed, you request “Stay Awake,” and sing the first few words with me before falling quiet. Like in the movie, you close your eyes in the middle and by the end, are asleep.

The Preface: We have no child safety equipment in our home. None. However, we do not have stairs in our home. My parents have even less safety measures in their home. And they DO have stairs. Big, tall, hardwood ones. With spindles to get caught in, slippery floors to lose traction on, and hard surfaces to pack the punch.

So how do we keep an eye on ever-so-active Kate? And how did we keep an eye on Will before he was old enough to tackle them on his own? This is how: we communicate constantly, keeping tabs on who is watching which child where and providing updates when the situation starts to change. All the time clarifying and updating the who, what, and where.

Somehow, this didn’t happen so well this weekend.

See these stairs? Straight, long, tall, hard, and unyielding?Yup. What you’re now thinking is exactly what happened.

Kate fell down these stairs. From the top, or at least very very very close to it. It is a fall that could have killed her, should have seriously injured her, and in the very least must have decently hurt her. The thudding sound of her body going down these stairs is, without question, the worst sound I have ever heard.
I found her at the bottom, lying on her back, having just hit the bottom floor. Still in her hand were pieces of clothes (freshly washed and folded and placed among our suitcase upstairs) with others lying up and down the stairs around her. It was obvious that she had climbed the stairs alone, rummaged through the clothes, and chosen some to carry back down. Somewhere near the top, it all went very wrong.

I reached her so quickly that she hadn’t yet started to cry. She was in that moment of shock and surprise, the split second before you register pain. She let out the first cry after her eyes met mine. But, surprisingly, her cries did not last long — they were very short-lived, actually. She did have (has) a bruise on her forehead and red marks along the right side of her cheek, but nothing that looked truly serious. No blackout. No vomiting. No strange eye movement. No odd limb positions, pain while moving, or stiffness in walking. Nothing. After a minute of crying, pushing away bags of ice, and fussing over us looking at her head and eyes, she calmed down, pointed outside, and asked for “bubbles.”

It seemed like I was in worse shape… shaking, swallowing back bile, trying not to think about the sounds etched in my head and the pictures they painted. I have never been so afraid.

Some lessons:
— No matter who is watching, supposed to be watching, or assumed to be watching … everything is always on my watch. I am having a much harder time being around while others keep an eye on her and am definitely more nervous over her.
— Kate’s head is a diamond. Nothing is harder.
— Kate will make an excellent addition to the NFL or NHL.
— Kate does not learn well from accidents. The very next day, I stopped packing in a moment of dread and rushed to the stairs on instinct… and found her halfway up the stairs.

To my children: please, let this be the last of your near-death experiences. It’s too much for your poor Mother to bear.

Will was a week or so shy of 16 months when we started to train him to self-soothe to sleep. I felt guilty about it then but was getting desperate for a good night’s sleep… one free of kicks, punches, and pokes. I’m fine with the family bed and have no problem with a 1-year old sharing it… but either because we’re smooshed in the Queen (note to future parents: forgo the crib, invest in a King mattress) or because my children are maniacs out to destroy me, both children go into attack mode during sleep.

Kate gets herself to sleep at school each day, so I know she is capable of drifting off without me. However, when I am around, she seems to forget this. In fact, when I am around, she makes a point to wake up every 30 minutes or so just to remind me that she needs me to fall back asleep. Even this would be okay, if the 30 minutes in between those awake moments were not filled with Bruce Lee moves directed at my tender parts.

I say all of this to relieve myself of the guilt I feel for starting Kate on sleep training. It actually went well, the getting her to sleep part. With Will, the first night involved him throwing a huge temper-tantrum, rocketing his toys out of the crib one by one and finally, when there was nothing else to throw, taking off his pants and tossing them. I remember that when he was too exhausted to fuss, he started to clap to get my attention. (We did the Supernanny “stay in the room without eye contact” method.) He still joined us in the wee hours of the night until he was almost 2 and when he did make this transition to sleeping in his bed through the night, it was on his own schedule. I figured this will be the same for Kate. We have been talking about needing to do something for awhile and decided to go for it. Paul has little patience for being disrupted in his sleep and I can’t handle it alone every night. I just really need her to sleep a few hours on her own. Maybe just for half the night? Four hours? Is that too much to expect from a 1-year old? She is a few months younger than Will was when we started him down this path, but I know this is something she can do because she does it everyday! Please Kate… just go to sleep for us, on your own! I am so sorry, but I can’t fight with you every night.

So, tonight, I nursed her, cuddled her, sang to her… and put her in her crib. She started out happy, bounced up and pointed towards our bedroom, signaling that she expected to go back. After a few minutes of quiet fussing, she let us know she wasn’t happy. But it didn’t last particularly long (20 minutes?) and finally, Kate went to sleep. It was hard for me to do — mostly because I feel it was completely wrong. Rational parenting makes sense to me. What other species allow their off-spring to cry themselves to sleep? What would it mean for children to decide when they are ready to leave their parents bed? If we stripped away the need to fit our children into convenient places in our lives and removed all the cultural lessons that tell us to use cribs… if we did all of that, would we ever even consider the thought of not sleeping with our babies? I feel sorry, sad, and frustrated to be giving in to these conveniences.

As I write this, Kate is crying. She was asleep for a little over an hour before waking. Paul is trying to help her but she is pretty miserable. If I get her, she’ll be up again in an hour and then again in another half hour to hour for the rest of the night. She’ll kick herself awake, be cranky, pull on me to nurse, nurse, then squirm and kick and be miserable until I fight her to be still enough to sleep… then wake up again in 30 minutes. This has been my life for over a month and I need help changing it. I’m sorry Kate. I have to believe that, in this moment, I am not teaching things that will cause you to loose trust in the world, in me, or in yourself.

Shower time, two nights ago. I’m in the shower. I’ve turned over Babycakes, who is being dressed by her father in the back bedroom. Will is on the toliet, doing whatever he can to delay getting into the shower. Not for any real reason, Just Because.

Finally, it’s been too long. My requests for him to get in have been blown off or given lame excuses; no more will be tolerated. I open the shower door. “Will, it’s time. Get into the shower now.” He looks up at me with a slack, relaxed face. It is obvious he sees no need to hurry.

“no.”

And there it was. No drama with it, no capital, no bolding, no italics. Just “no.”

I’ve heard tell of when parents break. They get pushed too far and the demands on them culminate into one moment where they launch into an uncontrollable rage. For me, this usually materializes in a voice that I didn’t know I had — one that sounds a bit like the monster “Zhoul” in Ghostbusters (you remember the one: “There is no Diana, only ZHOUL.”) This voice rumbles up my ribcage and pounds through my throat, emphasizing in hard consonants the terrible things that will occur if my words are not obeyed RIGHT NOW. The voice is so effective, I don’t need to say much. Things HAPPEN with the voice.

But today, the voice didn’t come. I held it in, trying to maintain the composure that I’m told it is Most Important to have in These Situations. Instead, to my surprise, something else happened.

Right after that calm little “no” ventured out of Will’s lips, so gently, as if putting a toe into a pool of water of unknown temperature, just after that little rebuttal, in that first moment of pause — my head began to shake on my shoulders. And then, suddenly, my head began to spin. (I know what you are thinking, but I promise: I Am Not Making This Up.) Around and around it swirled in circles, my eyes going large, blinking to accommodate the 360 degrees of bathroom I was taking in with each rotation. I was completely out of my body; it was an unworldly experience. So much so, that I was convinced I was under the control of Another Being — I began to worry if I’d suddenly be vomiting pea soup ala The Exorcist. But just as I had that thought, I heard at loud “POP!” And just like that, my head stopped spinning and slowly rested back on my shoulders, shaking as it regained balance.

I blinked. Then I reached over, plucked Will up by the tops of his arms and plopped him in the shower.

Will (walking into the front room, after his bedtime): “Mommy, I had an accident.”

“You had an accident in your pull-up?” (He sleeps in pull-ups. We are so not ready to tackle night potty training for Will, who sleeps with an intensity most NOLA folk save for Ash Wednesday.)

Will: “Umm… I’m wet. My bed is all wet.”

“What do you mean your BED is WET? Do you mean your pull-up?” (You can start to hear the fear in my voice.)

Will: “MY PANTS are wet. I had an accident.” (I look closely. The sides of his pajama shorts are a bit wet. I’ve put it together and am not ready to accept it.)

“Will, you wear your pull-up to bed so that you don’t have any accidents. What happened to your pull-up?”

silence.

“Will?”

Speaking softly with his chin pressed tightly to his chest, shamefully looking to the floor in growing remorse, “itookitoffandtinkledonmybed.”

Thanks to the generous support of family and friends, Paul raised over $800 (when cash donations were totaled, I think it was around $860?) in ONE DAY for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. So either Paul has a lot of supportive family and friends, or a lot of people who were willing to pay to see his bald head. Thank you!Paul’s nervous laugh as things got started…
Nothing fancy! Others went down to mohawk first… unfortunately, Paul was a little nervous and camera-shy and didn’t realize he had the option!
Fellow shaver (who we ended up hanging out with at the St. Patrick’s parties the next day) hammed it up for cameras and audience.
Paul’s pink and blonde hair floated by in the breeze…
All done!
Will couldn’t keep his hands off Paul’s head — “it’s scratchy,” “it’s really short,” and “it’s shaved” were among Will’s responses. Later that night, he would also ask Paul “Daddy, why’d you shave your head?”
Paul holds a lock of his hair. We saved it. I have no idea why.
Local muse Chris Rose, who came across as much more insecure and gruff in person than I would have thought, gets shaved. He was funny (expected, as he’s writes with wonderful humor), a bit socially awkward, clearly nervous, and had a bit of a rough edge that seemed more a result of his awkwardness and nerves than anything. I wanted to get a picture of him and Paul together, but he ran off quickly after his shaving so we missed the opportunity.
But we DID take pictures with fellow shavee Ecoee, whose son Jude and partner Melody are friends from Music Together and future Abeona parents. Jude is the same age as Kate and weighs 26+ pounds… almost 10 pounds more than Kate!
Many Abeona kids came with their parents. It didn’t take long for the kids to find the one puddle in the lot to splash in!
Will went crazy in the puddle for a good half hour.
With many friends! It was a good distraction (along with hot dogs and ice cream) for the kids while parents talked and met with other community members, businesses, and Oak Street vendors. It was also a great opportunity for the Abeona community to meet more people in our neighborhood.
With all of the stomping and commotion, it was just a matter of time until…
…Will fell in the mud. It is telling that Will was the ONLY one to fall.
The mud didn’t stop him. He continued to jump and found a balloon to get stuck in.
By the time we were ready to leave, he was so muddy and wet that we had to strip him down to his undies. He wore Paul’s t-shirt (a lagniappe from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation) to enjoy two hot dogs before heading home.

Paul spent the last week in Sierra Vista, Arizona, leaving me as a single mother with two children and no bathtub. Lucky for me, our friendly neighbors were more than willing to let us use their tub. Even luckier for me, Violet spent a few days here during her vacation tour of the Gulf Coast.Violet was our neighbor in Michigan and she and her husband, Millard, are friends and role models. It was a bummer that Paul missed her visit, but frankly, she came at the perfect time. As a research-minded, academy-familiar, professional mother of two, Violet is just about the only person I feel completely comfortable talking to about my professional endeavors because She Gets It. I found out Monday afternoon that my Wenner Gren application did not get advanced, mostly because the reviewer felt it lacked in “theoretical anthropological significance.” Considering my committee chair, a Wenner Gren reviewer for several years, felt it was easily one of the top he’s read, I felt a bit wounded by the letter. But after an evening of licking my wounds, I was able to brush it off and move on.

So Tuesday, I had a meeting with another committee member, who was shocked at Wenner Gren’s decision, but felt it a good thing for two reasons: my focus is so much changed that it may have been worth taking a new funding direction and increase the budget. Current literature on RDS suggests using a Deft (design effect) greater than 2, greatly increasing sample size. That, combined with recent changes in focus, was putting things in a different light. I felt better after discussing all of this with Beth. But I felt even better after talking it over with Violet, who immediately advised brushing it off and going for more. *sigh*

Wednesday, I spent the day with Violet. We went to a local gym, where I oogled the FOUR outdoor pools (two just for kids) and contemplated how many organs I’d have to sell for a summer membership to take the kids to the pool. We enjoyed breakfast at Oak Street Cafe while Charlie entertained in the background. In the afternoon, we toured the 9th ward (particularly the lower 9, downstream from the industrial canal) — my first time in going post-Katrina (more on that in another post). In the evening, we left the kids with favorite babysitter and friend Michelle and had an UH-MAZING dinner at Dick and Jenny’s. And each night, Violet helped me get the kids bathed and in bed. It was wonderful.

Thursday, we took a walk in Audubon Park. We noticed the egrets and ibis (and maybe others?) mating and nesting in the trees at Ochsner Island, passed the violin player practicing under the oaks, and regrouped. Before leaving, Violet came to Abeona to take a few pictures with the kids.
Thanks, Violet, for a wonderful visit!

Now that Will is out of diapers, a whole new world has been introduced to us: KIDS IN UNDERPANTS.

Even with the choices of disposables, cloth, characters, and brand, diapers are collectively ambiguous, nameless, and generic. At least they seem that way compared to the fast-paced world of Underwear. Underwear is a serious business. Kids talk about their underwear with the same intensity that they discuss treats, toy, and trips to the zoo. They announce that they’re wearing it to strangers. Give the slightest hint of interest (or maybe even not) and chances are, that little guy or gal will flash some Dora, Spiderman, or Bob the Builder.

Last week, Will spent a Saturday back in Pull-Ups because they were BOB Pull-ups. The generic pirate undies, although good for “pirate days,” weren’t cutting it 24/7. In the pushover mindset of parents who are willing to do whatever it takes to solidify successful potty training, we found Bob Underwear. Will found the box of undies the moment he came home and he acted as if he’d just stumbled upon the world’s largest vat of ice cream, bouncing around the room with infectious joy. We couldn’t help but get excited, too, “Hooray, Bob Underwear for our Big Boy Will! We’re so proud of you!!” How silly was I to think that he would be able to resist the temptation of wearing them long enough for me to wash them? Unthinkable. But I held firm and insisted that they needed to be washed first.

As a side note, parents of preschoolers need to think — and think hard — on the things they insist to their children. Intense feeling about something may raise a level of interest in said child that is not anticipated. By insisting on clothes being washed before wearing, I impressed upon Will the importance of LAUNDRY. Which is why I keep opening the washer to find random dirty clothes (read: Will’s underpants) and a huge scoop of Tide tossed in with the freshly washed clothes. While having a front loader does give him better access, visiting my parents this weekend proved that top loading machines are no matter to our laundry-helping kid. Will is so enthusiastic about his Underwear that he even will help load the dryer to move things along.
Another Underwear issue:

Me: “Will, your Underwear is on backwards.”
Will: “No it’s not.”
Me: “The picture of Spiderman goes on your butt.”
Will: “No, IT DOESN’T. It goes in front so I can see it!”

Good darn point. Who are the pictures there for, anyway? Who and what are those Underpants manufacturers thinking about when they put the pictures on the backside?? Attention: manufacturers of children’s underpants! Pictures go on the front! Children’s underpants are made for the children who wear them, not those who might be looking at their underpant-clad behinds, as noted my brilliant, Underpant-wearing child.