Providence, Oh Providence

 
I survived my first week at my new job.  I week during which B was on the other side of the country for her job (which, from what I saw on facebook, seems to involve watching Dodgers games and eating fancy meals), and being woken up in the middle of Sunday night by a puking child.   My new job is right in downtown Providence, and I got to walk around a bit to get my bearings and drink quite a bit of coffee in local shops. 

I've lived in a few cities, and gone on interviews in many, many more.  My specialization seems to be the small post industrial (aren't they all) city, with a good dose of Rust Belt.  In each of these cities, I got a tour describing the place as a "city of neighborhoods"- aren't they all.  Providence isn't post-industrial like Chicago or Pittsburgh, but it is certainly post-manufacturing, and you can see that written all over the city.

My morning commute brings me to Kennedy Plaza, the central bus transfer point for the system.  The Plaza brings together all kinds of people, but overall it reflects the demographics of bus-riders who are poorer than the city as a whole, and described in one local NPR commentary as "the 3rd world" of Providence.  They also blast classical music through the loudspeakers on the Plaza.  I assume this choice was based on some broken windows theory that classical music keeps away the riffraff or generally classes up the place.  In practice, I can say that it is very disconcerting to stride away from the Plaza to a soundtrack of "Flight of the Valkyries."  My associations are either Apocalypse Now or Brown Shirts, and I'm assuming that neither of those was what the city fathers and mothers were going for. 

Bitties and Yummy Bears, Oh My

We had 12 hours of crisis last week when we realized after dinner that LB's very important blanket named "Bitty" was missing.  B spent some time cruising the mean streets between our house and daycare thinking that perhaps bitty had been dropped (passive voice intentional) on our morning walk.  No Bitty.  LB went to sleep whimpering "Bitty got a little bit lost.  Bitty got a little bit lost." And rejecting all other blankets, after rubbing them between her little fingers, and finding them wanting.  She woke up crying at least three times during the night.

B and I were wrung out.  I may have started crying once.  It was the worst thing since the NICU and the time after the NICU when I dropped LB on her head.

All three of us walked to daycare the next morning and the adults kept our eyes peeled for Bitty.  No Bitty.  I was imagine years of interupted sleep.  We walked into daycare and there was Bitty on the front desk!  Then LB remembered (confabulated) that her mischievous friend Z. had removed Bitty from our stroller, and Bitty had gotten a little bit lost.  Perhaps, but we are just glad to have bitty.

Potty training continues to the sounds of "I need a yummy bear!  I neeeed a yuuuummmy bear!"

I managed to get through my first day of work with no puking, cursing, or crying, so I'll call that a win.  I ordered a couple dresses from Land's End, before they told me the dress code is "very casual."  The dresses here and here are flattering and nice fabric.  I was afraid they would be too low cut, but they're fine. And, for anyone who's nursing and looking for professional-type nursing clothes, these dresses would be perfect.  They are faux wrap style with a lot of give, and they seem a lot less expensive than dresses marketed as nursing dresses.  This is my first and last fashion post.

Gut Shabbos, Providence

The most visible minority in the neighborhood where we live are Orthodox Jews.  Depending on how much you want to stretch your legs, we are walking distance to at least four Orthodox congregations including a "modern and inclusive Orthodox Synagogue" and an Orthodox Shul that makes no claims to be either modern or inclusive.  There are also a couple Orthodox day schools, and I love to see the Orthodox girls riding their bikes the wrong way down our main drag like bats out of hell with their skirts and braids billowing out behind them.

Orthodox families give a certain rhythm to the neighborhood, mothers and children rushing on Friday afternoon errands, and a steady stream of people walking north on Saturday morning.  Today I was moving against the foot traffic, hurrying to my hair appointment, part of the Saturday morning dog walking, baby strolling, coffee drinking types.  Halfway to my destination there was rugby practice on one side, with knots of Orthodox boys in black suits leaning over the fence to watch.  The other side was the Brown football game (who knew Brown had a football team) complete with girls in short-shorts, tailgaters, and piped in music ("Last Friday Night").  The girls were interspersed with families, one with a fashionable mom in a long dark skirt pushing a baby carriage, accompanied by a stair-step gaggle of daughters in matching, elaborately stitched dresses like something right out of my childhood All of a Kind Family books.

It's Potty Time (sung in the voice of Elmo's dad)

 It seems like they should sell Elmo underwear at Target, but, at least at ours, they don't.  Instead we have kitties and ponies, which is ridiculous, but we couldn't see buying Spiderman or Cars underwear just to make a point, which was a good call since a young child only wants to wear one particular pair of Hello Kitties. 

Services, Services, Services (in which I complain about that which no one wishes to hear me complain about in real life)

We had LB's IEP transition meeting today.  For those of you lucky enough not to know, that is the transition that three year olds make from getting services through Early Intervention to getting services through the school system.  So far this shift has required

PT eval (2 service providers present)
Speech eval (3 sessions) (1 PT present)
1 meeting to describe transition process (3 providers present)
1 (hour long!) paperwork meeting (1 provider)
1 meeting to meet our transition coordinator (2 providers)
1 meeting to meet IEP team and sign forms (5 professionals!)
(and I was supposed to get LB a hearing screen, but I didn't because she hears fine)

In a few weeks we'll have
The meeting where they tell us if she qualifies for services

Do you see where I'm going with this.  We sat at a conference table with five professional people (presumably making professional salaries) signed a couple things, and they ushered us out the door.  How much did that meeting cost in labor hours?  Because I can tell you that the benefit to us was $0 (and that's being generous because it actually cost us money in lost time).

It is so frustrating, because I know the system exists for a good reason, and some of its exactness and convolutedness does exist to protect parents and kids, to make sure parents understand the process, to make sure that everyone has access to the services they need.  But, it's enough to turn a lady into a small government libertarian.

They really need some kind of screening matrix that rates
1) The complexity of the child's needs (if LB had multiple serious issues, we probably would want to have an actual sit down meeting to make sure nothing was overlooked)
2) parental resources (some parents do need to have all of the forms read aloud to them, and it should be their right to hear that information.  B and I do not need to have things read aloud to us, and doing so is an annoying waste of resources)

The also need to modernize from paper triplicate forms!  Dear lord.  Most of the stuff that takes hours in person could be done online in minutes.  And not all parents have access to a computer and a scanner, but it would be so much cheaper to buy a family a tablet and pay for their internet access than to make them schelp around town to sign forms.  Even it they modernized the system, they could still have some dedicated people would work with families who needed the most support and keep providing them with in-person meetings. 

Cooking From the Box

We have started getting a weekly veggie box (mostly veggie, with some fruit) from Farm Fresh RI.  The big draw is that we can pick up the box at daycare, which is so convenient it makes me want to cry.  (If you are anywhere near Salem, CT you should check out my friends at Provider Farm, they are talented farmers and some of the hardest working people I know!) When we were in Chicago we did Angelic Organics, which is an absolutely amazing CSA, and then we did one in Baltimore that wasn't so impressive.  Farm Fresh isn't a tradition CSA, instead they work with multiple farms and bundle and deliver the box.  I thought the first week had great variety and quality, but was a little skimpy.  For week 2, the box was absolutely packed and had great variety and quality, so far I'm really happy with FF.

Last week I made: roast tomatillo salsa, bok choy stir fry, and baba ganoush (do you know how long it took a girl from NH to spell all of those foods?).  The baba ganoush was great because I had one medium eggplant, just enough for me and I'm the only person who likes it, and I had all the ingredients on hand.  LB ate 6 peaches, and we ate some of the tart little apples.

This week, red salsa (we got a good sized bag of mixed hot peppers and they are hot!), stuffed peppers, and borsht (I think I'm going to make it with little meatballs).  We also have green beans and cooking greens for sides.  

We got more apples this week, and I think they are just too tart for eating raw.  I could make applesauce, but I think I'll make more decadent apple squares.  I love the box!

"I'm All Jacked Up!"

It's our new family motto.  I was trying to quickly cram LB into her carseat, but it wasn't working and it seemed like maybe there was a bag of cheerios under her somewhere, and I was afraid I'd pinch her with the clips, and I said "This is all jacked up!" For the next 15 minutes a mournful child repeated, "I all jacked up! I all jacked up!"

And we laughed and laughed.  But we are all all jacked up.  Sick, wheezy, asthmatic, adults overworked, child feeling the pressure of being a big girl.  Clearly crappy lung season clearly starts early here than it did down South, but we are not on it.  We have a big meeting for LB on Monday about her move from IFSP to (potential) IEP and I'm gearing up for operation "make sure LB gets services."

Something like a first-day-of-school picture

With neb