Schools, Schools, Schools: Part 1

We signed LB up.  She is officially a 6%er having gotten into her new school by lottery. It's a small community charter dual language school (they offer Spanish and Portuguese tracks, and she will be in the Spanish track). Our little unicorn baby.  I feel cautiously optimistic about our choice, but I can also see the messed up ways that our current distressed system of public education structured our choices. I like our neighborhood school a lot.  It offers some things that the charter does not: gym every day, a gym that can be used for indoor recesses, a big (if seriously rundown) facility, a stage, a community of people who live nearby.  But the way the system is structured, we can only choose the charter now.  And if it doesn't work out, we can go back to our neighborhood school, but we can't move the other way.  So LB will start out as a unicorn.

And the class and race dynamics: the school LB got into is a school White People Want (WPW).  As a district 80% of kids in Providence Public Schools are classified as low-income, and 91% are kids of color-although in terms of total population, Providence is slightly less than half white people.  Latinos make up the majority of kids in the district.  Our neighborhood school has long been both the blackest and whitest elementary school in the city, but lately has been drawing fewer white kids (although there are still plenty of white kids in the neighborhood) and more latino kids.  At least in Elementary, Providence schools work on an 80/20 formula.  To register your child, you go to the office in South Providence, take a number, sit in a spartan room full of rows of chairs, with a big sign that says "do not form a line, wait for your number to be called." When you go back into the office, you submit say yes or no to the lottery for the public (not charter) dual language option, and then you submit 3 ranked choices.  Your zoned school is established by your address, and zoned schools draw 80% of their students from their zone and 20% from out of zone.  As our zoned school has become less popular, the zoned spots don't usually fill.  It is all very complicated.  And schools don't seem to do a very good job of outreach (and clearly don't have resources to do a good job of outreach).

The result: the most desirable school among people we know is the other Eastside elementary that is out of our zone, and it's 40% white (likely the whitest public school in Providence).  Our neighborhood school is about 20% white, and I believe African American students make up the largest single racial demographic group-and I can't help but think that a rising percentage of African American students correlates with the school becoming less popular among white parents, although white parents don't say so.  LB's new school will be both highly diverse (majority latino, 25% white kids, 10% black kids, slightly majority low-income kids) and unrepresentative of the district.

Providence loses wealthy white families (WWF) (and I'd lump me and LB in that category even though the feds say we qualify as a low-mod family) at every point.  Demographically whites in the city skew older than other groups, so more elderly whites and more young latino families, white families move out to the suburbs to afford more house, to avoid city taxes, and to send their kids to suburban schools, the city has a strong culture of independent schools-so there are 5 independents and at least 3 religious schools within walking distance of my home.  Charters like LB's  are among the most racially balanced schools in the city, but they take more than their share of white kids and not-poor kids.

So here we are in a district with big, old, crumbling schools, full of poor kids, kids who are learning English, kids who have experienced trauma and dislocation (at my own work, I hear about life in wartime, refugee camps, families separated, from our high schoolers). And the kids have problems, but the problem is not the kids.  For reasons I still don't understand, the state pays RI cities less per pupil than it does in the suburbs.  And the money follows the student here, so charters pull more money away from urban schools with their fixed and expensive crumbling physical plants.

So what is diversity in a school system where most of the kids are low income and most are kids of color?  What moral responsibility do WWF have to stay in the system?  And what special sauce do WWF bring to the system?

I can see the ways that diversity benefits the high schoolers I know in Providence.  That diversity does not necessarily include WWF kids.  Instead kids who came here from the DR a few years ago, get really into KPOP and start learning Korean on the internet.  These kids are cosmopolitan in a way I certainly never was.

I don't like the cultural arguments that tell us in more or less veiled language that poor kids of color need to learn with white kids of privilege so that they can learn the cultural habits of whiteness and wealth, so they can get respectable, so that the rising tide will lift their boats.  But there are ways that being in proximity to wealth and power help people glean wealth and power (and by glean I do mean, collect the leftover bits after the harvest).

A school with more WWFs likely have more people who have easy access to lawyers, politicians, and high-level administrators.  When they complain about unequal funding formulas and rundown schools, their voices are amplified.  In the best case, access to power benefits all the kids in the system.  In reality, it often means more resources for the schools and programs used by WWFs, but even then perhaps there is a marginal benefit for all.  But if WWF bring resources, they are also remarkably good at segregating those resources for themselves and people like them.  The whitest and wealthiest school in our district is a neighborhood school-because it takes most of its students from the wealthiest and whitest neighborhood.  Other schools consolidate WWFs in "gifted programs" which are based on tests that measure a child's relative advantage in life.  And we have an exam high school, which is the last in the city to hold onto WWFs.

Without those opportunities to segregate resources, even fewer WWFs would stay in the system, and likely the system would be in even worse shape (and when WWFs leave for the suburbs they take their tax payments with them, and the district's per child money is for kids who enroll, so when kids go to independents, the public school system has to deal with its heavy sunk costs with even fewer dollars).

And the issue of public schools and individual morality: I don't think WWFs should be too quick to claim the high moral ground for choosing publics.  Most of us who do have a decent public option, as well as kids who are able to function within that option.  And I don't think moral responsibility requires us to keep our kids in a situation that is miserable.  I definitely judge parents who call out public schools as crap, rough, failing...without ever visiting those schools-and I think many of those judgements are based on evaluations of the race/class makeup of the school, and of WWF peer pressure.

But even as I have sympathy for parents who choose charters (that includes me) or independents or "better" publics, it troubles me to make the comparison between opting out of public schools and residential white flight in the 1950s through the 1970s.  When white people fled to the suburbs, some of them did so because they didn't want to have black neighbors, others feared the loss of value in their properties, some were moving for other reasons-to get a shiny new house, to be close to family.  But in the end it didn't really matter whether WWFs moved because of racist motivations, mixed motivations, or motivations unrelated to race, what mattered was that most of the white families left and they took everything of value that they could carry, and that loss of white wealth massively destabilized american cities.

And also helped created our underfunded urban schools (my school historian friend tells me that before the 1960s, urban schools were the best and best funded in the nation).  When we act as individuals, we are also acting as a group.  That collective action has power beyond our seemingly individual act.  Even if our individual action is based on motivations other than race, if the collective result of our individual actions perpetuates and increases the inequality in a society structured by racial inequality, then the effect of our individual action is to perpetuate racism.

Play Pretend

LB has long been into imaginary play, but since we moved to two homes, she has amped up several games.

When we first moved, she would repetitively play a game where she was Elsa hiding in her ice palace.  I was Anna and had to go find her and knock on the door and say: "Elsa, come out of the castle, we need you in Arandale.  We miss you Elsa." Elsa would run out of her castle and down the hallway and collapse on the floor.  I would chase after her and hug her on the floor to "unfreeze" her.  The "I miss you, I love you, come home" themes seemed important to LB as she got used to living in two places.

Lately, it's been Mama Cat/Baby Cat.  Baby Cat (played by LB) doesn't have a home and wanders around lost and crying.  Mama Cat finds Baby Cat and says "Baby Cat, are you lost, don't you have a mama?  You can come live with me in my house and I'll be your Mama Cat." The Mama helps Baby build a cozy nest.

Now we are four

I think I'll always have that little baby in my mind when I think of how amazing she is now.  At four, LB had a friends party and loved giving out Hello Kitty plates.  Her favorite animal is the giraffe.  She loves puzzles and suddenly gone from struggling with a four piece interlocking puzzle to being able to do a big puzzle on her own.  She likes to wear sundresses, shorts, and t-shirts even as winter closes in.  When she excited she does a little running skip and jump and looks like a tiny blond fairy.  She needs mamma and mommy and her blanket "bit,"and wants to be held and hugged and kissed.  She plays babysitter, which requires a mom, baby, and babysitter: the mom goes to work, and the baby tells her not to be long, and the babysitter says mom with be home soon.  She likes daycare as long as she doesn't have to stay to late in the afternoon.  The other parents say she is always sunny and happy.  She likes to watch Frozen and Babe.  She's memorized Richard Scarry's Bunny book, and it is the cutest thing ever to hear her say "Angora rabbits have soft cuddly fur."

Summer List

Thanks to Little Monsters and Mommies for the inspiration.  It's summer for real after the long cold spring.  Summer in Providence feels so crisp.  Baltimore would be like a warm damp sleeping bag, but here it's all puffy clouds and cool breezes, and only occasionally a moist, salty breeze that makes me remember we are the Ocean State.

LB and I were on our way back from the park when we ran into a neighbor who asked me to water his garden for a week in exchange for an produce we can harvest.  I said yes.  I don't know his name and I don't think he knows mine.  That's New England.

The List

Strawberry Shortcake Cake
Maine
Maine again
plant window boxes
swim at least once a week  (in progress)
Go to Pride [fail]
grill (in progress)
eat dinner in the mud room (porch) (in progress)
have a picnic dinner
4th of July parade in Bristol?
go to the beach and swim
go to the beach on a bad weather day
have dinner on the beach
Portland Oregon trip
Montreal!
get passports so we can actually go to Montreal
go car camping
overnight in a hotel (LB not invited)
babysitter/regular date nights
set up sprinkler
go to PawSocks game
go to Mista Lemon
have ice cream for dinner
make ice cream
go the RISD museum
go to an historic house museum
see friends!
walk in local cemetery we've never visited
figure out something fun LB wants to do and do it!
whitewater rafting (B only)

Intended Summer Reading

Fear of Flying
Moby Dick
The Burglary
Radical Relations
The Color of Success

Currently I'm following the doctrinal/cultural conflict within the LDS Church.  This thread on FMH is very sad.

Father's Day

"This week we are celebrating Father's Day!! We will be discussing all types of fathers (ex: fathers, stepfathers, uncles, grandfathers, or brothers).  We are asking if friends can bring in pictures of their father/ stepfather/ uncle/ grandfather/ or brother, who whoever they consider a father figure [so] that we can discuss them during circle time."

I can remember crying about Father's Day once, either before LB was born or right after, imagining her sitting at a little desk with no father to write for.  This year, we spent time with Granddad for Father's Day, and I think that made everyone happy.  Otherwise Father's Day has so far been a non-issue.  Maybe it will be as LB gets older.  I think we do the right stuff when the issue of dads comes up.  We're mater of fact, we don't try to shield LB from the world of fathers (it wouldn't be creepy to black out all the fathers in her books with sharpie, right?), but we don't make a big deal out of it.  But even if you say all the right things, some kids will feel being different more strongly than other kids, and there's nothing to do about that but wait.

Daycare is doing us some favors, because, while we may be the only two-mom family, there are plenty of other families that are not mom/dad.  LB's reality is that some families have two moms, and some have one mom, and others have a dad, or a grammy.  I declare this a Father's Day without tears.

"Oh can't you see I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired"

(I make no excuses for the slideshow that accompanies this song) When I was growing up, Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust was in heavy rotation in our house.  B did not have that experience and strongly objects to such, so I'm taking this time while she's away to listen to a little Joan, and this song has been stuck in my head.

B's ETA is in the hours of late night or early morning.  She's been gone since 5:00am Tuesday.  For me and LB, morning start around 6:00ish.  I drink coffee in bed and she eats cereal in bed.  The usual stuff.  Out the door between 7:00 and 8:00, brisk mile walk to daycare, happy dropoff (thankful!) and another two miles to work.

LB gets to swim once a week with daycare, and when it's clear they play outside a lot.  LB has been deep a game about scary chasing kittycats before I even leave the yard.

Onward: work, work, work.  I'm coming off some crazy weeks at work (and a late event the Monday before B left) so this week I've making a conscious effort to work less that my usual 45 or so.  Instead it's been in by a bit before 9:00 and out around 4:30.  In general I've been trying to walk at least one way to work or home (3 miles), but this week I've given myself permission, also, to take the bus and save what energy I have.

Back to work.  LB with a wild mane of curls, shoes on the wrong feet, shirt tucked into her underwear which is pulled up nice and high.  Girl's got style.  Her new favorite toy is a stuffed dog who has had his eyes chewed off by our actual dog.  Into the stroller and a mile back home.

Tuesday we had a special outing to the bakery on the way home.  I don't think I'm much of a judger, but when I worked at a certain corporate coffee concern, I seriously wondered about parents who would come in a drop $5.00 on snacks for a single child (1990s prices).  And now, in 2014, I dropped $6.00 on a muffin and juice for LB and felt like it was money well spent.  On Wednesday we had a picnic dinner on the living room floor and watched Thomas, and this evening I remembered that we had popsicles, and so we did.

I've also let LB sleep in "the mama bed"-pure heaven for a child.

All and all not a bad three days, although LB has made an unfortunate philosophical turn, and even Harry at the Beach, provokes endless question.  Of seaweed covered Harry, "is Harry a dog? No mama, is Harry still a dog.  Why Harry want the same umbrella, why?" Cute. Tiresome.  Cute.

Because my daughter could have died alone

This post is the one I don't want to spend the weekend writing.  I thought of funnier topics and cuter topics, but this is the post I need to write.  This post is part of Blogging for LGBTQ Families Day sponsored by Mombian, but today I'm not talking to my usual audience of friends, lesbian moms, feminists, and fellow travelers.  Instead my imagined audience for this post is someone like Kendra, who blogs at Catholic All Year.  I hope she won't mind a shout out (and just a note that this post contains no cursing, no explicit content, and a minimum of typos).  I thought of Kendra when I began this post because she is an intelligent and thoughtful blogger who engages with political and social issues, and also finds gay marriage in my words: morally, culturally, and theologically abhorrent, and in her words "immoral" and "sinful."

This is our story:  I married B in a civil ceremony at the courthouse in D.C., attended by our parents, and occurring two days after we found out our first attempt at IUI was unsuccessful.  A month later I was pregnant.  A few months into my pregnancy (2nd clinic IUI, anonymous donor from a bank), we made the obligatory trip to a family lawyer.  In most urban areas you can find a small cadre of lawyers specializing in gay families and you find them by asking around or googling.  I believe we paid $2,500 for a 2nd parent adoption and an additional $1000 for estate planning. In Maryland, our part of the process included a doctor's note, some essay questions, letters of support from friends and family, and pictures including a required picture of our front door.

While we were happy with ourselves for being diligent and starting the process early, the legal reality was that no guardianship or adoption paperwork could be filed before a living baby was born.  I could make my belief that this baby belonged to both B and me and that we would parent the baby together known through unofficial channels, but we could not formalize B's relationship to our baby until after the baby was born.

At the time, that didn't seem like a big deal.  Life continued, lots of sleeping, trips to IKEA, inhaling chicken and bulgogi beef, picking up extra work to earn extra money, procuring my great grandmother's rocking chair.  Throughout I was nervous but healthy, as was B.

Then, an ultrasound showed that baby's previously normal growth had slowed: monitoring.  And long after my nausea had subsided, I had some episodes of violent puking (in the bushes outside my classroom and in a plastic bag in the car and on the sidewalks of my neighborhood where only junkies puke).  Not great, but I knew that puking could be a normal 3rd tri thing.  Then were some headaches so bad that they made me cry, but my screenings and blood work were okay, so I went about my business.

We hit week 27 and I was headed out of town for one final conference.  I went in for my regular checkup: blood pressure pretty high, concerning level of protein in my urine - for the first time, blood work ordered.  The next day I was prepping for class and one of the midwives called to request my presence at L&D - immediately.  The blood work had shown significantly raised liver enzymes.  "But I have a class to teach.  I don't have a bag packed." I negotiated for two hours, hustled over to my classroom to put a sign on the door, burst into staff meeting crying, and called B. to come get me.

At the hospital we went immediately to the MFM practice.  I had previously met the doctor there when he brought some med students in to observe my impressive fibroids.  Extended and anxious scanning, discussion of IUGR, a steroid shot, and the doctor: "You have severe preeclampsia.  We need to prepare for you to have this baby in the next 48 hours," he said pulling a sad face.

On L&D we sat on a bench in the hall.  They brought a woman through as she screamed that she was losing her baby. Our midwife waved from behind the nurses' station, but didn't come out to greet us (still bitter).  My blood pressure was 160/100.

The night in the hospital was long and loud.  The nurse's default was to turn up the baby's monitors as loud as possible so that it sounded like I was in my own womb, women screamed endlessly, my blood pressure monitor alarmed every 15 minutes because my pressure was too high and no one came to turn off the alarm.  But I had B there with me, sleeping fitfully, together.

A second night B went home to stay with our freaked out dogs.  A nurse told me she wouldn't be able to come back until visiting hours started again the next morning.  "We're married, we have a certificate, she's my next of kin."  The nurse said we could get it sorted in the morning.  B remembers that the visitors desk swapped her "visitor" wristband for a "family" wristband that gave her access to L&D 24 hours a day without any hassle.

Despite the frustrations of the hospital, I started to simply exist.  The days blurred quietly together with tests and scans and quiet.  I read steadily through the collected Sherlock Holmes stories.

B and I couldn't discuss the what-ifs, we lay in my little hospital bed and tried to imagine our baby's future.  I had a half-waking dream about a little boy and a little girl on a beach, and I felt a wave of peace.  We had already chosen LB's first and middle names after her great-grandmothers, but I told B that if they baby was a girl and she lived, we should give her a second middle name, Grace, after the Our Lady of Grace statue in the hospital lobby.

Time felt soft, I was floating and waiting.  Baby stayed strong.  And then her heart rate was alarming.  And she went off the monitors and couldn't be found.  The head resident efficiently and calmly, too calmly, pulled the portable ultrasound into the room.  She was so calm that I didn't know when she found the heartbeat, and asked several minutes later "is she there?" I called B and asked her to leave work and come sit with me.

B talked to our lawyer, who said she would drive up to Baltimore after the baby was born with our paperwork.  "What if something happens to me during the birth?" I asked a nurse.  "You'll be okay," she said.  It wasn't a question I asked with fear for my own mortality, it was a technical question.  "What if something happens to me?  They'll put our baby in foster care," I said to B.  "We have a lawyer, if there's a problem your parents will come down and sign over custody, it will be okay." B understood, but we didn't have much of plan, and I couldn't dwell on the future.  When I did, I was forced to consider a future in which our baby did not live.

For the first nine days in the hospital, I felt okay.  On the 10th day, I did not.  I saw floaters before my eyes, that I did not report.  I felt off.  My MFM popped back in with the verdict: rising liver enzymes, stubbornly high BP despite major meds, baby not growing, and now dropping platelets.  "It's time, you'll have this baby tomorrow morning."

B stayed with me that night and we cried and imagined our baby.  Surgery prep started early, but we were already awake.  A nurse came in to start the magnesium sulfate, which I describe here.  Mag acts as a muscle relaxant, and after I stopped sweating and puking bile, I felt very calm.  B put on her gown and held my hand as I was wheeled to the OR.

The anesthesiologist was waiting for us, he asked me to sit on the table and put both my arms around B's shoulders.  "It will feel like bee stings" he said.  I was too relaxed to talk, but I thought, "I've totally got this!" having been stung several times by a wasp in my office with no ill-effects.  I lay on the table, relaxed and unable to see without my glasses.

I'm sure B was trying to crack some jokes, but I don't remember much until there was a flurry of movement and someone said "You have a daughter."  "Is she alive?" I asked.  "Yes, Yes" and a tiny pink bundle was flashed somewhere near my face.  I thought I heard a tiny mew.  "She's breathing on her own."  B ran back and forth between me and LB(G) managing to snap the first baby-in-a-plastic-bag (to conserve body heat) photos.

As the NICU nurses prepped LB, my team got louder and more energetic.  "Blood, I need blood!" became "WHERE'S THE DAMN BLOOD!"  Muttering, orders, cursing.  "Okay, we need to put you under, okay?  B, you'll need to step outside after she goes under." I tried to nod, thinking "yes, I don't really want to be awake for this." I breathed as deeply as I could, trying to make it go as fast as possible.

The next five hours or so are not my story, but what has been told to me.  Medically, my low platelet and fibroids combo had complicated delivery, and led to extensive bleeding requiring extensive surgery.  Thankfully the replacement blood did arrive in time.  Meanwhile, B was sent back to my room to wait with a friend who had just happened to come visit us.  She prayed the rosary with a Quaker, and sweated through a Code Blue not knowing that it wasn't me.  A nurse came in and sent her up to the NICU to see LB.  Born at 29weeks, weighing 2lbs 3oz, LB was holding her own.  B kangarooed her (I would share the lovely pics, but B isn't wearing a shirt), and took more pictures.

LB's first hour in the NICU

I came to around noon, looking and feeling rough.  It was hard to remember what had happened, but I did remember "you have a daughter," and I felt waves of joy and love.  A nurse, one of the ones who was both kind and efficient brought me a gingerale with a straw and it was the best thing I ever drank. B came bouncing into the room flashing pictures and telling me all about the NICU and about how she held LB.

In 1995, Julie and Hillary Goodridge had a daughter:

"When their daughter was born, she breathed in fluid and was sent to neonatal intensive care. Julie had a difficult caesarian and was in recovery for several hours. Even with a health care proxy, Hillary had difficulty gaining access to Julie and their newborn daughter at the hospital."[full text here]

As Julie lay in the OR, Hillary sought to see their daughter in the NICU.  She was turned away because  she had no legal relationship with the baby.  She waited until shift change and lied to a new nurse, saying she was her baby's aunt, and was allowed access. Hillary and Julie became the lead plaintiffs in the case Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health, the case that brought gay marriage to Massachusetts.

If not for Hillary and Julie, what would have happened to our LB?  Would she have laid alone in an isolette while B fought to get to her?  Would she have been denied that time sleeping against her mother's skin?  If things had gone worse, would she have died never being held by someone who loved her?

"We're married" were magic words for us, words that opened doors and produced wristbands.  These are the stories of unfortunate couples who possessed only lowly civil unions: Brittney Leon and Terri-Ann Simonelli, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond, Kathryn Wilderotter and Linda Cole, and Bill Flanigan and Robert Daniel.  This latter case is particularly sad, because Robert died alone after Bill was denied access to his hospital bed.  In each of these cases the couples were in a legal domestic partnership.

The sad fact is that "we're in a domestic partnership" is not a magic phrase.  Say domestic partnership and very few people know exactly what rights you possess. Say marriage and everyone knows you should be at your spouse's bedside.  In 2010, the federal government offered additional guidance to hospitals receiving some types of federal funds, telling hospitals that they must allow patients to designate their own visitors.  That's a step forward, however, at least one of the cases above occurred after 2010.  The workers at the hospital front desk don't necessarily follow changes in federal guidance, but they do know what marriage means.  Marriage means you get the bracelet.

I am not equipped to speak to matters of theology.  I have freely chosen not to know what, if anything, exists after this life.  I am living this life with love: the intense love I feel for my wife and daughter, the joy I feel for my friends and coworkers, for clerks and bus drivers and randos, the perplexity and fascination I feel for those who claim to love me, but would deny my daughter a mother's love.

as a big girl

Thanks to Mombian for hosting the 9th Annual Blogging for LGBTQ Families!

Hello to all that

We got a Zappos box today, and I realized I've been railing about gender, culture, and children's shoes (excuse me: boys shoes and girls shoes) for three years now.  First it was the shoes of a non-walker.  And then it was the kittycat shoes.

And now all these shoes, mostly from grammy, are getting a little small.  We've pretty successfully avoided pink: there are "beaver shoes" (Oregon State), "Thomas shoes" (I'm not really sure how tweed Toms became Thomas shoes, but I guess they are her most British shoes), shoes that have no name, and "pink shoes." The pink shoes are actually red shoes, and although LB is still a little weak on colors, the pink shoe designation is clearly aspirational.

And so we come to this year's pair of kittycats.  LB reviewed her options and decisively chose these shoes.

Pink kittycats.  When I opened the box, I thought perhaps a flock of tiny princesses would fight their way out.  So far, no, but I'm sure they're lurking somewhere nearby.

At Three

From the Preschool Files

Yesterday LB woke up in a terrible mood.  She cried and fussed and windged like it was her job.  And as she lay prostrate on the stairs, overcome by the idea of putting on her socks, I said to B, "WHY IS SHE SUCH A HUGE CRAB!"  LB increased the volume screaming "I AM NOT A HUGE CRAP, I AM NOT!"  Awkward.  But, at least she wasn't yelling "Fuck you, and fuck her too" [NOTE: B just expressed concern that gentle readers might not realize that those are song lyrics from a song by the artist CeeLo Green.  Not to worry, we are not cursing each other out here at the cozy house, we are simply singing along to inappropriate pop songs.] or any of the other non-daycare-appropriate phases that are spoken, sung, and yelled around here.

The younger set has gotten hip to the fact that LB has two mommies. Her classmate Allen had a little conversation with me that went like this:

A: What's your name?
Me: Mary
A: Does LB have two moms?
Me: Yes, LB has a Mama and a Mommy.
A: Hank has two moms.
Me: Cool.

End scene

End then today from another kid:

J: What's your name?
Me: Mary
J: Does LB have a daddy?
Me: No, she doesn't
J: Why doesn't LB have a daddy or a sister or a brother
Me: Maybe she'll have a brother or sister some day

And from LB after one of our very few playdates:

LB: Why R has a daddy?
Me: Some kids have a daddy, you have a mommy and a mama
LB: ...and a grammy and a grandad and a Jojo (our dog)

Health Update

I wrote about some of the stuff LB is up to last week, but I forgot to mention the thing that has been the biggest positive for our quality of life.  (Knock wood) LB has been remarkably healthy this winter!  She's had a few little sickness, but nothing scary, no extra doctor visits, no middle of the night nebs, no holding a congested child upright all night.

Last winter LB had a mild bout of pneumonia (very scary for me), pink eye, months with a green runny noses, and various viral miseries.  And that was better than the previous winter that involved wheezing, low o2 sats, ear infections, sinuses infections, and a fever of 105.  The fever happened while I was teaching, B handled it really well, and by the time I got home LB was down to a respectable 102.  That was also the winter that LB's ped called on Christmas morning to check up on her because she was so sickly.  That was the winter that we tried desperately to force a small child to swallow an oral steroid that tasted like dirty pennies (yes, I tried it).

I'm so thankful for that first ped, a gentleman who had practiced for close to 40 years.  I feel like he single handedly  kept us out of the hospital that first winter by checking in with us twice a day when LB was really sick, and giving us very detailed information about the symptoms that translate into "go to the hospital now."  I like our current ped, but she's in the "if your concerned, go to the ER" camp, rather than "let's run through all the symptoms, do a neb, and I'll call back in an hour and check on you" camp. 

Both of those winters required a minimum of an hour of nebulizer treatments, often with a thrashing rabid badger of a child.  The helpful advice from everyone was "just let her watch tv," but at that point in life, LB had no interest in screens.  We got our best results doing the nebs when she was asleep, but I could never drag myself out of bed to do one before she woke up in the morning.  Both of those winters involved anxious listening to interpret the exact character of LB's crackling, wheezing, and gasping.

During those winters, LB always lost her appetite and lost weight.  After LB was born it took a number of months for her to be plottable even on the premature and low-birth weight baby chart.  She has always been small, but in the winter she would dip off the normal weight chart into some nether reaches of the 1st percentile.  I don't think being small is necessarily a problem, but I do have some random folk belief that a little fat reserve helps a kid have energy and immunity.  This winter, almost no sickness has meant no weight loss, and LB seems sturdier, more energetic, and happier (and less whiny).

This winter we switched from the neb to an inhaler with spacer, and it is amazing!  I really wish we had tried it last winter.  I've heard that the neb can be more effective at delivering meds to the lungs, but given the amount of neb time when LB was out of range, I think the inhaler is much more effective for her.  We do a maintenance dose of Pulmacort 2x a day, along with a nasal spray 1x a day, and we have albuterol for times when she sounds crackly, but we rarely need to use it.

A healthy LB also has the benefit of a healthy me.  I guess I had undiagnosed asthma as a kid.  There are a bunch of asthmatics in my dad's family and we all seem to get worse as we age.  Every virus I get seems to settle in my lungs and leave me coughing and wheezing long after everyone else has recovered.  And I never go to the doctor, much to B's chagrin.  Last winter, when LB got pneumonia, I was afraid I also had it, and spent a week extreme commuting while feeling like there was an elephant sitting on my chest.

She's done so well this winter, I guess the next question will be whether she need to continue using maintenance meds every winter.  Our doctors have told us that preemies often grow out of their lungs issues by age three, but that will be a scary step.

LB Updates

The child is a chatterbox, especially when she's tired.  She has started "reading" to whatever mom is putting her to bed, which includes reciting very accurate passages of her favorite books interspersed with rambling monologues about I'm-not-quite-sure-what. 

After a tough adjustment to the preschool room at daycare, she's doing really well.  She has a "best friend" who is also tiny and well-behaved.  LB was upset one day because she and a friend (I mean that in the daycare sense) wouldn't stop lifting up their shirts and giggling and Miss A. told them they were going to get in trouble if they didn't stop.  According to LB, "I don't like to get in trouble!"

LB has a great sense of humor and can tell and understand jokes-most of which have the punchline "skunkfish!"

We've had fewer and shorter tantrums lately-more whining, but less honey-badgering, and I'll take it.  She will take offense to random things, like telling the dog, "You don't look at me in the eyes like that!" in a super creepy voice.  Or, "you don't say 'grinding on that wood'!" Which was a sign that we need to start watching what we say and sing in front of LB, and, despite our embrace of inappropriate music lyrics, any lyrics that glorify Ike Turner should not be sung in front of our young daughter (note that impressive use of the passive voice).

When she feels that she's been wrongly accused, LB will roar in our faces, but when she knows she is in the wrong, she'll say "I'm saaawwee." Which is cute until she says it again and again with increasing desperation, and we talk again about how people can get mad at each other but still love each other.  She will also say, often out of the blue, "Mama are you mad at me?" She's a sensitive creature.

LB is also pretty good at taking care of herself, she able to function pretty independently in the bathroom and can get dressed and undressed herself, including putting on a rashguard top by herself, which is pretty impressive for anyone.  

And she's got some moves (Note the very appropriate prop.  I wanted to get LB to dance in the car, but then, sadly, I realized I'm not that kind of mother.):

Services, Services, Services: The Update Edition

It's been a week of work, and vomiting, and meetings, with just a little bit of the rage virus added in for good measure.  I finished my freelance job, and God willing, I will be paid some day.  I'm excited to be back to blogging now that I have a minute or two of free time. 

Hump day brought our IEP eligibility meeting.  Not good my friends.  I guess I've know for a long time that I find negativity highly motivating, but this meeting really brought it home.  I can't remember the last time I was in a room with such a bunch of unprofessional hacks, and I'm not even going to qualify that with any excuses about how they must have hard jobs or how they have to work within a broken system.  There is no excuse for what I saw in that room.

I'm taking the details straight to the ombsbudsperson for the school system.  The short version is that they were about to formally deny LB services, when I pulled a bureaucratic maneuver that forced the school team to throw out all of their findings and start over.  It was definitely a strange moment.  [Insert warfare or card playing metaphor here.]  Even though we kept them from getting what they wanted (a closed case), I left the building feeling dirty.  I want to believe in public education, and it sucks to see in action those people who ruin it for everyone: certainly for students and their parents, but also for the good educators in the system, who have to see their efforts to actually educate children constantly thwarted by people who are there to play the game and collect a check.

It's going to be a long 16 years.

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.

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. 

"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

While Mommy's Away

Not pictured: night wakeups, nebs, puking, blueberry covered face, general destruction.

Report from the Annals of Stubborn and Manipulative Children

LB's speech therapist C goes to visit her a daycare once a week, even though the hunch at this point is no speech issues, just some mix of sensory/processing/social stuff that sounds like total bullshit until it's your kid.  I like C a lot, she's calm and seems eminently sensible.  Today she called after her visit with LB to tell me that she had attempted to do some more formal testing with LB, and LB had refused any part of it, even with the best and most creative efforts of C and the daycare staff. And then she asked me if LB has trouble drinking from a sippy cup!  Which really, if my almost three year old had trouble drinking from a sippy, I would probably mention it to her speech therapist.  But no, she has absolutely no issues, at home that is.  Apparently at school she feigns an inability to drink to the degree that they have her wear a bib!  And, of course, give her lots of attention.  C astute observation was that maybe LB likes getting attention for being a baby.  At her beloved old daycare, LB was always "Baby LB," and everyone fawned over her.  Add to that the fact that she is tiny (and cute), and she's now the oldest in her class by a ridiculous number of months, and I think we have a well-developed get-attention-by-acting-like-a-baby strategy going on.

So next week, another crack at the speech testing at our house, and maybe we can figure out if she is processing really slow, or she's amazingly stubborn, or something in between.

Awkward Conversations with Toddlers about Race: Hanna Anderson Edition

After my recent posts about white kids and race, LB decided to give me some additional content.

Imagine the scene: two white ladies relaxing with microbrews (LB doesn't partake, but she does run over with her sippy cup and yell "CHEERS"), listening to The Clash, and reading the new Hanna Anderson catalog.

Eventually LB decided she wanted to see the catalog and immediately pointed to one little girl:

LB: "That Amy! That Amy!" (not her real name).
Mary: "No, that's not Amy."
LB: "THAT AMY!"
Mary: "That little girl has brown skin like Amy, and curly brown hair like Amy.  Does she look like Amy?"
LB: "AMY!"
Mary: "She's not Amy, but she has brown skin and brown hair like Amy."  "Is Amy your friend?"
LB: "Amy fwiend!  Amy nice! Elmo fwiend!  Kittycat fwiend!"
Mary: "Who does that look like (pointing to a redhead)?  Who looks like you?"

When LB fixated on one little (brown) girl in the catalog and compared her to another little girl she knows in real life (who does have a similar skin tone and hair color), B and looked at each other and it was awkward.  If you are a reasonably sensible white adult, you know that "Hey [insert name of person of color], you look just like [this other person of color]" is right up there with "can I touch your hair" in the taxonomy of racial shit you shouldn't say.

Let me make a very smooth transition here with the announcement that I know nothing about teaching small children about race.  Yesterday, I also knew nothing about dealing with a dog who was on the losing end of an encounter with a skunk.  But I learned.  That learning was quite painful, involving multiple changes of clothing, sitting fully clothed in a full bathtub pouring diet coke over the head of a terrified dog, but I did it because my only other option was to live with a dog who smells like skunk.

If I won't talk to LB about race, race becomes the skunk dog in our living room, because no matter how much I would rather not deal, race is part of our world.  So, for the two-year-old set: people have different skin colors and hair colors, hair styles, and eye colors. Our friends have different skin colors. Our friends are nice. Repeat."

But, I have to say that in this whole learning process, that Hanna Anderson catalog really isn't doing us any favors.  I once spent a day in an archive sorting and cataloging all the cards sent to a prominent African American family in the 1950s congratulating them on the birth of their son.  There were hundreds of cards, and every single one had a white baby on it.  My young friends, that was what people used to call a "click." These were wealthy, powerful people who knew a lot about their own history, but every single card had a white baby.  So, things have changed in 60 or so years.  At least where I live, you can go to Target, or Hallmark, or Walgreens and buy a greeting card with a brown baby, or bride, or graduate.  But, Hanna Anderson isn't making my life as a white parent any easier by having a catalog that 85% white models.  And I guess you could say: oh it's a Scandinavian company, or is there something wrong with white kids-should our kids no longer be seen in public?, or even, last I checked there was still a white majority in this country-so the models just reflect reality.

I grew up in a place where almost everyone was white.  In my school pictures, there is usually a lone kid of color.  That's not LB's reality.  Her reality is one where kids come in lots of different colors, which was one of the reasons that it was so weird to us when she fixated on the fake Amy.  It's not wrong to see white kids in catalogs, or even lots of white kids in catalogs, but would it be so terrible if sometimes white kids were the one making the token appearance?  Someday, my friends.

LB rocking out to The Clash last year, when she was just a little girl.

You've Come a Long Way Baby: Part 2

A year and some ago, LB was not quite walking, and then she was not quite talking.  I was hanging out in the space between mom of typical kid and mom of atypical kid.  A year later, LB is a walking talking machine.  Tonight she balanced on an upside down chair while saying (at our prompting of course) "Honey Badger don't care." We've come a long way, but LB is still on the edge of typical.  After a few weeks, LB's speech therapist ruled out receptive or expressive language disorders, and decided that LB is capable of speaking at a normal volume when she wants to.  After observing LB at daycare, she raised the idea of sensory issues.  Apparently at school, LB is sometimes happy to ignore the activity and do her own thing and she speaks very little compared to what we hear at home (no Honey Badger monologues for school).  Wait and see, wait and see.  Then there was the physical therapist evaluation.  LB can run, and she can walk up and down stairs, which is all good.  But we've noticed that she has a crazy little egg beater motion when she runs.  And it makes her so happy to swing her little legs as far away from her hips as she possibly can as she runs.  According to the PT, we are correct, and this issue has a name, genu valgum or knock knees.  Othro consult to follow (for freaking knock knees!).  At this point, it's not good or bad, it just is.