Thinking about composting. Charlie starts school tomorrow and this is how I distract myself! Thinking about worms turning our table scraps into great soil.
Non-urban living (as I like to call it, as I refuse to use the "s" word.) has been great with a few moments of panic thrown in, when I notice my life resembling something from television a la Desperate Housewives, or better TV, Knots Landing. When the men leave for the day, we women talk about what time of day is best to start making meatballs or, who do you think shot the neighbor's dog? Did that neighbor really set fire to his next door neighbor's car- with her mother in it? The burnt out shell is still there.
I bought those plastic "children at play" placards for when all of the kids are out on their bikes and scooters. The The teenagers around the corner (grandchildren of the accused arsonist) have slowed down, and the middle-age daughter of the burn victim says the hood now resembles the times of her youth. Yes, same hood. Same house. We're a mix of old and new here.
So composting. With worms, I think. Charlie is starting school tomorrow by getting on a little yellow school bus and his lunch box. And although I won't be following the bus, I'll be waiting for that bus to arrive safely at his school and then I will lurk in the lobby hoping he is doing better than me. Then we go through this again with Emilia next week, who, although I assume she'll be fine at her new school, might surprise all of us an have a difficult time with the tranisition. And then I start work again.
9.04.2007
8.06.2007
Blog facelift coming soon...
I have entries running through my head all the time, I just don't have the discipline to write. But now that I've finished the new Harry Potter I have more free time on my hands. Look for a new and improved site soon....
7.23.2007
7.02.2007
$3700!
We're here in Piermont and happy happy happy! Funny- we're living about the same distance from the Hudson River as we did in the city, but it feels completely different. More details to come.
PS: Our apartment in NYC rented to a new family for $3700 a month.
PS: Our apartment in NYC rented to a new family for $3700 a month.
5.11.2007
Is this a hint?
I think NYC is telling us to leave. At this point, I think its yelling at us.
The CPSE offices (Center for Preschool Education- they are the people who approve services for Charlie for preschool) have had Charlie's evaluations since March 28th. We have finally learned that he won't be having his transition meeting until July.
Lesson #1: Send things certified mail. This way, when a CPSE office tells you they don't have your paperwork you can say, "Well, a person in your office signed for it and this is her name..." Then call the CPSE office in South Orangetown. You don't get put on hold, you get the name of the person you need to talk to, they leave a message for you, and the person calls you back. And he talks to you for 30 minutes and you're not even a resident.
Next week we find out if Emi made it into the Gifted and Talented program. If she didn't, then we wait to find out if she makes it into one of our schools of choice through the second round of the general education lottery.
Lesson #2: If you don't want your child to go to the neighborhood school, move. Especially if you are paying outrageous rent and are stressed out about money all the time.
Our downstairs neighbors can't stand the pitter-pat of Charlie and Emi's feet. So we lay down carpet remnants all over the apartment. Kind of an eyesore, but the neighbors are happy.
Lesson #3: Check out www.flor.com If we resign our lease, we will be their #1 customers!
The CPSE offices (Center for Preschool Education- they are the people who approve services for Charlie for preschool) have had Charlie's evaluations since March 28th. We have finally learned that he won't be having his transition meeting until July.
Lesson #1: Send things certified mail. This way, when a CPSE office tells you they don't have your paperwork you can say, "Well, a person in your office signed for it and this is her name..." Then call the CPSE office in South Orangetown. You don't get put on hold, you get the name of the person you need to talk to, they leave a message for you, and the person calls you back. And he talks to you for 30 minutes and you're not even a resident.
Next week we find out if Emi made it into the Gifted and Talented program. If she didn't, then we wait to find out if she makes it into one of our schools of choice through the second round of the general education lottery.
Lesson #2: If you don't want your child to go to the neighborhood school, move. Especially if you are paying outrageous rent and are stressed out about money all the time.
Our downstairs neighbors can't stand the pitter-pat of Charlie and Emi's feet. So we lay down carpet remnants all over the apartment. Kind of an eyesore, but the neighbors are happy.
Lesson #3: Check out www.flor.com If we resign our lease, we will be their #1 customers!
4.28.2007
Sensory gym and sleep
Its 2:22am and Charlie is up. Again. I finally got him to stop doing laps in the hallway. Now he sits in his bed, in the dark, flipping pages of board books I placed next to him. Occasionally, I hear him singing. There are no discernible words, but I can tell which song it is by the hand claps. He's doing B-I-N-G-O now.
I am so tired.
Charlie, without fail, decides he only needs 5 hours of sleep a night during the busy stretches. Maybe that's not an accident, that during more chaotic periods of family life he just cannot sleep more than that. But as the laws of parenting would have it, the times when we need sleep the most, we don't get it.
Charlie now attends a sensory gym twice a week. Imagine the best possible scenario for a room with padded walls. Some of the equipment looks a bit archaic and frankly, quite frightening, and yet it is the most stimulating/soothing (depending on your sensory thing) experience. There's the steamroller- padded dowels that look like an old fashioned clothes wringer, that one can roll over, or roll though, compressed between the dowels. I imagine Charlie sliding out looking like Flat Stanley. He loves it. He loves being pressed. He loves lying on the floor while someone takes a yoga ball and rolls it one top of him while pressing down with all of their weight. Then there's the bag of balls- a swing, really, filled with little plastic balls, that you sit in. And the bench swing with three chains so you can swing in a circle. Since Charlie just started, he doesn't have a routine yet. He zips from one station to the next, with his therapist trying to keep up with him.
The sensory gym is like a hidden gem, or, if one is feeling dower about their situation of parenting an autistic child, its a prescriptive, pubic health version of the large ultra-trendy urban indoor play spaces with child hair salons and mommy and me yoga. Charlie's gym is located in an office building near Columbus Circle, one of those relics with windows stained permanently from car exhaust on the outside and cigarette smoke on the inside. After signing in at the nondescript lobby, and taking the elevator to the nondescript 5th floor, we enter the nondescript waiting room. Linoleum floor tiles, and loads of chairs, but not a single thing a sensory-seeking or avoiding child would respond to. But behind the nondescript door... Charlie pounds on it when we show up. He rattles the door knob. He starts to do his little grunts and vocalizations. Until someone opens the door. He barrels his way in, so incredibly happy. That's how the therapist who works with him at the sensory gym describe him when they re-emerge in the waiting room 30 minutes later. "He is such a happy little boy!" she says. He really is. We are lucky. In the mix of everything, we have a very happy son. Now if he'd only sleep.....
I am so tired.
Charlie, without fail, decides he only needs 5 hours of sleep a night during the busy stretches. Maybe that's not an accident, that during more chaotic periods of family life he just cannot sleep more than that. But as the laws of parenting would have it, the times when we need sleep the most, we don't get it.
Charlie now attends a sensory gym twice a week. Imagine the best possible scenario for a room with padded walls. Some of the equipment looks a bit archaic and frankly, quite frightening, and yet it is the most stimulating/soothing (depending on your sensory thing) experience. There's the steamroller- padded dowels that look like an old fashioned clothes wringer, that one can roll over, or roll though, compressed between the dowels. I imagine Charlie sliding out looking like Flat Stanley. He loves it. He loves being pressed. He loves lying on the floor while someone takes a yoga ball and rolls it one top of him while pressing down with all of their weight. Then there's the bag of balls- a swing, really, filled with little plastic balls, that you sit in. And the bench swing with three chains so you can swing in a circle. Since Charlie just started, he doesn't have a routine yet. He zips from one station to the next, with his therapist trying to keep up with him.
The sensory gym is like a hidden gem, or, if one is feeling dower about their situation of parenting an autistic child, its a prescriptive, pubic health version of the large ultra-trendy urban indoor play spaces with child hair salons and mommy and me yoga. Charlie's gym is located in an office building near Columbus Circle, one of those relics with windows stained permanently from car exhaust on the outside and cigarette smoke on the inside. After signing in at the nondescript lobby, and taking the elevator to the nondescript 5th floor, we enter the nondescript waiting room. Linoleum floor tiles, and loads of chairs, but not a single thing a sensory-seeking or avoiding child would respond to. But behind the nondescript door... Charlie pounds on it when we show up. He rattles the door knob. He starts to do his little grunts and vocalizations. Until someone opens the door. He barrels his way in, so incredibly happy. That's how the therapist who works with him at the sensory gym describe him when they re-emerge in the waiting room 30 minutes later. "He is such a happy little boy!" she says. He really is. We are lucky. In the mix of everything, we have a very happy son. Now if he'd only sleep.....
4.08.2007
Emi-ism Archive
I'm replacing Emi-isms with "Exchanges with Emi". So here's the Emi-ism archive:
Emi-ism #61: "Mommy, I don't know how to be nice. I want to be nice, but my body is not controlling myself."
Emi-ism #59: "Charlie and I are twins because you know why? When I smile, he smiles."
Emi-ism #56: "I have super powers, you know. But I never use them because they're really, really secret."
Emi-ism #55: "I had a beautiful dream about nails. That our nails were as long as monsters. And there was this magic water that made our nails long and a fairy had it and she said, 'No more short nails until tomorrow.'"
Emi-ism # 48: "Crying reminds me of the drawing I made that I erased before I got to show it to you."
Emi-ism #47: You can be the fairy happy mother. I'll be the fairy love mother."
"I'm just into sugar, mommy. That's who I am. And I like it."
Emi-ism #37:
"(Bike) pedals are like see-saws for my feet!"
Emi-ism #23:
"An umbrella is like a trampoline for raindrops."
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