costume drama

He's my firstborn and so I say this with all possible love and bemusement, but Cal is a weird child when it comes to dressing up for Halloween. It's not so much like he has sensory issues--he doesn't have problems with the costumes being itchy or bulky or too hot, he just thinks they're dumb or something. I think in reality he just gets self-conscious. Like the act of wearing a costume garners too much attention, and he doesn't like the fuss. At all.

Above is, unfortunately, the only surviving photo of his first Halloween costume that I can find (there must be more out there, but I didn't use iPhoto during Cal's first year so many of those digital image files are archived somewhere unreachable). It also showcases Joe's unfortunate predilection for grafting cheesy beyond belief titles and borders onto photography--just be grateful we're spared a wreath of pumpkins around Cal's face or something similarly Printshop circa 1988. Anyway, I just show you this picture because this, taken at the time that Cal was about Nina's current age (they were both born in July), is the last time that we were able to cram Cal into a Halloween costume without him complaining.

Here the following year. You can't see most of the costume since he's you know, running away from Joe (I think I was actually on call that particular Halloween so I wasn't even there) but he's supposed to be a monkey. See how happy he looks? SEE THE LOOK OF CHILDLIKE WONDER WHILE TRAIPSING THROUGH THE MAGICAL WORLD OF MAKE-BELIEVE?

Above, the following year, when he was two years old. We, thinking ourselves terribly clever, dressed him as a medical resident. Cal quickly stripped himself of the accessorizing accoutrement (the scrub cap, the pager, the stethoscope which had been doused in alcohol and Clorox to eliminate all traces of Enterococcus fecalis--it's the small touches that really make the costume, after all) and just barely tolerated the rest of it, mostly once he realized there was candy involved. This was back when we still lived in New York by the way, so his exposure in costume was minimal--mostly we just walked down the hallway, trick-or-treated one apartment, and then walked back. (Some of the candy he got may have been from our own bowl.)

I had some high hopes the following year, as in September Cal specifically requested a pink butterfly costume. Yes, a pink butterfly. So I got the costume (OK, so maybe I got a red and orange butterfly costume--I am as open-minded as the next parent but maybe it's my own bias that led me to apply some well-meaning edits to his original intent), but by the time it came Cal decided that he didn't want to wear any costume, butterfly or otherwise. "I just want to wear regular clothes," he said, a refrain that would dog us again and again subsequent Halloweens. We went to his nursery school Halloween party that year wearing khakis and a grey cardigan (I begged him to let me put some baby powder in his hair so that we could at least pass his costume off as "old man," but he was not having it) and had no further costume planned as of October 30th.

Finally, we just ended up putting him in his beloved "regular clothes" (black long-sleeved t-shirt, long pants), gussied it all up with his rain boots and a two-tone bolt of electricity that I cut out from construction paper and taped on his chest. Enter "Captain Lightning Bolt."  He was OK with this for some time, but then had a little potty accident after hitting three or four houses (three year olds never feel like they have to go to the bathroom until all of a sudden OMG THEY TOTALLY DO) so trick-or-treating was cut short and the costume issue was put to rest for another year.

At age four, Cal finally acceded, after weeks of cajoling to think of a Halloween idea, any idea; to go as "a builder man." Again, a costume involving his everyday clothing and some accessories from the toy bin.  The hat, tool belt and goggles were, of course, instantly shed the second after the pictures were taken, and he ran around his school Halloween party somewhat incongruously dressed in jeans and a blue oxford shirt.

And then, the year he was five, Cal refused to wear anything even approximating a costume. In fact, we didn't even go trick-or-treating that year because he just flat-out refused to do anything and Mack was too young to know any better. At the 11th hour (that is to say: 6:00pm on Halloween night) we thought maybe we had convinced him to go as Steve from "Blues Clues" just by wearing stuff out of his closet (green striped rugby shirt, khakis, blue dog stuffed animal--boom, instant Steve) but then at 6:05 he decided with finality that costumes were BOGUS and trick-or-treating was DUMB and a horribly humiliating ordeal for LOSERS. Also maybe he whined and cried and acted like we were asking him to eat not but burning hot coals and drink not but burning hot cola.

"But if you go out and wear a costume, people will give you candy!" I told him, playing what I thought was my trump card.

"We have candy at home," he said, quite reasonably.

So after that debacle, we decided last year, when he was six, that he was going to find a costume that he would tolerate and we were going to go trick-or-treating whether he liked it or not. I don't think we're of the type necessarily to force our kids to do stuff that they hate, only it seemed like he was getting himself all worked up over nothing, and that if only he would stop being so rigid and just relax about "looking dumb" and allow himself have fun, that maybe he could actually have fun and we could be like a normal family going trick-or-treating. And then maybe I finally get some candy runoff at long last. IS IT SO MUCH TO ASK?

We decided, after brief discussion, that he would be Harry Potter, which was cool because he already had a Harry Potter wand, and anyway, Harry Potter wears regular clothes, he could even skip the glasses, all he'd have to do is let me draw on the forehead scar and wear this Gryffindor scarf that he got just so it looked like he was trying a little.

After a lot of discussion (and more whining, and more crying), he finally let us tie the scarf on him. But he was not real happy about it. "You know, Cal," I told him, "most kids actually really like Halloween. They think it's fun to dress up, and go around, and they like going door to door to get candy. It's kind of a really big holiday for kids, you know?  Some kids look forward to this all year!"

He just grunted.

(Though eventually he did get into it.)

This year, we didn't even have a discussion. We were going to do this thing. After polling Cal to see if he had any costume ideas (to which he responded, "I don't know. I have to consider it.") I just decided, boy, you're going to dress up as a Star Wars character, and I don't want to hear any more about it. Originally I bought a whole pile of cream and brown fleece and was going to sew all the kids matching Jedi costumes (pause for laughter), but reality testing eventually intervened and I ended up buying the chintziest of chintzy drugstore Jedi outfits for both boys, coupled with these foam colored light up rods that I highly recommend to anyone who has kids that are into Star Wars.

And when we went to the third grade Halloween party this Friday, he put it on without any discussion.

Cal!

Put on an actual non-regular clothing costume!

WITHOUT DISCUSSION!

(High fiving a million angels)

I know it's not a big deal (and believe me, I'm trying not to make it into one, especially in front of him), but it's been seven years and eight Halloweens to get to this point so...yeah, it is kind of a majorly big deal.

Both of the boys, by the way, decided to be Obi-Wan Kenobi for Halloween.  Originally Cal wanted to be Obi-Wan and Mack was going to be Anakin Skywalker (which I found actually quite fitting), but then Mack decided that he wanted to be Obi-Wan too, and Cal got mad because what are you nuts, there can't be two Obi-Wans, haven't you even seen the movie?  Like, a couple hundred times? And there was much squabbling, and I came in and decided, perhaps at a slightly higher volume than strictly necessary, YOU KIDS SHUT UP EVERYONE'S GOING TO BE OBI-WAN.

Ah, Mack.  Mack, on the other hand...

The only problem we have with Mack is getting him out of costume.


* * *


I'm kind of hustling to write this while the kids are asleep so I don't really have time to reflect on this fact or get overly introspective/profound/lachrymose about this fact, but: this weekend marks the twelfth anniversary of this blog.

Twelve years. That's a lot of years, boy. Twelve years ago I was starting my second year of medical school and decided, on a whim, to start an online journal in lieu of memorizing the complement pathway to have even a faint hope of passing my immunology midterm. And now I am an attending anesthesiologist, married to my med school classmate (who, not to knock my own clinical skills, but I often think is a better doctor than me, or at least good at different things), a mother of three, living in the South.

Aside from the part where I now have a medical degree, at the moment I started this blog I had no idea where I would end up ten-plus years down the line.  I can't say that everything that has happened to me since has been expected. But as much as we Type A personalities like to control things, the unexpected can be exciting, and what's more, the unexpected can be quite good. And really, I don't think that this blog anniversary requires much more reflection than that, only to say that life now is busy and full and, most importantly, fun. I think I've reached a point in balancing my life and obligations where I feel that if something extracurricular ceases to be fun, it's probably not worth doing anymore. But keeping this blog, even after twelve years, continues to be fun, and that's why I keep writing. So thank you for sticking around with me.

And yes, if the finer details of the CXCR4 signaling pathway are indeed important to my clinical practice, I am pretty much screwed, because I don't think I ever really learned it in the first place.

the underwear drawer

I can be a gunner as much as anyone else, but when it comes to my approach towards getting my kids reliably toilet-trained, my attitude can euphemistically described as...well, lackadaisical.  To be fair, that's their attitude toward the enterprise as well (toilet training is one of the few "big boy" things in which Mack has absolutely no interest--his approach towards pooping in a diaper is the same as Homer Simpsons take on littering: "It's easier.  Duh."), but we figured he's not quite ready and we're kind of lazy, so let's all kill the earth a little more and subscribe and save on Amazon Prime, shall we?  (Diapers.  I'm talking about buying diapers.)

Thankfully (?) the preschool that we're sending Mack to has a more hardline approach towards the matter, and now that he's moving up one level (from the two-and-a-half year-old classroom to the two-and-three-quarters year-old classroom, apparently) they are going full on immersion therapy.  No more diapers at school.  Only underwear.  Sink or swim.  Oh, and also, please send in four or five spare changes of clothes for the first few weeks.

We had a few pairs of underwear lying around (I had originally bought them about six months ago as an enticement towards the idea of toilet training--Mack cheerfully tugged one pair on over his diapers and and pair over his head and has continued to wear them this way ever since, so the bloom is kind of off the rose for that one) but this afternoon, in anticipation of the new, uh, addition to his curriculum, we bought a few more packs of briefs for the rotation.

I'm sure in the next few days we're going to be pretty sick of washing these things, but you have to admit--those teeny tiny underoos are pretty freaking cute.

it puts the lotion in the basket

Mack's first day of school went well.  I don't quite have the stomach for these kind of drop-off situations, but luckily I go to work very early anyway so that's my excuse.  Joe was the designated bad guy, and he said that while there were some tears and low-level leg-clinging in the morning, by the time I picked him up this afternoon Mack was in a good mood and very chatty, which I can only assume is a sign that he had a pretty good time.

The teachers said he didn't nap at the designated naptime though, so we're doing this now.  He'll be down for the next three hours, I predict.

(This is a very low-light photo and all Mack's sheets happen to be green, which is why it looks like I'm Jame Gumb stalking him with night-vision goggles in my Kill Basement.)

I was on call all weekend and it looks to be a pretty busy week, but our internet has been down intermittently so I just wanted to take this quick window of functionality to throw something up on Ye Internet and say hi.  Hope you guys had a good weekend, and that your week is starting off right.

the cat's in the cradle

My baby is starting preschool on Monday.  MY BABY IS STARTING PRESCHOOL ON MONDAY.

Cal I was a little more worried about when he started school.  Cal is shy.  Cal is deliberate and reserved, which, in the caveman world of preschool, translates more to getting squashed on.  And Cal can be stubborn as hell about change.

But Mack is ready.  This kid is ready for school.  He was ready months ago.  Not that there's not going to be some transition (I still don't think he quite understands that the "school" part of school involves actually leaving him there all day) but he's going  to love it and he's going to make friends and he's going to thrive.  And honestly the only reservation I have about sending him on Monday is the fact that he's my baby, my little baby who was born just yesterday, so it seems, and I'm just not quite ready to let him go.

school daze

Sarah asked me in the interview that ran yesterday about the three words I would use to describe my two kids.  I wish I had found this picture before I answered that question, because all you need to know about their personalities is laid bare by their expressions in this photo:

(Look, I'm going to talk about preschool stuff right now, even though I know this is one of the topics that inexplicably makes people irrationally angry, but hey.  I'm reckless like that.)

Mack's starting nursery school in June.  He's ready.  Frankly, he was ready months ago, but nursery school is expensive, and we needed Cal to be a little closer to finishing up his stint at private school (he'll be starting first grade at our local public school next year) before we started sending Thing Two into the money-vacuum that is pre-primary education.

Before we moved to Atlanta, we probably toured five or six preschools for Cal, mostly because we had no idea which schools were good or where the schools were or even where we would be living.  Also, Cal was our first child, and we were coming from Manhattan, where there is this curious notion that picking that one, perfect preschool will either make or break your child's entire future forevermore amen.  We picked the school we thought was the best, and Cal's been there for the past three years, though, as I said before, he'll be switching schools in the fall to the local public school that, among its other benefits (FREE), is only about five minutes away from our new house.

Because see, that's the main thing that we learned about sending your kids to school.  Obviously there are good schools and some schools are worth the sacrifice and commute (I had friends in high school that commuted up to two and a half hours each way just to get there every morning--it made my 45 minute single subway train commute look like nothing) but preschools?  Let's face it, most preschools are pretty much the same.  So if you don't have to drive a million hours each way to drop your kid off there, all the better.  I toured two schools for Mack before we picked one, and both were right close by.  One was closer.  That's the one Mack will be attending in May.

This is not to say that it's not a good school.  This place?  Is ridiculous.  They have computer class and foreign language and dance and they have this crazy water playground in the back that's just--well.  Mack may never want to leave.  But the best part of it?  The very best part?  They provide breakfast and dinner and all snacks at the school for all the kids.  Meaning they make the food.  Should I say that again?  WE DO NOT NEED TO PACK ANY FOOD FOR MACK TO TAKE TO SCHOOL.  Do you know how many hundreds of hours of my life I have spent cutting up grapes and packing little cheese squares and making sandwiches for Cal to take to school?  Do you know how many hours I will save by not having to do that for Mack?  "All meals and snacks provided" may be the sweetest words in the English language.

So that's Mack's nursery school in a nutshell.  It's three minutes from our house.  There's a ton of stuff for him to do there.  And we will never, ever need to pack him a lunch box.  If there's anything else we need to know about this place, I can't think of it right now.

*          *          *

More sightings of my book from around the country (and hopefully, soon, around the world):

Jamie from the VCU School of Medicine in Richmond, VA sent me this one.  She wrote, "I'm sure Hippocrates would give your book two thumbs up... if he had thumbs." Well played, doctor. Well played.

This one comes from Henry, my first Aussie reader (that I know of) to get his hands on a copy of the book.  Of course, he did have to fly into New York to buy it, but be that as it may, it's a proud day for Australo-American relations.  This shrimp's on the barbie for you, Henry.  (I SPEAK AUSTRALIAN, YES.)

This one's from Roxanna, who told me that she burned 2500 calories while reading my book on the elliptical.  2500 CALORIES.  Does this book give you super-powers?  Is it so utterly absorbing that while you're reading it, you can no longer feel pain?  Who can say, really, why not read it yourself and find out?  (Short answer: YES.)

Also, here is Roxanna's daughter, because she is adorable.  (Hopefully she's not reading the gross parts or any of the bad words.  Cal has read some of the book too, but mostly he just like the chapters that are about him. Egoiste!)

This cat right here in Corona, CA is so pissed that she can't read right now.  Pissed, and hungry.  Is my book a good present for cats?  Depends how many cats you have.  Each cat must have her own copy, though, or else they get jealous, and the resentments will tear your home apart.  (Thanks, Jenn!)

And this one, my favorite of the day, comes from Professor Miwa in Wellesley, MA, who has photographed my book with her Organic Chemistry students in the Wellesley College Science Center.  Oh, I learned so many important things in the Science Center.  And then I graduated and forgot all of it instantly.

Now, if I remember things approximately, probably at least 75% of this organic chemistry class are premeds or pre-medical professionals in one form or another.  Ladies, study well and work hard, and five or six years from now you too may be eating cold refried beans out of an emesis basin at 2:00am next to the hospital supply room!  REACH FOR THE STARS!  (And good luck on finals!  By the way, is it true that the answers to the Orgo 2 final exam are actually fiendishly encoded in the pages of the book like the damn DaVinci Code?  I can't confirm it...but I won't deny it either.)

Keep your photo submissions coming, either to my e-mail or on Facebook or Twitter.  And hopefully I will see some of you guys at the book events in the Northeast starting next week.  Did I mention that the reading at the Atlanta History Center will also have light refreshments and a cash bar?  A BAR IS THE THING WITH THE BOOZES ON IT.  Enough of that business and I'll hardly need to be funny and insightful at all!  Delightfully potted attendees--the pressure is off!

the price of admission

The cooking lesson today was a success.  The avocados ripened in time (if you missed my blow-by-blow on Twitter: basically, I had a clutch of rock-hard raw avocados 24 hours before The Great Guacamole Mash, and hey, putting them in a paper bag with a few bananas and apples really worked!) and the kids had fun mooshing and tasting and everyone made glorious mess.  I would have taken pictures, but I think getting lime juice on my iPhone would have voided the warranty.

Of course, the trade-off was that, in order to ensure I could make it to Cal's cooking day, I was on call the night before.  Probably there are jobs where you could arrange to go to your kid's school the next morning without having to stay up in the OR the night before, helping take some other kids' gangrenous appendix out...but that's not my life.  Not that I mind.  At least it's rarely boring.

So anyway, I'm pretty tired today.  Still.  Worth it.

flavor of the week

Well, it's that time of year again. Haven't I done this before? Like, a couple of times?  I know that this kind of thing is part and parcel of the school experience for kids these days, I'm sure as hell glad I didn't have any "Person of the Week" type stuff when I was a growing up. I was super shy and I had all this anxiety about speaking in front of the class and performing and just generally breathing in public. If I had to present some posterboard about myself in front of everyone, I probably would have just cried the whole time. (I think I cried every day at school for the entirety of first grade, as a matter of fact.)

Cal's a little older now, so we just kind of gave him free reign with the poster, handing him pile of markers, the posterboard, and a pile of loose pictures that we had lying around from Christmas card season. Have at it, Cal. Of course I think that 80% of the things that my kids do are magical and delightful (75%?  Fine, 68%) I do find it particularly adorable that for his own Person of the Week poster, of the nine pictures he chose for the poster, fully seven of them are of Mack. Which proves that though the dialogue in this house seems solely to consist of:

"Stop it!"

"No YOU stop it!"

"No, YOU stop it!"

(continue ad infinitum or until I intervene with some suitable distraction--TV, snack, Ketamine dart, louder yelling, what have you)

...the kid really does love his brother.  How gratifying.

I'm on call tonight, which means that tomorrow I'll be post-call and therefore able to go in to give that "cooking class" that I'd mentioned before.  You guys had given me so many good ideas--I was originally going to go with vegetable dumplings, because I figured it was different and culturally relevant and fun, what with the dumpling skins and whatnot.  But then I was looking at the ingredients on the dumpling skins and I remembered that there's at least one kid in the class who is gluten-intolerant (not that it'll kill him or anything, but he does get a pretty bad rash).  So in the interest of making the activity fun for everyone, and minimizing the unknowns (I also realized I had no idea what kind of heating elements, if any, I would have access to--very Top Chef Quickfire Challenge) I decided to go with something simple and easy and healthy.  Healthy-ish.

Cal and I made a test batch yesterday (what, you don't think I would go in cold, without practicing, do you?  If so, you don't know me very well--before the Oral Boards, I took a test drive to the exam location at least three or four times, and it was only ten minutes away) and it turned out pretty well.  We even put jalepeños in--turns out they're not really that spicy if you scrape the seeds out.  And if some kids don't like guacamole (Cal doesn't like avocado himself, but he does enjoy guacamole) I got, like two giant bags of chips.  KIDS LOVE CHIPS.  Except for that no-gluten kid.  I will just give him a spoon and a bowl of guacamole.

(Hey wait, I'm looking at the poster again, and I think Joe helped him cut out the Statue of Liberty figure.  Cheater!)

well, to be honest, they do all look kind of the same

JOE: Cal, look at these art projects! These look great!

CAL: Yeah.

JOE: Which one is yours?

CAL: You know, that's a good question, Dad.

JOE: Yeah, it sure is. So which one?

CAL: Um...I don't really know.




(It was this one.)

person of the week




So Cal is this week's "Person of the Week." I keep calling it Gold Star Day but Cal reminds me that Gold Star Day is only for three year-olds, he's in Pre-K now and he's four-and-three-quarters years-old now Mom, jeez. Fair enough son, fair enough. Magical Sparkle Snowflake Day it is.

Part of being Person of the Week (file this under homework that is more for parents than it is for kids) is bringing in a poster about yourself. I'm not really sure what such a poster would entail, though I caught a glimpse of some hanging in the classroom, which were elaborate pictographs of family and vacations and various passions like Disney Princesses or pizza. So I hope that Cal's poster fits the bill. I think it turned out pretty OK, despite the fact that Cal wouldn't let me help him do this really cool offset letter effect in which I cut out the letters of his name in two colored cardstock and made it look like his name was popping out in 3D. You don't understand my vision, kid, just run along and let me do my poster...I mean, your poster...in peace.

(Anyway, click here for annotated notes of Cal's poster. This is now officially more information than you require, but humor me, grandparents are interested.)

let no one say this has not been an eventful year

OK, OK, but before you get all piqued at me about not posting, quick pop quiz. Which of the following things happened in the four months since my last substantial post?

1.) Random stray gunfire came in through our window one night
2.) I took the Anesthesia written boards
3.) Joe was hospitalized for three days in the cardiac ICU
4.) We found a new rental in a less bullet-y neighborhood and are moving in five weeks

All of the above, my friends. All of the above.

First thing: I reposted those two entries I redacted a few months ago, here and here. There, now everyone knows what I was cryptically referring to in my penultimate post before that video with Cal and the driving dogs. We got a bullet through our window. No one was hurt, but really, a bullet through our window? That is excessive drama by any standards, and I am a decidedly undramatic person. Despite the sweeps season-like air that the incident lent this blog, I took down my posts about the bullet shortly after posting it because Joe didn't want his parents (read: Mom) to know about what happened until we were out of our current living situation (lest she worry unduly), and I found that since I couldn't talk about the bullet and I couldn't really talk too much about work and since I couldn't talk about XYZ other topics for a wide variety of reasons (ranging from general discretion to topics just too boring to write about), I realized I couldn't think of anything to blog about. One week became two, became a month, etcetera etcetera. The more you stay away, the more you stay away. Anyway, barring any further upheaval to cap off the year (perhaps alien abduction would be a fitting coup de grace), I will resolve to do better. Perhaps I will do what I did last year after I fell off the wagon for an overlong period of time. 30 posts in 30 days, that kind of thing. Anyway, we'll see.

Oh yes, Joe in the ICU. That was about two weeks ago. Short answer: viral myocarditis. Long answer: I will try and get a blog entry up about it sometime soon, both about the general experience and about the dual advantage/terror of being a healthcare professional hospitalized for a potentially serious condition. He's out now and doing better of course, or I wouldn't be talking about it at all. Call me superstitious, but I'm a firm believer that talking about bad things makes them come true.




Cal and Mack are both doing well. Cal started school a few weeks ago. He is in Pre-K this year--after some stunning-to-the-teachers (though not stunning to us) gains in the social arena during the Spring semester, his teachers decided not to pursue the issue of retention, and though he still is the youngest kid in his class this year, he's basically normalized himself amongst his peers and is just acting like a regular kid--talking and playing and laughing and running around, as opposed to sitting on the sidelines with the teachers chatting about numbers and scowling evilly about this kid or that kid breaking the rules. (Among other things little-old-manly, Cal loves pointing out and imposing rules on others, sometimes in less than adorable ways. My little mid-level manager.)

And Mack?




Mack is delicious.

So let's jump back into it, shall we? Or hell, I'll do you one better. Forget 30 posts in 30 days. It's 60 posts in 60 days this time around, baby. This is called "penance." And lord knows we have enough to catch up on.

big mack attack

Good god, hide the cookies, he's in the 6-12 month clothing already:



If Cal is any indication, his size will eventually normalize, but man, is Mack ever a big baby.

Also, does this outfit look girlie to you? I would say no, because what, it's GREEN, but for some reason I could only find it in the girl's section on the Old Navy website. Perhaps there is a hidden Barbie intarsia somewhere in there that I can't see, but whatever, who cares. I love me some stripes.


* * *


Another weekend, another kid's birthday party. Some people complain about this, because their weekend social calendars are just littered with all these little parties, making it difficult to do anything else, but we like them. BECAUSE WE HAVE NO LIFE. Anyway, It's a free activity at a kid-friendly venue, and it's nice to get Cal out of the house and with his friends on the weekend, all sugared up and blah blah blah. I do think I have to start employing my mom's strategy of The Gift Closet, though, where basically I buy a whole stash of little kid's birthday gifts on sale and keep them around for all these events. Most of the parents in Cal's class actually are of the "please no need to bring gifts" or "instead of gifts, bring canned goods for the food bank" variety, but still, there are occasionally some birthday gifts exchanged, and since I always forget this involves a last minute run to Borders the day before to pick up yet another copy of "Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late!" (An excellent kid's book, by the way.)

Yesterday the party was at 1:30pm, which implied to me that there was not going to be any lunch, so we made lunch at home for Cal before we left the house. For the sake of simplicity, I just made him pizza and a banana, two foods which require the least amount of assembly and preparation possible. Midway through lunch, this exchange, per Joe:


JOE
So how are you liking that lunch? Looks good.

CAL
It's good. I love pizza and bananas together. It just makes good sense.

JOE
Makes good sense, huh?

CAL
But you know what doesn't make good sense?

JOE
What?

CAL
You farting.


I've said it before and I'll say it again: this house is lousy with BOYS.


* * *




A few weeks ago we got some of that Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's, which, for those who don't shop there, is basically the very extremely cheap but reportedly good house wine. (Actually, it costs $2.50 now, but Two-and-a-Half Buck Chuck is something of a mouthful, and anyway sounds too much like "Two and a Half Men," that show with Charlie Sheen and Duckie from "Pretty In Pink.") I actually had a patient this summer who was a wine distributor out of Manhattan, and he swore to me--though perhaps the midazolam had affected his recall--that in his expert opinion, Two Buck Chuck was as good if not better than many of the much more expensive wines he has tried. So with that endorsement in mind, we bought a bottle of the Shiraz and a bottle of Merlot, just to keep around.

Not that I'm some kind of wine connoisseur or anything like that (actually, I barely drink at all) but I've been wanting to try this wine since we got it. But now that I'm back at work, there's never a window for me to drink it. I don't want to have a glass during the work week, because I feel too rushed in the evenings and if there's the off chance that it will make it difficult for me to wake up the following morning, I have to shun it. (See also: allergy medicine in the Spring.) Ditto Sunday evenings. Friday evening Joe doesn't get home until late, so I don't have any hands free, nor the patience to taste anything more nuanced than chicken nuggets and ketchup. So really, the only window I have is Saturday evening, which I missed this week. And the week before. And the week before that.

But never fear, I will try again next week! And for those purists who frown at the idea of me having a glass of wine when I'm breastfeeding, it's called first-pass metabolism, people. And anyway, I hear babies love the sauce.

reconsidering



Remember when I talked a couple of weeks ago about Cal being young for his class and a little on the shy end of things and how we were considering retaining him with his current teachers to allow him to grow and become more confident and la la la everything lovely? Well, Joe and I are starting to rethink this. Not because anything has really changed--Cal still is who he is, that being a kid who is essentially cautious and slow to warm up to new things and perhaps a little on the cerebral side (though, I hope, not in a maladaptive way). We're just worried that if he repeats a year in the same classroom again, he's going to be bored as shit.

I mean, look, he's three, academics can take a backseat. But they do do some academic-type stuff in his nursery school class. They write letters and words and read books and learn songs and talk about rhymes and what letter does DOG start with, blah blah blah. And Cal knows that stuff already. He knows that R is for Robot and Ring and Ramp and...whatever, pick your favorite R word. (He has some trouble understanding that C is both for Car and Cereal, but join the club, kid, that barely makes sense to me, and I'm old.) He can tell you that Cat rhymes with Mat and Bat and Fat. As for writing letters and stuff--well, the funny thing is--OK, remember when I was all confused because his teachers insisted that he was left handed, whereas every observation I had of Cal where I had enough wherewithal to take notice of such things, he writes with his right hand? Well, when I went in for that parent teacher conference, they were showing me some of Cal's work, among which was a full sheet of paper on which Cal had written out the alphabet very neatly and legibly. "Oh yeah, that reminds me," I broke in, "what was that thing about him being left-hand dominant? Because so far as his dad and I can see, he writes with his right hand. Like this whole page of letters, he wrote with his right hand, right?"

The head teacher looked confused. "Actually, he did all this writing with his left hand. I took special note. That's why I put that in his report." They had no idea that at home, he was writing with his right hand equally well. My point not being OH MY GOD MY KID IS AMBIDEXTROUS, GET HIM IN A SURGICAL SIMULATOR NOW, rather that there is a big program in the nursery school called "Handwriting Without Tears," wherein they spend basically the entire year learning to write their letters in various multidisciplinary and multisensory ways. So does Cal really need to spend a whole additional year doing letter drills when he can already write the entire alphabet using EITHER HAND? Probably not. Again, it's true, we didn't send him to school for the academics, we sent him to school for the social component. However, since they're doing academic stuff anyway, aren't we obligated to keep him at least somewhat challenged?

The other thing is: Cal's school runs this summer camp-type thing that runs from June through August. It costs a couple of pesos, but what to do, he has to do something, otherwise he'd be so bored sitting around all day (see also: the Christmas Break that would not end) that he would kill us and we would kill him and everyone would be killed and oh, the humanity. Though this summer program runs out of the school, I presume he will have different teachers than he has during the year. The goal of keeping him in the same class next year was so that he would have the same routine and the same teachers, but what, we're going to send him to the summer program, get him used to a new routine with new people anyway, and then...send him back to the same classroom he was in before? Does that make sense? Shouldn't we use the change that is "summer camp" (still at the same school, remember, same physical plant and facilities) as sort of a jumping-off point for transitioning to next year's classroom? I mean, if he will have already made an adjustment to summer camp, what's the point of holding him back?

Part of me worries that our inclination (mostly on the part of me and Joe, though who knows, maybe the teachers feel the same way--they weren't adamant about the retention by any means, just suggested with the idea that Cal might be more comfortable with things the second time around) is this notion now to want to protect our kids from everything. Protect them from ever experiencing difficulty, failure, protect them from having to negotiate tricky situations or adapting to things with which they are not entirely confident. Sure, I want my kid to be happy and succeed, but I'm not convinced that retaining him in his current preschool class is going to have any bearing on that. I don't want to be the parent that wants to make everything PERFECT for my kid, and oh, he's a little younger than everyone else? A little shy, a little reserved? Keep him in the same class, let him be one of the oldest for once so he knows what it feels like to be ahead. I don't know if I want to be that kind of parent. I don't know if that's what's right for Cal. And I know that he's got a handle on the "curriculum" (such as it is) for his school year thus far, so would I actually be doing him a disservice by making him do it all over again, just so that he doesn't have to learn the routines of a new classroom and new teachers? I mean, in one sense, yes, let's give him the tools to be more confident and break out from his reserve...but in another sense, why not move him along and let him just cope? And sure, some things are going to be harder for him than for other kids, but isn't that just life? As a parent, you can't make everything easy for your kid, nor, would I argue, should you try to. I think life is challenging sometimes, and kids should learn that that's OK.

Anyway, the discussion goes on. We'll keep talking with Cal's teachers and we'll see what we end up doing. And thus ends another overly detailed episode of Nursery School Overanalysis. I'm your host, Michelle. Join us next week, as we explore the perverse and often baffling ritual known as "Circle Time."

do-overs




(Above graphic by Chris Sharron. Incidentally, just so I can clear about 20+ e-mails from my inbox all in one fell blow--people often ask me where I get those cute T-shirts for Cal. I have talked about this before, but most of them are from Threadless.com. They primarily do adult shirts, but their selection of kid's shirts and onesies has really expanded in the past few years. And apparently they are having a $9 sale on all their girly-fit T-shirts now through Sunday, so go look. Unless you're one of those nudists.)

(And now back to your regularly scheduled whatever.)

There's a pretty big spread of ages in Cal's class. I mean, all the kids are three to four years-old, but I don't think anyone can argue that a the difference between just-turned-four and just-turned-three is huge. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that while it's a spread that will minimize with time, it's not going to totally stop being a factor in school until all the kids in the group hit puberty, at which point everyone will just be equally revolting. Some of the kids in Cal's class turned four as early as this past summer, probably more than half celebrated their fourth birthdays before the calendar year ended. And Cal, well, Cal turned three at the end of July, less than a month before the school year began. He is what in the preschool age spread they call "a young three." In fact, I think he's actually the second-youngest kid in his class, if not the youngest.

The night that we got Cal's progress report, Joe and I discussed the idea of retaining Cal in "pre-primary" (as his nursery school class is called) for another year. This is something that sometimes the teachers and parents choose to do for a variety of reasons--there is one kid repeating in Cal's class right now, for instance--mostly to give kids who are a little bit on the young end of things a chance to catch up, both socially and developmentally, to give them a chance to not always feel the pressure of being smaller, clumsier, behind. I'm not worried about Cal's academic development--that I think is well on-target--but I think the combination of Cal's particular cautious personality and the fact that he is on the extreme young end of the bell curve for his group may be a disadvantageous combination. We talked about it and we talked about it, and finally, I just said, "Well, let me just see how this parent teacher conference goes, and we'll see what they think."

At the parent teacher conference, after we had chatted and gone through all the papers and artwork and shot the shit for a while, the teachers paused, sort of took a deep breath, and said that while Cal is doing great academically, they thought that--guess what?--with the combination of Cal's particular personality and the fact that he is on the extreme young end of the bell curve, they wanted to see what we thought about him staying with them in pre-primary for another year.

I think they were a little surprised when I told them that I actually wholeheartedly agreed instead of running out of the room, rending my garments, screaming, "MY KID JUST FAILED PRESCHOOL!"

After they exhaled (really, they were very relieved that my reaction was not, you know, defensiveness or anger), they further elucidated their reasoning, much of which I had thought through myself and agreed with. He would be in the same classroom, with the same three teachers, and they hoped that in not giving Cal another big transition (our move from New York to Atlanta right before Cal started school also played into their decision, as Cal is not a kid who deals easily with upheaval), that he could build his confidence, and in already knowing the rhythm and patterns of his classroom environment, he could finally be the expert, the leader, bigger and more competent as opposed to always feeling behind. And that with this comfort and familiarity, maybe he could finally be a little less anxious, and develop a little more of that social piece that we all think he needs work on. That's the thinking, anyway. We could re-evaluate again at the end of the year, since Cal seems to have been steadily improving on all fronts (most notably in the few weeks since Mack was born--instead of regressing, he seems to have hit some sort of developmental growth spurt) but they just wanted to broach the subject and see what we thought.

I will be totally honest with you here and say that as a Type A person and someone who skews towards the nerd end of the spectrum, part of me does find this a little embarrassing. The TEACHERS are saying that MY KID may benefit from REPEATING a year in NURSERY SCHOOL. Oh my god, he is REMEDIAL. But another part of me sees the potential benefits of retention very clearly, and not just for the reasons you might think. See, when I was a kid, I attended nursery school starting at the age of two. This is not uncommon in New York, and anyway, my parents were both residents, and they figured, what, was I just going to sit at home with a nanny all day? Might as well go learn how to sit in a circle and nap on cue. So by the time kindergarden rolled around, I had already been attending school for three years. Like Cal, my academic skills were on target, and at the time (this was the early 1980s, remember) my school principal thought I might be bored in kindergarden or something, doing the same old things that I had been doing all along, and so decided (along with my parents) to skip me directly into first grade. My birthday is at the end of June, so I had just turned five.

Like I said, I turned out basically OK. As I got older, I even eventually came to like being on the younger end of things--it occasionally made me look like some whiz kid or something, though clearly I am nothing of the sort. But as the years went by, it also ceased to matter--no one asks me how old I am anymore (well, I guess my patients do sometimes), and when I did an extra year of residency when I switched from Peds to Anesthesia, that extra year I had on everyone got absorbed. And, whatever, I'm thirty now, so who cares. But being on the extreme young end of the spectrum for my grade and, like Cal, having sort of a self-contained personality, I'm not sure in retrospect that skipping ahead was necessarily the best decision. I've always done OK academically, and it's not like I'm some social retard or anything like that, but I'm not going to say that being on the younger end of things didn't occasionally make things hard.

Particularly for Cal now--we're not sending him to school for academics. I mean, yes, of course that is part of it, and I care as much as the next parent whether or not he can write his alphabet and cut out shapes and recreate patterns. But the big thing, the main reason we sent him to school when and where we did, is for the social element. As his parents, we can teach him how to read and add and write in cursive. But we can't recreate the experience of being in the schoolyard with four of his little buddies, playing "construction site" and cooperating to dig a giant hole straight through to China.

Joe's one hesitation when we first discussed the idea of retaining Cal was the prospect of separating him from his peer group. There are seventeen other kids in Cal's class besides him, and he knows their names, knows some of their parents, sometimes tells us little stories about the COO-RAZY stuff that Aaron or Maya or Simon did at school that day. However, tellingly, Cal does not have a best friend yet. He is interacting with the other kids more now than he was at the beginning of the year, and I think is starting to make that leap from parallel to cooperative play (he also does more imaginative play now, at least at home--his new favorite game is "Car School," in which there's a teacher car and student cars and all the cars sit in a circle and have snacktime and line up to go to gym class) but I don't think he's particularly attached to any one or several kids in his class over any other kids he might meet. Well, except for his teachers. He is very attached to his teachers. Which, I guess, is another argument to keep him in the same class for another year, and let him grow a little more under the care and guidance of people who already know him well.

Anyway, for all our hand-wringing and overanalysis, let's not forget--THIS IS NURSERY SCHOOL. The idea of "retaining" or not retaining him in some sense is almost meaningless, all it means is that he's going to be in the same classroom with the same teachers, as opposed to in that other classroom with those other teachers. Everyone's going to learn to read, everyone's going to learn to add, everyone going to get to eat paste. The important thing is that Cal is enjoying himself while doing it. And that he eventually attends the Ivy League medical school of his choice.

(Kidding!)

(I swear.)

Edited to add: Yes, I have read this article. And while I never thought that I would be making this decision, I realize that if Cal continues at his current school through kindergarden, we may be in the position of looking over the fence from one side of the debate to the other.

blame daddy, because i just say "jeez"



Cal's Gold Star day went really well. He was super-excited to have me there (at one point he told me, "Thank you for coming to my school, because I miss you when you're at work," like STICK A KNIFE INTO MY HEART why don't you), and was so proud to show me where everything was, what he was doing, all that kind of thing.

Part of Gold Star Day is bringing something in for Show and Tell--really just an excuse to get kids used to the idea of speaking in front of people and to share something interesting from home. I knew if Cal brought in a toy or a book, he would run out of things to talk about fairly quickly ("This is my train..." followed by five minutes of mute nodding), so in the interest of prolonging the experience, I printed out a big picture of him and Mack to bring into the class, so he could talk about "his baby" and the various aspects of his new life as a big brother.

Cal uncharacteristically seemed to be enjoying the self-revelatory aspect of the activity, and decided to share this story, which I will transcribe as faithfully as I can.

"The baby can't use the potty. He pees in a diaper. And he poops in a diaper. And when we were going to the park and the baby was in the stroller, he pooped in his diaper. And then we changed the diaper but then he pooped in the diaper again. I mean, Jesus."

like mother like son




First off, thanks for all the e-mails about my post yesterday regarding Cal in all his little old mannish-ness. Just seeing the volume of stories about kids just like Cal who are all doing well (despite the best efforts of us parents to TOTALLY SCREW THEM UP) was very reassuring. One piece that I should add for context that is also reassuring (or possibly alarming, depending on your point of view) is that when I was a kid, I was actually very much like Cal is now. Especially when I was very young, meaning nursery school up until...oh, say...second grade? I just found the childlike hijinks of other kids a little overwhelming for me, and occasionally puzzling. Why are they doing that? Why are they so loud? Why would they just knock that block tower over? Why do they keep touching me? I don't want to name a body part to stick into the circle to shake all about for the Hokey-Pokey. EVERYONE STOP LOOKING AT ME. And then I would cry. I think I cried a lot in school as a kid. They even broached the subject to my parents that maybe I should see some sort of child psychiatrist for what they construed as my crippling shyness and anxiety (who knows, maybe they were right) but anyway, such things were just not as common then as they are now, and besides, as I got older (and perhaps just as importantly, my classmates got older) everything sort of normalized, and here I am now, restricting my serial killing to just the weekends.

Well, the important thing is that Cal really loves his school, and that the emphasis be on him getting as much out of the experience as possible rather than getting him to fit into some cookie-cutter mold. However, I also worry (warning: exposure of deepest darkest neurosis ahead) that the teachers or other parents somehow think that Joe and I are psychos because we have this kid that more than one parent has described to us as, "so sweet, but so serious!" I mean, this thing that Cal says to get out of doing things, by saying, "I'm not very good at [insert activity here]," be it playing some group game, complying with instructions, breathing, what have you--is just strange, because where did he get that? One of the other moms said to me at this party on Sunday, "Well, isn't that cute, he just wants to be the best at everything!" Lady, let me tell you, Cal wants a lot of things, but could not give two shits if he is The Best at anything--I'm not even sure he understands what that means. Why he says "I'm not very good at this" as an excuse I have no idea, but if it somehow gives the impression that his browbeating overachiever parents are telling him that if he can't be the best at something, he shouldn't even try, I will die of mortification. Seriously, I will die. I know I shouldn't worry about what The Other Parents think, but let's be honest, we all do, right? ADMIT IT. (See also: why I will put on lip gloss for the parent teacher conferences.)

But anyway. Tomorrow is Cal's Gold Star Day (specifically engineered with his teachers so that I could attend during my maternity leave--he wasn't originally scheduled to have his Gold Star until the end of the month), and afterwards, I will stick around and help the kids decorate cookies for Valentine's Day. It's quite possibly my only chance this year do do anything with Cal's class at school during actual classroom time, so that will be fun, and possibly even take the edge off my working mom guilt somewhat.

Oh right, that reminds me of my other secret worry--that I made Cal into an anxious collection of neuroses by working such long hours. Side story: one time I got out from work early and was picking Cal up from school. One of his classmates, a little girl, asked me, "Are you Cal's babysitter?"

"Actually," I told her, "I'm his mom."

She paused for a long time, looked me up and down, and then retorted, "NO. You're his BABYSITTER." Ah, little girl, practicing for high school already.

Anyway, whatever, I know it's the fatal flaw of all parents to overanalyze everything with their own kids to absolutely no benefit, so I'll just try to stop. It's kind of like in the hospital, how the especially complicated patients will have this huge thick chart just filled with reams and reams of notes, but at the end of the day, the essential plan to stay the course with current treatment remains unchanged. Or as one of my attendings is med school put it, "no one ever died of note-openia."

progress report




(I was going to start off with some joke about how the devil went down to Georgia, and that's why it's so warm down here--highs in the 70s today--but I realized that would be a pretty lame joke, even for me.)

So yesterday, we got Cal's progress report, which is sort of like his little report card, issued in advance of the parent-teacher conferences this Thursday. By the way, even though part of me misses the comments section on this blog, this is one of those days that I am glad I turned them off, because for some reason, EVERY DAMN TIME I talk about Cal going to nursery school I would get these comments that were like, "Why can't you let your kid be a kid, why do you have to send them to school at age three, what are you hyper-achievement pressure-parents pushing, MCAT prep or something!?!?! And also: !!!!!!" Yes, people send their kids to preschool. And then the kids can eat their boogers in new and enriching environments. The End. But anyway, comments are OFF now, so I don't have to mentally gird my loins for the sarcastic repartee, of which the name of some Ivy League school and our supposed grand admission scheme always seems to be the punchline.

Anyway, though I think Cal is a pretty great kid, I am well aware of his shortcomings. I don't worry about him from an academic point of view--I know he's smart and all, and learning numbers and letters and colors and reading honestly isn't the reason that we sent him to school, because he can get that at home. The reason we thought it was important for him to start school was for the social piece--particularly, socializing with other kids his own age. Because frankly, in a room full of other kids his own age, Cal is kind of...weird.

It says repeatedly in his progress report that he's more of an "observer" than a participant in group activities, and that I have to agree with 100%. He doesn't play with other kids per se unless he's tricked into it; more often, he just watches them. When you try to get him involved in some big-group kid activity, he inevitably makes excuses and begs off. He's less this way now, but a few months ago he actually used to be kind of scared of other little kids, especially when they were very exuberant (read: loud) or energetic (read: rough), and would run back to me or Joe or whoever to cower by our sides and peek out from between our legs. Just yesterday, we took Cal to the birthday party of some kid in his class, held at one of these little kiddie gyms with a ball pit and a trampoline and soft climbing structures and what have you. He had a right fine time playing on his own, but when it came time for "circle time" and to participate in a group game (I believe it involved beaning Nerf balls at each other) he stood off to the side and refused to participate. "I'm not very good at sitting in a circle," he explained, casting a jaundiced eye on the proceedings. "And I don't think I like that game very much." Meanwhile, all the other normal kids were smashing each other with foam balls and screaming with joy. Let's just put it this way: if you're a magician at a kid's party and you need to pick a volunteer for audience participation, you don't want to call on Cal.

Contrast that with what I think is actually Cal's ideal party, which we attended a few weekends ago--the adult's cocktail party. Our neighbor had a small get together for about thirty people to celebrate her 40th birthday, and since it was early enough and we lived right next door anyway, we brought Cal and Mack along. Cal was in his element. He was talking to everybody, all of them strangers, telling stories, laughing and dancing, even sidling up to one person he'd just met to hold their hand. (This actually was fairly embarrassing for me, because the person whose hand he decided to hold had, I'm fairly sure, had a STROKE not too long ago, and it appeared he was actually PARALYZED on the hand-holding side--but the guy was a former teacher and very nice, not to mention thoroughly charmed by Cal's gregarious party persona.) To say that Cal is "adult-oriented," as one of his teacher's noted earlier this year, is perhaps one of the bigger understatements that we've heard. If you saw him at this adult party and then observed him with other kids, you might not believe he was the same child.

The other problem with Cal (well, it's not a problem in that it's so unusual for a three year-old, but it is a problem in that it makes things difficult sometimes) is that he does not deal well with new things. I'm not talking about new foods or new people necessarily, but new experiences are problematic, and no matter how much fun they look and whether or not every other kid is enjoying it (there was a zip-line at this kid's party yesterday that he just refused to even look at), he is just very slow to warm up. He's not the kind of kid who's going to cannonball into a pool, let's put it that way. I believe they call this warming-up-to-new-experiences "transitions" at school, and it's true, Cal is probably not that great at transitions. I mean, just look how long it took for him to agree to even use the toilet at school, despite being scatologically reliable at home. MONTHS. And you have to be careful how you encourage him to try the new things. One wrong word and he digs his heels in and you can just forget it--he won't be going down that slide or sitting in his cubby or watching "Toy Story" ("TOY STORY" for chrissake! It's a CARTOON! And an hour and the half of parent-endorsed TV time! Who is this kid?) ever, ever again. Or at least until he forgets all about it and just does it anyway.

I think these two things are the two core things that Cal needs to work on, but the problem is that between those two things, I imagine Cal occasionally does not come off very well, and appears more like the freaky loner kid who refuses to do anything that I'm sure teachers just LOVE. The progress report takes pains to mention what they feel are Cal's strengths--mainly, that he's very empathetic and sweet and "sensitive" (though this seems more like a euphemism for "cries easily"), but I think some of his other strengths are being eclipsed by the fact that he just refused to do some of things for which he was being evaluated. For instance, we (Joe and I) know Cal has known all his letters for almost two years, he can easily count to 20 (has, actually, counted to 120, with only occasional prompting that the number following, say, 49 is not "forty-ten"), writes his own name, talks in long, complete sentences (tellingly, his favorite word is "actually"), and knows his basic shapes, colors, and all that crap. I mean, the kid told me a few months ago, "Actually Mom, did you know that this banana kind of looks like a crescent?" COME ON NOW. But according to his progress report, he is still has not mastered those skills, which makes me wonder just what kind of act he is pulling at school, and just how stubborn he is being about coming out of his shell to show them. Because when Cal doesn't want to do something well, he just won't do it.

I mean, for example, in his progress report, it says in one part about fine motor skills that he is functioning as left-hand dominant. And Cal is very clearly right-handed. I mean, we've been spelling out the words for him and he writes thank-you notes to his grandparents--I've watched him, HE IS RIGHT HANDED. Yet for this evaluation, he was using his left hand to cut out shapes, write letters, what have you. This is classic Cal, this deliberate screwing up of tasks he can easily do well (like when he pretends he can't put on his pants so we have to help him, or pretends to fall down because he's "too tired to walk") inevitably followed up by, "Actually, I'm not very good at this, I can't do this." He can do these things at home, and my initial response was to be very defensive of Cal and his abilities, even thinking, well, maybe I should make a tape of him and show them...but then I came to realize that really, that's beside the point. The point isn't that he can do this stuff at home, the point is that he isn't doing them at school. And that's what we need to work on.

That and his reluctance to play with other children. Other kids just freak him out for some reason. The adult world, with its manners and rules, its polite conversation, its personal space boundaries and lack of rough physical engagement, that's what Cal likes. Put him in a room with a bunch of squealing, grubby kids jumping up and down and throwing things (you know, any preschool class, in other words) and you're more likely than not going to find him standing off to the side watching everyone else and occasionally making deadpan critique. Yesterday at the party, he walked out of the party room, where all the other kids were honking on their little noisemakers, and told me, "It's just too loud in there, it's hurting inside my ears," before settling on the bench next to me and finishing his slice of pizza. Part of me agreed--it was loud in there, all the other parents were wincing and making jokes about "whose idea was the noisemakers anyway?"--but another part of me wanted Cal in there, honking on his horn and smearing frosting. Like, BE A KID, for chrissake!

I also realize that I'm going to get some e-mails from people insisting HEY, YOUR KID HAS ASPERGER'S! (or whatever, pick your favorite diagnosis--mine is tuberculosis, THE GREAT IMITATOR), but I really don't think so, mostly because he is very empathic, and also his little peccadilloes are not across the board--like I said, around adults or older children, he's much, much different. Not that I'm in love with the new en vogue practice of labeling every childhood micro-neurosis with some diagnostic catch-all anyway. I think Cal is sort of a weirdly fastidious, over-analytical kid, and while we can certainly work on some of the issues of stubbornness and transitioning now, the rest of it I think is just going to take some tincture of time.

Either that, or he'll grow up to be a twenty year-old kid who spends all his leisure time hanging out with his BFF over at the old folks home.