The receding horizon

I've been sitting on this for about a week, trying to figure out how I feel and what I want to say.

Technically, by the numbers, according to quantitative measures, I'm perfectly fine.

I went into my appointment hoping that the doctor would come in and tell me she'd found something. I cried when she said I was fine.

"So why do I still feel so bad?" I asked the endocrinologist.

This has come to be about much more than trying to have another kid. Back when I thought I had this figured out, when I thought I had found a reason not just for the miscarriages, but also for the chronic pain that has been my companion for as long as I can remember, I became hopeful about finally feeling better. And then the hope grew until my focus was conquering this pain and pregnancy something to return to after.

But, according to the labwork, it's not my thyroid. Not that my numbers are ideal. My T4 remains a little high, my TSH has been unstable, and a few numbers are at the edge of the reference range, but there's nothing obvious to be treated.

"Western medicine doesn't have all the answers, for all it wants to think that it does," she told me.

At my endocrinologist's suggestion, I have started to see an acupuncturist. I decided that I will be open to what he says and follow all of his recommendations. And so I am taking a range of herbs and probiotics, which I fervently hope will make a difference--and that my underlying doubt will not negate any improvement, placebo-effect or not.

It helps my attitude, at least a little, that the acupuncturist wants to know what the labwork has said. There's enough science in what he says that I can buy into a good part of what he says. He expressed shock that there isn't any obvious issue with my thyroid. (That makes three of us. Trillian is still shaking her head over this.) He is concerned that my sedimentation rate is slightly elevated and suspects that this constant, low-level of inflammation may have caused my miscarriages (which even meshes with what the nurse practitioner said); since tests for rheumatic factor and lupus and other inflammatory diseases always come back negative and the inflammation is not that elevated, most doctors dismiss its importance. So he also gets points for demonstrating concern about issues that concern me. And taking a couple tears in stride.

My emotions continue to roil under the surface, not always under the surface. Back in March, I expected to have an answer within a month. In June, two months. Now, I'd even forgo an answer, if only I could feel better. But the waiting continues.

I do not (usually) complain about other people's children in real life

As I mentioned in a comment on my previous post, Scooter is in a class with a couple of kids I wouldn't mind not seeing again. Now, I hold a strong opinion, forged in my years of teaching, that it is my responsibility, as an adult, to interact appropriately with all children, even those with whom I am a complete mismatch.

But what I write here is not an interaction with those kids, so you'll excuse me if I abdicate my adult responsibilities for just a bit in this space.

The kid I knew would be at Scooter's school is not only in the same class, but will be sitting catty-corner from Scooter at the same table. To start. We let the teacher know that Scooter has a tendency either to get angry at this kid or to imitate his noises.

Wait, let me back-track a minute. Let me explain our interactions with this child. And, so that you can hear this appropriately in your imagination, let me give him a (barely) disguised name: Lucifer. Think of a nickname for this that is a common boy's name. Just know that I used to LOVE this nickname.

We first met Lucifer in an introductory sport class for kids aged 3-5, held at our local Y. I signed Scooter up for something to do before we could get him into the preschool program. I figured it would require him to use gross motor skills and be a marginally helpful thing until he was back in OT. I could do a whole "mean mommies" post on how I found myself in the middle of a group that had been doing this program for months and so the women found it hard to muster even a greeting. But most of you don't need that spelled out.

Lucifer and his mom were a bit late to the first class Scooter and I went to. His entry immediately changed the tenor of the class. He was not still for a second and didn't/couldn't pay any attention to directions. He touched and poked and pushed other kids. His mother split her time between yelling at him to stop whatever he was doing and chasing after her toddler.

By the end of our month, neither Scooter not I wanted to go back, so we waited for soccer instead. Guess who was on that team too!

Turns out we had been seeing a fairly tame version of Lucifer. In soccer, he was even worse. Things like blowing spit bubbles (at kids), picking boogers and chasing people with them, pushing even more, picking up sticks and then refusing to put them down. Whenever he was at practice, Trillian (who was assistant coach) spent most of her time corralling him. His harried mother would again be shrilly, oh so shrilly, shouting his name from the sidelines.

(This is why I can no longer use a boy's name with that nickname. The sound will forever be etched into my brain!)

To be fair, I found out later that he has asthma and is on inhaled steroids. His impulsive behavior is either due to this or, at least, greatly exacerbated by it. So I do feel sorry for him and his mother. But holy hell, that doesn't make me want to spend more time with him.

Then there's a second kid in the class who drives me nuts. He was in Scooter's preschool class, I would guess for behavioral issues. He is, as best as I can tell, the fourth of five kids. When he came to Scooter's birthday party, his father dropped him off really fast and picked him up last (besides the neighborhood friend who lives a couple houses away). We were lucky to have extra adults, because he needed one to watch just him most of the time. He's the only kid who let himself into Scooter's room, while everyone else was playing outside. He also shot one of Scooter's plastic golf balls so far into our neighbor's yard that we couldn't see where it was (and it was yellow, so pretty obvious). He unceremoniously takes possession of anything that interests him, including grabbing ahold of gifts as Scooter unwrapped them.

I initially assumed that this child's behavior was some combination of being the youngest (somehow, I got the impression that he was the youngest of three from what his father had said) and his particular character. Then our neighbor told us that all of this family's brood are just as wild as he is.

So these are two of the kids Scooter will be spending kindergarten alongside. At least during the meet-the-teacher afternoon, I know that the teacher got a chance to witness a little of these two's antics. Apparently he taught one of the wild brood last year, not to mention the obvious grabbing and attempts to make off with others' property. And Lucifer gave a performance of his noises at full volume.

On the plus side, Scooter is sitting next to another soccer teammate, one who seems fairly level-headed and nice. And it turns out that the son of the woman who gave us a ride home during a rainstorm is in his class too. I think that he knows yet another boy too, though I'm only going off of first names, so I won't be sure until I see the whole class.

Crossing my fingers that somehow Scooter's drawn to the nice kids and not the bad boys as he sometimes has been in the past.

Countdown to Kindergarten

Scooter's summer daycare situation is winding down. Class lists are posted soon. Then there's a meet-the-teacher time where he can scope out the classroom and drop off his school supplies.

And then he starts kindergarten.

This week, we've been making use of a guest pass our neighbor gave us for the pool that's near the elementary school. As Scooter and I walk over there, we'll talk about how this is the way we'll walk once school starts and count the days until various kindergarten-related events. Yesterday I asked how he was feeling about kindergarten starting soon and gave him the choices of excited, worried, or excited and worried. He chose excited, and we began to talk about all the different things he would get to do.

I, however, would have chosen excited and worried.

Overall, I am hopeful that kindergarten will be a good experience for Scooter. I suspect that the all-day structure will be good for him. At a couple of the preschool/IEP meetings last year, I pointed out that the brevity of the preschool day (2 1/2 hours, four days a week) probably worked against Scooter's comfort. They tried to go to all of the extras that the other classes do, but this created a very compact schedule with lots of transitions and little chance for Scooter to settle into a rhythm. He was never very excited about school and had multiple meltdowns in those 2 1/2 hours on several occasions. In his summer daycare, where he stays for about 7 hours a day, he has had very few meltdowns and is almost always excited to go. Some of it is probably due to the similarity of their style to his old daycare in Toronto, but I feel pretty sure that he also feels more at ease since activities are given a bit longer. It doesn't hurt that these teachers seem better at letting kids know about imminent transitions before they happen instead of demanding an instant switch to a new activity.

I am also confident that Scooter is ready for the academic kindergarten. He really wants to learn how to read--he doesn't consider the fact that he can recognize some words, sound out others, and spell yet another group to be real reading; he wants to be able to read a whole book. He'll tell you he can count to 20, but with only a little help, he can make it to 100 and can identify numbers much higher than that. He is absolutely ready to soak up whatever knowledge his teacher can impart, and somehow I think that he will be more willing to consider it true learning if it comes from a teacher instead of me or himself.

But that also raises the first of my whispering concerns. I cross my fingers that he will have a teacher who will keep the material interesting and provide enrichment when he's already beyond the curriculum. Given what I've seen of other kids in the community, I have to imagine he's not the only one and the teacher is used to dealing with 5-year-old smarties, so I won't actively worry about this until there's reason.

It also helps that there will be some continuity for Scooter. He'll be working with the same OT and will probably have teachers he's met before for PE, music, and library. He's walked through the building and knows at least the main corridor.

He's not worried about the issue of friends, even though most of the kids he met at daycare, especially the other boys who are odd in the same ways as Scooter, are going to other elementary schools. So far, the one kid I'm sure will be there is one who was on his soccer team, not a kid Scooter or I particularly like. (Hearing this child's name shrieked non-stop by his harried mother turned me off of my favorite boy's name since she was using the shortened version--which was the nickname I would have used.)

He's not concerned about where the bathroom is or having an accident at school (which kindergarten-readiness articles tell me is a common cause of anxiety), but I've noticed that a fresh change of clothes is not included on the supply list. So now I'm anxious for him. Will the teacher have scheduled potty breaks? Will he have a cubby where I can stash clothes for him? Or will I have to convince the teacher to find a place for them? Will the accident(s) he almost certainly will have haunt him for the rest of elementary school? (This reminds me a bit of Aliki's post on sleep issues with L. This is not something I discuss with other parents around here, because who still has a kid at 5 for whom accidents are still a concern? He can make it through most days, but will then slip up a few times in a row. And we still have to frequently remind him to take potty breaks.)

Outside of all this, of course, there are the obligatory motherly exclamations of "How is it time for kindergarten already?" and "What happened to my little baby?" Trillian and I both are likely to cry when he heads into school by himself that first day. Hopefully, when this is all routine in another month or so, my concerns will have been unfounded and we'll be happily discussing what Scooter wants to learn next.

Isn't it romantic?

The last sentence of Lisa b's comment on my last post reminds me of another bit of our Toronto trip that deserves to be set to the page (er, screen).

I also cannot stop laughing when I think of your romantic room with two twin beds!

On my previous trip to Toronto, I spent the night before my exams in a hotel. I knew I wanted to be in a location convenient to campus and in a decently nice hotel. So I turned to Hotwire. This website, if you haven't encountered it, basically carries the leftover rooms from various hotels. You don't get to see which hotel specifically you're booking, but they give you a star rating and a general location. I was able to get a 4-star hotel in Downtown Toronto West for a really good price, so I booked it. It turned out to be the Sheraton on Queen St, which really was handy for what I wanted.

When I got there, the person at check-in informed me that the only non-smoking room they had was a business suite. The deal with it was that it was significantly larger, but did not have a permanent bed. Instead a roll-away is brought in. I was fine with that since I expected to be up studying for several more hours. Not that I told him--he comped me the breakfast buffet.

The set-up worked well for me that night. I had plenty of surfaces to spread out my books, plus two very comfortable couches. I called in room service, turned on some lamps, and frantically ran through my notes for the next day. The roll-away bed was actually quite nice--a comfortable, thick mattress, not just a cot--for the less than four hours of sleep I got.

Fast forward a few months. Trillian and I decide to go the Hotwire route again, in part because it will be easiest to be downtown. I find the same deal, so I'm not surprised that it's the Sheraton. What I wasn't expecting, though, was that we'd find ourselves in the same situation as before. Sure enough, our choice was a smoking room or the business suite. The smoking thing is a big enough deal to us that we opted for the business suite. We got the free breakfast buffet again, but that didn't quite make up for the fact that we spent our vacation, longest away from Scooter yet, on twin beds pushed together.

As Trillian remarked, it felt a bit like we were in a 50s sitcom--other than the whole lesbian thing.

Lisa b is always right

I should know this by now. And it's not that I ever actively doubted Lisa.

She has written before (and spoken) about how Toronto is a small town. But usually in the context of the medical professionals she deals with. And it seemed completely reasonable to me that, even in a big city, various medical experts might expected to have their paths cross more often than the average Torontonians. That the child of one of these experts attends the school where she has taught, well that was an interesting coincidence, but not wholly surprising within the given context.

But I have learned my lesson: Lisa b is always right and I shouldn't try to place limitations on the wisdom she imparts.

Toronto is a small town. As I had amply demonstrated to me during my last visit. And by none other than Lisa b herself.

Trillian and I walked a lot while we were in Toronto. We were staying in a downtown hotel and it only took us 35-40 minutes to walk to campus, so we made that our exercise. In the afternoon of our first full day in town, we were headed back to the hotel after a visit to Whole Foods for some provisions when we saw a familiar face just up ahead. There was Lisa b, in the flesh. Not a planned meeting at all and quite fortuitous, as we'd been going back and forth in email, trying to arrange a meet-up. We walked all together back to the hotel and firmed up plans for a later meeting--so much easier in person.

And again Lisa told me that Toronto's a small town. I could try to chalk the coincidence up to our location--near a cluster of hospitals where she, unfortunately, still spends a lot of time. But that doesn't explain the timing or being on the correct side of the street. So I'll just use this as a reminder to believe whatever Lisa tells me.

Impromptu weekend away

Have run away to the in-laws' air conditioning. Will post again once brain stops boiling.

Green: School supplies

Every once in a while, Trillian and I find ourselves at a loss as to the fact that Scooter will be headed to kindergarten soon. As in, real school. With a supply list and everything. Supplies I really should get around to buying.

We've had to buy school supplies for Scooter before, usually here and there, as things come up. His stint in the public preschool required a very specific list; several items--Purell, foaming handwash, a plastic folder--made me cringe, but I dutifully bought them. We were just so glad he'd be able to start back in a care setting that I didn't want to rock the boat.

I've had longer to digest this coming school year's list and to at other grades'. And there are a few items for which I've been trying to brainstorm alternatives. Again, I won't be rocking the boat too much this year--we're still essentially new to this town. But I think that I'll bring some of this up next spring when the new lists are being formulated.

One of the shortcomings of school-supply lists in general, as I see it, is that they are created so that everyone brings in the same things. Some of the solutions I can think of would require some coordination of different items or collecting some money for one-time purchases (though my school system already includes a check for each grade level for a variety of different things--kindergarten has a crafts fee).

Some throw-away items will probably never go away. Tissues being the big one. And I can see the point of those from the hygiene angle--plus, I haven't even gone as far as carrying handkerchiefs yet.

But I wonder about the Clorox wipes. Many grade levels have kids bringing at least one container. The kindergarten list is even specific about the brand. (Which makes me want to bring another brand on purpose. I'd bring some of the Method's, but they don't have their ingredients listed and they frequently use parabens.) Something I've been meaning to try at home, something that might work in a school setting, is homemade cleaning wipes. If students brought in one role of paper towels (preferably recycled), that would create the equivalent of 2 containers of Clorox wipes per kid. Or, if resources could be pooled, a multi-pack could be purchased, cutting down on the amount of packaging.

For foaming handwash (which is not on the list for this year), if each teacher could hold on to one or two containers from previous years, almost any liquid soap could be substituted. In our house, we use mint soap from Trader Joe's (cheaper than Dr. Bronner's and none of the kooky religious writings on the container) and cut it about half-and-half with water. Works great, smells wonderful, mint is slightly antiseptic, and one bottle of soap lasts many, many months.

I am currently reserving judgment on the plastic bags requested, although I will be interested to see what they do with the 50 sandwich bags and additional gallon bags. I will be watching, however, because I want to know why these can't be reused.

For folders, and there are two specific types requested, I will be drawing from my personal stores as much as possible. I've got one type covered. I thought I had the other type around (with brads), but it may be that I gave those away to colleagues before leaving my teaching job. There's one part of me that sees the allure of buying new supplies each year--a clean slate for each new grade--but I got over that pretty quickly. Scooter is already using a backpack we happen to have around and has never complained.

The item that has me most flummoxed is glue. Not the concept of glue in general, but the fact that we have to bring in 20 glue sticks. TWENTY! All those plastic tubes. Not to mention all of the packaging. I'm hoping to find packages of 10, or at least 5, but have only seen 2-packs advertised so far. I wish there was a way to buy just refills, but I haven't seen that. (Can I also say that I was unaware gluing plays such a large role in kindergarten? Scooter had better come out of the year a champion gluer!)

Looking at lists to come, I can tell I'll have plenty of other things to obsess over. Most grades that require pencils specifically ban recycled-wood pencils. But they still want 24-48 of the good old number 2s. What about mechanical pencils and lead refills?

I also can't help but notice that different years ask for wildly different things in terms of folders and notebooks. I recognize that a lot of this is dependent on teachers' personal preferences, but given that the lists are at least school-wide (and possibly district-wide), there's already been a fair amount of compromise. Maybe they could think about some consistency between years so that supplies can be used from one year to the next until they wear out?

Just for the record, I love school supplies and consider office supply ads to be a bit of nerd porn. I know that some supplies are absolutely necessary to maximize learning, and I would never deprive my son of that. I just wish that it were a bit easier to balance the consumption needs with environmental issues, maybe turn it into a class lesson or project. You know, throw in a little education?