Anyways, this is what she drew. Be sure to click on it to see the full-sized version. From left to right is Bean, mommy, a rose, daddy and Miss O:

I crack up every time I see the disgruntled look she put on her dad. When I asked her to tell me about the picture, she doesn’t say why she made him look that way, or why he and Miss O have the freaky hair going on. Even without a Beanism to explain the picture, it’s still entertaining.

Speaking of Beanisms, they’re much more involved these days. Gone is the simplicity of lines like “Look – it’s a whole family of poopie!” and “Mommy! I just licked a bug off your table!” Now there are whole conversations a la Bean. Like a convo we had about skyscrapers, where she asked me about them, and I explained about building up instead of out, yadda, yadda. As she’s done in the past, she listened thoughtfully and then essentially told me I didn’t know squat:
“No mommy. Skyscrapers scrape water from the sky and then bring it to the oceans so the fish can live. You don’t know anything about skyscrapers, mommy.”

It seems like we have a lot of conversations where she’s telling me I’m wrong, or I don’t know stuff. Is that a Bean thing or a four-year-old thing?
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It’s been awhile, huh?

Sorry ’bout that. Been a bit … overwrought of late. So rather than piss and moan, or be all sad and whiny, I’ve been laying low. The fact that I’ve not had a full day off from being a mom in over two weeks hasn’t helped me find my Zen or the time to blog, either. Throw in a sick kiddo and a sick mommy, and, well .. I’m moaning, aren’t I?

The girls seem to be adjusting well to their new school. I’m not in love with it, but if they’re happy, I can deal with my issues. I’m just not a big believer in / fan of Montessori. They say it’s all child-centric, but to me, it seems like a program to create little automatons. Maybe it’s my own gut reaction to regimented activity. And maybe *regimented* isn’t fully accurate or fair, either. But seeing my little almost-two-year-old queued up, and having to get and carry her own stuff. I just don’t like it.

It probably makes me insane that I don’t like her being trained to be self-sufficient, doesn’t it? Actually, Miss O is pretty well-suited to the environment, it’s just kind of creepy to me. And like I said, she seems to be doing fine.

Bean seems to be doing well, too.

Note the use of “seems”? Yeah, I did too. I can only say “seems” because the communication from the school/teachers leaves a lot to be desired in my book. In the morning, you kind of do a rolling dropoff, where you pull up, unload, and the kiddos go in. In the afternoon, it’s the same thing, but in reverse: pull up, they tell your kids you’re there (the kids are sitting on the floor just inside the door) and they come out to you.

There are no daily report sheets, no talks with the teacher (oops, sorry, “guide”). The director and assistant can find time to nag me about the girls’ paperwork not being complete – and I don’t think they realize that the stress I’ve been under makes nagging me a real risk – but there’s no talk about how the girls are doing.

Instead, I get to ask the girls how their days were. Bean responds with “I don’t know” or “I don’t want to tell you” and Miss O just says “no” to everything while shaking her head and wearing a sh*t-eating grin. It’s less useful than you’d think. Really.

Mommy: Bean, did you have a good day?
Bean: Yeah.
Mommy: What did you do today?
Bean: I don’t remember.
Mommy: Did you play with any friends?
Bean: Can we go to the park?
Mommy: Sure. But I want to know about your day …
Bean: Squirrel!

Mommy: Miss O, did you have fun today?
Miss O: No.
Mommy: Did you play outside today?
Miss O: No.
Mommy: Did you like your lunch?
Miss O: No.
Mommy: Squirrel!

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Took Bean and Miss O to breakfast this a.m., thinking I’d spring the little one for a day of hooky before they start at the new school tomorrow. We were supposed to meet Julia and her kiddos.

We got there and Bean wanted to sit outside. It was 50-ish degrees this a.m., and her friend didn’t want to sit outside. Commence full-on meltdown. Complete with screaming, running away, yelling and histrionics of epic proportions. Seriously. Epic.

After 5 minutes of trying to talk/calm her down (which, I’ve finally realized, only ramps the whole production up in scope and scale) I had to make good on my “if you can’t calm down, we have to leave” promise and drag her out. All while holding Miss O. And in front of a cop, who thankfully gave me a knowing smile.

Or maybe that’s the smile they give all whack jobs before running plates and starting a file. Who knows.

Of course, there was more freaking out in the parking lot, and when I got her strapped in, she was screaming and flailing and kicking the tar out of the seat in front of her. Got out of my seat, walked around the van, punched a side panel to let a little pressure off, then moved the seat so she couldn’t kick it. As we drove home, I eventually went down the rabbit hole too and engaged in a screaming match with her.

(The awesomeness of my parenting truly knows no bounds. Don’t hate. We can’t all be this good.)

So by 9:00 my day was crap and I was offering to Miss O “do you want to go to school?” and she was responding with her new “yeah. yeah-yeah-yeah” reply that I took to mean: “Does the pope wear a funny hat? You two nutjobs or eight 18-24 month olds? Bring on the relative Zen of biters and naps on mats, please.”

I dropped O off, let them know it was her last day there, then came back out to the car. Where I was greeted by a tranquil Bean who just wanted to chat peacefully, and with a smile, about how she knows she need to make better choices and that she just needs a nap.

And in my head I’m backing away slowly, smiling, and making non-threatening eye-contact with the psycho who is now sucking her fingers and asking for classical music so she can sleep. And from that point forward, we had a damn good day.

Within the span of an hour we went from absolutely fine, to the lowest of lows, and then back up to mellow and Zen. If anyone wonders why I get a little twitchy sometimes, now you know. I’m an unwilling passenger on the emotional rollercoaster that is life with the Bean.

I’m reading “The Sensory-Sensitive Child: Practical Solutions for Out-of-Bounds Behavior” and it’s so dead-on balls accurate for Bean it’s kinda spooky at times. And I’m totally kicking myself for not listening to the people who flagged sensory issues as long as two years ago. I have got to call her PT for an OT recc, and also circle back around with the child psychologists I touched base with last weekend. I’m not sure how much help a psychologist will provide, because until Bean’s able to integrate and accommodate her sensory stuff, we can give her all the tools and all the words in the world, and I don’t think it will make a difference.

To my local friends, I’m trying to convince her to stop confronting kids and to go to their parent or a teacher if the kid’s behavior is bothering her. So she may come off as a tattletale or a nut, and for that I’ll apologize in advance. But if you could just help me out a little and try to help Bean with her issue, I’d appreciate it. If she needs more space, or thinks someone took something or she doesn’t want to talk to your kid, I’m trying to get her to tell me, you or a teacher instead of screaming at the kid and lashing out.

After that horrific start to the day, she and I had a fabulous time. We shopped (window shopped, mostly, as I’m all cheap these days. But she did get a $1 doll from the Dollar Tree store at the mall), had lunch at Boston Market (where up to two kids eat free with one adult, which rocks for single parents!), got her to clean up the playroom here and then went to the park and had a great adventure walk. Her listening was amazing, and we talked about all kinds of stuff. And even though I haven’t had a break in 8 days, and have had some truly awful moments in that time, I was sad to see her leave with her dad this evening and miss her already.
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Not bad over here. Still a little more tightly wound than I’d like, thanks to some unforeseen changes that I’ve talked about privately, but I’m nothing if not resilient, right?

I’m having to take a day off tomorrow, to cover Bean’s not being in school yet, and had planned to take the girls up to the zoo in Waco. But all this rain has me a little worried that all the animals will be sittin’ on a big boat when we get there … it’s not a super long drive but long enough that I’d hate to waste the trip.

Have you heard the kerfluffle about the Baby Einstein DVDs? How people are all excited that Disney’s offering refunds because – shocker – baby’s brains really *aren’t* improved by watching the DVDs?

Disney says that it’s just their standard policy, and the big fastoosh is actually people making mountains out of molehills (the four-year-old’s new favorite phrase) for their own grandstanding.

To me, it’s more a statement of how lazy we’ve become as parents, if we truly believe that a video takes the place of us and what we’re supposed to do for and with our children. There’s no way I’ll be seeking a refund because I never bought ‘em thinking they’d make my kids smarter – I bought ‘em because they were a more developmentally appropriate babysitter than Buffy the Vampire slayer was.

Yeah, I said it out loud. Babysitter. Anyone who really expected a video to make their kid smarter doesn’t need a refund – they need their own set of brain-building videos. Seriously. TV and videos are just ways to buy time for parents. Sometimes it’s time to pursue noble causes like a shower or making a meal; sometimes it’s time to pontificate on a blog. But it’s not called the boob tube for nothin’ folks.

I actually never really dug on the DVDs because the midi-style classical music annoyed the crapola out of me. And I just never got how watching a bunch of wind-up toys was a vast improvement over TV + commercials. I was a much bigger fan of Classical Baby – good music, good art and nice little animals.

What do you think? Should people be walking around, fist-bumping because they feel like this is some kind of admission on Disney’s part? Does anyone really deserve a refund because a video didn’t make their kid smarter?

A whole *week* without an update?

And what a week it’s been. Long story short, both girls start at a new school on Wednesday. It’s one of those eeeaaassseee into it deals, where on Wed they will be there like 9-11 or so, Thurs 9-12, etc. Annoying as *hell* for those of us who have to work for a living, but it is what it is, I guess. Dave and I checked out 5 places, and this was the only one we felt good about. I was prepared not to like it, and to have warmer fuzzies for a few other places, but this place just felt good.

I’m not sure what to expect from Bean, though, and if I can be brutally honest, I’m not holding out high hopes that this will be all that much different. We had a hellacious day yesterday, and sometimes I wouldn’t be surprised to find her in a corner pulling the legs off bugs or throwing stones at baby birds. I swear that she sometimes seems like a total sociopath. She spit on a kid at the playground yesterday because he was following her everywhere, even after she screamed at him to stop seceral times.

Now, granted, because I am under an obscene amount of stress right now, my responses and patience have been less than stellar. So I’ve been feeding into the vicious cycle with really high-caliber parenting moments, but still.

I think that until we fully understand and start “fixing” the sensory and emotional components of her behavior, it’s going to be a very rough road. Filled with moments/hours/days that put parents and teachers alike on edge. She’s just *not* like other kids, and switching schools isn’t going to change that, I don’t think. Her dad and I are each going to have to reach deep, deep into our reserves to parent her, and keep reading and implementing new mindsets and approaches. And it’s going to be frustrating. Because I’ve found that the higher the high, the lower the low.

She’s capable of such greatness, so much love and such humor and fun. So while I’m describing the weekend, be aware that there is a lot of good thrown in, much more than the “bad”. And 99% of the time, I see her as a magical, loving kid that happens to require a lot more skill to parent than a kid who doesn’t have her unique makeup. That is, I cut her the slack, I cut myself the slack, and we have a great time.

The 1% of the time where we’re both mired in “the suck”, well, weekends like I’m experiencing happen.

All weekend has seemed like an exercise in “no good deed goes unpunished” for me. Take her to Sportfun and lunch, she freaks out at Ikea. Get more food in her and try to help her understand the choices she makes, be rewarded with a screaming freakout in the car, complete with throwing things at me. Because Miss O has had a great day and is begging “park!” over and over, reward a good choice of Beans’ with a stop at a playground, have her scream at a kid and spit on him for following her around. Bring her home and resist throttling her and lecture instead, listen to her tell me she doesn’t love me, that she hates being at my house and wants to go to her daddy’s. Forever.

At some point recover (myself) from all that, talk gently about how bad the day was for both of us, shake on both of us making good choices the next day, then have her wake up and refuse to quiet down when I ask her not to wake her sister. Take a do-over and get a few good hours in.

Then have her violate the deal we agreed on, that if I ask her to do/not to do something twice and she doesn’t do/not do it she has to go to her room, and have her screaming or laughing at me as I try to calmly enforce the rule. Take yet another step in her direction and talk with her and soothe her as she is in there, then indulge in 5-10 minutes of the rough play she loves, where we can roll around and be silly. As I wrap that up, she lick me. I ask her to stop. She licks me again. I ask again, and reiterate that the game is over. She licks me again. I explain how she can’t do that, that people think it’s gross/freaky. She licks me again. I remind her of our deal, and how I have given a little extra latitude but that this is my last request. She licks me again.

I tell her she’ll need to stay in her room for a little while to think about what I asked and why she couldn’t do it. She screams bloody murder and starts kicking the walls. I ask her to stop, she screams more. I take Miss O and leave, Bean commences histrionics. I wait a little, then go in and try to explain to her that she really just needs a nap – that I want to be able to take her places this afternoon, but I can’t unless she sleeps. She keeps screaming at me. I leave again, trying to calm O down so *she* can nap. Bean’s still screaming, so I try again to talk to her, and explain that I’d be happy to hug/rock/hold her if she can calm down, but that O needs to nap, and I can’t bring her in the room if Bean’s freaking out.

Finally, *finally* get Bean to settle herself down, then go in and try to lay with/snuggle with both girls. Herding cats would be a more satisfying task at this point. Then Bean freaks out again, because in the course of the 15-20 minutes of histrionics, I have threatened that if she can’t calm down, we won’t go anywhere, and now I have to stick to it. I then threaten that she will stay in her room all freakin’ day if she doesn’t nap, and we get into a very mature discussion, culminating in her laughing in my face as I threaten, me swatting her tush and her laughing at me again.

I’m fairly certain my head did at least one 360 at that point, and I may have thrown up a little pea soup in my mouth.

So finally, they’re asleep, I’m blogging and pretending my house doesn’t look like a tornado hit it and trying to get my heart and my head to a “clean slate” place for her and I to start over from. I’m also trying to decide if I have to stick with the “we’re not going anywhere!” ultimatum I threw out, or if I can gracefully back down because she napped …

Oh yeah. I’m *that* good a parent.
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Had a great meeting with Dave about what to do first with Bean; he’s taking point on calling the handful of preschools we agreed on, and trying to set up a few asap visits for us to go tour them and see what their philosophies are. Getting her into a new school, and transferring Miss O there as well, is priority number one. The therapies are important too, but my folks can only help out with childcare this week, so we’ve got to visit 3-5 of the schools we like and make a decision fast.

No pressure, right? Sigh.

So wish us luck finding a good fit for her, and a place that Miss O will adjust to well.

My big girl, pleased as punch with the hotel and all the flowers!

Bean and Miss O, exploring the Hyatt grounds

Bean and her friends, swinging

Love for the Clydesdale statue

Mommy, looking like a spaz, and kiddos

Bean!

Bean plays Guitar Hero

Thanks so much for the empathy, feedback and well-wishes here and elsewhere. This situation with Bean is so hard; I don’t think her dad really “gets” it, as I’ve asked him to grab lunch Monday so we can talk and got the “I’m busy, can’t we just talk on the phone?” response. To me, this isn’t an ‘on the phone’ thing – this is her dad and her mom sitting down and really dealing with what’s going on with no distractions. No sitting on the Crackberry or doing anything else. And frankly, after all the parenting-by-committee and forwarding all my emails that went on with the lovely Voldemort, I don’t trust him to just be talking to *me* unless we’re face-to-face. Does that make me sound bitchy? I don’t mean it that way, I just want to be sure it’s Dave I’m talking to, not a joint email.

This feels like one of those crossroads, where I’m being given a clear sign that Bean needs both her parents to make some changes, get her into the therapies she needs and have a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting of the minds where we brainstorm and fix this. Not just bandage it – really understand what is going on and what we need to do to help her. It may be something that takes her a while to really get through, but as parents, we should be working our asses off to understand what is going on and start helping her work through it.
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And an extra le sigh.

Bean got the boot from preschool today. Okay, not ‘the boot’, but they asked us to take a break and not bring her back until January. Which for working parents pretty much means ‘the boot’, as now we’ll have to start her in a new preschool, pay all their enrollment and start-up fees, and get her acclimated there. At which point, it’s not like we’ll want to yank her two months later to go back to her now-former school.

I’ll give them credit for holding on this long, and doing everything they could. But Bean’s incident reports were piling up, and two sets of parents have now come in to say their kids are specifically afraid of Bean and don’t want to come to school anymore.

There are more, sordid details that I’ve bored most of y’all with on the phone already and I just don’t feel like putting all out there, but Bean is seen as an aggressive and vociferously independent kid that they’ve exhausted their ideas and solutions on. And I’m not saying that in any sort of condemning way toward them; I’d feel the same way in their shoes.

But I’m not in their shoes; I’m her “mama”. The person who loves her beyond reason and is heartbroken that she’s struggling so much, that she carries so many burdens around and lashes out so strongly at times. I’m the one who sees everything she is, and knows it’s just rock solid good at it’s core. I’m the one who can (and does) overlook the flaws and doesn’t have to worry about managing a classroom – I get to set her up for success and help her navigate her feelings before they’re meltdowns.

And while most everyone who knows her has been treated to an Epic freakout at one point or another, they don’t see her as an aggressive kid or a mean kid. Unfortunately, that’s not the impression she was making at her school.

I’m not sure what’s right for her now, but I’ll obviously be spending a good chunk of my weekend trying to figure out the next move. Is a Montessori approach better? A nanny? An in-home daycare? Nanny and in-home worry me that they won’t be stimulating enough; another school setting worries me that once the novelty wears off, she’ll have similar issues there.

And, much as I hate saying it, I worry that the aggression she’s displayed won’t be “fixed” by moving her to another school setting. I don’t know if a more individualized setting, like a nanny or in-home care would be better able to help her succeed and learn to manage her feelings … She needs to see a psychologist for sure, and likely an occupational therapist, as her sensory issues play a role in this.

My poor kid. I think some of this would have happened even without the divorce, but it certainly didn’t make her life any easier. She wants her “family” together so badly; any group of objects she has, she makes a family. Plastic horses, Ponies, crayons, rocks …. it’s heartbreaking to see her name off “this is the daddy, this is the mommy, and this is me and this is Miss O”, and to hear her almost-daily mantra “I want all of my family in the same house” or some variation on that.

Divorce sucks. Especially for kids.
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Both girls had Best Actress in a Childhood Trauma-worthy freakouts this a.m., the likely Osacr-winner being Bean’s 15 minute sulk-whine-cry fest over the dresses in her drawer being “not long enough to twirl in”. I kid you not.

But they also had a few awesome moments. Like Bean telling me “I’m just going to love my mama all day”. And both of them giggling and bopping around in their car seats, after Bean’s request for ‘dancing music’ ended up on a radio station playing Isaac Hayes singing the theme from Shaft. Damn right I was laughing out loud watching them in the rear view mirror. (Shut your mouth!)

Miss O is not enjoying her school dropoffs one little bit these days; every morning is a full on crying fest. And it totally sucks. Bean’s a bit better, but that’s because I’m willing to get her there early enough to hang out in the room with her favoritest teachers, Miss K and Miss J before I take her to her class. Yesterday, one of the boys brought in a toad he caught and as the kids gathered round and Miss K asked a newcomer if they wanted to see the frog, Bean interrupted: “Actually, it’s a toad.”

Miss K laughed, said she was right, and recalled how when Bean was just 2.5 and in her class, Miss K was showing a picture of a “baby horse” and Bean corrected her with “it’s called a foal”. It’s nice that she appreciates my little smarty pants and isn’t annoyed by being corrected by her Because sometimes it gets a little old for me …

On the drive this a.m., Bean also informed me that watermelon seeds push themselves into watermelons, and that’s where vines come from. She asked if that was right and I said “is that what you think really happens?” and she said yes. So I said “then if you believe it, it’s right to you.” Of course, she caught the hedge, and asked me what I thought happened. I went thru germination, sprouting, vine growth, flowers, pollination and then fruit and she listened politely and thoughtfully, pausing afterward before she informed me I was totally wrong.

Sigh. Of course I am.

Miss O insisted on bringing “Uncover a Tarantula” with her as her naptime dolly today. I talked her out of the two Breyer horses she originally held, but couldn’t get the spider book away from her. Since she screams at dropoff anyways, I let her bring it in with her, then took it when I left. Why make her scream twice, right? Then Bean got to share it with the boys in Miss K’s class, as the only girl there, C, was totally not interested in seeing the book. I’m sure Julia dropped dead with shock upon reading that

And now they’re off to Dave’s for the weekend. And while I enjoyed my first evening off, and accomplished a bit, by tomorrow or Saturday latest, I’ll be missing the hell out of them again.
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whispers – photo credit is all Julia

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