One pink puzzle piece

Boring statistics number 1: 1 in 110 babies will have an autism spectrum disorder.

Boring statistic number 2: It is four times more likely to happen to a boy.

My life doesn’t go by statistics. Maybe that is why I don’t do math.

During the “What the hell is wrong with my toddler?” phase of my life, I was told she had anything and everything but autism. “Oh no, Mrs. P, you have a girl.” LOL went the pediatrician, neurologist, and speech pathologist. I didn’t get the big “A” word diagnosis until she was four and we had moved states. It could be that I didn’t hear what I didn’t want to hear, but that is for another post another day.

What is it like to have a girl on the spectrum? I get this question about neck and neck with what is it like to be southern in Connecticut. I will have to write it up as it comes, so this is pink puzzle piece number one. To start, I’m going back to the princesses to help me with this. And again, I can only write about what has happened in my house, I can’t speak for anyone else.

She discovered the Disney Princesses about three months ago and that was it. She can’t just watch Beauty and the Beast. Before we start the movie, she has to put on the Belle dress, find her stuffed Beast, find the all of the princess dolls, even make sure she has on Belle socks if she has them, and then watch the movie. Then later, in her room, I can hear her acting out different scenes from different movies and acting with the dolls. We go through this process with each princess and each movie. If she had her way 100% of the time, we would put the television in the bathroom so she could watch the Little Mermaid in the bathtub water.

The little details are very important to her. She wants to know why Prince Charming is wearing gloves. She wants to know what went into the apple to make Snow White fall asleep. She is obsessed with what happened to Drizella and Anastasia after the movie-I desperately want to tell her they had kids of their own and Cinderella has to deal with them in preschool coat rooms, but I don’t. She really won’t be happy until I tell her that John Smith and Pocahontas reunite in England, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

Every little princess shoe must be accounted for. She knows who wears the pink ones and who has the red. These can’t under any circumstances be sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and if they are, then Mommy is going to have some kind of fun going through the bag later.

Her brother is her number one prop. If you need a prince to dance with-there he is. If you need a wicked witch or step-parent, he will be that too. He has also been known to be a mouse or cat, depending on which animal is needed at the time. He isn’t too thrilled if he has to play Flit the hummingbird, but he will. Their conversations really crack me up. Once, Frances said that Phillip was the best prince because he fought the dragon to kiss Sleeping Beauty. Kenneth responded with, “I’m not sure about that, I mean, John Smith was wounded and had to go back to England in a boat; that had to have hurt.” For the record, as soon as it warms up, I will turn off the television and take them to the park.

Let me tackle a few stereotypes. Yes, she categorizes her princesses and lines them up certain ways in her room. If she is anxious about something, like a schedule change, she will wake up in the middle of the night and play with them until she falls asleep again. She shuts her door and doesn’t want anyone coming in. I listen on the other side and can figure out what is bothering her by what the dolls are saying. Her brother, being her brother, delights in rearranging them. “Frances, I’m going to touch your dolly.” This results in a melt down and sometimes a wrestling match if I don’t intervene in time. There are times when she tells him to do it just so that they can fight. Oh the joys of siblings. Every now and then she will let him play "princess school" too. I always love it when she includes him. Interaction is a good thing.

We make lists and lists of the princess movies and the characters in them. For Sleeping Beauty this would be: Aurora, Phillip, Sampson, Merryweather, Flora, Fauna, King Stefan, King Hubert, and Maleficent. She reads the lists to herself and she copies them over and over. (Yes, I am floored that my child can read). She carries them around with her and the dolls. We decorated a special box with princess stickers to keep her things in.

Just recently she told her teacher she was going to Disney World for two weeks. She forgot to tell us. If and when we get there, we will be scouting out the princess characters and it will take a great deal of work to get her away from the Cinderella Castle. I hope some of the minor characters, such as Bruno the dog and Lucifer the cat, have some form of representation. Thank goodness I have this site to help me with the princess planning. Otherwise I might be in for a royal fit.

What is it like to have a girl? My pieces of the puzzle are pink. Every parent has to deal with these tantrums and obsessions and stubborn streaks in some way, but with the autistic child, it is constant. Now I must go back to printing out princesses.

God Bless...

1) Non-fat lattes
2) Magnetized refrigerators and dishwashers
3) Gyms for kids with "open hours" during long, cold winters
4) Youtube-especially vintage Sesame Street
5) Mr. Clean Magic erasers-Mr. Clean, you are neck and neck with Don Draper in my book.

Anyone else have a blessing?

The Grocery Store Diaries 8

Dirty looks: None
“You’ve got your hands full: None
Almost made it out with nothing, BUT then the cashier and the bagger both told me they were never having kids of their own.


A couple of new things have happened lately as we make our weekly trip to the grocery store. It always involves verbal skills. All three of my kids talk too much. The middle one always has. That is his purpose in this world, to talk his way out of anything. The baby talks too much. We haven’t had any speech red flags with him, if he wakes up in the middle of the night he talks to his stuffed animals. Even the one with the speech delay doesn’t keep her opinion to herself anymore. Where did they get this from? All this blabbing and blabbing like someone cares? Perhaps their dad…..

The baby is at the age where he is picking up nouns. He practices them at the grocery store. We are doing the grocery store thing, putting food in our cart, and as other customers go by, he will point at what they have and scream words such as “COOKIE!” “APPLE!” “NANA!” “MILK!” and try to climb out of our cart to get to what they have. I should be grateful he isn’t screaming “BEER!” “DORITOS!” “COCA-COLA!” or even “CHICKEN NUGGETS!”

The girl has decided that it isn’t enough to tell me what to put in the cart, but we have to tell other people what they should or should not have. As we were checking out, she starts pulling on me going “Mommy! Look at that man!” I cringe when she starts this, because I don’t know what the hell she is about to tell me. Before I can cut her off she says, “He is getting Cheerios just like us!” Sigh of relief, but then she doesn’t stop and adds, “But he doesn’t have 2% milk.” I must return to the cringe. It is none of her business if he prefers whole milk or even rice or soy for all I care, but again, it could be worse.

And rounding off my not so sexy threesome, the middle child must question the world. Who to blame this on? The Montessori Method? His scientist father? Sid the Science Kid? Your guess is as good as mine. But we can’t just put “crackers” in the cart. As we go down the cracker aisle, he wants to know what makes each cracker different. These have salt, these are wheat. These taste like gluten free cardboard. You can make this a game. Find the circles, find the rectangles, find the ones a "certain friend" of mommy's wouldn’t let her son touch with a ten foot cattle prod. Actually, he would not be allowed to touch the prod either. We finally decide on the crackers shaped like goldfish. You can’t get enough goldfish crackers. But then you have to decide if you want regular, pretzel, or pizza flavor.

He does this all over the store.

Here is a conversation we had about yogurt:

“I want vanilla.”
“I know that, I put it in the cart.”
“No, you put in the red cartons and I want the blue ones.”
“Honey, vanilla is vanilla.”
“No mom, look, the blue carton is better.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do, I want blue vanilla yogurt, trust me.”

I switch the primary colors just so I can get out of the store before he decides that the green bell peppers should be red. The blue cartons were on sale five for three dollars; maybe he knew that…..

I hate to compare my four year old to Sascha Baron Cohen, but Borat actually has a deleted scene that explains this argumentative grocery nature. Watch it here. And no warnings are needed because it is not inappropriate. In fact, it makes me kind of mad that comedians can be just as funny and keep their personalities without being disgustingly graphic if they want to. Sascha definitely channeled a four year old for that scene, and that employee had a lot more patience than I do on any given day!

Yes, in America, we have so many choices it is ridiculous. It gives my munchkins something to talk about. And moi? Something to write about later.

Juliet, Naked: A reflection

I love anything by Nick Hornby. You can imagine my shock that one slipped by me when I saw Juliet, Naked in a store window as the kids were trying to run away from me. Why do I love him? He is brutally honest, throws in pop culture a lot of people could care less about, and he is the only person on this earth, and I mean the only one that can make me roll on the floor laughing until I choke and need to change clothes. I saw the book-but did I have time or energy to take three kids into the tiny little bookstore where old ladies have no patience? Did I have the time to read anything other than Caps for Sale? So it had to wait until Christmas break, and I just finished it. Before kids I knocked out the entire Hannibal Lecter series in one weekend, or it might have been the Mitford series-same difference, right? Hornby didn’t disappoint. He never does.

Because I am a freak, I have read Q&As by him several times. Therefore I know he doesn’t read reviews by anybody, be they written by a professional or freak fan. The good news is I can say whatever I want, like I would have changed what I was going to say anyway. He says he doesn’t read them because reviews are, for the most part, just summaries of books plus adjectives. Ouch. Brilliant and true, but all the same, ouch. I haven’t read any reviews of Juliet, Naked either. I haven’t because I wanted to write my own and I don’t like other people’s words and opinions in my head.

At the risk of being accused of a summary with some adjectives, the gist of the novel is a couple in England, Duncan and Annie, have been together for fifteen years by habit. They haven’t left each other but they never made it permanent. Duncan is obsessed with Tucker Crowe, an old (by old I mean popular in the 80s, ha) singer that abruptly left the music world. Annie is a fan by osmosis. I have been there before, trust me. The couple gets a hold of a new album of old stuff. The original album was Juliet; the new one is Juliet, Naked. Duncan immediately writes a review for his website, and his girlfriend decides to write a review of her own. Duncan rolls his eyes, pats her head, and posts it for her. It’s her review that, of course, gets a secret email response from Tucker himself. From there we go into the ups, downs, and heartaches of these three people in what is their real life versus the one that has been created for them by fans and acquaintances. Any guesses on which one is more interesting?

Oh oh oh! How many of us are waiting for that secret email from JK Rowling, Kevin Smith, or one of the Cohen Brothers? You are the only person who understands where the famous person is coming from. Yeah right. Nick is able to use his gift of knowing “real” people and their need to join message groups, blog, check Wikipedia, and share common interests online. People are listened to on the internet when they find the right fan page or group of crazies that share their interest. I myself am included in this. The fact that he nails us and our internet tendencies does not make me want to shut down my modem and go hide.

Nick is always able to zap a reader with his opening sentence. I know all of them from all of his books because I am a “Duncan.” But this is how he begins Juliet, “They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet.” First thought? Who the hell would do that? I don’t know -who goes to London and stands between platforms nine and ten? How many people travel to Memphis for Graceland? Not to be morbid, but I heard tell that in Corpus Christi, the hotel where Selena was killed had to renumber the hotel rooms to keep sick fans from looking for the room she was shot in. People are `crazy. It isn’t new; it is just funnier in Nick’s story. I laughed out loud a lot during the entire reading.

Nick can make a person as serious as a heart attack crack a smile. This time around he is making fun of the fandoms-people who write essays about nothing and think they know everything and the rest of the world is stupid. Here is a scene between Duncan and Annie, after she tells him she wrote her own article:

“You?”
“Yes, Me.”
“And do you think …Well, do you think you’re qualified to write something?”
“Is it a matter of qualifications?”
“Interesting question. I mean, you’re perfectly at liberty to write whatever you want.”
“Thanks.”
“But for the website…People expect a certain level of expertise.”
“In the first paragraph of his post, Jerry Warner says that Tucker Crowe lives in a garage in Portugal. How expert is that (p.66-67)?”

You know, I once got very angry at someone for confusing a Hippogriff with a Thestral. Little did I know that music fans are more arrogant and vicious than those of us that adore Harry Potter. The dialogue and wit of a Hornby book has no comparison to me. I’m laughing so hard at Duncan’s arrogance it makes me forget Annie should have dumped him years ago. I hope I wasn’t rude about my all time favorite seven part series. Don’t anyone tell me if I was….

Nick can also make people cry. When we come full circle and realize why Tucker walked away from the career and the fame to go live on a farm in Pennsylvania, we feel for him. We also feel for all the ex-wives and kids that he wasn’t there for. That phone call with his first daughter, Grace, got me teary and that doesn’t happen very often.

To me what is important throughout the novel is the concept of thinking you know everything when in reality you know nothing. All the discussion groups and die hard fans who shell out a lot of money to go stare at a toilet seat have no idea what really is going on with the real Tucker Crowe. He had to go to the bathroom, so he went. I have been working really hard on this concept with my four year old son. I’m glad an 80s musician mastered it. Hornby presents the internet and what it has done not only to inform, but also to misinform. For all you people know, I am actually single living in L.A. and waiting tables until I get a big break in Hollywood. So are we clothed on the internet and naked in real life, or naked on the internet and clothed in reality? Hmmmmm

If he zaps you with his opening, he seals it with the close. I can just imagine a group of music fans going off when someone dares to prefer a happier, later in the career, my life is fine, album. That cracked me up the most. Like when all the kids in the 90s discovered Santana and all their dads and uncles hit the roof.

If you like to laugh at the good stuff and I don’t mean Jackass, then pick up anything by Nick Hornby. The man really can’t write fast enough-must be all those soccer/football games he watches taking up his time. We know he isn’t reading book reviews.

Thank You, Hungry Girl!

I have written before about my lack of cooking abilities. I am not good at it, and I think a major part of not being "good at it" comes from not trying. Again with church, sorry to you non-religious people, but stick with me. A couple of weeks ago the priest said that fear kept us from becoming the people we were supposed to become. That made sense when it came to my kitchen, and I had a little epiphany right there in the midst of Advent on the front row of my church. I can cook just as well as any other mommy if I really really want to. I have a kitchen and the bills are paid so I know that it works. I have pots and pans. You guys KNOW I go to the grocery store. But still, if I were to face a boggart, it would form a busy highway first and kitchen stadium second. After that sermon, I tackled my fear. I refuse to call this a New Year's Resolution, because those fizzle. I have been doing this for three weeks now, and it takes twenty times to learn a new behavior, so it's safe to blog about. I also think I am really going to stick with it.

I decided to go with Hungry Girl. I bought her cookbooks a couple of months ago and her attitude makes the most sense. You have to live in the world, so tweak it. She has a wonderful website and her newsletter is awesome. I get it every morning and read it before I start my work day. I have seriously been making her recipes and I will write about the ones that have worked.

NOW MAJOR ALERTS:

1)This is NOT Julie and Julia and I am not a professional anything, in fact I am a quack, so read this or not, and do whatever you want.
2) These are not low sodium recipes, and my blood pressure has always been fine, so I am not worried about it really until my doctor says I am about to have a stroke. Use common sense with the salt shaker.
3) If you decide to make changes, watch out for, as my middle schoolers in Pittsburgh used to say, "haters." Yes of course we would all rather eat the french fries and drink a venti mocha latte, but you have to decide what you really want more. For a couple of months you are going to have to hang out with people who eat the way you do and avoid people who are going to pressure you otherwise. This is also good advice if you are trying to quit smoking, drinking, or whatever.


The Recipes from Hungry Girl 200 under 200:

1) "Faux Frying"- I was really skeptical of this one. First of all, I have never been allowed to fry because my husband, with good reason, is afraid I'll catch the house on fire. Second, duh, I'm southern. How in the hell do you faux fry? We fry steak for crying out loud. But Lisa has this fry mix that involves Fiber One cereal and a lot of different spices, and oh yeah, egg substitute, another thing I was raised to gag at. I have tried it with the chicken, zucchini, and the cheese sticks. I like it. The more I eat it, the more I do NOT want my children anywhere near a chicken nugget Happy Meal. But still, I can just imagine trying to serve it to some of my relatives and getting yelled at for living in the north too long.

2) Fettuccine Hungry Girlfredo Veggie Explosion- OK, I don't use the Tofu Shirataki noodles, I use whole wheat ones. It will be a while before my southern genes allow me to be near tofu, but I am always hopeful. Even with the noodle tweak, the sauce is still very creamy and the veggies are very yummy. My kids ate this one.

3) Spinach, Mushroom, and Mozzarella Supreme- This one was easy and anyone who knows me knows I am a mushroom freak. So I had to make this one first. I am making it again tomorrow. I can't believe it has less calories than one of my cream of mushroom dishes.

4) Cheesy Saucy Veggie Stacks-It was good, but I couldn't get my stacks to stack. Such is the story of my life when it comes to a stack....

5) BLT Quesadilla and Wrap- I am getting used to turkey bacon, and my children love it too.

So, I have been trying and it is working. I feel better already and have more confidence in the kitchen. What is the trick? Practice makes confident? Who knew?

Thank you, Lisa!

What is a snow plow?

Another example of being southern in the north:

Plow man: Hello?
Me: Yes sir, my friend Mary O'Brian gave me your phone number I'd like you to plow my driveway.
Plow man: Who? The O'Connells?
Me: No, the O'Brians-they said you were reasonable.
Plow man: OK, I'll come give you an estimate.
Me: Are you going to bring the shovel thing?
Plow man: You mean my truck? You need it done now?
Me: Yes
Plow man: Nobody plowed from the last snow?
Me: No, I just stayed home until it melted.
(LONG PAUSE)
Plow man: OK, but normally you set it up with an estimate and a contract for the winter.
Me: You mean it's going to snow again?
(LONG PAUSE)
Plow man: Are you new to the area?
Me: Moved from North Carolina, yes.
Plow man: Normally, people prefer me to come if we get three inches or more.
Me: Three inches? You get that much?
(ANOTHER LONG PAUSE)
Plow man: I'll bring my "snow stuff" and plow you out, then I will tell you how much it is and if you are happy I will do it when you call, or we can agree to a contract.
Me: OK, thank you sir.
Plow man: (LAUGHING) You are welcome, "Ma'am."

Well, I can get out of my driveway now.....

Don't Break the Ice

Santa always brings my kids a board game. Actually, I always try to have Santa bring a couple of things they can share. It just drives me crazy when I hear them playing nicely and then less than a minute later I hear someone scream, “Don’t touch it, it’s mine.” Last time I checked not a one of them paid for anything. Anyway, they do get their own special gifts, but they get lots of things that belong to us as a family. This year’s game was “Don’t Break the Ice.”

It is simple enough. You set up all the plastic ice cubes, put the polar bear on, and then the players take turns chipping away at the cubes with the plastic mallets until the polar bear falls. No reading required and hours of fun.

It takes longer to set up the ice cubes than it does to play the game. You have to shove them in so that they will stay up and you have to strategically place the big ice cube somewhere on the board for the polar bear. I have pinched my finger a couple of times doing something that should be very simple. Thank goodness the company had enough sense to add extra ice cubes for the families like mine, with a baby that thinks he is getting away with something by running off with a cube. Once the cubes are in their places and the polar bear is ready, you can start your family bonding time.

I have drowned so many polar bears I think Al Gore is going to take me off his mailing list. My kids don’t seem to get bored whacking away at the ice cubes. Kenneth asked me if maybe they would make a version with a ship that hits an iceberg. Ha ha, not funny. But I am impressed that he listens when I read him Magic Tree House adventures.

The goal is to stare at the cubes and figure out which ones you should not hit to keep the polar bear up. There is a lot of strategy involved; one could say that this game is pre-chess. My kids strategize nothing. They pound until an entire row falls off. BUT-they are wonderful about taking turns with the random polar bear attacking.

My son asked me a couple of weeks before Christmas why Santa picked the North Pole for his factory. When I asked him to explain, he said that belugas and penguins couldn’t possibly enjoy a factory in their environment. He also said that it had to be cold inside the factory, or the heat bill was high. Now he is convinced that Santa has huge mallets around to break the ice before a polar bear comes in to steal toys. I love it.

This was a great game, from my crazy family to yours…