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It's funny how things change. I used to be jealous of Heather Armstrong because she's such a good writer. But today I read this article that talks about how successful her writing has become, how she's supporting her family with the ads on her blog; I don't feel jealous anymore. I'm happy for her, and mildly interested in the ongoing saga of her life - the way I feel about Katie Holmes or Oprah.
But I do feel jealous when I read this:
One of the audiologists ... put us in touch with a family whose daughter had been through a similar experience and had been implanted. When we met their daughter, Talia, who was 4 at the time, our jaws dropped. Her ability to communicate was excellent even for any 4 year old!
In spite of Paula's great strides, there are times when I just want her to talk like a hearing child, to understand speech like a hearing child, like the bright child I know she is. I want her to ask me questions about things I don't expect. I want her to babble away in clear and universally understandable English.
I know it will happen someday. But reading that article makes me wonder if I should get her evaluated for a cochlear implant.
We've so far passed on the evaluation because Paula has a lot of residual hearing in both ears. With her hearing aids she hears at 25 decibels for low frequencies and 35 decibels for higher frequencies. Implanting one of her ears would destroy all the residual hearing on that side for an increase of about 10 decibels in the high frequencies.
Sounds like it wouldn't be worth it, right?
But hearing high frequencies is what gives speech its crispness. How would you understand words if you could only hear the vowels? High frequency sounds like those produced when we say tah, ssss, hah, thhh and ffff are important to understanding speech. Paula's hearing aids don't allow her to hear f, th or s sounds. That means when I use English plurals, she can't hear the "s" that makes it a plural. When I say "fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh," she hears little of that. How can her brain extrapolate the rules, "Plurals are designated with an S at the end," or "Ordinals above three are designated with a TH at the end," without hearing them?
I have to teach her. Her teachers have to teach her. That's how she can learn the rules.
Our Early Intervention service providers consistently praise us for doing "so much" to help Paula acquire language. But the other day I realized we've really slacked off.
We've stopped labeling things: shoelaces, table legs, microwave, desk drawer, printer, carpet, back bedroom, oven. We've stopped fingerspelling as much to her: broccoli, spinach, Cincinnati. I haven't been making language experience books for her, but my camera is broken and I'm out of color toner, so I have an excuse. Not that excuses will take over the teaching where I leave off.
I feel like I'm not rising to the challenge of cramming a whole heap of learning into the 4.5 hours I spend with her a day.
That's because lately I have been focusing on other things, namely, myself. I'm working on writing, I'm submitting some of it to the off-the-beaten-track parenting magazines that I think might print it. I'm taking hot baths during the day, I'm reading, I'm making myself pesto, tomato and cream cheese sandwiches and watching Law and Order at 1:00. And I do dishes.
I've been enjoying the sense of balance that has come from feeling like I'm living more of a normal life. I'm hesitant to rile myself up again to get back into the hyper-urgent mode of being teacher, cook, housekeeper, caregiver and desperately hopeful candidate for the Best Mother Ever Award.
Maybe I should just try to do one thing every week. One week, for an hour or so, I'll go around putting labels on everything: shoelaces, table legs, microwave, desk drawer, printer, carpet, back bedroom, oven. The next week I'll get everything up and running and make a new language experience book. After that I'll ... think of something else.
I hope that I can find a way to work Paula's home-instruction needs into a balanced life in which I don't have to go into hyper-urgent mode to accomplish them. I hope this is just a phase, the pendulum swinging towards me for a while before it makes its way towards the middle.
Last night we went to my nephew's 4th birthday party. Paula did so great with everyone there and a number of people (including the birthday boy) commented on how much more she is talking!
She was sitting in the family room with the other kids and some of the adults, watching that haunted house movie from Pixar - you know which one, right? - and got a little scared at one point. My sister-in-law Mayra got up to take Paula upstairs to me and Joel, but Paula indicated she wanted to just sit with her aunt. She ended up sitting on Mayra's lap for quite a while, signing and talking about the movie. Mayra said later that she understood a lot of Paula's speech, that she learned the signs for "fire" and "house" from listening to Paula and watching her sign.
My other sister-in-law, Livier, also noted how much Paula is talking and how much progress she's making. Livier said she and Javier Emilio (the birthday boy) have been watching their Signing Time video and learning the signs. Javier Emilio kept saying, "She talks now! She talks Spanish!" I think he's a little confused about which is Spanish and which is English. I don't care!
Paula also did great with greeting and saying goodbye to people. This is SO important in Mexican culture, it's just not something you can skip. For the first time she was really able to connect while greeting her relatives (often using their name signs, thanks to our Deaf Mentor Karen!). Paula also very clearly said Bye-bye! when people were leaving, and leaning sideways against them as if to say, "you may hug me now."
On the way home we gave my in-laws a ride home. Paula was excited to have all of us, her parents and one set of grandparents, with her in the car. She kept naming us off, and her grandparents marveled at how clearly she is speaking. She was entertaining herself for a while singing the ABC's, and my father-in-law said, "She's learning a lot in school, isn't she?" I couldn't resist. I answered, "No, she's known her ABC's for a long time. I taught her!"
Well, Joel and I are both feeling pretty puffed up this morning at how well Paula did. It makes us feel a lot more optimistic about her future, and as you all know, we need that.
All right, everybody, here's the deal. Paula's back at school, hubby and kid are gone for the day, I've got the house to myself and I'm ready to party.
I've got a couple of quarts of ice cream, a couple of jars of Nutella, two boxes of cheese crackers, one eighth of a chocolate-covered apple fritter, a gallon of whole milk, a bag of grated coconut, a big tub of cream cheese, some 7-Up, a quart of salsa (b.y.o. chips; we're out), and a small head of cabbage.
Forget about the cabbage.
We've got cable TV: Judging Amy is on from 11 to one, then comes Law and Order for at least two hours. We can channel surf until 11 and maybe hit some of those new talk shows with Rachel Ray and Megan Mullaly. Oprah is optional and on now.
Just get your butt over here and join me in what I like to call the adolescence I never had. No, there will not be booze, but we can make coffee milkshakes and get a caffeine high.
But before you come, you should know that I may ask you to fold laundry, help me clean out my fridge, or take out the trash. I'm not promising, just warning you. Because similar to the adolescence I did have, I have to get some work done while I'm kicking up my heels.
Just hurry up and come over! It will be a blast, and I promise you we will party like it's 1999 until I leave at 2:15 to pick up Paula.
From Why Aren't We Shocked?
"In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls. ... In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted."
Read on.
Oh, I've been away so long and I still can't think of a damn thing to write!
But I have a good excuse. Paula is getting over another bout of pneumonia. She was droopy enough on Friday the 13th for her teacher to comment on it in her daily note home about Paula's school day. Over the weekend she continued tired, napping a lot, laying down on the kitchen floor, just basically a wet washcloth.
Monday and Tuesday I sent her to school feeling she had rested up and perked up from her hours and hours (and hours) of sleep over the weekend. Unfortunately I appear to have deluded myself. By Tuesday afternoon she had a bad cough, by early Wednesday morning she had a fever, by that afternoon I had tried two homeopathic remedies (recommended by the homeopath), neither of which made a dent in the cough-till-you-vomit fun.
I finally opted to take Paula to the pediatrician. Joel had to work and I was a little freaked out, so my friend Jody brought his kids and kept me company and Paula entertained during what turned out to be two hours in waiting rooms. By the time we left the sky was dark and Paula had been listened to, held down, thumped, x-rayed and had her earwax removed. The dashing young resident said it was almost certainly pneumonia. Amoxicillin, here we come.
Now after three days on antibiotics Paula is getting back to her old self, more or less. She's still taking long early naps when she can, but not walking around with bags of marbles under her eyes. Yesterday I took her to this year's first session of Baha'i children's classes (She calls it "Allah'u'Abha School" because the sign is the same as Baha'i*), and she did fine until she missed her nap afterwards.
And as much as I adore my curly girl, I can't wait to get her back to school tomorrow so that I can work on my own things. I made a sticker chart on which to keep track of writing submissions, so now I feel compelled to cover its nudity. I started my homeopathic treatment this weekend, too, which is miraculously healing me by making me feel really, really tired and like someone punched me in the jaw and kicked me in the knee. Yippee.
* Not an official ASL sign, but useful for communicating with my daughter about my religious faith.
I spoke with my friend Shawn the other night after his 2-hour astrological consultation. He said he's in a period of major transition. I told him I know how it feels.
"Well," he said. "I don't know what kinds of changes you're going through, but what I'm going through is like a fog that comes in and wipes the slate clean."
(Maybe I misremember the mixed metaphors there, but that was the general idea.)
In the course of the conversation he pulled up my astrological chart, about which I know next to nothing. I'm a Gemini, if you're wondering.
"Oh!" A little surprise in his voice. "You're going through the same big transition I am!"
Shawn's and my birthdays are about nine weeks apart, which apparently puts us in the same cosmic ballpark for having the ship-in-a-bottle of our lives picked up and shaken as though by a hyperactive four-year-old. Any other 35-year-olds want to join us as we hang on for dear life?
I don't know much about astrology, but I really relate to the "fog" imagery. I look forward to the next six to eighteen months, and I still feel I have no idea what shape my life is going to take.
I want to write and publish, but when I try to imagine what I'll be writing about, I draw a blank.
Then there's the translation gig I'm hoping to get with Early Intervention. It will mean good pay for flexible hours - I'll actually be self-employed for the first time in my life - if it works out. I'm still waiting for EI to write me back to say, "Go ahead and translate your little heart out." When that arrives, I'm hoping my life will begin to have more structure. When you're looking to self-employment to provide structure, you know that things have really gone downhill.
But the really good thing about this time in my life is that for once I am ready to just see what develops. That's not to say I stop writing, let the dishes pile up or go without bathing (after all, I'm not camping). Just that I'm not trying desperately to control the outcome here, and that's a first for me.
Most of the (practically innumerable) big changes I've gone through as an adult I've tried to manage aggressively. Whether I was ditching one college for another in hopes of blowing the first college's little, patriarchal mind; whether I was going from punk-rock nanny for my niece and nephew to married late-20's college student; or just trying once again to leverage myself into an ecology PhD program (three guesses on whether I succeeded!), I was always holding onto the reigns with white knuckles and trying to steer things the way I thought they should go.
I was driven by fear, for the most part. I would a) run out of money, b) fail in every possible way, or c) degenerate into slackerhood. My life would come to mean nothing to anyone if I didn't make sure everything was on whatever track I thought it should be.
And out of that I got my bachelor's and master's degrees, my marriage, a decently-timed entry into motherhood, among other things. It hasn't been such a failure, my quest to control my life.
But at this point in my life I'm ready to face the fog and wait it out. I want to start making some money, but we can handle another few months of me not earning. Failure may occur along the way, but I guess I've realized that's part of life. And the fact that I'm writing this dressed in my pajamas says that slackerhood is really not as bad as I'd thought.
I guess I have started to trust that whatever's on the other side of this big transition is going to be okay. I just have to ride it out and wait for the fog to clear.
It just speaks to so many of the people I know. And love.
We have begun a new sleep regimen for Paula. All hail the new sleep regimen!
Here's where we're at:
1. No more nighttime bottles. I bought a little lamp on sale at Tar-jay, and put it on a timer in our bedroom. We turn it on to do bedtime stuff in the room, then the timer turns it on at 6:00 every morning. She drinks 4 ounces of milk for bedtime, and the rule is that she can't have more until that light comes on in the morning. I finally got fed up with giving her bottles in the middle of the night, just to have her wake up needing to pee 90 minutes later.
2. Bedtime Buddies. Paula has selected two teddy bears, a plush cat, a baby doll, and tonight a plush fish, who "sleep" cuddled around her at night. Every night before bed, we go over exactly how the animals/baby can help her sleep. Sometimes it's by making up a story, sometimes we "show" the animals so they'll get with the program. First I practice and then Paula practices. The steps are as follows:
a. Paula experiences normal night-waking.
b. She hugs the animals/baby.
c. She takes a drink of water from the sippy cup.
d. She snuggles into bed, pulls up the covers (optional), and goes back to sleep.
3. In accordance with the Nighttime Nazi Sleep Doctrine, "sleep begets sleep," Paula's new bedtime is six p.m. That's right. In bed, lights out, plush toys packed around her like ice around a pneumoniac, sippy-cup within reach, by six o'clock.
So she eats dinner at 4:30 and The Routine begins at 5:00:
a. Brush teeth, change to pajamas.
b. Select/collect Bedtime Buddies and make sure they are clear on their duties.
c. Read books.
d. Lights out, bottle of milk.
And with advance thanks to those who write to tell me I'm ruining my child's teeth by giving her a bottle of milk, actually letting her fall asleep with it in her mouth, I know. I'm tackling one thing at a time, okay, so get off my back.
So far this is going well. Paula has knocked out promptly at six most nights, and is getting a lot more continuous sleep now than she had been. The only real challenge that this program does not confront is that Paula routinely wakes up at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning. But she wakes up early no matter how late she stays up - I think she's just a natural early bird.
How I would LOVE to sleep all the way through till like 9:00 someday. That would - will, I hope - be a great day.
Today I'm Doing Something about being achey and sick, which is how I've spent the last four weeks. I have a phone interview - no, not for a job <snort> - with the homeopath whom we've been consulting about Paula's health. The fatigue, the susceptibility to sinus infections, the aching muscles; I need help. I'm going to get constitutional treatment.
And here's what I expect to happen after my year-long treatment: By next time this fall, I will be totally strong and healthy, weighing 135 pounds, resistant to illness, full of energy, brimming with creativity, writing like a fiend every day, cooking adventurous meals, taking up acting, going dancing at night, replete with femininity, contentment and enthusiasm. I will live the life of the 22-year-old I wasn't at 22.
I will wake up every morning and little birds will lift my covers off of me. I will perform an interpretive dance as I get Paula dressed for school. My toes will make graceful contact with the back of my head. I will train the neighborhood children in tai chi and yoga. The walls of my home will appear hazy from the gold dust that will follow me wherever I go. Joel and I will regale each other with operatic duets. Purple clover and sweet alyssum will spring up wherever I walk.
You may think that my expectations are too high. Or you may think that I am putting a lot of pressure on the homeopathic physician. I don't agree. Nowhere have I mentioned that the homeopathic treatment will win me a Pulitzer. Nowhere have I implied that little wings will sprout from my feet or that the treatment will allow me to teleport to Atlanta to lunch with my mother whenever I please. I think I'm being very reasonable.
That said, if you notice that my hair, which will have grown in burnished chestnut strands all the way down to my hamstrings, commands a high price on Ebay, you will know why.
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