Cousin It and the Bride of Frankenstein are in the car!

In my last post I told you that our family is dealing with a tremendous amount of stress right now. Since then my mom has been in and out of the hospital...and is currently back in.

When it rains it pours. In our case, it feels like a hurricane.

I feel like a raw nerve at this point.

However, something happened this morning that gave me a moment of humorous relief, and I thought I would share it with you. I find it important to focus on the good stuff to get me through the bad stuff. So, here is my attempt to do that.

Monkey is in orchestra. Orchestra practice happens twice a week before school starts, and in the case of Monkey's school, that time is 0-dark-thirty (a.k.a. butt crack of dawn).

Up until recently, we have driven to his school under cover of darkness because we were always up before the sun. It pains me to even type that. I would rather have been in my warm and comfy bed any of those days...

Well, I realized this morning that spring has sprung, and we no longer drive in darkness.

It was a typical Pacific Northwest morning: overcast, gray and misty. So, I did what I always do when I am stumbling around, bleary-eyed in the morning. I attempted to make Monkey's lunch and get him to eat breakfast, wake up Prince Charming to get his coat and slippers on, and then we headed off to orchestra. I put the defrost and heater on high so that I could see something through the windows of the car, and we got our trip underway.

Now, for the visual:  I am wearing some God-awful sweat pants that look like they've been through a war and have shrunk through repeated washings, which makes them unfashionably highwater. I have on my husband's old flannel shirt that he didn't want anymore but I thought it was too comfy to toss out. My slippers are fuzzy, but well-worn in that matted down, filthy fleece kind of way. And, the best part - I am sporting the most awesome naturally curly, long-haired bed head you have ever seen. I haven't even bothered to run a comb through my hair or even brush my teeth. Makeup? Ha! I laugh in your general direction. I am the antithesis of "put together."

So, we are driving along through the fog and the gray and I start to get a glimmer of light coming through the windshield. Could that be the sun? As we get closer to Monkey's school, the sun gets brighter and the fog gets thinner. It's actually quite a beautiful morning and I am silently reflecting on that.

We pull up in front of the school and I park in the line of cars with other parents waiting to let their children off for orchestra. The sun is brightly streaming through my sun roof and that's when I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror.

BIG MISTAKE!

To describe my hair as "finger-in-a-light-socket, sideways-mohawk, Bride-of-Frankenstein frizzy" does not even begin to touch what I saw. There I was in all of my backlit-by-the-sun glory, exposed by the sunlight to all of the cars around me. Those poor parents and kids that saw me must likely still be in shock.



I wasn't even this cute - she has makeup on!
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I averted my eyes from my own freak show to glimpse at Prince Charming in the back seat.

He likes to bring a throw blanket with him in the car when we take Monkey to orchestra. This habit originally started out as a "I'm sleepy and cold" thing and ended up being a sensory thing. He would throw the blanket over his head, much like you would if you wanted to pretend to be a ghost. It helped him block out the bright car lights that we would see in the dark mornings, and he liked the feeling of a warm and soft enclosure. It was a sensory tool he figured out on his own, so I have supported him continuing to use it in the mornings that we make the early drive.

As I looked at Prince Charming, the only thing I could think of was that he looked like Cousin It. He was covered up by a fuzzy blanket and it struck me as funny.



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Apparently the sunshine made me a little loopy or something.

Here I was, the Bride of Frankenstein with my raggedy clothes and wild hair, and Prince Charming was a more colorful version of Cousin It.

I felt bad for Monkey having to asssociate himself with us in light of our early morning, roll out of bed version of crazy. Had he been a neurotypical junior high schooler, he would likely have asked me to park down the street so he could walk to school so that we didn't embarrass him. Thankfully, that is not an issue we have to deal with (yet).

I think maybe next time I take him to orchestra I should at least comb my hair. Darn that sunshine!

Changing Names?

Over the summer my little guy earned some new nicknames. Right now I refer to him almost exclusively as Prince Charming. He truly is a charmer and he’s so dang cute that your cheeks ache from smiling at him. Now, there is his other personality… I call him Grumpy Badger for a reason. He has earned that name, for sure! He can be hell on wheels when he wants to be. It’s hard to believe that such opposite personalities can exist in one small body.

I noticed sometime during the summer that a new habit was developing. At first I thought it was a comfort thing or just a way for him to have fun, but I think ultimately it was a sensory thing for him. He began to sit with his legs pulled up tight against his abdomen, and then he would pull out his shirt over his knees. Once he pulled his arms inside his shirt, his body was encapsulated into one little mass. I’m sure there was some nice compression on his body, which probably felt good to his overactive sensory system.

It took me a while to figure out what prompted this new behavior, but then it hit me one day as he was tucking his head inside his shirt while dialoging some semi-familiar sounds. His speech was slowing down as he was forming himself into a small bundle and burying his head in his shirt. I realized that he was acting out a scene from the movie Wall-E when Wall-E was losing power and had converted back into a cube as he shut down.

Prince Charming had been making little noises here and there for a few weeks at that point, including the famous electronic, “E-va-ah” from Wall-E as he was trying to wake up Eve from when she was protecting the plant. He nailed the inflection and tone perfectly every time. His constant rendition of Wall-E reminded me of last winter’s obsession with Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam.

As the summer continued, I would occasionally refer to him as Wall-E when I saw him tucking himself into a little ball. He always quickly objected and then Monkey would pipe up with some comment reminding me that his name was actually Badger and not Wall-E. We would laugh over the nicknames and then continue on with our day until it happened again.

Then, one day I saw him in a little heap on the chair. His legs and arms were all tucked inside his shirt and he was in the process of also trying to get his head inside the shirt to form a perfect Wall-E cube. The difference was that he was wearing a green shirt that day. I was watching him wiggle around to get inside his shirt, and all of a sudden it popped into my head. “You’re my little Turtle, aren’t you?”

His head jerked up and he exclaimed, “Turtle? I’m not a Turtle!” I told him that he looked like a Turtle because he appeared to be hiding inside his shell, which was green. He laughed and told me I was silly. But, the funny thing is that he immediately came out of the Wall-E fantasy and began acting like himself again.

I tested the theory the next time I saw him withdraw into his shirt. “There’s my little Turtle!” His arms and legs flew out of his shirt and he immediately sat up straight. He was Prince Charming again, but with a funny look on his face like he didn’t know what to make of me calling him by a new nickname. I have since called him Turtle several more times and each time it snaps him back to reality. Hmmm. We may be onto something here…

Turtle, Wall-E, Grumpy Badger, and Prince Charming. Each of these names definitely fits my little boy. I wonder what the next one will be?      

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The cat always gets it in the end

We try to work with our boys on ways to express imagination. My husband told me about how as a boy he used to tell stories with his Grandpa. They would make up a story and take turns adding bits and pieces to it, but it always ended in the same way. There was a cat and it died.

Titan’s Grandpa was not a cat person. I’m a cat person. However, I can appreciate adding a predictable yet humorous twist to signal the end of an imaginative story game. I’m sure the anticipation would build up as he waited for his Grandpa to introduce the cat and then promptly off it.

Our boys both struggle with abstract thinking and have difficulty coming up with their own ideas. We knew that this type of repetition, coupled with an exercise in imagination could be quite beneficial for them.

A few months ago Titan decided to try his Grandpa’s story-telling trick for the first time. He scooped up Monkey into his lap and they sat together in the big recliner. Titan explained what they were going to do, and then they began creating a story together.

Titan started it off in some familiar territory, talking about a boy that was similar to Monkey. He figured it would be easier for Monkey to create interesting details about something he could easily talk about. Titan got things rolling and then prompted Monkey to add something to the story, like talking more about the boy and what adventures he had.

They went back and forth for several minutes, each adding their own stamp on the story. The fun was seeing how the story progressed and what unexpected turns took place. Then, as the story was winding down, Titan weaved in the doomed cat who quickly met an untimely demise. Poor thing. Titan chuckled, as I imagine he would have when he was a boy playing the story game with his Grandpa. Monkey couldn’t help but follow suit and also laugh.

They had lots of fun creating a story and then killing the cat. I guess boys will be boys!  

How do you engage your child’s imagination?