Yellow belt, big feelings

Lochlan has now been in karate for almost three months, and he has worked his way up to his yellow belt as a Tiny Tiger.

As soon as we mentioned it, he seemed upset. He wanted to keep his white belt. Could he still wear it? Would he have to get rid of it?

Tonight was the belt ceremony, and he's just the funniest kid.

Now, I'm used to having people watch my kid and whisper and laugh. Not in a mean way! Just, you know, some kids are funny and draw your attention. If you've ever been to the school concert, that kid who's be-bopping around while all the other kids complacently do the hand gestures, that's my big kid.

So it is sort of funny that Lochlan is an attention-grabbing kid, too. He's the one who leaps like a lemur to his spot on the mat. Or who *always* forgets to wait for "go" on a "one two three go" activity and has to return to the starting point so they can begin again (like, three or four times in a row). Or the day the teacher had to "superglue" Lochlan's feet to the mat for a move, but every time he'd take a step, he'd forget and do his jumpy dance again. And then he's got the funniest little Charlie Brown moping walk and a whole series of exasperated facial expressions.

I don't even think he's hyper: the kid is just airborne a lot.

He's also got Big Feelings. He is scared of the jumping over the pool noodle game, and runs off the mat to come sit with me. He takes a while to get warmed up to join the class.

So like I said, he's kind of already the kid that other parents watch. The budding YouTube sensation, if they happen to get the right video.

Tonight he bowed in very politely. They sat in a circle and talked about mindfulness and breathing. They demonstrated their moves. And one of the moves was taking a step, punching, step, punch...
And they did just fine facing the mirror. Then they turned to face the parents, and for some reason, my little homie was just... going diagonally. On the first move, he was just a little off course. On the second, he was decidedly on a collision course with another little girl. The parent tittering began. By the third step, the girl looked discombobulated, and Lochlan was decidedly in her space. Sensei noticed and came over to re-route him, but it was pretty funny.

Then it was time to take off the old belts and be presented with the new ones. I knew it was dicey. They were asked to look forward while throwing their old belt behind them, and Lochlan did. But then while he waited for the teacher to get other people's new belts on, I saw him reach back for his old one, pick it up gently, and touch it to his cheek. Shortly thereafter, he turned to me with tears in his eyes.

And then his whole face turned to a tragedy mask. I saw the other parents doing the face that parents make when little people cry. He turned back to me. I assured him he was okay, and I was going to take his old belt home and keep it forever. He cried quietly but consistently, his shoulders shaking, for a few minutes until the teacher got to him and spoke to him encouragingly. He got his new belt on. They bowed out. Sensei said, "Okay, look for your parent, then go to them and give them a hug."

All the other students did. Lochlan stood on the mat looking forlorn. I said, "I'm right here, Buddy. Come give me a hug." I also picked up his belt. He came over, threw himself into my lap, and collapsed in loud sobs.

When he calmed a little, I asked if he wanted a picture with sensei. He did, so we waited in line, but he was crying lightly the whole time. When we got up to sensei, Lochlan turned around for his photo, still crying. Sensei kneeled down to comfort him again and wiped his tears with the sleeve of his own gi. Then we took our picture.


I know you're probably thinking, "Wow, that kid is over-sensitive!" And, maybe yeah. I don't know. I love his big feelings and his sensitive little self, and I think he's going to be fine.

Big round-up!

Howdy howdy howdy..

I haven't posted in a long time!

Well, how is everybody? Pretty good, and downright weird, all of us.

Azadeh is doing so well with all her therapies that I think she might "graduate" from them soon. I have mixed feelings -- there are still things that are pretty hard that I'd like to work on, but I also can really see the progress she's made, and I think she definitely doesn't need the social skills group at this time. That doesn't preclude us from doing occasional meet-ups or events at the MIND institute or whatever, but I think in general I'll be glad to see the end of the weekly social skills group. And not just because I have to drive an hour round trip to get there.

She had close friends, and there was a falling out, and there was a girlfriend and a breakup and a band? and a renewed old friendship and a crush and a clique and a club and... It's sort of normal 5th grade girl drama, about 90% of it. The other 10% is that she's weird and awkward and temperamental and doesn't read other people's feelings that well.

She was invited to her first sleepover, and they watched YouTube videos and played dance games and ate pancakes for breakfast and went to sleep at 10, so overall a total win, I think.

She's still a crab to us a lot of the time, and it's hard as hell to get her to do a chore, but you know... such is life.

She is in musical theatre class, which she enjoys. A bonus for us is that Grandpa BowSaw takes her, so she gets some guaranteed Grandpa time every week. Sounds like sometimes they talk and sometimes not, but that's always her deal.

She also re-started karate (after Lochlan asked to start), and it's been nice to be back with the dojo "family." It's so much more of a community than I ever really expected, and I didn't realize how much I'd missed it.

Lochlan is a pretty awesome kid. He has a verbal facility that matches Azadeh's when she was his age, but also with a real flair for figures of speech. Like, the other night we said we would go in the hot tub, and he said, "How could I say no to that?" He's so knowledgeable about animals and dinosaurs it's really remarkable. I love experiencing how his brain works as he talks about the features of animals and what their purpose is.

He is still so sweet and loving. He'll cuddle up, hold hands, give kisses, and spontaneously tell me he loves me. I got a picture today of him and his buddy at pre-school holding hands on a field trip.

And he gets wild and runs and jumps and shows us his "karate moves."

He's also still a little mixed up on gender, probably naturally. He's happy with his boy clothes, boy haircut, boy name, and pretty much everything else. But if you say, "You're such a sweet boy," he'll correct you and say he's a girl. I want to be respectful of his identity, but I also don't entirely, really think he's a transgender girl, you know? (This picture aside.)

Anyway, it'll all shake out eventually, and I promise that if I'm wrong on this I'll be supportive as hell and always use the right pronouns.

Speaking of... My lovely Ánt is happier than I've ever seen her, although as she spends more time as herself out in the world, she does encounter more societal judgment than I think she was expecting. She says she gets "clocked" (recognized as being trans) all the time, and she sees people staring.

She has also started engaging on Twitter a lot more than she used to, and while I think she benefits from a really kind LGBTQ community on there (I see a whole lot of "You're valid and you're cute," "No, YOU"), I believe seeing some of the bad/worst news she encounters there as well as the TERFs (basically, trans-haters) she sometimes argue with take a toll on her well-being.

Still, she's discovered new music she likes, new hobbies (she's taking a lot of lovely photographs), and is sort of enjoying a whole renaissance of life. It's exciting to be privy to.

School progress

Azadeh just had her triennial IEP meeting. For those not in the know, every year we have to have a meeting to create or update Azadeh's education plan, which includes things like, does she still need speech therapy and can she take breaks if she gets overwhelmed. Usually it's just a handful of people, but the three-year one is a biggie, and we had the principal, teacher, special ed teacher, speech teacher, occupational therapist, two people from the group that provides her aide, the school nurse, and the school psychologist. And they'd all done new observations or new testing. Whew!

I couldn't have been happier with the results of the meeting, to be honest.

First of all, it's really powerful to have a team of people like that who are working hard on Az's behalf, who seem to be concerned about what's best for her (not what's expedient), and who seem to genuinely like her.

Second, we are making real progress in a lot of areas.

For example, the speech therapist says that over the summer, somehow Az overcame her last actual speech-sound issue, the r sound. However, she still qualifies for speech therapy, so her new goal is to work on using tones that others will read as kinder, and to work on the volume of her voice (it tends to be loud, especially if she is feeling angry).

The people in charge of the instructional aide noted only that it's been working really well, and they're not planning on making any big changes, though they may try to give the aide a half hour lunch break with no coverage during a time of day that Az typically does well.

I learned from the teacher that although Azadeh does make her little noises a lot (her autistic stims are largely vocal, though she does have physical ones too), the group of kids in her class is so used to her that they don't seem distracted by it. This makes me really optimistic about middle school, since at least a handful of these students will move with her to 7th grade, meaning that she may be somewhat insulated by the peers who know her.

And most of her goals used to be "try not to get so angry when you shout out and aren't called on" or "don't escape off campus when you're upset" or "learn to take a break outside instead of stabbing a kid and calling him a jerk." Now, her goals are evolving to things like "raise your hand instead of calling out" and "keep your desk organized."

The group even noted that she had taken responsibility for some bad choices lately (which is ASTOUNDING).

Also, I never make a big deal out of this stuff to Azadeh and I try not to brag too much, but they did her academic testing again, and her language scores -- reading, verbal, etc. -- are just off-the-charts phenomenal. Like, the "grade level equivalent" was <17 .9="" ahead="" and="" beyond="" br="" college="" count="" does="" fingers.="" go="" grad="" hat="" like="" nbsp="" on="" psych="" read="" s="" school.="" school="" she="" textbooks="" that="" the="" was="" your="">
Anyway, there are days when her other mom and I lament that she's never going to live on her own, never going to hold a job, etc. And then there are days like yesterday when I get to daydream about her being an illustrator for botanical books or a park ranger, or something else that allows her the freedom and passion and creativity that is so central to her nature.

So yeah, yesterday was a good day.

How is Azadeh?

Pretty good, actually.

Not that we don't still have issues with... oh gee, cleanliness, mean tones, fighting over chores, getting ready for school on time, interrupting, abusing screen time limits, being thoughtless of others' feelings, begging for everything she sees, refusing to take responsibility for her actions... I just had to get that out of the way. Life around here can still be pretty stressful.

But overall, I feel like we're on a pretty good path. To wit:

She got invited to her 2nd birthday party in five months. Also her second birthday party in about 5 years. She has several friends at school. I attended the parties with her, and she did really well at getting along with people and playing cooperatively. (Until the end, and when I heard her voice raising, I decided it was time to go.)

She has had more good days at school than bad. Last year her teacher was nice, but young and new. This year her teacher is loving, and experienced and tough, which is a great combination for Az.

She is sticking with dance, and seems to enjoy the musical theatre class she's in. She joined the track team and has her first meet next Friday.

She has made positive choices on several occasions lately, like telling a kid today (when HE got mad at her and said something mean), "It's okay, it's okay. We're on the same team." She's also walked away from a couple of conflicts or people who were annoying her. [Full disclosure: she's made a couple real bad choices, too, but we used to have ZERO good ones, so this is still quite an important step.]

She's sleeping pretty well most of the time (knock wood). She sometimes wakes at 4am for the day, but it's far less often, and she's mostly getting to sleep around 9. (This is a tremendous improvement from about a year ago and all the time before that, ever.)

We haven't had a real rager of a temper tantrum in a while.

She very occasionally says something nice to one of us unprompted.

As I re-read this, I know that "no temper tantrums" and "sleeping mostly" and "more good days than bad" is not what "pretty good" would look like for a neurotypical kid. But I don't have one of those. I have a beautifully neurodivergent artistic weirdo, and I will take our version of "pretty good."

4 Years Old!

Lochlan is sweet, smart, funny, loving, empathetic, and an uncoordinated goofball. He loves music and asks for things all the time (mostly Harry Belafonte, but he also quite likes M.I.A. and Missy Elliot). He is genuinely thoughtful of us in a way that is sort of brand-new to us as parents. Like, a few weeks ago I complained of a headache, and about an hour later, he asked how my headache was! (Maybe this is normal, but his sister has never done it.) 

He's obsessed with dinosaurs and watches every dino show there is on every streaming service. He can recognize at least 30 dinosaurs on sight (probably more, but it's hard to say), and usually tell you how he knows the difference between one and another that looks similar, like some detail of the toe claw. 

He is not a big risk-taker in some ways. He won't even try riding the little bike I attached via trail-a-bike to mine. But at the same time he's very confident he's allowed to play out front by himself, or ride his balance bike to the end of the block (he's not). 

He loves the hot tub we got a few months ago and asks to go in almost every night. We started singing "Hot Tubbing" to the tune of "Hot Blooded," and now he sings it too, stripping naked and yelling, "CHECK IT AND SEE." 

He likes to make up new species of animals and pretend to be them (usually some sort of combination breed, like the frog-look-raccoon). Other times he'll tell me he's my "human baby" and wants to be held. 

He's a little sensitive, especially to loud noises. He has flatly refused to allow anyone to sing him the Happy Birthday song. 

He will try most foods, but he occasionally tells us he's a carnivore and doesn't eat vegetables. The other night I ordered only veggie pizza, and he was so mad at me he refused to eat pizza at all and stared at me wrathfully while shoving slices of ham in his face. 

He has lately been telling us he's not a boy, but a girl, and Azadeh's little sister. This will either be a funny anecdote to tell someday, or the thing we look back and and go "OH" about. But he doesn't seem to mind wearing boy clothes, getting his hair cut short, etc. So we're letting it ride and using gender-neutral pronouns as much as possible. No more "you're such a sweet boy," but "you're such a sweet child." 

He has his moments of crabbiness, but for the most part, he's an easygoing, sweet, mellow dude. We are so lucky to get to share our lives with him. Happy 4th birthday, Lochlan! 

Motherhood P.S. -- You know all those people telling you "it goes so fast?" Sometimes it doesn't seem like it goes fast, but going through these pictures BLEW MY MIND. I was like, "didn't we take that stuffed whale to the river, like... a month ago? Are you telling me it's been almost a year?!?!" Look at his tiny face in that picture with the Christmas lights. That was in December, and he looks like a BABY compared to today! Oh, my heart!

The worst features of my kid

I am hoping that when they debut My Older Kid 2.0, they will debug her in the following ways: First, she will notice that her words and actions are of her own doing and they sometimes have consequence for which she is responsible.

And second, she won't be so fucking selfish. Like, I was thinking of trying to run some role-play scenarios after The Toast, and then when The Quilt went down, I was definitely going to write this blog post, and then today was The Drums, and I am seriously wondering if she is under warranty.

The Toast is just one example of something she does regularly. In this case, it was with toast, which she likes. There were six slices on a plate. There are four of us. She evaluated the situation and immediately took three.
I mean... I was going to make more anyway. But read the room, kid! If there are a dozen cookies, make sure everyone gets one first before going back for seconds. If a piñata breaks, just double-check to make sure you aren't mowing down three-year-olds and taking all their candy. You will get yours, I guarantee it. You will get a fair share. Just calm the fuck down and make sure it at least looks like you care whether other people like toast, too.

The Quilt, though, really ticked me off. Background: when she was younger, she thrust a Pottery Barn catalog in my face (and Grandma's, and Boompah's) and said that this pink quilt was the epitome of all that was wonderful in the world and she'd probably die if she didn't get it. So, okay, whatever. Christmas was coming up, and she loved the quilt, so she got it.

In the meantime, I put away the old quilt of mine (from childhood) that was torn and worn and left it in the closet. She never asked for it, never played with it. I think she didn't even ever make a fort with it, and she emptied the damn linen closet to make forts.

So when I was pregnant with Lochlan, I thought, "Hey, won't that be sweet -- I'll get the blue quilt repaired and they'll both have their own quilt."

So I did. I had an old friend repair it (beautifully, I might add), and I put it on Lochlan's bed when he got his own room.

Well, now that she is a teenager (she has some tortured math and logic to make this work at age ten), she hates pink, and also her quilt is too small, and also it's itchy. It is, in fact, the worst quilt in the world, and I am a bad person for not replacing it THIS INSTANT. (Y'all, that is the short version.) And she drags out "You like Lochlan better than me" whenever she wants something (which kind of hits a nerve, because I kind of DO like him better. I love them the same, but he's easier to hang out with because he's chill and nice). So then comes her accusation that actually, she LOVED the blue quilt and ALWAYS wanted it, and I was clearly doing her a grave injustice and insult by giving this TREASURED HEIRLOOM that she has loved her WHOLE LIFE to some random kid.

"Dude," I said, "You never gave that quilt a second glance until someone else had it. You just want it because it's your brother's."

She denies this, but friends, I would stake my life on it. If, the week before I got that quilt out to send it to Kristin in Utah, I had asked Azadeh if she remembered it, she would not have. But once it was his, it had to be hers.

So I was definitely on the "how can I address this selfishness thing" train already.

Yesterday, I cleaned her room a little. I didn't throw anything (much) away, just rearranged. I talked to her about whether we could give her little-kid school desk to Lochlan and she agreed.

There's also a drum kit in there. Now, I got the drum kit for her the Christmas she was 3, I think. We had it in her room for about a year, she banged on it a handful of times, and then we put it in the garage, disassembled.

But Lochlan's kinda musical. He would sometimes use things for percussion, and one day when I was cleaning out the garage, I decided to bring the drums back in for him. Well, as soon as she saw them, she was like THOSEAREMINE! So I put them in her room instead, because it's true, they are hers.

That was at least six months ago. I showed her one or two beats, she practiced them for 2-3 minutes each, and that's been the end of it. The only time we hear the drums now is when some of her clutter falls on them.

So in the big room clean (which I did because she's been complaining about her room being too small), I moved her drums out to the living room while I decided what to do with them. Lochlan is fascinated! He's been hitting them with his hands, pencils, whatever he could find. He's using the foot pedal. He's got rhythm! So Ánt got him a pair of balsa wood chopsticks to play with on there. And him using them just set her off. Why were they out here? Those are hers! He can't touch them! Everything he touches gets gross! He's going to hurt them!

So we try to have this serious talk, and her point of view is something like this.
A: She doesn't use the kit because it is too small for her.
B: That is not a good reason to take it out of her room.
C: She doesn't practice because the drums are unacceptable.
D: She will be needing a new, adult-sized professional drum kit.
E: And Lochlan STILL can't play with hers.

And I'm like... maybe someone somewhere is willing to pay upwards of $1k to see if their kid, who has never practiced the drums before, will practice the drums in their house if they get the kid a much, much bigger set of drums. But that is not me.

I never had a sibling myself, so I don't really get the whole sibling rivalry thing. And I think if we were the kind of parents who routinely insisted that she give her stuff to the younger child, I could see getting put out. But we don't. In fact, more often than not, if Lochlan gets her stuff, it's because I asked her to choose some stuff to give to Goodwill and she doesn't really want it to leave the house, so she gives it to him.

Anyway, I can't put my finger on what it is about selfishness that really gets my goat, but it does. So seeing her ignore or reject things until Lochlan touches them pisses me right off.

About a month ago, I thought about writing down everything she asked for, like when we're in stores. Because "Ooh, can I have this? I NEEEEED it," is about her most commonly-used phrase. And I rejected the idea of doing it, because I knew I would find it both too demoralizing and too time-consuming. I don't want to use a trip to the local homeless shelter as some kind of moral-lesson-imparting tourism, but she is kind of slowly growing into a really reprehensible person. At this rate, in fifteen years she'll be running for office as a Republican.

My Ántonia

So, I mentioned sort of offhand in the last post that my Sweetie is a trans woman. And that's somewhat new, and I hadn't mentioned it before, so I probably owe an explainer.

Earlier this year, I asked if she might be trans -- not really expecting the answer to be yes, but sensing that something was wrong or off, and looking for some answer, no matter how apparently out of left field.

She did not, in fact, answer "yes." She answered "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???!!!!" about 17 times over the next several days.

And then after some time had passed, we had a Very Serious Talk.

Interlude: my Sweetie is an intelligent, eloquent, articulate, clear and concise speaker. Until it comes to saying things that might hurt someone's feelings. Behold the conversation we had in the tent last week.
Á: Is that your red light?
Me: What? No, I have my white light on. Hang on. I don't see a red light. Do you still see it? 
Á: I mean... I meant... Are you using your red light on your headlamp?
Me: No. I'm using the white one.
Á: I know. It's really bright.
Me: OOOHHH! You want me to use the red light? Yeah, I got you. (The white light was too bright and had been bothering her, but she thought "Could you switch to your red light, please?" was too demanding and rude.)


So this is how we ended up having a conversation where we walked away, her thinking she had told me she was a trans woman and me thinking she had told me she didn't want to compete with other men anymore because toxic masculinity is bad. (It is possible I didn't want to hear her message.)

It took one more serious conversation for me to get it.

Most of the rest of this writing is going to focus on how good everything is and how all is well between us and what a not-big-deal it was, ultimately. But for the sake of honesty, it felt like a pretty big fucking deal for a couple days, and I lost some sleep over it. The scariest thought I remember having is, "Well, if anything would lead us to divorce, this would do it."

Also, this realization/revelation was causing HER a lot of anxiety and pain, so I sort of demanded that she go see a therapist to talk some of it through.

She did, and I don't think that was easy. And that sort of got the whole ball rolling -- she's seen medical doctors, etc. since, and is well on her path through transition. Although transition makes it sound like there's some end point where she'll be a woman in a way she is not now. That's not right. She's a woman already. But she will undergo some physical transformation and legal changes, and those may help the world see her as she is already.

Anyway, if you're wondering, YES OF COURSE it was an adjustment. Things I took for granted are changing. One day the dark hair on her arms was gone (shaved off). It seems like nothing, but I remember being really surprised by it.

But here come some of the positives: her therapy, which she has continued, has really helped her deal with her anxiety. I've even heard her coaching Azadeh on what to do with intrusive thoughts. She's more patient, more relaxed, more at ease in social settings. She smiles more (like, a LOT more). She even cuddles more.

She has shared her new name at work and with our friends and family. Although I was trepidatious at times, we have had overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Even the kids are pretty well adjusted to it. Instead of Papa, she's now Poppy. Lochlan saw us arrive at swim lessons and happily announced, "Poppy! My Poppy's here! I have two mommies!" Azadeh is even more consistent than we are sometimes at using the correct pronouns (although this was more noticeable even a few weeks ago -- she and I rarely slip anymore).

One of the phone calls she made was to her oldest sister (I sat in the room for moral support). To fill some time in what I think was a surprised silence, she started telling a long story about Leroy Jenkins.* But she also told her sister that she'd first realized she was a woman in 2016.

I heard that needle-scratching sound in my head. I thought my question -- the one to which she answered, "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???" -- was the catalyst, and that she hadn't realized or thought about it before. Later on, I asked her about it. No, the 2016 date was correct. But she went online and read about how incredibly many marriages are ended by the revelation, and had more or less decided to just be unhappy and hide it from me (and the world) forever. But, she went on, she had gotten to a pretty low place. She didn't think she could continue to live as a man, hiding her real self, but she also didn't think she could live as a woman. The implication was pretty clear to me, and I'm glad we were able to get past that.

Things won't always be easy. One of my biggest fears is that she will face violence or harassment in public, and that will probably never subside much. There are still things to learn to navigate, too. Last night I was reading some old blog posts with pictures of her with a shaved head and captioned "Zadie with her Daddy." When those Facebook memories come up, can I still share them, or will they make her feel bad?

But you know what? We are keeping the lines of communication open, having really hard and honest talks sometimes, and when I want to know that, I'll ask her.

A funny idea popped into my head today. A nerdy band I like called They Might Be Giants came out with a song many years ago called "Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas.)" It's upbeat and catchy. Then, after the science was updated, they wrote a jazzy new song, "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" "The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma. The sun's not simply made out of gas... Forget that song: we got it wrong."

In some ways, our recent changes feel like that. The sun is vitally important to us, right? No life on earth without it. This science is a groundbreaking revelation! The very sun is not what we thought it was! But also, the day before they figured it out, the sun rose and set, and the day after, it did, too.
Understanding that someone isn't what you (and they) mistakenly thought doesn't mean they changed.  My Sweetie, my Ántonia, is still the generous, loving, supportive soul who has made me laugh until I lose my breath more than anyone else on earth. She's still the person who believes in me more than I do. She's still the loving parent of our two kids. I am glad to know more about her. I am wildly glad she is happier than ever before. I'm grateful we get to grow into the future together, and that I can know and love her real self.


*Essentially, Leeroy Jenkins is the story of someone who rushes headlong into something in a foolhardy way. I think she was expressing to her sister that she wasn't rushing into anything.

Big family camping trip 2018!

Well, we missed it in 2017, but we managed to get together with the Oregon family for a big camp-stravaganza in the redwoods this week.

In case you missed it, we love going up to Oregon, but it is a VERY long drive to drag the kids on, pretty expensive, and involves a whole lot of finding restaurants that can accommodate 18 people and which everyone likes.

Camping is about half the drive, less than half the cost, and we just cook the food. It's great!

We drove up last Saturday, and everyone was already there (minus some of our nieces). We'd managed to get two sites right across from each other. The ones I'd found were right near the bathroom and ours backed up to a little ravine, which meant we didn't have quite as many neighboring sites as we sometimes do. Also, it was next to the path down to the river.

I won't bore you with every detail, but I'll share highlights. My older nephew brought Cards Against Humanity, so one of the nights he was there, we played that and laughed a LOT. Another night we played Exploding Kittens, which was a lot of fun until Azadeh cheated at the last second. (We're still working on sportsmanship.)

I had brought some wood carving tools, since Azadeh had recently expressed an interest in learning, and my brother-in-law Alan is a terrific talent at it. He spent hours and hours with her, teaching her the right way of doing things, and telling her stories while they worked side by side. She carved a lovely canoe, and I'm hoping she'll finish it here at home.

I love both my sisters-in-laws' cooking, so it was great fun to eat Maryam's spaghetti and Michelle's loobia polo and Persian egg dish. I also adore Maryam's pancakes -- I try to recreate them sometimes, but to no avail.

Maryam, her husband Alan, and her son Jacob had to leave Tuesday, which was sad, because I know we'd have had more fun with them if they could have stayed. But they went out of their way to make time after just returning from another long trip.

One of my favorite camping activities is just sitting around the fire at night telling stories. My brother in law is a great storyteller and has a vast catalog of favorites. My wife(*) just laughs until she cries!

The kids go half-wild: they get filthy, climb giant redwood stumps**... heck, Lochlan stripped off half his clothes on day 1 and went barefoot some of the rest of the time! But they also eat and sleep well. It's about the only time Azadeh can be reliably counted on to sleep all night long, and perhaps even sleep in in the morning. And with so many family members around, someone's always got an eye on them, so even on the brink of a ravine, I really wasn't too worried. Where's Lochlan? With Katie. Oh, ok.

We had big pots of coffee every morning, made fires even when we didn't need them, made breakfasts sort of communally (my brother in law is my morning homie -- we both get up and sneak around making coffee and starting fires), one of us making eggs or potatoes while the other fixes up bacon or toast.

Antonia, my wife, loves to play in the river, so she hightailed it down there on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday until she got really pretty sunburnt, and gave it a rest for the remainder of the trip. They take inner tubes down, or re-route the water by digging tunnels through the rocks or climbing up the steep bank and jumping in. I like to float down the (shallow) rapid, then let the eddy take me right back up. The water isn't ideal -- it's full of algae and frogspawn, and it's never very deep -- but it's a great way to spend a couple hours.

I made a couple side trips -- mostly to the closest town for ice, but also to Garberville to show my brothers-in-law and go to the toy store, to "Confusion Hill" to delight the kids, and to Miranda for ice cream (like, really good ice cream). We also checked out the visitors center and took one drive to Rockefeller Loop Trail to do a little adventure that earned us patches.

We did have one pretty serious bummer on Thursday. Samwise Gamgee, beloved dog of our Oregon family, passed away. He was 14, arthritic, and blind in one eye, so it was probably his time, but it was still pretty devastating. On the bright side, he went pretty quickly without much suffering in a beautiful place, a few days after getting a swim in the river (Katie carried him all the way there).

Now, I will be circumspect here: Katie, having checked on her phone, indicated that we may have broken approximately four laws. But let it suffice that we thought Sam would appreciate being laid to rest in the beautiful place we had all been enjoying. And one of our trips to Garberville involved the purchase of a shovel.

That night, we heard the freakiest sound. Sort of a whining/barking OH OH OH OH-OOOOH! Then more. One was close -- in the campground, certainly.
Sweetie and I looked at each other in the darkness from our sleeping bags and thought the same thing: coyotes. And that maybe they had found something fresh to scavenge. I have a vivid imagination, and I had CONCERNS.

Then in the morning, we heard more than usual crow activity, and I remembered that they, too, are scavengers. I was just... well, I was hoping that no one wanted to go say a last goodbye to Sam, lest there be a grisly discovery.

BUT! Thanks again to Katie and her ever-present phone, we found out it was the call of a "barred owl."

It had been a sad afternoon and a tense evening, but Friday we were back on track and enjoyed the day together.

Today we all packed up, said our reluctant and loving and tearful goodbyes (mostly Lochlan was tearful -- he thought he wouldn't see cousin Kellen again!), and headed home.

* Oh, hi! I told everyone I know on the Facebook, but I suppose I haven't mentioned here on Blogger that my partner of 15 years, frequently referred to here as "Sweetie," fairly recently discovered that she is a woman. She is transitioning, and it's all going pretty well, and we're still fine and in love and the kids are largely used to it (Lochlan proudly announced "I have two mommies" at swim class last week), and it probably deserves its own post, but there you have it. Sorry if it snuck up on you!

** Lochlan, upon learning that his sister had climbed a VERY large stump when she first visited the campground, insisted he was going up, too. And despite discouragement (she was 5 at the time, and he is 3), he did! He needed a few boosts and foot placements, but he sure enough got his ass up a HUGE redwood stump. Of course, he had to be emergency-rescued down by his cousin, but still -- a victory is a victory!

How's it going?

You know... fine.

Lochlan is 3, and the "fuck you threes" has never been a more apt description. So much of the time, he's just a sweet, darling, smiling, belly-laughing cuddler. But other times he just does his own thing, regardless of what you want, and if you stop him from doing the thing (running down the street naked, bashing a stained-glass lamp into the wall), he'll fight and yell and hit. There are lots of times when I just leave him in the car rather than trying to get him out for a short trip, because he doesn't like to get buckled in, so it becomes a huge, exhausting wrestling match. I won't be able to do it this summer, because even now it's 80 degrees out and I only do it if I find shade, roll the windows down, and I know it'll be less than 5 minutes. But it's just hella hard to find the energy to have that fight multiple times per day.

I'm all for respectful, child-centered parenting that allows kids to have authority over their own bodies and what happens to them, but if I let the boy CHOOSE whether to get buckled into the car, we would have to leave his sister at school, never get groceries again, and keep spare car batteries in the garage for every time he just wanders around the car interior turning on lights. Sometimes I can bribe him or tickle him into submission, but other times I just have to get him in there by force.

Anyway. He knows pretty much all his colors, shapes, and numbers. He still doesn't like to participate in preschool (or go, sometimes), but he knows more about dinosaurs than you, unless you are a legit paleontologist. He's a hummer and a singer and a maker-of-funny-noises and a nonsense babbler, and it's kind of loud around here sometimes.

As for me, I'm... also fine. I really am getting past my Grandma grief, although if you follow me on the Facebook, I'm still wearing her jewelry every day. I'm pretty busy at work, between papers to grade (so many papers), an event coming up, and the many things I'd like to do that are half-formed ideas I haven't followed up on. Almost every day I think about how I'd like to sit down and write something, and almost every day I'm so worn out after the kids' bedtime all I do is sit and read social media or watch Netflix. Ah well. Summer is almost here, and I'll get to relax some then.

My lovely Azadeh has her ups and downs. When I think of some of the downs we had in the past --  her threatening to run away, Sweetie and I breaking her door in the middle of the night during some intense sleep-and-behavior issues, the nights I spent Googling boarding schools because I wasn't sure I could continue to live with her -- I know that things are on a more even keel. That doesn't make them easy. We still live with someone who more or less constantly talks to us as though we are the serfs who have disappointed her. She shouts and snaps and insults and degrades and is kind of mean about most things most of the time. She doesn't (can't?) accept responsibility for anything she's done, ever. She could pick up a bat, swing it into a window, and then if you said, "what the heck!? You just broke a window!" she would answer, "Well, if YOU didn't want it broken, why do you even HAVE a bat in here? This stupid house has old, fragile windows because YOU didn't buy a nice house!" (This is not a conversation we've had, but it has the tenor of hundreds we have had.)

She is filthy to the point that it makes me uncomfortable, but she will not change her ways if bribed, reminded, helped, reasoned with... She wipes marinara sauce on her pants even if there is a napkin next to her. She leaves dirty clothes all over her bedroom floor, eats in bed, leaves wrappers wherever she unwraps things. I know at some point this is a parenting issue, too. I could and should just put my foot down and say, "No, this is fucking disgusting. You shall not do that." But any attempts to get her to, say, JUST pick up the dirty laundry can turn into a multi-hour, yelling, lying, argument, and I don't have the energy for it all the time.

On the bright side, she actually has a handful of friends she's been eating lunch with, she's talked on the phone twice to a friend, she has emailed another, and she even Face-timed a friend a couple times.  She's been going to social skills clinic for a little over a year, so I think it's really making a difference. She even told me tonight that one of her friends is going to invite her to a birthday party, which will be her first birthday party invitation in about four years. That is, IF it comes through. I'm always nervous about some of these friendships. Like, she was SO excited to meet a friend at an accessory shop in the mall, so I said we could go at the designated time, but the friend never showed up.

School is sort of better overall. We haven't had to pick her up early much (sometimes, though). I haven't had a lot of talkings-to, although I was informed fairly somberly of the day she threatened to kill a staff member. Other, less-serious offenses are chatted up more breezily: "She had a good day and got all her points. We did have to ask her not to climb on the desks." "She had a good day and earned all her points. At lunch there was a little kerfuffle where she did kick one of her classmates, but she calmed down and got back on track." (No mention of the kick-ee's recovery.) "She missed her points by two after she threw a Kleenex box at the speech teacher, but other than that..."

One of the things I struggle with -- because I am a parent, not just because I am an autism parent -- is whether I'm doing the right thing for my kid. There's a debate in the autism world, and this doesn't do it justice, but to give you the Cliff's Notes version: some people want to make their autistic kids seem as "normal" (or neurotypical) as possible so they can sort of "pass" in the real world someday. Other people think asking them to hide who they are and not be what nature made them is profoundly cruel, and that what we ought to be advocating for is a world that accepts them as-is.

I've always been a practical person. In terms of effort and my ability to effect change, I think my effort is better spent trying to help my kid adjust to the world as-is than in trying to get the entire world to adjust to accept her. But I see the other view, too. I never wanted her to stop making her noises. I welcome her obsessions (her dad and I have been the ones to buy her the most books on poisonous plants, and I've been scouring the web for plant-identification walks). But especially in her case, so many of the ways her autism presents itself could be easily mistaken for... just being a dick. How am I going to educate all her future bosses that sometimes, apparent dickishness is actually autism, and should be accommodated? I really think I need to help her not be a dick instead.

So we continue the in-home therapy, and we continue social skills clinic, and we try to be patient and loving and give her space to be herself, and sometimes we drink on weeknights.

Re-reading this makes it seem kind of rough, but it's really not. A day might look like us showering and having some breakfast, and sometimes we have a rough morning, but 80% of the time, we get both kids dressed and fed and out the door on time (perhaps with the shoes thrown in after, or a bagel still in hand). Then in the afternoon, we have therapy or clinic or a late day at Grandma's, and there might be some chasing and fussing about the car seat, and somebody might shout (the shouting is pretty likely), but not ALL the time. There will also be some TV watching and maybe paper-plane folding or play-dough and maybe one of the kids will spend 20 minutes peeling a carrot for dinner, and over dinner we talk about our days. And Lochlan will run outside naked and have to be retrieved. And then maybe at bedtime L won't want to brush his teeth and A will take her toothbrush and wander around with it for ten minutes, delaying bedtime, but there are also stories and songs and Az and my relaxing "countdown." And since the sleep issues are (knock wood) mostly sorted, I have some quiet time here to write this all down. Or watch Netflix.

It is tiring. It is imperfect. It is also fun and sweet. When a close friend asks if I got to see the latest movie, I often say, "Well, I have an autistic tween and a toddler, so... I don't have a lot of free time." It's true, but it's obviously not the whole picture.

Just pics

This is Azadeh being ALMOST as tall as Grandma. 

Az got glasses. She hardly ever remembers to wear them, but...