For the past couple of weeks, Baguette’s teacher has had us send in things that begin with a particular letter. This week, it’s L. So we assembled some items and helped her identify them, and then dropped them off.
What did we find?
And if the ladybug, lion, lemon, leopard, lock, and laces aren’t enough for you, then perhaps you’ll enjoy one of my favorite Sesame Street segments of all time:
Baguette’s a fan.
That’s what Baguette whispered to Mr. Sandwich this morning.
Here’s how he’s spending the day.
We seem to be having an Endless Summer in California right now, even if you’re not a surfer. But that doesn’t even matter, because in California, grilled food is a year-round option.
What’s easier than grilling? Grilling using foil packs.
Two layers of foil. Potatoes sliced into 1/4-inch rounds (no need to peel them–just scrub well). Minced garlic and a mixture of butter and olive oil. Oh, and fresh rosemary, because our house came with a rosemary bush so enormous that there’s no using it up. But the dried stuff will work, too.
Wrap up that foil tightly and put the pack (or packs) on the grill for 25 minutes over a medium-high heat. Toward the end, put some sausages on the grill and cook for 5 minutes (these were pre-cooked sausages), turning occasionally.
Meanwhile, put broccoli florets and some salt and pepper into a steamer, and steam for six minutes.
Enjoy.
Oh, and set some aside for leftovers. Instant lunch.
I love the water. My mother loved the water. And, as it turns out, Baguette loves the water. We started taking her to swimming lessons last fall.
When she turned 3, the Y would have had her switch from a parent-child class to an instructor-led class, with no parents in the water. Baguette would not have done that. So we took a break until the city pool opened, and we started going there. Baguette loved it. And, we quickly realized, the joy of the pool made her want to talk. She talked more, and more clearly, and more enthusiastically on the days when she went to the pool.
Mr. Sandwich started taking her every day. And she put it all together.
She can kick, she can reach, she can hold her breath for about 15 feet. She smiles and claps underwater as she swims. And after each pass, she’ll tell us what she’s going to do next: “Swimming to Mommy!” “Swimming to Daddy!” “Swimming to steps!”
Our girl has found her element.
All photos by Mr. Sandwich.
I’m starting to think that the Disney Princesses aren’t the real problem.
And I’m starting to think that the problem isn’t entirely with the teen stars, either. Why, exactly, do we want to watch these girls destroy themselves? Why is there so much ravenous glee when they implode? Why do we want to see them to be so very, very damaged?
Voting on your favorite mug shot? Tell me that’s not ugly. Of the website. Of the people who vote. Of all of us who clicked on the link. Of me for even providing the link.
This isn’t right. It seems like once we’re done with one, we’re ready for the next. We crave new meat. So I hope it’s not too late for Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. But I’m not sure that’s in the cards.
I leave before 7 a.m. for daycare dropoff and work, which means that I eat breakfast after I’m at my desk. There’s a deli on the ground floor of my building, so I’m able to buy breakfast and lunch there, but that adds up quickly.
In an effort to keep the complex mornings as simple as possible–and to keep costs down–I’ve started making a big batch of steel-cut oats and reheating a serving once I’m at work. I also take a small container of walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon to mix in.
For a while, I was making the oats in the slow cooker, but I found that they wound up mushy. If you like mushy oats, then that technique will work well for you; I’m having better luck with the following method:
Put all of those together and bring to a boil; reduce heat to a low simmer and cook for 25 minutes, stirring several times. Cool and refrigerate.
If I start this process early enough, I set aside a portion for the next day. If I don’t, I do that in the morning. Once at the office, I transfer it to a microwave-friendly dish, heat it up, and stir in the toppings.
Someone will tell me I shouldn’t be boiling the almond milk. You can also use water.
Mr. Sandwich wrote this on Monday, and we both wanted to share it here.
Last week we got the news we had been both expecting and dreading. Baguette was formally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This was not a complete surprise, we had been looking at symptoms and ‘benchmarks’ to one degree or another for at least a year. There was speech therapy, there were visits with the principal at daycare about her behavior and class integration issues, of potty training, and the need for her to have further help. To the friends I’ve talked about it with, I have likened it to a punch that you can see coming. You can brace for it, but you’re still going to feel it.
So now we have a doctor’s diagnosis. We have a downloaded packet of steps to follow and paths to pursue. As I read my packet I see that I can expect to go through the stages of grief, which I don’t know if I am, or I don’t know if I started months ago when it became so clear that Baguette was different from her peers. I’ve talked with friends whose children are affected too. I’ve felt at alternating times that I am dizzy and steady, even keeled and bowled over. Today Baguette bowled me over, and I haven’t quite gotten up yet.
I picked her up from daycare late and was rushing to the pool. We’ve noticed how she seems to respond positively to the water, both with speech and behavior and for the past several weeks I’ve been trying to get her into the pool every day. When I buckled her into the carseat she asked for her Sesame Street CD like she always does, but that was in the other car, so all I could do was turn on the radio for the 3-minute drive to the park pool. Of Monsters and Men’s “Little Talks” was playing on the radio and we heard most of that by the time we hit the parking lot. I was running late, and we would only have 12 minutes worth of swimming so I was hustling as fast as I could. As I scooped up Baguette, she was reciting to me. She frequently recites, she doesn’t speak directly, she reiterates whole passages, whole verses of books and songs she knows and keeps as her friends and repeats them to me and Mommy and the World. While I was initially distracted as I fast-marched through the parking lot, she reached out and grabbed my face to turn me towards her and I heard clearly what she was reciting.
“Listen word I say. Hey. Scream sound same. Hey. Truth vary. Ship carry. Safe shore.”
She was repeating to me the lyrics she had heard on the radio just moments before. She’s heard that song played before, but not recently, and even if she did I’m not sure I’d expect any three-year-old to mimic lyrics like that. For a brief moment I was struck dumbfounded in the parking lot, trapped between wanting to laugh and congratulate her on her razor-sharp retention and cry over the fact that she couldn’t tell me things other little girls can. The fact that the lyrics are about a woman whose mind is at war with her and the man who still loves her despite this is just the brass wrapped around these particular knuckles. I didn’t have time to process the moment completely. She had started singing “The Farmer in the Dell” and time was ticking away. We only had a few minutes to get in the pool and that was the reason why we were there, for her benefit, not mine.
Hours have passed now and I can’t shake that refrain she recited to me. I can’t help but think that she was trying to tell me how the wheels in her mind were turning, how she needed me to communicate to her, how she hears the world. “Don’t listen to a word I say. (Hey) The screams all sound the same. (Hey) Though the Truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.” That song will never be the same for me. Nothing will ever be the same.
A hundred years ago–okay, in January–I wrote about our efforts to help Baguette with her speech delay. I was going to write more. I didn’t, really.
It’s not that I was avoiding the subject, it’s that I didn’t really know what to say about it.
Since January, we’ve eliminated the idea of thrice-weekly occupational therapy appointments; while she does have some sensory-seeking characteristics, we don’t see indicators of the Sensory Processing Disorder that the therapist suspected.
We’ve tried–and failed–to get Baguette’s hearing tested (she would not cooperate with the protocol). We’ve also determined that if Baguette really had a hearing problem, she wouldn’t hear as well as she does, and she wouldn’t be able to memorize what she hears as well as she does. So we’ll probably try the testing again at some point, but we don’t think it’s a priority.
We had an in-network evaluation with a speech therapist, who recommended twice-weekly sessions that were denied by the insurance company. This is both infuriating and not a big deal, because we were happy with our speech therapist and could not have gotten Baguette to the location that the insurance company would have insisted on.
We’ve continued–mostly, Mr. Sandwich has continued–her twice-weekly speech therapy and music therapy sessions. Once a week the speech therapist comes to school, and once a week Baguette goes to the therapist’s office.
We’ve hired a “shadow,” who helps Baguette with classroom activities, encourages her to look at and speak to her classmates, reinforces the activities introduces by the speech therapist, and tries and tries and tries to help her with potty training.
And we went to a developmental pediatrician. He talked to us and observed Baguette for an hour, and sent us home with a form for us and a form for the teacher and a request to take video of Baguette in class, to see how she interacts with other children.
At the first meeting, he said that he couldn’t yet diagnose her with Autism Spectrum Disorder, but he saw things that might indicate it. At the second meeting–last week–he did issue that diagnosis.
This is not a surprise to me. My reading to date has been admittedly spotty, but it seems to fit. And there are a lot of things that now connect–the sleep challenges, the picky eating, etc.
But at the same time, I recognize that a lot of those things are also simply Baguette. She is a happy, funny, intense, independent, adventurous, STUBBORN little girl who chooses whether to comply. And she has autism.
How much is autism, and how much is her personality? I’m not sure they can really be separated. But I do know that autism is not the only thing that makes her who she is. It is part of who she is, just as many things are.
So as we now embark on the process of setting up an Applied Behavioral Analysis program for her, I want to pay close attention to what we’re actually working on: helping her develop skills that will give her greater flexibility in the world and throughout her life.
But I also think she’s perfect just as she is, and I want her to be the Baguettiest Baguette she can possibly be.
It’s been weeks since I posted. I have photos from our vacation earlier this month. (Didn’t know we went on vacation? Quite possibly that’s because I haven’t posted in weeks.) Well, technically Mr. Sandwich has the photos. I haven’t managed to transfer them from his computer to mine.
And there have been things I’ve wanted to blog about, but I can’t remember them. Maybe that’s because Baguette has been going through a growth spurt, which means that none of us has been sleeping.
So I need a writing prompt. Ginger from Ramble Ramble to the rescue!
She’s been providing a pair of writing prompts for several weeks. And usually I look at them and think, “Oh, I could blog about that.” And then I don’t. But this week’s prompts both appeal to me.
Prompt 1: In another life, what career/job would you have, and why?
Prompt 2: Give us your top 10 favorite movies of all time.
Today I’ll do #1, because, well, it’s the first one.
When I was a kid, I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up:
The easy answer is that I’d be a writer, and a successful one (hey, it’s my alternate reality I’m imagining). I’d have taken the path I saw for myself in high school, pursued journalism, written some nonfiction under my own name, and written some fiction under a pseudonym. Or I’d have turned to magazines rather than newspapers, and I’d be a freelance writer with the aforementioned nonfiction and fiction.
But I really didn’t like the person I was when I was a reporter–even a high school reporter–and I have discovered that I don’t really like freelancing. I’m not geared to work for myself; I prefer to work for a company or organization of one sort or another. I like the steady paychecks. I like not having to build a client base or die. I like the health benefits (Seriously, I once had the following internal monologue upon seeing a picture of the mountains in eastern Kazakhstan: I would love to be able to backpack there. I wonder if I could get to that level of backpacking. But I’d wind up with a sinus infection. Where would I get antibiotics? I’m really not Backpacking-in-Kazakhstan Girl.)
So I’d probably be an editor, quite possibly in magazines. Considering how much I have always loved reading them, I’m not sure why I didn’t pursue this as a career path. After I got my master’s degree, I applied for a kazillion jobs (college admissions counselor, CIA analyst) in a bazillion fields (education, government, publishing, historical research) all around the world (rural Virginia, Philadelphia, the United Arab Emirates). I don’t think a single one of those jobs was at a magazine.
In this life, I spent 13 years as an in-house and freelance (see? I even tried it) editor. My current job is not editorial, but I’m still asked to do a lot of editing.
Yes, I know I’m out of control with the parentheses on this post, and my use of italics is erratic at best here, but this is the way my brain is working today. Bear with me.
So I guess in whatever life I’d have, I’d have something akin to this career.
Oh, hey, the mom part turned out to be true, too. Nice.
Whoops. My bad. Go here.