Merry Christmas!

I'm having a great week home from work. If you're curious, I've posted my Christmas photos to my facebook page.

Sugar-plums

9:30 PM on Christmas Eve 2009

It's a man's job

Hey there!

Before I get to this post, I wanted to say that I started a post about a week ago. The post was going to be about how busy I was and list all the things that had been keeping me busy. However, I soon found myself too busy to finish the post, and at this point I don't see much point in posting about why I was so busy a week ago.

Anyway, the thing they kept me busy this weekend was digging out from the first big snowstorm of the season ( Admittedly, there was also a snow blower involved, but there are a lot of places where you need to use a shovel, especially if you are as anal as me about making sure your driveway, sidewalk, steps, and area in front of the driveway and mailbox ( The city snowplows always seem to block your driveway by pushing huge amounts of snow from the street in front of your house ) are 100% clear of all of even the tiniest bit of snow and ice. Also, my snow blower is not self-propelled or anything ( so there is a lot of pushing involved ), and it is not powerful enough to throw snow from the middle of my double-wide driveway to the snow banks on either side of the driveway, so I've got to go over lots of areas more than once . Plus, to get a head start on all the snow ( The storm started slowly at about noon on Saturday, got heavier as the day went on, and continued until dawn on Sunday ), I did a lot of work at about midnight before I went to bed and did a lot of it by hand so I wouldn't piss of the neighbors too much. ). As I was doing all this work, I got to thinking about what still passes as "a man's job" these days.

Modern western society has certainly come a long way in the last 50 years when it comes to how couples share the responsibilities for domestic chores. While it's true that most women still wind up doing most of the domestic chores, ...

( Full disclosure: I'm a bit more of a Felix Unger than my wife ( if you don't know who Felix Unger and Oscar Madison are, check this link for The Odd Couple ), so I'm pretty much the only person who ever cleans the bathrooms or does any kind of floor-cleaning or vacuuming. I also do most of the dish washing and I love caring for my kids ( Well, I didn't love the changing poopy diapers part, but I did this as much as my wife did. We had rule that whoever first smelt the poop had to clean it. Of course this system relied on the honor system quite a bit, but I can report that I never shirked my responsibility after detecting the poopy odor. ). However, I HATE shopping of any kind, and I'm pretty useless in the kitchen, so Ruth basically does all the grocery shopping and has cooked thousands of more meals than me over the last 13.5 years )

... there are certain jobs that are still reserved for men. mostly because most men don't want to give them up. I think shoveling snow is a good example of this. I guess it would be easier to have our wives chip in with the snow shoveling, but most men would feel a bit emasculated to have their wives help them with hard physical labor. I can't tell you how many pieces of furniture I've moved by myself while telling my wife to "stand back - I don't want you to get hurt". Perhaps this is silly, immature and sexist, but that's the way it is - at least for me. Sometime a man just wants to feel like his "manliness" is useful. I dunno - my nearly 40-year-old bones certainly are sore today, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Oh, I don't tell me "Why don't you just hire some teenage kid to do the work?". You don't want me to get started about how middle-aged guys feel about being usurped by younger guys when it comes to physical labor.

Rich

Back To School

Well, it's been a trying week ( see this post if you don't know what I'm talking about ), but after much effort and help from some great people, we finally managed to get Peter back into full-day pre-school. Well, it's not exactly full day - he's going to school from 9:00 to 2:30 each instead of 9:00 - 3:30, but it's a lot better than 9:00 - 11:30. Now we won't have to worry about finding a new daycare center for Peter ( Ruth works until 1 PM each day ), and he'll get the type of specialized instruction he needs all day.

Technically, Peter is only in class for the first half of the day, and he is been designated as a temporary "visitor" to the class in the afternoon. Basically, the teachers at Peter's school found a loophole for us to get around the Superintendent's rules. Things are going to need to be re-evaluated in January, but the teacher's seem committed to doing everything they can to help us out. Kim also gave a bunch of great advice on Friday and offered to meet with the teachers/administrator's at Peter's school if we needed more help pleading our case.

So, perhaps Peter getting kicked out of his daycare center will turn out to be a blessing. He'll definitely get better instruction in school than he would have in daycare.

Anyway, I decided to include another nice happy photo of Peter in this post. The photo above really shows the two sides of Peter. He really likes the piano and he's already shown a talent for making up little simple little melodies on his own :) . However, the marks on the walk behind him are the result of Peter using a magic marker on the wall the previous day. :0

Expelled!

I've included the two photos above just as a reminder of what a sweet little boy my youngest son Peter can be. Peter's behavior has cause us a lot a grief lately, so I just wanted to post some photos that would make me think about all the joy he brings me. I especially like his smile in the Batman photo above. He was so happy that day. I really can't emphasize enough that NOTHING make a parent happier than seeing his/her child smile. When I think back on all the fun I've had in my life prior to having kids, I can honestly say that none of that fun compares to the feeling that I get watching my kids having fun. Nothing I accomplished in my life before having kids gave me anywhere near the feeling of accomplishment I get when I make my boys giggle. My kids bring me so much joy, and I've needed to keep think of that joy to get through the last few days.

On Monday morning Ruth called me at work. She was sobbing into to phone. She called me to let me know that Peter had been kicked of of his daycare center for bad behavior. She wasn't really crying because he was kicked out ( Peter getting kicked out of daycare certainly doesn't qualify as a tragedy. It's been inconvenient for us, because we've had to scramble to find new daycare options, but there is certainly much worse news you can get about your child. ) - she was crying because of what his recent behavior might imply about his development and future.

As you may already know from this post and this post, Peter can be a real handful at times. He's not really good at taking "no" for an answer. Actually, he gets insanely angry when you tell him no, and he'll physically fight you off if you try to get him to do something that he doesn't want to do. He is EXTREMELY strong-willed. He is more strong-willed than anyone I've ever met in my life. I keep telling myself that his strong will is going to serve him well in life someday, but that doesn't make things easier now.

I think his speech-delay is still a big part of the problem. His speaking has improved by leaps and bounds lately, but I still don't think he grasps the concept of cause and effect. You can scold him and punish him over and over again when he acts out inappropriately, but I don't think he has any comprehension of what he is being punished for. If you ask him why he is being punished, he won't be able to tell you ( even if you told him why 5 seconds earlier ), and he'll go right back to the inappropriate behavior at the next opportunity.

Actually, "opportunity" is the wrong word. It makes it sound like he's always looking for the opportunity to behave badly, and that really isn't the case. Most of the time, he wants to be good, and acts like a little angel. Few kids are bigger mama's boys than Peter. We put him in his own bed each night, but he still winds up being right next to Ruth in bed almost every morning. He's really attached to his Mom, and I don't think that any Mama's boy with a loving Mom could turn out that bad. The Paul Simon song below kind of sums up my feeling about that ...



Peter doesn't want to be bad, but he tends to react to conflict badly. I can't tell you how many times he's hit his brother Michael for inappropriate reasons. Once again, I think the speech delay has a lot to do with it, and recent events have made things worse in that regard. During the previous school year ( September 2008 to June 2009 ), Peter was getting full-day pre-school instruction for kids with special needs like Autism and speech delay. He made tremendous progress over that year. I really don't think we could have gotten him to accept potty training without the extensive help we got from the school.

This September, he started again in the full day pre-school classes ( He went to daycare at our local YMCA over the Summer. He had gone there prior to September of 2008, and all the caregivers there knew him well, so he was pretty happy there. ). However, in late September we were told that Peter needed to be re-evaluated because the school thought he had made good progress and didn't really qualify for one of the classes he was taking ( He's always had two different teachers in school, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Actually, in the first few months at school ( starting in September 2008 ), he actually only went to pre-school for a half-day session in the morning ( then a bus would take him to YMCA daycare in the afternoon ). His morning teacher decided that he wasn't making enough progress, and the school decided to enroll him in an afternoon class as well. He didn't really start making great progress until he started to go to class all day ). We protested when were told Peter no longer qualified for his afternoon class, but as we found out later, there really wasn't much we could do. The public school system in our town had gotten a new Superintendent in September, and apparently that superintendent was trying to make budget cuts anywhere he could ( Considering the MASSIVE property taxes we pay to support the public school system in our town, it REALLY pisses me off that this new Superintendent is trying to nickle-and-dime us. ). This bozo decided to save money by skimping on the special needs kids. He decided that kids in Peter's situation were not going to be allowed to be in more than one program at a time ( The before lunch and after lunch classes are each considered to be a separate program ). So, I think Peter's recent problems really started when he was denied full-day pre-school classes in the public school system.

So, it was back to the YMCA daycare for Peter in early October ( Pre-school classes at the public school in the morning, and YMCA daycare in the afternoon ). We didn't really expect too many problems ( Peter has always loved the YMCA ), but a few weeks after he got back to the YMCA, we started to get reports that Peter was acting up really badly.

We got reports that he had hit other kids.
We got reports that he had hit his CAREGIVERS.
We got reports that he had BIT his caregivers.

( He didn't bite his caregivers in anger in an attempt to hurt them. He was giving them gentle little nibbles to get their attention ( Peter craves attention, especially from people he likes. ), Still - biting of any kind is very much inappropriate. )

So, while we were upset with the news we got on Monday, the writing had been on the wall for a few weeks. We've spent the last few weeks trying hard to correct his behavior, but he's actually been pretty good at home lately, and when we punished him at home for stuff he did at daycare, you could tell that he wasn't coming close to making the cause-and-effect relationship between the behavior at school and the punishment at home. It was also clear that the "punishment" he received at the YMCA wasn't helping much. Apparently, they would isolate him from the rest of the class when he acted up and send him to the office of the Director of daycare. The Director used to be one of Peter's caregivers. Peter REALLY likes her, so sending an attention-craving kid to the Director's office every time he acted up was probably just re-enforcing the bad behavior. Anyway, I'm sure the Director didn't really have time for Peter's frequent visits, and after enough hitting and biting ( especially hinting of other kids ), I guess she really had no choice to expel him.

So, that's where we are. The YMCA has given us a grace period of a few days, but we've got to decide on a new daycare center REAL soon. I'm sure we can get him into another daycare center, but Ruth and I are really worried that workers at any daycare center won't be able to handle Peter if he keeps acting up like this. We are really worried that he won't be getting the instruction he needs to get ready for Kindergarten next September.

The good news is that a lot of people REALLY love Peter and have offered to help. We are actually meeting with a very special person's in Peter's life tomorrow afternoon at our home. From the time he turned 2 up until he turned 3, Peter got speech therapy twice a week at home from speech/autism therapist named Kim. Kim also worked with Michael for a year when he was two years old, and she was eager to take on Peter's case when it was discovered that Peter would need speech therapy. Kim has really been a godsend to our family. We were really starting to lose hope with Michael until she started to figure out how to get Michael to come out of his shell. We invite her to all the birthday parties for the boys and she's really like a member of the family now. It will really be great to see her tomorrow, and hopefully she'll have some good ideas regarding Peter's situation.

Peter and Kim in a therapy session, March 2008:


Rich

The bane of my existence

As I noted in this post, I hate picking up all the "spikey balls" that fall from sugargum trees in my backyard each Winter. I just thought I'd give you an idea of how bad it gets. Please click on the pictures below to see them in maximum detail. The leaves have pretty much all fallen off the trees by now, so every little thing you see hanging from the trees is a "spikey ball". Eventually, I'm going to have to pick every one of those things up. I've got 5 trees like this in my backyard, as well as 5 more from another yard that have a significant amount of branches hanging over my yard.

And so it's come to this ...

I have an appointment with an orthopedic doctor on December 9th. Yeah, things aint going too well with the foot/ankle ( See this post if you don't know what I'm talking about ).

A week ago ( on Nov. 11th ), I felt more than the usual pain in the ankle when I started to run on the treadmill. I probably should have stopped right then and there. I really probably should have. But ... but I was getting SO close. So close to running at the same speeds I was running 18 months ago before I injured my knee. I was so close to getting back my personal best time for my regular 2-mile run before I turned 40. All it would have taken was about two more months of intense training. Just two more months. I could do that that. Sure, my ankle hurt a little more each day and I was limping around a lot the morning after each run, but I was almost there. I could make it. Just two more more months. I would rest the ankle for a while after that, but I still had two months to go. So, I gritted my teeth, finished my 2 mile run, and didn't give it second thought ...

Until the next morning ...

CRAP

My ankle looked pretty f*cking big on the morning of Nov. 12th. I could walk on it and all, but pretty f*cking big. Even then, I was still holding out a little hope. I only run twice a week anyway ( 2 intense runs a week - my knees get really spongey if I run more than that ), and my next scheduled run was set for Sunday, November 15th. I was still planning to run again until the morning of the 15th, but my ankle was still really swollen on the 15th, so finally some common sense kicked in. Sure, it might give me great feeling of accomplishment to get back to my personal best running times before I turned 40, but would it really be worth the risk of potentially spending the rest of my life with a limp ( or God forbid, a CANE! ). So yeah, common sense kicked in. It was time to hang up my running shoes for a while and finally call a Doc.

Oh well, no personal bests by the time I reach 40. I guess if the Docs can fix what is wrong and I heal up okay, I could still try to reach my personal best at 41. Heck, that would be more impressive anyway. Of course, I might be told I need to give up running altogether - but I'm going to think positive for now.

Aging REALLY REALLY blows!

Rich