Tragic Sandwich

Category: Family and Friends

  • Lifelong Learning

    Baguette has a significant language delay. We do a lot of interpretation.

    NighYouRah

    She works so hard at communicating. I’m so impressed with her, and how diligent and persistent she is with any number of tasks. These are traits that are going to serve her well no matter what she chooses to do with her life.

    These traits are invaluable with ABA. She makes no secret of the moments when she is bored, or frustrated. There are plenty of times when she resists completing a task or participating in an activity (to the point of banshee screams). But there are so many other times when she will Just. Keep. Trying.

    She does this with speech, and I want to encourage her. So I try really hard not to tell her that she’s saying something incorrectly. Instead, I say things like this:

      “Mommy doesn’t know that one yet.”

      “Mommy still has to learn that.”

      “Maybe you and I can figure that out together.”

    Because I want to let her know that communication is a two-way street, and the burden isn’t entirely hers. I want to let her know that I’m still learning, too. I want to show her that adults also struggle. I want to let her know that it’s possible to share tasks and work together.

    Ultimately, I want to help her make herself understood to others. But first, I have to show her that I understand her. I have to show her that I’m going to work hard with her. I have to show her that I think hearing her, listening to her are worthwhile, even if it’s not immediately easy for me.

    Oh, and Nigh You Ra? She requested it for days. I asked her ABA providers and her teacher and Bestie’s mom and a co-worker with a daughter slightly younger than Baguette. And then (as you can see above) I turned to Twitter–and I was not surprised at all when the answer came from Cloud, with an assist from one of her daughters:

  • Baguette, of Late

    The last six weeks have been pretty incredible. Toward the end of December, both Baguette’s day care and our workplace closed for the holidays. At the same time, her evening ABA therapist got married and took a few weeks off. We did schedule one session with the therapist who goes to her daycare, but for the most part it was a real break for all of us.

    We’ve discovered that these breaks are very important. Routine lets Baguette learn new skills; the breaks are when she shows us what she can do. And when this break ended, she kept going. Here is a not even remotely exhaustive list of the new things we’re seeing from her.

    • She answered a question with a specific response: When Rockin’ Elmo said, “What do you want to do now?” she answered, “Run on the grass.”
    • She didn’t just quote, but imitated the “how do you wrap a present” segment from the Elmo’s World about birthdays.
    • On New Year’s Eve, she let Bestie watch videos with her on the iPad.
    • One day, after several viewings of a “Happy Halloween” Sesame Street compilation on YouTube, she came up behind us when we were in another room and said “Boo!”
    • One evening, she said, “Want carry you.” Then she jumped up into my arms and yelled, “Whee!”
    • Another evening, before bed, she sang first the first two lines of her favorite lullaby by herself.
    • She played with her Connect Four game and took turns with her stuffed lion.
    • When coloring, she enhanced a drawing of an elephant to show it spraying water with its trunk.
    • This morning, she used her Sesame Street-inspired gift-wrapping skills to help wrap Bestie’s birthday present.
    • At the zoo:

      • * “The elephant is eating the carrots”
      * “Look, an elephant”
      * “I see a lion”

    • After climbing and playing on the elephant statue at the zoo playground, she ran back, hugged it, and said “I love you. I love you.”

    small girl sitting on statue of elephant

    To a lot of people, these developments may not sound like much. But for Baguette, and for us, they’re huge.

    She’s communicating in ways she never has before. She’s expressing a complexity of thought that is new. She’s interacting in ways that we haven’t seen.

    Because not only will she let the lion take turns at Connect Four, but when she completed a task at day care and her teacher asked her if she wanted to pick a friend to jump with, she walked up to one of the little boys in her class and held out her hands to him.

    It’s hard to know who was happiest about this–us, her teacher, or the little boy, who apparently was overjoyed that the girl who talks to no one had picked him out of the group. But probably the answer is that we were happiest. Because we know what it took her to get here.

  • Things I’ve Been Thinking About

    Baguette has done a lot of cool stuff lately. This will be a post of its own. It’s that much stuff.

    • I’m glad the holidays are over, but I could really use a vacation. Good thing there’s a three-day weekend starting tonight.
    • We’re playing a lot of football.
    • Sometimes we play leopard.

      • Leopard

    • Sometimes we play both at the same time.
    • I had my first session with a personal trainer today, and I am so sore I can’t walk down steps, and no one will sympathize because they’ve all been working out for years.
    • Eating a huge burger and fries with a beer may not have been the most productive response, but it worked for me at the time.
    • Unexpectedly running into John C. Calhoun must have been terrifying.
    • This Christmas, it occurred to me that I don’t know if Baguette knows about Santa. Then it occurred to me that we also haven’t taught her anything about Jesus. Then I started to wonder what, exactly, she thinks is going on at Christmas. So I bought her a book of Bible stories, and am reading her one a night before bed. I also contradict them with my commentary. I am not sure I’m helping.

  • Happy New Year!

    So we planned a quiet New Year’s Eve at home with just the three of us. This was to follow a morning of snowshoeing at sort-of-nearby Mt. Pinos, with Bestie and her parents and another family.

    Baguette had a lot of trouble getting to sleep Tuesday night; she and I were up until at least 1 a.m. Still, we were on the road at about 7:45 this morning and at the parking lot at the top of the road just over an hour later.

    But then something very unusual happened: Baguette refused to get out of the car and play in the snow. Our girl loves the snow; she’ll put on all her gear and ask for it in August. We’ve made two other snowshoeing trips this month, and she had a blast both times.

    This morning, though, she was tired. And it was cold. How cold? It was 13 degrees Fahrenheit in that parking lot. While that just means adding a layer of clothing for Mr. Sandwich and me, it has quite a different meaning for Baguette. I guess she’s not completely impervious to cold after all.

    Bestie and her parents couldn’t make it, and eventually we packed up and headed back down the mountain, spotting the third family on their way up as we were on our way home. (Although by that time, we’d have been pretty much done even if Baguette had been willing to leave the car.)

    So then a lot of texts went back and forth, and Bestie and family came over to our house for an impromptu New Year’s Eve dinner of take out from a local Mexican restaurant. We cut technicolor snowflakes out of colored copier paper and finished up with ice cream for dessert

    A good time was had by all. And Wicket didn’t even have to wear a hat.

    Happy 2015, everyone!

  • Auld Lang Syne

    When I was younger, I thought it would be fun to go to a big, blowout New Year’s Eve party.

    I never did. I’m totally fine with that.

    First of all, I didn’t want to go by myself; I wanted to go to that kind of party with a boyfriend. And I almost never had a boyfriend, which limited my opportunities. (I did once go to First Night in Manhattan with a friend, her husband, and her brother, but I’m not even sure that was a set-up; I think we just all wanted to go to First Night.)

    So what have been my favorite New Year’s Eve celebrations?

    Growing up, we would have dinner at a Chinese restaurant and then see some blockbuster or other. That was always good.

    One year–I can’t remember whether I was dating Mr. Sandwich yet–another friend invited me to a party at her brother’s Manhattan apartment (different friend, different brother, same Manhattan). But it was supposed to snow, and my block was always last to be plowed, and at the last minute I canceled because I wasn’t sure I’d get home. Instead, I spent New Year’s Eve curled up on my couch, watching movies I can no longer recall and eating either Chinese food or pizza. The details don’t matter, because what I do remember is that it was a great evening.

    When we were dating, Mr. Sandwich and I spent one New Year’s Eve with his friends, starting at Cheesecake Factory and moving to one friend’s nearby apartment; we spent others playing board games with some of my friends.

    The year we moved into our house, we hosted a party at which I learned that if I’m going to drink, I really need to eat dinner. Or at least lunch. But that lesson didn’t make itself clear until after everyone else had gone home, so the party itself was a lot of fun.

    Since then, we tend to stay home, safe from the drunk drivers of the world. Last year, Bestie and her parents came over for dinner (we planned to start early, to reduce their odds of being menaced by drunk drivers on their return). A good time was had by all, including Wicket–although the hat placed on her head spoke more to her tolerance than to her awareness of the passage of time.

    This year, we have planned absolutely nothing. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with lots of events filled with people who want to see Baguette. She’s done really well with it, but she needs plenty of downtime. We all do. So we have no plans, and I think it’s going to be another great evening.

    So to all, near and far–may you have a Happy New Year. And those good wishes aren’t just from me. They’re also from Wicket.

    small dog wearing Happy New Year hat and leis

  • Happy Anniversary, Wicket

    In November 2009, Wicket followed Mr. Sandwich home from the corner store.

    Five years ago today, I picked her up from the shelter.

    Based on everyone’s best guess, she’s 16 or 17 now. She sleeps more and she can’t jump onto the couch from the floor anymore, but she still loves her walks and her food and her tummy rubs.

    I have too many Wicket stories for one post. But this dog, who is not at all the dog we imagined or expected, is one of the best things to ever happen to us. She brings us so much love and kindness, and we are really grateful that she found Mr. Sandwich on that corner.

    So here’s to Wicket. And here she is today, in all her Wicket-y glory.

    apricot toy poodle

     

  • Ten Things About Me

    I totally stole this from Nina at Sleeping Should Be Easy. As you do.

    So here are 10 questions for you to answer on your blog(s), should you so choose.

    1. What’s the last movie you watched (in the theater or DVD)?
    2. What’s a random fact about you?
    3. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
    4. What are three things you can’t live without?
    5. What is the best thing to happen to you this past month?
    6. What is the biggest stress in your life right now?
    7. Tell me five things I’d see when I walk in your door.
    8. Did you—or do you—have a nickname? What’s the story behind it?
    9. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
    10. Why do you come to this blog?

    And here are my answers:

    1. What’s the last movie you watched (in the theater or DVD)? Frozen. I do have a four-year-old, after all. The last movie I saw in the theater was Star Trek Into Darkness, and WOW, was that was a disappointment.
    2. What’s a random fact about you? I have ancestors from a lot of places, but only the Celtic ones show.
    3. Would you like to be famous? In what way? Not famous enough to get doxxed, I can tell you that much.
    4. What are three things you can’t live without? Baguette, Mr. Sandwich, and butter.
    5. What is the best thing to happen to you this past month? Baguette moved into the bed in her room!!!!!!!
    6. What is the biggest stress in your life right now? Lack of time.
    7. Tell me five things I’d see when I walk in your door. A giant pile of mail, a lion chair/pillow, my bag, a camera on a tripod (we just finished taking our family picture for our holiday photo card).
    8. Did you—or do you—have a nickname? What’s the story behind it? As far as I know, I’ve never had much in the way of nicknames. I have no idea why not.
    9. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? I very much appreciate the way my parents emphasized breadth of interests, but I wish I’d been taught how to focus on something beyond the task/project level.
    10. Why do you come to this blog? Because it wouldn’t be here without me? I’m guessing this one is more for you.

  • Night-Night

    If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that sleep has always been an issue for Baguette–and, by extension, for Mr. Sandwich and me.

    Baguette naps at day care, but not at home, and nighttime sleep is very hard to come by. Although we never planned to bed-share, it turned out that doing so got all of us more sleep than any other approach we tried.

    But she kept growing, and the bed didn’t. Eventually, none of us was getting enough sleep. And then, on a trip to visit family, she suddenly decided that she would rather sleep on the hotel room’s couch.

    We capitalized on this by moving her to the couch when we got home. One of us has to lie with her until she goes to sleep, and that can still take a while. Our girl does not slip off into dreamland, not even when she’s clearly exhausted.

    And, frankly, the couch is not really big enough for two to sleep, even if one of us is still pretty small.

    Mr. Sandwich therefore took his experience in building a toddler bed and put it to use in building a twin frame. One of my cousins made a beautiful elephant quilt, because elephants are Baguette’s favorite animals. We bought a mattress and some sheets.

    And then this happened.

    twin bed

    Now, if we can just get her to stay there. Wish us luck.

  • A Little of This, A Little of That

    Friday morning, I went to The Help Group Summit. For those of you not familiar with The Help Group, it’s an organization focused on research about and support for autism and ADHD. The annual Summit presents a variety of topics for researchers, care providers, and parents. Because of some scheduling conflicts, I could only make it to one session. Fortunately, it was the one I wanted to go to most, about tactics for handling feeding issues with picky eaters.

    Baguette’s appetite is expanding. This may be the perfect time to try out some of those tactics.

    Afterward, we packed up the car (very full), picked Baguette up from day care, and drove up to Santa Barbara. The next morning, Mr. Sandwich left very early to compete in the Santa Barbara Century. Baguette and I left not very early to go to breakfast and the Santa Barbara Zoo, where she saw “wions, and ewehphants, and giraffe, and sheeps, and fwamingos, and penguins, and goats.” The next day, we had breakfast with friends, made another trip to the zoo, and drove back to L.A.

    Baguette is sleeping on the couch. This has been going on for a few weeks. It’s not as magical as it sounds; often, one of us has to sleep there with her, sometimes for more than one stretch per night. But it’s still better–and we all get more sleep–than when the three of us are in the same queen-sized bed.

    Next up, moving Baguette into a twin bed in her room. Mr. Sandwich is building her a bed.

    Yes, you read that right.

    But I can tell that I have more energy, because I’ve been wearing contacts on a semi-regular basis. Next up, I may actually manage to put on lipstick.

    None of this keeps me from drinking a lot of coffee.

    small girl leaning on elephant statue

     

  • Friday 5: September 26, 2014

    Thoughts from my week (or two):

    1) I’m a little concerned about the nature of Baguette’s relationship with Bert from Sesame Street. She keeps kissing him and then feeding him to her dragon.

    2) While I think she has a point about the animation style, based on her criticism of the plot and themes, I’m going to assume that Mayim Bialik has not actually seen “Frozen.”

    3) Speaking of “Frozen,” there are lots of ways to interpret that movie. Personally, I see it as a sharp criticism of helicopter parenting.

    4) We went to visit my dad and stepmom this weekend, and on the drive back, Baguette let us sing with her. While we have found the Busy Beavers “Color Songs Collection Volume 1” to be maddening, we are delighted that she was willing for us to join in–even choosing which colors she wanted us to sing about.

    5) This fall, I really want to get better at meal planning, and I want to use the slow-cooker more. Which means I probably ought to clean off the kitchen counter. Hey, time for a Leaf Bag List. Maybe I’ll get to that soon.

    the number five