Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Shopping With Primo [Or: When Your Early Reader Can Kind Of Be a Pain In the Ass]

[Buying cereal at our local Trader Joe’s.]

Keen: Vamos a comprar Cheerios.

Primo: [Whiny] No son Cheerios!

Keen: No, no son Cheerios. Son Joe’s O’s.

Primo: [WHINY AND SCREECHY] No son Joe’s O’s! Son TRADER JOE'S HIGH FIBER ORGANIC O'S!!!

Keen: Sigh.

[The Cheerios bars made from said Trader Joe's High Fiber Organic O's were delicious. I think I liked them more than the boys did.]

Monday, June 15, 2009

Dandelions

The boys' nanny quit unexpectedly a couple of months ago. While it definitely shook things up around here, I'm lucky that a) I'm a freelancer and b) It was a slow month and I had no work lined up when she quit, so I was able to take a month off. And that month was idyllic. I got to spend an entire month with my boys, and I loved it.

What will always stand out when I think of this spring is the dandelions in the huge field Primo and I walk by as we're walking home from school. He insists on picking them, and he refuses to blow on them himself but instead hands them to me. And every time, I am reminded of one of my very favorite poems ever, "La florecita de diente de león" by the Costa Rican writer Carmen Lyra:

Soy la florecita
del diente de león,
parezco en la hierba
un pequeño sol

Me estoy marchitando,
ya me marchité;
me estoy deshojando,
ya me deshojé.

Ahora soy un globo
fino y delicado,
ahora soy de encaje,
de encaje plateado.

Somos las semillas
del diente de león,
unas arañitas
de raro primor.

¡Qué unidas nos puso
la mano de Dios!
Ahora viene el viento:
¡Hermanos, adiós!

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

This Post Is Brought to You by the Letters S and E

If you start typing letters in the search window in the upper right-hand corner of my browser, Google will helpfully suggest search phrases that begin with those letters for you.

If you type in the letters S and E, for example, one of the options is Sesame Street. Another is sexual intercourse.

If your computer-obsessed (and remarkably computer-literate) preschooler types in both of those letters for whatever reason, guess which option he will pick?

[Time for parental controls. I wouldn't have been so freaked out about it, except the kid can read and I didn't want him repeating that at preschool. Also, he'd clicked on the Google Images tab. I supervise him when he's on the computer, but he was fast.]

Excuses

So, all I have to say for myself is that IEP season kicked my ass but good.

I’m still sorting it out, and there will be details. And I know that blogging will probably make me feel good after I do it, kind of like exercise, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to sit down and do it. (Blog. Or exercise, either.)

I don’t want this blog to be All Autism, All the Time, but that’s kind of how things have felt around here lately, so instead I’m silent.

And yet—there’s been so much good stuff, too. The extra time I’ve been able to spend with my boys since our nanny quit. The fact that my mom is here to lend a hand, and she makes the best piña coladas on this planet. The unbelievable progress Secondo has made lately. Firing up the grill on cool evenings for no real reason and enjoying time on the patio with a nice glass of white wine. Work, even, because it’s always interesting.

I might have to ease back into things with some fluff. Jump-start the blog and see what happens.