And Zen What

They're playing water tag. It includes most of the traditional "tag" rules and a few extra--and those of a complexity that would put the tax code to shame. Five, who's It, says something especially annoying to Six.

Six punches Five.

Immediately, gleeful little boys--including Five--shriek at the top of their lungs, "You touched him!!!! You're it now!!! HAHAHAHAHA!"

Six, indignantly: "I did not TOUCH him. I PUNCHED HIM!"

A brief judicious pause on the part of the crowd.

The game continues, as before.

Pretty much all anybody would ever need, right there.

Just sayin'.

Seven has a corner of what should be the dining room but is in fact a computer/play/mess room for her dolly swing/bed/diapering station thingummy, her (inherited from older sibs) Little Tykes Playhouse, and a Little Tykes play kitchen bought used and much faded from its long stint as an outside toy. She has a nice little pretend world waiting for her there.

Today when she got home from "camp" (aka half day preschool but they CALL it camp--engendering thereby much anxiety in poor Seven who assumed for a long time, till I realized what was going on, that she'd have to bring a tent and sleep there and she din' wanna) she was sort of at loose ends. So I asked Two to start her up a bit--you know, give her a jumpstart to Pretend Land.

When I left the room, Two was helping Seven get her dolly (named "Dolly," surprisingly enough) into the swing.

A couple seconds later, from the kitchen where I was wondering why I always always manage to step on a grape if there happens to be one on a floor in a 10 mile radius of my feet, I hear:

Two (coaxingly): "Look Seven, Dolly wants you to push her in the swing."

Seven: "YOU push Dolly; I watch TV." Whereupon she plopped her little self on the couch and started clicking the remote.

hmmmm....maybe I can re-sell that play kitchen.....

I'm letting them do whatever they want to (well, except for chores--a medieval system of torture, judging by the groans and howls whenever it comes up).

I'm not enriching them (monetarily either--see above, re: chores).

I'm not tutoring them.

I'm not exploring their hidden talents by enrolling them in "programs" the secret agenda of which is apparently to find future Olympic contenders while holding the rest of the kids in contempt (except when fees are collected).

I'm not limiting video and computer games to 15.7 minutes a day.

I'm not enforcing the now extinct rule against popsicles in the house.

I'm not, in short, following the Parenting Rule Book for Robbing Kids of their Rightful Summer Slughood.

And yup. They frequently complain that they are bored.

And yup. Mom, MOM! doesn't care.

Which means, I guess, that I'm having a Rightful Summer Slughood experience of my very own.

Go me!

My kids like yoga!

They didn't used to. But I found a DVD that isn't pompous or too wordy or too long. (These are common yoga DVD faults.)

I put it on once a day, when I remember. Sometimes they ask for it, even.

They are pretty inflexible, mostly (thank you No Child Left Behind--not!), but they are endlessly game. And the practice, brief as it is (maybe twenty minutes) has wonderful after-effects. They really are a tad calmer and happier.

And that is huge in the mid-afternoon of a long, hot summer.
Namaste!

This won't be a funny, ironic, jaded, bemused, or long post.

I just want to tell you that there is no joy quite like hearing Six (who is 7) mentoring and nurturing Seven (who is 4) while sharing his precious new video game. You know how sometimes (ok, often) you hear the words or phrases you use in your, uh, less fine hours repeated in their chirpy little voices? (Here it's usually a very stern "NOW!" added to some peremptory command.) Well, this morning I got to hear the other phrases: "Good job, Seven!" "YES!! You did it!!!" "That's ok, you'll get it next time."

They'll have this for life.

This is Life.

I want to apologize to whatever continent we've accidentally stolen the gravity of.

We didn't mean to, and we'd like to give it back.

It's taken me a while to figure this out, and I'm still not too sure of the math involved, but extra gravity is the only explanation for what's on my floors.

TV room: 5 shoes, only one pair (widely separated); 7 sheets of lined paper, two of which boast unflattering sketches of Three with clever ("clever") titles which reek of 7-9 year old humor ("Three Eats Boogers" and "Three Ways a Thousend Pownds"); a popsicle wrapper (see, now, I KNOW that's stolen gravity because popsicles are not allowed in that room at all, ever); 5 colored pencils, 2 without points, 1 with 2 points; 4 picture books, all open and in various stages of dog-eared deshabille; 2 Pokemon cards; 3 YuGiOh cards; a paintbrush (oh dear lord--where is the corresponding paint???); an empty Cup O' Noodles carton; a plastic Lord of the Rings sword, large, but without bloodstains; a Mexican blanket; some long threads pulled out of the center of one of the throw rugs; a coverless copy of Black Beauty; 2 remotes; a small pink hoodie; a blue fluffy Nite Lite bear; many pieces of scotch tape bonded to the tile; a Little Tikes keyboard with unidentifiable bluish goop adorning some of the keys; and dust bunnies who are older than some of the kids.

And that's just what I can see without standing up.

Since the words "pick up this room or [insert utterly useless parental threat/bribe/consequence here]" have been uttered in various pleading, menacing, and/or despairing tones about sixteen times today alone, and all before lunch, I believe I have irrefutable proof that there is a gravity sluice of some kind hovering over my house.

So, please, Cameroon or Argentina or New Zealand, please: you can have your gravity back. Just come and get it.

And could I also interest you in a Pokemon card or two?

Seven got a new bed.

One wants to drive. She's almost old enough for a learner's permit--a fact which she brings up in arguments pretty often. "Why can't I [insert ridiculous demand here--say, a trip to Las Vegas to hear Bowling for Soup in a car driven by a 17 year old and occupied by 18 teenagers]? Why can't I??? No FAIR!!!!! I'm almost old enough to driiiiiiiive!"......[door slam--and we all know how Mom, MOM! feels about door slams].

I know it's her job to spread her wings and fly on outta Dodge, I really do. But what knucklehead made a child who can't get out of bed by herself on a school morning, who doesn't get that slamming a door is not a good persuasive tactic, who still thinks "I forgot" and "I didn't mean to" are reasonable ways to fend off consequences, almost a driver????

I want that guy to go on the Las Vegas trip and then, if he survives, to come to my house and explain himself to me. And then we'll see how good Mom, MOM! is at remembering not to slam doors.

And other stuff.

She walks around the house singing. She's the happiest child I have ever known (not that she doesn't have her, ahem, other moments). Tonight, she's cradling her little dalmation beany baby doggie; it's swaddled in a blue and white checked napkin. Apparently, Doggie (all her stuffed dogs--and they are legion--are named "Doggie") is about to be put to bed. So Seven sings:

Yikes. It's been a while, hasn't it. Adding a new member, even a wonderful, fabulous, charming, easy new member, gives new meaning to the word "chaos." It's possible we are beginning to settle a bit--at least, my peripheral psychic vision isn't a constant blur anymore. So, while this could be a premature announcement, allow me to be bold (and perhaps, later in life, to run for governor of California like my cover boy here did after saying the magic words below).

I'm feeling ready. Any minute now.....

When the house is a mess, and the kids are whining about chores, and you just can't stand the piles no more no way no how: put LOUD LOUD LOUD dance music on.

Presto!

Cleaning is happening.

Aerobic dancing cleaning. Maybe we'll make and market a DVD......

It was the Day of the Pretzel. Somehow Seven hadn't had one (ever one presumes, but for sure not here) until yesterday. This is odd because Mom, MOM! thinks pretzels are a major food group.

Anyway, there she was in the van, with her little baggie full of pretzels, yelling, "NUM, NUM" with every bite. Then she decided to share her tremendous discovery with everybody else. When she got to Six, he said, clear as a bell:

"No, t'ank you."

Floored. See, Six has, uh, politeness issues these days. And he's pretty apt to get into bickering mode with Seven. She gives him as good as she gets. Then it's over. Until it begins again. I'm not too fussed about it, since it's a pretty common in the (re)adjustment phase. You add a kid to the already complex mix and all the relationships in the family get tossed up in the air. It takes a while for it all to settle back down, and it's frequently a pretty bumpy ride.

So whenever there's a hint of something like normalcy peeking through, I immediately go into reinforcement mode:

M, M! (schoolmarmishly): "Six! That was very polite! What a good boy you are!"

Six (slightly aggrieved--as usual he hasn't quite heard me the first time): "Wha'? I said 'no, t'ank you."

M, M! (uber-schoolmarmishly): "Yes, I know. You said 'No, thank you to Seven. That was very polite."

Six (pitying tone for the cluelessness of Mom, MOM!): "Well, I like her, now."

Six lives in the now. It's a good place to be. Sure, the next pretzel may get batted away with a growl which will then provoke a howl which might then provoke something non-schoolmarmish from me (yes, it's true, Mom, MOM! is only human, sometimes). But that will be then.

And this is always now.

Six: "Mom, MOM!"

M, M!: "Hang on honey, I have to find our turn."

Six: "But Mom, MOM! Dis is 'portant!"

M, M! (figuring a U-turn opportunity would come up eventually so what the heck): "Ok, what?"

Six: "When people is dead, can they poop?"

[Edit: Mom, MOM! has decided to spare you an image on this entry.]

From the 3rd row:

Six: "Mom, MOM! there's a poor dead bunny!!!"

M, M!: "Ohhh, that's too bad."

Six: "I wish I coulda keep dat bunny!"

M, M!: "Yes, it's hard not to be able to take care of all the bunnies, isn't it?"

Six: "I think alllllllll the animals should be aLIVE!!!!"

Once in a great while, we are granted a moment of crystalline clarity.

Last night, during the bedtime ritual time, Four just could not wind down. He was chattier than I've seen him in a long time, talking fast, switching topics faster. Then all his topics started clustering around one: middle school.

Now, Four is in 3rd grade, so that's a while off. But Three is going next year, and Two is entering high school from that same middle school Three is starting and Four is worrying about.

It's a good school. Very student centered. Very approachable faculty, administration, and staff. Very quick to resolve issues.

But it is a middle school (here, that's 6th through 8th grade). Full of kids at arguably the hardest stretch of development a human has to face. How could it not be scary, even at a good, safe school?

So we are chatting about all that.

Then we get to the moment where suddenly Four puts on his most guileless face (it washes over his face like the sunrise over tree tops). "You know," he remarks, "I wouldn't be afraid of middle school if I had a little phone I could call you with."

This was the crystalline moment. Several revelations burst upon me at once:

1. He has been campaigning for a cell phone for the last several months, in part because they are cool and One has one. So there's that. But still.....

2. Even so, there is a real issue here. Middle school is scary, and Four is especially susceptible to the kinds of scary it is. Because he's afraid of it, the move to middle school feels like tomorrow to him, just like tomorrow can seem like a million years away to a child looking forward to something.

3. He's always been worried about not being able to locate me (even though, so far, knock wood, it's never happened). We've had a lot of conversation about how he will always be able to, going over what he'd do in all kinds of scenarios.

4. I'm going to be gone for 2 weeks soon. I will have a Panda phone and Skype on my laptop, and he is allowed to call me no matter when for no matter what, but still he worries.

5. No one will ever care as much about his little foibles and worries as I do. No one. I hope his future partner will, but s/he will need to be loved back. I like being loved back by my kids of course, but their love isn't the same as mine for them, or as a life partner's is for the other.

6. This is the essence of motherhood. Nothing else.

That all burst on me like fireworks, suddenly, in the darkened room, talking to my sweet boy about why 3rd graders don't actually need cell phones. And it's why I must live forever, because every one of us needs that kind of attention and knowledge and love every day of our lives.

But he's still not getting a cell phone.

Mom MOM!: "Six, Four says you threw a scooter at Five. What can you tell me about that?"

Six: "I did NOT."

M, M!: "People saw you."

Six: "OK!! OK!!! But NOT on purpose."

M, M! [trying not to snurfle and break the mood}: "Well what is the rule about throwing ANYthing, even [choke cough] accidentally?"

Six [mumbling]: "Not sus-posta do it."

M, M! [getting too clever for her own good]: "So what do you think the consequence should be?"

Six [just clever enough]: "Nuffin'!"

M, M!: "Uh, Ok, what if someone threw a scooter--accidentally--at you? What should be the consequence?"

Six: "They should have a time-out for a million billion hundred hours and hafta go to bed and not get up ever even when dey are a ol' grampa!!!!!!!!!"

We went with a 6 minute time-out instead.

Chaos. Six throwing paper around because he can't make a heart. Four yelling that Six is yelling. Three telling Five that he's fat. Five whining and tattling not on Three, but on Four.

I discover I'm out of coffee.

The dog, despairing of ever being let out by these maniac humans, floods the hallway.

There's something I can't identify seeping over the edge of the dinner (breakfast and lunch) table.

It is what it is.

I have the best life in the universe.

*
*
*

Where are the paper towels, right now?

Three, Four, Five and Six are up. Their schools are off today. They are in the room with the TV, but they are not begging, whining, and pleading for a temporary suspension of the "no TV in the morning or whenever Mom, MOM! can't stand it" rule.

Right now, this moment, they are not bickering, picking, fighting. Right now, this moment, no one has a long elaborate narrative of multiple complaints interrupted every nanosecond by the accused party attempting to revise history as it's recorded.

Right now they all have pieces of paper. They are sharing a box of markers--the really cool, skinny kind, with all the colors imaginable. And they all have tops back on when they are not being used.

Right now, they are teaching each other--Three is an incredible artist, and she is especially good at copying elaborate drawings. She has a book of dragons; she's inviting the boys to choose one so she can make each one their favorite dragon. Four is suggesting a color choice to Six. Five is wondering if the sky is ever gree,n and Six is telling him at length that yes, it is, sometimes.

Right now is right now.

I have the best life in the universe.

Right now.

It seems to surprise people when I acknowledge that my kids aren't perfect. Hey, of course they make mistakes, who doesn't? They can be mean, unfair, intolerant, nasty, annoying. My view is that pretty much every human on the planet can be thus described.

And my view of my job is to point out, when they are earning those labels, that there are better ways to deal with whatever they think being mean, unfair, intolerant, nasty and/or annoying will fix. As all parents know, this is not a one time gig. You pretty much have to do a version of this on a daily basis. Anyone who claims their kid is never m-u-i-n-a is in denial, dreaming, or doing drugs.

Uh, that would of course be only my opinion.

We are having a crisis here at the Mom, MOM! ranch. One of the kids participated in something that is pretty much the epitome of mean-unfair-intolerant-nasty. It's very clear that the kid in question did it, and that the "it" in this case is Not Good. But it's also clear--and I have this from a third, concerned, and very honest party--that it wasn't part of anything like a pattern and is almost certainly not predictive of future behavior. (And I'm going to get a third opinion--I do that when I buy a stove for gosh sakes, I'm certainly going to do it for my kid.)

What I'm mulling over right now is the incredible emotional turmoil this event has produced in all the adults surrounding the child. And I'm particularly interested (now that I'm slightly recovered from feeling battered and brutalized and sick with anxiety) in how the so-called adults are behaving. (And I do notice that I do not include myself in the "so-called"--my own denial? I hope not.)

Despite (or not) the omnipresent child education and advice industry, there are still adults--teachers, even--who are operating on an implicit punishment mode--dressing it up in the various rhetorical flourishes that convince them that they are talking about, say, fairness or responsibility (and, by the way, as to those virtues, I just want to say I'm fer 'em). I do understand the impulse. I really do.

But it seems to me that any job connected with children (this includes motherhood, fatherhood, caretakerhood as well as teacherhood) means that for virtually all non-clinical behavior we have to be in "helping the child to learn his way out of this" mode. (And if you get into clinical territory, I imagine that a similar principle applies.)

I struggle with this every day. So much of what we do to teach our kids has an uncanny resemblance to punishment. "You hit your brother? Time out! [Or extra job, or an essay on man's inhumanity to man, or whatever seems to work that week]" "Oh, he hit you first? [Insert indentical punishment, uh, learning device, unless it's a week where identical isn't the best approach.]"

Confusing and ambiguous yes. But there is a difference. It's a resemblance only--punishment is retaliation with an assumption, implicit or explicit, that learning and improvement are not possible. That makes it the worst possible approach to a child, and it is a flatout statement to that child that s/he is bad to the core.

And that, in turn, and paradoxically, is a teaching. But it's teaching the wrong, the most wrong thing--that s/he is worthless, unregenerate, hopeless.

Some of my children are all too ready to hear this kind of message, given their previous life experiences. They are perhaps more vulnerable to such negative teaching than kids who have had smoother lives from birth; I wouldn't know about that, and I'm always suspicious of any such comparisons. All I know is my own kids. Kids are not a generality. Each one is a unique constellation; no "one size fits all" rule will work for all six of mine. In fact, no "one size fits all" rule works from one day to the next on an individual child. A time-in or a time-out, for example, will do the trick one day; the next day the very same child just keeps escalating so I have to try something different.

What's my point? Do I have one?

Yes, I do: adults have to be very self-aware to be effective in teaching and rearing children. Being self-aware is not a character trait. It is a goal, and it has to be worked toward every single day. You don't get there--you just keep working at it, moving toward it.

And I have another point too: what you learn in college, in textbooks, in expert-seminars, in books from Amazon--that's all just background. Muzak for the mind. It doesn't apply to the actual child in front of you. It only helps you know how much territory there is to be aware of while you deal with the actual, particular child looking up at you that moment, that day.

If you ever forget that, and you will, try to turn it into a teachable moment for yourself.

Leave the kid out of it.

Oh, and by the way: there is a "secret reindeer" in this picture. ("Mom, MOM! See if you can find it--it's very very twicky.")

Yeah, and don't think I didn't notice the "y" word!

You know your kids are happy being in a "large family" when you have 3 of them at home (school schedules don't line up for everybody), and one of them (this is Four) complains "there's barely anyone to play with."

Four remembers every Valentine's Day gift he's gotten his teachers over the years (he's 9 and started preschool when he was 3). He knows exactly why he chose each one for that particular teacher.

This year, he got something he'd seen and remembered from a previous trip to the store.

Four is my empath child. He's uncannily sweet and sensitive. People (even people who are not related to him--school personnel, teachers, childless-by-choice acquaintances) have frequently made comments to the effect that he seems to be an old soul.

He's also the biggest worrier in the family. So he was anxious about the Precious Item being there still. I mean, really, wouldn't the shopping hordes just naturally want his gift, it being so perfect and all?

When he found the gift still on the shelf, clearly awaiting its destiny, he nabbed it with great glee. Bliss crept over his face.

"I can't wait to see her opening this--it just makes my shoulders warm thinking about it."

I'm trying to decide what to do about a travel blog--I could put it here, but this blog I'm trying to keep focused on my relationship with my kids. It's my motherhood blog, that is.

Of course, on March 8, I will become Seven's mother. *(WAHOOOOOOOOO)* But a travel blog is also about the process and the trip and the sights and sounds and smells of China.

Maybe I'll put the travel entries on Seven's blog.

Yeah, that'll work. I could post pictures to it also.

Ok, that decision is made.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Four and I have a verbal game we often play during bedtimes. It would shock the moms I avoid in the parking lot (the ones who apparently have hair-stylists on staff), I'm afraid, but then they don't visit here.

It basically goes like this: we each try to out-do the other in assertions of how smelly/stinky the other one is (Moms of little boys know how interesting smelliness is to our boys......). So, for instance, I might lead off with, "You are the smelliest boy on the planet." Then, Four might say, "No you are," which would lead us into an adjacent game about how I'm not a boy and he is and etc, but I digress. He might say, "No, you are the smelliest Mama on the planet." Then I might say, "You are smellier than elephant poop." Much giggling. Then he might say, "YOU are smellier than elephant poop and giraffe boogers on top." More giggling.

You get the idea.

So the other night we'd gotten rather far into it and I was running out of things to add onto the endless chain of smelly things (if you can't think of something you lose the game). Reaching into my historical TV commercial database I added "rhinoceros b.o."

There was a pause (pauses are allowed--it's once you start the retort sentence that you are liable to lose for lack of a coup de grace addition at the end). Then he said, "What's b.o.?"

Fair enough. I am not sure when I last heard the phrase--it may well have been before he was born, who knows? Being older than dirt as I am, I find the millennia tend to blur a bit.

So I explained that b.o. basically means armpit stink.

Another pause.

Then (bemusedly): "There's no 'b' in armpit."

I practically swallowed my tongue guffawing and snorfling.

Later I wondered why I thought this so hilarious. I think it's because Four is another of my children who I had to fight a teacher over. In first grade, Four wasn't reading. He didn't even know the alphabet in fact. This didn't surprise me, since he'd spent kindergarten in a progressive school that didn't believe in that kind of thing (they do teach kids to read--just not that way). So he went to the local public school as a pretty clean slate. His first grade teacher--new to the first grade; she'd transferred from high school teaching--was horrified, appalled, alarmed, and over that year increasingly frenetic and indignant at what she took to be my irresponsible attitude.

I just kept saying that his learning style had always been that he watched for a long long time, til well past the "deadline" in the official rule book for whatever skill it was (walking, for instance), then all of a sudden, he'd just be able to do it. Without intermediate gropings.

She just wasn't listening, was convinced that my attitude was borderline (or not) neglect, got the reading teacher to gang up on me, called me at home repeatedly. I finally had to get the Special Education Supervisory teacher to call her off of me.

The next year, I allowed some provisional testing. I still remember sitting at the low table with his classroom teacher, the reading specialist, a counselor, the Special Education Supervisor (bless her heart forever--she retired right after this and not a day goes by I don't think of her with gratitude), and a couple others. The reading specialist was the same one who'd ganged up on me the previous year. She hadn't seen the results, but she started in talking about deficit this and benchmark that and as she was talking opened up the folder.

Her eyes fell on one of the reading measures (I forget the acronym--this was an acronyminous meeting--har har).

Here's the delicious part: Her jaw LITERALLY dropped. I mean, I have read that phrase I don't know how many times in my life. I'd always taken it for a metaphor, or for a drama queen gesture favored by preteens.

But it dropped.

Kid's scores were in the high 80th percentiles.

neener neener.

So, I think, that's why I thought that armpit remark was so hilarious.

I'm not saying we can't be blindsided by a disability or a learning problem or a need for classroom accommodation or whatever. Of course we can. (Two's hearing loss is a prime case in point.) What I am saying is that sometimes, maybe most times, we really do know our kid.

And the good education professionals, the ones with experience with actual children, usually know this. The new ones, the insecure ones, the ones who are teaching from their egos rather than their viscera---they don't. It is something they have to learn. And they learn it not from books and tests and data tables: they learn it from our kids and from us.

If we are lucky. And if they are.

Oh, and yeah, in the game in question, I lost. I was trumped by the addition of goose farts on a hot day.

That's m'boy!

Dear Five's teacher,

Yesterday you sent me an email asking me some very specific questions about Five's sleep patterns (does he wake up, does he sleepwalk, is he restless, etc.). I sent you short answers--it was rush hour traffic in the kitchen at the time--No, No, No, and No. Five sleeps like a rock, sleeps well, it's all good, blah blah blah.

Then, last night, he got up, wandered out to the dining room, and then had trouble getting back to sleep despite the fact that it was 3-something in the holy cow morning.

As he was getting ready this morning, I asked him if you had asked him any questions about sleeping yesterday. It turns out that you asked him all those very leading questions before you checked with me. Now, Five likes to please. It's what he does. So he probably knew you were looking for "yes" answers (he's smart, my Five, and he'd know you weren't asking because you'd run out of chitchat). He tells me he answered "No" to the questions, but I don't think he did. So he came home and had to please you here too.

Color me sleepy and rather alarmed.

You are not an MD. You are not a PhD. You have no training in any of the fields you seem to be frivolously and dangerously dabbling in. My child is not a petrie dish. Do your armchair doctoring on your own time.

For the record: Five is fortunate in that we have excellent medical coverage and one of the most highly regarded pediatricians in our state. Five has received, and continues to receive, all the relevant screening and diagnostics for a child of his age and his status (older, post-institutional, subtractive bilingual, visually impaired, international adoptee); his pediatrician is very well-informed on all such matters.

In addition, I have over a decade of very thorough, very in-depth education on the psychological, physical, emotional and cognitive issues and development of older, post-institutional international adoptees. My parenting is informed daily by the learning and research of many dedicated professionals who have spent years studying these kids.

Furthermore I am in daily, sometimes hourly, contact with scores of smart, savvy, well-educated adoptive moms who are walking the same path my family is. They have BTDT, and are still beinger there and doing it. I get support, advice, warnings, commiseration and information on parenting the kinds of kids we all have (see list above) every minute of every day, and I will never ever be able to express enough gratitude for my online friends.

Now, one issue that comes up often in parenting our kids is that the field of symptoms available to children in general seems, as it were, rather limited. So, for instance, behaviors that would lead one to suspect tendencies toward OCD or ODD or ADD in a child with a "normal" background can actually be perfectly normal for the post-institutional adoptee--part of the many stages of adjustment to a new life and of devising strategies of compensation for what was missed. Often, you will find a 7 year old doing things and acting in ways you would feel is more appropriate for a 3 year old. This would raise red flags for a child living in his birth family, but it might very well be completely normal and in fact an issue for rejoicing in an IA post-institutional child. And when that child is 8, he might be doing things that would be more appropriate for a 5 year old--this is serious cause for rejoicing in an adoptive family because it means excellent (catch-up) progress is being made. And this is not an overnight process. Nor is it over in a year, or two, or even several years. It is a process. A long one.

The overlapping bag of symptoms issue sometimes causes one to miss perfectly ordinary diagnoses, because one focuses too much on all the acronyms (IA, PI, etc). When Two was in grade school, I suspected she had CAPD (I'd read all about it, her symptoms matched the lists, she always passed her hearing tests at school, blah blah blah). So when she went for the obligatory full-on audiological exam (which is always the first thing they do), imagine my shock when it turned out she actually had/has a mild hearing loss. Hearing aids took care of the symptoms I was concerned about. No CAPD—despite its being a more common issue with kids with all her acronyms (older, post-PI, subtractive bilingual, IA).

That little episode taught me a few things, I can tell you.

Anyway, this brings me back to your list of questions about Five's sleep patterns. He sleeps like a rock, doesn't sleep walk or talk, etc etc, as I told you yesterday.

And I'd like to assure you that Five is progressing rapidly and well along the path that his particular background has started him on. Many of his behaviors still resemble symptoms of various and sundry syndromes/acronymic diagnoses and what have you, but they are also, simply, the behaviors of a child coming to terms with not having to control his own environment and be vigilant 24/7, with not having to make sure he's taken care of, fed, and noticed, among the crowds of babies, toddlers, and kids he spent the first years of his life in.

He doesn't have to do that any more. He has a family. He is being taken care of daily. He is safe, warm, fed, and loved. That sounds like good stuff, right? Why would anyone have to struggle to adapt to it?

But taking care of himself and controlling the room is what kept him alive, literally. It can be hard to let go.

He's adjusting very nicely to his home and family, and while I know he is still something of a challenge for his teachers, he's really a lot better at being a "good boy" at school than he was a mere 2.5 years ago.

Bottom line? You want to play shrink, pick on someone your own size. You've made me crazy enough with this stuff--bring it on. I'll play.

One word:

Five: "Mom, MOM! We played this cool game in school today."

M, M!: "Oh, what did you do?"

Five: "Well. There was this rocket ship? And you had to make it go up and up and up? Alllll the way to another universe, like.......like......like.....TEXAS!!!"

Waiting for Seven......I sent these and some other pictures to her. I hope she can see them clearly enough to recognize herself, and if she can't, I hope one of the nannies can describe the picture to her. I'd like her to have a sense of belonging or at least recognition when she first sees her bed in person.

I think the dolls will come with me, and Big Bear, Little Bear, Monkey, and Kitty can stay home and keep her bed warm and cozy for her. This wait is hard. But I am not forgetting that while I am longing for "Gotcha Day," for her that day will be an abrupt and even terrifying cataclysm in her sheltered, routine-defined little life. So I wait, not patiently, devoting myself to trying to devise small places of shelter for her, against the storm that will be us. That, and being a total lunatic on eBay--don't even TRY to bid for a Hanna Andersson dress, especially a pink one, when Mom, MOM! is "nesting." It could get very ugly......

"Will Seven be home tomorrow?"
Uh, no.
"Nex' day?"
Nope.
"NEX' day?"
No, honey, not then either.
"WHY NOT????????"

I'm right there with Five on this one! Why not????? wah.......

Well, I do know why not. Once the dossier is finally gathered, notarized, authenticated, certificated, belled and whistled, adoptive parents tend to breathe a sigh of relief--done, done at last.

Welllllllll.........

No.

Not exactly.

After the excruciating wait, and before landing in China, there's more, much more, hoop-jumping. My "brown envelope" didn't arrive, for instance. It's got forms you need for the Consulate in Guangzhou, where all adoptions in China are approved and the children sworn in as new about-to-be U.S. citizens. So if you don't get your envelope (I didn't get Five's until months after he was home), you have to find a list and print out the relevant forms. And they are legion.

Your guide will have copies, of course, in China. But there's no way anyone who's already waded through the avalanche of paperwork and procedural minuets that defines international adoption is going to risk getting halfway around the globe only to discover that the consulate is out of forms and they'll have to change their plane tickets to get home and....and....and....well, you get the picture.

And then there's the Search for the Ultimate Plane Fare. No matter when I travel, somehow it's always Peak Time, which is to say, start looking for that second job (or third) to start when you get home so you can pay off the airfare bill. Now you can obsess about that online too, so that the laundry will pile even higher than it did when you were checking every 5 seconds to see if your TA had arrived yet.

Explaining to people why you can't go tomorrow is good for a few hundred hours a day too.

And don't even get me started on the ceremonial gifts you bring to China as a sign of your respect and gratitude for the indescribably wondrous gift they are entrusting to you. Yes, they are ritual gestures; they aren't like the perfect birthday gift you never quite manage to buy for your beloved. But that doesn't help. It's far worse, actually, than worrying that your giftee will hightail it back to the mall to exchange the Hideous Object you thought so lovely as you staggered to your car in the vast reaches of the parking lot. Because even though they are tokens, and we are told not to get all wrapped around the axle over them, they matter. They DO! How on earth can you be cavalier about a gesture that will convey respect, thanks, gratitude, cultural sensitivity, and an ability to read the fine print on labels (one tries not to bring things "made in China"....)??

Then there's convincing your bank that you really do have to have bran' spankin' new $100 bills. A true delight, especially when you get the Crabby Teller. You know--the one who peers owlishly at you over her glasses? I got her (and isn't she everywhere?) back when I was preparing to travel to adopt Two.

She breaks the rather lengthy peevish silence--well, "peevish" on her side; craven, on mine.

"Ma'am. Those are perfectly fine bills."

"Yes, yes, I see that, but I have to have new ones."

"These are what I have, Ma'am. They are in excellent condition. There's not a mark on any one of them."

She glares at me, and then looks, with great Significance, at the growing line behind me, and then bestows her increasingly severe attention on me once again.

"Yes, I see, and they are lovely, really they are, but you see, I called some weeks ago and talked to several people and then finally the last person I talked to understood what I was saying because her aunt's cousin's niece also adopted from China and, she said she'd take care of it, and, uh, well, see, I just can't use these....."

She purses her already pursy lips. Starts rapidly tapping the packet on its end the way I remember the grownups doing with a cigarette pack back when I was a child and cigarettes were cool.

I try to think of a graceful exit line . . . .

It's eleven years later, and I'm still working on it--I'll probably need it when I go in to get the bills for my trip to Seven.

But first, I must get online and spend many many useless hours looking for, finding, copying, and then losing Packing Lists.

Because heaven forbid I should start being sane at THIS juncture.

Lessee, I wrote down that url on the back of something on this counter.........

Now, this doesn't mean I will get to hold Seven in my arms in a matter of days, more's the pity. Chinese New Year is celebrated for several days in China, so that has an impact. But it does mean that in a matter of weeks (why oh why do weeks last for so many years?), I'll be clutching Seven to my heart. She may not be liking it, not right away, but she's going to have the whole rest of her lifetime to get used to it!


Waiting, waiting, waiting--this last bit's the hardest, believe it or not!

I'm one of those people who will do pretty much any ugly, messy, undesirable, tedious, soul-crushing job as long as I don't have to have a committee to do it with. When I became a "doesn't play well with others" type, I don't know. Probably came out of the box that way--as most of us do with respect to all kinds of things.

It's not that I have issues, exactly. It's more that I just like to get stuff done already, and with a minimum of mess. Show me a committee that can do either better than a single worker bee can.

So when I decide for some unknown reason to make, say, muffins on a weekend morning, I usually try to make Stealth Muffins, hiding what I am doing till the tray is safely popped into the oven and I can say to the inquiring child who narks me at that point, "Oh, sorry, honey, maybe next time--I'm all done with these."

I know, I know--there goes my Mother of the Year Award. Again. But despite the rosy aura surrounding those wonderful "parenting tip of the week" flyers that the school keeps spewing out, cooking with the kids isn't always all Little House on the Prairie around here. Actually it never is. And then, like I said, I'm a committee-phobe to begin with.

They got me this morning. I just wasn't sneaky enough. And they are cute as the dickens, my kids, with their sweet little pleading faces. What's a bossy Mom, MOM! to do?

"Mom, MOM! I PRRRROOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMISE I will do eZACKLY what you tell me dis time!!!! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZ????"

That'd be Six. No doubt he's recalling the time I had to clean pancake batter off the counter, floor, and a innocent-bystander cat.

So yeah. They bickered, pushed and shoved, spilled all over, objected that everybody else got more batter, etc. etc. We all know that drill.

But they sure were happy.

And actually, me too. See, there really are things about making muffins that I do not enjoy (there goes my Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year Award too--dang, this is a bad day for awards). And this morning I had the rare stroke of genius that makes cleaning muffin batter off an innocent-bystander dog worth it. (Hmm. Scratch that--when it comes to food, no dog is ever an innocent bystander.)

I don't like putting the cupcake liners in our gigantoid muffin tin (holds 24, I'm not kidding). So that became Five's job. (Also good for him tactilely, separating those dratted little paper things.)

I don't much like coaxing the batter off the spoon into the cupcake liners either. So I divided the number of muffins by the number of kids and had that done for me too.

And frozen berries--ugh. I hate frozen berries. Even looking at them makes my teeth hurt. But Four has very very particular Ideas about exactly what those berries need to be and where they should appear in the muffins. These Ideas are generally announced after the fact, as he's refusing to even touch the finished product on the grounds that abominations have been perpetrated as to berry choice and placement.

So--he became the Subcommittee of Berry Choice and Placement.

I could maybe get into this whole committee thing after all. . . .

I wonder if it works for vacuuming?

Five is now 8!!!

And one of the gifts he wants for his birthday is Seven.

There's now a new form to sign and return to China before TA (travel approval) can be issued.

This will add weeks and weeks to the already long wait for Seven.

This is incredibly upsetting. I'm finding myself unable to do anything at all; I'm just in turmoil. I never thought that I'd still be waiting this far into January.

The standard comfort lines just don't help--you know the ones: you'll forget all about it once she's home, you'll look back and realize it turned out to be perfect timing, that kind of thing.

It is oddly, I think, like everything else associated with having children in one's life: knowledge is one thing; experience is always another. I know it is "just" a few (4, 6, 8, whatever) weeks more, and that she's lived 3 and a half years without me.

But it isn't "just" a few weeks more. Because she's had to live 3 and a half years without me.

It feels just like when one of my kids is having surgery, and I'm waiting to get to the recovery room.

Nothing, nothing can help. Nothing but getting to China and taking Seven in my arms- she'll finally have a mama, and the hole in my heart will finally be filled by that no doubt kicking and screaming, temporarily traumatized, but much-loved little girl.

Now then. Where DID I hide that chocolate?

Six was "interviewed" at his school. The last question was: "If you were stranded all alone on the moon, what 3 things would you want to have with you?" A daunting question, especially for post-institutional kids.

Six's answers, in order:

1. Dinner
2. Game Cube
3. Breakfast and lunch and my guitar and pick

Excuse me now; I must go take an "overwhelmed by poignancy" break.

And then, just in case you thought I thought we were the dang Waltons or something, there's this conversation which just slammed in and then slammed out of the house (between Six and Five, but it could have been any two of them):

"Shut up!"
"No! YOU shut up!
"No, YOU!"
"No, YOU!"
"No, YOU!"
"No, YOU!"
"No, YOU!"
"No, YOU shut up with your butt!!!!"

(That's Five, having the last word, as always.......and the last word here quoted is the last word he chooses pretty much most of the time. I'm thinking I'll set the clocks back an hour and dump 'em all in bed before the whole shootin' match blows.....)

Picture a whirling dervish, a spinning top on warp speed. Now add arms stuck straight out and vigorously pumping up and down. Oh, and the dervish is hopping frenetically up and down, more or less in place.

This vortex of absolute energy, this sweet funny charming LOUD Six, yells at the top of his voice:

"Mom, MOM! I am not a Haiti person anymore!!!!!!! I am a FAMILY PERSON!!!!!!"

The earth stops spinning on its axis for a long, slow, full-elbows-and-chin, wrap-around-the-legs hug.

Then he boings happily off to wreak havoc in the next room.

**Happiness!**

And I wish you all the same.

Dear Teacher at the Blind and Visually Impaired School,

Thank you for your recent letter. I so very much appreciate your obvious affection for and investment in Five. I'd like to talk a bit, as I did with the teacher last year, about your statement that it's hard for Five to learn Braille as he is "such a visual learner."

It’s perfectly understandable that Five presents as a “visual learner.”

The proposition that people have different learning “styles” (visual, kinetic, etc) has “legs,” as it were: it’s proven useful to countless teachers and students. As a pedagogical hypothesis it is a singularly hardy and broadly applicable one.

But in Five's circumstances, the hypothesis that he is a visual learner based on his observable behavior presents a problem. The problem is two-fold:

1. Five is not “visual” enough to live a full, independent adult life—one that is commensurate, that is, with his considerable gifts and capabilities. Yes, he could work in a call center with huge 48+ pt font on his computer with auditory support. But only being unable to read swiftly and fluently in Braille would put him in a job like that. Five is, as you say, exceptionally intelligent and personable. He's a math whiz. These are gifts; he should learn that his gifts can outweigh by far his disability.

2. His formative years were spent in an environment where being disabled was literally shameful and undesirable. He LEARNED to be a “visual learner” and still has deep shame about not being able to be as sighted as the "normal" population. You have to trust me on this shame issue: he's not going to express it directly at school; it will probably come out in frustration behaviors, dawdling, fidgeting, etc, which is how he expresses resistance and negativity at home.

He is at your school because I want him to be not merely proficient but expert at so-called “blind skills.” I don’t know what the future will hold for him (will his vision get worse? Well, I know it won’t get better. Will technology “save” him? I hope so, but who knows).

He may be a visual learner. Or he may long to be a more visual learner and therefore with the immense determination and adaptable intelligence we have all seen so much of, he may have meticulously taught himself to look like one. He may never lose the sense that any other approach to life and learning is “second rate” or worse, but he has to live in his body and in the world he makes for himself.

It’s not exactly analogous, but sometimes I think about how left-handed people used to be trained to be right-handed. When it was ok for them to try to revert, were they able to do it? Were they somehow always ashamed of their left-handedness?

Five is a challenge not only at school and home; he is a challenge to himself. You and your colleagues can help him enormously not only with his education, with opening out the world for him far beyond “sheltered” work environments, but also with the even more important mission of self-acceptance.

I know this is your vision for him too. Let's work together and make it a visible goal for him as well.

Waiting for Seven, I have reached a fairly well-known stage in the wait for TA (Travel Approval): the buying-soft-sweet-adorable-things stage.

I can't touch her. I can't hug her. I can't feed her, brush her hair, tuck her in.


So for now my maternal longing can be partly appeased only by items like these, which are even now wending their way from some warehouse after my online feeding frenzy of the other night.

See, I've decided she loves pink. I don't know why I have decided this, since I have two daughters who hate pink. But I just know that this one loves it.

I also know that she'll need soft warm pettable things. My arrival will turn her world upside down. She will be scared, angry, grieving. It is quite possible she won't want any comforting from me. Five sure didn't. He did love his new clothes though, and they helped him feel a little better those first couple of terrible days. He put them all in his little bag, along with his water bottle and the kleenex box, and kept it by the door all ready for the big break out.

So despite the fact that I have NO idea when that precious TA is going to finally show up, Seven already has one brand new, very pink, very soft, fluffy outfit to keep in her little bag by the door.

And if I am very lucky, she'll be able, before too long, to put them on and feel pretty and special and like maybe things might turn out okay after all.

And you can bet that the minute she does that, you will be seeing this very outfit on this blog again. But then it will have a little girl in it. And that will be the day that my surfing for soft pink dresses and furry coats and warm fuzzy hats will finally be over. Until then, Mom, MOM! will be spending far too much time (not to mention money--but hey, it's a sale, and it's all so cute and cuddly and, uh, cute and cuddly) on hannaandersson.com and other such dangerous locales.

A clarinet and recorder concert--their own idea. Three adores her recently started clarinet and practices pretty much constantly. And she hardly ever squeaks.

As to the concert--you haven't lived until you've heard these two instruments together (well, more or less together).

Six was getting really boingy just now. Throwing pillows around, bugging his sibs, making loud annoying noises.

I told him to go get his pajamas on, and he upped the volume considerably, making loud groans of anguish and protest.

Then, suddenly, it stopped.

Suddenly, again, he popped up next to me, beaming.

"Mom, MOM! I going to be NICE now!!!"

"That's very good news, honey!"

"And, Mom, MOM! I know WHY I was NOT being nice before."

"Oh? Why?"

"Because, because you know what I did??? I ate a chocolate SKULL! And that's what made me mean! See?"

Uh, no.

But hey, whatever works.

Have you heard that wonderful 60s (I think) song, "The Name Game"? It's on one of our very favorite ever CDs, a Kids' Rock n' Roll compilation. Great beat, catchy yet near-incomprehensible (for ol' geezer moi anyway) lyrics, and a formula that can be repeated endlessly, and I do mean endlessly, by the inhabitants of the back row seat on long car trips.

And did you know that if you google "baby names" you get 46,200,000 results in 0.11 seconds?

Names are important. Parents agonize over, worry about, endlessly play and replay the possible combinations ("No, NO!! That will give her the initials D-U-M!!! Not good!!!!"), try to avoid offending family members expecting that this time Great Aunt Mehitabelle will finally have a namesake, scour name dictionaries seeking out a name with meaning but not too much meaning, try to think like the future 7 year olds whose lives will be dedicated to playground teasing ("No, no!!!! They'll call him Stinky Linky!!!").

Parents adopting internationally get another circle of Name Hell to contend with. Keep the child's "birth name" (but what if the orphanage gave it to her and not the birthparents?)? Incorporate it ("John Paul Chao Fu Fan Nickerson-Sanderval is NOT too long--it'll fit, see? You just have to write really small!!!")? Forget all that and name him/her yourself because after all it's important--you read it on the internet!--for both your and the child's psychological health to claim him or her. Plus you've waited all this time and been through so much and all you want is to name your child.......

It's tricky stuff.

And it got trickier at my house the other day. Mom, MOM! was trying to explain the term "nickname" to Six, who, frankly, was getting slightly alarmed by the slippery-slidiness of it all. Finally, I remembered that Three had confided to me some months after coming home that her birth mother had called her by a different name from the one on all the documentation. (For blog purposes, let's say her birth mother called her "Twa"--the actual names are totally unrelated, by the way, so this substitution is misleading, but it's the best I can do right now.)

So I used that as an example. "Ok, Six, in Haiti, sometimes Three was called 'Twa' and that was her nickname."

"No," said Three.

"What?"

"No," repeated Three, in her extravagantly fetching deep Haitian accent, "No, dot was not my neekname. Dot was my name before I went to the ofalina."

Clutching the counter for support, I probed a bit. Turns out that Three's birthmother decided to place her in the orphanage using her (Three's) middle name, deciding at the same time to use her own (i.e., the birthmother's) middle name on all the paperwork. The two middle names are virtually identical. The two occulted first names are not.

I had misunderstood what Three told me long ago, but I made very sure not to misunderstand it this time. It turns out, also, that One and Two have been knowing this for a long time. "Oh yeah," they nodded, "Her REAL name is Twa."

Three/Twa went on to tell me that Six's real first name was, in Haiti, an entirely different first name from what he was called in the orphanage. Six doesn't remember either name, however, which is fortunate because neither are names that could be pronounced by anybody but a loving mother here in the good ol' U. S. of A.

As our conversation continued, it became very clear that Three (we will now return to our regularly scheduled pseudonym) hadn't wanted me to know her "real name" until now. And that she now wants to return to that real name.

Done.

It's a name that will be mangled more often than pronounced correctly (though not as badly as either of Six's original Haitian names would be), but then her new middle name (which is, ahem, her OLD middle name...I know it's confusing, but think how totally at sea the school will be and join me in an evil chuckle about it all) was also destroyed more often than not in conversation and roll call situations.

I never had a chance to name her myself; she was 9 when she came home. But this feels like something equivalent. She trusts me now to know her real name, her first name. She is allowing me to call her by the name her Haitian birth mother called her.

I feel like I just won First Prize in The Name Game.

Six (as usual): "I'm gon' punch your face off with boogers in it!!!"

I gave in (I always do) on buying costumes for the younger kids. So here's Three (the cheerleader--sorry about the spooky looking blurred face, but as I've mentioned I don't want to put reconizable pictures of my kids here), Four (the Gatekeeper--what gate and why keep it I have no clue), Six (some kind of Power Ranger to the nth degree--I stopped being able to keep track of Power Ranger morphings half a decade ago), and Five (who keeps proudly declaiming that he lives in a sewer--I THINK he's talking "in character".....).

The pumpkins were usually carved the day before. Mostly my Dad did it, though we "helped." He used a kitchen knife ("No, not my GOOD knife!" my Mom would always beg; he would always ignore the request). We scooped with spoons onto newspapers. No doubt my Mom cleaned up the mess--I of course have no memory of any of that part of it.

Halloween was always FREEEEEEEEZING. It was Minnesota, after all. Outside, the air was sharp, crisp, often smelling like snow about to happen. We'd always have a warming-up kind of dinner. The house would smell warm and delicious and kind of steamy; the lamps would be glowing and my Dad would be trying to light the candles in the jack-o-lanterns without burning himself (never happened). Hot, rich, delicious-gravied stew is what I most associate with Halloween, though no doubt there were other menus.

Then we'd get the costumes on. Often enough, they'd be improvised on the spot from the Halloween Box. There was stuff in there that could turn you (any "you"--the same stuff worked for all the kids, every year, and my parents used it too) into a ghost, a hobo (including stuff to black out your front teeth and make big black freckles on your cheeks and a twine belt with cooking utensils hanging from it--wayyyy cool back in the day!), a devil, a witch, an old lady (generic), a policeman, a cowboy, a bobby-soxer, a greaser. Most of the component parts could function in more than one costume. The box also contained pillowcases that not even my laundry genius Mom could rescue--those were, of course, the trick-or-treat bags--and the carefully preserved cut-outs of witches on brooms and ghosts and pumpkins that we had made ourselves that got taped up on the front windows before supper.

Only one house would be dark, always the same house. Nobody was quite sure who lived there even on days that were not dedicated to nabbing pillowcases full of candy. That, of course, became, on Halloween, the Witch's House, the scariest house in the neighborhod.

Our neighbors would open their doors, sometimes wearing a mask or scary hat, sometimes holding a glass of grownup Halloween brew (but mostly the grownups would have their own parties on the weekend, not imposing on the kids' Halloween), and empty fistfuls of candy into our pillowcases. There'd usually be one house that had apples, sigh, and toward the end of the evening sometimes one or two houses would be down to pennies (or even nickels!).


That's mine.

Now, for theirs.

First of all, Halloween seems no longer to be one glorious thrill-packed night. Now it lasts a week, maybe more. I think that dissipates, even as it prolongs, the excitement. It also makes for an impossible-not-to-disappoint anticipation; the build-up just can't deliver enough.

They clamor for costumes from the stores. Decorations come from stores too. The candy's gotten miniaturized and bagged by type. The schools have "events" where they try to guilt the parents into contributing "party favors" rather than candy. Every 4th house, maybe, in our neighborhood has its lights on. If we are lucky.

I know, I know. Things have changed. Boy, have they changed! And I've changed too. I buy the store costumes for the little kids (the big kids have to think up their own--they grumble at first, but they do come up with great costumes). I even own those pumpkin lights marketed on the Christmas tree light principle. I buy the "pumpkin carving kits," though I have so far refused to go so far as to purchase the ones with special plastic table-cloth thingies to scoop the goo onto--we still use newspapers. We go to the school "events" (but I always contribute candy, CHOCOLATE candy, not "party favors"-ugh) and the parties. And I do try to have some savory, warming something or other for pre-trick-or-treat dinner (they always want pizza delivered, but I'm still a hold-out).

Maybe it's not so much worse as it is "different."

But I do miss my Halloween.

A week ago Monday, Six and Four came running in the house yelling "Five is BLEEDING!!! A LOT!!!!"

Often enough, this means he scraped his knee. Occasionally it even means somebody picked a mosquito bite.

But, and every mom has experienced this, I knew, somehow, that it was not trivial this time.

He was lying in the driveway. Not moving. Not crying. The scooter was near him. His helmet was not. (Fifteen minutes previously it had been on his head.) There was a pool of blood forming under his head, getting bigger--fast.

You know that "dreamscape" feeling? Where sound disappears and everything is both slow motion and faster than light?

I got to his side, issuing instructions--call 911, take the little kids back in the house and turn on the TV, bring me a blanket, get me a towel, all the while watching it all from somewhere else. One, who not only took but absorbed a Red Cross first aid class, issued advice from a safe distance (she really doesn't like blood--not that anybody does)--she couldn't come closer, but she couldn't leave either.

He started crying, loud. Phew.

One reminded me, from her safe distance, that superficial scalp wounds always bleed a lot.

I didn't know, however, if I could safely move him. I was worried about his neck. And everything else, for that matter.

The paramedics were a comforting presence. Somehow we got 6 or 7 of them. Young, healthy, uniformed men, brandishing equipment, mobile communicators, checklists, hearty reassurances ("Hey, Buddy!" "You're gonna be fine." "Hey, Champ, how does your neck feel?" "Move your toes for me, willya guy?").

He had a huge bump at the site of the bleeding. We decided to take him to the ER in the ambulance.

He kept asking, "Am I dreaming?" He didn't know what day it was (Five always knows what day it is). He looked....odd. He wasn't chatting everybody up. He wasn't fidgeting, trying to reach forbidden gadgets, yanking on cords to see what would happen.

The cubicle we were put in had a TV with a remote control on a cord. Five wasn't interested in it. He just lay there, occasionally asking if he was dreaming. The Resident came in, looked at the bump (roughly the size of Rhode Island by now), asked some questions, and went out to find the Attending, who came in and immediately affirmed the Resident's idea that a CT scan was in order. "With swelling that size, you always want to check."

On the way to the CT scan, Five switched questions. At 5 second intervals he asked: "Are you going to tape my head down?" Assurances that that wasn't part of the deal fell on deaf ears.

He was a real trooper during the scan, and on the way back to our cubicle, started acting more like himself. Over the course of the next hour, he got more and more of himself back. I was beside myself with relief and joy to see him start in on that remote, let me tell you. He found pretty much every way to violate it--Five was BACK!!!

Yes, back. Perseverating, slapping people on the back, complaining about the TV (which he couldn't see but boy howdy everybody in a 2 block radius could HEAR--in the intervals between my turning the volume down that is), asking what things were for.

Can you spell RELIEF?? I can. It's "F-I-V-E-I-S-O-K"!!!!!

CT scan was normal. Five was normal. We went back to our normal chaotic crazy house where all his sibs had drawn him funny cards and wrapped up improvised presents (parts of long-defunct board games, plastic army guys, precious Yu-Gi-Oh cards, gum I didn't know they had). Everybody got dumped into bed, rather unceremoniously.

Then I got to be normal. That is, I locked myself in the bathroom and fell apart. Every mom who's ever been to an ER and been able to come back the same day (night) WITH her kid knows exactly what I'm talking about here.

So now we are all normal.

Well, except for the minor fact that Five is grounded from scooters until he's 30.

My nieces are proposing to put together a family recipe book. They sent out an email asking for contributions. Here's mine.

My Kids' Favorite Recipe

1. Find Mom.

2. Whine a lot about being hungry.

3. Demand food.

4. Get told to go do your jobs.

5. Wait for dinnertime, while shirking jobs and arguing about who made the mess.

6. When you are called to the table, dawdle, straggle in reluctantly, sit down, say "what is this?" while making a disgusted face.

7. Eat with loud sighs and many rollings of the eyes.

8. Wait until table is cleared and food put away.

9. Find Mom.

10. Whine a lot about being hungry.

11. Repeat all steps above, twice a day (three times on weekends and holidays).

Life with kids is really, really good for keeping mind (and body) flexible and engaged.

For instance:

The other day Two was sweeping the floor. I was doing something or other in the kitchen and largely successfully tuning out the inevitable litany--"Why do I have to do EVERYthing around here??? It's not fair!!!! No one ELSE has to do ANYthing. YOU'RE the mom--this is YOUR job!!!!"

Then she just subsided into doing the job more or less quietly, which is a stage she usually gets to.

After a few minutes, I hear, uttered in a contemplative, zenlike tone:

"This floor doesn't feel very tall."

And no, I have no idea. I'm still working on it.

"Ta-ta-ta-Duh!-ta-ta!!!!! I’m famous! I'm FAMOUS!!!!!!!!" (Wild waving of arms over head.)

"In comes the golden horse of doom........" (Deeply foreboding voice.)

"Thar she blows, Six, thar she blows!!!!" (Pirate accent.)

"Hey, who splashed me?" (Spoken by one nowhere near any water.)

"Here they come again!" (I'm guessing, the golden horse of doom has friends.)

"Stop tackling Four!" (Having no line of sight, I do not know if Four was being defended or addressed.)

I'm telling you what, kids are a hoot. Who needs cable?

The one that goes, "Clean up! Clean up! / Everybody everwhere! / Clean up! / Clean up! / Everybody do your share!"

There are all these happy adorable moppets with a spring in their steps and a smile plastered on their faces chirping this song--on Barney and in my head.

It must be me, I keep thinking, as I escalate from bribes to taking away privileges to plain ol' fashioned yelling (hey--my mom did it and we are all happy productive members of this body politic, so I don't want to hear it, I really don't). They act like I'm asking them to take their seats in the belly of a slave ship.

"Whining"? Hah. That doesn't begin to cover it. Weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth in epic proportions. Tattling on the other ones who allegedly "aren't doing anything at all, Mom! I hafta do it all. I'm serious!" Howling to the heavens, "I didn't do it!" "Three put that there!!!" "That's not mine!!!!!"

Here's the kicker: it's their stuff! This is not even the part where I loll around on my chaise longue and have them scrub the floor and peel me grapes. (That part does happen, right? Right?)

And really. It does take about 15 minutes, tops, once they get started. It just takes about 2 hours to get them started. And I'm running out of creative threats.

I've read the books, the articles, the advice columns. They are all written by people without kids. Or maybe with one perfect one who runs on solar batteries.

Stickers? Nonstarter. Bribes? They don't care. Threats? Ditto. Removal of privileges? Hah!

It really is a battle between Good and Evil, in their little minds, when clean-up time arrives. They are committed. They don't care what is to gain, what is to lose.

There's a principle at stake, an irrational, inexpungeable, die-in-a-ditch principle. If you could somehow combine and harness the power of the "Not me!" which, in kidspeak, is a denial of all responsibility for whatever misdeed is under discussion, and the "Not me!" which is a refusal to willingly perform any household or bodily maintenance chore no matter how light or short in duration, I swear this planet would never need a drop of fossil fuel ever again.

Now, who's going to clean up this mess?

Not me!