The Signs that Pointed Towards Autism

When I began searching for the various 7 Signs of Autism articles that I remembered reading when the girls were small I came across the graphic below on Pinterest.  If I had come across it when Maggie was two I would have had to pause because the list given here sounds far more like our girl than the lists I mentioned yesterday.  

This list (with a couple of points taken out) more of less sums up the various "quirks" that I had no idea pointed towards autism before we began on the diagnostic journey at the request of Mae's doctor and I began reading everything I could get my hands on about ASD.  

And here's a point by point explanation of what each of these signs looked like for us:

"Inappropriate" Playing with Toys

I have a hard time with the word "inappropriate" in this one, since I often think the way she plays with toys is kind of genius, but for the point of this exercise I'll go along with it for lack of a better word that would make sense to everyone reading this.

This wasn't all that noticeable, mostly because Mae usually didn't stop moving long to play with toys very often.  She'd climb and dance and get into everything.  She'd accidentally break many. many toys and household objects as she raced around the house tumbling over anything in her path.  But most of my memories of the girls playing when they were small don't involve toys.

When Mae was diagnosed, one of her therapists pointed out that she was very attracted to certain small objects (usually it was something bright red that would fit in her hand).  It might be a small red block from a set of blocks or a large bead from one of those bead stringing sets for preschoolers, but she would often find a small toy and carry it around in her hand all day long.

She loved to find interesting objects to carry around until something new caught her eye.

Nowadays her play has changed significantly.  She's one of the most imaginative kids I've met, transforming a plastic box of crayons with little plastic separators into a stair case for her doll to walk up, or spilling water onto the carved top of my giant mahogany chest to make a lake for her doll to swim in.

And yes, she oftentimes still finds strange little parts of toys (like the bubble hair from her Bubble Guppy doll) that she loves to carry around with her and examine.

Hyperactivity

This was probably one of the most noticeable aspects of Mae's personality.  From the time she could walk (and she took her first steps at 10 months) she hardly ever stopped moving.  People who spent time with her who had had many children would comment that they had never seen a child with so much energy.

Since her sister was also hyperactive however, it didn't really seem all that strange to me (especially since Sadie is also sensory seeking).  In addition Mae's gross motor skills are good, which meant she wasn't always crashing into things like her big sister.  They would both run around, holding hands, twirling together and were pretty much the perfect playmates.

One thing I found later on was that, like many kids who are hyperactive, when Mae has caffeine she becomes extremely calm.  Apparently that calmness in response to caffeine is rather common in people who are hyperactive.

But since I was trying my best to avoid caffeine for our kids, I didn't discover this until much, much later when I was trying to get Mae to take medicine and the only thing I had to mix with it was caffeinated.

Inappropriate Laughing or Crying

This was probably the biggest sign that something wasn't quite normal with our little girl.

I've told this story many times, but it is truly the first time I began to worry that something was going on with her that I didn't understand.

When Sadie was in Kindergarten we would do "Field Trip Friday's" where we would finish our school work at the table before Paul got home and then, when he was done with law school for the day, we would go to a museum or the zoo or do something else fun and educational outside of the house.

On this day we'd gone out to one of the University's livestock farms and had looked at sheep and explored the area a bit.  Afterwards we drove to a park so that the kids could run around and play.

I was pushing Mae and Patch in the baby swings while Paul was in the "big kid" part of the maze like wooden castle playground with Sadie.  It was almost time to go and I figured that I could get them down and we would go find the other two to go home.  I put Maggie on the ground and turned to get Patch.

She ran straight back to the back fence behind the swings and I kept an eye on her as I struggled to get Patch's shoes out of the leg holes of the swing.  Two other moms had arrived and started to push their preschoolers on the big kid swings while they chatted.

I saw Maggie turn and look at them. I shouted "No!  Stop!" over and over again while gesturing wildly.  The mom of one of the little boys looked at me like I was maybe a little bit insane, and watched as Maggie ran towards her son.

She kept pushing.

She'd never had a kid like Maggie.

She didn't understand why I was so upset or that Maggie really would run straight into the swing without realizing she could be hurt.  And it all happened so quickly I didn't have time to get out the words to explain.

Maggie collided with the swinging child at a sprint and was thrown about ten feet across the playground.  The boy wasn't hurt at all.  I can still replay the moment in my mind as I watched her fly through the air, hardly noticing that Paul and Sadie had just come to get us.   I knelt down next to her while the two moms looked on and said nothing.

And it's at this point that I stop to say:  Please.  If a child is running towards your child on the swings and it looks like they might run straight into your child, please do not assume that they are going to stop.  Especially if a frantic mom is chasing after them trying to stop them. 

Now back to the story.

She rolled over, covered in dirt and wood chips.  In my mind I was certain that we were about to be headed to the hospital, and that we might be about to call 911.  Instead Maggie sat up and starting laughing, hysterically.

She laughed, as if she'd just heard the funniest joke ever, for a solid ten minutes as we took her over and played in the sand pit.  Paul and I looked at each other, bewildered.

At the time I thought that the laughter had meant that she was somehow, miraculously, unhurt.

Thank heavens she really was okay and wasn't just laughing through internal bleeding.

Knowing what I know now about her reactions to pain, I would have taken her to the straight to the ER, despite the laughter, because often times when something happens that's painful her reaction is to laugh.  She's far more likely to cry about a small injury than a large one.

Although this has made doctor's appointments when she's sick very difficult since giggling and hyperactivity (her reaction to being upset about being in the doctor's office, even when she's been sick and unable to eat and drink for days at home) cause many doctors to say "well look at her, she's fine..." and not take anything I've told them seriously.  This was a major problem when she had a fever for months last year and was severely dehydrated, refusing everything I tried to get her to eat or drink for days, and then she started bouncing around the doctor's office after being lethargic and hardly able to move at home.

Strange Attachment to Objects

The famous red boots

Maybe it's rather telling that I don't think that Mae's attachment to various outfits/toys/things she's found around the house is "strange" (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I guess).  I mean, many toddlers love certain outfits, or have a lovey, or a toy they like to bring everywhere.

This is a red flag that might be a red flag or might be nothing more than a toddler being a toddler.

Mae's interest of the week often changed.  For a long time she was very attached to her red super hero boots, but later that interest transferred to all shoes.  She loves pretty shoes and loves matching her shoes and outfits and is very particular about them.  If she doesn't have the right shoes for an outfit, she won't wear them.  She is very attached to her shoes.

Yesterday we had two hours of tears because I wouldn't let her wear a pair of shoes that had rubbed her foot until it bled, unless she wore socks.  The socks apparently didn't go with the outfit in her mind, and she was willing to have a bloody foot to match her dress to her gold shoes.  When I said "no" and took the shoes away after she took her socks off repeatedly, she was heartbroken.

I imagine that that sort of interest, which is more socially acceptable and quirky, is one of the reasons why girls with autism are far less likely to be diagnosed, than boys.

After all, Mae's three big interests are mermaids (and anything else in the ocean from shells to dolphins), ballet and shoes.  Her particular interests that are far more socially acceptable (and will continue to be for quite a while) than certain interests that boys have (maybe trains or dinosaurs) that people begin to see as odd when they persist beyond the preschool years.

A study out of UC Davis that hit the news cycle yesterday found that the girls with autism that they studied were actually further away in the measures they used from typically developing girls than the boys with autism were from typically developing boys.

Yet girls are generally far less likely to be diagnosed (I know there are some awesome posts out there by bloggers who are on the spectrum on this topic, but I was having serious trouble finding them!  If anyone has a post you love on the topic please share it in the comments), possibly because autism often looks different in little girls than it does in little boys and the tests are based on how it presents in little boys.

Under Sensitive or Over Sensitive to Sound

In most areas Mae is a sensory seeker (that is to say she's under sensitive).  This applies to sound (if she's making it).  And light.  And pain.  And pressure.  And flavor (she's my only child that likes food as covered in hot peppers as I do).  And proprioceptive input (input for her joints).

Light touch is really the only area she's over sensitive in (so we have a bit of that thrown in as well).  And looking back I think it can all be summed up by this picture:

Lack of Awareness of Danger

The slide incident mentioned above pretty much sums this one up.

The other giant, frightening red flag was the fact that she was totally okay with heading out on her own, and wouldn't even glance back to see if we were following her.

When we were at Paul grad school graduation rehearsal I was sitting with her outside in an unfamiliar setting on a huge lawn when she began to crawl away from me.  I watched her to see what she would do.  She crawled quite a distance before beginning to circle back around, never once glancing back to see if I was with her.

First incidence of wandering?

Later when she began walking and then running she would head off in one direction, enjoying the feeling of running, without any concern that she might be by herself.  I'd watch as she ran across a field, never once glancing back over she shoulder to see if I was with her.

It is, undoubtedly, the most nerve wracking part of being her mom.  Everything else I can handle.  The wandering is the only thing that really scares me.

These days there's around a fifty percent chance that she might stop if I tell her to.  And at least I have Sadie to help me catch her now.

And that more or less sums up what we saw with Maggie when she was small that we had no idea pointed towards the fact that she's on the spectrum.  

Shortly before her diagnosis I did come across the MCHAT (a test the indicate whether or not a toddler may be on the spectrum) and I took it online and was told to contact her doctor (and I did fill out a referral form for the local school district who never responded or contacted us).  But after years of reading about the common signs of autism that I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't really concerned despite the results, because she didn't fit the picture of autism stereotypes that were really all I knew about ASD.    

The 7 Signs of Autism and Why They Didn't Tell Our Story

When the girls were tiny I read every parenting magazine that I could get my hands on from cover to cover.  And oftentimes in those magazines there would be articles about autism.  More often than not those articles would site "Seven Signs of Autism" that parents needed to be on the lookout for.

In part these Seven Signs are exactly why I was so surprised when Mae's doctor spent forty five minutes with her and told me that she was certain that she was autistic.

You see I'd read this list over and over again and they weren't Maggie.  They never Maggie.  She not only hit these milestones but we never had any regressions.  She hit many of milestones early (especially anything involving gross motor skills).  Looking back I can see that she kept on developing, just not in a neurotypical way.

Still I wanted to look back over the lists that I remembered reading to be certain.  Here's the big 7:

• By 6 months: No big smiles or other warm, joyful expressions. 
• By 9 months: No back-and-forth sharing of sounds, smiles, or other facial expressions. 
• By 12 months: Lack of response to name. 
• By 12 months: No babbling or “baby talk.” 
• By 12 months: No back-and-forth gestures, such as pointing, showing, reaching, or waving. 
• By 16 months: No spoken words. 
• By 24 months: No meaningful two-word phrases that don’t involve imitating or repeating.

And I thought I'd go through them one by one to share how different our experience was from the "Seven Signs."

By 6 months: No Big Smiles or other warm, joyful expressions.

At six months Maggie was already our smiley girl.  I think it's safe to say she was a pretty joyful baby.  She was undoubtedly one of the easiest babies to care for and was happy most of the time.

Here she is at around four months:

And here she is at six months:

By 9 months: No back-and-forth sharing of sounds, smiles, or other facial expressions. 

By nine months she was cooing and squealing and giggling and interacting with others.

I actually shot this video at three months:

Maggie Rose Giggles
Posted by Cammie Diane Wollner on Thursday, October 7, 2010

And here she is interacting with Santa at the hardware store at five months:

And just being her smiley, giggly self around six months old:

By 12 months: Lack of response to name. 

I never noticed her not responding to her name or to being spoken to. Like all of our toddlers there were times when I'd say something (like "stop") and she'd do the opposite, but other than that I saw no indications that worried me on this front.

By 12 months: No babbling or "baby talk."

By Mae's first birthday things seemed right on track.  She was making sounds and "talking" and interacting with everyone around her.  She called Paul "Ba."

By 12 months: No back-and-forth gestures, such as pointing, showing, reaching, or waving.

 There was pointing and reaching (oh so much reaching!), showing (I think this falls under pointing too, although Mae was always good at taking my hand and showing me exactly what she wanted) and waving.  There was even clapping:

 And sometimes there was even sweeping of the floor:

By 16 months: No spoken words. 

Maggie had some words.  Not a lot, but they weren't completely absent.  I would hear her talking to "Oatmeal Bear" in her room on the baby monitor and occasionally there would be full sentences before we left Florida (which we did when she was 22 months old).  

By 24 months: No meaningful two-word phrases that don’t involve imitating or repeating.

Since I'd heard her having conversations with Oatmeal Bear in her bedroom I was't really worried about this one.  She'd also started saying "Good Ma" when I gave her something she wanted and "good girl" when she was doing something she knew she wasn't supposed to be doing.  If she was mad at Sadie she's say "bad girl, bad girl!" to let her sister know how she felt.

And there was the infamous meal when I served her sweet potato porridge and she responded by saying "Bad Ma, Bad Ma, I want oatbear!" (which we were pretty sure meant that she wanted pumpkin oatmeal, which I'd been serving a lot at the time).  

So the Seven Signs of Autism that were so widely touted weren't really relevant for us at all.  Even some of the later "red flags" that are usually brought up weren't apparent.   I've never seen her "flapping."  I have a child who flaps, and as a result she's repeatedly been tested for autism and the tests all come back saying she isn't on the spectrum.  Actually when I get super excited I've caught myself flapping my arms, which always makes me laugh since of the three girls in the house Mae is the only one who doesn't flap.

Another "red flag" that I see on other lists is lining things up.  She does this sometimes now, but I saw it rarely starting when she was four and it's only beginning to increase a bit more now that she's almost five.  She started with pumpkins last October.  Sometimes she lines up pretzels.  And two days ago I caught her removing all the ice from her cup of ice water (she loves ice water) and lining them up on the table.  But lining things up definitely wasn't on our radar until long after her diagnosis.

 Repeating words is another "sign" that comes up.  As with flapping I have a kid who does this... and if I had to guess I'd say he's the most neurotypical of my kids.  He's just learning to talk and he loves repeating the last word in just about any sentence he's heard and laughing hysterically about it. 

Toe walking is another one that we just never saw.  Mae's gross motor skills were, if anything, extraordinary from the time she was tiny.

I've saved one of the biggest "red flags" for last.  Not making eye contact is frequently touted as one of the biggest signs of autism.  I never saw it.  She's never avoided eye contact with family members and actually, because her verbal communication is limited, she's pretty intentional about making sure I'm looking back into her eyes when she wants something.  

She won't necessarily make eye contact with someone she's just met, but it's not totally out of the question either.  Sometimes she does sometimes she doesn't (and she tends to be a pretty amazing judge of character rather quickly). Then again I'm not sure most 4 year olds go around making eye contact with people they've only just met.    

In a way all those articles that told me what autism "was" kept me from getting help for her sooner. After all, Mae didn't have any of those signs.  Looking back I see red flags galore, but they weren't the signs that anyone was talking about when I was reading all those terrifying articles.  And that is one of the reasons why the doctor's words came as such a complete and total shock when she told me she was 100% certain that Maggie was autistic. 

I think that's one of the problems with trying to put autism (and people with autism) into a box and saying "this is what autism is."  There's a popular saying in the autism community "if you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism."  

It's good to have information and things to look for, but making any definitive list of what autism is, is pretty much impossible, because just as every single person in the neurotypical world is unique, every person on the spectrum is unique as well and while they likely have many things in common with each other (and you and me), I find that, at least in our case, the Seven Signs of Autism fell far short of even beginning to describe our experience.

Tomorrow I'm planning to post on the signs that we did see that might have led us to talk to our doctor if they were as widely mentioned at the Seven Signs.  

The Floppy Baby gets Evaluated

Today was James' big day.  A physical therapist from Early On came by the house to evaluate him.

She asked lots of questions and ran through the list of things he should be able to do right now with us.  He'll be seven months old tomorrow and we were going through the six month list.

He's been spending most of his days in tummy time lately.  And little by little he's been getting stronger. But even with all the time we've spent coaxing him to push up or helping him try to sit on his own and even though he put a tiny bit of weight on his legs (and has been for about four days) he still was definitely behind in the gross motor department.

I didn't expect all the other delays that popped up in the results though.

The numbers showed a 21% delay (for a six month old!) in gross and fine motor skills, speech and social communication.  If she factored in the fact that he can say "mama" (and does frequently) it should bump him up out of the speech delay (but he still falls short on the actual list of things a six month old should do).

The social communication part was really the only portion that came as a shock to me.  He's such a social baby.  He has that I'm-the-fourth-kid thing going on where any person smiles at him (or so much as glances in his general direction) and he turns the hammy-ness factor way, way up and giggles and smiles and coos up a storm and acts like every person who speaks to him is the most important person in the world.  He makes eye contact and follows people when they cross the room with his eyes.

But he is super floppy.  His arms and legs are fairly strong, but he has low tone in his trunk, which is why he tips over when he sits, even in a high chair (which is Goal #1... to be able to sit in a high chair to make meal times much, much easier when I'm trying to offer him food...).  Goal #2 is to be able to pick up small things with his hands.

I'm not worried. I'm glad we're starting physical therapy early.  I'd rather have a few PT sessions now and learn things that can help him get stronger in hopes that maybe we'll miss having a whole lot of therapy sessions down the road.

In other kind-of-but-not-really related news, Sadie is graduating from OT at the end of this month!  So that's one less appointment to fit into the mess that is my calendar (although if we ever get her into Speech that will fill in that point so I guess I should hold off on celebrating just yet).

Now to learn more about the wonderful world of baby PT and hopefully before long our little guy will feel a little less floppy when I'm holding him.

And if you're worried about your own little one (or are just curious about the ASQ and what it's like Oregon has an awesome website where you fill out the ASQ online and they actually give you the results and tell you if there's a possible delay to talk to your doctor about.

Picture Day

One of my goals for the day was
not having to give any of the three big kids
a bath.  Which meant not going outside in
the afternoon.  Because one of Patch's favorite
things to do these days is rubbing dirt everywhere.

Yesterday was picture day at our parish.  We'd signed up for a time slot weeks ago, but somehow those weeks slipped by far too quickly and the day arrived before we knew it.

I have friends who make amazing Pinterest-esque boards when their families get their pictures taken professionally, and I had fleeting moments during the day, as I surveyed various outfits for various family members and tried to picture them together, when I wished that I too was that organized.

But, as you've probably guessed, I'm not.

I was also worried about Mae's reaction to just about anything I picked out.  Should I just let her wear a tutu and hope that the tutu alone would make her happy enough to tolerate the photo session?  Or should I try to convince her to wear the dress that I kept picturing whenever I imagined the perfect family picture in my head.

I posted the question on Facebook and with an hour and a half until picture time I was beginning to imagine the pictures with out little tutu wearing super hero.

While all these thoughts were bouncing around in my head I asked Sadie which dress she would like to wear.  She picked a fancy white beaded dress (that was surely intended to be a first communion dress) and I told her that we should wait to put it on at the last minute.

The next thing I knew Maggie was doing her best to reach the other dress I'd brought out for Sadie and was putting it on.  She then went to the closet and found a pair of her sister's shoes and began strutting around the house in them.

The dress was perfect and I brought out a pair of gold sparkling shoes I'd found in the basement (that will finally fit her) and she quickly grabbed them and put them on.  The next thing I knew the pink princess dress was on the ground and Mae was surveying the play room for something else to wear.

Maggie is very particular about which outfits match which shoes and apparently she didn't think that a pink dress matched her gold shoes.

I ran downstairs and grabbed the dress I had in mind.  It was a white dress that Sadie wore at Easter a few years ago that would fit Maggie now.  When I brought it into the room she grabbed it and put it on.

We went to our parish and the photographer did his darnedest to get all of the kids to smile at the same time.  He told me afterwards that it took all of the skills he'd acquired in his 18 years as a photographer to get a handful of pictures where everyone was looking at the camera.

James was obviously very thrilled to  get
dressed up to have his picture taken
 by a stranger.

I thought he was a genius because not only were we all looking at the camera, but no one was crying in all five of those pictures.

We sat down afterwards and picked the picture for the directory.  In it Sadie is smiling.  Patch is laughing.  Maggie's head is tilted sweetly to one side, and while she's not quite smiling, her expression is sweet.  James is looking suspiciously at the bear puppet that the photographer is holding and is refusing to so much as crack a smile.

We ordered a few pictures and went on our way, declaring the day a success.

When we got home any suggestions to put on pajamas were met with tears.  The white Easter dress of 2012 with matching gold glitter shoes is apparently Mae's outfit of choice at this moment.

Paul shrugged and asked if it was worth fighting over and a few minutes later he tucked her into bed in her new white dress and gold shoes.  I guess I'm going to need to find some pretty awesome pajamas if they're going to compare with that white dress.

And they'll probably need to match the gold shoes too.

Through the Wardrobe: On the "Good Samaritan" Controversy from Another Perspective

This is a rambling sort of post that I feel like needs a disclaimer of some kind.  I've seen many articles on this subject and this isn't a criticism of the very real objections people have to the subject I'm writing about.  It's just sort of stream of consciousness about all the thoughts I had when reading those articles that aren't really appropriate for comboxes but that I just haven't been able to get out of my head.  

I've watched all the news articles pop up in my feed lately about moms being arrested for leaving their kids in the car for a few minutes, or being harassed by various authorities for letting their children walk to a park unattended.

It's odd to read the articles from my particular vantage point.  In a way it's fascinating because I cannot even begin to wrap my head around the idea of being able to let our kids who are in the same age range do the particular things named in those articles and so seeing what the vast majority of my friends feel is appropriate for a typically developing four or six or eight year old is amazing and odd to me.

I have no point of reference.  Reading the articles and comments sometimes feels like visiting a strange land where anything is possible.  I almost feel like I've stepped through the wardrobe into some magical land where animals talk and anything is possible,

Yesterday both girls were in therapy sessions (Sadie at OT and Mae at ABA) and I had an hour to burn and a wiggly little two year old.  After walking around the hospital we returned to the waiting room and Patch raced around pausing briefly at the various toys in the room.

One of his favorite things to do was to run up and put his little toes against the line where the carpet changed from hallway to waiting room so that he could look out down the hallway.  He would then turn around to look at me and giggle because he knew that he wasn't supposed to leave the waiting room, but he was so, so close to doing it and he thought that that was hysterically funny.

It was a little moment, but it was sort of mind boggling to me.  That was so far outside the range of what either the girls could do at two that each time he did it I marveled at the control he had to stop and not go racing away down the hall just to feel his little legs moving and the air moving past his face.

Last month we had a scare.  We'd gotten home from a walk.  Sadie was feeling sick and I was trying to think of any possible wheat cross contamination so I told her to go upstairs to the bathroom.

I did what I always do.  I walked the kids into the house.  I told Sadie I'd be right back.  And I walked outside and locked the door and grabbed the stroller and ran to our garage.  I took James with me this time because he was asleep and I didn't want him screaming in his little bed from me waking him up and then leaving him for a couple minutes.

Our garage is around the side of the house.  Putting the stroller away takes me approximately 90 seconds.  And it terrifies me.

I constantly debate exactly what I should do with the stroller when we get back from a walk.  Since we have lived here there has been a bullet in our front yard.  Paul's bike was stolen from our garage.  Someone set our leave bags on fire last month and this week I found (look away if you're squeamish) two condoms and an empty pack of cigarettes (not in their packages) on the grass as I was getting out of our car to walk to our front door.

All of this is to say that our neighborhood is not the sort of neighborhood where one can leave a stroller outside and expect that it will still be there in fifteen minutes or an hour.  When we walk I do not wear my engagement ring because I'd like to still have it when we finally move someplace else.

As a one car family that stroller is my ticket to getting out and not sitting around our house all day. It takes us to therapy sessions and doctor's appointments and the store and the park and museums and anyplace else that my feet can carry us.  I really, really would rather it not disappear to go where ever Paul's bike went.

So I ran to the garage and pulled James out of his seat quickly and then I heard screaming.  I paused for a split second, praying that it wasn't what I thought it was, that I'd imagined the sound, that it was just the ringing in my ears from eating too much salt.

Screaming is kind of like ringing, right?

 But then I heard it again, more clearly this time.  I took off running, clutching James against my chest.

I only half saw the flash of pink fly past me as I shot out my hand and caught her by the arm.

If she was standing here with me it meant that the door was open.  She'd undone the lock.  The door had to be open.  Where was Patch?

I took off running, with Maggie crying as she stumbled along behind me, still holding James.  I could still hear Sadie screaming from the doorway that her sister was gone.

 I came around the corner and Sadie said "Mommy, Maggie's gone! I stopped Patch but Maggie's gone!" as she clung to her little brother's hand in the doorway, panic written across her face.

"I got her!" I said and then tearfully thanked her about a hundred times for letting me know that she needed my help and that her sister had gotten out, that Maggie had finally figured out how to operate the hard to open lock on our front door.

I spent the last several weeks thinking about that moment and how things could have gone differently.  We live between two busy streets.  I think of the different paths she could have taken.  She took the only one that didn't lead onto a street within a few steps.  Her guardian angel must be working over time (although I guess we already knew that).

I guess the point of relaying that story was that the idea of doing any of the things parents are getting in trouble for is so foreign to me that it's hard to wrap my head around.  Not that I'm saying they're wrong (because that's not what I'm getting at at all).

At the same time as we spend ample parts of our day outside now that the weather is warming, I find myself thinking, more and more that this particular problem is one that doesn't affect all zip codes equally.

Little tiny kids walk past me unaccompanied every day.  They get off the bus and walk home.  They skip down the sidewalk by themselves and in groups.  One small boy stood and watched our kids playing in the backyard, and waved back when I waved at him before slowly trudging on down the street kicking up piles of leaves with each step from the sidewalk as he went.

Then there was the time during the great ice storm of two winters ago a tiny boy, accompanied by a boy only slighter bigger, threw glass bottles at cars on an icy road as we drove past, laughing as the glass exploded across the ice packed pavement.

The police are busy here dealing with crime, with too many calls and too few officers.  Sometimes I hear that a child has been shot.  I have never heard anyone complain that they were so much as warned that their child shouldn't be out and about town by themselves.

Our neighborhood does have a neighborhood watch.  Someone called 911 when our front yard had been set alight.  Another neighbor told us that our street used to be a place where ladies of the night waited to be picked up, but that they'd called the police over and over again and that it had gotten better.

I do worry about the small figures I see walking by though, because we don't live in an area where there are many mother's watching out their windows to make sure that everything is fine and some of those kids are awfully tiny.  If I check the sex offender data base(which I don't do often because it makes me feel panicky and not want to unlock our door to step outside)  it will tell me that there are over 60 offenders within a mile of my address.

Even if our kids were entirely typical I can't imagine sending them out there alone until they're much, much older.

Perhaps that's why, whenever I see these articles I feel a small ache in my chest that is twofold, firstly because it shows me how vastly different some of our "differences" (delays) really are and secondly because I'd really rather live someplace where those are the sort of problems that our neighbors are worried about, instead of worrying about whether that guy who's walking slowly by our house for the fiftieth time today carrying a brown paper bag, about to get into the nice car of a nervous looking college student I've never seen around before is a drug dealer.

I agree that these articles point to a great overreach, a breakdown in community when people would rather call the police than say something to a neighbor.

At the same time though each time I read them I almost want to point out what a blessing it is to live in an area where this is the particular brand of problem that people are highly concerned about.

I guess that deep down I'm hoping that before too terribly long we're living someplace where I have to worry more about what the neighbors think than about the criminals that came to my door repeatedly last spring trying to convince me that they were from our alarm company (and that they were later selling books) and that I should let them in.

5 Lessons I've Learned While On Road Trips with Our Kids

I love road trips.  I've loved them since I was in seventh grade scribbling in a notebook covered with stickers, dreaming of the road trips that I imagined I would take with my best friends when we graduated from high school.

During college my best friend and I spent a lot of time on weekends and during the summer driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway with surf boards strapped to the top of my little yellow Volkswagon Beetle camping and surfing and planning out longer, out of the country trips that we never got around to taking.

The longest road trips I've been on, however, have come after marrying Paul and having kids.  When Maggie was not-quite-two and Sadie was not-quite-four we drove from South West Florida to Northern California.

When the girls were two and four we drove from Northern California to Michigan, spent one night in Michigan (and found a house to live in) and then drove from Michigan to South West Florida (where we rented a U-haul and packed up our house in record time) and then headed north again straight back to Michigan for the start of a new school year.

I also drove from Michigan to Montana with the girls (while in the third trimester with Patch) by myself for one of my best friend's wedding, and when Patch was a little over a month old we drove from Michigan to Massachusetts.

And we had fun!  We've spent eight, twelve and even fourteen hour days on the road without a single tear involved.  Paul and I have both been a little sad that the last two years were so crammed full of studying that we've hardly had time (or an excuse) to head out on the open road.

That's my long winded way of saying that we have a bit of experience in the road-tripping-with-kids department.

Here are the lessons we've learned and the tricks we've used along the way:

1.  Don't Plan To Far Ahead 

On our first long road trip I had everything mapped out.  I was sure that we wouldn't be able to drive more that three hundred miles a day with the girls being not-yet-two and almost-four.

Sure they did great in the car around town, but could I really expect them to spent longer stretches in our mini van as we drove across the southern part of the United States.

So I made motel reservation and plotted and planned just about every stop.  And while it worked out I later realized that it might not have been the best way of going about things.

I mean, we had a lot of fun, but on subsequent trips I've learned that there's a lot to be said for looking at the map, noting where things are (and maybe even checking out attractions that we'll be driving past)and what time we'll hopefully get there and then seeing how things go.

That way we could stop at sites that looked interesting in person, or take a break when the kids (or adults) were tired.  It also meant we could push on further than we'd thought would possible and spend more time on another day exploring a new area.

2.  Use Diversions Sparingly

Before one of our long trips my parents gave our family a little travel DVD player.

I quickly realized that to make the DVD player as effective as possible it was best to keep it loaded, charged and hidden and out of sight until we actually needed it.

If the kids were happy looking out the window while Sadie chattered away or while we listened to the radio than the DVD player would stay hidden.  Often times that meant that it stayed off all day.

On the other hand when someone was cranky or tired or bored the appearance of the DVD player instantly broke through the monotony of what was becoming a long afternoon and the kids would immediately quiet down.

I've used this same car trip strategy with snack and other small treats I've tucked away and it works well. Instead of handing over everything at once and having the kids bored with their little snacks or surprises after fifteen minutes we've had good luck with spacing that sort of thing out so that we get more mileage out of them.

3.  Books on Tape

Or CD.  Or MP3.  Or whatever car actually have these days.

Ours has a tape deck and a CD player that skips non-stop if the car is actually in motion and almost non-stop if the car is parked, so tapes it is.

After the first road trip I got the idea of using a tape recorder to record myself reading the girls' favorite books, along with some classics.

These tapes became an instant hit.  They still listen to them.

If I run into a store and Paul is in the car with the four kids (which include a certain two year old who likes to scream "Help me!  Help me!  No!!!!  Go!  Go!" if the car comes to a complete stop for more than a split second... and sometimes just if we decelerate...) he still pops the tape in and they listen to me read We're Going on a Bear Hunt and Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories and while Paul almost dies of boredom from listening to the same tape for the three hundred and twenty seventh time, the kids love it.

They especially love it when they hear me say "just wait Maggie, we'll read that next" and you hear not-yet-two year old Maggie squeal in response in the background of the tape.

4. Organize, Organize, Organize

One of the best investments I made after our first road trip was in cheap little vacuum seal travel bags (that didn't need an actual vacuum).

Instead of throwing all of our stuff in suitcases I very carefully packed a days worth of outfits in each vacuum bag.  That meant one outfit for each person went in each bag and then I rolled the bags so all the air was out of them.

I then stacked those bags in an easily accessible bag, near the bag with toiletries and pajamas and whatever else we might need and when it was time to unload for the night  we just pulled out one days worth of clothes and brought it inside.

It made it much easier for Paul who was lugging our bags up and down staircases and in and out of motels day after day.

5. Roll with the Punches

When we broke down in North Platte, Nebraska it felt like the end of the world.  We had two days until we needed to be in Michigan to find a house, were low on funds and the first car place we were towed to told us that they couldn't even begin to work on the car for several days.

Then a small shop saved the day for a fraction of the cost we'd been imagining and we ended up with great stories about kind, helpful people and several stories about the subsequent walk to a playground while we waited for the car to be fixed, where I had to squeeze my gigantically pregnant self up to the top of a very tall slide to rescue a certain four year old who'd gotten scared at the top (a tale that's still told to this day).

What had seemed like a disaster at the time ended up being one of the most memorable days in one of our most memorable road trips we've taken so far.


I have a road trip coming up in the not so distant future and hopefully the lessons of road trips past will serve us well as we embark on another trip and see what the open road has in store for our little group!

So Many Smiles

Are you in the mood to look at way too many baby pictures?  

If you are keep scrolling on down this page because I went a little crazy with my camera over the course of the last few days.  

James always seems more than willing to smile when he sees my phone come out.  In fact, today he cried when I stopped taking pictures of him.  And when he's fussy there's a fairly good chance he'll stop fussing when he sees the phone raised like I'm taking a picture.

And so here's the hammiest (wow, I had no idea "hammiest" was a real word, but spell check is not underlining it, so I guess it is) baby I've ever met with three days worth of smiles:  

I snuck in a frown there at the end when I snapped a picture really quickly before he was ready.

But for the most part I don't see many "Grumpasaurus" moments these days!