themommyquack's Autisable

The Grocery Store Diaries 7

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:40:00 GMT

You have your hands full: Two!
Bless your heart: One! I know it! In the north!
Damage Control: Lowell threw his passy once and Kenneth tried to climb out without help, but fortunately, he didn't hurt himself, the groceries, or his baby brother.
Dirty looks: One woman who must not have any tolerance for children, especially ones who decide to dance in the aisle.

My actual trip was all right, all things considered. Therefore, I am hijacking my own post:

I love cable television shows. I really, really, love cable shows. My husband and I started this during the graduate school years, when we could stay up all night on weekends watching Sopranos episodes from Blockbuster while other twenty somethings were out getting trashed. The only non-cable show I enjoy right now is the Office. I have heard great things about many programs, but there is just something a little better about the quality of writing in a cable show. Who knows exactly why?

Sunday night, Showtime aired their season finale of Dexter. I am not going into details on that show, because people love or hate it. I will say that John Lithgow had a one season role and he will be missed and never forgotten. As a tribute to him and a way to say "Thank you" for a wonderful season of Dexter, I am linking the grocery store scene from Terms of Endearment for everyone's viewing pleasure. Take a moment to watch and then keep reading, but the bad language was not edited from the clip.

I am not a big Terms of Endearment fan. Deborah Winger and Shirley Maclaine drive me crazy with their obnoxious fighting. The husband makes professors look like scum. Jack Nicholson will be Jack Nicholson. I am dumbfounded as to how Deborah's character could stay at home with three kids while her husband was still working on the PHD, but maybe that was just Reaganomics. Someone should explain it to me later.

As much as I can not stand that movie, I love that scene. It's a grocery store diary! I have never run out of money at a grocery store, but I always have this fear I'll open my purse and my wallet will be sitting on the kitchen counter. I have snapped at my children in public. Usually it involves keeping one of them from doing something dangerous or finally deciding I am not buying three boxes of cheerios just so that they can each have their own. I have given in and bought junk food that I shouldn't have. I'm sure that people have changed check out aisles or rolled their eyes when they have seen us coming. There is only so much crying, begging, and dragging of boxes that childless people should have to take. Deborah Winger's Emma is taking criticism not only from the annoyed cashier, but her older son is old enough to know what is going on. How much worse could it get? Don't answer that.

Then in the middle of her humiliation, John Lithgow comes out of nowhere to save the day (and help her get even with her idiot husband later, but that isn't the point). The right people fairy came in the form of John Lithgow-and he let the cashier have it with a little more control. Nice.

This grocery store diary is dedicated to John Lithgow as Sam from Terms of Endearment, because to give him a Dexter post would be way too morbid for my readership. I hope that all moms out there who have a bad grocery store day have a "Sam" to help them out.

Keep up the good work Mr. Lithgow. Be it saving the day in the grocery store, preaching the gospel to teenagers that just want to have a prom, or killing somebody's wife in a bath tub, you do it well!!!
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Our Halloween

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:25:00 GMT

I love this town I’m in. I don’t want to start a fight, but I am coming from places where celebrations were out of schools and psychologists said costumes confused little children. Now I live where you trick or treat on the town green and the elementary schools have Halloween parades. It is never protested, and no one forbids their child to participate that I know of. I’ll leave it at that. My kids wore their costumes at Daddy’s work party, gymnastics, the school parade, the town green, and then trick or treating. I really got my money’s worth out of those things this year. The only exception being my darling daughter deciding that she had been Cinderella one too many times and that to the town celebration she would be a ballerina. Of course she decided this at the last minute and the tutu in question was dirty and unraveling. Oh well….

Last year I wrote about how I attempted creativity with costumes and my three angels wouldn’t buy into it. This year it was much easier. The baby wore the outfit his brother wore when he was his age, no argument. I had forgotten how nice it was when you could just put them in something and they couldn’t protest. Kenneth was Spiderman, but lost the mask. I tore this house up looking for it, and in doing so I found a ton of stuff I had been missing, including a Very Hungry Caterpillar onsie that Frances wore and a library DVD. I was about to convince him to go as “Peter Parker” when a friend told me he could borrow her son’s mask from last year. Hallelujah! And Frances was Cinderella, as already posted once before.

Autisable has some wonderful blog posts up on their site with Halloween tips and tricks, and I’m not going to repeat anything, but I did decide that for the first time I would carve Jack-o-lanterns. I have never carved pumpkins before. EVER. I did buy the Mr. Potato Head (love him!) Jack-o-lantern parts once at Target and we always put those on a pumpkin, before anyone thinks my children have been doing without. I couldn’t stand the idea of the glop and the mess and the seeds and cutting with a knife. Those of you who know me well, can you imagine? But this year, I was going to go for it and carve pumpkins with my older children.

I also found out about pumpkin stencils, where you can trace your carvings on the pumpkin. How cool is that? We printed out a Yo Gabba Gabba Foufa and a Spiderman to carve on our pumpkins. The plan was to do this in the garage so we could make a mess. I had knives, paper, garbage bags, and bowls for the seeds. I also had two little helpers that had been dressed in their costumes since six a.m. We got the stem carved out and we looked inside. Man that is nasty looking. We started singing, “Pumpkins guts, pumpkin guts, yucky pumpkin guts” (The tune is jingle bells). It took a good forty-five minutes, but I got two pumpkins scooped out. I wonder if you can buy a pumpkin already hollowed out and then you can go home and carve the face. I would pay for it.

Next came the decorating. I taped the Foufa stencil to the pumpkin and attempted to carve it, but it kept ripping apart. I took it off and tried to free hand it. By the time I had done the flower on top of her head, the flower took up the whole pumpkin and the kids were looking around the garage for something else to do. Then I decided that less was more. And that while I have never attempted to be super mommy before, why should I start with uber jack-o-lanterns? To make jack-o-lanterns, all you have to do is cut out triangles. I can cut out a triangle. I cut out three triangles and then some weird looking mouths. The kids loved them. We carried them to the front porch and then they clapped for me and their jack-o-lanterns. Ta-Da! Next year it’s back to potato head parts.

I ended it with toasting pumpkin seeds they wouldn’t touch, but I thought they were yummy. Now we are filled with sugar, get an extra hour of sleep, and the dress up box is a little fuller. It was nice to celebrate Halloween and see my daughter in a parade and say the words “Trick or Treat” without running away. Next up is the Thanksgiving Play, yikes.
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Cinderella Just Got Quacked

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:01:00 GMT

My daughter has not cared about a single princess in the six years she has been on this Earth. I remember when she was about eight months old I bought her Disney Princess sippy cups. She didn’t touch them. The only time she was slightly interested in a princess was Fiona the Ogre from Shrek. Lovely. We own three princess DVDs, and they have been ignored in order for us to get our fill of the Imagination Movers. I get all kinds of protests if I suggest we watch one.

Cinderella and all her princess buddies get more mud thrown at them than a politician. I myself am guilty of this. She cleans and cooks for the sisters and the only goal is to have this big beautiful wedding and live happily ever after while everyone cries that they aren’t her? I wanted to teach my daughter not to be a “princess.” She would be a strong, intelligent, independent woman. Then she didn’t develop in the normal way. I told myself that I would be a good mom, and that I wouldn’t “expect” anything. I knew not to have high expectations before I brought her home from the hospital. I was in therapy and self-help groups growing up and I knew better. It was the little things that got me. I expected that my daughter would walk and talk, and it didn’t happen. Were my expectations too high when my 18 month old was still crawling? I didn’t know; she was my first.

About a month ago, we were going for a long drive in the car and the only DVD I could reach quickly was Cinderella. Cinderella is pretty tame. No dragons, no sharks, and no beasts being attacked by wolves. Nobody's mama is shot by a hunter. You only have to deal with a dysfunctional family, kind of pre-Harry Potter if you think about, just a nasty step-mother doting on two ugly daughters and forcing the beautiful worthy one to do their bidding. The minute I started the video the older two threw a fit, but I told them it was that or actually just stare out the windows like I had to do when I was their age. About twenty minutes into it the baby starts cracking up. I mean the kid was cackling over the mice. There is nothing more adorable than a toddler's belly laugh. Then I started laughing and the other two children start laughing, and then they loved Cinderella.

With the discovery of Cinderella, her girly girl side took over with a vengeance. She had to have the gowns and the shoes, she had to have the backpack, she wanted the dolls and she started brushing her hair. She chases her brothers around the house begging them to dance with her or help her try shoes on to see if they fit. Kenneth can fight her off but Lowell gets dragged around the playroom.

I guess I should be glad it’s Cinderella and not a different princess. Cinderella isn’t perfect, she managed to lose a shoe at a dance, I lose my keys and my glasses three times a day. Now we line up the Barbies and the Cinderella doll for “snack time,” and Kenneth the know-it-all yells at his sister that it must be tea.

Cinderella can be viewed as a girl cleaning and being a slave to her sisters and then just becoming a “slave” to a man. I don’t watch it that way now. Cinderella has given me some wonderful lessons the last few weeks. She has also helped me remember things I already knew. The first one, she “Stuck it to the bitches.” She didn’t fight or scream or make a fool out of herself. She played it cool and everyone got what they deserved in the end. The second? That magic doesn’t last forever. I remember little things, like when Frances finally walked, but then I had to get her to run. I remember two nights before Kenneth was born, she asked for “Barney” and Kevin wanted to run out and buy up every Barney in the store. Magic happens a little every day, and like Cinderella says to the Fairy Godmother, even until midnight is more than she could have asked for. In your time of need, the right people and the right things will come to you when you need them. It also gives a new spin to the idea of, “He’s just not that into you.” If that prince had his people take the shoe out and make every girl in town try it on, he definitely wanted to find her. My husband would have sold it on Ebay.

So now we have moved on to the Disney Princesses in all their glory, glamor, and commercialism. I did plan to raise my daughter on Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, and Ani DiFranco. But now, after six years of waiting for a little girl to come out, I’ll let her do it just a little longer. I am just not ready to squash it out of her yet. She can always figure out that monarchies have no real power later…..
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What to do when On Demand is not on demand

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:56:00 GMT

I don't know what the hell parents of children with autism did before things like youtube, DVDs, and On Demand cable. I remember the scene in Rain Man, when Tom Cruise pulls over on a country road and begs a lady to let them watch The People's Court. That was a pretty creative solution until he bought the little television. I totally get that scene now.

I have blogged about the Imagination Movers before. My kids love that show. I could go on about how I am a tad disappointed that Knit Knots was fired from season two. My only main comments there are 1) What does Nina do now other than act as a "groupie" for the band since she no longer works for her Uncle Knit-Knots? and 2) I hope the actor was well compensated or has other acting opportunities ready to go because they put him through a lot last season, including carrying around a pet rock, watching paint dry for fun, and dressing up like a cu cu machoo that couldn't speak English. Then they go and fire his ass....

So the point is my child loves this show. So much that we sprang for tickets for their concert in November. She understands it will be crowded, she understands it will be loud. But she wants to go and you better believe you will be reading a blog about it later. I have always been grateful that she can go to school and come home and watch Imagination Movers to decompress while I get dinner done. She knows how On Demand cable works, and she can read the names of the shows on the buttons to choose from.

A couple of days ago, The Imagination Movers were removed from the ON Demand menu. To say that a tantrum followed is a bit of an understatement. We have a DVD of them as well, but alas we have no DVD player at this time. I took for granted that I would always have access to cable. What was a mother to do? A good mother would have held her and said life wasn't fair. A perfect mother would have said "let's go color." A superior mother would have said, "How about we read some books." And a guilt trip mother would have said, "Have you seen Slum Dog Millionaire? CHILL!" Now, who is ready for what the Quack Mother did?

As much as I hate math, I can count to four, and a light went on in my brain stormin' head. I found Noggin, now Nic Jr., on Demand and hit an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba as fast as I could. As soon as my man DJ Lance Rock had the toys coming to life, I held her close with her special blankie and said, "Look Frannie Monster! The Imagination Movers are wearing Yo Gabba Gabba costumes today!" Four movers, four Gabba Gabba friends. Scott is Muno, Rich is Foufa, Smitty is Plex, and Dave is Brobee. Nina comes over and voila, we have Toodee. She smiled and said they did a great job pretending to live in Gabba Land. My four year old, catching on, nodded and said that I sure did solve an idea emergency.

Any mom can brainstorm. But the mother of an autistic child needs the quick thinking of the Imagination Movers combined with the wackiness of Yo Gabba Gabba daily.

Think Fast ladies,

Page
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I need more Barbie!

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:09:00 GMT

Please forgive the week without any posts. We moved, Kevin is out of town, and I have had a lot of work to catch up on. Since I stayed one night in a hotel and just changed houses, I haven’t really had a grocery store diary either, except maybe taking the baby to the 7-11 for whole milk while he ran up and down the aisles touching everything and laughing.

I thought I would talk about another toy that has a special function in our house. I’m talking Miss Thing herself, Barbie. Barbie and I go back, I had the mansion in 1978. Maybe it was in Greenwich. No, it couldn’t have been with those pulley elevators. I remember I got in big trouble for taking a chapstick and smearing it all over the Barbie doll’s hair. I had Western Barbie, and if you pressed her back she would wink. My aunts were only eight and thirteen at the time, and their bathroom was full of Barbie perfumes and make up that I wasn’t allowed to touch. I bet if I went over to my grandparent’s house tomorrow it would still be in the medicine cabinet upstairs.

Yes, yes, we can debate the importance of Barbie in pop culture and what she means to little girls. I googled it and got all kinds of crap. Feminism Friday had a good one, The Body Shop had a poster about ten years ago, and did you know what her real life measurements are? I remember that fact being flashed at Lollapalooza back in 1992. Don’t knock her, she has had so many different careers she is ready for anything. I have a Spanish Teacher Barbie the nieces gave me a good eleven years ago one Christmas. I love that thing. I would go back and forth between wanting a convertible like Barbie or a jeep like Barbie, and then I remembered I can’t drive worth a crap no matter what it is.

So let me bring this back down to today. I have a little girl, and that little girl doesn’t play like other children. I also have a mother with four grandsons and wants to give my daughter dolls. My daughter has about six Barbies and a Ken in counting. They sat there for three years. The poor little Barbies, if they were played with at all they were lined up in front of mirrors to be left alone to stare at their beautiful reflections. Then last year, during Pre-K, something happened, and you will never, ever, hear a harsh, sassy word come from my mouth about that doll again. (Well, ok, maybe one.)

Frances comes home from school and tells us nothing. She couldn’t re-tell a story, or sequence events. If I ask her how her day is she says, “fine.” If I ask her what she does, she says “Nothing.” Now I know that all kids do this, but you can talk a kid into a story with the right bribes. But I still got nothing. Frances also comes home and plays alone. This is part of her autism, some might call it her “stem” but I am not good on terminology, I leave that to the experts.

One day last year, she was in the playroom and I heard her talking to the Barbie doll, she had named it, “Maddie,” then she had another Barbie named, “Bella” (I’m making these up). She named each Barbie and Ken for a student in her class and they kept the same names all year. Then each day she came home and re-enacted the entire preschool day with the Barbies. I knew who answered a question, what was said at circle time, who went to OT and who had speech. She could tell me through the Barbies what each kid had for snack. She would sing songs and do the weather.

Her brain rocks and her memory blows me away. I can’t remember what snarky comment I made to the woman at the library that handed me her mommy business card. This also means I have to be careful what I say around her. Once “Mommy Barbie” was on a toy telephone like this: “Uh huh uh huh, ok. Bye bye (hang up toy phone) Idiot,” and then “Mommy Barbie” rolled her eyes and shook her head.

A couple of other moms in our groups tell me this is wonderful pretend play. I go back and forth on this being pretend play. She is acting out her day using dolls that look like people, which according to Barbie History, is what she was originally designed to do. It is a start but not exactly there. Barbie is giving me hope though.

I am always searching for toys and games and the educational stores to find things to get my daughter to talk and sequence. Who would have thought that I would just need more Barbies? Now I’m looking for Barbie everywhere. Yard sales, consignment stores, I am searching toy bins at Wal-Mart. We must have a Barbie or Ken for each member of the class. Thanks Barbie, you might have made me feel like shit about my breast size, but you have given my daughter an outlet and a way for me to spy on her day.
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The Medium

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:11:00 GMT

Thursday was my 35th birthday. You hit a certain age, and your birthday means jack. You don’t get parties. The cards taper off. You really don’t need much, and you are watching the calories because you just can’t lose the weight from that third surprise baby. So birthday smirthday, I say.

Well, this year about a week before my birthday, I decided I wanted to do something crazy, or different. I narrowed it down to three choices: memorize a Vagina Monologue, get a tattoo, or have a psychic reading done. And honestly, I chose the last option merely because it required the least amount of time away from home.

All things paranormal are hot right now. We have Professor Trelawney in Harry Potter and The Ghost Whisperer. I am not saying if I believed or disbelieved, but I googled around until I found a “medium” in my small town. Let me say this, where I live we have quite a few spas, yoga studios, and psychics. Sometimes I think nobody told Connecticut the economy is bad. Googling worked for my son’s preschool, and it worked in this case too. I set up an appointment on my birthday, and with that, I had my first “reading” ready to go.

Now, I am not going into a lot of details about the actual session, and I’m not saying his name because he didn’t give me permission, but maybe he will sense that I wrote this and find it online. Hmmmm. Here are my “Mommy Quack” observations.

• He was incredibly good looking and had a great accent. I’ll bet women just pay up to sit across the room and stare at him.
• He made it very clear to me that I wasn’t who I was anymore, that my life was very different now. You mean I never gave a damn about sports and now I live to track the Steelers? Yep.
• It was really nice to know that my super anal grandmother is indeed NOT rolling over in her grave every time my toddler dumps his milk cup on the floor and tries to lick it up like a kitten.
• He said a lot of little subtle things that I am convinced there is no way he could have known, but that is just me…
• He asked me if I was always this dry and witty or was I just saving it for him? You guys will have to let him know the answer to that one.
• He said other things too, and I will say that, whether he googled the hell out of me or if my lovely relatives told him from the other side, I felt better about what he had to say.
• He DID NOT say stupid shit like, “EVIL spirits are after you and I can get rid of them if you give me a grand.” So don’t even think it.

When it was over, I told him that was the coolest thing ever, and thanks. Will I go again? It depends on how accurate some of his predictions are, but even then, I might go get that tattoo or memorize a story about my vagina.

Now, let me warn people who want to do something crazy on their birthday:

1) It is YOUR birthday and YOU decide how YOU want to spend it if you get a birthday check. Don’t worry about other people. Could you pay the phone bill with that check? Sure. But what are you going to remember in five years? Your crazy choice, whatever that is, or the bill?

2) If you tell people what you are up to, like when writing a blog post, be prepared for different reactions, for example:

• My brother in law pissed me off beyond belief by calling me Whoopi and telling me he was going to ride his unicorn to work the next day. I hope he sits on the horn.
• My sister’s friend is scared for my soul and wants me to do a cleanse and get healed by a priest.
• And my favorite? I have a good friend who said, “Really? Cool! Let’s go to Lily Dale and dance naked under the moon…..I am so there!

May you always do something memorable on your own damn birthday,

Page
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Picking Berries

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:10:00 GMT

When I was talking to my real estate agent about living in Guilford, the first thing she said was, “you are going to love living here, we have orchards and you can pick your own apples and berries.” I have never cut grass; I have only really raked leaves once because a friend of mine told me her dad said he bet I couldn’t. Now I was leaving the hustle and bustle of Pittsburgh to go pick my own berries? Nope. I don’t play the Grapes of Wrath.

We did try to do it the second weekend we lived here. It was apple season and you had to wait in line for the big trucks to take you up the actual orchards. This was before you even started picking the apples. The crowds were too big and the wait too long for any of my children, forget the one that can’t stand a crowd or loud noises.

When I was in high school, it was the early 90s and Kurt Cobain and all that grunge stuff was popular and my parents were divorcing. I was headed to a women’s college, and I was obsessed with Sylvia Plath. I loved her pain and her depression and the world hates me and doesn’t understand me angst. The bottom line is she was a girl from New England going to Smith and working for a magazine. Come on girl, you weren’t waiting in line at a soup kitchen. But I loved her. I wrote papers on her. I memorized “Daddy,” yeah, I know. I didn’t have much of a life then either.

OK, now I am a mother of three little ones and I know that Sylvia killed herself while her toddlers were napping. I know that isn’t funny and please don’t take this the wrong way, but who hasn't used naptime at least once for a full blown psychotic mommy melt down? But since I have other outlets and know, thanks to the internet, that I am not alone, dear Sylvia, you and I have parted ways. I will stay on the earth as long as I am allowed….

At least I thought we had parted ways until I agreed to a berry picking play date. It was my children and three other moms and their kids at the blueberry patch. All the kids were ready to pick berries with their buckets. It wasn’t nearly as crowded or confusing as that day in the apple orchards. They had the bushes marked for picking, and off we went. Yeah right. Sylvia’s brilliant Bitter Strawberries popped into my head, and it has stayed there. It was still there three months later when we went for raspberries with daddy. Here we go, my Blueberry picking against her memories turned poetry of her Bitter Strawberries:

All morning in the strawberry field
They talked about the Russians
Squatted down between the rows
We listened
We heard the the head woman say,
‘Bomb them off the map.’

In the blueberry fields, probably closer to eleven than the original plan of ten, the six kids all ran in completely different directions and didn’t hear a single thing any of the mommies said about healthcare, if we mentioned it at all…

Two Children laughed at tag
In the tall grass,
Leaping awkward and long-legged

Page’s kids decide they would rather throw rocks than pick berries and invite the other boys to join in the fun. The baby squirms and wants to join them. He has incredible aim for a twelve month old. Wow.

How many quarts?
She recorded in the notebook

Most people’s buckets were filled and the totals were in the 20 dollar range, cash or check only. My three kids picked less than four dollars worth.

Cupping the berry protectively before
Snapping off the stem
Between thumb and forefinger

What nice fine motor skill work. Occupational therapists should really encourage berry picking, considering my daughter had about zero fine motor ability right before she turned three. I couldn’t get her to pick up a cheerio with a pincer grasp. I tried broken crayons, I tried three little pig finger puppets from Guatemala, and I tried popcorn. No go. But she did really love picking the blueberries for a little while. Then you remember no attention span and after about fifteen minutes, give or take ten, my kids were yanking on everything and shoving it in the bucket.

We did try to recreate our “Pick your own” experience with Daddy in the raspberry field, and I did try harder that day. They each had a hat they refused to wear, and I put sunscreen on them. But no one, and I mean no one, told me that raspberry bushes had prickles on them. Good night nurse the screaming that day isn’t worth writing about. Sometimes I am almost sure my husband wishes he had married someone else who would have given him cute kids that would have worn matching Gymboree outfits and filled their baskets to the brim without eating any or smearing berries on themselves or scream to get out of the stroller. Then we could have gone home and made tarts from scratch and read Jamberry together and scrapbook the day.

Sylvia so should have blogged….
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Mr. Potato Head Is Not A Secret

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:54:00 GMT

He is timeless. He requires no batteries. He does not flash or make noise. He is a potato head, that’s Mr. Potato Head to the world. I don’t think the version they have now has changed much since the original one. Here is the link to the history, but if you don’t feel like going there, I’ll say a few things. The year was 1952 and the plastic body parts were originally going to be prizes in a cereal box and mommy would provide the potato for hours of fun. I can see my kids sitting there with a potato punching pieces into it while I bake a cake from scratch. However, WWII was over, and people didn’t like the idea of wasting potatoes, but I bet the “people” were either childless or dads like Don Draper who were in an office all day and didn’t have to worry about how to entertain a child. Plus if we are going to try and save food, we shouldn’t put a toy at a bottom of a cereal box, but that is just me.

The actual plastic potato and all his body parts came together soon after, and everyone has loved him ever since. He has branched out a little with a Mrs. Potato Head and the spuds. You can go to the Mr. Potato Head website for cool ideas if you can’t figure out yourself he can teach body parts. My brother and I had a lot of fun screwing him up, putting his teeth where his shoes should be, stuff kids all over America have done forever. I would like to add that our potato head had a pipe! Who else had one with a pipe? They didn’t take Frosty’s pipe away, but that is another debate for later.

Mr. Potato Head has made his way into cinema. He had a leading role in Toy story. He introduced children to Picasso, which I appreciated much more than Jackson Pollack’s splattering which resulted in applesauce all over the kitchen. Men all over the world can take a lesson from him as he sat in the Barbie convertible, “I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud.”

My favorite Mr. Potato Head scene is from the 1983 movie War Games. Here we have the very young Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy talking to two computer hackers about how to break into a system. The big line: “Mr. Potato Head! Mr. Potato Head! Back doors are not secrets!” Does this mean that a backdoor is so simple someone that can play with the toy can break into a system using the secret password only the system designer knows? If I could follow the conversation it can’t be that difficult. What looks better with age: Matthew, Ally, the computers, or the potato head? I love that scene, but don’t stop watching. In the next part of the clip Matthew answers the question, “What did we do before Google?”

Teachers are all over Mr. Potato Head. When I started teaching Spanish, one of the first things I got as a gift from a fellow Spanish teacher was a Mr. Potato Head. I have taught Spanish from Pre-K to high school and all of my students get psyched when you pull out that potato head. All the hands go up in the air. Everyone wants a turn to push a body part into a potato and say “La nariz.” I love it.

When Frances started speech therapy four years ago, the first thing that skinny-minnie young pathologist did was pull out a potato head. The first thing my daughter did was scream and run away. For the first month Sally* would try to get her to point to body parts or ask for a body part and for a month my daughter would thrash and scream. Now, I don’t want to start a health care debate, but fifty dollars for thirty minutes of my own money was a lot for her to scream at a potato. I was also very pregnant with baby number two, and one day during a session I couldn’t wait any longer so I left the room to go to the bathroom and as I came back I looked through the window. There was my daughter pointing and signing and sitting nicely. She was working that potato head while mommy was out of the room! After that day, I started taking a People magazine and waiting in the lobby. Sorry. She also went through a phase where she only wanted potato heads. Her attention span was very flighty, so in a way it was good that he had so many parts. She could put them all on, take them all off, and start over again.

I guess I should thank Mr. Potato Head for all of his years of service: in education, in Speech therapy, and in pop culture. My baby is discovering his goodness and began playing with that potato head I was given (gasp!) thirteen years ago. Mr. Potato Head, you are my favorite carbohydrate: baked, scalloped, French fried, Spanish tortilla, oh have mercy……
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Finger Painting

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:41:00 GMT

Just the name ought to tell you to keep going and not throw it in your cart, but we buy it anyway. Finger painting is a rite of passage. It’s an “Our infant is now a toddler” kind of thing. I loved it when Frances was tiny. I remember her first birthday party when I just had one child. Afterwards, she slathered paint all over pieces of paper and I would let them dry. Then I would use all of the cool jagged scissors I had and scrap booking paper and blank cards from Michaels to make “Frances original” thank you notes. Nowadays, you can just be thankful you got a thank you note, OK?

Kids love to acceptably stick their hands in something funky feeling and smear it. Typically developing kids adore it, but autistic kids and other kids with sensory issues relish it. Frannie would get a grin so big on her face and dip her hands and arms in the paint and a sense of contentment would wash over her. She had to have it all over her hands and arms and in between her fingertips and squish it. I am only beginning to realize now that she was sensory seeking.

A year later we have her in a private preschool in Pittsburgh and she is studying artists (yes, I know, don’t take me there). All of a sudden, she is flicking applesauce around the kitchen and smearing it on the table. I begged her to stop, but she looked up at me and said, “Look Mommy, I Jackson Pollack.” I sent the director an email about the events that transpired in my kitchen and a request to have dear Jackson stricken from the curriculum. Then I thought I better send that woman a second note explaining I was kidding before my husband got a call in his office. Good choice on my part. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to say “joke,” then I would have gotten a six page letter about her aesthetic perception and how small children need the right to explore their artistic abilities and exposure to the fine arts and the big names. Um, my kitchen was covered in applesauce. That could have happened if I let her watch the WWE SmackDown.

So, you might ask, why do I keep buying this paint if it is so messy? Aside from her loving it, in some ways it is very low maintenance. How can you screw up finger paint? You can’t really. And anybody anywhere can find something positive to say about it. “She put a lot of energy into that one,” or “He sure was in a good mood when he made that gloppy mess.” You can let your own creative juices soar just describing it.

While I can go to the local Walmart for the paint, where I live they don’t carry the paper. Bummer. At first I was letting them finger paint on computer paper. The problem with that was that the paper would disintegrate under the paint and make a bigger mess on the table. I had to go the Purple Bear, the specialty toy store in town on the green. I was very proud of both of the kids on the way over. I specifically told them that we were going for finger paint paper and this was one trip before the grocery store. We were not looking or buying anything else. A parent could go bankrupt in there. The boys were in the stroller and Frances was next to them grinning from ear to ear. They were so good. I asked for shiny paper for finger painting because I decided it would go quicker if I just asked a sales attendant instead of torturing the kids by staying in there longer necessary. She looked at me like I was from Mars and then she said, “You mean glossy?” I took my own advice and semi-walked away from retaliating that shiny and glossy gave me the same connotation. Of course she was right about the glossy, so I am glad I just nodded and thanked her for bringing it to the front for me. That couldn’t be enough for a trip to the toy store with my crew. As she is putting the “glossy” finger paint paper in the bag, my big mouth three year old has to say “Mommy! Are we going to buy ketchup now?” The woman stared at the paper and then at me and said they carried the paint and I didn’t need to buy the ketchup. Good grief if I was going to just buy ketchup to paint with I wouldn’t stop there. I would buy mustard, mayonnaise, and pickle relish and then drag a shower curtain out to the back yard and totally have the neighbors fall in love with me as we smear condiments on the vinyl in the name of aesthetic pleasure.

I have had many a “Super mommy” moment with finger paint. There have been nasty rainy or snowy days in New England when I have mixed up a chocolate pudding box and had all three of them finger painting away into chocolate happiness. I have even been an extra super mommy and attempted to have them spell in it, or at least draw shapes and guess letters. The baby gets covered in it and cackles in delight to be part of the older two’s world. Nice.

You can spice finger painting up a bit by adding glitter and tools to paint with instead of your fingers. My kids love to use Q-tips, old tooth brushes, and sponges to smear their paint around. They have tried to use traditional paint brushes, but they really prefer the other things I mentioned. I am going to be brave and make my own paint some day. What else am I going to make with flour and cornstarch? I even have food coloring left over from my volcano attempt.

I have written before about our use of foam at bath time. They also love to use bath tub finger paint. Again, it is easily removed from the nice bathtub. They paint all over the tub and the walls, and I have been known in a “Super mommy moment” to challenge them and say, “Who can draw a circle first? Who can draw the letter T?” There is something in a little competition. I think they get it from the brother/sister bunny rabbit pair Max and Ruby, but they seem to love painting all over each other and laughing. It is paint/soap after all and at least on those nights they will all be squeaky clean. Another “mommy” (translatable gag) moment is to mix the paints as it says to on the bottles. Yellow and blue make green, red and blue make purple, red and yellow make, hey wait a minute, you know this, sorry.

I am not sure what purpose traditional finger painting serves other than to work on the fine motor skills and sensory delays. Maybe someday one of my children will find themselves in a remote jungle in Costa Rica being chased by an alien who likes to hunt for fun, but only has thermal vision, so they will need to quickly get that mud all over their bodies to hide their heat before he gets them. All of these Crayola kits that end up on the counter tops as I desperately try to get it up before my husband gets home are really going to come in handy then. Can’t wait…..
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Saturday, September 05, 2009

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:34:15 GMT

Thanks for reading my posts on Autisable. Read more of my writings/thoughts at http://themommyquack.blogspot.com.