The Bugs Are Reading My Mind

Or at least my blog.

After my midnight post last night as I stumbled off groggily toward the bedroom, what did I find waiting stealthily to ambush me in a dark hallway?

An enormous cockroach.

They're out to get me! They're all out to get me, I say!

Battle of the Bugs

First I must apologize for my slackness in posting the past few days. I still have a bit of lingering infection from my recent dental surgery (yes, still, even after two rounds of antibiotics), and two-and-a-half weeks of constant pain in my jaw (pain when I talk, pain when I eat, PAIN when my son affectionally slams his head into my face as toddlers are so wont to do) has really been dragging me down. And no, I haven't been back to the dentist yet, because I keep hoping if I ignore the problem hard enough it will just go away. And yes, I am being irrational and sort of a wuss, but read my recent wisdom-tooth-removal-related posts and see if YOU feel like going to the dentist. See? And you didn't even live it. You just read it. So there :P

Now, on to my post.

THE BUGS ARE COMING.

A few days ago, I saw one. A big fat slick black waterbug, lying legs-up on my carpeted hallway floor, twisted, twitching. Death spasming.

I hopped over it with a shudder of my own, and grabbed a wastefully thick wad of papertowels from the kitchen. I scooped it up gently in the towels, and bundled them tightly around it, and then made myself smash the little bundle as hard as I could. Quicker that way, I thought. Put the poor damn thing out of its misery.

MAKE SURE IT'S DEAD.

You see, I have a problem with bugs. Bugs in my house.

Oh, they're all right outside, keeping to themselves, living their little buggy lives. Part of the ecosystem. Circle of life, and that. Pollinating and nourishing my garden. Tiny, intricate creatures, so delicately made, so alien to my comparatively massive mammalian self. Outside, sometimes, I think they're facinating. Sometimes even beautiful. In fact, there is a tattoo of a dragonfly on my back. Dragonflies seem so lithe and graceful, and have such lovely iridescent glassy wings; yet, there is a fierceness in their movements that is startling. Quite engaging creatures, certain bugs.

When I find them in my house, I want to smash them.

(I usually make my husband smash them for me).

There is something about these little creatures invading my domain that seems to activate a primal warding instinct. That line of little ants that seems so quaint and prim to me upon the sidewalk looks like an invading army of ugly, filthy marauding thieves crossing the threshhold of my patio door. The spider that seemed so friendly and useful spinning her delicate web above my basil plant seems full of malevolent intelligence on the rim of my bathroom sink.

Last summer I discovered much to my horror that the thin, shoddily constructed walls and poorly sealed window frames of my apartment building here in the wooded suburbs admitted many more unwelcome arthropod guests than I'd been accustomed to living closer to the city. In the space of one season, we suffered no less than three ant invasions, from three different species of ant-- black ants in the bathrooms (coming through my mildewed water-damaged wall), pharoah ants in the baby's room (coming through a poorly spackled fist-sized hole in the wall adjacent to the windows, and then around the unsealed window frame itself), crazy ants in the living room (sneaking under my patio door). Every time it rained, we played host to at least three quarter-sized refugee spiders. Waterbugs and spindly crickets abounded in the utility closet. And in one week, I caught no less than three GIANT FLYING COCKROACHES. I didn't even know Missouri had flying cockroaches. They sure showed me.

After I filed several complaints, the apartment office finally sent over a bumbling exterminator who looked amazingly like a stereotypical TV caricature of an exterminator-- right down to the poor posture, stained clothes, creepy stare, and amazingly bad teeth-- who tended to spill things in places he shouldn't, and once asked if he could pour some sort of toxic pesticide from one container to another in my kitchen sink. After two visits, he and his noxious chemicals scared me more than the bugs did, so I stopped asking the apartment office for help (which I strongly suspect may have been their plan all along).

My second line of response to this mass invasion was to invest heavily in boric acid traps, seal every crack in the poorly made, water-damaged walls I could reach with spackle, insulating foam, and caulk, and put all the food in my pantry in air-tight plastic or glass containers.






I had already been keeping my house quite clean (not always neat, mind you, but clean). I consider superior cleanliness necessary when you live with someone who spends a good deal of his time on the floor looking for odd things that aren't food to put in his mouth.

The Battle of the Bugs raged on into the fall. I lost most of my patio herb garden to the crazy ant invasion, but I did manage to keep my kitchen and pantry bug-free. (Except for that unfortunate flour weevil incident, but I blame that entirely on my Schnucks grocery. After all, who on earth expects a swarm of mature flour weevils to eat their way out of a sealed bag of chickpeas purchased at the store only two weeks prior? Well, I do. Now.)

Then winter came, with its blissful killing frosts. And away went the bugs.

But the winter was unseasonably mild.

And spring has once again sprung.

As they say in the movies:

This time, I'm ready.

Caulk gun? Check. Non-carcinogenic bug killers? Check. Enough air-tight plastic in my pantry to make a entire Tupperware party swoon? Check.

I don't care if I have to lay down a perimeter of diatomaceous earth and boric acid around this whole apartment building, my pretties. I don't care if I have to pot three different species of insect-repellant shrub. I don't care if I have to hire a team of trained bug-eating bats.

You're not taking my house, bug army. Go build yourselves a buggy civilization outside.

Nothing Much

Just wanted to mention if you like my new manga-style profile portrait you can make your own at this site. Their English needs work, and the interface is a bit tricky, but it's still fun.

In other news, I am considering actually designing a new look for my blog instead of just using this cheap-but-cute-cookie-cutter template from the Blogger template collection.

You wanna know a secret? I've designed websites a few times before. And site graphics. From scratch. And sometimes people even paid me for it.

So why, you ask, have I allowed my words to languish here so unadorned for months on end?

Well, there are three main reasons.

1.) See blog subtitle.
2.) I've been busy doing paid work and chasing a small red-haired whirlwind.
3.) I know HTML. I use Dreamweaver. But I don't know CSS, which is what I would need to employ to create a really spiffy layout for this blog.

But I saw Mrs. Fortune's snazzy flipped blog the other day, and I got jealous.

Lucky for me, it does just so happen that I'm sleeping with a professional web developer who might be persuaded to help me out with my CSS deficiency.

So . . .

Give me another week or so to get over this crazy debilitating post-dental-surgery infection, and we'll see what happens . . .

Round Two: Fight!

In Which I Go Back to the Dental Surgeon, Get Stuck with More Pointy Things, and Am Sentenced to at Least Another Week of Dieting upon Pain Meds, Antibiotics and Mush

(Okay, so, I meant to post about this a few days ago, but as many of my fellow Blogger-users may well know, Blogger has been having a lot of technical issues over the past several days, and my blog seems to have been one of the ones that was particularly hard-hit, and I have therefore had extreme difficulty posting of late. I apologize if any of my regular readers have come upon a "forbidden access" error message or a whacked-out, barely-readable layout here lately. It was, unfortunately, a situation entirely out of my hands).

So, this past Thursday I went back to the dental surgeon who had removed my wisdom teeth the week prior to have my sutures removed. That's right-- instead of those nifty Space-Age disappearing sutures most dentists use on extraction patients now, I had positively archaic non-absorbable wire stitches stuck in my mouth for a week because my dental insurance is just that cheap.

Anyway, I was glad to have an appointment already scheduled, because while three of the four areas where my teeth had been removed seemed to be healing nicely, the removal site in my lower left jaw was still hurting. A lot. I had sort of expected it to hurt more than the others, because that tooth had been tilted at an odd angle, and was difficult to remove-- it took twice the time to take out that one as it took to take out any of the others (I know this because, as I've previously mentioned, I was fully awake and aware with no drugs besides a local anesthetic during the surgery. See above description of cheapness of dental insurance company). But I hadn't exactly expected my whole left jaw, my left cheek, and every tooth on the lower left side of my mouth to be throbbing in serious pain that I could still more-than-vaguely feel through the three Advil and two Extra Strength Tylenol I'd been popping along with my prescription penicillin every four hours.

I was afraid that maybe despite, being the amazingly good girl that I am, having followed the written instructions the dental surgeon had sent me home with to the letter (including not eating anything hot or drinking anything through a straw the first day, brushing and rinsing my gaping wounds according to a tight schedule, etc.), I had wound up with this thing called a dry socket. Or, worse, that the dental surgeon had accidentally cracked my jaw without realizing it, or left a piece of my tooth in my gums, or something. So I was glad to have the opportunity to ask the dental surgeon if anything bad was going on.

However, when I arrived, the dental surgeon was nowhere in sight. Instead, a dentist's assitant, whom I remembered had been present during my surgery, apparently mostly to hand tools to the surgeon and occasionally yank on my jaw, came into the exam room. She started rooting around in a couple of drawers and pulling out various tools, and I began to get a little nervous. This woman could not have been more than 20 years old. At the ripe old age of 25, I am still getting used to the idea of medical professionals being younger than me, and I have to admit it always makes me a bit uneasy. But even putting my unfortunate ageism aside, the chick seemed to me to be, well, a little ditzy. The day of my surgery she had spent at least 15 minutes searching the entire room for a set of clips that happened to be dangling from my chair. Then while we'd waited for the surgeon to come in, she had related a story to me about how just the last week she had gotten lost trying to avoid traffic in a construction zone and wound up being so late that she'd decided not to come in for work at all.

Was this woman going to CUT WIRE STITCHES out of my mouth?

"Okay, let's take a look at those stitches!" She sang out cheerfully, approaching me with large tweezers and an enormous pair of wicked-looking curved scissors.

"Um . . . look! I need to see the surgeon! I'm still in pain, you see, a lot of pain, on this one side, from the surgery, and I sort of expected to be in more pain on that side, you know, because you all had to work so much harder on that tooth than the other ones, but I'm in more pain than I should be after a week, you know, so, um . . . well, you see, I was hoping he could look at me and . . . I thought I might have that dry socket thing or something, you know?"

The other workers in the office overheard me through the open exam room door, and started laughing. "She had her wisdom teeth out and she wants to know why she's in pain?" someone called. "Hello! Tell her to take her pain meds!"

The assistant, though, looked concerned. "Hmm, what kind of pain is it? Is it a throbbing pain?"

"Yes, it throbs sometimes."

"How bad is it?"

"Well, I've been taking a lot of pain medications . . ."

"Is it like the last time you had a toothache? Like getting a filling?" She asked, standing in front of a huge glowing X-ray film of my completely cavity-free teeth.

"Umm, I wouldn't--"

"Is it a screaming pain? Like, the kind of pain that makes you want to scream at your husband?"

Thinking of how I'd come out of my Vicodin-pain-and-lack-of-food-induced fog on the Monday morning after the surgery to discover that my son's hair had not been brushed in three days, there was a new abstract artwork in green crayon covering the lower third of my dining room wall (and another in permanent black pen scrawled across the newly-crumpled pages of my son's favorite book), and my laundry basket had overflowed into giant piles on the bedroom floor*, I said, "Well . . . "

"Hmm, let me have a look," she said. She shifted the tweezers and scissors to one hand, and picked up a mirror to look in my mouth with the other. As she manuevered the mirror, she leaned forward, and suddenly,

WHACK.

She hit me in the lower lip with the scissors.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" she gasped, giggling. "I swear, I'm really not that clumsy. I'm not that clumsy!" she continued as I felt my lip to see if it was bleeding. "I just forgot those scissors were in my hand!" Not quite bleeding-- the sharp tip had only grazed me; she'd mostly hit me with the flat end.

"Anyway, let me go ahead and take your stitches out," she said matter-of-factly once she'd recovered from her giggle fit, "and then the doctor can have a look at you and see what's wrong."

Before I could scream for the doctor in terror, she shoved her hands in my mouth and started cutting. I was afraid to breathe. At last she pulled the last stitch out. As far as I could tell, there was no new damage. The assistant left to get the surgeon, and I felt like I had narrowly escaped having my tongue cut out by a madwoman. Which may have been true.

After shining various lights in my mouth, turning my head this way and that, and making several grandfatherly "Hmmm," and "Ahh," noises, the surgeon determined that the top of part my gum had healed before the bottom part had a chance to finish healing, and that this situation had lead, despite a week of prophylactic antibiotics, to an infection.

"You just heal too well, that's your problem! We'll have to cut you back open," he said cheerfully.

"What?"

"I said you heal too well! Great healer. Now open your mouth. Got a little bitty bit of novocaine." Before I knew what was happening, he shoved a needle into my gums. The left side of my tongue immediately went numb. My jaw itself and the area around the original incision, however, kept throbbing. Seconds later, he grabbed some sort of sharp silver implement and jabbed a new hole in my gum.

"OWWWWW!" I said, as well as I could with a half-numb tongue.

"Well, it was just a little bit of novocaine."


Anyway, now I am on another, stronger round of antibiotics. The enormous red pills look EXACTLY like the Red Pill from the movie The Matrix. The package says side effects may include nausea, tiredness, headache, vomiting, or mild diarrhea. (I'll let you guess which four of those five I've been getting with every dose).

Four days later, my jaw still hurts.

And I STILL CAN'T EAT NORMAL FOOD. At least, not if I don't have an hour and a half on my hands to sit there and chew every very small bite of normal food extremely carefully only on the right side of my mouth.

This totally sucks.

*My man does deserve some props, though: he did go out in the middle of the night to get me a mango smoothie once during all this.

Blogger, You Are Pissing Me Off.

That is all.

Extreme Makeover, Amish Home Edition

We had some seriously severe weather here in Missouri last weekend. Thunderstorms, tornadoes, golf-ball-sized hail-- you name it, it came to visit. Luckily for me, there was no damage to my family's home or property (though in a previous storm a couple of weeks ago our car got some pretty serious hail damage). However, lots of unfortunate people in rural areas on the outskirts of town had their homes completely destroyed.

Although (knock on wood) such a terrible disaster has never happened to me, I have witnessed this kind of devastation up close, because my sister lost her home to the weather last year. The roof came off of her rented townhouse during a storm. She and her boyfriend escaped alive with most of their pets, but they lost almost everything they owned. Clothes, appliances, furniture, food, tolietries, school paperwork, important financial and legal records. Paychecks. Souvenirs from trips they had taken outside the country. Artifacts they had collected on archeological digs. Family photos.

It took my sister months and months to get everything sorted out. Fighting with the state housing authority (they did not want to allow her back on the site to salvage her few remaining things), fighting with her landlord (who had neglected the property in a way that might have contributed to the disaster-- she had complained to him repeatedly that her roof had been leaking for months), fighting for her renter's insurance settlement (the policy, of course, was inside her ruined townhouse). She stayed with friends for weeks, then finally moved into an apartment on the same property that was only partially finished.

This month she and her boyfriend were finally able to buy a new home. But it has taken months of struggle and heartache for them to get there.

So, when I saw these poor people on TV (the lucky ones, who could still stand), standing shell-shocked in the ruins of their homes, I really felt for them, I mean physically, viscerally felt pain on their behalf. The hurricanes down south several months ago have taught us all how little our government is willing or able to do for its citizens who have lost everything to a storm, and how quickly charitable organizations that do try to help become overstretched. And my sister's experience has shown me how instantaneously and unexpectedly this sort of disaster can happen to any of us, and how difficult it can be trying to get life back together when it does, even when you have family and friends around who want to help you.

That's why I'm absolutely in love with this story.

After this Amish family's home was destroyed by the recent storms, their tiny community came together and built them a new house in 15 HOURS.

Sure, they're Amish-- they didn't have to put in electical wiring or fancy plumbing. That might have required and extra day or two. But nonetheless. What's important here in my mind is the sense that building a house for a neighbor who'd lost one was an absolute priority for these people. It needed to get done, so they did it. Just like that. Nobody sat around and argued about who should be in charge of designing the rebuilt house, or whether or not the new house should be built in the same place as the old one, or whether this family really deserved a new house, or whether building the family a new house might make them feel somehow entitled to community house-rebuilding in the future, and whether such a sense of entitlement on the part of citizens to receiving public services in exchange for their contribuitions to society is good or bad for the community, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.

Nope. They saw a house needed to be built, and built it.

Our greater society could learn from this example, dontchya think?.

Historical Figures I'd Most Like to Have Over for Dinner

Not sure why I was thinking about this today, but I'm sure you've all heard this question before: What historical figure would you most like to have over for dinner, and why?

Here are my current top ten:

10.) Jesus*: You know, to ask him what he would do. I'm not a Christian**, but I have the feeling he wouldn't hold it against me. Might have to pick up an Aramaic phrase book beforehand, though.

9.) Sacagewea: The escaped tribal war refugee and teenage mom who helped lead an expedition halfway across a continent through unexplored foreign lands, acting as tour guide, herbalist, medic, translator and diplomat, with a nursing baby strapped to her the whole way. I think she could give me some excellent advice regarding how best to balance a fulfilling career life with motherhood.

8.) Edith Wharton: I am mostly just hoping she might give me advice on writing bitingly sarcastic, razor-sharp social commentary offering timeless insights into human relationships and human nature that will resonate with audiences for centuries to come, in the guise of popular chick lit.

7.) Jane Austen: See Edith Wharton.

6.) Albert Einstein: Well, duh.

5.) Mary Wollstonecraft: Survived an abusive, dysfunctional home to become a self-made independent woman and successful political essayist. Authored this little bombshell called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. Hung out with a fascinating crowd of revolutionaries and Romantics. What's not to love?

4.) Jorge Luis Borges: If you don't know why I'd want to have Jorge Luis Borges over for dinner, then you'd better go out and buy his Collected Fictions RIGHT. NOW. Hop to it. THE LIBRARIAN IS WATCHING YOU!

3.) Joan of Arc: Okay, so I'd have to learn medieval French for this one, but still. How could the dinner conversation possibly bore when the guest of honor is a cross-dressing, sword-wielding teenage visionary who claims to have a direct line to celestial management?

2.) Ben Franklin: I am hoping that maybe he could give me some tips on money management, fire prevention, and international diplomacy. Also heard he's quite the expert on the proper enjoyment of beer.

And the number one historical figure I would like to invite over for dinner is:

Thomas Jefferson: The same man who wrote the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," also kept his own secret illegitimate biracial children as slaves. Fascinating. What a puzzle. I'd really like to know him better. I get the feeling if I understood Jefferson, I'd truly understand American politics.

So what's your list?

*This guy would rank higher on the list, except that I find the prospect of discussing the things people like the Spanish Inquisitors, the Crusaders, and Fred Phelps have done in his name since his death kind of depressing. I don't think he would like the subject at all, but at the same time something tells me he's just the sort of matryr to insist upon bringing it up.

**I should probably add, anymore. I was raised Christian, sorta. In that my father was a self-idenitfied Baptist, my paternal grandparents were German Catholics, my maternal grandparents were nondemoninational pretenders, and my mom was in a sort of New Age explore-all-religions phase during most of my childhood, and therefore did not offer much in the way of specific religious guidance. So, I've read the Bible, more than once, cover to cover, and been to Sunday school, church services, etc. But I don't ever recall being without scepticism on the subject.

Weird Bad Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So, I FINALLY got my (impacted) wisdom teeth out yesterday. I had the surgeon do it with local anaesthetic instead of getting put under, because 1.) I'm thrifty! Or two paychecks shy of broke and stuck with crappy dental insurance, whichever way you wanna put it, and 2.) I'm just that hardcore (as in, I pushed a 7 lb 3 oz person out of my vagina with no pain medication, people! I can sit perfectly still and let a dentist cut my gums open, bash my teeth to bits inside my jaw with a hammer and drill and then rip out broken the pieces with pincers while I am still fully conscious without totally wigging out. Really. Seriously. I know I can. I hope. Can you hold my hand now?).

The procedure wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I have a terrible, irrational fear of needles, but for some reason they don't scare me nearly as much if I can't see them going in, so I just closed my eyes while they injected my gums, cheeks, throat, etc. like 20 times. And the local anaesthetic really did do it's job. I felt an incredible amount of pressure while they were removing my teeth, and weird cracking sensations that might have sent pre-natural-childbirth-kind-of-hardcore me into a bit of a tizzy, but I didn't freak out and start flailing around and trying to hit people like I was secretly scared I would.

Anyway, now I'm on Vicodin, or rather, generic hydrocodone actually, because my insurance company is too cheap to pay for brand name pharmaceuticals (though that's one kind of cheapness on their end I'm actually cool with). In case you don't know what Vicodin* is, it's a narcotic-plus-Tylenol combo that is known to kill pain quite efficiently while also making you loopy and sorta high. It's one of those addictive-over-time prescription pain killers that people bribe and cheat their doctors into getting them extra refills for.

I guess now I know I'll never be an successful smack fiend, because just like its narcotic cousin codeine, which I had quite a rocky first date with a couple of years ago after minor abdominal surgery that left me worshipping the porcelain gods for hours and then dry heaving for three days straight, this Vicodin is making me almost constantly nauseous (though this is a much milder reaction than I had to the codeine-- i.e., I still can eat stuff. Soft, cold stuff that doesn't have to be chewed, anyway).

It is also TOTALLY not getting me high. Loopy, yes. Frequently I can't remember what I've said ten minutes ago, and I have lost all sense of the passage of time. My brain doesn't seem to want to hold focus on anything. Which I suppose is a good thing when you have gaping holes in your mouth. If I were focusing on that fact all day long it would probably disturb me, come to think of it.

But all in all, I have to say this Vicodin is not all the street dealers hype it up to be. I can't imagine using this stuff on a daily basis without also consuming at least 15 cups of black coffee just to keep my mind focused enough to have coherent conversations with people. I think tomorrow I will be switching back to my trusty old Advil bottle, thank you very much.

And no, you can't buy my leftover Vicodin from me :P

*In case any nursing mamas are wondering, Vicodin is rated "probably safe for nursing" on Kellymom.com

Cowboy Diplomacy

So, I'm watching the Oscars last night, even though being the parent of a toddler I am completely out of touch with the mainstream movie scene. I'm watching because Jon Stewart is hosting, and I love Jon Stewart. I would watch a televised log rolling competition if it were hosted by Jon Stewart.

Seriously.

So, I'm watching the Oscars, and I'm feeling more and more sorry for my main man Jon Stewart, because he looks nervous from the moment he steps on the stage, and the uptight Oscar audience can't seem to to find its sense of humor with two hands and a flashlight, and their consequent awkward inability to laugh sincerely at jokes about themselves is clearly freaking him out, and the show seems to be drowning even a little more than usual in its own pretentiousness, and he just can't seem to pull it out. But I'm not sure what I was expecting. Sure, the man is funny, but he's no superhero. The Oscars always suck.

Anyway, as I continue watching, I realize that I really, truly haven't seen any of the movies that have gotten non-techinical nominations. I mean, I really, truly, seriously haven't seen a SINGLE ONE. I saw the Harry Potter movie, back in November-- that got nominated for Art Direction,--and I saw part of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which got nominated for costumes, on DVD at a friend's house during a party, but Isaac started screaming uncontrollably once he caught a glimpse of the Squirrel Attack scene, and after that I spent most of the rest of the party in another room trying to keep him from breaking stuff.

But I hadn't seen anything that got nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director . . .

You get the picture. Or lack thereof.

So I start complaining to my husband about how we never see any movies anymore since the baby was born, and saying how a lot of these Oscar-nominated films are already out or are coming out soon on DVD, and proposing that we rent or buy a few, and he says to me, "I don't want to see that Brokeback Mountain."

Before I can respond, he continues, "It has cowboys in it. I don't want to watch a movie about cowboys . . . you know I can't stand anything that makes me think of country music."

That's right, fair readers. I'll come right out and say it. I just found out my husband suffers from COWBOYPHOBIA.

Guess I'll have to watch that one by myself.

I'm Not Quite Dead Yet!

I swear . . . I've just been very busy . . .

The Incredible One-Armed Woman

I would have posted this a couple of weeks ago when it actually happened, but I've been so busy working on the sort of writing I actually get paid for over the past month that I haven't felt like I should have time to blog. Of course, this somehow hasn't stopped me from leaving my typical post-length comments on other people's sites . . . LOL.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I decided I would convert Isaac's crib into a toddler bed. It's not that he had been trying to climb out of the crib-- STAIRS freak this kid out-- I fear he has inherited my acrophobia (Get it?I fear he has a fear of heights! Haha. How clever. This is what happens when I spend several hours writing advertising copy. Watch out!).

Instead, for several weeks, he had been expressing a desire to play in the crib when not sleeping. He kept dragging me into his bedroom and asking me to lift him up over the crib rail so he could play "Night Night," a game he'd invented which proceeded as follows:

1.) I put him in the crib.
2.) He says "Night Night, Mommy. Bye bye!" and motions for me to leave.
3.) He pretends to be asleep.
4.) I leave the room and shut the door.
5.) The moment the door shuts, he cries.
6.) I come back.
7.) Return to Step #2, and repeat, until Mommy loses her patience, takes Isaac out of the crib, and insists that instead of playing Night Night we are going to go watch Finding Nemo/Clifford/Baby Einstein again for the 500 billionth time right now.
8.) Play again from Step#1 every two hours.

I figured he had invented this little role-playing exercise as a way of working out some nighttime separation anxiety issues. Since Isaac has been a terrible sleeper since even before he was born (this kid seriously kicked or somersaulted violently every ten minutes 24 hours a day in the womb, and slept less than 10 hours for every 24 as a newborn), I am pretty receptive to almost any activity I think might just possibly help him sleep better. So, I had been gamely playing along for days and days, in the hopes that this self-guided theraputic activity might eventually help him make it through more nights without waking.

The problem with this game (other than the mind-numbing repetition, of course, but that's par for the course with any activity invented by a 21-month-old) was, I have a bad back. And a bum shoulder that likes to pop out of the socket. And a I've been suffering on and off for months from this funny little thing called costochondritis, an inflammation of the sternum and ribcage, a repetitive motion injury, which, if you aggravate it, basically feels like an elephant sitting on your chest all day long-- i.e., like a 24-7 HEART ATTACK.

So, as you might guess, even if my numbed mind was willing, my creaky body was beginning to tire a bit of this in-and-out of the crib all day situation. Somewhere around the about 45th or 50th game of Night Night, as I felt my whole ribcage start to groan in protest, I experienced a brilliant epiphany:

My child is now, in fact, a toddler. This crib converts to a toddler bed. If this kid wants to climb into his crib to play ONE MORE TIME, by the stars in the heavens, he can damn well DO IT HIMSELF!

Of course, I was hit by this bolt of inspiration in the middle of the morning on a weekday. My husband was at work, and probably would be for several more hours. Still, I thought, this was surely something a handy woman like me could handle on her own. After all, I'd put this crib together with my husband while I was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and IN LABOR (true story). I'd read the instructions for converting the crib before, and as I recalled, they'd seemed very simple. It was a couple of hours before Isaac's usual nap time; I had the basic tools I needed (a hex key, a screwdriver, pliers) close at hand. Why not just do this thing and get it over with before my husband could come home and insist on helping me so we could argue with each other the whole time over which one of us was doing it wrong?

Isaac was busy drawing pictures, anyway. This was a twenty-minute project, tops. How much trouble could he be?

My fellow mommies see where this is going.

Maybe it was the writing-project-deadline-induced sleep deprivation. I don't know. But some momentary lapse of judgement, some freakish state of mind made me, mother of 21 months, experienced older sister, and former nanny, FORGET a fundamental truth of child psychology:

The MOMENT you start trying to do something you don't want a child who is in the same house with you to interfere with, no matter how happily distracted the child just appeared-- no matter how perfectly content that child felt minding his own business a tenth of a second ago-- at that very moment the child will sense your determination to do something without his involvement, and he will ATTACK.

Of course I had to finish this project once I had started it-- couldn't wait until my husband came home, because if I did, there would have been crib pieces all over the floor in Isaac's room for hours, not to mention the fact that there would be no good place for Isaac to sleep come nap time other than my bed, which happened to have its clothes in the wash.

I wound up doing almost all of the crib conversion with a tool in one hand and a thrashing child who kept screaming "I want screwdriver!" in the other.

It took me almost two and a half hours. MORE THAN TWO HOURS. To take one side and some wheels off the crib.

I would not recommend this method of furniture assembly to 130 lb women with bad backs and a history of costochondritis.

But . . .

Almost immediately after I tightened the last bolt, Isaac leapt into his "new" bed and proceeded to bounce and roll there happily, holding elaborate conversations with his stuffed animals, for the next half hour. His newfound bed-access freedom put him in a fantastic mood. He beamed wildly at me and slapped me repeatedly with fierce baby kisses for the rest of the day.

It's amazing how the same person who drives you absolutely *chain of extravagant expletives deleted* insane one moment can in the very next moment make every instant of insanity seem worthwhile.

Like Mother, Like Daughter, Like (Grand)Son

Isaac read the word "milk" on Saturday while we were at the grocery store.

He is 21 months old.

He is not involved in any experimental early-reading programs.*

Yes, I know you don't believe me. I wouldn't believe me if I were you either, but it's true.

We were in the baking aisle, with the condensed and powdered milk. We don't use powdered milk. There's a box of it waaaay in the back of my pantry in case of some milk shortage disaster, but as no such disaster has yet occurred, Isaac has not had occasion to be introduced to the concept of milk-as-powder.

Isaac was toddling along in the isle, holding his father's hand. He stopped, and pointed to a box of generic brand powdered milk that had no pictures of anything related to milk on it. He pointed at the letters on the box, that, in a very ordinary sort of typeface, spelled MILK, and said "Milk!"

His dad was there, I was there. WE BOTH SAW IT!

Much to my anti-consumerist chagrin, the boy has already been recognizing certain corporate logos and signs for a couple of months now. It started with Burger King (also known as the only restaurant he is willing to eat things at). One day he pointed to the Burger King logo on a toy he had gotten with a kids meal there, and said "Fries!" I told him that indeed, that was the logo of the place we often went to get fries, but that in fact, it said "Burger King," which was the name of the restaurant, not what they served there.

Now when we go there, he points to the logos on the cups and the bags and says, "Burger King," and smiles at everyone in earshot very proudly. He also recognizes the logos for Sesame Street, Disney, PBS, NBC, and Charter Cable, even though I swear I don't let him watch that much television. He recognizes the Scholastic logo from some of his books (though sometimes he gets confused and calls it "Clifford"). He recognizes the Kraft logo, too, but he calls it "Bag of cheese!" (I have tried to use this confusion to my advantage to get him to try foods made by Kraft that are not, in fact, shredded cheese, but so far I have had no luck in that endeavor).

But recognizing logos, of course, is not quite the same as reading.

He also recognizes and can easily name every letter of the alphabet, as well as numerals from 0-9. He got really good with these a couple of months back when we bought some alphabet and numeral refrigerator magnets.

But knowing the names of letters and numbers is not the same as reading.

And he pretends to read his favorite books himself now, and sometimes remembers to say a fair number of words from the stories.

But repeating words he's heard me read a thousand times because he knows they're supposed to be there is not the same as reading.

This is the first time we have ever seen him actually, seriously, definitively read a word.

I know you probably STILL don't believe me, but I'm recording it here anyway so I can prove to Isaac when he's older that he really DID start reading before he was two, and it's not just that my memories of his early childhood have been clouded in the years since by motherly love.

(By the way-- Sorry I went behind your back and told all those people you talked to about how I started reading before I was two that your memories were just clouded by motherly love, Mom. Touche).

Looks like we might have a third-generation literature major on our hands.

Maybe this one will get lucky and actually have enough discipline to write famous novels!

Of course, I'm pretty sure his dad is still rooting for him to either be a world class hockey player or a computer engineer . . . **

* Unless you count his father's obsession with Wheel of Fortune.
** Edit: Upon reading this, John insists that he only likes watching strangers on skates beat each other up. He claims he does not want acually to see his own son getting beaten by people on skates. But you wouldn't guess this from the way he's taught Isaac to jump up and down screaming "GOAL!" Or from the hockey-themed clothing he has encouraged Isaac to pick out at the store . . .

Ode to an OT

Oh, Michelle! Michelle who comes to our house instead of making us drive 45 minutes and then wait 20 minutes to see her in a sterile, un-childproofed office. Michelle with her bag of bright, squishy, irresistable toys. Michelle who sits on the floor all the time when she's here so as to be at child-eye-level. Michelle who brings tests, equipment, and treatments designed for a toddler instead of an eight-year-old.

Michelle, who has been the first healthcare professional besides our family doctor to treat Isaac like a child with an eating problem instead of a problem child.

Isaac tried BARBEQUE SAUCE today, thanks to Michelle.

Now if only we could get Great West to actually cover her services before our healthcare FSA runs out.

*sigh*

Husband Material*

*Note: not available for serious dating until 2022

Today, as I was gathering dirty clothes for laundry, Isaac came up to me and said, "Dryer?"

"No sweetheart," I responded as I piled together some whites for a light-colored load, "I am putting these in the washer to get clean. Then we will put them in the dryer."

Before I could stop him, he ran to his own laundry basket, grabbed two baby-sized handfuls of clothes, and ran to the utility closet. I heard a thump as he threw his body against something. I came out of the bedroom to see what he'd done.

Despite being about a foot shorter than our top-loading washer, apparently by jumping, he'd managed to throw them all in. And, looking inside the washer, I discovered the clothes were all light-colored! Unless it was just an amazing coincidence, he'd apparently noticed I was sorting my own clothes and not grabbing anything dark, and decided to follow suit.

Then, when I had the load together, he insisted on helping me pour in the soap and set the dial.

Did I mention that he's already been helping me load the dryer for months, and he also likes to dust, use the lint roller, put his toys back in his toy box, and wipe off the dining room table?

Maybe I don't need a maid.

Now, if I could just get him to learn how to scrub applesauce and playdough out of the carpet, and to stop unfolding clothes as I fold them . . .

Domestic Spying

Or, Why I Love this Family of Mine

Just like the President of the United States, lately I've been eavesdropping on my neighbors without a warrant.

However, unlike our Dear Leader, I haven't been doing it on purpose. For the past couple of weeks, our baby monitor has been on the fritz. I'm not sure what happened; we've had it for over a year and a half, and it's never seriously malfunctioned until recently. But about a month and a half ago, one of the recievers started randomly picking up all sorts of feedback and static, and more recently it's begun almost exclusively picking up actual audio signals from other baby monitors in our apartment building (instead of the signal from the transmitter in Isaac's room TWENTY FEET AWAY, which it apparently has lost the ability to hear) .

More than half the residents in our complex seem to be families with small children, so there are LOTS of baby monitor signals flying around. Ever since we moved in here a year ago, I've always kind of assumed that some of our neighbors were probably picking up signal from our monitor now and again and listening to us. Frankly, I've never thought much of it, because despite the fancy tennis courts and clubhouse and the high rent, this complex is cheaply built, and my next-door and upstairs neighbors could probably hear half of what goes on in my home each day through the paper-thin walls of our building with their own ears if they gave half a try.

So, it doesn't much bother me that someone might be eavesdropping on me. But hearing other people's conversations over the transmitter freaks me out. I feel like a sleazy voyeur, despite the accidental nature of these encounters.

The truth is, despite having spoken with most of my neighbors in person, I can't actually usually tell who I'm hearing on the monitor. The sound is always distorted, kind of like it is with those voice disguisers they use on TV news shows when they're interviewing corporate whistleblowers and people in the witness protection program, and though I can usually guess the gender of the speaker, and make out a few of the words, I can't recognize the owner of the voice, which is a relief. But it still creeps me out on some fundamental moral level to be secretly eavesdropping on someone else's home life, even if I don't have a clue who I'm listening to. And besides, I'm trying to hear what's going on in MY baby's room, not someone else's apartment.

So, whenever I start picking up sound from someone else's place, I immediately try moving the reciever, or turning off the radio or the tv, or changing the wireless channel.

But sometimes it seems no matter what I do, the voices just keep coming through, and I wind up hearing a whole five minutes of snatches of someone else's conversation before I get totally exasperated and turn the monitor off.

We've tried moving our other electronic equipment. We've tried messing with the settings on the monitor. There doesn't seem to be any way to fix this situation short of getting ourselves a new baby monitor and HOPING that that one will pick up its own signal without picking up everyone else's. So, I'm researching them online right now, and I hope to have a new one sometime in the next few days, and my spying days will be over.

However, I have learned something important from this secret surveilance adventure. It's something I probably shouldn't know, since I shouldn't really be spying on my neighbors, even if I've been doing it accidentally. But despite my guilt over how I've come by this knowledge, I can't help but be glad and a little proud now that I have it.

MY FAMILY LIFE IS TOTALLY AWESOME.

How have I come to this conclusion, you may ask? Because I now know that all of my neighbors with small children argue, angrily and loudly with each other, ALL OF THE TIME. I'm not exactly sure who's starting these arguments, or what they are arguing about, since as I said the voices I hear aren't that clear and anyway I try not to listen too hard, and I'm glad I don't know, because that would be awkward. But sheesh. Here I thought I had it bad because I cry to John one or two nights a week about how I can't get the boy to eat or sleep like a normal person and I don't have any friends anymore now that I'm a SAHM and he just doesn't understand what I'm going through* and meanwhile, all my neighbors are having all-out shouting matches with each other EVERY DAY.

I guess things are abnormally calm and content around here, after all.

Score one for domestic surveilance.

You still shouldn't be doing it, though, George.

*(because he gets to shower and shave and put gel in his hair and leave the house every day, and then he talks to his friends and plays cards on his lunch hour and gets praise from his bosses all day at work, while I scrub floors and wash dishes and try to finish writing projects in ratty jeans and a t-shirt while someone still-mostly-non-verbal tries to draw on the furniture and throws applesauce at me )

An Open Letter to My Body from My Mind:

Dear Body,

Okay, I'll admit it straight out. I am a flawed mind. I may not always have the willpower to do everything that's best for you, even when I technically know what's best to do. Sure, I don't get enough sleep, or enough exercise, lately. I have a tendency to indulge in a bit too much chocolate from time to time. But it's almost always dark chocolate. And that has bioflavonoids, and antioxidants, and stuff! It's almost healthy for you! Remember? We read about it one time on the internet.

(And maybe I had a few too many drinks on two or three isolated occasions while we were in college. But I think you were secretly encouraging me the whole time anyway, because you have this side that's into all manner of debauchery the sort of which I DO NOT APPROVE that you know it's easier to trick a mind into when you intoxicate it).

Anyway, despite these transgressions I must point out that for the most part, I've taken pretty decent care of you thus far in our life. In fact, if you'd care to pay attention to my processing of optical information about other people lately, you might realize you have it pretty good.

I've kept us vegetarian, after all, for over a decade! We eat whole grains, and fruits and vegetables, and take our vitamins, every single day. We don't smoke, we don't drink soda, and we rarely drink alcohol anymore. As a result of these efforts on my part to resist, ahem, your outdated evolutionarily-encouraged urges, you are within the ideal medical weight range for our age and height.

We may not be all that athletically inclined, but it's not like we spend all of our free time sitting at the computer or watching television-- we lift weights, sometimes. We walk places that are within walking distance instead of taking the car. And I asked for that exercise ball for Christmas, just for you, when I could have gotten myself a DVD, or language practice software to brush up on my Hindi with, or something.

I even let you REPRODUCE yourself not very long ago, with the genetic assistance of a very fine male specimen we both picked out for lifetime emotional companionship and reproductive collaboration. Which, I might point out, is at least half the reason we don't get enough sleep and exercise these days. Not to mention the fact that the whole human-making-and-birthing process was really a MAJOR PAIN IN THE ASS. Figuratively and literally. And I'm planning to do it again sometime!

So, Body, please take into careful consideration the fact that I, our Mind, have really been pretty good to you over the past two and a half decades.

With that in mind (no pun intended, Bod), do you think that perhaps you could STOP IT ALREADY with the pain?

The lower back pain, the knee pain, the ankle pain. The impacted wisdom teeth (I'll get them taken out, already, okay? As soon as I can get the dental insurance company to stop whining and balking and actually cover it. I've been trying for six months straight. So stop complaining). The migraines. The costochondritis (I have to pick the baby up at least fifteen times a day every day. It won't stop for at least another year. And he's only going to get heavier. So suck it up already).

And, oh yeah, one more thing I would like you to stop doing, while we're discussing it. Those recurring ovarian cysts on our left side. Especially that.

Because you see, body, I know you've been storing that genetic material up there in that left ovary for future use ever since we ourselves were still in the womb. And if you keep scaring the crap out of me and ruining my productivity with this terrible, risky, painful habit you have of developing a cyst or two on that left ovary at least once every six to twelve months, I, your Mind, am going to have to ask a professional to TAKE THE WHOLE THING OUT. Then we'll only have one ovary left, just one, to regulate hormones and make babies with. Half of that precious genetic bank deposit, gone, just like that. Snip.

Your move, Body.

Thank you,

Your Mind.

New Hope

We saw a new occupational therapist on Tuesday. The company she works for, called PS Kids, was recommended to me by a parent in Isaac's playgroup. They aren't in-network on our new insurance, of course, so we'll have to pay total cost until we exhaust our $1,000 out-of-network deductible, and even after that, we'll still be stuck with 50% of each bill.

But after weeks of searching, I haven't been able to find ANY pediatric occupational therapists who:

1.) Are willing to work with children under the age of five

2.) Are willing to work with severely underweight children with feeding disorders who are under the age of five

3.) Have any openings for new patients before next December

AND

4.) Actually take our insurance.


Aside from the Cardinal Glennon Feeding Team, of course (*grumble* *mutter* *curse*).

So I'm kinda at the end of my rope with this finding a specialist who takes our insurance thing.

Anyway, when I called PS Kids, I found out they give discounts and offer payment plans for people whose insurance won't cover the service, AND they make housecalls.

So I decided to make an evaluation appointment.

And guess what? Just as I have suspected for months, the therapist from PS Kids thinks that the cause of Isaac's eating problems is, in fact, most likely Sensory Integration Disorder.

The fact that, after months of testing and testing and researching, someone has finally given us a specific diagnosis that makes sense is remarkable enough to start me doing a happy dance in and of itself.

But I found myself even more impressed, and relieved, by what this woman didn't say.

She didn't say, for example, that Isaac, my sweet, mostly-well-behaved, polite little boy, has been starving himself since the age of eight months because he "lacks discipline" and has a "manipulative personality."

She didn't tell me it was all my fault that he didn't like solid food because I'd nursed him "too long" and made him too attached to breastfeeding.

She didn't tell us we could fix him through strict punishment by scolding him fiercely or locking him in his room if he threw a single piece of pasta off the dinner table (mind you, he's less than two), or by witholding all food for the rest of the day if he refused to eat what we wanted him to.

She didn't tell us to stop giving him nutritional supplements and vitamins, cut out all food he's currently willing to eat, offering only food he dislikes-- to, in effect, starve him for days at a time until he was so ravenously hungry he'd be willing to try something new.

Nope, she didn't say any of those things, because she's not Barb the Draconian Dietician from the Cardinal Glennon Feeding Team.

Instead, she recommended intensive occupational therapy to desensitize him to various textures and help his confused nervous system reorganize itself. She gave us a list of theraputic activities to try, involving, among other things-- get this-- just as I imagined in a previous entry--

APPLESAUCE AND PLAY-DOH.

(Maybe I should be an occupational therapist).

And Isaac seems to like her a lot, to boot.

My fingers are crossed . . .

Holiday Wrap-Up

So, the holidays mostly sucked for me, which is why I didn't post during them, because despite the title of my blog I am actually not the gloomiest of persons and I am getting tired of only seeming to be able to come up with complainy-sorts of things to say when I blog, and anyway I didn't want to get even more depressed during the holidays by complaining about them.

Even if I am brilliant at complaining.

But I feel the need to at least summarize.

So, I was sick (again), and I had a writing project due, because despite my best efforts to get it out of the way before Christmas, I couldn't start on it until the week before, because the client didn't get the data I needed to start it to me until then. And we had too many places we were obligated to go, with too little time, and Isaac was stressed out and angry and (*gasp*) wouldn't eat anything at anyone else's house, and everyone was constantly trying to give us loving and well-meaning and under-informed and, well, let's say, less-than-useful advice about his eating issues, such as "Strap him to a chair and don't let him out until he eats," or "Set a sixty-second timer and tell him he has to eat three peas before it buzzes or you'll force-feed him a whole pot," or, the old stand-by, my absolute favorite, "Ignore it-- he won't starve himself sick. No child would do that."

(Never mind that he already has).

ROLFMAO, my friends, ROLFMAO.

And I had a major blow-out with my sister over her not coming to see us on Christmas, or the Friday before or the Monday after Christmas, or even the weekend before or after Christmas, because her boyfriend wanted to visit his father and his foster sister and his cousins and his second cousins and his cousins once removed and his best friend and his ex-girlfriend's mother for Christmas instead. (That's right: my sister's boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's mother ranks higher than me on my sister's Holiday Visit list. True story*).

And John had to work on New Year's Eve, so I spent it alone with a cranky kid who couldn't sleep because of fireworks outside, and the the consequently sleepy Isaac took a frightful spill on the sidewalk and nearly broke his skull on New Year's Day, so we had to cancel on the annual family dinner, but that was probably for the best as at that point I wasn't sure if I could take one more person giving me friendly cockamamie advice on how to get Isaac to eat something without telling them to eat their own words. Pun intended.

And as usual, I missed my mother and my kid brother, the two of whom I haven't been able to visit with on a holiday since the year 2000. Despite having new family now, I still find myself longing pretty frequently for the old one. Even if they did drive me nuts all the time when I did still see them regularly.

But Isaac got a mad haul of toys from The Grandmas, and he had tons of fun playing with his smallest uncles, and our $10 mostly-Isaac-proofed holiday tree looked TOTALLY AWESOME, even if no one but us saw it. So it wasn't all bad.

In fact, it probably would have felt better if I'd maintained a better attitude from the beginning. I think my childhood experiences in a divorced and dysfunctional, constantly arguing family conditioned me to expect to be unhappy and stressed out on the holidays, so I wouldn't be disappointed when it inevitably happened. Trouble is, expectations like that can become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, where you get so stressed in anticipation of stress that you're stressed no matter what, even if things don't turn out nearly as badly as you anticipated.

That's a thing I need to work on, there.

So, here we go: a New Year's Resolution:

I will try to stop being such a freaking pessimist all the time ;)



*Edit: After I though about this, I felt the need to mention that the fact that my sister hangs out with her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's mom is not actually quite as odd as it sounds. My sister's boyfriend's ex-girlfriend passed away suddenly and unexpectedly a couple of years ago, due to an accidental drug overdose, and although my sister's boyfriend and his ex had been broken up for a long time, the news of her death was still pretty hard on him, and of course it was devastating to the ex-girlfriend's mom. So I actually think it's rather honorable and kind of my sister to go with her boyfriend to visit his ex-girlfriend's mother on holidays. But I don't understand her using that obligation as a primary excuse for not being able to find even 30 minutes to spend with her own local family members over the holidays, especially considering that my sister lives less than 15 minutes away from us! Grrrr. Cue Lifetime docudrama music. My sister and I so have issues.

Overcharge.com

or,

Making the System Work for Me!

Okay, so I hate buying from Overstock.com, because nearly every time we have placed an order with them, there has been some sort of annoying glitch. The first time I bought something from them, I did so with a free shipping coupon through PayPal, but they charged me for shipping anyway, and it took me FOUR HOURS on the Overstock help chat line, on the phone with Overstock, and on the phone with PayPal to resolve the issue.

(And before you ask, no, it was not worth four hours of my precious time just to save a couple of bucks; it was the principle of the thing. Having worked for years in the retail and customer service industry during which I continually forced myself to be nice to people much snarkier than I, I can't stand bad customer service, and so when bad service happens to me, I generally try my best to do something about it. Even if that means subjecting myself to even more bad customer service for a couple of hours straight until I finally get a hold of someone who will help me).

Another time when we bought from them, the item was poorly packaged and shipped late, and another time, the item we received not only didn't really match its description on the website, but was also inordinately complicated to put together, on a Byzantine level, and only came with a single poorly illustrated page of instructions, in German.

(If I'd been better friends with Peter Nacken at the time, I might have just scanned the instructions and sent them to him to translate for me, but they were so bad I'm not sure even a native speaker could have figured them out).

So, I am not a fan of Overstock.com. But at Christmas time, when the heating bills are high and the extra freelance writing income is low, being a most-unwealthy SAHM, and therefore a serious penny-pincher, I become so huge a fan of low prices as to occasionally be tempted to compromise my principles.

Not so far as to buy all my holiday presents at Wal-Mart on Black Friday or something. But yes, so far as to give it another whirl at Overstock, upon discovering that they have refurbished CD-ROM drives on sale for a really, really good price, and needing just exactly that type of drive for the computer my husband is building for Xmas for my home-schooled 12-year-old brother, who lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and has never had his own computer before.

So, reluctantly, we decided to try Overstock.com one more time.

And the drive arrived in short order, in a plain brown box, with inadequate packaging, a bunch of cords, and no instructions. And a cracked case.

And it doesn't work. It spins disks, but it won't talk to any of our computers, no matter how John, the IT professional, tries to coax it. And, being that John knows a lot about how to make computers work, and being that we have four different machines in the house right now, with three different operating systems, and he's tested the drive on each of them, THIS INDICATES A MAJOR PROBLEM.

So, my husband contacted Overstock.com via their live help chat today:

Welcome to Overstock.com Customer Service, you are now chatting with Spencer.

Spencer: Thank you for visiting Overstock.com, this is Spencer, how may I help you today?
You: I recently purchased a refurbished memorex external CD-RW from you, but it does not appear to work
Spencer: I would be happy to help you with that.
Spencer: Could you please provide me the order number and the catalog number of the item?
You: order number [xxxxxxxxx]
You: sku [xxxxx]
Spencer: Thank you.
Spencer: For security purposes, may I ask you to verify the name and billing address on your account?
You: John X at [address xxxxx].
Spencer: Thank you for verifying.
Spencer: Are you referring to 'Memorex External 52x32x52x CD-RW Drive'.
You: yes
Spencer: Please stay online while I forward this issue to thetech support.
You: ok...
Spencer: I have escalated this issue and you will be contacted soon.
Spencer: I understand, and I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
You: contacted how?
Spencer: You will be contacted by email or phone.
You: how soon will this be? this is a christmas present that i need to send to another state
You: also i need to go into work in an hour
Spencer: You will be contacted within 7 days.
You: that's not acceptable
Spencer: I apologize for the additional time this will take, and look forward to a positive resolution.
You: why will it take 7 days?
Spencer: You will be contacted within 7 days.

****

Clearly, I realized, despite the claim of "live chat," this "Spencer" character must not actually be a real person, but some sort of artificially-semi-intelligent android, with a penchant for meaningless repetition due to limited vocabulary!

Having dealt muchly with Overstock androids before, and being possessed of a much, much more wicked tongue than my dear gentler half, at this point, I asked my husband to allow me to take over and "translate" his sentiments for him, to see if I could get anywhere.

ENTER JAELITHE'S TRANSLATION ON BEHALF OF JOHN

****

You: this will not be a positive resolution if it takes 7 days to resolve it
You: we will not have time to get the present to its recipient
You: you cannot look forward to a positive resolution under these circumstances
Spencer: I understand, and I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
You: so please cut the corporate script speak and help me
You: before you lose a customer
You: should we just return this?
You: how quickly can you ship a new one?
Spencer: Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused to you.
Spencer: I am sorry that you have had troubles shopping with Overstock.com for your previous order.
Spencer: I am confident that such incidents will never happen in your future purchases with us.
You: i cannot accept your apologies until you actually help me
Spencer: I hope you will give us a second chance to demonstrate our commitments.
You: so please stop apologizing and help me
You: are you even a real person?
You: i would like to return this if it is going to take seven days for a tech consult
You: i am a computer programmer
Spencer: Yes..
You: this problem is not on my end
Spencer: You will be contacted soon.
You: 7 days is not soon
You: i need this to be escalated to management immediately
Spencer: I am sorry, however please wait till the time frame.
You: can you connect me to a manager, please? preferably one who is authorized to actually speak to me and respond to my questions instead of reading from a script?
You: i will not wait
Spencer: I understand, and I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
You: you will connect me to a manager or another person who can help me immediately, or i will not shop with you ever again
You: and i will return this item
You: and i will report this entire conversation, which i have been recording, on my weblog
You: and send it to my local newspaper
You: so i suggest you keep our relationship civil by connecting me to a manager
Spencer: May I place you on hold for a minute or two while I research this for you?
You: certainly

[lengthy pause]

Mark: I'm sorry to keep you waiting, John.
Mark: This is Mark, the floor supervisor.

****

Hehehehehehehehehe

So, here's the handy tip of the day, kids:

If you need to get in touch with a manager on the help chat at Overstock.com, threaten to post the entirety of their ineffectual "help" chat with you on your blog. Then get the manager to actually help you resolve the issue in a semi-reasonable fashion. (Which, after some apparently ritual further ridiculous ado about nothing, Mark finally did. He even gave us a coupon).

Then, post the conversation on your blog anyway, just so all your friends think twice about being tempted by those low prices.

(Hey, I never said I wouldn't).

:P

They should just be happy I'm not sending it in to the newspaper.

(P.S. Sorry for the lack of capitalization and punctuation and for any typos in the chat, but the client they use takes for-ev-er to load as you type, so we were trying to save time).

The Starvation Team

I know, I know. Again with the long-time no-posty. Not even to my Fotolog, or Flickr, which as my friends know, is really uncharacteristic! But at least lately I have an excuse, as for the past two weeks I have been sick, sick, SICK with some industrial-grade version of the common cold that has caused me to run a gamut of unpredictable symptoms, beginning with sniffles and a vicious, itchy sore throat of the sort that could tempt you to chug whisky until the pain goes away even though you hate whisky and you're still very occasionally nursing (no, I didn't :P), progressing through chills, fever, body aches, and sinus headaches the size and temperament of New York City, arriving at my current state of 24-hour cotton-headed fatigue and physical weakness spiked with fits of deep-chested coughing that sound so scary the baby will run up to me, put his hands on my chest, and say "NO" very sternly to my ribcage.

And who, you might ask, afflicted me with this disastrous virus? My loving son, Isaac, of course, who expressed his reaction to the illness mainly by waking in the night flushed with fever and refusing to eat more than three bites of food or drink more than a cup or two of liquid a day for FIVE DAYS straight. Which action on his part has caused him to lose a quarter of a precious, precious pound. So, not only have I been very sick; I have been stressing myself half to death watching the dangerously skinny boy eat even less than usual. (Which is probably why I'm still sick, while my husband and son both got over this thing in less than a week).

Needless to say, not so conducive to writing when I don't have to.

But I've been promising for some time now to post about the hospital-administered outpatient feeding program we recently tried with our son, so although I would rather be taking a nap at the moment, here goes.

After a performing multiple tests, including an upper endoscopy (yikes!) on our son to try to discover some underlying physical cause for his poor appetite and inadequate weight gain, only to come up with nothing time after time, a pediatric gastroenterologist we've been seeing suggested that the problem might be strictly behavioral, and referred us to a group of specialists at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital known as The Feeding Team.

Consisting of a dietician, a pediatric psychologist, and an occupational therapist, this group is apparently known all around town for using a multidisciplinary approach to help children overcome serious eating issues. After some wrangling with our insurance company over how they planned to charge us for seeing three specialists in one visit, we managed to get an appointment.

After months of searching for answers as to why my son has such a serious problem with eating, I was truly, if guardedly, hopeful that these Feeding Team people might finally really be able to help us. After all, I'd known all along that one of my son's major problems when it comes to eating is a serious texture aversion, and after doing a small amount of independent research on this in books and on the internet, I'd learned that a lot of toddlers with severe food texture issues really benefit from a psychological evaluation followed by occupational therapy.

Musing over what I'd read, I imagined that, perhaps, after thoroughly evaluating my son, these magical people called The Feeding Team would finally discover the root of the problem, and come up with some sort of brilliant custom comprehensive food texture desensitization plan, probably involving applesauce, Play Doh, and popsicle sticks, and after that (I fantasized) through repeated theraputic visits and diligent work done at home, one day in the not-so-distant future I would offer my son a plate of, say, macaroni-and-cheese, and, instead of making a face like I had just set a steaming pile of raw sewage on the table, shuddering, and decisively pushing it away, HE WOULD EAT IT.

So, it was with a positive attitude that I entered the Feeding Team office with my husband and son back in October for the first time.

(While we waited to be seen for that first appointment, I couldn't help but notice that the waiting room featured, among an assortment of other kid-friendly amusements to help patients pass the time, a full-length wavy fun-house-style mirror. I remember thinking briefly that that was really sort of a stupid thing to have in the waiting room of a practice that treats children with eating disorders. Perhaps this ought to have rung a louder warning bell . . .)

After we were called in, two members of the team, the dietician, Barb, and the occupational therapist, Jenifer-with-one-N, introduced themselves, and explained that the pediatric psychologist was unfortunately unavailable that day. Immediately I felt a twinge of disappointment, as I'd been hoping that this visit would include an in-depth psychological evaluation. But, I reasoned, if these people worked with a psychologist on a daily basis, surely they would have picked up enough knowledge of psychology to recognize whether a child's extreme picky eating was just that, or a symptom of a more serious underlying disorder, like, say, Post-Traumatic Feeding Disorder of Infancy, or Sensory Integration Dysfunction (which is something I have worried about with Isaac from time to time since in addition to his food aversion, he has difficulty sleeping and has strange reactions to certain loud noises).

The dietician and the occupational therapist asked us a series of questions about our son.

How long had he been experiencing weight issues and eating problems? Ever since he had surgery at eight months to remove a dermoid cyst on his face that was threatening to enter his brain. We also had to move to a new home that same week. It was a very time stressful for all of us, but especially him.

Did he have any other behavioral issues? Aside from being an extremely poor sleeper since birth, and having an unusually high activity level when awake, no. As a matter of fact, I took care to mention, he is particularly well-behaved for a toddler. He is kind to other children. He helps me with the laundry. He says "please" and "thank you," and even "I'm sorry," sometimes completely spontaneously. He listens a good 80% of the time when I tell him not do do things, often the first time I say no.

Was he or had he ever been developmentally behind? No. He crawled a bit on the late side of normal, and walked a bit on the late side of normal, too, but his language development has always been advanced for his age, and his social development also seems to be normal.

Then they asked us what sorts of things he was openly willing to eat (very few), at what times we offered him food at home (three regular meals and two more flexibly scheduled snacks, extras on the rare occasion he should actually tell us he wanted something), where he usually ate (at a high chair next to the family dining table), and how often we all ate together as a family (ever night at dinner during the week; generally breakfast, lunch and dinner on weekends).

After about half an hour of questioning, they gave us a meal to give Isaac (whom we had been instructed to deliberately starve for several hours before the appointment, so he would definitely be hungry), and went behind a two-way mirror to watch him eat and to watch us interact. Since it was mid-morning, they had included breakfast foods: bacon, eggs, fresh strawberries, a cup of milk, and, bizarrely, some sugar-coated colored cereal resembling Fruit Loops. I remember thinking it was truly odd that a medical team led by a dietician was offering my undernourished son Fruit Loops.

The only things the boy showed any interest in, of course, were the milk and the bacon. He wouldn't go near the cereal, I suppose because of the odd color, and the "slimy" fresh strawberries and "squishy" eggs were definitely out of the question. I did get him to touch the strawberries a few times, only to be rewarded with his trademark look of utter, unbearable disgust. Being as hungry as he was having skipped his regular morning nursing and breakfast, he did eat almost a whole piece of bacon.

Then the Feeding Team members came out and Barb the dietician declared that, since he had shown he could chew and swallow properly, our son had great potential. She noted that our feeding technique struck just the right balance, offering encouragement without being pushy or overly attentive. Our son's problem, she assured us, was clearly behavioral.

She went on to explain that our son was simply using food to undermine the family power structure, and, clearly, had been starving himself for the past nine months solely in order to manipulate us.

Then she handed us a photocopy with a list of feeding guidelines, and explained that in order to treat our son's severe behavioral problem, what we needed to do was to cut all of his "preferred" foods-- including especially his favorite food, dried fruit-- and all nutritional supplements completely out of his diet, always eat with him at precisely scheduled meals, feed him only what we ourselves were eating at every meal, and take away his food when we ourselves were finished eating. If he refused to eat at any meal, he would not be allowed to eat or drink anything except water until the next scheduled snack. If he threw so much as a single piece of pasta or french fry off the table, or started crying loudly because he didn't like the food, or tried to shake his milk out of his sippy cup, we were to scold him severely, immediately take away all of his food, and not allow him to eat or drink anything until the next meal. And, counter to the advice of our gastroenterologist, I should wean him completely as soon as humanly possible.

I was shocked. These people, who had never met my child before, had just spent 45 minutes interviewing us and come to the conclusion that for months he had been starving himself into ill health just because he was onery? And this draconian method was supposedly the only solution?

I was more than mildly pissed off.

I will paraphrase a bit of our further conversation:

"I don't believe 17-month-old children are capable of that type of complex manipulation," I said. "He's been doing this for ages, since he was much too young to have any thought of 'undermining family power structure,'" I said. "Aside from this one issue, and his sleep problems, he is INCREDIBLY WELL-BEHAVED!" I said. "He is severely underweight, which is why we were sent here, and you are asking me to stop giving him nutritional supplements multiple doctors have told us he needs, and to remove healthy food he likes completely from his diet!" I said. "And besides," I added, "this whole thing sounds like it's based on physical punishment, which is completely against my parenting philosophy! You are asking me to withhold food from my child because he doesn't like everything I serve to him, or because he misbehaves the way most toddlers misbehave at the table. You are asking me to try and starve my already underweight child into submission!"

"Actually," replied Barb the dietician cooly, "We prefer to call it appetite manipulation."

Jenifer the occupational therapist, who had largely remained quiet throughout our visit, added cheerfully, "There are plenty of days when my 19-month-old goes to bed without having eaten anything at all."

I wondered if Jenifer's son had starved himself so skinny by skipping dinner that, like Isaac, he was off the pediatric growth chart.

I doubted it.

"It's not really starvation," Barb insisted. "You're offering him nutritious food, and he's choosing not to eat it."

"But that's what I'm already doing," I replied. "I offer him good food, and most of the time, he chooses not to eat it. I'm here to try and get him to eat more, not less. If I only offer him food he doesn't like, he won't eat anything at all. Trust me on this. I know him. He is genuinely afraid of certain kinds of food. "

But both women insisted that after just a few days of this treatment, my son was sure to turn around. Some kids take as much as a week, they said, but then nearly all of them get on board. He might lose a little bit of weight at first, but he was sure to gain all of it back in short order once he started eating a much wider variety of food thanks to the program. They had seen tons of little boys just exactly like mine, they insisted. Same age, same problems. All had gotten better after a short time on the program.

My husband and I left in a bit of a huff, and also very confused about what to do next. I didn't know what to think. After months of struggling for answers, we were desperate to find someone who could help our son. And these were professionals, after all working at one of the best-rated children's hospitals in the country. We had been referred to them by a perfectly competent gastroenterologist. All the information I could find about them indicated that they came highly recommended, that they had years of experience, that they had a very high success rate.

The Cardinal Glennon magazine, published on their website, and other sources I found, spoke of brillant success stories. A boy, for example, hospitalized with a severe vitamin deficiency after a year of insisting on eating only chocolate pudding and french fries-- cured. A girl who had spent the entire first two-and-a-half years of her life on a feeding tube due to surgery as a newborn-- weaned successfully to a plethora of healthy solid foods in a matter of weeks.

At the same time, I knew as surely as I know anything that my son wasn't starving himself on purpose, to manipulate us. Aside from the fact that at 17 months I really didn't believe he possessed the level of sophisiticated reasoning required to launch such a serious, prolonged psychological attack on his parents (let alone that he'd had it at EIGHT months, when the trouble had originally started), that sort of manipulative behavior was not at all characteristic of his personality.

Of course, all toddlers try to test boundaries by pushing their parents' buttons, and my son had proved no exception to that rule, but if anything, outside of his food issues, he was MORE obedient and agreeable than most children his age, not less. (I may be a first-time mother, but I do have experience with other children to compare him to-- a much younger brother and younger cousins who had lived with my family when was a teenager, and the children I took care of during the years I spent working as a part-time nanny).

Besides, I had seen first hand, day in and day out, the genuine fear and disgust on his face when I presented him with certain types of food. He was really, truly terrified of even touching certain kinds of food. The kind of reaction I saw in him daily was not the sort of thing a child his age could fake. I knew it was real.

So, I knew with total certainty that their diagnosis of my son was wrong. Still, I reasoned, even if their methodology is totally off, did that mean their method was entirely wrong? They claimed to have cured so many children with more severe problems than his.

I decided to call the gastroenterologist and explain my concerns to him.

"Try it for a few days," he reasoned. "It does sound counterintuitive, but a few days won't hurt."

So, we tried it for a few days. A few MISERABLE, HORRIBLE, EXHAUSTING, EMOTIONALLY MUTILATING DAYS.

For the first two days, Isaac ate next to nothing. On the third day, he began asking me what I was cooking, at every meal, and then, (learning several new words instantly), began begging me for whatever it was I was making, crying, screaming, throwing himself against the gate to the kitchen until the food was finished. Then, when he sat down, he would put a bite or two in his mouth, smile a sad, game, little smile, and take the food back out of his mouth and politely set it back on his plate, and stare at it forlornly for the rest of the meal.

On the fourth day, he began trying to eat crayons, and paper.

Frantic, I called Barb the dietician. Despite her assurances during our first appointment that we could call her anytime to discuss problems we were having the the program, I quickly discovered that there is no way to actually reach her directly during the day, because her number does not connect to a live person, but a recording that instructs you to call 911 in case of emergency, or otherwise leave a voicemail message for the person of your choice. I was only able to leave a few urgent messages on her voicemail. I then managed to get through to Jenifer the occupational therapist, who seemed sincerely concerned, but she told me that she would not be able to advise me on anything until she spoke to Barb. Finally, at the end of the day, Barb called me.

"You said he would turn completely around by the end of the week," I said. "He's barely eaten or drunk anything in days besides cow's milk; he's hungry and cranky and crying all the time; he's waking up three or four times a night and begging for food, and now, he's started trying to eat things that aren't even edible!"

"Has he done that before?" Barb asked, sounding slightly alarmed.

"NO!"

"This is normal," Barb assured me, after a silent pause, her calm demeanor restored. "He will be better by the end of the week. Just give it a little more time."

Finding no satisfaction with her over the phone, I decided to talk to another sort of expert, a good friend of mine who, as an adult, has a severe phobia of trying new foods, and eats only about 14 things.

"Do you think this will make him hate me forever? Will I just wind up making him worse?" I asked my friend after explaining the program to him.

"No," my friend said. "You should force him to eat new things. The only reason I'm willing to eat peanut butter is because my parents sent me off to camp for a week one summer, and if I hadn't learned to eat something new there, I would have starved."

Then I called the gastroenterologist. He, too, suggested I continue with the program.

So, we gave it a few more days. On the fifth day, I had some encouragement. Isaac tried fresh banana. BANANA! Quite possibly the slimiest food on earth! And he liked it, which is really no surprise, since he's been obsessed with dried banana for months, and as part of the plan, we had cut it completely out of his diet. (He liked the fresh banana, I should say, enough to eat it while starving. But he still winced every time he put it in his mouth). The next day, he tried applesauce, which he had actually eaten with gusto when younger, but had been refusing to go near for months. The next, fresh apples. And later that same evening, he tried a bite or two of apple pie.

Maybe this will work, I began to think. My son is beyond cranky all day, and he is waking up all night, and I know he is really freaked out and scared about all this new food being forced on him all the time and I know he is in physical pain from not eating, and I feel absolutely awful about this whole thing and it doesn't seem right to me at all to be doing it, but maybe it will work, and if I can get him to eat enough food to be healthy, in the long run, all this will be worth it. That is what I thought.

Besides, every single person I asked about it kept telling me to try it for a little longer.

So, we decided to stick with the program. We went in for another appointment with The Feeding Team. The psychologist, mysteriously, still wasn't there. They weighed Isaac. He hadn't gained any weight, but he hadn't lost a significant amount, either. This is when the turnaround happens, they told us. "He's tried four new foods already-- that's fantastic!" they said. He will surely start eating more regularly any day now, the told us and then he will start gaining weight.

During the second and third week on the program, he did not start eating any more new foods. He stopped eating apple pie and apple sauce. And he went day after day, for days at a time, not eating a single bite of dinner.

He continued to wake up multiple times each night, crying piteously for food. He began showing an intense level of separation anxiety regarding me that I had never seen in him before. If his father went in at night to try to comfort him back to sleep, which he had previously been accustomed to and fine with, he would begin screaming "Mommy!" at the top of his lungs, over and over again, crying and gasping for breath, for up to an hour, until I came in the room. My son's father has given him most of his baths since birth, but suddenly, my the boy began screaming in fear every time his dad said the word "bath," and insisted on having me within sight at all times at bathtime. During the day, he attached himself to my hip, crying franticallly every time I got more than 5 feet away from him.

Mind you, my son sees me ALL DAY LONG. EVERY DAY.

His body was trying to grow during that time, and managed something along the lines of an eighth to a quarter of an inch-- enough to make all of his size 12 month pants noticeably too short. But he didn't gain an ounce; with the upward growth, he lost girth; his now too-short pants began falling off his waist, and his ribs and shoulder blades began to stick out even more clearly through his skin.

In the middle of all this, we had a scare: one morning, Isaac had a severe allergic reaction I hadn't seen before. His face swelled up, and his cheeks broke out in hives. We had given him less than a teaspoon of peanut butter for the first time two hours earlier that morning. I was terrified that he might have developed a peanut allergy. We couldn't get in to see an allergist for four days. In the meantime, our family doctor got us an Epi-Pen, and I called The Feeding Team to tell them we might have to modify the program until we could find out what my son was allergic to.

Barb the dietician, when I finally was able to reach her, asked me why I thought I needed to change things just because of an allergy.

I explained that both our family doctor and the allergist we were waiting to see had told us to avoid every food that might possibly contain or have come in contact with peanuts until we could see the allergist, and that we needed to stop introducing him to new foods for the time being in case the allergy was to something else, and only feed him things we knew would not cause any reaction.

Barb replied that I should really calm down about this whole thing, as even if he did have a peanut allergy she was sure I would be able to find a "comfort level" with it eventually, and that really it would probably be safe to go ahead and feed him foods containing peanut oil before we saw the allergist, because most people with peanut allergies are just allergic to peanut protein, and not all peanut oil has protein in it.

I told her I was not going to try any new foods or anything with peanuts in it until we saw an allergist, and hung up the phone, indignant. Who was she to contradict our family doctor and an allergist?

But still, avoiding peanuts, we stuck to the program as best we could; a few days later, we got in to see an allergist and found out, thankfully, that our son was not allergic to peanuts, and had probably reacted to a household cleaner, so we were able to proceed as before.

We went in to see The Feeding Team for yet again (still no psychologist). I told them of my son's lack of progress after three weeks on their program. They were nonchalant.

"It takes some kids a month to catch on," Barb assured us. "He'll get there. Besides, he's still not losing any weight."

[You may recall that at our first meeting, they had told us most kids only take a week, not a month, to turn around on this program].

"But he's not gaining any weight," I countered. "He is already severely underweight for his age. Our family doctor is very concerned about it. That's why we brought him here. He needs to gain weight. When we brought him here, we had finally gotten him gaining again, just not enough. Now his weight has completely flatlined. What does it matter if he eats a slightly wider variety of food if he's still not eating enough? His height has already dropped from the 90th to the 25th percentile in the past few months. His weight problem is stunting his growth."

At that point, Barb insisted to us that she really thought the height thing could really just be a natural correction toward our son's destined final height, since, after all, my husband and I aren't all that large.

My husband is six feet tall.

And I myself am no shrinking violet at 5'7", two inches above the national average for women.

We're both well above the 25th percentile for height, and always have been. Since birth. As we had noted on the family history we filled out before joining the program.

I gave her a look.

"Maybe you should start allowing some of his preferred foods back into his diet for a while, " she then suggested, rather lamely.

It was at this point that I came to a realization: Barb the dietician did not care whether my son gained weight. Barb the dietician did not care whether my son started growing again at a normal rate, and caught back up to his growth curve. Barb the dietician did not care whether my son was physically miserable because he wasn't eating enough to sustain himself; she didn't care if I was stressed out about it; she didn't care if our entire family life was falling apart because of our attempt to stick to her extreme set of recommendations.

All that Barb the dietician cared about, at the end of the day, was promoting her stupid program.

And if it failed with my son, and we dropped out, I realized, all she had to do was say we hadn't followed it properly, and voila: no blemish on her oft-reported "stellar" success record.

But did I get up and run out of the office right then? I am ashamed to say, no. After all, I was desperate. It had taken us months to get a referral to these specialists, and I knew for a fact this was the only group in town who regularly took pediatric feeding disorder cases, because for the past week, in my frustration with The Feeding Team, I had called around to multiple different pediatric doctors and hospitals trying to get information on someone else who might help us, and everyone I'd spoken with said that they were sorry but they couldn't touch psych-related Failure to Thrive with a ten foot pole, and then cheerfully suggested I see The Feeding Team at Cardinal Glennon.

So, I didn't run from the office and slam the door behind me. Instead, I told Barb and Jenifer that I wanted to see the psychologist.

It was at that point that we were informed that the reason we had never seen The Feeding Team's psychologist was that our insurance wouldn't cover her, as this much-touted "expert" on child feeding issues had been in practice for less than five years.

Jenifer (who, despite her seeming utter deference to Barb and her initial unsettling comment about how often she forced her son to skip dinner, I actually do sort of like, because she does seem to genuinely care about my son) then offered to run a Sensory Integration survey test on Isaac.

Why it did not occur to anyone to do this in the first place given his clear texture aversion symptoms, I have NO IDEA.

The only catch was, we would have to come in to see them one more time to drop off the Sensory Survey.

So, we filled out the survey, and dropped it off at our next appointment (delayed for a week, of course, due to the aforementioned family illness), where I basically told them I had no interest in continuing to pay for their advice if they could tell me anything that would actually help my child.

I have no idea whether or not to trust whatever results we get back from that survey.

But, in the meantime, we have completely stopped following The Starvation Team's feeding program. We have gone back to our old scheduled-flexible way of eating, feeding Isaac when he's hungry, whether or not he misbehaved at the last meal. We've gone back to gently encouraging him to expand his diet instead of demanding, giving him lots of things he likes to eat, alongside new things and foods he's been offered many times but never touched. I have started nursing Isaac occasionally again, although after coming so near to complete weaning, I have almost no milk left.

In short, we are slowly trying to regain our son's trust when it comes to food. He is still really cranky a lot of the time, and he's still waking up at night, and he's still crazy-clingy, and lately he's refusing to eat couple of things he used to be relatively okay with, before he went a month without eating them because we'd been advised to cut them out.

But he is very, very happy that his dried apples and bananas are back.

*sigh*