Playin' Catch Up

I think I am due for a catch up post.  Maybe after you read just how much has happened in the last three weeks, you will understand why I haven’t had time to post as often as I would have liked to….
First Mr B went to Lexington to visit some friends for a weekend after his birthday.  He had a great time with the Loose Baggy Monster.  In case you didn’t know, I married a rock star.  They’re pretty good.  You should check out the monster {here} or {here}.

The Loose Baggy Monster: Mr B on lead guitar and vocals, Luke (LJB's BFF) on bass and back up vocals, Tall Paul on guitar, and Kick Stand on the drums

After a weekend as a single mommy, I was waiting for Mr B to get home.   Our little poodle, Frodo, used to climb up on the arm of the couch and do the happiest little jig when we would get home.  His whole body would shake – he was so happy to see us, he just couldn’t control himself.  Occasionally this would result in an accident on the rug, but it was nice to know he missed us, even if we were only gone for 5 minutes out to the mailbox.  I felt the same way when I heard Mr B’s key turning in the lock after he had been home for the weekend – minus the accident on the rug.  : )

Frodo: post happy dance and in dire need of a haircut

We’ve also been working hard with LJB’s therapists over the past few weeks.  Tantrums have been greatly reduced.  I can only count 3 tantrums in the past 3 weeks that went beyond the normal I’m-2-years-old-and-you-have-the-nerve-to-tell-me-no tantrums.  As parents of a kiddo on the spectrum, a lot of therapy is more for us than for LJB.  Mr B and I have learned how to calm him, how to better communicate with him, how to better understand what he needs.  It’s been great for us.  We both felt so distant and not connected to this little creature carrying our DNA.  We have also become more proficient in our sign language skills.  All three of us.  LJB regularly signs more, eat, help, and open.  He is also using the words – really using them for their intended meaning.  Pretty cool.

The crib.  Notice the couch cushion for extra pressure.  BTW, Mr B picked out this sleeping ensemble. ;)

Of all the behavior troubles we’ve had, LJB had always been a great sleeper.  From the time he was about 4 months old, we put him in his crib awake and within 15 minutes and no crying, he would drift of to sleep.  It was amazing.  He usually spent the hour before bedtime screaming his head off, but at least I knew that when it was over he would sleep like a champ.  Last Wednesday this all changed.  Mr B and I were getting ready and hadn’t heard a peep from LJB’s room.  About 7:30, he came running into our room.  I looked over at Mr B. 
“Did you get him out of bed?”
“Nope.”
“Lennon, how did you get out of your bed?”
LJB squats down to the floor.  “Bounce.”
Then he took me to his room and showed me exactly how he bounced out of his crib. 

Refusing to admit defeat, we battled the rest of last week trying to get him to sleep in his crib.  Before we could get out of his room and close the door, he would bounce out again.  On Friday, we converted his crib to the toddler bed.  I spent Friday night sleeping in the toddler bed with our little dude.  On Saturday, I slept most of the night in his floor.  Sunday night, no one slept at all.  Then suddenly, on Monday, I guess he had enough (I sure know I had!) and at bedtime he voluntarily climbed into his bed.  He came out of his room about 3 times, but eventually stayed and slept all night.  Tuesday night, he got in bed and only came out once. I am proud to report that for the past 2 nights, he has gone to bed and not come out a single time and slept all night.  I feel like super-mommy!!!  The secret we learned was to give him all the sensory input his little heart desires before putting him in the bed.  This basically means Netflix streaming Blue’s Clues and a full body massage for at least an hour leading up to bedtime.  I wish someone would give me an hour-long massage before bed…

So, that’s what we’ve been up to.  Not to mention our regular full-time jobs, 4 hours of therapy each week, finding new childcare for the school year (more to come on that one), and trying to find a little time to have fun and do some thrifting/crafting/reading/etc.

As much as I’d like to tell you I will be back on my thrice weekly blogging schedule, I’m afraid I may not be able to make that promise.  We are moving at the end of the month.  LJB’s Gramma is coming to spend the last week of August with us to help get the new house ready, pack, and move.  I hate the physical labor part of moving, but the rest of it is kind of fun.  I like re-organizing and decorating.   We also have a follow-up intensive level evaluation for LJB on the 28th.  I am hoping for more answers from the eval and I’m anxious to have a more objective picture of his progress.  And finally, we start September with pre-school.  Whew!  All of that to say, I may be MIA for a bit longer, but Mr B and I will check in as often as we can and then I PROMISE to be back on the regular schedule after we get moved and settled in.

Goodbye to Gore

Gore Vidal has gone with the wind.  The world woke up a little worse.  I admit to reading only one of his novels, the scandalous and deeply troubling book for a teenaged boy called Myra Breckenridge.  To even tell you what the novel is about constitutes a mortal sin.  He wrote lots of bigger, heavier books—in both senses of the word—like Burr and Lincoln.  But I read about Mr./Ms. Breckenridge instead, feeling deeply strange and conspiratorial, like I was cracking the secret code of adulthood perversion at the ripe age of fourteen. It would be much later before I discovered that this purveyor of smut was a great public intellectual/sometime actor, the senator running against hyper-conservative Bob Roberts, the highbrow professor of With Honors (remember that one all you Joe Pesci or Brendan Fraser fans?).

Vidal was a great essayist, perhaps one of the finest ever in the English language.  He famously sparred with William F. Buckley on live television in 1968, Vidal accusing Buckley of being a “crypto-Nazi” and Buckley retorting that Vidal was a “queer” and a low-rent pornographer (for the aforementioned Myra).  Ah, the good old days.  Vidal notoriously interviewed and sympathized with Timothy McVey, the terrorist behind the Oklahoma City bombing.  He was an adamant conspiracy theorist about the murder of JFK.  He spoke in a very droll, sardonic manner, with perfect diction and an f-you attitude to anyone who’s views didn’t truck with his own.  He lived abroad and smited the United States with all the power his pen could offer.  People on the right loathed him and people on the left at times did not like him much better.

He was a great man indeed.  And with his passing, and Buckley’s, and Howard Zinn, and with Chomsky not long for the big sleep, this country is losing a generation of public intellectuals that it may not be able to replace.  The 24 hour news media, and Twitter, and the Blogosphere, have warped our entire sensibility towards public intellectualism.  Everything is a sound bite, a slogan, a platitude, a talking point.  Intellect in miniature, haikus of big subjects like “freedom” and the “free market”.  Decent commentary shows like the early morning weekend shows on MSNBC get labeled “nerdville”, too wonky for their own good.  The public largely tunes out, retreating to its “intellectual ghettos” as Chris Hedges dubs them.  Give us Rush, give us HuffPo, give us the Drudge Report, give us the damned NFL, just please for the love of all that’s holy don’t give us anything that might turn the worm.  Ideology is indeed the mother’s milk of contemporary politics.  We suffer tinnitis from the reverberations inside the echo chamber we occupy. 

This must be why it is not a national outrage that the very night Obama was inaugurated key Republicans in the House and Senate held a cabal where they pledged to do nothing but ensure a one-term presidency.  Smack dab in the middle the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senator, my senator, was playing Oz.  Halleluiah for the new Republican Party, the Scorched-Earth Party, the Nero Party.  Whatever you do, keep on fiddlin’…

Vidal was making similar criticisms up until the day he died, but who was still listening? He was a relic of a time before I was even born.  And in this season of contempt for Americans writ large—I mean can you believe some of the presidential ads?—we need such relics more than ever, folks with real honest to goodness intellectual credentials who can speak truth to power.  And we need a real media platform to put them on. What we don’t need are a million blogs like this one, a blip in the din of white noise circulating through our beloved World Wide Web.  We need Titans, people who can recite Latin and understand Hegel and don’t whore themselves out to lobbying firms or charge six-figures for a speaking engagement at the MGM Grand convention center.

You will be missed Mr. Vidal, even by people who don’t care that you’re gone, or ever were.  We need you snobbish, elitist SOBs more than ever, because we are drowning in the mean season of presidential politics, and there’s no one on board to throw a rope.

A eulogy from Peter Scheer:  “I don’t feel sad for Gore Vidal today. He lived to 86 and he had the kind of life people ask Santa Claus for. It was not without hardship, loss or suffering, but he leaves behind great works and a million smiles. If anything, I feel sad for my country, which lost one of its truest patriots.”

Selah.