Going to the dentist

I took Frank to the dentist Tuesday morning. This is only the third time he's gone, and it went no better than the forst two times. Actually, it was somewhat worse this time, because he's getting to be too strong for me to hold down! I laid down on the chair, with him on top of me, both my legs crossed, locking his legs into place, my left arm across his chest, like a straitjacket, and my right hand on his forehead, holding his head back. Even so, he managed to wiggle away from my grip several times, screaming his head off the whole time.

I have to say, none of the people at this practice ever blink an eyelash at his behavior. Either screaming bloody murder during a cleaning is par for the course for his age, or they have so many special needs patients (I know they have a lot of autistic kids and kids who have Down Syndrome in their practice) that Frank is easy in comparison. I do know that, after our first visit, the hygenist told me, "Hey, he didn't bite, kick, or punch me, so he was a pretty good patient. As long as he was screaming, his mouth was wide open, so I could do what I had to do!" Better her than me- I'm really quite glad I did not go into pediatric dentistry!

The good news is, we apparently are doing an excellent job with brushing his teeth- no cavities, no spots even close to needing to worry about. The kid's teeth should be pristine- he doesn't eat anything with sugar in it!

Frank, of course, each time behaves as if he's the conquering hero, showing off the new toothbrush and the prizes he got. He also, of course, spends much of that day reminding me that, "We don't need to go back to the dentist for a long time, right Mommy?"

Oh, and with food? Tonight, he took a bite of carrot, chewed, and swallowed. And he only gagged on it once.

Been a while...

Frank is now using the toilet at school to urinate. The catch is, he uses the adult toilet because the kids' toilets don't have doors, and therefore no privacy. But he's quite content to use the adult toilet, and his teachers seem to be fine with having to escort him down the hall to the bathroom, and he hasn't had an accident yet at school since he started using the adult bathroom, so I'll take it.

The catch is, he still refuses to use the toilet at all anywhere to defacate. So, at the suggestion of someone at school, he now tells us when he has to poop, we put a pullup on him, he hides in the closet (yes, I'm serious) for about five minutes, we clean him up and then put the underwear back on.

It's better than cleaning crap out of underwear.

He actually asks for mac and cheese for dinner a few times a week now.

There's a website that you can use to make a video from Santa for your child. You go and answer a bunch of questions about your kid, and they send you the video on email. I played it for him Christmas Eve morning. He seemed a little freaked out to find that Santa knows so much about him! His eyes got huge, too, when Santa said that he knows Frank's been working very hard, but he needs to work a little harder at trying new foods. It was hard for me not to laugh. A little while later he told me he was going to try a lot harder with carrots because, "Santa wants me to."

So, in the last couple of days, we have gotten from zero to 60, really. Yesterday he took two bites (that I let him spit out immediately) of a raw carrot, and today he actually took a bite and chewed it twice before spitting it out.

Bless you, Santa.

Paperwork

I got the paperwork from the Child Development Center. I have to get his teachers at school to fill out a form, his pediatrician has to fill out a form, and his OT needs to fill out a form. And I have about five pages to fill out.

Nobody told me, when my son was 17 months old, that a diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder would bring so much freaking paperwork. I thought, at the time, that it was going to be something more like a personality quirk- he'd get some OT, and be much better, and would just have little things pop up once in a while. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would affect everything we do with him, and every aspect of his life.

In other news, he's decided he likes the Dodgers. Why the Dodgers, you ask? "I think it would be really exciting to watch them." He then hastened to add, "I still really like the Yankees, too, though." Shades of his grandfather, my father in law. When FIL was a child, his whole family were Dodgers fans, only back then it was the Brooklyn Dodgers. FIL one day up and decided he liked the Yankees. My husband thinks it was just to piss off his father. So now, in a family filled with Yankees fans, and several generations of Yankees fans on my side, my four-year-old son has decided he likes the Dodgers.

Sometimes, life really is a circle.

Blankets

My son refuses to use a blanket to sleep. He'll curl up under one to watch cartoons, or to listen to a story, but he refuses to sue one at night, and doesn't seem to be able to articulate why. Up until this point, I haven't been all that concerned about it; we put him in thick footsie pjs during the winter, as well as a layer underneath on really cold nights, and the kid is way more warm-blooded than I am, anyway, so it wasn't a big deal.

But now he's wearing 5T shirts, and 4T pants. I'm having a hard time finding footsie pjs that fit him AND that feel good and don't have any "lines" (seams) to bother him. So, we've been trying to get him to use a blanket at night.

Epic Fail.

He even freaks out when we try and leave a blanket folded at the foot of his bed...or anywhere else in the room, for that matter. I KNOW it's because of his knee-jerk "anything different is bad" thing, but have no clue, short of forcing him to keep the blanket in there with him, to break him of his aversion to using the blanket at night. We've tried several different blankets, all to no avail.

Meanwhile, the kid HAS to be freezing at night. I know I am, and it's only November. I worry about him freezing his little butt off at 2am, but have no idea what to do to change this.

Appointments

So, I called the Child Development Center at Big Area Hospital Frank was born at and made an appointment for him to see a developmental pediatrician. This is different from a regular pediatrician because this kind of doctor is a specialist in stuff that affects child development. The center wants him to have a full evaluation (And you should see the amount of paperwork they want before the appointment! They'll end up knowing him and his history better than I, who carried him inside my body for nine months, do!) before they decide what kind of therapy he needs, to rule out any physical issues. It's an approach that makes sense, I guess, but...the next available appointment isn't until MARCH 31ST! That's five months away!

I've looked around for a therapist for him, but there's not a single one in my plan within a 25 mile radius of my house who's taking new patients and treats kids as young as he is. So, this means I either have to go farther afield, a displeasign prospect during after-school rush hours, which is when I'd be bringing him to therapy, or go outside the plan and pay extra money, which is equally displeasing.

So frustrating.

Also, at an appointment with his pediatrician last week, she and I noticed a red thingie on the side of his chin. She thinks it's a blood blister type thing, but isn't sure, and because he's a fair-skinned child, and it's a sudden thing that wasn't there before, she wants him to see a dermatologist.

Great. Just what I wanted to be doing- schlepping around to more doctors.

I sure hope what people say is true- that one day I'll look back on all this and laugh- because I am not laughing now.

So, I haven't posted in a while...

There's not much good to report.

He got over the ear infection, only to get some kind of virus a couple of days after the ear infection diagnosis that the doctor thought could be MONO. (My reaction? "He's four. He only kisses ME!") Apparently it's not unheard of for kids his age to get mono, so on his birthday, no less, we went to the pediatrician and then to LabCorp to get blood drawn for testing. The good news with that is that it turned to be Not Mono, and he eventually recovered from what turned out to be one of those ugly little-kid viruses.

I took him to the allergist to get tested last week, because I wanted to know what the hell was causing his constantly runny nose since about April. He mentioned casually to me on the way there that his ear hurt a little. Sure enough, he had an ear infection in his left ear this time. SIGH. Yet another antibiotic. If he gets another one soon, I am going back to the ENT and raising holy hell. The tubes are supposed to be taking care of this, for crap's sake!!

The toilet issue is still a huge issue. We eventually gave up on the underwear for school- he never uses the potty, and screams hysterically at the mere suggestion of it. He also screams at the thought of pooping in any potty.

No new exciting news with food, either.

I am just so damn tired, all the time. Thinking about anything, let alone trying to fight him on potty issues or food issues, sucks the life out of me. I just can't do this anymore, I can't. I just don't know what to do. Everyone has a suggestion, none of which work, and I know, because I have tried EVERYTHING. I spend hours at night, tossing a turning, and thinking about everything...I just don't have the strength for this, any of it. I know I'm failing him, but I just can't do it.

Getting there

So, Frank has settled in fairly well to Pre-K. His first day of not crying when I dropped him off was Monday, his fourth day of pre-K. I fully expected to almost start at square one after having the weekend off, so this was quite a pleasant surprise. Maybe switching to a totally new school for kindergarten next year won't be as much of a trauma as I fear it will be?

He's been wearing underwear to school, too. Not that he's actually using the potty, yet, but, as his teacher, J, said, "His accidents are getting closer to the toilet each day!" Today he actually held it until it was an emergency, and peed on the floor in front of the toilet because he simply couldn't hold it any more. His pants were off and everything. He still insists that toilet is not private enough, and asked Darrel the other day if he could build a door to put on there.

He greeted me after school the other day with the words, "Mommy, my ear hurts." Okay, this is the kid whose head has hit the driveway, and slid down a flight of stairs on his butt and laughed both incidents off, so the fact that he was complaining of pain would have alarmed me, anyway, but we had just been to the ENT three weeks ago to check on his tubes, and they are "still lodged in there pretty firmly." So I was quite freaked.

When we got home, it was too late to call the doctor- the office was closed for the day. He didn't have a fever, but I gave him Tylenol, and a half hour later, he told me his ear didn't hurt anymore. The next morning, we dosed him with Tylenol again, and sent him to school. (This early in the school year, I cannot be calling in sick, and Darrel just started a new job two weeks ago, so that would look pretty bad to be calling in sick or asking to work from home one day this early on.) Because I interpret stright through in the mornings, I told Darrel to call the pediatrician and make an appointment for immediately after school. I took Frank in, and sure enough, he has an ear infection, a bad one. Is that tube not working anymore? Not sure. He got an oral antibiotic and ear drops. He's going back in two weeks, anyway, for his yearly exam, and she said if his ear wasn't markedly better, she was sending us back to the ENT.

She also, because of his drippy nose the past few weeks, advised me to give him Calritin for the next few weeks, because seasonal allergies are really bad for a lot of people right now, and she thinks that's what's causing the drippy nose. Yay, not only do we have to put ear drops in, give him an oral (liquid) antibiotic once daily, we now have to give him liquid Claritin as well.

All of the above are going over with the boy as well as you might imagine. I had to sit on him and use my legs to pin his arms down this evening to put the ear drops in. As for the liquid meds? I bribe him with extra juice boxes. He is normally allowed to have only two of the tiny-sized juice boxes a day, and knowing this, he hoards them and reserves them for late in the day. I told him he could have one extra juice box per dosage if he took it without incident, and this evening that actually seemed to work.

There are days, weeks, even, when I feel like all I am doing is treading water. This has been one of those weeks.

Make it stop!

Okay, so we have one child. About six months after Frank was born, I was seriously ill, ill enough that the surgeon who put chest tubes in me told me that if I had walked around in that condition another couple of days, I could have died. Tha doctor and another both told me that another pregnancy was not a good idea, because they "could not guarantee a positive outcome". Darrel and I easily read the handwriting on the wall and said okay, we're done. We had been leaning towards only having one child at that point, anyway, so it was a pretty easy decision for us all around.

Lately, I am surrounded by pregnant women. One coworker just gave birth to her second child two weeks ago, another one just announced her first pregnancy two days ago, my sister in law is pregnant with her second child, Darrel's cousin's wife is due in a few weeks with her first child, and three teachers at school gave birth over the summer.

I am finding, since I am being bombarded with pregnancy all around me, that I am jealous. And there's really no reason for me to be, because, as I said, before Mother Nature essentially made the decision for us, we were leaning towards that very decision, anyway.

I find myself wondering what a daughter of ours would look like, what she would be interested in, would she and I have a close relationship or an adversarial one. I find myself feeling like I want to be pregnant again, which is the stupidest part of all, because I HATED being pregnant. You know that feeling you get when you're getting sick? You don't have a sore throat or anything yet, you just feel yucky? That's how I felt the entire pregnancy. Add in morning sickness the first 14 weeks, and shortness of breath for most of the rest of it, and I was not happy for nine months. And I suspect, although he's never said anything, that Darrel wasn't really happy, either, because I'm sure I was a tiny bit difficult to be around sometimes.

So, why these twinges of wanting another baby? I don't know why, but please, God, make them stop!!

Red-shirting kindergarteners?

So, this article, appeared earlier this week: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100905/sc_livescience/moreparentsredshirtingkindergartners

It's really got me thinking more about this whole parenting thing in general, and my own child in particular. Frank's birthday is September 20th. The cutoff date in our district is October 1st. Most people in this position, especially with a boy, would "hold back" their child until the September he turns six. We plan on sending him when he turns five, next year. The amount of crap we are getting for this decision is incredible. Everyone from my mother ("This is one of the worst possible educational decisions you could make for him. He will struggle for his entire educational career.") to coworkers ("I held back my son. It was the right decision. I'd do it again.") has an opinion on my son's education, or rather, when that education will officially start.

You're really damned if you do, and damned if you don't when it comes to parenting, I've found. It starts before birth, even: What kind of birth are you planning? You do have a birth plan, right? And, then, the birth itself: Really, you had a c-section? There are entirely too many c-sections in this country. They're not neccessary. Our ancestors gave birth in between working crops and humanity has turned out just fine. Then: What do you mean you're not breastfeeding??? Breast is best! It'll keep your kid from having ear infections! And so on.

I was prepared for a lot of things when I decided I wanted children. I was prepared to lose a lot of sleep, for starters, although, as an insomniac, I haven't noticed much difference from before baby to after. I was prepared to constantly worry about the child. I even knew there'd be a constant roller coaster of emotions that went with motherhood. (When you work in a field that is dominated by women, you learn stuff just by listening at the lunch table.)

I never thought I'd feel like I have to explain every decision I make for my child to people in my life who are not my child's other parent. No, I should not feel like I have to explain things to others, but in real life, I am incredibly nonconfrontational, and telling people to butt out is still a skill I have not yet developed fully.

As for the future kindergartener? Well, my husband and I have taken into account everything about him, his personality, his skills, and his physical development. The only thing that concerns me is the kids who will be a year or sometimes more older than he will be. My concern is that his behavior, which should be age-appropriate for chronological age five years zero months will look not as good compared to age appropriate behavior displayed by kids who are chronological age six years and zero months.

First Day of Pre-K

Summer is over. Mr "I don't like change" had been visiting his pre-k class a few times over the last couple of weeks, and told me the other day, "You know, Mommy, pre-k is nice, but I really like my preschool class better." (Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there?)

So, I didn't really have a huge amount of optimism for how today, the first full day of pre-k, would go. Call it a self-fullfilling prophecy, but it went pretty much as I had expected. He sobbed at home to each of us in turn, telling us how much he liked his preschool class and that he really didn't want to go to pre-k. No matter how much we tried to rationalize ("You didn't like preschool when you started last year! Mommy was nervous on her first day of school last week, and it's fine now! Daddy was nervous on his first day of his new job last week, and it's fine now!"), he's three going on four, and therefore incapable of rational thought.

I had to carry him into the building, and hold him, as he sobbed that he really didn't want to be there, and could I please not leave him there. I left to the sound of him sobbing, which, may I tell you, is not an awesome way to start one's day. But when I called later, around 9:30am, I discovered that he only cried for about five minutes after I left, and he was thrilled because he was the Helper of the Day. (All we have been able to get as explanation for what this entails is, "I held the door open for everyone!" Apparently this is a Very Big Deal when you are four, or nearly so.)

Anyway, he greeted me when I arrived to pick him up with, "I had a super day!" However, "Tomorrow I would really like to go back to my other class." Um, I hate to tell you, kid, but that is not how this whole school thing works...

Ladies and Gentlemen...

He ate a bite of mac and cheese, chewed, and swallowed it, all without crying or fussing.

I feel like I won the NY Marathon.

Good News and Bad News

Good news: He's taking mac and cheese more easily. He even chewed it instead of swallowed it whole tonight.

Bad news: He sobs more when Darrel's home and we do feeding than when it's just the two of us. I think he knows how much the screaming and crying sets Darrel off.

Good news: He's been (pee) accident-free at home for...hm, five days now?

Bad news: We sent him to daycare in underwear both days last week. What. A. Fiasco. He still refuses to use the potty there, and we cannot figure out why. He's willingly used the toilets at Target, three different diners, two different doctors' offices, my mother's, and a mechanic's, but he won't use the potty in the building he's gone to since he was five months old.

Good news: He hasn't soiled any underwear since Thursday.

Bad News: He hasn't pooped at all since Friday.

I blame this child for all my grey hairs.

I feel like I am at war.

We keep Frank in underwear so long as we're home and he's awake. He gets a pullup for naptime and bedtime. Yesterday he kept his underwear dry all day long (yay!) but his naptime pullup was soaked through when he got up after an hour and a half (boo!). Today, he was dry all day long...until 5:45pm. Between 5:45pm and when Darrel got home at about 7pm, he wet or soiled five PAIRS of underwear. FIVE. The last pair was so heinous, I threw it out. I'm sorry, honey, poop is the one bodily thing I simply cannot handle without retching. A lot. I can (and have) catch vomit with my bare hands and not blink an eyelash, but I CANNOT handle poop. I could not handle it when he was a newborn, and now that there's more of it (and more stink to it), it's even worse.

Anyway, so we were on pair number five when I started yelling. Now, I worry about being a yeller, but I don't actually think I do it very often. For one thing, it seems to really get his attention. For another, he always sobs hysterically when I do yell at him. Once I'd calmed down, I apologized to him for yelling, cuddled him, and told him that even if I was angry and yelling, I still loved him, that I would always love him no matter what happened, etc.

We are both firmly convinced that he has the physical knowledge of when he needs to go, before he actually goes. He has tells, and he's a lousy liar, so when you ask him if he has to go poop, he gets a panicked look on his fac and says, "No!" I've tried putting him on the potty when I see this, but...yes, you guessed it, he holds it in until I take him off the potty and put pants on him!!! No one can tell me this kid does not have bowel control, that's for sure. I mean, not within the last week or so, but I've sat him on the toilet for a half hour at a time, and he holds it in until he's got pants on.

I make him help me clean his underwear when he wets or soils it, as per the suggestion of a college friend, I make him stand there and watch, him still in the wet-soiled pants, both of us silent, while I clean the mess from the floor, we've had stickers, we've had prizes, we've praised lavishly when he pees in the potty, we've called Grandma when there's a Big Potty Milestone, we've talked about ALL of his friends at school use the potty ful time...nothing seems to work.

So, after some quick private discussion, Darrel came up with an ultimatum: Tomorrow, the kid has to put some poop in the potty, or the TV gets turned off. Frabk looked horrified at this, and said he'd "try"...which he's been promising for months now, so I will believe it when I see it.

If I were a drinker, I would be well on my way to drunken bliss right now, that's how emotionally exhausting the day has been.

The only bright spot is, after only a couple of days of trying it, he seems somewhat intrigued by macaroni and cheese. He's thrown nowhere near the fits over this than he has for other foods. He loves salty foods, so we are hoping he takes to mac and cheese. *crosses fingers* It would make my month if we added a new food to his diet, even if it's not a fruit or veggie.

1000 Books, 1000 miles

I read and post on a messageboard. One of the other posters on that board, C, is a teacher in Missouri. They had a flood at her school, and many of thier books were destroyed. I told her I'd ask around, and see if anyone here had any children's books they wanted to get rid of. I posted a plea for books on my school district's email board, and got a response back: a teacher at the middle school had had a book drive, the places she was supposed to donate the books to fell through, and did my friend in Missouri want about 1000 children's books?

The result? 1000 Books, 1000 Miles: The Project.

http://1000bookjourney.livejournal.com/

As of now, we still have some parts of the journey between Philly and eastern Ohio that are not yet covered. Once we get all legs of the journey covered, the books will start making their way from Somerset County, NJ, to Missouri.

Please repost to your blogs/Facebook pages/Twitter feed, etc. Even if you can only do a couple of miles, that will help tremendously. Many thanks!

Frustrations

We had a family party Saturday. It was at Darrel's aunt and uncle's house, which is about ten minutes from here. I brought fish sticks for Frank's dinner, but nothing else, because I figured there'd be plenty of crackers or chips he'd be willing to eat. Well, I wasn't letting him eat potato chips- he's been having diarrhea again, and I think the oil in the chips makes it worse- but I thought there'd be enough other things he could eat that it wouldn't be an issue.

Well, it was an issue. Yes, they had Doritoes, but they didn't have the exact kind of Doritoes (Cool Ranch) that Darrel gets, so they looked different, so Frank wouldn't eat them. They had crackers but they weren't a kind Frank had ever eaten before, so he wouldn't eat them. They did have potato chips, but, again, I wasn't letting him eat those. I wanted to cry. Aunt had a box of Wheat Thins, so after Frank finished his fish sticks (comment from Aunt: "Oh, you're moving up in the world, Frank- eating more than just chicken nuggets now!"), I let him have all the Wheat Thins he wanted to have.

For dinner, they had burgers and dogs, mac and cheese, potato salad, etc- typical summer grill party type food. Frank doesn't eat any of those kinds of things. (Well, he couldn't eat potato salad or macaroni salad, because they have mayo in them, and mayo is made from eggs, which he's still allergic to.) There was another three-year-old there. not only was this kid fully potty trained, he played in the pool (which Frank doesn't like), and he ate whatever his parents put in front of him.

It's hard for me to decide what frustrates me the most- that my son won't eat many different types of foods, that he still is not nearly potty trained, that he doesn't want to do normal stuff like run through a sprinkler or play in a pool, fighting with insurance, or that I feel like I always have to make excuses for him to people who think we are entirely too permissive and let our kid run his life. I am starting to feel really drained by dealing with all this, and I feel sometimes like I just cannot handle it anymore. Darrel is getting so annoyed again about Frank's food issues, and I am unsure whether playing good cop/bad cop is a good thing, and will get Frank to try different things, or whether it is damaging to him. I'm just so confused and angry and frustrated- I was emotionally prepared for my kid to have lung problems, or immune problems, but never in my life did I even think there was a possibility he'd have a disorder that most of society has never heard of, and many who have heard of think it's BS.

Steel Magnolias

I'm watching this movie, which I love and hadn't watched in...well, years. It's still near the beginning, just after when Shelby (Julia Roberst) starts to have insulin shock at the beauty parlor. While I have always cried at various parts in this movie, this is the first tiem I was moved to tears by this scene, specifically by Sally Fields' character, Shelby's mother, M'Lynn. (I'm not sure if I spelled the name right, but anyway.)

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS MOVIE, STOP READING NOW.

When people talk about this movie, I've never heard them talk about Shelby as having grown up as a special needs child, with the obviously serious Type I diabetes. Her diabetes is so serious, the doctor has told her that pregnancy would endanger her health, a fact that is later proven to be true, when Shelby's kidneys fail after she has her son.

M'Lynn, as shown in this scene, obviously has spent Shelby's life being the pointman when it comes to her daughter's health. When Dolly Parton's character first realizes that Shelby is having a problem, she immediately calls for M'Lynn, who comes over to Shelby and begins to talk her through the episode, while their friends get orange juice and candy. In this dialogue between the two, you can see the long history they have- Shelby with her health issues, and fighting so desparately to be normal, and M'Lynn leading the charge in that fight.

It's very interesting- most people who look at Frank would never realize he's a special needs child, and, indeed, as compared to a lot of kids with SPD, he's really quite well off. The movie has made me think- how many kids do we see every day while out and about look "normal", but really have special needs?

Still got...something!

He still has the stomach virus, or whatever this is. Today is Tuesday. Thursday will be two weeks. The doctor told me when I brought him last week that if he was not better by this Wednesday, to bring him back in. Guess what we're doing tomorrow morning.

He tracked poop all over his bedroom this evening.

I sure hope I laugh about this one day, because I am nowhere near laughing about this now.

D-Day

That'd be d for dentist.

The good news is, he has no cavities. The bad news is, he sobbed and screamed throughout the entire thing. "Please stop! Please don't do that! Please stop!!!" It broke my heart having to lie there in the chair, with him on top of me, and hold him down, with my left arm across his chest and my right hand clamped down on his forehead. I'm amazed I didn't cry, to be honest.

He had some iron deposits along the front of his front bottom teeth, so she had to use the scraper thingie. His screams during this part were bloodcurdling. I can't really blame him- I hate that part, too!

I really wish these things were easier for him. I wish I could make it all better.

By the time I got him to daycare, he was pretty much okay, though, and ready to show off the prizes and stickers he got at the dentist's office. I guess it's good he seems to be pretty resilient in that regard- once the sensory assault is over, he usually snaps back to normal pretty easily.

He was pleased to hear we wouldn't have to do this again until after Christmas, "After Santa comes and brings me presents. That's a long time away, isn't it, Mommy?"

Graduation

I work in a high school. Last night was Graduation. The graduates sit on the stage, in rows, girls on one side and boys on the other. When we interpret for Graduation, we need six people, always- two in front, for the audience, and two on the girls' side, facing the graduates, and two on the boys' side, also facing the graduates. Last night, I was backstage, on the boys' side, with coworker P. One deaf boy who graduted, J, I have known since he was about five years old. I interpreted for him at church and Sunday School for many years. His dad does contracting work for us sometimes, too.

So, at practice yesterday morning, J told me, I thought, that he wanted "an interpreter" to stand near the principal when they were awarding diplomas- he wanted the interpreter to let him and the other boys know when their names were said, so they would know when to start walking. I told him, "Okay, when Mrs P and I get here tonight, we'll figure out who's doing what, and it'll be taken care of."

"No," J said. "I want you to do it. You interpreted church, my baptism, confirmation, everything all those years, I've known you since I was five, I want you to do it."

I was a bit taken aback. J typically is not what you'd call a sentimental kid. He's a nice kid, to be sure, but he has Some Issues that I won't go into here, and high school for him has, on more than one occasion, been a rough road. But I was very touched, and told him, "Okay, I'll do it."

And I did. And it went well, the whole ceremony...even though this class (hearing and deaf) is, overall, kind of rowdy, so much so that for the first time in my memory, the principal assigned staff members to sit backstage to keep an eye on them. I've grown fond of some of the hearing kids, too, as always happens, and made sure to wish them luck and all that as well.

I made sure that J's parents took a picture of me with him after Graduation was all done. They promised they'd email it to me. I'm going to miss that kid.

Dentist!

Frank has an appointment with his dentist next week. I am already dreading it. I am not the calmest dental patient you will ever meet, and bringing him to the dentist was worse when I brought him for the first time last November, because I had to pretend to be calm and happy. (At least with my dentist, I can let the fear fly!)

Oh, Lord, please let him not have any cavities. If he does, he is going to need to be sedated for the fillings, because I do not think I have enough physical and emotional strength to hold him down while they shoot Novacain into him and then drill his tooth.