Sensory Performing Arts

After the big Christmas Tree afternoon at Mimi's house, Jupiter and I went to the Nutcracker on Saturday afternoon. I had originally thought that going to Boston to the big Nutcracker day at the Children's museum would be our Nutcracker for the year. But Jupiter saw the ad in the paper and begged me for days to take her to the whole entire performance. So the Thursday before I called up Porttix and ordered two tickets for the Nutcracker.

I got the cheap seats. I had to get the cheap seats..especially since they charged me an extra $10 to order the tickets on the phone. I wonder if the phone rep really makes $600 an hour to take the calls and print out the tickets? But anyway, the cheap seats were right up front. They were actually in the first row of tickets that were actually being sold. They were also very close to the orchestra.

We were not close to the side of the orchestra with violins and the harp. We, of course, were on the side with the brass instruments, the tympani, and the cymbals. Jupiter does not like sudden loud noises. She loves loud noises when she's causing the loud noises. In fact, she would like a drum set for Christmas. But when they happen unexpectedly, not so much. She sat on my lap the entire performance. Which was nice, actually. She made me hold my hands over her ears the entire performance. She tried to go without my hands once. The cymbals crashed, and that was it for the hands free ballet watching. I missed a lot of the dancing as I was trying to keep an eye on the conductor and the cymbals person. But despite the loud noises, Jupiter loved the ballet. It was entirely worth the ticket price and the surcharge to see her enthralled with the Nutcracker. And during intermission, we wandered to the other side of the auditorium to see the harp up close (have to remember for next year, we need to be in the house RIGHT section. I think.) and the harp lady even let us come up and touch the harp strings. That was SO COOL! ( I always wanted to touch the harp myself, actually.) So the Nutcracker was great. Totally recommend it. There are a few pictures of the show at http://www.mainestateballet.org/.

Jupiter, by the way, does not want to take dance class, as much as she loves dance. She did take class for a half a year when she was three and a half. But now she's too worried she will make a mistake to enjoy it. I'm hoping she may have a change of heart. I took dance class myself (very ineptly) when Maine State Ballet was a dance school in the instructor's basement. But Jupiter is already asking if we can go to the spring performance of Cinderella. I think we will.

Sunday afternoon, we went to see MimiX in her school performance of The Time Machine. Jupiter did not get bored. But as you might suspect, the Time Machine itself occasionally does things like explode noisily. So while she liked the play itself, she didn't like the loud noises so much. I watched that play with my hands over her ears too. MimiX was the Queen Morlock. (We must now bow down to her.) Jupiter is not fond of Morelocks. She thought there were scary Morlocks hiding in the shadows for three days afterwards. She felt a little better after we got home from the play and I decided we should decorate our Christmas Tree, which has been sitting undecorated for two days.

Christmas Tree Wrestlers..my new reality show

Last Friday, I had the day off from work. And it turned out to be Christmas tree day.

My mother's house has a cathedral ceiling. Every year, it is my sister's quest to find a tall, full tree for the living room with the cathedral ceiling. Every year, this also requires finding somebody with a truck who is willing to haul the giant tree from wherever it happens to be to their house. This year, that person (my parents' neighbor) happened to be available on Friday afternoon at 3pm. So on Friday afternoon at 1pm, we get in the car to find a Christmas tree at the local tree farm. Actually we are searching for three trees. A large and smaller one for my parents house, and a middle size one for my house. I have a Chevy Prizm and therefore can not haul on my own any tree larger than a Charlie Brown tree.

So we get to the Christmas tree farm. The owner offers us a hacksaw. I get to carry the hacksaw. Jupiter amuses herself by tramping through all the mud she can find. Mud, Mud, she loves Mud. She's absolutely positively wild about Mud. (Hello, Rick Charrette.) My sister finds a tree for my house first. My mother and I crawl next to the tree, lay down flat on the ground next to the tree, and start trying to saw the tree down. Wonder of wonders, the tree falls down. I haul it out of the row to the road where the owner said he will drive down and pick up the tree. We leave the tree and go in search of the really big tree. All the trees are the same price, by the way. Which is a great deal if you're in the market for a really big tree.

Finally my sister finds two or three trees she's interested in. She spends a lot of time trying to determine which one will look the best. She points to one, and we climb down in the mud and grass again to saw some more. This tree is a lot bigger. It takes longer. We have to stop to rest a few times. Jupiter finds some more mud and puddles to climb through. Finally it falls down. We rest some more. Then we haul it out just as the tree man comes along with his gator looking for us. He throws the giant tree into the gator trailor and asks us where the other tree is.

Good question. We start looking for the other tree. My sister takes Jupiter and the hacksaw and starts looking for the third tiny tree. My mother and I search through the fields for the tree we already cut down. We wonder if some other people happened by the tree and said "Wow. What a nice tree already cut down. We'll take it.". But eventually we do find the tree. The tree man loads it into his gator trailor and hauls it back up to the front of the field. Then we search for my sister and Jupiter.

We find them, but my sister has lost the hacksaw. So we look for that. When we find that, we look for the tiny tree. She finds one, and I have to try two or three angles to cut it, as it is growing very close to some other trees.

We load the tiny tree into the trunk of the car and the middle size tree on top of my mother's Impala. ( I feel like I'm doing a rewrite of Goldilocks and the three bears.) and advise the tree man that we will be back with the truck for the big tree. We bring the middle size tree to my house. We try to cut off the end again so it will be nice and fresh, but I only have a minature hacksaw which is not effective, so we borrow a handsaw from the neighbors. Then we bring the tree inside. I have underestimated how much room I will need to bring in the tree, and we knock over a mirror, a stack of photo albums, a side table, and a lamp. We jam the tree in the stand and pour in some water. Then my mom and my sister (my father has the good sense to be in California during this project) go with the truck neighbor to get the big tree.

They get back late. The truck neighbor decided to cut a tree for himself while they were at the tree farm. He offers to help bring the tree in but being Independent Maine Women, we decline. Then we start hacksawing at the end of the tree. By now I am very tired of hacksawing. My arms, actually are very tired of hacksawing. I'm getting tired of trees, period. After much sawing and swearing we get the tree flat in the stand and drag it in the house. We push the tree up. It's not straight. It requires a lot of adjusting and turning. It is very heavy. I start to glare whenever turning or adjusting is suggested. But eventually, everyone is satisfied. We break to drink five gallons of water apiece and have something to eat.

Note: if you go to a farm to cut down the Christmas tree, the tree will look bigger in your living room than it looks in the actual field. Pick something that seems a little bit small.

The tree is so big we have to bring the extension ladder in the house so I can climb up and stick the angel on the top of the tree. Then we do the lights. By now it's after 7pm. After they're plugged in, some of the lights don't light up. A big invisible thought bubble of bad words rises above my head, but fortunately with some jiggling, the lights think better of being difficult and light up all on their own.

Jupiter and I go home and collapse into bed. We have a busy schedule of performing arts to attend over the weekend, and we need our sleep.

Ice Storm 2008

We have survived Ice Storm 2008. Actually, our power only blinked off once or twice. I think this is entirely due to the fact that there is a mini substation or something at the end of my street. And one of the electric company dams is on the river behind my house. So we get lucky a lot. And we do have a woodstove. So in the event of a prolonged power outage, I fire up the woodstove (ooh, that's kind of a funny...I didn't plan it that way though) and as a result my house is actually a good bit warmer than it is normally. If it didn't require me to go downstairs and feed it every 45 minutes, I would use the woodstove a lot more than I do. But back to the ice storm.

Jupiter got to spend most of her day without power. Mimi's house lost power twice, the second time for most of the day. She did a lot of writing and illustrating her books. So when I got home, I brought them some fireplace wood and a coffee from Dunkin Donuts and some marshmallows for Jupiter to toast in the fireplace. Don't worry, Mimi did the actual toasting. A half of a mile from my mother's house, everything had power. So I brought my mother out to buy batteries and get hot food for supper. We started eating the hot food in front of the fire and then the power came back on. They're very happy.

Part of me likes ice storms. When the sun comes out and makes everything sparkle there are few things more beautiful to see. This does not extend to driving in ice storms. The good thing about going to work so early is there are few other cars on the road. Especially if all the schools are closed. The bad thing is a special weather related email that suggests that if it's not safe for you to come to work you can stay home doesn't do you a lot a good when they send out the email at 10am and your start time is 6am. But it wasn't so bad. There was that one tree blocking my street, but I just followed the tracks of the newspaper delivery truck and drove around the neighbors mailbox, as well as the tree. Another good thing about going to work so early.

But the storm is over, and we are warm and have power. Hopefully soon power will be mostly restored and everyone will be warm and safe.

Explaining the last post

I haven't been able to publish to my blog for about ten days. I kept trying, but I kept getting very non specific error messages. I thought it was the blog people, so I was just waiting for the blog people to fix it. Turns out, it was my computer. I needed to clear the cache and cookies. That took a long time. Apparently since I got real internet I've been to a lot of internet places and filled up all my temporary memory, and thus could not post.

I got a little tired of typing out the whole entire post, then finding out I could not post anything. So I finally just started typing out some gibberish letters to test it.

It works now. Hilarious December posts to follow.

elrgdjs

iweuhnfs

Blog Support

Tonight, after Jupiter went to bed, I checked out some of the other blogs. Blogs from parents with kids who struggle to accept being loved. Jupiter has made progress from where we were a year ago, in a big way, and I'm proud of her for that. But can I do better? Oh yeah. There's a lot of room for growth. So tonight I was browsing the blogs looking to see what the other Moms do. I got to the second blog, and was just reading an entry about reacting when your child says "I hate you!!" Then I hear a panicky "MOM!!!"

Jupiter is not in her room. Since she's been (supposedly) going to sleep, her music is turned up to about 90 decibels, and it takes a minute or so before I find her in the bathroom, frustrated with trying to wipe herself and furious with me for not knowing she needed help before she even called me. So it takes a few minutes to settle her down. While I'm hugging her and telling her she's ok, she says she hates me. She hates me all the time. She doesn't like me. So I let her say it. I put on my anti-mean armor and just let her get her mad feelings out. I tell her it's okay to use her words to get the mads out. Eventually she gets satisfactorily wiped, washed, and dressed again. And I take her to the rocking chair. She says we only do the bad chair when she's been bad. I tell her that we don't rock in the chair because she's bad. We rock in the chair because I think she needs a little extra love.

Jupiter does NOT want a little extra love. She wants to be alone and listen to her music. But I hold her in the chair anyway, so she hates me some more. She wants a younger Mom, a cooler Mom, a stylish Mom, not an old weirdo Mom. I let her say it and just hold her some more. I feel a little better when she tells me that she hates Big Dog (her really big golden retreiver stuffed animal) too. Then she starts to talk to me about school. That Mary and J are always mean to her and she doesn't like to play with them. That Mary messed up her hair one day (she puts her hands in my hair and messes it all up to demonstrate.) and how she didn't like that.

When she seems done with the mads, I talk about last night. Remember last night, when the first snowfall started and even though it was dark outside and time for bed, we put on our coats and boots and hats and mittens and went outside and ran around the driveway and threw snowballs at each other. And then we made snow angels right next to each other in the driveway. And I tell her that I will always remember that night with her, because it was so much fun doing that together. Well, I won't remember it, she responds. Belligerently. I tell her that then I would remind her.

She asks for a drink of water, so we get one. I turn the hall light off, but she wants it on. She doesn't want to go to sleep in my arms, so I offer the compromise of laying in her bed with her. She accepts this. After she's under the blankets, she removes her blanket sleeper and sleeps in her "nighttime underwear." (she's too big for pull ups). The blanket sleeper makes me too hot with the blanket. And it's too tight. I start to rub her back and she asks me to scratch the itchy spots. She gives me directions and I follow them until she is satisfied. Finally she says "Good night, Mom." Good night, I answer. Have good dreams, I say. Have good dreams, she answers. I love you, I say. I love you, she answers.

My favorite BCLC advice was this "What can I do, at this moment, to strengthen my relationship with my child?" Sometimes the answer is more obvious than at other times. Oftentimes, it means parenting in a way that seems strange to those who don't live with kids like Jupiter. Do the parents at church understand why I don't pry Jupiter's hands off mine in the Sunday School room and disappear out the door? Nope. Sometimes the Mom she needs me to be looks strange to others. And sometimes, I don't do it right, and in retrospect a better way will seem more than obvious. And the next day, we do our bonding dance some more.

Four years ago

Four years ago today, it was Thanksgiving, and I was in a little place called Serov, visiting the baby girl who would hopefully soon become my daughter. How cool is that, that every year at Thanksgiving time, I remember the first trip to Russia to meet my baby? How snow in Russia is so much more beautiful than snow in Maine?

The Thanksgiving visit was the third visit of the trip, and the last one before I had to fly home. Jupiter played with us (my sister was with me) and walked a lot and chewed on her shoes that I had brought her, and pried my mouth open to check out the teeth. I fed her her lunch and carried her back to her group for her nap and then I had to say goodbye til the judge decided I could come back and get her.

That was the moment I dreaded from the moment I chose to go to Russia. I didn't know how I was going to cope with having to leave the child I had bonded with and flying halfway around the world, not knowing when I would be able to go back. And as it turned out, I didn't handle it all that well. I cried in the car on the way back to Ekat from Serov, and I'm sure there are workers at the Greek Restaurant Rest Stop who still remember the crazy American lady who was bawling her eyes out all over the place. All my instincts were telling me to go back and not leave her, and it was the one thing I couldn't do. And I wondered if she would remember me when I came back, or if she would think I had abandoned her. I still wonder that. I'll probably never know if she recognized me the May morning I finally got back to where I had left my heart. And in all honesty, I don't know if it would be better for her to remember me when I got back, having spent all those months in between wondering where I was all that time, or better for her to have forgotten all about me in between.

I looked at the first trip pictures the other night. Jupiter doesn't like to look all that often. She likes to see herself as a baby, but prefers the pictures from after she came home. After the first trip pictures, I put the pictures in the album from the disposable cameras I left at the baby home. We'd been home almost two months when I finally got them developed, and then mostly I saw the expressionless little face in the photos. They were, with a few exceptions, the saddest pictures of a baby I had ever seen. No smiles in the face or in the eyes, especially in the pictures that are obviously posed. I don't share those pictures much. They're part of her story, and so they're included. But how I wish that those five months haden't been taken up by a databank letter.

Thanksgiving now is way different than that day four years ago. Jupiter was at the table with her family and even gave up her customary chicken noodle soup to have some turkey and a roll, wearing a red princess dress that she chose at Sears last week. She antagonized all the dogs that came for Thanksgiving and smiled at me from across the table where she was sitting next to one of her aunts. But probably every Thanksgiving now, I'll remember Thanksgiving in Serov.