The Poor Voter on Election Day — John Greenleaf Whittier (1852)

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man’s common sense
Against the pedant’s pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

While there’s a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon’s vilest dust, —
While there’s a right to need my vote
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man’s a man to-day!

young and the reckless

I have the best idea for a television show, y’all. It’s a show full of drama and angst — you’ll feverishly await the next episode to see what happens next! It’d be a show set up like a soap opera, complete with cheesy music and awkward turns toward the camera . . . only with four-year-olds instead. A soap opera is exactly what it is like out there on that playground, at least to hear Lydia tell it.

“How was your day,” I ask Lydia each afternoon when I pick her up. She gives me the rundown of the day, channeling my mother summing up the days’ Young and the Restless.

“Abby didn’t want to be my friend,” she begins, “but Arya is my BEST friend. I had the small bike. And I didn’t throw sand.” This is completely different from the previous day, when she was whining that Arya wasn’t her friend but Abby was.

I used to get a run-down of who got in trouble, but that has stopped now that the person getting in trouble is usually her. “I was on ‘RED’ today, Mom. Do I get any M&Ms? Nevermind, I don’t want any M&Ms.” Ha, that’s a load of malarkey, I know she’s super peeved about the M&Ms.

Another time after the ‘how was your day’ question, Lydia looks straight at me and, without cracking a smile, says, “I got killed today.”

“Oh, did you?”

“Yeah. I was a princess.”

“How did you die?”

“With a gun.” Dramatic pause. “Me and Abby and Arya was a princess and Nathan was a soldier and he killed us.” Dang, chivalry is dead, y’all.

Yesterday, Lydia informed me she is getting married. She changed her choice on groom a few times — it’s either Ryan or Colin — but the date is set for today. A co-worker told me I should ask when she’s moving out and where I should send all her stuff.

oh, but what will all my friends at school think?

Lydia had a hangnail on her thumb this evening. She only showed it to me after she picked at it a while and made it worse. As we headed toward my bathroom and the clippers, I jokingly told her I was going to have to remove the whole thumb.

Her eyes widened as she looked at me in shock, then she summoned up a ninety mile an hour protest.

“No, you can’t do that ’cause then I won’t have any thumbs today, and then I’ll be sad. And I’ll go to school and everyone will ask, ‘Hey, what happened to your thumb?’ and I’ll say, ‘My mommy cut it off,’ and they’ll all be sad!”

meltdown

My sweet Sam. He can be so loving, so happy, so excited about life. He loves to give hugs and kisses to everyone in the family, including his Bear. He is beginning to speak very well, and will parrot back anything you say to him. Usually, Sam seems like a pretty happy-go-lucky type of boy.

But then, something will happen. Sam can’t get the toy to work the way he thinks it should, or his banana breaks in half, or he is being told to wait. A nuclear explosion goes off in Sam as he hits the floor, screaming and banging his head. All his new-found language skills vanish. Yes, sometimes these are regular two-year-old tantrums, but other times, they’re just . . . different. You look in Sam’s eyes and he is just not there, completely unreachable.

All of this and more sent us on a journey earlier this summer that landed us in a psychologist’s office, where Sam was only too happy to demonstrate his mad headbanging skillz. I’ve been able to handle Sam’s allergy-related curveballs he’s been throwing at us for two years — they sing the song of my people — but this is more foreign to me.

The first (and probably best) thing I gleaned from all this is Sam’s behavioral issues are not mine and Steven’s fault. We aren’t bad parents, we aren’t doing anything wrong by him. After all, Lydia is turning out okay so far, despite her hearing problem.

After a couple of visits here, some questionnaire tests there, then one big fight with Blue Cross/Blue Shield*, we ended up at a psychiatrist’s office with a diagnosis: “ADHD . . . and watch out for Asperger’s.”

Well.

So . . . what do I think? I know Sam’s young, and that was continuously acknowledged throughout all this. He’s way too young for medication and will be for a while. For me, it helps to know why. There’s a reason why Sam is so easily frustrated; there’s a reason why Sam won’t listen to me reading books; there’s a reason why he wont acknowledge you when you call his name. Hey, knowing is half the battle. #gijoe

Since all this is new to me, I did what I do best when knowledge is needed: to the library! I snapped up all the best books on ADHD and even one on Asperger’s that the Pelham Public Library had to offer. I was surprised to see there were as many books on food allergies as there were for ADHD. I’ve never thought to read up on allergies. Heck, I’ve lived the dream.

The books were very insightful (except for that one crappy tome) and I’ve still been scouring for information when I have a spare moment. At home, we’re now trying to be more attuned to Sam’s moods. We’re making an effort to redirect Sam’s attention if he is about to get overly frustrated with something, before he gets so mad he cannot express himself verbally. We still employ time-outs, though I don’t think he always understands what rule he is breaking.

We also have found that music helps calm him down when he gets agitated. Whether it’s singing, music from the stereo, or a musical toy, he is immediately calmer and focused on the music. At night when Sam goes to bed, his room is a cacophony of sounds: there’s the musical aquarium thingy, the inner piece of a musical glowworm that we call “baby guts,” and an iPod/speaker setup that plays Steve Roach music. Sam enjoys music so much, we have to replace the 4 C-size batteries in the aquarium thingy about every six weeks. A 4-pack of C-size batteries cost $7.49 at Publix — I know this well.

Then there’s the psychiatrist’s other concern: “watch out for Asperger’s.” There really will be no knowing about Asperger’s until Sam is older, like around five years old. By then he could very well grow out of some of the little tics he has, like his love of pushing buttons over and over (and over and over again). I can’t do anything about it, so there’s no need of worrying now.

For the present, we will work with Sam where we know we can make progress. I will also enjoy my son, the one that reads letters**, counts to twelve, loves anything orange, and wants me to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Sam over and over.

__________________
* I don’t know why people fret about socialized healthcare on the basis that it will force you to go to certain doctors and you’ll have to wait weeks for an appointment — we already do that now. I had to wait five weeks for Sam’s first appointment with the pediatrician-recommended psychologist, only to find out two appointments and two months later that our insurance carrier will not pay for any of that. They only want us to see mental health professionals that have been approved by them. In Birmingham, there is only one doctor’s office that is on that list.

**We’ve recently discovered that Sam knows his alphabet. I don’t mean just the alphabet song, though he kinda-sorta knows that. He knows the letters, randomly, all uppercase and many lowercase, plus some of the numbers. He can also read the word “off.” Figures — ‘off’ was one of his first words.

pourquoi?

Lydia: “Hey, where did Daddy go?”

Me: “He went upstairs to get something.”

Lydia: “Huh?”

Me: “He went — look, why do you ask questions if you’re not going to listen to the answer? I’m tired of you saying ‘Huh?’ all the time. If you ask a question, at least listen to the answer I give you.”

Lydia, after a slight pause: “Mommy, can I talk to you?”

Me: “Yes.”

Lydia: “Where did Daddy go?”

Me: “I already told you.”

Lydia: “Huh?”

summer doldrums

During the summer, I tend to take a creative break, both with my writing and with my photography. I abhor the heat, and i think it wilts me. So anyway, that’s why I haven’t written much though we’ve been fairly busy, especially on the Samfront.

It’s been cooler over the past week or so and I dare to wonder — could Fall be coming? I sure hope so. I think cooler weather is my muse.

four year old taco

Hey, it’s that time of year again! Time to honor the passing of another birthday with a traditionally belated birthday post. June is full of birthdays (and there was a wedding this year as well) so we’ve been vegging the past two weeks.

Lydia has continued to come into her own this year. She likes to do things HERSELF, from brushing her teeth to fetching snacks from the pantry. Finding the right movie on the television is still a bit tough but she has seriously got the hang of it on the iPad. It’s amazing how intuitive that touchscreen is for someone her age — just a few flicks here, a tap there, then BAM, you’ve got Spiderman.

Lydia is becoming a big helper around the house. She enjoys helping to feed the kitties and she does fairly well when asked to clean her room. She really gets a kick out of helping Steven and I with cooking. Last night she helped make pancakes! She is still a very picky eater, unfortunately. Unknown foods on her plate will be met with loud protestations and scrunched up noses.

Here she is helping Steven to roll out pizza dough for a pizza that she will definitely NOT eat.

She is still very sweet with Sam and very mothering towards him, though he can now tackle her as well as she can tackle him. Sometimes she tries to be his mother too much and I hear her echoing me: “No no, Sam. Get your fingers out of your mouth.” I have to remind her that being a mommy is my job and she doesn’t need to worry so much about what Sam’s doing.

Despite her small stature, Lydia has been a willing participant of all things outdoorsy or sports-related this past year. She joined a ballet class through her school, and this summer she’s trying out gymnastics. She is more fond of swimming as she feels more comfortable with the water. She even tried out roller skating!

In fact, between Lydia and Sam we find ourselves outside a lot, even when it’s really just too hot. Every Saturday morning you will find us emerging from the basement, then one toy comes out, then a few more, and by the end of the day our driveway looks like a colorful plastic obstacle course. Sometimes, all the shiny red bicycles in the world aren’t amusing enough and Mom has to come up with “arts and crafts.”

I’m glad arts and crafts are more washable than when I was a kid.

My first good memories from when I was a kid are from when I was around three or four years old, so I’m often aware that Lydia is beginning to set up her own childhood memories now. I wonder what it is that she will remember.

Hopefully she remembers more of the cupcakes,

and the playtime,

and being a dinosaur,

and not so much of that time Mommy got locked in the bathroom.

super party

Sam struck the jackjpot this year. Not only was it his Golden Birthday; it also fell on a Saturday — a great day for parties! So it came to pass that Sam celebrated his second birthday on the second of June, a surprisingly mild day complete with superhero masks, capes, and Sam-friendly cupcakes.

Yes, I went for the Superhero theme this year. After all, both kids already had capes in the closet from last Halloween. Score! I made the cake (and the cupcakes) but I think I’m about to wear myself out on baking. Baking is tedious and I only get excited once the fondant comes out. Yes, the cake is supposed to be tilted, I swear!

Sam woke up from his nap ready to party, as long as it involved eating first. While the girls ate all the fruit, Sam chowed down on sweet potato chips galore while babbling the whole time.

We quickly moved on to the traditional singing of “Happy Birthday” once Sam caught sight of the cupcakes on the table. Thankfully, he didn’t get as messy as last year when we had to hose down the high chair. Over the past year, Sam has learned how to down a cupcake or two. Or seven.

After Sam finally seemed to fill up on food, we gathered around to open presents. He enthusiastically ripped into the first one, which turned out to be a drill and hammer set. Well, Sam was done. All he wanted was the drill set, and he was annoyed by Steven’s repeated attempts to distract him with another present. Drill, baby, drill.

The new pedal bike Steven and I got him was a distraction for about 15 seconds.

After presents, the adults sat around drinking Grapico — many epic burps were dealt — while the kids ran around on sugar highs. Lydia ran around so much she scraped the same knee twice. After the second time I made her put on a pair of jeans.

At one point the shade became very lovely in the back yard so I made Lydia pose in the grass, so here are some gratuitous Lydia pictures.

As the afternoon meandered on, the kids moved into the pool. The Game of the Day seemed to be Jump and Splash. I think Elizabeth invented this game.

Once Sam saw the girls jumping, he had to take a turn. Sam’s theme song is, “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.”

By the end of the afternoon, another successful birthday party drew to a close. All three kids were wet, tired, and full of sugar of all sorts. They were also very happy and still wanted to play still the stars came out. Where do these kids get all this crazy energy? It wasn’t in the Grapico. I should know — I drank three.