Me, nuzzling Wombat: “You are my little treasure. And Nathan is my little treasure. Two treasures! Heeee heeee.”
Wombat: “Treasure? We are… like your trains?!”
Me: “Trains are treasure?”
Wombat: “Yes! Like Thomas and Gordon! Nathan and I are like Thomas and Gordon. We are your trains.”
Yar!
Wombat refuses to be toilet trained. He is ready. He knows what to do. He just doesn’t want to do it. He insists on wearing a diaper and this is becoming a problem for our Big Secret Plan to Move Schools. (more on that later)
We have tried it all. Sticker rewards. Candy. Watching favorite cartoons on the potty. He will do his business on it sometimes, but has zero interest getting to the potty instead of going in his pants. The wetness, smelliness and general yuckiness of it all do not bother him in the least. (This is the same child who, when the tiniest drop of water or mud touches him, will scream “WET! I’M WET!! DONT LIKE IT! CHANGE MY SHIRT!!”. But apparently sitting in poo is no problem.)
So we have decided to take a stand, much like those generals in some battle that has the name ‘Stand’ in it and I am much too lazy to look up. This weekend is it. We are bringing in additional, veteran troops (code-named ‘grandparents’). May the force be with us.
The plan so far is to announce to him that he has become too big for diapers (which is actually sort of true as size 6 barely fits him now), put him in underwear and then move on. Hopefully after 3 or 4 days he will surrender, er, I mean, figure it out.
(I actually suspect his resistance DOES have something to do with his hatred of being wet. I think he has figured out that when you wet yourself in underwear, you wind up soaked, but with a diaper you wind up sort of dry. So he views underwear as inferior, and a trip to the potty as an interruption to his action-packed day. Sorry, kid. Harvard has a strict no-diapers admissions policy, so they have to go sooner or later. 
)
Please send reinforcements, provisions, gummy bear ammo and Valium to help the effort.
Elijah (holding up a piece of junk, like a shred of mulch): Look at my car, Mommy!
Me (joining in): Yeay, your car is awesome! What color is it?
Elijah: Yellow.
Me (grabbing another piece of mulch): Look at MY car! Mine is green!!
Elijah (with a concerned “I’m talking to a crazy person” look on his face): Um, Mommy, that’s not a car. THAT’s a piece of MULCH.
Um, duly noted.
We welcomed Nathan’s first tooth last Sunday! On 6/19, we could see a fine white line that by today has become a sharp white ridge. Its the lower left front tooth; Nathan is going all textbook on us. 
Hurray!
A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Iggy and I were buying dog food on our way to be induced at Shady Grove hospital. (Yeah! I know! Hemingway WISHES he had an intro like that!!) While checking out, Iggy got a phone call. It was from our number-one-choice, deliriously-unlikely, awesome-est daycare that took infants. And they had A SPOT. For US. They asked us if we wanted it and we screamed YES!! They then asked us when the child was born and we said “can you hold on just a second? Because if you wait a little, we might be able to tell you the exact time!”)
Elijah has been going to that daycare since 7 months old. It was a wonderful necessary evil in my life. By that I mean that it is the absolute best daycare around (and possibly ever, anywhere) that takes care of infants, and we were lucky to ever get a spot there, but still infants belong with Mom and having to send a baby of mine there broke my heart.
One of the ways I tried to deal with it, because you must, is to tell myself that this experience will make Elijah more social. “Look at me!” I would say to myself. “I am a pariah, socially speaking. Always preferred books to people, never any good at parties, never comfortable in a crowd, never had more than one friend. No doubt this is because I spent so much time at home with my Mom, being talked to like an adult, having no siblings or other children my age around and so never learning how to interact with my peers!! Elijah will be the life of the party. This will be good. He will have no choice but to be social!”
Elijah screamed through the entire 5 hours that I left him in daycare daily. The staff told me that much later. I didn’t know that at the time. I would pick him up, and they would say in careful tones “He is adjusting. Still adjusting. But he is ok!” When he turned 10 months, they told me that they used to be not sure he’d be able to stay in daycare at all; he cried all the time and was unconsolable, but now, at 10 months, they felt he finally was happy there! They asked me if I had taken him to play with more kids or something. They wanted to know what changed.
What changed (besides my wanting to punch them in the face for never telling this to me before) was that Elijah could now move. Specifically, he could move away from them to where he wanted to be. By himself. He wanted to be by himself and to do what he wanted to do. So much for the influence of “my time at home with just my Mom”. Turns out, it’s just the way I am. Turns out, it’s just the way he is too.
Since that time, I have watched him act more and more like me, and I have become more and more concerned. (If you have ever met me, and are reading this, no doubt you are growing more and more concerned too, because the last thing YOU need to deal with is two of me). I did not have an easy time in kindergarden or afterschool programs, or any unstructured social setting with a horde of other children. I took myself very seriously when I was little; I didn’t like playing pointless games, I didn’t like jumping around, I didn’t care to sing songs, hold hands and do hopscotch. I wanted to get something done. To learn something. To make something. To boss others around so they do something. (I know, I’m a really lovely person! Stop by my house anytime!) Nothing made me more frustrated than someone ordering me to go do something pointless just to take up time. I wanted every minute of my existing to have purpose and meaning, and to be toward some larger goal. I largely ignored childhood as an annoying waiting period before you become an adult and can actually get some shit done without weird people pushing a “nap time” or “play time” on you every freaking day.
But, even worse, I did not understand that being social was important. This is hard to explain. I am not introverted. I LOVE public speaking. I can be a ham in front of a crowd. I really like talking to other people and can approach a stranger with no problem. I like people. It’s groups that I don’t like. Or, rather, it’s not that I don’t like them; I just don’t feel the need to be part of them. Any of them. I could never be part of a club, religion or movement. Groups are not my thing.
And so, at a young age, when people would come to our house and ask my parents “Can Olya come play?”, I would calmly say “No, thanks” and stay at home. I said so because I was reading my book, and wanted to finish it. I was too young to understand, and no adult has ever explained to me, that this response will make everyone hate you, because you just dissed them. I didn’t have a clue; I thought I was just honestly answering their question. I did not realize that “Can you come play?” is also really asking “Do you like us?”. I had no clue that to other people group belonging is as important as life, and as natural as breathing. I was like a cat at a dog party. Predictably, and in very short order, most people began to line up on the spectrum of ignoring me to hating me, which bewildered and frightened me further into avoiding everyone, and so a very fun cycle began.
I am telling you this not just to make you weep and start a non-profit to help people like me (although feel free to fundraise!), but to motivate this scene in daycare: Elijah, by himself, in a corner, building a sophisticated LEGO city with apparent zoning and a sanitation system, while ALL the other children are throwing pillows around in the opposite corner. When a child comes over to engage Elijah, he gives the child a look (and sometimes one LEGO piece), moves and proceeds to ignore the kid. This repeated over, and over, and over. The funny thing is, kids love him. They want to play with him. They keep trying to engage with him. They follow him around. This, of course, annoys him.
I’m watching my Wombat do this and I want to scream at him about what will inevitably happen in a year, or two, if he keeps that up, but he is unreachable. He has no clue. How do you explain to a 2-year-old that his social future is in danger, that he is taking the natural goodwill that everyone has toward him, squandering it and setting off for a very bad cycle of becoming a misfit? Is it any easier to explain to his mother that she might just be completely off her rocker, that this might be a normal 2-year-old behavior and that her child may not become her after all? I know, this is the post of hard questions.
(Nathan, by the way, is not like that at all. Nathan loves company. In a month or two, when you come to our house, Nathan will be handing you a drink. I’m hoping to find a lot of new friends through him in the future.)
Given that I cannot turn my Wombat into a social butterfly, and that I cannot explain to him that he must, at least sometimes, act excited to be with other people for the sake of appearances, I decided I should at least try to make him stand out less. And so, as much as I love our daycare, I started looking into Montessori. Montessori is the individualistic learning method, where each child moves at his own pace, there are no mandatory group activities and you are expected to work, finish your work and make progress. It sounds awful, doesn’t it? Sounds like poor three-year-old doesn’t get any play time anymore and has to work. But I know that I would have LOVED such an environment when I was little. I had always wanted to work, to get something done, not to just play. Really strange: a preschooler who loves and wants deliberate practice. But that’s what I was, and that’s what Wombat seems to be.
I have visited every Montessori school in the nearby suburbs in the last 3 months. And I now have to decide whether to move schools or stay put. Because if I don’t make these decisions, how will Elijah find something to blame me for later? Better give him enough fodder for future things to say about his mother, don’t we think?
*This, of course, is a reference to a wonderful Kipling story. Read it to your kids tonight, because it is very, very sweet.
He held her hand the whole way. Wish we could see you guys more often.
Making Faces from Olya on Vimeo.
Farmhouse swings, strawberries, wide-brim hats, bubbles and other things boys are made of.
I have no allergies. Iggy has no allergies. Wombat has no allergies. This is well supported by the fact that all three of us kiss Bismarck, roll on a fur-covered rug, snack on tree nuts and consider seasons with pollen in them to be our favorite.
When Wallaby was born he seemed to be fine with everything too. But around 4 months, his skin became rashy, and his cheeks bright red and crusty with orange scales. “Impetigo”, said our pediatrician. We duly smeared Wallaby with muciprocin and mild corticosteroids (DermaSmooth) to stop inflammation. It stopped. We stopped. It came back. Pediatrician upgraded our diagnosis to eczema, and recommended I omit milk and soy from my diet. I did. Skin cleared up. We celebrated. I got used to drinking black coffee. It flared up again. We went to a dermatologist.
Actually, I took Nate to 2 dermatologists, because I like to apply swarm intelligence to my medical decisions. I figure, the more people I talk to, the less likely it is that what I’m hearing is wrong. Well, in the field of dermatology it seems all bets are off.
“Eczema” said the first doctor in Virginia before I said anything at all. “Eczema, eczema, the whole thing is eczema, it’s genetic, there is nowhere to hide.”. He explained that eczema is basically an allergic reaction that is expressed on the skin. (On a more fundamental level, it’s a genetic defect in cell membranes, causing the immune system to attack benign foreign particles on the skin). It used to be common knowledge that you outgrew baby eczema. It turns out that you never do, it just becomes less severe and you learn how to manage it better. But if you have eczema as a baby, you will probably have sensitive skin all your life.
“Well, at least you are not a girl.” I informed Nathan. I have no clue what you do for makeup when your skin reacts to every single thing, but I imagine it to be a major headache. All a boy has to find is a shaving cream that doesn’t make him break out. That’s when he grows up, of course. For now his Mom has to find a way to manage the eczema.
The doctor told us that’s all we could do. It’s an allergy, effectively, and so you need to find out what the trigger is. Unfortunately, allergy tests are not reliable in young kids and, in doctors words, “there’s no point doing them.” He suggested keeping a diary, writing down all aspects of food, environment, smells, people present that day. The diary would help us figure out what is causing the flare ups: we could go and look which new substance or place had been introduced the day before. In the meantime, we were to apply steroids topically until the skin was completely clear. I was also informed that Nathan was likely very itchy and eczema was keeping him up at night.
“It’s like trying to sleep with poison ivy!” the doctor exclaimed, and prescribed more DermaSmooth applications, Eucerin Aqaphor rubs and antihistamines. Antihistamines don’t actually do anything to help the eczema, they just knock you out to help you sleep. So, my 6 month old is now being prescribed a sedative. Lovely. We were also advised to visit the dermatologist office every month, because even though the steroid is topical, it can still thin the skin. You need a dermatologist to keep checking it monthly. Great.
Arranging all the prescriptions in a neat pile, we headed to dermatologist number two. After all receptionists were done fawning over Nate, we got to see the doctor- a hyper woman with blue bulging eyes and an enthusiastic air of a cosmetologist. She proclaimed that he has a severe allergy, and that elimination diets were a waste of time. She instructed me to get a blood allergy test for him immediately. “We need to get him better, he’s got rash all over, it’s bad”. The rashy baby grinned at her. “Oh but he is sooooo happy!” she exclaimed and walked out. Her receptionist called the allergist and told me the next appointment was the next day. We couldn’t make it, and I said I’d call to schedule it for another day. “Are you sure?” asked the receptionist with a concerned grimace. “It’s the long weekend. Do you really want the baby to SUFFER until next week?” A Thousand dirty looks to the receptionist.
Allergy testing doesn’t produce reliable results even in adults. The blood test, which is the more trustworthy one, detects antibodies in your blood. If you do not have antibodies for a particular allergen, then you are definitely not allergic to it. If you have antibodies for a particular allergen, then there is a 50% likelihood that you are allergic to the substance. in other words, this test better turn up lots of negatives, or it is worthless. You might as well use a list of allergens and a coin to figure out your course of treatment. All is is even more complicated when the baby is breastfed: mother’s antibodies are in the baby’s blood, and the test becomes less conclusive. Take that, hyper cosmetologist-looking derma woman with a heartless receptionist, and give us our hundred bucks back.
We might see another dermatologist in NY, because why stop now? I am not eating any dairy. (By the way, you know what has milk in it? EVERYTHING.) It’s definitely helping me lose weight, but it’s not clear if it’s helping Nathan clear up his skin. He seems to break out randomly, in bumps and red blotches, and we cannot spot a food or environment pattern to it. It could be food. It could be pollen. It could be pets. Hope not. None of this makes sense to me. We are not allergic to anything, so how could he be? It’s not fair. And the breakouts don’t seem to be that bad, and Nate doesn’t seem miserable either. I’m not on board with the doom and gloom the dermatologists are prophesizing. I think he’s ok. Its true that he is not sleeping well now, but neither did Elijah at this age, and he had no skin issues.
What should I do? How much is enough? Should I go to see more doctors, possibly dragging Nathan to countless tests, blood draws, germ infested waiting rooms all to fix a mild condition he will just outgrow? Should I say this is no big deal and risk it turning out to be a big deal after all? What is better for him? That’s the thing with being a parent: you could do a 1000 things, one of which is right, but you have no way of telling which one. Argh.