hot n tired

n grumpy... Lars' school bus got in an accident on the way to school this morning.

He's safe & home now. All I know is it was on route 20 in Weston, the EMTs came to the scene & checked him out, decided he was fine & didn't need to be transported to the ER, and another bus from the same company (Shuttle Bug) came & picked him up & brought him to school.

His teacher called when he finally arrived at school & said he was fine except for an abrasion on his neck where the car seat strap rubbed. They didn't take him on the class field trip, not wanting to put him back into a vehicle again so soon. He was apparently okay at school except for an angry half-hour in the late morning, perhaps after getting hot outside (For those of you "from away," it's 97 degrees here today. Our five minutes of spring have aparently elapsed already. Time flies.) I'd say he was probably pretty ticked off about being woken up & scared in the accident, missing circle time, which he loves dearly, missing the field trip & his peers, and about the whole hullabaloo in general.

I want to know more about exactly what happened so I can talk with him about his experience. I'm assuming the bus company will make contact with us this afternoon. If I were them, I certainly would call me.

5:15 update: Well, the bus company didn't call, so I called them. Can you say, "tailgating?' Can you say, "not paying close attention"? Lars' driver rear-ended a truck.

Story is truck sped up, Lars' driver sped up. Truck braked & driver "didn't catch it" & rear-ended the truck.

I spoke with one of the bus company's owners. She wasn't at the scene (assured me this is their first accident since 2004...), but reported that Lars waited in the van until the police and EMT's came, then after they cleared him to go to school, he had to wait another 45 minutes on the van for a second van to come. The police helped transfer the three kids to a different van & they went to school. She had no information about how long he cried, how the other two kids were, etc.

In order to do what’s required of me, I must ignore what I know about how vulnerable my children’s skin, bones & organs are when being hurled down the road enclosed in a metal box.

another good week

Lars has been having a good week at school. He has perhaps been a little more...himself lately. A little less all-good-all-the-time, and a little more up & down, which is Lars. Last week he had his first big neurological pain day at school, this week he had one rather weepy day & another when he wanted to be held all the time. That's my guy, after the honeymoon. He's still thrilled to go every morning & happy to tell us about it when he comes home again. Not to mention cute as a button.

He was having a lot of gagging, reflux, spitting up, and throwing up for a couple weeks, and it seems to have subsided. No idea why it came or went. Stomach bug? He totally didn't present as sick. A mystery.

I am more buried in work than I have been all year & am coming up on a weekend when Andey is working extra. If anyone knows of someone who's available parts of Sat, Sun, Mon, or Tue to hire for childcare (I'd be here but working in the house), please please let me know. I'm more than a little worried at this point. Phone is five oh eight, three oh three, oh five four five.

Hope everyone has a great long weekend.

such a head of hair

the week in photos

Rockin' & rollin' was popular this week (throwing himself as hard as possible forward & back while seated).



The tongue was also a big hit this week. I think this is the 4th time in his life that Lars has re-discovered his tongue. Each time it's amazing and wonderful. So sweet.

whew, back to school

Another bit of a rough weekend, especially Saturday when I took Lars to Davis' Farmland to have a sweet, wonderful toddler time romping with cute endangered farm animals & playing on cute playground equipment. Not. Screamed bloody murder. So lovely to receive those what-kind-of-a-terrible-parent-would-make-her-kid-scream-like-that-&-not-be-able-to-stop-it-? looks.

Seems he's upset with us for not taking him to school over the weekend. Sunday I spent a good half-hour saying in different ways, "one more night of sleep, then back to school," and all at once understanding seemed to come over him, he was able to stop complaining & enjoy the rest of the day. I could be projecting, but this is really what it seemed like happened.

We'll work on it, extemporizing on 'stay home days,' 'school days,' & 'x more nighttime sleeps until the next school' day themes. It'll probably click in around the end of July when we're facing five weeks of no school. Yelp.

Make no mistake that this is an amazing & fabulous problem to have & I'm completely intoxicated by its very existence.

Hoping Larsy got to go swimmin' today at school; last week he slept through it 'cause he'd had a terrible night, but last night was great, so fingers are crossed.

standing today 1:00 Framingham green

From standing women dot org, a fantastic way to spend 5 minutes of Mother's Day. You can stand anywhere, joining women across the globe and back in history. Mother's Day is no hallmark holiday, it was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from Julia Ward Howe, 1870:
......................................

"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

"Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

"We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.'

"Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

"Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

"In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870
......................................

And more mothers' day history from our dear West Virginian friend, Carylbeth:

Did you know that the national recognition of Mother's Day happened due to the efforts of a WV woman?
Anna Jarvis held a ceremony in 1907 in Grafton, West Virginia, to honor her mother, who had died two years earlier. Jarvis' mother had tried to establish Mother's Friendship Days as a way of dealing with the aftermath of the Civil War. Anna Jarvis began a campaign to create a national holiday honoring mothers. She and her supporters wrote to ministers, businessmen and politicians, and they were successful in their efforts.

In 1910, West Virginia became the first state to recognize the new holiday, and the nation followed in 1914 when President Wilson declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother's Day. Jarvis used white carnations as a symbol for mothers, because carnations represented sweetness, purity and the endurance of mother love. (Today, white carnations represent a mother who has died, while red carnations represent a living mother.)

Unfortunately, Jarvis became bitter over the commercialization of the holiday. She filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother's Day event and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a mother's convention where white carnations were being sold. Jarvis never married and never had children. She died in 1948.

catch up...

Howdy... I really wasn't feeling well & have been buried in work & just couldn't bring myself to stay awake to write the past week.

The long & short of it is we're thrilled pink & purple, up & down silly with Lars' placement, the amazing people he's working with, how incredibly happy & excited about school he is, the clarity with which he is telling us that this is exactly the right program for him...we just can't say enough good things. The progress & gains he made in just the first week, for heaven's sake. Stunning. He's so ready to be there & so ready to learn. Gush gush gush.

We're even thrilled with the transportation, which started this week: he's mostly sleeping all the way there & back, just as we had hoped he would, arriving rested & ready to rock n roll. And it's our neighbor transporting him.

fantastic first day

Lars had an unbelievably great first day of school yesterday!

Details and pictures to follow soon.

(Mama's been sick, or there would be many more details already...ah well.)

this morning's snuggles

good weekend

Had ourselves a swell weekend, with all day Saturday spent at the Perkins Preschool conference, which was fun, and today we were at church where I heard the woman who is candidating for our senior minister position (thought she was wonderful) & Lars took an inaugural 40-minute swing ride on the new swing purchased just for him, & we had a little ribbon-cutting ceremony wherein our director of religious education read from a book called Welcoming Children With Special Needs: A Guidebook for Faith Communities & re-affirmed that he is fully welcome in our Unitarian Universalist congregation. A beautiful thing, indeed.



We're set to start preschool at Perkins on Tuesday. ! . Was in the preschool Saturday because that's where Lars' childcare for the conference was based & they have created his own unique tactile symbol (with yellow mylar); there's one in his class & one on his cubby down low where he can find it. I was teary just looking at it; town never did one thing to get ready for his arrival.

Four-hour genetics appointment last week. Yikes. They want to re-test Lars for D-2 Hydroxyglutaric aciduria because there are often false negatives, and because so many symptoms match...actually 12/13:

+(neonatal) seizures which are often hard to control (this is probably the most common symptom)
+hypotonia, especially in the first few weeks of life
+mild dysmorphic features (e.g. micrognatic, hypertelorism)
+dilated cardiomyopathy (dilatation of the left ventricle)
+gastro-intestinal problems; a lot of vomiting especially in the first three years
+slowly working stomach/bowels; constipation is common
+gastro-esophagal reflux
-cardiomegaly (sometimes) [don't have this one, at least not that we know]
+myelin of the brains not fully developed
+developmental delay
+irregular EEG (a.o. hypsarrythmia)
+cortical blindness
+abnormal MRI-findings (immature brains, pachygyria, micro- or macrocephaly)