*kendraspondence*

3:45a.m. I pick Baby Girl up from her crib where she is stirring and I kiss her. My lips feel as though they’ve been burned by her forehead. Lovey Loverpants got paged earlier and so he is at the hospital. Text messages are exchanged. Moments later and he is placing Baby Girl on my lap face down and saying, “Hang on, I need to get some KY for the rectal thermometer.” He bought one on his way home. Go to bed now, he says. I’ll stay with Baby Girl.
***

Thank you, God, for a man that will buy a rectal thermometer from the dodgey pharmacy at 4 a.m. and use it with care.

***

Three years ago on July 31, this was the part of our love story we were writing…

Three years later and this is our love story in living color…

Happy Anniversary, Lovey Loverpants. Happy Six Months, Baby Girl.

It’s not my policy to respond to ignorance, except for the occasional, “I’m sorry, but you are hopelessly misinformed,” when the occasion warrants it. So as the talk continues to fizzle over Michael Savage’s assessment of autism, its fraudulence and overdiagnosis, I won’t respond to it. I will simply relish the fact that as his insipid blather echoes across YouTube, autism awareness gains momentum, misunderstood children benefit, the ultimate irony materializes.

***

I think some more about what it is to overdiagnose a disease, and who are the ones who determine rampant overdiagnoses. Physicians? Statisticians? Or shock jocks living out their attention deprivation over the radiowaves?

I wonder if any of these people know what it is like to live with someone who is undiagnosed. What it is like to see your parents puzzled, grievous, blaming themselves when their son, who is perfectly verbal, smolders to a teary-eyed mess when it’s time to go to pre-school, who bawls his eyes out at a parade, his hands covering his ears as the fire trucks blaze by, when all the other children are raucous, opening their shirt-tails for free candy.

***

I don’t know what good Mr. Savage thinks could possibly come from telling an autistic child to man up and stop acting like a fool.

I only know that I watched my brother stand up proudly at his high school graduation last year, turning his tassel from one side of his flatboard cap to the other as he received his honors diploma, and then hugging all the people, the coaches, the teachers, his family who never ever gave up on a boy with autism. I wonder how he learned how to hug.

Happy 20th Birthday, Baby Brother.

The woman who is working the front desk looks up to see us and probably assumes we are there to visit a great grandparent. So she opens the door without hesitation, and I’m thankful because I can’t figure out how to open it myself without bumrushing it with the stroller.

I know she’s probably a resident and doesn’t have the scoop on all the activities, but I ask her anyway.

“Do you know where the mom’s group meets here?”

She looks puzzled, her glassy eyes squint behind thick lenses, as if to say, Honey, the only mom’s group here are for moms that are post-menopausal.

I’m not sure if I should waste my time elaborating, but I do so anyway, “See, I read this thing about a mom’s group here? Where you can bring your baby and meet all the residents?”

A baby boomer and his father are sitting on a bench watching this go down and they say, “Wow, that’s a nice idea!”

I agree it’s a great idea. Which is why I’ve dragged my infant here in the stroller on a rainy day to look for the moms group. That meets at the assisted living facility.

The assistant director of the facility comes out and I ask her if there is a moms group that meets here. She gives me a look like Man I’ve heard some crazy things today, but this is the loonbaggiest thing I’ve heard all week. A mom’s group that meets at the blue hair corral.

I tell her I’ve written down the information and she says she’s going to show the boomer and his dad an apartment here and when she gets back, she can help me investigate this further.

So Baby Girl and I sit out in the lobby and perform ad hoc duties as the Wal-Mart Greeters of the assisted living facility. We meet Ethel who’s just come back from Kohl’s with a bright orange sweater. And Doris who just heard about Flo’s accident, having mistakenly pushed the gas and not the brake. We meet Robert who asks Baby Girl if she, too, has come to rent out a room.

And with every exchange, Baby Girl studies the ruddy but wrinkled faces. She looks intently. They ask her if she’s going to give them a smile and I think, No, I’m sorry, but you have to spread wide your dentures grin if you want a smile. She’s an equal exchange opportunist. But it warms my heart, this series of impromptu tete-a-tetes.  Maybe there is no formally scheduled Bridge at the facility that day, but herein we are participants in an intergenerational bridge built spontaneously at an assisted living facility – where 3 years ago there may have been a mom’s group that met but whose internet site is no longer updated – on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.

Every morning, Lovey Loverpants scoops up Baby Girl from her crib and brings her out into the living room where he does Namaste Yoga. They enjoy their Daddy/Madi time, Mama enjoys her extra hour of slumber, everyone finds a little slice of peace in the morning. Evidently Baby Girl has been paying attention to what she has learned in this sacred hour. Just look at how her own practice has evolved….

Lying sun salutation

Down Sidefacing Dog

Warrior One

Arch

Cobra

Triangle

She is truly a happy baby. Forgive a yoga pun.

strapped inOriginally uploaded by shamrox

Life may be a box of chocolates, but it is also such a box of Nerds isn’t it? Half of the box is oh-so-granularly-sweet. The other side, open that hatch and out pours the sour in small warped little beads. . . .

Ya take the good with the bad, no?

The baby bundle is growing and I’m just trying my best to recognize the good in that, and not allow my mind to race ahead to when she will be slam dunking me into the laundry hamper because why? Because she can. She’s getting so big and so responsive, such that she beats against her crib mattress like a wind-up monkey with cymbals whenever she sees me or Daddy coming, but at the same time, she’s also getting so WILLFUL, which is just the slightest bit terrifying to her mother, who sees her *now* just flippantly tossing her baby sunglasses to the side because they’re kind of not what she wants to be holding right at this second, but tomorrow, who knows? Maybe those sunglasses will be the job that she just doesn’t feel like holding down right now WHAT THEN!?

Norma Neurotic begone.

I shall try my best to live in these moments, suck the Johnson and Johnson scented marrow out of them, and let these pictures remind me often the cutest pair of chunky legs to ever roam the earth.