Don't Eat Us!

The other day I found Alicia attempting to rearrange bedroom furniture, pack suitcases, vacuum, and organize non-perishables.

“Are you nesting?” I asked.

“I’m not nesting!” she said, slumping to the ground. “I can’t MOVE to nest.”

It’s true. She can’t move. And I feel horrible about it. So, I told her I’d like to be proactive.

Then she started talking about the need to rub her feet, press on pressure points in the ankles and give back rubs to quicken the effacement process.

“Hogwash,” I said. “Old wives’ tales. Let’s try the old husband’s tales for a change.”

You see, I did a lot of scientific research…sort of unscientific…more like brainstorming…okay, it was actually just a way to appear empathetic and try out a theory I once heard from a dad who heard it from his grandpa who heard it from his grandpa’s great-grandfather.

Old Husband’s Tale: If the biological father of an unborn child nurtures the growth of his mustache such that it is visible through the embryonic fluid, placenta, and abdominal epidermis, the unborn child will become excited and cause an effacement frenzy, resulting in rapid dialation and delivery.

I started a mustache. Again, fatherly, selfless effort.

It’s been almost two weeks, and I”m beginning to wonder if I should have started closer to the second trimester.

Or maybe conception.

I took a close-up pic, realizing some men like myself might benefit from a product like mustachescara. It’s like mascara but for a ‘stache.

I don’t get it. This is a picture of my dad. This is like three hours after he shaved.

So far, our baby girl is unresponsive.

This is me giving a last-ditch effort. Caleb gave it a shot as well, just for good measure.

I fear the worst: I may be rubbing feet tonight…

Why is it,

whenever I babysit my children,

they misbehave???

I must say, today was a most splendid day to have afternoon tea with my darling wife.  A date!  Most certainly Lady Elegant’s Tea Room offered us more than adequate accommodations for both hearty conversation and sugary indulgences.

First, when we contacted our nanny to provide care for our children for New Year’s Eve day, she responded in the affirmative. After she arrived (from the backyard, she’s a Saint Bernard, of course) we traversed the northern Twin Cities in horse and carriage.

Simply delightful! Though the bumpy ride gave my innards quite the jostle, we managed to enjoy the journey. We held hands, my naked palm resting atop her lacen glove. It was a regal yet romantic ride, the whole way.

It wasn’t until the grand duke announced our arrival that I learned I had underdressed.  How dreadful to have misplaced my tweed jacket, monocle and top hat only yesterday. Still, I saved face because my table etiquette is nearly flawless.

We ordered the Keemun Panda black tea. I was much surprised to find such fruity depth and complexity within the blend. My palate was instantly rewarded with an explosion of exotic spice, all wrapped within the warmth of a dainty porcelain cup. The steaming reddish tea even took cream rather well; a necessity for an experienced tea connoisseur such as myself.

Despite my attempts to focus upon my sense of taste, my eyes continually discovered ways to distract my tongue buds. Indeed, the only thing steeped longer than our Keemun Panda tea was my adoring gaze into the beauty of Lish’s hazel eyes. But, like a true lady, she did not flinch at the conspicuousness of my fascination. Instead she batted her feathery lashes, motioned her wrist in ways a beauty pageant contestant would envy, and smacked her lips after bites of scone in a way that sent chills down my well-groomed spine.

One last thing I must share. Indulge in this, friends! You may judge my wife, Alicia, to be a proper and refined woman, engaging in etiquette fit for the queen’s dining quarters.  Not so! At one point, after removing a morsel of scone with her translucent, ivory incisors, she accidentally dropped her scone upon the floor. “Oh, my beloved scone!” she said.

And then, as though it were the most natural of responses to take, she bent over, retrieved the scone from the floor, applied jelly, and continued to nourish herself with it like it was fresh out of the oven.

A woman unashamed of getting a little dirt on her scone, that’s the woman for me.

Finally, I must share a picture of my Lady Elegant’s Tea Room guestbook entry:

Now, if you would excuse me, I’m going to my garage, to power lift, to prove that despite finding enjoyment in afternoon tea with my wife, I do possess almost supernatural levels of testosterone that allow me to dead lift hernia-inducing amounts of iron.

Home school schedules have been a little erratic so far. Part of the reason is that Caleb is attending public school kindergarten half-time, and Lucy is in a Christian Montessori two days a week. Also, Alicia’s super-duper pregnant. And, I just finished a semester of creative writing courses at a nearby college.

Nevertheless, we’re seeing substantial gains when we put in the effort.

Some of the benefits we love:

1) Focusing on problem areas—there is no classroom of other students. If Caleb is struggling with penmanship, we work on that. We don’t need to worry about the progress of anyone but Caleb or Lucy.

2) We as parents stay the primary influence on our children—we teach material that is consistent with our values. Teachers, other children, and strangers have less of an opportunity for sharing values we don’t agree with.

3) Flexible schedule—Lucy needs to nap by 1PM or the town’s tornado siren goes off. At home, it’s easy to avoid educating her during nap time.  Lucy prefers 5:30AM for lessons, her normal wake-up time (don’t you feel for us???).

4) Lish and I get to learn new subject matter—We’re currently reading a book on the history of the world. Both of us are college educated, and yet some of the events we’re learning about are new to me.

Some challenges:

1) Our patience—I’m often preoccupied with dentistry or story writing or other responsibilities. Lish is nesting and almost entirely immobile.  If we’re short on patience, lessons become a crescendo of verbal frustration.

2) Getting Caleb and Lucy to recognize we’re teachers—Let’s face it: we’ll always be Mom or Dad, even when we’re teachers, too. It makes for a sometimes unexpected dynamic.

3) Time and organization—A lot of both is required to make home school fruitful. Up to this point our commitment has only been luke-warm. But we’ve found that more preparation=more progress, and that keeps us motivated.

4) Meeting worldly expectations—Lucy and Caleb don’t live and function in a bubble. At some point they’ll be taking standardized tests for college, working jobs, and having relationships with other people. And for those things, the world will determine Caleb and Lucy’s success by how they meet the world’s standards. Therefore, giving them the tools to jump through academic hoops is an unwelcomed necessity we must incorporate into our schooling.

As we continue to do more research and hone our home school plan, I hope to share more about the resources we find useful (and would love you to share yours as well). It’s going to take more discipline in the coming months (because the baby is coming soon) to keep up our curriculum, but I’m confident we can do it.

With enough caffeine, anything is possible.

The Christ Child–born fully man and fully God–came most humbly to Earth. Christ chose a delivery place filled with the filth and stench of barn animals. He could have chosen a palace or hospital.  Christ chose to make his infant-wrapped divinity known to pagan astrologers and unkempt sheperds.  He could have revealed his birth to emperors or reality television audiences.

Oh, Christmas!  The glorious beginning of God’s perfect plan of redemption. For sinners.  Like me.

Caleb.

Lucy.

Alicia.

Because as wonderful as the story of Christ’s birth is, we don’t celebrate it primarily because it’s his birthday.

My family celebrates Christmas because Christ’s birth was the most glorious way to bring about his death.  And his death?

That was to purchase the greatest gift of all–salvation.

Because I haven’t found the time to discuss in detail how we have implemented aspects of a home school curriculum for our kids, I’d like to share a project Caleb and I finished recently.

The project is called:

CALEB’S FIRST STORY

First I taught him to brainstorm for–

Characters–Caleb, Mommy, Daddy, Katniss (0ur cat), Baby, Wall-E, Eva

Setting/Place: Outer Space

Bad Guy: Monster’s, scary ones (I asked him to describe them)–Dark, Big Teeth, Claws, Big clas on arms and legs, Big fur, Big (Tall).  Color–Dark in dark time. Smell: Icky-Garbage. Sound: Big Roar, Low Voice, say mean things

Conflict--Mean guys try to eat nice guys

Resolution/End: Monster’s die, nice guys shoot them with lasers and rocks

Naturally, I was giddy with excitement for CALEB’S FIRST STORY.  Not only did I get to enjoy my favorite hobby of all-time, writing, but I got to enjoy it with Caleb.

Here is an excerpt:

  Then the monsters attacked.  Everyone jumped in the rocket.  Eva had a laser but she didn’t give it to Caleb because he wasn’t big enough for a laser yet.

     So Caleb quickly shut the rocket door and started the engine.  The monsters crawl up into the space rocket’s fire.

     And they die because it’s too hot.  Their claws fall off, their fur burns and the icky stuff dies, their eyes come out and their eyelashes and their teeth come out too.

All of the plot, conflict, character development, and resolution were from Caleb’s verbal descriptions.  I simply had to add conjunctions to make it read more smoothly.  Also, he had a few tense issues I corrected (I don’t teach that until age six).

We’ve been working on our illustrations.  And recently we’ve been very busy with writing poetry.  I’ll share some poems soon.

My favorite part of working with Caleb on writing?  ”What do you want to be when you grow up Caleb?”  ”Writer, like Daddy.  Reader too.”

Thanksgiving will be bittersweet for me this year.  It will be sweet because the last few months have been some of the best in my life.  And bitter, because two days ago Kenn died–a man who displayed Christ’s love to me when I needed it most.

How did our relationship begin?  Typically a spontaneous visit to a spouse’s great-uncle’s home two thousand miles away in California would be a casual meeting, and nothing more.  But over the course of an hour, Kenn and I decided that corresponding with each other sounded interesting.

And how might we correspond?  Email?  No.  I’m much too nostalgic for that.  And Kenn was forty years my senior.  Handwritten letters, folded up within lined notebook paper, deliberately addressed, deliberately stamped, and physically placed into the mailbox; it was the only acceptable way.

So here I am, two days after his death, submerged in a pile of his handwritten letters, wishing I could receive one more.

Our letters began in 2005 and many of them discussed issues of faith and spiritual growth, and many provided encouragement.  But I want to share excerpts of the last few letters.  I wrote Kenn a letter in Jan. 2008, in which I described my challenges with marriage and the revelation of Caleb’s special needs.  This was part of his response:

     Your letter, with its news about Caleb, and you, and your struggles, as an individual and couple, has moved Louise and me deeply!  We can sense…how painful it is for you to live faithfully and hopefully…

Another letter from Kenn, August 12, 2008:

     How you are managing to do it all, it seems to me, is a powerful witness to where, how , and on Whom you’ve centered your lives and your marriage. I haven’t written for a while, so this is “overdue”, but I want you to know just what I think about you, how often I think about you, and how happy I am for you.  Louise and I often include you in our prayers…

Months later I was at a breaking point.  I had not a soul I desired to reach out to–no friend, no family, no wife.  I was too embarrassed and scared to share my struggles with fatherhood and marriage, work and lack of contentment with others.  But I shared them in a moment of weakness with Kenn.

And Kenn responded:

     Please see, together, a marriage and family counselor, now.  You are now in my special prayers, as I am folding these pages, I will ask God to invest my words with His Wisdom and Power, so that they are communicated to you…

I rejected that plea, but during my deep struggles I never forgot the Christ-like love he shared with me through that last letter in 2008.  I shut myself off to the world instead of listening to Kenn.  Had I listened, my marriage might have been mended years earlier.

I never wrote to Kenn again.  I think I was too embarrassed.  Embarrassed at who I had become–an automaton fulfilling my manly responsibilities, devoid of emotion or concern for others.  I was broken.

Maybe one last letter, since it has been so long and so much has changed in my life, might have filled this void I tearfully write about now.  But that’s only a selfish desire; it would only serve as salve on a wound caused by my lack of concern for a dying man.

Kenn believed in the risen Christ, and Kenn’s faith was a bulwark I couldn’t ignore or forget, even after our correspondence ceased.  Speaking to him now would only benefit me, help me deal with regret.  But as for Kenn, he’s not melancholy over our sporadic correspondence.  Instead he is in heaven, rejoicing at the throne of Christ.

And I couldn’t be more thankful for anything today.

Kenn, if you read blogs in heaven, know that I took much from you and gave too little.  You didn’t seem to mind.  And some day, I hope to do the same for a young man like myself, pour into him, pray for him, so that he might drink and become wise, and know all the promises Christ has to offer.  I’ll pull out all our letter then.  Because I know there I will find inspiration in your sincerity, love, and faith in Christ.

See you in eternity, Kenn.

Profound statement #1:

I don’t try to disguise the fact that my sense of direction is worse than a maze-confined lab rat with late stage Alzheimer’s.  When I drive I’m usually thinking of anything but my destination: books I’ve read, books I’m reading, books I want to read, stories I’m writing, ways I can find more time to write.  But definitely I’m not concerned with where I’m going.

Unfortunately for Caleb, I was yesterday designated the task of taking Caleb to kindergarten.  Here’s the travel stats:

Total distance round trip: 3 miles

Estimated driving time: 6 minutes

So it’s nine a.m., Caleb and I are on the highway, and I’m thinking about fiction.  That is, until Caleb hollers from the back seat,

“Daddy!  What you doin’ Daddy?”

“Huh? Did I miss the turn, Caleb?”

“Yes!”

So I turn around, and I still don’t remember where the turn is, so Caleb says, “Gas station, Dad.”  And he’s right. The turn is at the gas station.

Profound statement #2:

Caleb has just loaded his Nerf gun. I’m acting as his commander, informing him of various targets. He’s just successfully assassinated a family portrait when I say, “Caleb, do you want to be a soldier when you grow up?”

He puts his Nerf gun down. Turns to me. Looks me in the eyes.

“No Daddy. My wife will miss me.”

And I think about that, and the two things it implies.

One: Caleb is beginning to communicate complex thoughts, and

Two: It’s the best compliment I can imagine, because I’m his role model for becoming a husband. And what has he seen so far? That it is not good to spend time away from your wife; a good husband’s priority is his wife.

Sometimes the best compliments come disguised in Caleb’s profound statements.

11-11-11    About ten minutes after I wrote the last post, Alicia arrived at the hospital.  I shared with her a bit about the emotions I was experiencing as we waited for results.  Just sitting in that lobby, observing the now familiar nurses and their epilepsy unit routines, I explained how I just wish we could just get out of this cycle of having to define Caleb in the world’s terms.

The tears weren’t dry yet when the neurologist approached.

Neurology-

“The EEG is normal. Any questions?” the neurologist said.

Yeah, a ton. But most of them are for God.

“So, should we stay off the Prednisone then?” I said.

And as the conversation progressed, I began to see just how far Caleb has come in three years. No more seizure activity; no more Prednisone.  No reasons for another EEG unless we see a regression in learning or behavior. For the neurologist, the bottom line is this: if the neuropsych tests look good, we’re definitely on the right track.

"Dad, this is great news! Be rid of your somber mood!"

Neuropsych-

This meeting with the neuropsychologist is where Alicia and I were really blown away. Every test the neuropsychologist performed came back in the average range, with one exception—language.  Last year a couple tested areas were still below average, or on the low end of average.  We discussed whether or not the Landau-Kleffner could be causing the speech issues, even if the EEG appears clear.  The answer is uncertain.  But from a practical standpoint, the neuropsych agrees that speech therapy is the best treatment at this time.  She sees no reason to consider Caleb as having anything but a developmental language disorder.

Alicia and I thank God we have some closure to one of the great trials on our faith and marriage. We are hoping for continued gains in the future with Caleb as we begin to focus on academics more than treatment of a epileptic disorder.

The ball is in our court now!  Alicia glows every time she tells me about how home schooling lessons are going.  And I have an awesome homes school lesson I worked on with Caleb I will share soon.  What a miracle we are witnessing in Caleb.

This is certainly momentum we will be taking into Caleb’s early school years!

Written at 9 AM today, but I could not post at the hospital:

Sleeping in until 6AM was good enough for Caleb today.  Impressive, considering he has a ponytail of wires and his forehead doesn’t move when he makes facial expressions due to the glue. 

One of the hardest parts of being here is listening to the sound of other children crying.  Last night there was a boy, not more than two, and he was up all night.  Fitful crying, wailing really, with a tinge of pain.  Maternal and paternal consoling could place no spell on him last night.  And I think of the many days and nights he’s been here, how in 2009 I nearly lost my sanity having to endure that fitfulness with Caleb for a single night.  Can there be too much prayer for this boy?  Certainly not.

Caleb’s biggest test today is not the EEG, but the neuropsych testing.  I’ve been preparing him for what I call “hospital school” to get him to the top of his game.  We read several books together, played games, and told jokes to sharpen him up.  I dressed him and brushed his teeth.  I gave him a pep talk.  It’s like I’m preparing him for a competition. 

I guess I’m more anxious about the results today than I was yesterday.  Just talking to the doctor and feeling like this seizure activity may be getting under control, it makes me nervous.  My mind’s like, “Amazing! The Landau-Kleffner is under control.  Praise God!” But it’s also like, “Caleb’s still struggling with speech and academics.  We’ve been in therapies for years.  What else can we do?”

It’s hard when the world’s expectations weigh on my evaluation of Caleb’s progress.  Words like typical, normal and average shouldn’t give me the sense of relief they do.  Why should any parent have to evaluate their child?  I don’t want to evaluate and assume and predict limitations.  Caleb’s five.  I just want to love him. 

As we await our doctor face-to-face time, I work to find peace in the blessings we’ve received in the last couple years.

(We are home now, but I’ll post about the results tomorrow because, frankly, I’m tired.)