Katy Rank Lev

Since Miles has been going to occupational therapy, I’ve become familiar with the phrase “social story.” My understanding of these is that I create a story for Miles related to an upcoming situation/outing/encounter that defines what will happen, who will be involved, our expectations of Miles, and what he can expect.

We’ve been using them for everything. It’s like blogging for kiddos or something.

And they are so darn useful! Most recently, we did a social story for pooping on the potty. Could not have been any easier! We had an INCIDENT with Miles and his Pull-ups and I decided I was done with him using Pull-ups for poop. Just plain old done. And we were really trying to help him be ready on his own, but…INCIDENT.

So we wrote a social story, printed it, read it to him, plopped his ducky seat on the toilet and he went to town.

I just wrote him a little social story to help him get ready for our big trip, and I can already see him using it to make sense of what will happen. He asks questions like, “Ninny will show me a calendar when I’ll see Mommy and Daddy again?” or “I’ll get to wear my fancy shoes while I’m on the trip, right?” I waited until this week to print out the little book for him because I wanted to pay attention to the questions he was asking and things that might give him anxiety: where will he sleep while he’s away? What animals will he encounter? Who specifically will he see and what blanket will he use at night?

Obviously he’s going to have moments on this trip where he cries or feels upset, but I’m sure this tool is helping him the best it can.

In a way, it seems so natural and makes so much sense to lay out expectations for children in this way. I was always sort of doing this sort of thing for Miles. I’d say at breakfast, “We’re going to the zoo today with Becky and her kids!” But I’m learning to follow his cues about how specific he needs me to be.

When something new happens at school, for example, we do a social story now and recite it to him. “Mommy will pick you up inside your classroom instead of outside,” or “today you will go to gym class, so you need to wear your sneakers. This is a rule in gym class.”

We find that when he has advanced preparation, when he knows what’s ahead, he has a much better day. Gee, I wonder where he inherited this need to control or understand or at least predict what’s coming? At any rate, I feel excited to have found a tool that seems to help him in this area.

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Corey’s been friends with Geoff since they were 5 years old–this according to the baby book I’ve read at my in-law’s house. Geoff is getting married (finally!) in BELIZE. Now, Geoff and Mimi travel all over the world. They’ve lived in El Salvadore and Berlin and hopped all about Asia and South and Central America and we’ve longed to visit them in each exciting place, but it’s never happened. We make excuses, namely: babies.

But you don’t just miss the wedding of a friend you’ve had for 27 years. No matter what. The moment Geoff and Mimi got engaged and picked Belize as a destination, I knew I’d be planning a trip…with a baby.

Felix is still nursing, and so he has to go where I go, even if I go to Central America for 5 days. Especially then! Miles…well, Miles is overdue for a trip to see his grandparents.

At first, we thought we could con Corey’s parents into joining us and watching our kids for us while we take sunset cruises and sip fruity drinks at the wedding, but since the wedding will conflict with Seder, we decided the best plan is for Miles to stay first with my family for a few days and then with Corey’s family.

I know this will be hard for him and it will make me sad, too, but there are a number of reasons this is the right choice. First, we’d have to buy Miles an airplane ticket. That’s about 700 reasons to send him off to Ninny and Grampy. Second, Miles is a handful. I can’t imagine what he’d be like on a long flight, with a time change. And our hotel room opens right out onto the beach. The stress of trying to prevent him from drowning for five days would just about do me in.

His safety awareness is improving, but not fast enough that I’d take him to Ambergris Caye. For heaven’s sake, we’ll be getting to the island via boat. My little sister almost hurled herself overboard on a brief dolphin cruise at Miles’ age. Certainly, over the course of the one-hour boat-taxi ride, he’d manage to go for a swim.

There will be time for Team Lev to take a full family vacation together, and that time is not now.

Miles has spent the week with his grandparents a few times. The first two times I was separated from him overnight were very hard, but by the time I was 38 weeks pregnant with his brother, I very much enjoyed hearing how much fun he was having with his extended family.

What makes this trip different is that Felix will be with us, and I already can tell this will stick in Miles’ craw.

To prepare, we’re spinning the trip thusly: “Miles! You get to see all your cousins! All of them! And go to Seder, and eat macaroons, and see the pygmy goats. Gosh, that sounds fun. Ugh, Mommy and Daddy have to go to a wedding. Doesn’t that sound boring?”

Given his love of The Jolly Postman, and particularly the one-pound note Goldilocks gets for her birthday, we’re also helping him feel better about the trip by promising to A) send him a postcard with a fancy stamp and B) bring him some foreign currency of his very own.

So far, he’s looking forward to his adventure. Hopefully this continues as we get ready for ours!

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For some time now, Miles has been fascinated by mail. He loves the plastic letters at the toy library and, often, spends his time there driving the cozy coupe with plastic letters in the trunk, delivering them to random people and singing the Blue’s Clues mail song, complete with wiggling fists/elbows.

He also loves getting junk mail and carting around catalogues, hoarding political flyers, etc.

And then, one of my aunts bought Felix a book about a rabbit named Felix who flies away on a helium balloon, sending letters from all over the world. It’s an awful book in terms of text–the story changes verb tense several times throughout!–but so captivating for him because he loves sliding out the letters and post cards, opening them, and “reading” them for hours.

Except we don’t let him play with the letters for hours, because the book belongs to Felix. If someone is going to rip the book or lose the mail, I want it to be Felix when he’s old enough. We only let Miles read the Felix book under close supervision, and this makes him very angry. He wants to sleep holding the post cards and get calmed for nap folding the letters or looking at the maps in the book.

Wants is a bit of a gentle word…he loses his damn mind when we take that book away.

My immediate instinct was to buy him a copy of The Jolly Postman.

I don’t want to seem as though I always buy Miles something to placate him or avoid teaching him lessons about disappointment. It’s just that *I* had The Jolly Postman when I was young and I remember loving it. Oh! How exciting it was to slide out those postcards and party invitations throughout the fairytale land.

My version of the book is still at my parents’ house, and I would have snagged it for Miles long ago, but all the letters and postcards are, of course, missing or ripped from that 30-year-old version. The story of the Jolly Postman is lovely (all that tea he drinks!), but without the mail, the book is far less magical.

So I ordered it for him and delighted in giving it to him. He didn’t even want me to read it to him at first, not until he’d explored all the mail.

This morning, he popped out of bed quietly, ran downstairs and dragged his stool around turning on lights. When I came down to show him the snow that had fallen overnight, he didn’t care. “Mom,” he said, “I just want to read my Jolly Postman book.”

Did he want to go out and play in the snow? No. “I can’t take my book out there! It will get wet!”

Was he hungry for some breakfast? “NO! I’ll get grease or food on my Jolly Postman mail!”

He’s just beginning to learn to sound out some short words, almost actually reading the books, but his not-yet-literacy doesn’t stop him from diving into books the way I do still. I am in love with his voracious reading, the way he pores over the illustrations.

Yesterday, he asked Corey to show him how to relax–he wasn’t sure how to calm down to enjoy his book, so Corey laid him out on the sofa, tucked him into a blanket, and handed him his book. “Isn’t that nice? To lie on the sofa with a book??” we asked him.

And he ignored us as he sank into the sofa, transported to the land of Make Believe. It was all I could do not to cry, I was so happy for him.

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We have a bunch of produce in our refrigerator I would like to use before it spoils. Apart from just eating salads, which I’m never good at doing anyway, I wanted to see if I could find some combinations of recipes to use up the following items we have on the verge:

• romain lettuce
• a BUNCH of lemons
• ginger root
• baby bok choy
• scallions
• most of a pint of heavy cream

I don’t really cook with bok choy very often, so while I know I can look at that list and think, “just make something Asian!” I still don’t really know how to incorporate bok choy into a recipe. So, I took to the Internet to see if I could find something interesting.

I stumbled upon turkey-Jasmine rice meatballs with steamed bok choy! Zing! As I read the recipe, I initially intended to just use whole eggs and not separate the whites, because who separates eggs? I thought this was excellent progress at using the perishables.

But then, the new Rhythm of the Home issue came out and one of the first images to grace my screen was that of delicious vanilla bean-lemon pudding. LEMON. PUDDING. You guys? The recipe called for the exact number of egg yolks to match the egg whites I needed for my meatballs.

I realize this sounds mundane and ridiculous and totally domesticated, but I felt so excited about this string of recipes that let me use up some near-spoiled things we already had in the house and it all worked out perfectly with proportions. A magic combination, I tell ya!

It’s like how my Nana used to make angel food cake the day she made noodles to use everything up and not be wasteful. This is how I want my kids and grandkids to remember me.** Meatballs with lemon pudding.

My entire family actually ate all the food, too, which is insane. Felix had meatball breath afterward and both boys licked their pudding bowls clean.

The best part was that Miles was able to help me prepare each part of dinner and he took so much ownership! We threw mushrooms and bell peppers in the steamer basket and he was able to help slice those veggies as well. He struggled zesting the lemons, but who doesn’t? If fridge Olympics were a thing, I would have taken gold today.

Now all that remains on rot watch is that pesky romain lettuce. Maybe for lunch we can wrap our leftover meatballs in lettuce leaves and call it a taco.

**I also remember that Nana used to swim daily, right up until she was 80 years old, and she was a champion bowler. And she visited Hawaii, which she pronounced “Ha-WOY-ya.”

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I’ve discovered something new about my husband that drives me a bit batty. I’ve decided I love him *because* of (not despite) this new habit, even though I feel incredulous about it. I believe he behaves this way because he misses riding his bike and he no longer has an opportunity to painstakingly clean his Fuji Team with a toothbrush on a Sunday afternoon.

The man is just fastidious and needs an outlet, I think.

He has become obsessed with loose leaf green tea.

He orders it in jars from Amazon and when it arrives, sets to preparing the tea.

He scoops out precise little spoonfuls, using a special tea measuring spoon. We already owned the spoon (wedding gift), but I’d previously used it to blindly grab a heap of whatever loose tea I had on hand. Corey levels and measures his spoonfuls.

He uses a digital food thermometer to monitor the water, because there is a certain temperature he seeks for steeping the tea. He’s also particular about which teapot or steeping device he’ll use because he wants his leaves to have adequate room to expand, so as not to affect the flavor of his tea.

I recognize that as I complain about this, I am sitting on the sofa building myself a hangnail to pick and that, of course, I have my own ritualistic and ridiculous systems of laundry folding or arrangement of the children’s diapers. But really? A thermometer for the tea water?

Once the leaves are steeping, he sets a timer and promptly whisks the leaves away when it goes off. He has developed a system of ice cube dipping and tea placement in the refrigerator to take it from near-boiling to tolerable as quickly as possible so he can then go sit on the sofa and slowly sip his damn tea.

As I watched him prepare tea this morning, I was reminded of the meditation challenge I did a few years ago, where I learned that preparing and drinking tea can be a form of meditation. I’m going to generously allow that Corey might be meditating through his tea ritual. So why shouldn’t I have a tea ritual?

No more ice cold chai for me. I’m not going to take the temperature of the water or even measure how much milk I add to my mug. But I’m going to prepare myself a cup of tea, slowly and deliberately, and I’m going to drink it while it’s hot. I might just stare off into the distance and ignore the children while I enjoy my morning meditation.

Hopefully, Corey can put down his green tea to intervene if things get serious.

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My family seems to have an increasingly rough time managing our layered challenges. Corey did not pass part 3 of the CPA exam–missed it by 2 points, darn it!–which really took a toll on us. For 21 months (with a few off when Felix was born) he’s been studying for hours and hours and hours each week. I can’t remember what it’s like to have a weekend, or even a full day just spent with our family because he always has to go study for his exam.

We anticipated that the whole shebang would be over by the end of February, but with that missed test this changes everything. He has to retake that part and some of his other parts expire…we’ll be in this boat until at least May 30. And by “this boat” I mean him studying for an hour or more every evening after work, hours after the children are in bed, plus four-hour study blocks on each weekend day.

I felt crushed to learn we’d be at this for three more months, another quarter year! I felt my breath slip away when I learned about it, since I’d already of course begun planning how we’d spend those evenings and weekends together as a family instead of our current setup where we cross paths in hallways, pass babies to one another en route to errands or work or angry household chores. We’ve got to work out a way to improve morale (my morale) while I’m navigating this ship short-staffed!

On top of this, we’re still navigating the paperwork and scheduling for various behavior therapies for Miles. Still! Yes, still. So I spend many hours on the phone or sending emails or filling out forms each week, usually while shushing my kids.

And Felix still doesn’t sleep, so I don’t sleep.

I definitely could handle most of these layered problems…but all of them together has just made me feel panicked and glum.

Thankfully, we have made amazing friends here. Just amazing. We’ve been welcomed into people’s homes for dinner on weekends. People have scooped Miles up for afternoon playdates, when my patience is most thin and my energy the lowest. So many offers of help. It’s so humbling to need it and to accept it, but what a difference it makes to go to a friend’s house for a few hours after “nap” and before dinner!

Sometimes, I’ll come home to find a gift dangling from the doorknob. Brownies or cupcakes…some of my friends play “elves” with their children and drive around on (what *I* call) mercy missions. They don’t even knock on the door. Just drop the bag of treats with a note and drive away, en route elsewhere. One day, I’ll play elf for someone else going through a rough patch. For now, the sight of a bag on the doorknob fills my spirit for hours.

I also asked my mother in law to come to our rescue and she stayed for 4 days, during which I napped, slept, and ate food I didn’t cook. She did my grocery shopping and took Miles on dates while I collapsed into sleep. She even brought me a mocha!

And now that she’s gone, I’m back to humbly accepting the love offered by our many friends. I always seem to find myself on the receiving end of this, ever since I had children, and I never imagined I’d feel so overwhelmed or rely so heavily on these offered shoulders.

I keep filling up my karma file with the promise that some day, SOME DAY, I will be able to do something so wonderful for another mother out there, waiting by the door at 7pm, tapping her foot as she looks for her partner out working and studying so hard.

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We recently made the decision to allow Miles to chew gum. This came at the suggestion of his occupational therapist, who told us gum chewing addresses Miles’ oral stimulation needs.

So we ordered a boatload of sugar-free gum and he chomps away merrily…most of the time. He still swallows occasionally, but more challenging are those never-anticipated-that moments where I hear myself saying things like, “Did you leave your gum in the toaster??? WHY???”

Today he was in the basement, chomping while I nursed Felix, when I heard sobs of great sadness. Such woe! “Mommy! Mommy! I dropped my gum in the toilet!” he wailed.

It’s so hard not to laugh sometimes, when his little heart is broken, but whew! He dropped his damn gum in the toilet while he was taking a leak. That’s hilarious, right?

“Mommy! I want my gum to be in my mouth,” he sobbed.

So I started saying Things-I-Never-Thought-I’d-Have-To-Say, like, “Do NOT scoop your gum out of the toilet!” and “Do NOT reach into the toilet. The gum stays IN the toilet.”

I never imagined I’d have to physically restrain my child from scooping a piece of chewing gum from a piss-filled toilet bowl. You just don’t think about those things when you’re registering for burp cloths.

This situation was rectified with a fresh piece of gum.

Our other main challenge is teaching him what to do with his gum when he needs to eat. Now, for many years I chewed a LOT of gum. I love cracking my gum. It’s such a release for me to chaw with my mouth open like so much cud. I can totally get how gum meets a sensory need for him. Anyway, I used to put my WinterFresh over the lip of whatever cup I was drinking from, to save it for later while I ate lunch or what have you.

I tried explaining this strategy to Miles but I think the caveats are lost on him. Like, obviously I wouldn’t do that while at work or somewhere it “mattered,” but Miles doesn’t understand those filters. He’s a hot minute away from hiding chewing gum on the door handle at the doctor’s office.

We also haven’t quite figured out our fast rules about gum, so it seems awfully inconsistent to him and he gets desperate about his gum. Like, I don’t think he should have it too early in the morning. But how do I explain this? And what’s “too early” when he gets up at 5?

I also don’t think he should have it too late, which we’ve interpreted as roughly past 6 pm. Thus, Miles thinks he needs to preserve whatever piece he currently has since he never knows when we’ll decide to take away the gum. I think this is why my elbow is currently resting in a heap of “just in case” ABC gum stuck to the dining room table.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the way gum lets Miles work out some of his excess energy. I’m eager to see if things go even more smoothly when we work out the particulars.

Any of you let your young children chew gum? What are your rules about chewing gum?

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Until now, the friends of my children have been the children of my friends. I’ve pretty much decided who they will play with and dictated to them, “Go! Play with [name] because [name] is your friend!”

Enter preschool, where Miles interacts with children independently of grown-up hovering, and he has developed his own preferences and made a friend. Oh, what a friend he’s made.

The friend, M, is older than Miles–another reason I love the mixed-age classrooms at his school–and as it happens, lives a few houses down the street. Miles talks about him frequently and I’ve seen the boys hug at drop-off or before Miles comes home. So I invited M to come play after school yesterday.

There is something magical about this other boy that allows my son to be his best, authentic self. The other boy is filled with energy, just like Miles. And yet, they somehow control their energy so it’s fiery/productive, not out of control. Just like Miles, M is very smart and talks like a wee grownup. I heard them having long discussions (reciprocal discussions!) about wheels, vehicles, and kindness.

As they walked from room to room, exploring our house, I saw M drape an arm over my son’s shoulders like old friends do.

What a moment! To see someone love my son, unprompted, on his own. To see someone else appreciate Miles and agree that he is pretty fantastic. I had to sit down, I was so overcome.

Who is this boy, this kid, my baby has grown into? When I was pregnant and making all sorts of proclamations about my parenting (haha! Hahahahahaha!) I had decided I wanted my son to be three things: curious, a problem-solver, and kind. I took such pride yesterday watching all three of these traits emerge during a visit with M.

Afternoons are usually a real struggle for me, especially as Corey has been studying so late. I’m tired, I’m trying to cook dinner, and the kids are rammy. I had no idea adding a friend into the mix would make things so wonderful. The big boys even entertained Felix, playing peek-a-boo with him and letting him play cars next to them.

When the time came to walk M home, I felt as though I was separating teenaged lovers. Oh! The agony of ending this play date! They held hands while we walked down the street. M taught Miles to leap over our neighbors’ hedges. Miles taught M to sing train songs while running down the street.

And then the most shocking thing happened. M’s mother told me she’d like to have Miles over to spend the night sometime. Woah! A sleep-over? You could have peeled me off the ground. “Oh, we have bunk beds,” she said, “It’s fine! And fun!”

You know what I say to that? Sign. Me. Up.

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My sitter is sick today. On a typical work-from-home day, this would just be super unfortunate and my kids would watch extra television while I finished the bare minimum from my to-do list. But today? Today? Oh my, today I had a meeting.

I found out about the sickness last night when I woke up to Felix crying to nurse, and my meeting was for 9:30, so there really wasn’t time to locate a backup. Corey’s job is so flexible that under ordinary circumstances, he might have been able to go in late. But he’s in hyper drive studying for part four of that darn CPA exam, so that was out, too.

So what did I do? Did I reschedule the meeting? No I did not, because who the heck knows when the stars would align for me to get down there again and mesh with my meeting-people’s schedules.

Instead, I phoned J to see if she minded me strapping Felix to my back during our tour and talk. We had exchanged an email the day before joking about early morning wakeup calls and the stressful dance of preschool dropoff, so I knew she would *get* it. But did I really want to go to a meeting with my child? To remind everyone that I am a mom+writer, not just a regular old writer?

The truth of the matter is that when I’m writing, there are often children about. I tend to work out the intricacies of a sentence while I’m waiting my turn in Sneaky Snacky Squirrel…Felix is a big part of my work anyway, which doesn’t mean the work is less important to me or less of a priority.

So I stuck him in the Mei Tie and in I went to tour an industrial kitchen and learn about the workings of an uptown nonprofit. It ended up being really awesome.

The first group of people didn’t even notice he was on there. In fact, when Felix popped his head up over my shoulder in the elevator, another passenger yelled, startled, because he hadn’t noticed Felix there before. We carefully navigated the kitchen, dancing around trays of tuna and bins of sliced potatoes, and people only realized he was there when they saw me from behind.

People who did notice him used him as an icebreaker, so I felt like I was actually more on my game and more personable having him there. Some of the folks I was talking to were speaking about combining the logistics of daycare with their work in the kitchen, so Felix was definitely proof that I could relate to their childcare woes. I always like having an obvious way to relate to people I’m interviewing, so, again, I was more on my game than I would’ve been otherwise.

I think I got folks to say more or speak more comfortably than they otherwise might. I’m glad I had that experience, although I still vastly prefer to leave him home under the care of a loving sitter!

The hardest part about bringing him along on the meeting was not being able to type up my notes the moment I got home. My favorite moments as a writer are those when I first return from a meeting, dash into my office, and spew out all the sticking points and fascinating memories from the conversation. Instead, I had to chant them to myself while I nursed him and changed a diaper when we got home. For this story, I’ll most likely rely more heavily on my audio recording than I’m accustomed to.

Thankfully, I was able to get both boys down for quiet time this afternoon so I could prepare for a networking event this evening. Although, it went so well with Felix this morning that I’m thinking I might be braver at the event if I brought him with me! Of course, I know better than to take a baby to a whiskey distillery after dark. I’ll just have to carry my excitement about the successful experience and use it to make excellent connections this evening.

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Today, two separate friends sent me photographs of their sons’ boogers. Two! Unbeknownst to one another. How awesome is that?

Non-sequitur: Miles gleefully blurted yesterday, “I just love wiping boogers on my sleeve!”

I believe they sent me the images because a few weeks ago, I texted them pictures of Felix’s poop.

I can explain.

Felix has been pooping in the potty! He still only poops once every few days, and when he’s fixin’ to poo, it’s very obvious. Very. Audibly and visually. So, I’ve taken to whipping off his pants and sitting him on the little potty chair when he starts doing yoga moves and grunting.

A few weeks ago, he pooped so much poop in the potty I couldn’t help but photograph it. I just had to. It was bountiful. Then I sent it to Corey and a few close friends, only I made it a game–which of my kids made this poop?? Almost everyone guessed wrong. Because obviously Miles should be the one pooping huge poops in the potty, not his 9-month-old brother.

(Miles still poops in a Pull-up and it’s a battle we’re choosing not to fight right now)

So, anyway, I sent a bunch of people a picture of my kid’s poo. That’s the kind of friendships I’ve cultivated. I love it so much. Not only are these people still my good friends, but they’ve also reciprocated by sending pictures of their kids’ boogers. Booger pictures might just be more fun than “guess who pooped this poo” pictures!

I want you to know, readers, that you can send me a booger picture any time.

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