First Steps in our New Home

This morning I was ready to head to the grocery store for our weekly run, and Hambone said "Why are you doing that when we move in less than a week?" So I take that to be very, very good news. I spent the day packing up the rest of our house instead of grocery shopping -- I packed everything that would fit in boxes until I ran out of boxes. My excitement knew no bounds.

To fill you in a little on the construction, the last few weeks have involved large teams of laborers, all digging and moving furniture and lifting and drinking Gatorade by the gallon. My job throughout construction has been to provide lunch for all the guys. During the winter months this was easy because there were only about three people working most Saturdays, so a few pizzas or a quick trip to McDonalds did the trick. 

Lately with the crews so big, Hambone decided it would be a good idea to buy a cheap gas grill and serve everybody fresh burgers and hotdogs. He said it would be about half as expensive and the food would be better quality, so why not?

To put this into perspective, this means making lunch for 10 to 15 workers, and they were big, hungry laborers. Did I mention big? And the house is not, shall we say, entertainment ready. For instance, we have no plates. I bought plates, but by Saturday they were invariably gone. Nobody knows where. There are also no tables, and for the first cookout, there was also no spatula. Being an improvisor, I made 20 burgers and 16 hotdogs using a putty knife.

But the guys were all jovial and they line up for their burgers served on paper towels like they are at the Taj Mahal. I will always be grateful for their attitude.

One of them, referred to simply as "Big O" (apparently the father of another laborer named Orin) is my favorite. He only spoke to me with ancient animal like sounds, but he makes everything sound like a celebration. MMMmmMMmmmmm  oooeaaaahh brimmme sommeda'. I look forward to seeing him in line, and usually he passes through the line more than once. The first weekend he ate five burgers and two hotdogs. Last weekend I grilled corn and he seemed to like that pretty good too.

Our own little family had a celebratory first meal of "food cooked inside my brand new gourmet kitchen" which consisted of microwaved hotdogs. Hambone had a good laugh about that.

We are so excited to try this new lifestyle out. Hopefully fewer hotdogs and more outdoor time are in store for us. Stay tuned.

The Summer of the Move

We are starting to pack up and move things to the new house, which is incredibly exciting. Our original move date was April, then June, then July 4 weekend, and it seems that now we are looking at the completion date as August. But I keep telling Hambone it has to be sooner!

I planned the summer activities for Hamslice and me to include living at the new house, which meant I scheduled camps for him up there, and took weeks off of camp with the idea that we would go hiking together and exploring around the pond and fishing. However, with the move date so late, I am commuting for all of the camps, and Hamslice is watching a lot of TV. Again.

But we are getting there!

This summer Hamslice wants to learn how to catch and throw a baseball, and that is tough to do here in the city but we have that on the list of first things to tackle when we move. He has regaled me on the drive up to camp (one hour each way! AAHHH) with every known fact about superheros. Some of them I believe are embellishments by Hamslice which make me so proud. He gets that from his mom.

One of his camps this summer is at Puh'tok which is a non-academic camp. He sincerely hates this camp because there is no real curriculum so the kids spend their energy conducting intense social experiments on each other. Hamslice and I have had tearful, heart to heart talks about how learning to deal with these kids now is as much a skill as learning math or reading, and that he can't survive as an adult without learning how to handle it. He grudgingly accepts this explanation and patiently counts the days until camp is over.

He has three weeks at Club Scientific, which after Puh'Tok, seems like a wonderland to him.

Last week I registered him for the new school in Sparks and he received a MONSTER load of "skills maintenance" homework. He has been plowing through the pile two pages at a time, laughing and saying how easy it is. I have high hopes for him for next year.

I will note however, that Hamslice does like the songs he's learning at Puh'tok. There is one about a moose with juice on the loose, and a song about butts, and one about Bazooka bubble gum which mercifully has replaced some of the superhero talk. At least for this week.

Crooked Teeth and Swimming

Hamslice lost his first tooth about 6 weeks ago, and the new tooth is about half way grown in. It looks to me like his new tooth is about twice as wide as his baby tooth, so it's coming in nearly sideways. Snaggle tooth.

So far there aren't any other loose teeth, so this one will just have to jam itself in there and hope for the best. Looks like we need to find an orthodontist in the next year.

In other news, Hamslice is becoming a pretty good swimmer. He is able to do the crawl and breast stroke. When he swims with his face in the water he's even pretty fast -- It's his best skill so far.  He is still very skittish about jumping in, though. He's certain this is the way he will die.

We have set up swimming lessons for our new address in Sparks, however it looks like our move-in date continues to be a moving target. I suppose it will depend on the day that I just show up with a truck and say, "Here we are."  Hopefully we are going on the 4th of July weekend. Either way, we will keep him swimming for as long as he wants to do it. Maybe a little longer than that.

Last weekend Hambone and I realized that we will just need to put in a pool at the new house. Apparently, that's the best solution.

Hamslice Update, Waaaay overdue

I have been remiss in updating the Hamslice story for quite a while. As many of you know, when all this behavior stuff went down, Hambone and I devised an 18 month plan to fix everything, because why wouldn't you make an 18 month plan.

The plan is nearly complete and involved a lot of therapeutic intervention, home building, grade skipping, time taking, and attention to family. Possibly the most important factors in our ability to see light at the end of this is that we took the time and attended to our family.

After a series of charting exercises, and Social Thinking classes we are seeing a little guy who has loosened up a little and is able to take life nearly in stride. There are still things that get under his skin in a serious way, such as loud noises (particularly singing) and situations that are super unfair or where the rules change, but overall much better.

The 18  month plan in detail:

• Pull Hamslice out of school and homeschool for 2 months with intense therapy over the summer
• Change to public school for first grade, with therapy support as needed.
• Skip kindergarten and place him in first grade by doing a supreme paperwork shuffle that may not have been entirely legal. I came clean around Christmas, and they let me keep him in his grade.
• Prepare for second grade by buying a house in a better school district. This turned into a massive undertaking because rather than just move, Hambone wanted to do a full gut/renovation of a historic house in the school district
• Get Hamslice outside exercising, tripping over things, getting bug bites and playing in mud. As boys are supposed to.
• Move to the new house

Then evaluate. 

We move next month (?) or soon thereafter. Hamslice made it through first grade easily academically, and behavior that still has him in the bottom third, but seems to be manageable. At least... his teacher knows how to work with him.

It seems like we may be able to keep him in school without drowning him in meds or therapy (which, after about 8 months starts sounding like farty old ladies giving mediocre advice) and maybe this whole deal is fading to the background.

We are optimistic. And definitely smarter for the experience, and looking forward to supporting our little guy through school and in life, no matter what it takes.

Hamslice Designs a Security System

So Hamslice has been interested in the renovation of the new house. Not in a "helping" way, but more as a critic of the process. The one thing he is very concerned about is safety at the new house.

Watch this video to see his schematic of the security system that includes the following and *so much more*:

1. a security piano
2. haunted pool security skeleton
3. lasers (obviously)
4. canon with amazing ordnance 
5. metal safety jackets for the dogs

Unapologetic Bragging

As you all know, Hamslice has been doing a lot of work lately on his social skills and learning how to "do school." At one point I forgot that the point of school was "the 3 Rs" because I was so focused on just keeping him out of trouble.

Well, our little man seems to have picked up his 3 Rs just fine on his own. I noticed he has been making great strides in reading, and we're working on penmanship, you know... normal stuff.

Today Hamslice took his second set of standardized tests to check progress from the beginning of the year, and he JUMPED THREE LEVELS!!! Wahooo!!!

His teacher said he would have jumped a fourth level, but he missed one consonant blend. She said he had to test for hours in order to get all the levels, because the test and test until the student "peters out." She said he was testing so long that she felt guilty and asked him if he wanted to stop.

He said, "NO! KEEP GOING!"

So she is placing him in a new study group within his class and will continue testing tomorrow.

Go Hamslice!!! Mom and Dad so proud of you!

The Rules of Friendship

About a month ago, I was watching Hamslice after school as he was playing with some of his classmates. It was a little uncomfortable to watch him because he didn't entirely seem to understand the purpose or nature of play, and it seemed that it was more of an exercise in self-aggrandizement.

That afternoon, we sat down and talked about friendship and "How to Do Friendship" and we made a list of Friendship Rules, which I will list below.

I told my Dad about it, and he helpfully reminded me that this was more like the blind leading the blind, because historically I haven't been very good at friendship either. So if you have suggestions for additions to the list, please let me know. Leave a comment maybe.

Friendship "DOs"	Friendship "DON'TS"
Give friends fair choices	Brag
Listen	Interrupt
Let friends finish talking	Grab
Go slow	Argue
Take turns winning with new friends	Cheat
Work together to decide the rules of the game	Claim you won if there is no game
Make sure you know the rules (and agree with them) before you start playing
Try friends' ideas

Construction Safety Tip #27 - Using the Man Lift

Here is one more safety tip by Marci, as learned on the job at the new house; How to use the Man Lift

When using a man lift, always keep the engine running. It might initially seem like a good idea to save fuel by turning off the engine when you feel like you'll be in the same spot for a while, but it is actually not a good idea.

Here's why:  While the man lift may start up again reliably several times in a row, there will be the one or two times when you can't start it up again from the controls that you have in the bucket waaaay up in the sky.

And, while the man lift DOES have an emergency horn, it turns out that nobody on a busy job site will actually come to your aid. In addition to honking the horn, some other unsuccessful methods for getting help include:

• waving your coat around 
• hollering HEY
• saying YOOOO HOOOO in a loud, but cloying voice
• letting your hair down 
• jumping up and down 
• rocking the lift back and forth violently

Other unpopular moves in the man lift include driving it axle-deep in the mud.  Apparently the only way to get it out of that kind of mud is to push it out with an excavator.

Just FYI.

SPD in the Lunchroom

This school year has been a 100% turnaround from last year in terms of Hamslice's academic progress. He is now reading fluently, and is a little math rockstar.

Even so, we were alerted three weeks ago that he had "two out of three strikes" and was about to be suspended. Oh here we go again, it seemed. So I dug deeper, and asked Hamslice what was going on. Apparently he was having trouble during lunchtime with controlling his behavior and emotions.

Hambone and I were determined to keep his record clean and developed a plan. I started the ball rolling by "just showing up" for one lunch, and I saw kids running in circles around the tables, slapping each other and stealing lunch items. And it was SO LOUD! It was as loud as a nightclub at midnight.

I looked over at Hamslice with his hyper responsive hearing and visual perception and he was obviously miserable. Indeed, even I had a tension headache after just being in there for a few minutes. I sat with him during that entire lunch period and we read the dinosaur book that AB gave him for his birthday. Some of the other kids came over to see it too.

Then we stared a schedule: Hambone would go during lunch on Tues/Thurs and I go on M/W/F to manage lunch. Taking a page from AB's playbook, I bring about 15 books with me, and have established our table as the quiet table where people who are finished with their lunch can read. The books I bring have lots of flaps and holes and fuzzy sections so they are more like toys than books.

More kids are coming to the quiet table these days. Not all of them, but enough that the room is a little more manageable. Hamslice still hates lunch, but he's not getting in trouble anymore. This will be a long haul, but still less intense than last year. Stay tuned.

Ecosystem...Interrupted

The new house has had a 130 year old ecosystem within its walls that we discovered as we went through the demolition process.

It started with the bees (which we found first) and the honey from the bees drew mice into the house. There were several dozen mouse nests in the walls, and we found one live mouse in the kitchen -- I had he exquisite pleasure of pulling down a piece of plaster with a mouse behind it.

As we moved down the house (from top to bottom) we found many, many snake skins. They were wrapped around the roof joists, the electrical wires, and many times the water pipes. Some were over three feet long. Eeeewwwww

But, now that we have displaced the snakes, the toads have moved in. Hambone just sent me a picture of the newest plague.

Let's see... in the bible there were 10 plagues.... we're on #4...

Understanding SPD by Being There

As we journey with Hamslice through Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) together there are a lot of times we can forget about it, and there are some times where it comes right up to the surface and can't be ignored.

Yesterday was Hamslice's class field trip to a farm just outside White Marsh. I was surprised to see that Hamslice wasn't looking forward to it AT ALL, and wondered what an excursion like this meant to him.

At the Very Last Minute (there's that stellar Mom side of me coming to the surface...) I volunteered to chaperone the field trip and was gratefully accepted onto the bus that had no shock absorbers. After an hour of very loud and bumpy bus travel, we wound up at the farm.

Apparently, when traveling with 20 first graders and very few moms, there winds up being a lot of down time while lining up and counting the children. Hamslice did OK until the field trip started to break down because there were too many kids on the farm, which meant we were relegated to the corn field, where a very nice lady tried to teach the kids some songs about corn.

After the third song, he really started to lose it. Big time. I pulled him aside and asked what was the  matter, and he said that all he could hear were the other kids shouting. He couldn't hear his own voice to know whether or not he was on pitch, and it was super frustrating. Furthermore, he said, "You promised me this would be fun and so far it is not at all fun."  This, my friends is tell-tale SPD behavior. The blaring of sound in his head, the frustration  in processing it, and the blaming/anger.

So we agreed to stand on the perimeter of the class where he would be able to hear himself singing, and hear less of the others. That worked OK for him. We also splintered off of the group for a little while to do more in-depth discussion about sunflowers and caterpillars. Some of the other kids went with us to learn about which birds eat sunflower seeds, and to talk about whether or not bugs eat sunflower seeds.

By the end of the trip, both Hamslice and I were exhausted, but I think he really had too big of a day. On the bus ride home, he curled up in my lap and snuggled almost the whole way. And after school he fell asleep for an impromptu (and unheard of!) two hour nap.

We are still learning our way through what it means to be Hamslice, but I am happy that I am able to be with him to develop strategies and coping mechanisms for these situations. Event by event, one at a time we will get there.

Behavior Modification that You can Do At Home!

So all the professionals can look on in awe -- I've created a behavior modification program right in my kitchen that works like a charm! It's the CHART Game (pictured below)

  

When to use it: If your kid is having a hard time understanding when they have been bad, or understanding why it is more important to be good instead of bad, it's time for the CHART Game

Here's how it works: Your kid picks a reward that they would absolutely do ANYTHING to get. In our case, Hamslice wanted to download a video game onto the iPad.

We set the YAY (see the big bubble at the end of the green squares) to "Download one video game" and the BOO (see the end of the red square side) to "Delete one video game"

Every time a good behavior happens, they get to color in a green square. Every time a bad behavior happens, they have to color in their own red square. (It is important to have them fill in their squares)

Mom labels both the good and bad behaviors so that they can be reviewed in the future by either mom and child, or read aloud by Dad when Dad gets home from work. The labeling also helps you catch them if they break rule #3 below.

Each time Mom redraws the chart after a reward or punishment (the red squares meet the red bubble or the green squares meet the green bubble) the chart gets longer. I started with 7 squares on each side, and now we are up to 55 squares on each side. The goal is to have the squares become the reward instead of the physical rewards of video games or cookies or whatever.

RULES:
1) Only one square per episode. If there is a major outburst, it still only earns one square.
2) Lying automatically earns a red square (so if they lie about how well they behaved at school, for example... one red square)
3) Coloring additional green squares without permission automatically earns one red square.

Enjoy!

 

Hamslice Update

Many of you have been asking "How's Hamslice doing? What happened when school started again this year?"

So I have an update for you, and the good news is that so far it's pretty good stuff.

We wound up enrolling Hamslice in the local public school, right here in Federal Hill. And believe me I did so with incredible trepidation. When I went there to sign him up, there were some large scale mothers from Sharp Leadenhall there, yelling about stuff and blocking up the counter. but I carried through and after four attempts (on different days) was able to enroll him for fall.

My thinking was this: "It's a practice school. He can go here and learn to do school, and then we will see what's next." The flip side was this "If he can't handle even this school (where some pretty tough cases come through) then we know it's time for special ed or homeschool."

On our first day, I walked him to school and held his hand while things got started for the morning. He was the blonde in a sea of corn rows and little shaved heads. The moms mostly knew each other and were belly laughing and carrying on, meanwhile I was so nervous -- watching Hamslice to see if his nerves were under control. He, however, was a little champ. He did just fine.

Three days later, I get a frantic call from the office -- your son has flipped his lid. So I ran to school and found him in the nurse's office speaking in a high squeaky voice and hiding under the bed. Here we go, I thought.

But I took the words of AB to heart (from her visit this summer), and told him that we needed to eat some food and then get back to class. No more days off for freaking out, Mister. And POOF -- that was the end of any further episodes. To date, nothing even close to a tantrum. All better.

Now that school is actually about school, he is doing very well at math, his reading has exploded and we are all happy to see him mastering concepts one after another. He is very excited now about being the "good kid" and that means something to him now that there are others who are a little worse behaved than he is in school.

This week we bid our last therapist good bye, and we are flying solo. I haven't removed them from speed dial, but we are ready to try this ourselves. Here goes nothin!

Beware of the Bees!

This week the demolition began on our new house. All of the plaster needs to come down in all rooms so we can replace lead pipes, add HVAC, replace knob & tube wiring, and add insulation.

We hired Mr. Jim to do the demo because, man, that guy knows how to tear stuff up.  Two hours after he began swinging his sledge hammer, he was swarmed by something like 300 angry bees. Maybe more

Hambone got an urgent call from Mr. Jim, requesting three full cans of bee/wasp spray. He could hear the bees buzzing in the background of the phone call.

After the dust cleared, it all made sense. Just look at how many hives had been built between the roof and the plaster on the 3rd floor. Yikes!

Bee hives all over the interior walls of the house

Buried Treasure

So it turns out that the previous owner of the new house was a bit of a hoarder. Well, more than a bit. We didn't notice how bad it was during the home inspections because the house is so big that it looked like "some piles of stuff all over the place."

However, as we cleaned out the rooms, we filled three dumpsters with garbage. And to help you really get the scale of the mess, let me tell you that these aren't trash cans, or even the kind of dumpsters you'd see behind a restaurant or school. These are full-on semi trailer sized dumpsters.

And we filled three. So far.

But before you get to feeling too sorry for us, in all of the trash we found a bit of treasure. Here are just some of our big scores:

• Life Magazine in mint condition that describes the Andrea Doria crash for the first time
• 1930's porn (eeew)
• 1 full bottle of DDT
• 1 full bottle of something that smelled even scarier than the DDT
• Harper's Bazaar describing the Titanic disaster for the first time
• Several stock/bond certificates from the early 1900s that we could perhaps try to cash in, but they look so cool we may save them as art
• Confederate money -- several $1, $5 and even $100 bills
• An old quackery medical device from Raytheon that actually microwaves your skin
• Blueprints from the 1980 restoration of the Statue of Liberty
• Contestant photo from the 1954 Miss America Pageant
• A handwritten letter describing a suspected murder
• Divorce papers from the 1950s
• Land deeds and titles from 1850 - 1918

 So all in all, a pretty cool treasure hunt.

In other news, the poison ivy has now spread to all family members -- including the dog. And we found out that hemorrhoid cream is the  most effective treatment for the itchy bumps. It's all good.

Exploring Poison Ivy

The new house seems to have been built on some sort of poison ivy super site. We suspect that this property is the breeding ground for all other poison ivy in the United States.

We discovered it this weekend. I was out in the yard cleaning up old tires and cinder blocks when I noticed all these vines running across the lawn and up the trees. Without a second thought, I reached down and pulled up as many as I could. And of course since they were vines, they draped down my arms and legs. Some of them smacked me in the face.

Hambone comes walking up to me holding out his phone with a picture of poison ivy on the screen. He looked at me and just kind of cleared his throat. I dropped the ivy.

After a minute to think about it, and possibly descend into the deepest depths of madness, I declared "Well so what. Poison ivy doesn't even make me itch. Watch." And I cleaned out the whole yard with a determination previously un-witnessed.

Fast forward to Wednesday, after all the poison ivy has seeped into my skin and I can hardly manage to stop clawing at my skin long enough to write this. Ung. This morning I was so desperate for relief that I spread myself all over with baking powder paste.

Do Not touch. This is poison ivy.

 The good news is that it's all gone from the yard.... for now. I saw more on a tree yesterday as we drove off the property. We will have to figure out a better way to deal with it. Maybe next time I'll wear pants and a long sleeved shirt.

You Can Take Ham Out of the City but...

While it's true that you can take hard core city folk and physically transplant them into the country, but it takes a while to catch onto country living.

We closed on the house Wednesday, and on Thursday (last night) to clean up and organize the house for the renovation. Upon arriving, we noticed an abandoned van on the lot next door. We thought "That's weird."  Then we saw that one of the french doors on the front of the house was standing open, with broken wood all around it.

Damn

Inside, many of the antiques we had purchased at the auction were gone. They left the paper and clothing, but they took our urns, old surveyor's gear, some wooden pulleys -- only stuff that a hard core antique hunter would be after. We thought that we had been "hit" by some people who were frustrated by the auction. Or maybe by some night-flying stars of Trash in the Attic.

So we called the cops just to get a report. Because the house is not insured, we couldn't file for any kind of help there, but we wanted the police to be around to understand what's happening.

While the police were there, Hamslice started screaming BLOODY MURDER behind the house. We all three took off running. (for the record, Hambone was the fastest, then me, then the cop) Hamslice had been bitten pretty badly by the neighbor's dog. And the cop was like "I can't leave here without doing a dog report." So now there are two reports being done on in one evening.

 I said "Heck, while you're at it, come look at this van" and we did -- the van had no license plates on it, and when the cop ran the VIN, it came up as "never ever owned by anyone. No record."

So... less than a stellar beginning here, but it does feel like home. Or, at least what we're used to.

Hamslice Fugitive

This weekend we were in Michigan for a nice family visit with Grandma, Grandpa, Auntie Bet, and K&M. It was also the weekend of M.Borto's wedding reception. So as you can see it was pretty action packed.

Hambone opted (wisely) to stay home and get some work done.

So this means Hamslice and I had a lot of time together and he had some time with relatives. He had his first "on his own" sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa and had a great afternoon throwing apples and walnuts with K&M. And don't forget his afternoon/evening with Parker & Pals at m.borto's event.

On the way home, Hamslice and I had a little spat and he stormed off to an airport bench to sulk. I came up behind him and asked what's up, and in a most sincere voice he said, "I just don't think I can live with you anymore."

So I offered to bring him rolls of quarters every Monday so he can live off of vending machine food in the airport. He didn't like that idea very much, so we picked up our suitcases and went home.

Hamslice Hillbilly

We close on our new house on Wednesday, and we are already having an adventure about this place. It turns out that a house like this (super old) is a real challenge to buy. The assessed value has come in from different vendors (Mortgage/insurance) in such a range that Hambone and I just started laughing. One estimate came in 30% higher than what we are paying, and the other came in 3 1/2 TIMES higher than our price.

However, the house nets out as un-mortgageable and uninsurable through traditional venues because nobody can really get a handle on the value of the property. When I broke the news to Hambone, he looked at me like I was a toddler trying to drive a car. "Let me handle it" he says. He thinks it's hilarious when I try to work on a rehab property.

And for all of you who have been jonesing for pics of our new house, here's a bunch of them.

The photo above is of the house when it was new -- 130 years ago. Note the lack of trees!

This photo shows the house with the old carriage cover across the front. We're planning to rebuild that.

Blessed, Golden Silence

I have excellent news to report: we are now going on FOUR WEEKS without a single phone call or incident report sent home from camp about Hamslice. I feel like we may be getting a peek of sunshine over here, and I am encouraged to think that we may be able to pull off this parenting thing afterall.

Well. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

At any rate, he has made it through two weeks of Club Scientific (which he looooved) and he is now in Camp Puh'tok which is more of a general "fun summer camp" which he finds a bit dull.

Here are my tips for success:
1) Per AB's advice -- every morning I let Hamslice know that I have meetings "all day" so he can't pitch a fit and have me pick him up. This is key. Thank you AB.

2) We are keeping a closer eye on Hamslice. It is getting pretty clear when he's worn out from too much camp, and every few weeks we give him a day off. These days off help him reset and tackle some more time with "the mortals."

We have also come to the end of our intensive therapy over the summer, so now things will be a little more normal. It is nice to have my home office back to myself again to actually get some work done!

Silence. Blessed, golden silence.