The Great Chicken Massacre

 As our eggs rise in popularity throughout the neighborhood, so also did the taste of our chickens to the local fauna.  I may have mentioned in some earlier posts that we have seen some shrinkage in our flock due to the increase in predators.

We are now down to 6 chickens from our initial flock this spring of 47. The good news is that we now know what is eating the vast majority of them; a red fox has moved in just down the hill. 

This is no ordinary mouse/vole/mole/vermin eating fox, this fellow (or lady, for that matter) has a particular taste for free range organic chickens. And this fox is not intimidated by our dogs, our goats, or by Hambone waving his arms and yelling. It will stop at nothing until it can sink its tiny, razor sharp teeth into the neck of one of our chickens. One particularly bad day, this fox ate THREE chickens.

The remaining chickens all seem to suffer from PTSD. The brown chicken hardly leaves her nest anymore, and she continues to try to hatch rocks instead of eggs.  Hambone dutifully throws the rocks out of her nest each night, but the next day they are right back in the nest.

To protect the hens, we have reinforced the gate around the chicken house so there is no possible way for the fox to enter the chicken coop area. We are also leaving the door to the chicken yard closed until 10am -- just past fox hunting hours. This week we successfully kept the foxes and chickens apart for four days straight.

In the meanwhile, Hambone bought a local widow's lot of shotguns and rifles. Her husband was an avid hunter, and now Hambone is determined to shoot the fox. 

This morning, Hambone opened the gate to the chicken yard early, and sure enough, the fox visited straight away with 4 days of pent-up hunger. Before he even knew what was happening, Hambone saw the fox run off with a chicken by the neck. He shot *at* the fox, but (according to Hambone) the rifle was sighted in all wrong. He had three other good shots at the fox, so clearly (CLEARLY!) it was the rifle site. 

 Tonight all three boys, Hambone, Hamslice and Little Ham (who has requested the new name of "Pipsqueak") are all down the hill doing target practice and sighting in the rifle. It's a beautiful bonding picture of manliness.  

There are another 40 chicks in our garage right now, maturing to the point where we can put them out in the chicken yard next spring for a "do over." And so life goes on.

The Long Slog

It looks like the Corona Virus isn't going anywhere. States reopened too quickly and the virus jumped from people in senior care facilities, prisons and New York City to"20-30 year olds in every state." This seems more difficult to contain.

So we stay home and do our best to pretend like this isn't wearing on us. Hambone and I had a long conversation yesterday, reminiscing about what it used to be like to shop at Target. We miss it.

To bring a little normalcy, we go for long drives in larger circles. We always start at home and end at home. We enjoy the drives a lot -- we play comedian sets on the radio and laugh and laugh as we avoid all other people. Sigh.

Our friend ML came over last night with her son. He has been struggling with feelings of isolation so it was a wonderful time for him to have a chance to play with our boys. They played hide and seek, and laser tag and jumped on the trampoline. So much laughter and smiling was wonderful for all.

This fall it looks like school will be online again which is a tremendous relief. This way I can still keep them in the public school system. I was planning to home school this fall to keep them out of the school buildings.

In a feat of incongruity, my companies (both of them!) are busier than ever. I have been completely under water for the last two weeks and have hired three new people, with plans to hire two more. I have also engaged two contractors. This is fantastic news, but does also make it difficult to manage the simultaneous care that my boys need. Once the new people are up to speed things should get a little easier.

Keepin' on keepin' on.

So I guess this is the "New Normal"

In Maryland, the virus continues on its gruesome path, with most of us still staying home as much as possible. Our family has come to accept that this is just how things are now, and we will be ok. In a symbolic gesture, we ate the giant brisket (see "Panic Shopping" post from March) and are now settled in for summer break.

School "officially" ends today, although we received an email from school some weeks back that said the unofficial last day was last Friday, but the ACTUAL last day that curriculum occurred was two weeks ago.

To fill our days, we have purchased several classes on "outschool.com" where the kids can learn anything they want (seriously... ANYTHING). Right now they are learning money management, personal responsibility, fibonacci sequences, PHP programming, virology, how to draw sharks, dungeons and dragons, topographic studies of the terrain in the video game "Zelda"... these classes are awesome. Sometimes I listen in as well.

The boys come to the office with me Monday - Thursday at 8:30 AM. They have their own offices in my company office space, and they do their work in their offices as though they are Jr. executives. At lunch time they come into my office and we eat together, then they go back to their offices. It's adorable and so amazing to me that it is working as well as it is. Hambone usually takes them home around 2pm. This works for all of us. 

I have to take a moment out at this point to brag about my boys. Since COVID we have become a team. We are finally able to trust them to do what they say they are going to do, and to follow the rules of the house. It's like a miracle to me and Hambone is still trying to catch up with the total 180 degree shift in the household.

Yesterday we delivered eggs to one of Hamslice's classmates' houses and Hamslice saw his classmate for the first time in months. This young fellow had gained about 30 lbs and had lost a lot of his social skills since the end of school. His mom, like many of the others I've spoken with, stopped enforcing bedtimes for her kids once COVID hit. She also allows unlimited video game play and lets her kids set their own diet and daily schedules 100%. She is not parenting, she's acting as a roommate. Her oldest is 13 years old!

Hamslice and Little Ham got in the car and could NOT STOP TALKING about how grateful they are that they don't look and act like that kid. It was such a pleasure to hear them expounding on how happy they are for a routine and for discipline to make them into humans instead of ... whatever he was turning into.

I take it as a win. Our family is OK and is getting stronger every day, and if this Covid nightmare ever ends, we'll come out on top. So now I get it, and am willing to ride this out. 

It's not funny anymore

It's now the middle of June and school ends next week Friday. We have been in quarantine for more than 90 days, and now we're "suddenly reopened for most activities" even though the virus has not been able to be treated, there is no vaccine, and we don't really know why things are opened. It feels like people got sick of staying in, and so now we're open.

And, as people were getting more and more frustrated with quarantine, there was a horrific crime against George Floyd. This began a series of marches and protests worldwide, further increasing the pressure-cooker feel of this year.

The stock market is rising like crazy, in defiance of all logic or reality.

Nothing makes sense.


For now, I hold my babies tight, pray and wait. God help us all.

Weightless during Covid

So one of the things people complain about loudly online about the COVID quarantine is their weight. We are all indulging in comfort foods more often than we would at any other time, because we're all a little off center and want to feel better.

Hambone had the foresight to remove the battery from our bathroom scale on the 5th day of quarantine to keep us from obsessing. That was smart. Really really smart.

In other news, we haven't been able to get to a hair salon since February, which makes NO DIFFERENCE to the boys because I cut their hair anyway, but MY HAIR is a real disaster. It turns out I have gone pretty gray somewhere along the line and now I have tri-toned hair (dark brown, gray, and the brassy remnants of my last dye-job). There is no real date to look toward for a salon reopening AND accepting an appointment from  me, so I bought hair dye online, and then two days later I bought some wigs because the hair dye was super back ordered and did not have a delivery date available.

Ah, vanity.

Yesterday the Governor started phase 1 of reopening the state, but our county executive is not in agreement. So this means "maybe you can go outside?"  But it doesn't matter, we wouldn't go out in public anyway for a long, long time. 

Mothers Day 2020

Mothers' Day was low-key this year, as you can imagine. However, Hambone and the boys did their best to make it special anyway.

After dinner, Hambone made home made gluten free chocolate chip cookies and then made those into ice cream sandwiches with whip cream on top. It was a wonderful treat for us! And of course, I ate many more cookies after the sandwiches were gone. They were so good!

The boys made cards for me -- Little Ham's card said "I always knew you would be a good mom someday"  and Hamslice's said "You may be annoying and cruel, but you are also kind and caring" 

I'll take it =)

We Don't Need No Education....

Yesterday we heard the news that school will be closed for the rest of the year. That means from March 16 to June 22 we are homeschooling, using BCPS provided curriculum. Total time that we have no activities available for the kids as of today: 6 months and two weeks. That means no school, no summer camps, no Magic club, no sports, no Sky Zone, literally nothing to do outside of the home. We anticipate that "at some point" some of these non-school entities will be open again, but as of today, there remains a yawning span of primarily at-home activity.

So how am we doing? I honestly kind of prefer this. I love having this time with the boys, and I see them thriving without all the hustle bustle and peer pressure of school. We have hit a groove, where we all work during the day (them on school, me on... work) and then around 4, we all ease into the evening after a nice long walk.

Hambone has reduced his hours to 4 days/week, and he doesn't set a morning alarm anymore. My work is finally letting up, so I have less work overall to do.

As a family, we are having long conversations about things like "Why do people get married" and "What were you guys like when you were kids" and "Tell us about some of the jobs you used to have" and the connection between all four of us has never been stronger. We're like an old timey farm family from the 1800s, but with Amazon, Michaels' delivery, Pizza delivery and Instacart. We have never had this level of connection in our family.

When everything starts back up again, I will grieve the end of this time together.

Is it stressful? I'd be lying if I said no. The stress comes out in strange ways -- Hambone had the hiccups for three days (DAY AND NIGHT), and I have been eating frosting and marshmallows like I've just been released from Weight Watchers. My back spasms at night. My breathing is noticeably shallower, and so on. But it's not because of the time with family, it's because of the insane news cycle swirling in the background.

We are waiting to hear about school in the fall. As of today I am certain that even if schools open again I won't send Hamslice and I am on the fence about Little Ham. Home school has been a godsend for Hamslice (even with an admittedly bumpy start) and I am unconvinced that this virus mess will be resolved by fall. We've been talking at home that our boys may never see the middle school again -- the next time they go to public school may well be as high school students. This would be fine with me.

The Adventure continues: The Meat Story

Since the Corona virus hit restaurants squarely in the teeth, Hambone's restaurant owner friends have shared the fact that they are required by contract to continue purchasing food and supplies at the same rate all the time. Since their restaurants have been closed for over a month, meat and other foodstuffs are piling up in the restaurant freezers.

Hambone worked out a deal with a local steak house to purchase 200 lbs of beef and pork from them at a discount. Half came to our house, half to Hambone's business partner, Mr. Chris.

Our hundred pounds arrived last night in restaurant-sized portions. And, because we were fueled by anxiety and opportunity, we processed all this meat into family meal sized portions and tossed it into freezer in about 20 minutes. We took care of all of it while the kids were watching a TV show.

Hambone suggested that the kids help, and I said no. The kids really shouldn't see this. In my mind, the food should just keep magically showing up. No need for them to see us doing these strange things.

The Corona Virus hits the Exurbs

Today marks day 47 hundred thousand of the Covid-19/Corona virus quarantine. Our little family has fared quite well in spite of all of the madness around us, and I wanted to post something here to help remember our own personal memories of the pandemic.

But I'm only adding the funny things.

1) When the announcement was made that the state of Maryland was shutting down for quarantine, there was (of course) panic buying everywhere. On the VERY LAST DAY before we were not allowed outside anymore, Hambone and I BOTH went panic buying, unaware that the other was also shopping. Our combined quarry included these hilarious items:

• 5 gallons of milk
• 15 boxes of cereal
• 1 can of whipped cream (I bought this)
• 5 boxes of Reses' peanut butter chocolate Easter eggs (Hambone bought this)
• 8 lbs of potatoes
• 4 racks of ribs
• 1 brisket that weighed a whopping 18 lbs. Hambone explained that the only meat left in Sam's Club was this big brisket and raw shrimp. Of course he went with beef. 

2) The night before quarantine began, Hamslice left the doors to the chicken coop open and five of our chickens were killed by foxes.

3) On our second week of quarantine, we were drinking the milk that we had frozen from that initial shopping trip, and we had our usual delivery of fresh vegetables from Hungry Harvest (a company that delivers food that grocery stores won't sell because it doesn't match up with their standards). We usually get a nice variety of vegetables from this company but THIS TIME our delivery consisted of SEVEN HEADS OF BOK CHOY, two potatoes and four cartons of lettuce. I diligently cooked and served ALL seven heads in a variety of soups and stews. The boys WILL NOT STOP TALKING about how gross BOK CHOY is.

4) In the third week of quarantine, food shortages of eggs started hitting the grocery stores, and everyone we know started buying eggs from us.  What dawned on us soon after the sales spiked, is that our egg customers were using an "egg run from the T's" as a family outing -- they brought vegetable scraps for the goats, and each egg pickup would take about 20 minutes with all of the visiting with animals. We were, of course, not welcome to join them because of the social distancing measures, so we watched all of our friends pet the goats through the windows, sighing wistfully for brighter days. However we are very happy to share our animals with our *very bored* friends and neighbors.

5) Easter was a super crunch for egg production. We suspect that some of the dozens we sold were colored and hid in peoples' yards for their kids to find. Again we helped to entertain the neighborhood. =)

6) As our little family grows more suspicious of grocery stores, we have started trading eggs for other food staples. One of our friends is "friends with a gardener" who trades fresh onions and veggies from her garden for a dozen eggs. At this point, a dozen eggs is evenly traded for two onions and a handful of potatoes. These friends also leave a couple of bucks for the kids, but we all really look forward to the fresh veggies more than the money.

7) Our kids have started using the bank. As their opportunities for spending their egg and chore money dry up, they have started handing over all of their money to me to put in the bank. Their reasoning is that having money lying around the house is just an opportunity for theft from each other, and in case the house would be broken into. I can't argue with that logic. They also have asked for their savings accounts to be transferred into stock market purchases. I am not making this up, people.

8) The weekend before the virus closures happened, I went out for a manicure and got a "dip nail" which is basically powder-coated fingernails.  This color Would Not Come Off and as it grew out and out, it became pretty atrocious. Finally Hambone came to me with a can of acetone and said simply "It's time."

So with all of these funny things happening, you can see why I wanted to write this all down. More to come, I am sure, so stay tuned. As the governor says, "We're not out of the woods yet!" 

The Donkey Debacle

In a burst of over confidence after having such an enjoyable time with our new goats, I volunteered to take a pair of un-homed Donkeys from the animal rescue in PA as well. They were to be miniature donkeys, pets if you will, and they were described as the greatest family entertainment since Walt Disney.

The donkeys arrived by horse trailer in the middle of a dark and stormy Sunday night while the boys were away at camp, As soon as the donkeys exited the trailer, they looked at each other as a bolt of lightening streaked across the sky and HHEEEEE HAWWWED as loudly and as many times as they could without passing out. I have never heard an animal make a sound louder than these donkeys. Hambone and I looked at each other with grave uncertainty.

The animal rescue people mentioned that these donkeys were intact males, "Jacks" if you will. And then they got in their truck and left us with a couple of royal Jack asses.  All through the night and the next day we heard voluminous HEE HAWWWING and the donkeys fought with each other as hard as they could. For instance, one would sidle up to the other, shoulder to flank in an adorable manner, and then reach down with teeth bared to bite the hell out of the other's leg. Or they would run up to each other and bite each others' necks and backs.

The Donkey Rage spread out to the goats and chickens as well. The only person who enjoyed the donkeys was Elwood, who would goad the donkeys into chasing him along the fence. Elwood the dog was sure this was a game, but judging by the donkeys' eyes, this was a murder mission. Lucky for all, the fence kept them separated.

We also started getting a few passive aggressive texts from the neighbors about the extreme noise of the donkeys. The noise just never got better.

That Wednesday, just a few days from drop off day, we begged the rescue to take the donkeys back. Mercifully, the trailer arrived a few hours later to take one of them away. The second left on that Sunday just a few hours after the boys returned from camp.

And that was the donkey adventure. Memorable. Noisy. Brief.

And the neighbors rejoiced.

Exploring Farming

So we have been raising chickens for about a year and a half now--Hambone decided last April that it was time to teach the boys some responsibility so the poor chickens are our experiment in showing the boys what it means when you do or don't follow through on things. And being Hambone, we did not have a simple lot of 4 or 5 chickens show up. Instead we were blessed with 30 chickens all at once.

And of course when you live in the country and start talking about your thirty chickens, your neighbors who have chicken projects start donating their chickens to you. At one point we had a flock of about 36 running around in our yard.

Fast forward to winter, where there was a hungry mink in the yard and the flock dwindled to 12. This spring another dozen new chickens (plus two more from the neighbor) appeared in April like clockwork, thanks to the farm store.

The boys have really taken to the chickens, and while they still moan and complain about feeding and watering them, they've done a pretty good job. They sell a dozen eggs to the neighbors each weekend and earn a little money that way ($5 a dozen!) and all is well.

Mom watched all of this and at random heard from the local animal shelter that 100 goats had been forfeited. They were all pet goats, and Mom is such a big softie that she adopted two right away. They're pretty Nubian goats.

So why am I telling you all of this?

Well, Hambone and I noticed that the egg production of the chickens was waaaay down over the last week or so. like we're down from 12 a day to 3. This was a major conundrum for our boys' egg business. Then we noticed a black snake curled up in the corner of the hen house.  Being an environmentalist, Mom said "Just leave the snake in there, it's not hurting anyone and it's not poisonous. It can't even eat the chickens."  Meanwhile we looked for other solutions to the egg situation.

After a week of looking at possible other scenarios, Hambone went to the hen house to have a nice conversation with the snake about the eggs. When he opened the door, he noticed the snake was in the laying nest, curled around the eggs.

Hambone then chased the snake out of the hen house with a stick, and on its way out, the snake pooed an egg. Because Mom was against killing the snake (the idea was to bring the snake to Hambone's office to eat mice over there) Hambone used the stick to try to lift the snake into a bucket. When the snake was lifted up, it vomited out two more eggs.

All this commotion caused the chickens to flock around. They saw something food-like on the ground so they started trying to eat the puked eggs, and the goats seized this opportunity to rush into the hen house and start gobbling up the chicken's food like it was candy.

The snake was not cooperating with the bucket plan at all either, so Hambone was bending over, lifting the snake up in the air with the stick, and then right over the bucket, the snake made an artistic arc of its body so that it could not be placed into the bucket. Over and over, 20 times or so this happened. Meanwhile, the egg gorging and chicken food feast added a comedic level of chaos. Hambone's frustration at the entire scenario was the cherry on top.

This morning the snake is in the Tesla on its way to Rosedale, the chickens and the goats are reset for a new day.  Two more goats arrive this week to add just one more level to the fun.

Jeepers Creepers...

So my Middle Schooler rides the bus to school now, 45 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon, and he is receiving a Master's Degree in adolescence. Little Ham is physically developing a little faster than Hamslice and is besieged with curiosity and ideas about his body and... others' bodies.

Unrelated to the bus, Hambone and I decided to attend an event without the boys -- a 2 hour meeting with a church group.  While we're gone, Hamslice calls us many times, completely beside himself regarding Little Ham's use of my laptop computer.

We rushed home from our event and the boys were "already in bed" when we got home, so I looked at the browser history and search word history on my laptop. Sure enough, there were little boy queries about "boobs" and "sex people" and so on. They had discovered some pornography sites, which were handily stored in my history.

So what to do.

Well, Mom had 3 brothers growing up and she knows a thing or two.  And she is a fan of the theater.

Fast forward to breakfast, Mom comes into the kitchen all flustered with the laptop open to the worst of the pornographic sites that the boys had viewed the night before. I declared that the website had added code to my computer, and now this is the only thing that shows on the computer anymore and that I will need to do a FACTORY RESET to get rid of it. Then I just Left The Site Up on my screen all through breakfast, set on the counter right behind my face for all of breakfast.

Did I yell at them? No. Did I make threats? No. I feel like that was enough. I only wish I had the presence of mind to get a pic of their shamed faces as they poked at their shredded wheat.

(Then, of course, I changed the login to my laptop to keep them out of there forever)

Two weeks later, I get a call from school that Little Ham is using his school computer to show his classmates pictures of penises. The school asked if I had recommendations about how to handle it, and I explained about the situation above. The school followed my lead -- they took away Little Ham's laptop, replacing it with a desktop computer that he has to wheel around on a cart like the scarlet letter.

I said this was a great idea, and maybe they could also put a bell on it.

These boys. They have No. Idea. who they are dealing with. Mwah ha ha

New school year *Now with Pre-Teens*

The new school year has started off with a roar. Mostly the roar is me yelling at the kids to do their homework. Both boys (5th and 6th grade-- that's right! Middle school!)  have decided that homework and in Hamslice's case classwork too is "not their thing" and they just lie about it and don't do it.

Grades, of course, are posted online, so I nagged a little bit but mostly waited until grades were posted. And of course each boy was FAILING at LEAST ONE CLASS because they weren't doing their work. I got to say "I told you so" but to what end?

Little Ham was embarrassed and knuckled down to complete all his work and bring his grades back up. Hamslice is going down the road of total defiance and refusal to cooperate with anyone or anything.

I'm not sure if Hamslice is caught up in the 'middle school angst' or if there is a larger issue. We are bringing him in for an eye exam and also having him take SCAT tests to see if there are learning gaps to address. I mean... he is SO DEFIANT. I've seen a bad attitude from him before but this really takes the cake.

He's also struggling with our anti-technology stance (I know guys, the irony is obvious) and he is very resentful that we haven't given him a smart phone and that we don't allow video games at all anymore. But I can't help feeling that turning him over to technology to socialize and stimulate him is a huge mistake. What do game developers have to teach him about caring for others? About building character and developing a sense of humor? About learning responsibility?

I mean... once these traits are well developed in him, maybe he can get back to gaming but not as a substitute for growing up.

Hamslice, maybe someday you'll read this and finally understand why your Mom is such a jerk

Until then....

End of School Year Wrap Up

This is the last week of school -- Hamslice transitions to middle school after this week, and Little Ham will move up to 5th grade. Only one more year of elementary school left for this family, after what has seemed like a full lifetime of Parent Loop and endless in-class volunteering.

Little Ham ends the year with all A's and B's, because he is a cooperative soul at school, with a real desire to please and complete and total aversion to any form of hard work. He is smart enough to sail by without putting in any real effort, which is reflected quite well in the grades.

Hamslice, though, is like an asteroid trying to enter the Earth's atmosphere, even still. His grades throughout the semester see saw between A's and F's, not due to Hamslice's lack of ability -- instead it is based on his willingness to take tests. I am looking at his grades right now and see three entire tests in math that he just refused to take, so the score is Zero. Mind you, he is in the most advanced math, language arts and other classes, and I see the same pattern throughout. He won't test. He just thinks it's stupid.

In one of our meetings with the elementary school administration, the vice principal muttered under his breath, "That kid doesn't even need to be here." Hamslice is playing a whole different game than the other students. Probably a different game than you and me as well.

That's all great, but I wonder how much his separate, non parallel existence will interfere with the things he thinks he really wants out of life.

Let's see what middle school has to offer...

Resourcefulness

So about 3 weeks ago, my boys were in the back seat of the van, fighting over a stuffed animal and they tore the tail off. I put the toy in the trash as punishment. "If you can't play nice..." you know the drill.

Fast forward to today when I saw Little Ham playing with that same toy, beautifully repaired.
Apparently he took the broken toy out of the trash and then to school, where he told his best girl friend how mean I am. SHE took it home to her mom, who repaired the toy for my son. I don't know this other mom.

Now we have to go to this girl's birthday party on Saturday and deal with the super judge face that I know is waiting for me there. #momcantwin

Seeing Clearly Now

As I mentioned in my last post (sorry for the super psycho lingo in that one, btw) Little Ham was getting new glasses. They arrived on Tuesday, and for the first time in his life, Little Ham can see 20/20.

Little Ham has no memory of ever being able to see, and it has had behavior consequences in school and at home (IE: refusing to read,  standing up in front of the TV, etc). As we were leaving the eye doctor, he listed off things he can see now -- birds in the sky, blades of grass, texture in rocks, and of course, wrinkles on Mom's face.

He continues to talk with amazement about the things he can see, even several days later. He talks with wonder about how his eyes hurt when he takes his glasses OFF. His biggest discovery so far is that news print is made of just tiny dots if you look close enough at it.

I am so happy and sad for him at the same time. I am very happy that he can see now, and that he understands good vision even looks like. At the same time, I ache for him that this has been a years-long struggle for him and nobody has been able to help him until now.

During earlier eye tests he would trigger out about somewhere during the exam, and just stop answering the questions truthfully after he triggered. His prescriptions came out completely wacky after this half-participation/hostility/lying. Little Ham said his first pair of glasses was so off that he could not see to walk.

He admitted that my going into the exam room with him helped to keep him calm and focused through the exam and helped him answer truthfully to questions about what he could/couldn't see in the eye tests. And I wish that I had been able to be there for him earlier. More often. Always.

But we look ahead, not back. Things are ok now and will only get better for him. I just need to remember which way to turn my eyes.

Where we began

So now that I'm all sentimental about how far the family has come, I wanted to share where we came FROM. When Little Ham arrived, he was diagnosed with this: RAD (if you have time try to read this, it's a lot)

We believed that he had RAD, but also didn't... because we couldn't get our heads around what RAD was or what it would mean to our family. I must have read that page 100 times, looking for clues for us and coming out with a general sense of hopelessness. "HOW CAN YOU DEAL WITH SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE PASSAGE OF TIME?"

Once he arrived. we didn't have much of a chance to look back at the article, it's the only one we've found that really lays out the IWM.

This week I looked back at it. Little Ham had a giant dose of the anxiety, omnipotence, hyper-vigilance, scarcity, and dissociation. His emotional regulation was undeveloped, and he was very temporal. Basically the whole article with the exception of Indiscriminate affection applied to him quite well

We have been able to make significant progress with memory, hyper-vigilance, scarcity, Dissociation, Victim-hood, Temporal experience, Integration, language discipline and Consequences, adult attention, Discipline and Consequences, and boundaries. We still struggle with  emotional experience, Information and Power, and Nuisance behaviors. Oh the Nuisance behaviors.

Here they are, clipped from the article. You can see where they would be problematic:

Information & Power:  Information is power and AD children know this very well.  They will go to great lengths to control the flow of information about them in order to maintain their power to manipulate others' image of them.  AD children give out very little real information about themselves, for they view that as giving their power away to others.  Telling the truth, therefore, is to be avoided as a matter of policy, and adult urgings to do so can be seen as attempts to steal the child’s power because the adults want it for themselves.  Much of the fabricating of AD children is intended to keep adults confused about what's real and what isn't.  When asked questions, AD children often stall by “playing dumb” or “forgetting”, hoping that the adult will get impatient and give a prompt or clue around which the child can fashion an answer that will please the adult while giving away no information. 

Nuisance behaviors: These are frequently occurring, more minor behaviors such as interrupting, noisemaking, asking excessive questions, or relatively incessant chattering that serve multiple purposes: 1) disrupt the simplest of everyday interactions and block relating, 2) ongoing reminders that the AD child is not under the adult’s control, 3) nonstop chattering diverts awareness into left hemisphere language functioning and away from right hemisphere affective awareness (true of excessive verbalization in general), 4) discharge anxiety, and 5) probes the external environment to acquire information about the situation.  From adults’ reactions to these “behavioral probes”, AD children begin to piece together who is punitive and who is supportive; who will respond and who will ignore; who is more structured and who is more lax.  The child with AD is likely to use the responses to his probes to figure out how to “manage” the adults.  

We've been dealing lately with Disassociation in that it is not possible to get Little Ham to tell the truth long enough or consistently enough to get a glasses prescription set. Half way through he shuts down and starts simply grunting or answering "yes" to all the questions, and he then gets glasses he can't see out of. We are now on our third prescription, after he JUST  NOW failed the eye exam at school. so we aren't sure if he was disassociating during the school exam, or during the main eye exam or what. We have an appointment next week for yet another prescription...

Dissociation:  To protect themselves from their own own threatening feelings, AD children learn to dissociate or disconnect themselves from their own experience in the present moment.  Their selective perception is so well honed that AD children can appear to almost shut down parts of their brain in ways the average person cannot comprehend.  Experience itself is erased from consciousness as though it never happened.  Threatening questions, as well as any possible answer that might have immediately arisen can be obliterated right out of awareness.  AD children learn how to move and hold their bodies so as not to trigger physiologically stored emotions and memories.  This primitive denial is beyond the reach of conventional forms of treatment and is a major reason why such treatment tends to fail with AD children.  Overall, this dissociative response is made up of many different tactics including: increased distractibility and fidgeting (can look like AD/HD);  becoming confused; circular answers; vague or contradictory language; inaudible or unintelligible speech; loss of short-term memory; shutting down one or more of their sensory processing systems so they literally don’t experience their own sensory input (can look like learning disabilities except that processing can improve dramatically as attachment  develops); immature and/or faint tone of voice;  loss of eye contact; bodily preoccupations (picking at skin, scabs, bug bites; fingernail chewing, itching and scratching, hair twirling, aches and pains, repetitive movements, playing with fingers).   

 But, we soldier on. It took about a year to even understand that these were RAD behaviors, and now we work on omitting them using behaviorism and modeling. Still more years of work ahead of us, but also so much progress.

In Sickness and In Health

So one of the most surprising parts of adopting is the phenomenon of trying to treat the child when they are ill. Because the child doesn't know you or trust you in any way, the double whammy of feeling lousy, and believing there's no one to turn to is overwhelming.

When Little Ham arrived, the first several illnesses were quite difficult. We were up many times all night long because he wouldn't accept medication, including ear infection antibiotics and aspirin. Sore throats became the stuff of legend (between Hambone and me) and headaches were earth shattering.

As you may know, this year the flu virus has been very severe and ubiquitous. This week all of us got a stomach bug, and tonight Little Ham came down with a sore throat and fever.

I was just upstairs and Little Ham willingly accepted medication from me and told me he loved me after he took it. Sometimes I forget how far our family has come.

This simple action. This profound change.

Life is amazing.

Spoke too soon

Here we are after my glowing post about my mature boys just a few days ago...

Just got a note from the principal -- Hamslice told everyone in his reading group that they were s_____ readers, and then he curled up on the floor in the back of the room and wouldn't interact with anyone for about an hour.

So, hold off there with the maturation awards. There's still work to do. LOL

Mid School-Year Check in

So the ongoing saga of my kids in school has been a source of much amusement with my friends and family.  This year Hamslice is in 5th grade, with Little Ham in 4th grade.

The year started out a little rough, with Little Ham finding it hilarious to swear like a sailor and discuss the concept of 'sexiness' in 4th grader lingo, including the phrases "sexy penis" and "sexy butt," punctuated with slaps to the heinies of both girls and boys. The school administration [ahem] frowns on such behavior.

Hamslice, meanwhile, entered the semester like an asteroid entering the atmosphere. Much as he does each year.

As of mid-year we are actually doing OK. Little Ham has figured out that he has the smarts to do all of the work required of him at school, so now he's a little cocky. He has these big diorama projects this year, and he waits until the *very last possible minute* and cranks them out in 5 minutes and gets "A"s.  This has Hambone and I gobsmacked, after years of listening to Hamslice's languid arguments about the theory of school and the appropriateness of the projects and the existential need for dioramas. We had forgotten that the projects can simply "get done" without all the drama.

Hamslice is in all advanced classes but pulling solid Bs - Ds because he fails to see the point of the details in his projects. Or the projects themselves, also what is the point of school. And life. He is testing out at mid high-school levels in all subjects, so we are not super concerned with his grades. It's probably just time for middle school for that one. Or maybe a year in a commune.

The boys are into 'full time brother' mode with just glimmers of transition still. For instance, Little Ham and Hamslice still fight about who gets to go into whose bedroom and when, but Little Ham is sometimes inclined to push too far and then when Hamslice gets mad, Little Ham breaks into gibberish speech and overly defiant behavior.

Little Ham is working hard right now on controlling his silliness. One of his defense mechanisms is to move into a near-manic state where he is just giggles and sillies and not at all able to function. It's a form of helplessness, combined with aggravating behaviors. Pretty neat. So obviously that is our focus right now.

Hamslice has matured an incredible amount this year. It's like a packet of neurons plugged in somewhere in his brain and he is now able to see outside of himself and understand other peoples' feelings and how his actions fit into these feelings. Typical Hamslice, he has lagged behind in this area for years, and then once he gets started figuring it out, he takes off like a rocket.

Our strange little family is a full-fledged unit, and functioning as one. So far so good, but already I see signs that the end of school year update will have some zingers.