DC Metro Moms

Our Son Talks to Us Now

Our oldest son did not exhibit overt signs of autism during the first couple years. He played with us, laughed, and showed all signs of being a happy, healthy child. It wasn't until he was about 2-1/2 years old that we noticed some things were different. I can't say precisely which symptom I noticed first, but I remember the incredible tantrums that came seemingly from nowhere and the growing obsession with ordering things and the unusual play. He would gather all of our shoes, every single one, and arrange them in unusual designs all over the house, or he would line them all up in a row. This wasn't a game where he laughed and tried to get us to play with him; in fact he seemed to retreat and wanted to be alone. At first we thought it was cute that he was so focused and used his toys in creative ways, but then we quickly realized this wasn't just play because no one was allowed to touch the shoes. If anyone bumped the shoes accidentally, he would launch into a huge screaming tantrum or try to hurt his brother then quickly repair the damage. Calming him down took a long time. Trying to get him to clean up and put them away became a nightmare of tears and screaming every single day. And he couldn't explain to us what he was doing. When we tried to engage him and ask what he was making, he just glanced at us out of the corner of his eye and kept arranging and building.

After several months of this, we finally managed to redirect his interest to blocks and plastic containers. We save all of our cottage cheese, yogurt, and sour cream containers for other uses, and we let him play with those. Just as he did with the shoes, our son grouped and categorized the blocks and containers and made nonrepresentational sculptures that went all over the house, stacking the blocks and containers in complex, creative ways. When our boys got some Thomas the Tank Engine trains and track for Christmas, he did not play with the trains by rolling them around the track. Instead he took all of the track and continued making sculptures all over the house, precariously balancing three or four pieces of track on top of each other. He still could not talk about what he was doing and he stopped making eye contact and he started pacing and talking softly to himself.

Yes to Year-Round Schools

I grew up loving my school summer breaks. When school let out I would spend my days reading, playing outside, riding my bike, pretending I was an Olympic gymnast (I'm dating myself if I say I was pretending to be Nadia Comaneci, right?), sketching, going to the pool, and playing with my friends. My Girl Scout troop did summer campouts and my family sometimes went to visit my grandparents for a week or so. Summers were almost magical.

So why would I, a professed lover of my long childhood summer breaks, want to change that for my own children by asking public and private schools to adopt a year-round calendar? After all, I was a K-12 teacher for eight years and enjoyed my summer breaks even then, particularly because it meant I had time to travel and visit family. Why would this former teacher even contemplate changing the standard nine-month school calendar that has been in place for well over 100 years?

Water Restrictions: More to Come?

We woke up to rain this morning, and as far as I'm concerned it can rain every night for the next several months. Last fall Loudoun County imposed outdoor watering restrictions due to the low water levels in Beaverdam Creek Reservoir, which provides water for much of the county. The reservoir, which is fed by the Potomac River and Goose Creek, dropped into drought emergency levels after months of little rainfall.

It got a bit ugly after the voluntary watering restrictions became mandatory. Loudoun residents complained about the various HOA's watering the common areas when they were not allowed to water their own lawns, only to learn that several of the neighborhoods had wells for irrigation purposes. One of my neighbors was questioned in Costco when she bought some autumn perennials to plant. "But we're under watering restrictions," the person said to her. We watched our own lawn fade to brown, knowing there was nothing we could do. We had our tomatoes, peppers, and herbs in pots last year, so we could water with a three-gallon can and keep them barely alive. But this year we have planned raised beds so that we can grow more of our own produce, and I'm not looking forward to potentially more drought.

On the Way to My Skinny Jeans

I recently celebrated a milestone...I tossed a pair of perfectly good jeans into the donate pile. This is unusual for me because I keep jeans forever and in fact am inclined to grant sacred status to a good, well-fitting pair of jeans. Even when the material is worn thin and has a few holes in it, I can still wear them while working around the yard or cleaning house, so they stay in my closet. I have about 10 pair in various sizes, cuts, brands, and shades, but only half of them are pre-baby jeans. I don't know if that's a lot of jeans, but it feels like a lot to me, and I'm trying to whittle it down.

You see, the pair I tossed was slightly too big, and that morning I had moved down into the next pair between me and my skinny jeans. I walked confidently into the kitchen and started making breakfast hoping a certain someone would notice my new (old) look. Hubs noticed immediately and showered all sorts of praise about how good I looked, and I enjoyed every minute of it!

When I say "skinny jeans" I'm not talking about the ultra skinny low-rise type that seem to be very popular now, I'm simply referring to my favorite jeans from my skinnier days.

Mass Transit Woes for Dulles and Loudoun County

I don't pretend to understand all of the subtleties of the Dulles Metro project, aka the "Silver Line," or the politics behind it. The project has many supporters as well as detractors, and other people have written eloquently about the need for a Metrorail extension to Dulles Airport as well as the problems with the project in its current form. Last month the Federal Transit Administration dealt what would seem to be a death blow to the project by denying $900 million in federal funding, citing numerous problems that disqualify it from receiving any federal aid. Though the FTA money is only about 20% of the total cost, without that money the project is definitely in peril. Some lawmakers have come forward supporting the existing plan while others have cheered the FTA decision.

Speaking as a Virginia taxpayer, I'm not happy with how the project has gone. Costs have overrun before any real work is done, and the mess with the Bechtel, one of the primary contractors on the Dulles project, and their handling of the Big Dig in Boston just reaffirms my concerns, particularly since the construction phase of the project was not competed. I am certainly glad to hear that some of our delegates are working on different solutions, particularly one that would require the project to go through a bidding process and would likely scrap the existing partnership with Bechtel. 

I Want a Generator

The ice started coming down yesterday afternoon as I was driving the boys home from school. It looked like little drops of rain, but within a minute I could hear the characteristic scraping sound of the wipers as they tried in vain to clear away the ice from the windshield. By the time we got home just 20 minutes later, the front steps had already iced over and become treacherous, and from the sound of the forecast it was only going to get worse. A judge in Maryland even ordered the polls to remain open an additional 90 minutes due to the hazardous road conditions. There were already accidents all over the area, and I found myself thinking how glad I was that Michael was off in Hawaii and not trying to make the one hour commute home from the office. I would have been even happier if I could have gone to Hawaii with him, but I digress.

The ice continued to pile up on the trees and the road, and with the temperatures dropping I knew there would be no school today, but that was fine because my 3-year-old had started feeling sick at school and was running a fever by the time we got home. Then I started the fever an hour later and my stomach started rebelling soon after. The 5-year-old had been sick over the weekend, so I should not have have been surprised. I just practiced my horizontal parenting skills while the sick boy and I hung out on the sofa. I was grateful that we were all safe and sound in our nice warm house and not out in the mess. I had a fleeting thought about a possible power outage due to all the ice, but I was too far gone to worry about checking the emergency kit and gathering up all the supplies. My bad.

I Can't Wait Until...

I turned 42 last week. No big shindig, just a simple celebration with my little family, though I did make myself a birthday cake. I may not have big parties, but by golly there had better be cake! I'm not particularly nostalgic or retrospective when it comes to my birthday. I don't throw my hands up in the air and wonder where all the years went, but this year I did pause to think how birthdays are different from when I was a child. Back then I counted down to my next birthday because it almost always represented some sort of milestone.

For example:

• I can't wait until I'm five and can go to kindergarten.
• I can't wait until I'm in fifth grade and can join band/orchestra.
• I can't wait until I'm a teenager and get my period. (Boy, what was I thinking?)
• I can't wait until I'm 13 and can get my ears pierced.
• I can't wait until I'm 16 and can start dating/driving/wearing makeup.
• I can't wait until I'm 18 and can go to college.
• I can't wait until I'm 21 and can drink beer. (Actually, I never thought about this one because I didn't like beer back then.)

Quarantined! Again!

Maybe we've just been unlucky, but for the last two winters I have spent a lot of time indoors quarantined with my children. They've had all the colds, sinus infections, croup, and rotavirus that I can stand, but it doesn't look like this winter is going to be any different. George5 (five-year-old) and George3 (three-year-old) go to preschool, get sick, stay home, infect their brother, go back to preschool for a few days, George1 (the toddler) gets sick, and the cycle repeats. This goes on almost continuously from December through April, and sometimes even into May. Our house turns into a germ factory/biohazard zone, and many days I feel like putting on a hazmat suit or wrapping the house in plastic and setting off some kind of biological cleanup bomb like they do for termites in Florida.

Last winter we had all the usual contagious miseries back to back, but then in the middle of trying to sell our house in Hampton Roads and buy a house here, the kids and I all got pink eye. I was the last victim to fall, most likely infected while trying to administer the medicine to three squirming boys. My husband was probably very glad that he was already at his new job in the DC area and missed that whole episode, and he's the only one of us who didn't get it. I won't gross you out with descriptions of the multiple weeks of diarrhea brought on by rotavirus or the trip to the emergency room with the baby when he couldn't keep breastmilk down, refused to take Pedialyte, and got dehydrated.

Menu for Hope 4

As a mom, I try to teach my children about eating the right foods and trying new things. And even though they don't yet understand, we also try to teach our children that food is a precious gift to be appreciated and not wasted. As our boys get older they will come to understand both how fortunate they are to live in a country where food is widely available, and that for a variety of reasons many people in this country and around the world don't have enough to eat.

A few years ago Pim of Chez Pim saw the need to help people in Southeast Asia and decided to do something about it. She created an event called Menu for Hope, which is in it's fourth cycle. The now-annual event unites food bloggers from all over the world, and in the past the effort has supported UNICEF and its work in areas devastated by the tsunami in 2004, the victims of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, and the World Food Programme. This year the effort will benefit the World Food Programme's work in Lesotho, where the WFP purchases grain from small local farmers and uses it in local food programs, including one that provides school lunches.

Last year the international food blogging community raised over $60,000 to help support the World Food Programme's work in developing countries and feed those in need. What better present to give someone than hope? Tickets only cost $10 each and they make great stocking stuffers! Oh, did I mention that there are prizes? Yes, this is a raffle with great prizes donated by food bloggers, restaurants, chefs, authors, and a host of other contributors! Click here to participate.

Andrea blogs about her adventures in the kitchen at Andrea's Recipes.

Project Linus

Our first child was hospitalized when he was barely six weeks old. He was in the hospital for 17 very long days during Christmas and New Years, and it was the hardest thing that we've ever been through. He was connected to miles of tubes and wires which prevented me from holding him. For the first few days in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), I could only sit next to him and stroke his tiny arm and cheek. I sang Christmas songs to him, not really caring who heard me, all the while wondering when I would be able to hold him again. Because of all the wires and tubes, he only wore his diaper and the doctors put him under a warming lamp periodically, but my maternal instinct was to wrap him in soft blankets and reassure him.

It was a very rough time for us, but we were able to get through the ordeal thanks to the generosity of family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers. People fed us and brought Christmas gifts for our son, the most precious of which was two warm fleece baby blankets from the volunteers at Project Linus.