Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 69

Some Unspecified # of Takes, With Bonus Pictures

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At 3a.m. on Thursday, I heard a telltale, muffled sound coming from down the hall. I found Julianna wailing in her bed, shaking like a leaf, and waking up Michael, who also was crying. I crawled into bed with her and spooned around her, and she snuggled up against me as I tried to soothe Michael by voice. Unsuccessfully. “Did you have a bad dream, Julianna?” I asked.

“Yeah…”

“What happened in your dream?” I’ve never asked that before, but I thought it would be good to use wee-sma’s crises to help out with her school lessons, in which she’s supposed to tell us what happened first, then, and last.

She raised a hand and put it to her face. “Eye drops!” she wailed.

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Why eye drops? Why, because she saw the ophthalmologist on Tuesday, and they dilated her eyes, of course. And yes, the trauma of that visit was far worse than the dream! But we also graduated. The doctor said she can probably just go to an optometrist from now on. Happy dance!

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Of course, that still leaves us with a crying toddler, who, by now, has Daddy trying to calm him down. Unsuccessfully. The instant Julianna heard him come in the room, the ungrateful child reached out for him and wailed, “Daddy!”

Sigh. So we switched kids. And Christian fell asleep with Julianna.

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I forgot to pick Julianna up on Thursday afternoon.

I remembered as we were turning onto the street beside Alex’s school, because I was looking at the clock and thinking, “Man, we’re really early. Why are we really early?” Ahem. Well, I got to Julianna’s school and back to Alex’s juuuust before they sent all the kids to aftercare. Sigh. I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.

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So Jennifer did a post called “Ten Images That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About This Blog.” And I was going to make that my whole post today, I really was. A fitting end to a photo week, n’est-ce pas? But I haven’t written a real word all week on my blog, and how could I not share those stories? Nonetheless, I am going to wrap up with some pictures that are, well, not as funny as Jennifer’s, but they are my crazy life. Meet Kate’s Life, in reverse time order…

Alex, as St. Michael the Archangel, and Michael, as Lucifer. No comments from the peanut gallery.

Michael’s web search:

Michael Mayhem, illustrated:

Mommy, I nussing my baby!

Errr…..I had forgotten that Black Widow was NOT the first superhero I’ve channeled…at least, according to my kids!

Julianna smothers lays on loves on Baby Michael:

What Nicholas did to my perfect cheesecake (clearly he had plenty of Mayhem in him, too):

My best salesman. Man, he’s changed in the last three years!

Hey…that reminds me…Advent’s just around the corner! Are you ready?

Er….yeah.

Alex chasing Julianna’s bus:

 

Heart to Heart:

Alex is “leaning”. Poor baby Julianna. I guess we know where she learned to torment baby siblings!

But ah, this moment. I still love this moment:

The Many Face of Michael

All of which I will sum up in the phrase: Oooooh, you are soooo cute!

 

Nicholas: How ‘Bout Some Ham With That Cheese?

Julianna: Leaf Sprite

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Trying to get a smile, I asked Julianna what animal she wanted to ride on the carousel. This is “Hmm, hmm, hmmm….” (She does that a lot these days!)

In the Absence of Time…Kid Portraits

Did I mention last week that Alex has FOUR DAYS OFF SCHOOL IN A ROW? As in half of Wednesday and all of Thursday, Friday, and Monday?

Did I also mention that I prepared food for both Nicholas’ and Julianna’s Halloween parties on Thursday?

Or that Julianna had no school on Friday?

Or that she has an eye appointment tomorrow morning?

I haven’t written in five days.

So I’m devoting this week to sharing the results of our fall portrait-taking sessions–the shots that didn’t make the wall. Today: Alex, age 8 1/2. This photo session’s title:

THE HAT

The Avengers and other Quick Takes

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I went to a family wedding in southern Missouri last weekend. It was quite a culture shock; very suddenly, when I turned onto I-44, I found myself surrounded by John 3:16s, Baptist churches three times the size of my (very large) parish, a Mack truck dealership that took up both sides of the highway, and an NRA museum. It was one of those, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” moments. And in the brochure/attractions rack at the hotel: the flyer at right. Upon my honor.

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Between traveling, parent teacher conferences, early outs, Halloween parties, and four, read that FOUR days off school (okay fine, 3 1/2, but that half day might as well not have existed), I realized I had to write off this entire week for work. And naps, for that matter. Michael’s very flexible these days, but the down side is that he never, ever wants to take a nap. And he used to be so easy to put to bed!

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I had a vaguely hysterical moment with Nicholas this week in the car. He sneezed, told himself “bless you,” and kicked off a discussion of the Trinity. At the end of it, he asked thoughtfully, “What if God sneezed?”

I am totally writing a story about that. The Day God Sneezed. Christian and I were having all sorts of fun that night coming up with silly things to include.

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November (Photo credit: kurafire)

Speaking of stories…it’s November 1st, which for Catholics is All Saints Day, but for writers kicks off NaNo, National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write 50,000 words in one month–plant the butt in the chair, stick the fingers on the keyboard, and write. I’m ambivalent about taking on this challenge for several reasons–let’s call it six: Christian, Alex, Julianna, Nicholas, Michael, and Other Commitments. It’s unrealistic for me to think I could average 1666 new words every day. Yet I see the value of it–deadlines work.

So instead I’ve set a different sort of writing goal for November: seven new flash stories, at least half of them not for blog prompt posting. By the end of November, I want to have some new stories ready to send out. Or at least, within striking distance. To the writers among my readership: are you doing NaNo? What’s been your experience?

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Time for the obligatory Halloween take. It was a cold one; Michael and I only lasted half an hour, after which we opened up our house for trick-or-treating. He went crazy giving candy to other kids (and scoping out the contents of their baskets. “I’ll trade you one of these for seven of those!” was Christian’s joke). So you can imagine my surprise when a kid ran to the door in a black robe and said, “I’M SUPPOSED TO BE ‘THE SCREAM’ BUT THE MASK IS TOO HOT!”

“Too hot?” I said, but he was already halfway to the street. I traded rueful glances with his dad. “Well, when you run that fast…” he said.

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But I know you all were really just coming here for Avengers Family pics, right?

Alex as Hawkeye, Michael as the Hulk, Julianna as Captain America, Nicholas as Iron Man, me as Black Widow and Christian as Thor.

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I need one more QT, so I’ll offer this: as difficult as Nicholas can be, every so often he has a moment so sweet that it makes it all…well, it helps me see the big picture. Yesterday someone asked him what the best part of his school Halloween party was, and he said, “My mom and Alex and Michael coming to it.” Awwwwwww…….

Happy early November!

An Old Nemesis Pokes Its Head Up

Dandelion clock Français : Fleur de pissenlit en gros plan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been wrestling anxiety the last few days. The trigger is less important than the fact that it’s happening at all. One thing about juggling a writing career and four kids (and special needs advocacy, and NFP teaching, and choir leadership) is that there’s really not time for the kind of self-indulgent obsessing that leads to anxiety.

I’ve often felt the wispy edges of my old nemesis brush at my spirit, but a firm mental shove always seemed to make it retreat. Anxiety is manageable until you give it a foothold, and then, like a dandelion, it roots hard and fast and sprouts babies by the legion.

Last Sunday I spent three hours in the car with the little boys, headed for a family wedding. Nicholas had the portable DVD player for the first hour and a half, kept low enough for Michael to nap, and thus low enough that I could neither hear it nor turn on the radio or a CD.

How long has it been since you spent an hour and a half in quiet thought, with nothing but road to occupy you? I said a rosary and appreciated the peak colors flashing by, but mostly I made friends with the tender spot in my soul. Had conversations with the Holy Spirit.

A decade and a half ago, when terror beset me day and night for months on end, I learned that, given some quiet space, it is usually possible to quiet the brain or release the shackles on the heart–but not both at once. As I struggled in vain to do so, I came to believe that if I could ever achieve the complete stillness of spirit–peace in mind and heart simultaneously–that it would be a sign that I was healed. I never really reached that point.

Nor did I on Sunday. The festering rawness in my chest stubbornly resisted loosening its grip. And yet in the hollow spot at the core of all that worry, there was a cool stillness. Thomas Merton came back to me in those hours, his repeated reminders that the path to God most often traverses the rocky ground of spiritual sterility and aridity, of confusion and pain, rather than exalted mountaintop experiences.

And I realize that this rumbling of an old spiritual enemy is a gift–just as many of the most difficult things we face do in the end turn out to be gifts. Because facing it peels off all the layers of me-me-me’ing I slap down between me and the source of everything that is good about me. I think of a line from a song I never did finish writing: In my weakness, Your strength; in my shadow, Your glory.

A Snapshot of a First Grader With Down Syndrome

It’s been a month of Tuesdays with Julianna in honor of Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and I thought I would wrap up by giving you a snapshot of her academic skills two months into the first grade. Bear in mind this is only a snapshot of one child, a single individual; I know of children her age with the same diagnosis who are far ahead of her, and those who are behind, and others still who are ahead in some ways and behind in others. So this should not be considered anything more than a single example. Like typically-developing children, kids with Down syndrome have a wide spectrum of abilities and achievements. But for what it’s worth:

Speech: At 6 3/4, Julianna is now trying to communicate a lot by words. She’s developing coping techniques for the many times we can’t understand her–signs as backup, or pointing or showing us what she’s talking about, when it’s possible to do so.

Reading: This girl loves to read, and she’s good at it. The schools use a numbering system to indicate level. A couple of weeks ago her teacher told me her reading level was 4, and grade level was 6. Shortly after, one of Christian’s piano students’  parents, a speech therapist, read through a book with her during her daughter’s lesson. She said Julianna is actually reading at an 8 or a 10, but that fluency and comprehension are factored into the package and might bring her down. And comprehension & fluency definitely lag behind her ability to recognize words. That’s what her teachers are wanting us to work on.

Writing/spelling: Julianna’s weakest area in the language category. She can write the letters & numbers, but they are huge, misshapen, and don’t follow one after another, so it’s nearly illegible. Christian has been really good about drilling her on spelling words repeatedly over the course of the week, and she’ll know them cold, but still miss two out of six on the test, which we can only attribute to the writing hurdle.

Math: She recognizes numbers and can count one to one, but you can tell she doesn’t get the conceptualization required to do addition and subtraction. A few weeks ago her homework made me want to cry because it was addition problems, and I had to write out all the domino shapes for each number, and we’d have to count: 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3, now let’s put them together, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Now they’re telling us to work with her on adding one to different numbers, just to get her to understand the concept.

Even so, she is still basically working at grade level. We’re trying to keep it that way as long as possible. Of course it would help if Michael Mayhem would quit ripping her glasses off her face and snapping the earpiece in two. Grrr. But that’s another post.

So there you go: a snapshot of one first grader with Trisomy 21. Any questions you’d like me to answer?

The Balance Between Authenticity and TMI

I’ve spent my writing time the last several days researching literary agents. When you Google someone’s name, you get a lot of clutter, but if you take the time, you can often get a good sense of who they are by the things they say online. For an author hoping to find someone to represent her, this is a tool you’d be foolish not to use. And for an agent considering a potential client, the same holds true. So authors are always admonished to be professional in their online presence: to be careful what they say and how they say it.

“Careful” is a hard word for me. I overthink almost everything related to what I “should” or “shouldn’t” do, and the tension between what to say and what not to sometimes creates complete logjam. I’ve been wrestling for two weeks with a query pitch for my novel, for instance, because I’m pretty sure it’s not right yet, and I’m having trouble shaking loose a fresh take on it.

Online, the tension is between stories that are mine to tell and stories that are not. Between sharing the journey and risking looking whiny. Between affirming other people’s struggles by opening up about mine and opening myself to criticism and judgment for what I did or didn’t do.

Caution sign, in parking on 5th street (Photo credit: gregoirevdb)

Life is not all unicorns and rainbows, and when I run across people online pretending otherwise it really grates on my nerves. Yet I can understand why a person might whitewash (or self-censor) the tough moments, the ones where defending yourself might make you look petulant, or the ones where you don’t come off like mother of the year and it’s not funny but instead an excoriation of the soul. Your “tribe” will get it. They see you as a whole person. But they’re not the ones you have to worry about. It’s the person who’s Googling you out of nowhere. What if that moment is their introduction to you?

The balance between authenticity and TMI is something everyone who is online faces–or should be cognizant of, at any rate. I stopped Journaling when this blog took over that role, but more and more often I’m recognizing the value of an outlet where I can work through things without worrying about who’s looking over my shoulder. Now, where to find the extra half hour of time?

On to the next impossible question…

Sunday Snippets

It is time to join up with the Sunday Snippets crowd again over at RAnn’s This, That & The Other Thing (mostly) book blog. This week, she asked us to answer: “Who is your favorite saint?”

I just discovered Maximilien Kolbe last year and his story just caught my heart. I’ll stretch it a bit and add that I also have tremendous respect for Mother Teresa and John Paul II, and stretch a bit farther to say that Thomas Merton is rocking my world lately. (Have you read New Seeds of Contemplation? If you haven’t…do so…NOW.)

My posts this week:

Marriage Has Made Me Free

In my almost-wordless Wednesday post, you get to see Alex’s St. Michael costume, which he’s been preparing for his class’s celebration of All Saints Day next week.

Words matter (A Primer on Disability Language. In particular this one is interesting because another mother of a person with special needs offered a very different outlook in the comments. So read the comments, too!

And if you want the kid stuff, and a picture of me with my new red hair, click here. But there’s nothing even remotely Catholic in that post.