#isaac doomface

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I don’t even go here but I’m still weirdly proud that both twins made Pokémon at Build-A-Bear today.

(Sam did too, but he didn’t want to take a picture)

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For those who’ve been there since the beginning, please marvel at these three and how they used to not exist and now one dabs and calls me bruh and has created his own fantasy world with its own complex history and countries and one loves planets so much that he was the literal earth for Halloween and one eats and sleeps and breathes the color pink and dancing, and how very weird that is because their existence was so hard won and tada here they are.

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My small humans.

Y’all wanna know something fucked up?

Sammy turns 10 in two weeks.

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I got a new tattoo today~

Serotonin molecule with my kids’ favorite animals and astronomy imagery. Sammy is the wolf, Isaac is the giraffe, and Carrie is the polar bear. I adore it.

…and am maybe already hype to go back for more but I have so many ideas.

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I have had twins for five years now. This remains weird.

The cake was an attempt.

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Took the kids to Disney World last week and it was a great time until Thursday when my sister (who was on the trip with us) passed out just outside the Elsa meet and greet space and went to the hospital and they found out she has a subclavial aneurysm (maybe) and the rest of her blood vessels are basically Silly String but yanno, otherwise good times, and the iPhone 13 Pro’s camera is stupid good when you know how to use it.

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Are you ever just going about life, having a normal one, and then out of nowhere you’ve got twin kindergartners because man is that a trip.

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School pictures for 2022-2023!

I am thrilled that Sammy decided to go for the laser background. Didn’t even hesitate, as soon as he saw it was an option, he flat out told me, “I’m getting the lasers,” and that did my 90s kid heart good. His came later in the year because he was actually sick on the original picture day, but I love it.

With the twins, you can 100% tell that I bought their picture day outfits before we all sat down and chose backgrounds. Isaac wanted New York City because he is obsessed with Spider-Man, so he needed to be in front of “mine New York City,” and I accept this. Carrie chose pink flower blossoms because that is just how she do. I’m wholly pleased with their portraits and adding them to the roster of “look at my kids growing up.”

Also spring boarding off of this to talk briefly about school and sick days this year.

It’s all basically a lose-lose-lose-lose-lose situation.

If you’ve been watching the news, you’ve probably read about how kids are just all sick all the time this year and ending up in the hospital with RSV and pneumonia and the flu and Covid. Thankfully, we haven’t gotten any thing that particularly bad yet (I blame that Isaac got RSV every year until 2020 so we just know what to do immediately to keep it from settling in his lungs), but it’s a bit like Sammy’s first year at daycare with how often everyone is getting sick. The twins specifically--because their unmasked exposure to other kids has been very limited, they’re just getting every germ imaginable in a never ending cycle of boogers and coughs.

And on the one hand, yes, keep them home if they have any sort of congestion or cough, but this year, it’s to the point where doing that would mean basically pulling them out of school for the entire fall. We’ve been sending them with masks when their coughs get particularly severe, and even then, we have yet to experience a week this year where one kid wasn’t home sick several days. This week, it’s Carrie’s turn, at least partly because our kids tend to throw up when they get boogery and that’s where she is right now.

(well. Where she is right now is sleeping, which is how I know she’s feeling cruddy; she’ll be downstairs later, I’m sure, to revel in finally getting to watch TV without either of her brothers demanding that their show be the one everyone watches, which means today will be a solid 4-5 hours of Gabby’s Dollhouse)

And! And apparently a lot of parents have been dealing with calls from truant officers threatening CPS calls if they keep their kids home anymore, which is like... what? But all of these absences are apparently flagging families and nobody is going to get a doctor’s note for the cold that goes ‘round and ‘round, so parents end up sending their sick kids to school (I don’t mean just sniffly, I mean genuinely super sick), then those sick kids get sent home by the nurse but not before they’ve coughed or sneezed or touched things and gotten other kids sick.

There is legitimately no winning this year. If we all mask up, that’s awesome, but then eventually, masks do come off, and lmao at the idea of getting a healthy portion of the population to comply with mask mandates again (can you fucking imagine the bullshit drama that would cause?). Keeping kids home when they’re sick is also a great idea, but it means that kids are literally missing half the school year and then parents are getting threatened with CPS because their kids are missing school. It’s all an absolute fucking disaster.

You know what probably would have helped things? Improving school ventilation systems. You know what didn’t happen? Improving school ventilation systems.

Ugh. And I feel fairly confident that this is just for a year because it reminds me so much of Sammy’s first year of daycare, where he was sick literally all the time and had an ear infection every three weeks and I got in so much trouble at work over it, so I’m hopeful that next year won’t be like this, but UGH in the meantime.

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Promised a minute ago I’d throw pics of the kids out because they’re huge now. Enjoy some King Richard’s Faire goodness, in which we’re all dressed like we’re from different genres.

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Sometimes I feel very fortunate.

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Haven’t posted the bobbins in a hot minute!

The twins turn three tomorrow! I legitimately cannot believe that I’ve been doing the fulltime mom thing to twins for three whole ass years. And I have to brag a little bit about their birthday stuff because last year, Covid suddenly happening two days before their birthday derailed everything--we’d been planning to go to the aquarium in Boston and take them to a special ice cream place and just have a great time, but then plague. 

And they had a good time, but I felt bad. 

So maybe this year I went overboard JUST a bit, both (a) because we could afford it (Kyle’s new job is pretty sweet like that), and (b) because I wanted this year to make up for last year being meh. I know they’re too young to really remember but on the off chance that they do, I don’t want them to remember two miserable Covid birthdays. One is enough.

I made cupcakes, because they are tiny, and cupcakes are easier to individually theme than bigger cakes. Carrie loves unicorns, Isaac loves Mickey and Minnie, it was a fun thing to do. 

But kiddos overall. 

Sam is inching closer to SEVEN YEARS OLD WHAT, is on his third lost tooth (my favorite tooth when kids lose it because it’s the one that really makes him look like a little jack o lantern), and speaks mostly in Pokemon these days. I understand none of it, but he is OBSESSED and keeps coming up with creative ways to bring them into his day-to-day life (he’s beaten Sword about three times and is currently working his way through whatever the previous title was on the DS; his favorite vacillates day to day, but he tends to go for fire types). I’m still homeschooling him until the end of the year because everyone keeps changing their mind about when people are going back and doing what. And he’s kicking ass. Currently whizzing through very basic geometry (e.g., finding simple perimeter and area) as part of his third grade math curriculum and working on recognizing patterns in science. 

We also suspect that he’s either autistic or has ADHD (per his in-home therapists as well), but wait times for official testing are L O N G. We’re having him evaluated through the school, though, so that if he doesn’t get a diagnosis before he heads back in the fall (because I love him, but I do not love teaching him), he’ll at least have an IEP already in place and be able to get any assistance he needs. And that will most likely take the form of someone breaking tasks into smaller steps, maybe giving him fidget opportunities while he’s learning (he absorbs a LOT when he’s playing with Legos), maybe taking tests separately so that he can have someone read the questions aloud to him so that he absorbs them (because he can read, but unless he also HEARS things, he absorbs nothing). 

He’s a terrifyingly smart kid still, and I have no doubt that he’ll be on par with his fellow second graders next year academically. I just want him to not feel overwhelmed while working. 

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Isaac is slowly slowly slowly gaining spoken language. I’ve said before and stand by that I don’t care if he never speaks completely fluently, but I do want him to be able to communicate his wants and needs so that he doesn’t get frustrated so much. And he does get frustrated, but his meltdowns remain rare--they usually only happen if something he loved doing ends or if someone takes his toy or won’t give him their toy or just other typical toddler stuff (which inclines me to classify them more as tantrums than meltdowns, but eh). BUT he also communicates, not just by taking someone’s hand and putting it on something he wants, but by using words. He LOVES to talk about the cats (which are his favorite thing--cats of all types, including those in the musical) (but NOT THE MOVIE DEAR JESUS), and the other day, he very meticulously directed me to draw a picture of the three cats happily sleeping on his bed, based on his memory of seeing them happily sleeping on his bed at naptime. 

He’s definitely got his drilled down special interests--cats, cars, Mickey Mouse, Daniel Tiger, and Celtic Woman (we call them his “ladies”). And he is just such an absolute sweetie. He still has the smile that basically convinces you that you would both kill and die for him (shown above), and the way he relaxes against me when he’s tired just makes me sigh and love him to absolute pieces. He’s 110% a momma’s boy, and although I hope he grows out of it when the time is right, it’s really sweet right now. 

He easily qualified for special ed preschool, which I’ll talk about more in a second. 

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And then Miss Carrie, who basically read the rhyme about little girls being made of sugar and spice and all things nice and took it as gospel but ALSO realized that you can do all of those things while being a monster, beating up everyone who treats you wrong, and covering yourself in tattoos. I say of her that she’s too much, but in the best possible way: I want her to keep being too much forever, because it is absolutely delightful. She’s always giggling or twirling, singing or commanding her brothers in a game of pretend. She never just walks anywhere, she always prances or skips or dances or hops or jumps. She can be a screechy little spitfire one second and then brush away her angry tears and transform into a little cherub the next, and it’s hilarious. Everything ever must be pink and glittery (I promise, I did not try and force pink on her, she jumped to it on her own), must flounce out correctly when she twirls, must make her feel like a fairy tale princess. 

She merrily adopts all the stereotypical “girly” things in life--Barbies, princesses, My Little Pony (yep, we’re back in that phase), unicorns, mermaids, “cute” things, etc. At the same time, she’s always game for a lightsaber fight, playing “bug” with Sammy (I don’t know what “bug” is as a game, but the kids have established rules for it and play it whenever they’re not too tired after dinner), and wrestling with her dad and brothers. It’s wonderful. 

And SHE qualified for special ed preschool because her muscle tone is hilariously low (read: she flops). 

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The twins are starting preschool Monday because they are turning three and thus losing early intervention services. I worry somewhat about them being in school with Covid still raging (even though I’m 50% of the way to fully vaccinated--going back for Pfizer #2 on Saturday!), but it’s a huge relief that their therapies (speech, occupational, physical) are being coordinated by the school and not by me. I’m the most organized person in this house, and anyone who’s ever seen my house knows what a statement that is (it’s gotten worse since my sciatica has settled in, because bending over is just not a thing I can do without suffering), so having that burden lifted from my shoulders? Heavenly. 

And I’m just overall proud as fuck of all three kids. They’re so resilient, and I know that the pandemic has been hard on them in a lot of ways, but they’re still kicking ass, still smiling and laughing and having fun, and that’s been a bright spot for the entire last year.

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Had professional pics of the kids done FINALLY at an old schoolhouse in our town last week, and they came out absolutely delightful. Isaac’s smile is basically the death of me, Carrie is a total ham and a half and Sam remains a joy.

The schoolhouse was stupid cool, too. We got to see all the old documents they unearthed when restoring it about 10 years ago, like this letter where we’re throwing shade about Fannie and Jennie being bitches to Ethel: 

I’m glad they’ll be doing traditional school pictures next year (if only because Sam is in a phase where he doesn’t want to have pictures taken of himself unless he’s photobombing someone else), BUT this was a really cool experience!

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Christmas happened! It’s been a socially distanced affair--we went to my parents’ house because we basically see them every week anyway, but no visits with the larger family at all. Just a “quiet” time at home (by which I mean, everyone was screaming at some point, but we didn’t do a lot).

We tried to keep things moderate for the kids (we do the want-need-wear-read thing from Santa, and then everyone gets exactly one gift from the others in the household), but grandparents are a thing, so I currently do not have a living room. I have toys with some couches sticking out of them. We’ll tackle that tomorrow, but today was for (a) junk food; (b) lazing around; and (c) movies.

(Soul for one, which was really interesting and honestly, a genuinely bold piece for Disney and Pixar to release because a lot of it, including art styles in a lot of places, was pretty experimental; and Wonder Woman 1984, which was fun until the end destroyed my soul)

And, of course, kittens throughout. 

Anyway. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you and yours!

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Tonight’s Halloween test run, featuring Sammy as a Minecraft Skeleton, Isaac as a Regular Skeleton, and Carrie as a Witch On The Last Day Of Coachella.

(because every time I tried to put the makeup away, she let out such unholy screeches that we just added more to make the sounds stop)

Also featuring me and Kyle being parents.

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Anyone remember “The Most Popular Girls in School”? Because Isaac is apparently a Van Buren.

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Isaac got his autism diagnosis today (he’s “mild to moderate”), and I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I’m kind of glaring at the information packet they gave me because 99% of it is “go read up on Autism Speaks! They’re great!”

So I was like “man, fuck Autism Speaks, but there’s allegedly a free ‘first 100 days after your child’s diagnosis’ kit, and I kind of have morbid curiosity.” I pop on the recommended website and bam, guess what, it’s not free anymore. $11.95. 

Thus I continue to say, with increasing gusto: fuck Autism Speaks.