A Colorful Mess

Have you ever vacuumed with the vacuum bag ripped?  Or use the shop vac with it somehow spewing dust and other matter out of the back? (Both have actually happened to me.) If not, imagine, slowly pushing the vacuum forward while your busy toddler quietly follows you and throws flower, spices, toys and whatever else he or she may have up their sleeve or behind their back all over the floor behind you. This is what it is like cleaning with toddlers. Sometimes you wonder why you bother cleaning at all, but I have figured out a very sensible reason for this seemingly not so sensible action..... Because you don't want a mess on top of a mess. Picturing this is giving me chest pains....

As we all know, life can become quite stressful and intense. Ever since my early teenage years, one of the ways I learned to cope with being able to handle the curve-balls that would come my way, was to try to make sure that at least my physical surroundings were orderly and neat. Life might sometimes seem like a mess, but at least it was an organized mess! 

I remember one evening,  when I was going through the dating scene, I had retreated after a rather long day, into my bedroom. As I was tidying up my already Martha Stewart picture perfect, slightly OCD room, my mother poked her head into my room to wish me a good night, but stopped suddenly as she slowly drew in the scene before her. I was on my hands and knees, combing the fringes of my carpet out with my fingers, so that none of the fringes were touching, and all of them were relatively straight. 

My mother looked at me, let out a soft gasp and said, "Tana! You can't expect to do that when you have children!"

Still a teenager at 19, I responded, "I know! And I am not going to have fringes on my carpet when I have kids!!!!"
It took me 1.2 seconds to figure that out. 

It wasn't exactly something I regularly thought about, but I wanted to take advantage of the time of neatness while I could. Little did I know just how messy busy toddlers and kids with special needs can make your world, but in the meantime I continued to live in a world of bliss (or was it slight oblivion). I would fix those fringes on the carpet, hang my clothing in height order and according to weekday and special occasion, made sure to dust and kept the books in height order..... yes, [sigh] there was more but I will stop here.... but that was one of the ways I felt in control of that time period in my life, a time that was full of introspection,  nervousness and, well, at that point I was still working on my sense of humor......

So does our house get messy? Yes! Does it feel like I might lose my mind? Well, only when the mess looks like it is something out of Calvin and Hobbes, slowly morphing and coming to devour me alive. I remember seeing those scenes in Calvin and Hobbs and thinking, wow, that child (and author), has an incredible imagination!..... well now I am not so sure it's an imagination. ... and no one ever told me that laundry can multiply faster than fruit flies. And how on earth is there so much laundry when it seems like half the kids (especially my sensory kids), prefer to be in the nude??

But is it all worth it? At the end of the day, when I have cleaned up, rearranged, wiped, sprayed and organized for the trillionth time (literally), is it all worth it? I will give you a resounding Yes! And I thank G-d for a beautiful and colorful mess full of colorful and suspiciously sticky fingers and little bodies and the list goes on. In my teenage years, if G-d would have shown me a glimpse of our future mess, I probably would have fainted on the spot. Am I brave enough to show you pictures of our beautifully messy house with the kids in action before mommy digs real deep for that last little bit of mental energy to clean up again? Uh, nooooo. Anyway, the pictures of our toddler and one year old covered in chickpea flour this evening (thanks to our toddler who was filling an awesome sensory need), she was not exactly dressed appropriately, if you can even call it that, so I will leave that up to your imagination.

May we all be blessed with an unlimited amount of energy and a rock solid sense of humor to gracefully make it through the toddler days and beyond.  

Our son with Autism actually got past the child lock to this spice cabinet a while back. He dumped the cayenne pepper down the air conditioning vent just as the A.C. kicked in..... it was painful. This little beauty has thankfully not discovered the A.C. vent. Yet. And mommy has learned her lesson.

Ah yes. The three weeks.

      Every year I hold my breath when we get to the three weeks. One year, on the Shabbos before the ninth of Av (so what on earth was I thinking taking my kids to the park that morning????) My son fell off the zip line and broke his humerus. He needed 3 pins to hold the bones in place. Another year ( this was just as we were entering the 9 days), we were driving home, and on the on ramp, our youngest daughter began a 20 minute complex seizure. Needless to say that was the first time I have ever driven backwards on an on ramp... so yes, when the three weeks approach I tend to get a little nervous.  Last week, one of little ones spiked a high fever with a 24 hour virus. Watching her, I knew that if the baby would get it, there was a good chance of a fiberal seizure..... now if I was a betting woman.....!

        last night, I carried up a very tired little one off to bed. We curled up together under the covers and she began to nurse. After a few seconds somethings didn't feel right. She was still sucking, but even in the dark I could see her eyes open really wide and she gave a fixed stare looking up and to the right. Those wide eyes scared me. I had seen that stare before. Her neck stiffened a bit. I called her name, stroked her head and adjusted her position. With her eyes open wide, she continued to stare. As soon as her neck started twitching I knew something was wrong. Watching the clock, I yelled for my husband. We took her temperature and sure enough she had a fever. It wasn't so high, but a fever nonetheless. Her hands twitched a little, but that stare,  that stare was really all it took for me to know. We rushed her downtrairs. I stroked her, called her, I felt myself getting a little choked up. We were 5 min in and her lips were blue. By the time the parametrics came, just a few minutes later, it was over. We called her pediatrician and asked him what to do. This may sound funny or obvious to you, but having gone through our share of seizures,  once this was over it almost seemed like a walk in the park. I felt like, "oh! It's over! Few! Thank G-d (a million times over)! And just a febrile seizure, nothing fancy like her older sister child." (She pulled so much shtick and needed to spice things up with her seizures, by keeping them longer then 20 minutes, as if life wasn't exciting enough.) Needles to say, our wise Dr said it most likely is just a febrile seizure caused by a virus,  bit they don't like diagnosing those things over the phone, especially since hers was about 6 min long. So off we went with the EMT. As expected, she was still quite out of it, but I was relieved to have an additional set of watchful eyes, keeping a close eye on her.

     

       It was almost 4 am. My husband woke up Yehuda, one of my brothers, to come over and watch the kids while he went to pick us up. As my brother walked over in the dark in his pj's, slippers and button down shirt, and approached our house, he heard some crying. Yes, our toddler had gotten up and needed her passionate and intense toddler world to calm down.  As much as I dream of living on a farm, I know we would kill the roosters with insomnia. Perhaps my son's idea of getting a chinchilla isn't such a bad idea after all.....   

      

      Well, all's well that ends well, thank G-d. I should add here that this was the second time we called emergency this week, but the first time was much less eventful,  except for the fact that when the paramedics asked me for the name and birthday of our toddler, of course I panicked and completely blanked.  Our toddler just gave me quite a scare, enough for me to be in tears and call 911, my entire being and all of my brain cells are focused on her well being, and your going to throw the name and date thing at me? With a panicked and probably a bit of a sorrowful look on my face, I turned to my husband for help, who thankfully came to my rescue.  Flawlessly I might add.

      

      I thanked my brother for coming over in the wee hours of the morning at such short notice.  I was so grateful he came with his usual layed back happy self, despite being suddenly woken up. In no way did he make me feel like we had inconvenienced him at all. Smiling, he looked up at me and said, "It seems you have very religious kids who hold the Jewish calendar close to their heart."

Thank G-d for the little things.
L'chayim!
  

                                                                                                     Photos by Mendel B