Holiday Letter 2007

Dear Friends and Family,

Yet again I sit down to attempt to write one of these letters, hoping to get it out to you before the New Year.

For Alison, who’s 6 now, this has been a year of many firsts. She started first grade at Marlton Elementary and both she and we are thrilled with it. Her teacher, Mrs. Menzel, is her new favorite teacher (mine too!) and my extreme mommy guilt at not having already taught her some things that I thought were my job (like reading an analogue clock) turns out to be unnecessary, as those things are part of the first grade curriculum (Alas shoe laces are not, and Ali is still insisting on velcro. I figure that by the time she’s 18 she’ll have figured that one out).
Really everything about school has been wonderful this year. Even the school bus driver, “Mrs. M,” is incredible. How? Let me count the ways. First, she’s just really nice. The first few days of school when Ali was really nervous about riding the bus by herself, Mrs. M. was just really sweet and kind. Next, since Alison is the only kid on the block on her bus, Mrs. M switched the bus stop from an eighth of a mile up the road -- a long way when Andrew wants to walk himself) to our house. But it gets better. Every morning Andrew, Ali, and I meet her at the end of our driveway (Andrew insists on wearing his backpack and carrying his lunchbox too). Mrs. M. greets Andrew by name every morning (we were even at a neighborhood halloween party in October when a kid I didn’t know came up to me and said “is that Andrew?” I said, “yes, how do you know?” and he explained that he was on Ali’s bus.)

OK, but now the thing that puts Mrs. M over the top. Unbelievable. It’s now 8:26 am on Thursday (Andrew is watching Elmo (don’t tell Ali) before we head out to day care and I’m sneaking 10 minutes to type a paragraph of two of this letter). Ali caught the bus at around 8:10 this morning. At 8:15 the phone rang. “Mrs. E, this is the transportation center. Alison forgot the bear she had to bring to school today [for teddy bear day at school]. The bus will be back in a minute, could you run it outside for her?” Sure enough, by the time I got back downstairs with “white teddy” there was Mrs. M’s bus zooming up the block (living on the correct side of a dead end street means that we get early warning that the bus is here and have time to walk to the (far) end of our driveway before she gets back). I’m still in shock. (Postscript: talking to Mrs. M on Friday I discovered that Ali was so devastated when she realized she’d left white teddy at home she couldn’t even speak, and Mrs. M figured it was worth coming back)

Ali has also started playing on local sports teams. A year late, apparently, since so far both soccer (in the Fall) (yeah-- I’m officially a “soccer mom” now), and basketball (now) started at age 5. But she’s quite athletic, and really seems to enjoy it. Plus, since all of us tend to veg out over the weekend, it’s good that there’s one weekend activity that gets us out of the house (in the case of basketball, alas, that’s out of the house at 7:45 am on a Saturday) and moving.
Finally, Ali is, of course, a little genius (not that we’re biased or anything). Case in point: at the dentist’s office last week the dentist, “Dr. Zoo” (short for something he’s decided we can’t pronounce) asked Ali if she remembered his name from last time. She didn’t, so he said “well, where do animals live?” She thought for a minute, and then said, “In habitats?” Of course, Andrew, who is 2, is also a little prodigy. He can count to 10 and beyond (on a good day, on other days he misses out some numbers) and, because every night for the last year we have looked at the letters on his bedroom door before he goes to bed (because they’re colorful and interesting, not because we’re insane parents), he can point to each and say what it is (though “N” often becomes “R” for no good reason).

I continue to be so amazed by how different Andrew is from Alison. As far as I’m concerned the nurture vs. nature debate is done. She’s a picky eater. He eats a wide variety of foods. She is constantly zooming around and never really liked to just sit and cuddle, he really needs some calm down and sit in your lap time.

Andrew was a very late talker. So late, in fact, that he qualified for “early intervention” services from the state. A year ago he pretty much wouldn’t say anything, and understood very little. Now he talks up a storm, though it’s often very hard to understand him. Was it the early intervention? The ear tubes (after a bunch of infections?) Sun spots? Who knows, but regardless it’s such a relief to have him interacting more and talking more. Recently, he had his annual evaluation, where I pushed for a speech therapist (as opposed to the “teacher” that we had up to now) since I really think his pronunciation is the key issue now. Much to my amazement, they told me that he only barely qualifies for speech therapy, but he needs occupational therapy immediately. No, yesterday! My view had just been that he’s a clumsy kid. Their view is that the clumsiness, together with a bunch of other (apparently random) facts indicate that he’s got a sensory disorder. The short story is his brain doesn’t process all the nerve signals as well as it should. Red thinks it’s completely bogus, I’m a little swayed by the fact that the state will subsidize therapy. I can’t imagine that the state would subsidize something that wasn’t actually a recognized and proven treatment. Anyway, the bottom line is that treatment for each of these issues is a therapist coming to our house for an hour once a week and playing games with Andrew and me. And I figure, even if it doesn’t help, it can’t hurt, and Andrew gets some special time each week where he gets to play with fun toys others bring in and he gets all the attention. So why not?

So what else to tell you about Andrew? Beyond being just crazy about Alison and all that she does, he’s just a really smiley happy, easy-going kid most of the time. He loves to jump (really loves to jump), and for the last few months has been absolutely obsessed by writing in little notebooks. I wish I could tell you it’s because of some wonderful thing we’ve been doing, but alas it’s because of the TV show “Blue’s Clues” that he is equally obsessed with (when Ali lets him watch). For those of you who aren’t familiar with Blue’s Clues, it involves Blue, a dog, and her friend Steve (or in later episodes, Joe) who solves mysteries by writing down clues in his “handy dandy notebook.” Andrew calls whatever notebook he has to hand his “nany danny ote-book” (that took some time to translate) and to save us from the devastation of being without a notebook, Red and I each went to the local office supply store and bought a pack of twenty-something little 2 inch by 4 inch spiral bound notebooks which are now liberally scattered around the house. Also (thanks to Blue’s Clues) he’s obsessed with letters and envelopes and has (alas) started to take random ones off of counters, open them, and remove the contents. He’s also a terrific artist. One of his favorite techniques is to glue foam shapes into little towers on a piece of paper. He also likes pulling scotch (selo) tape off the roll and playing with it.

Not nearly as much to write about Red and I. I’m back to being a “normal faculty member” again. Being chair was a good experience, but incredibly stressful and it’s a great relief to be done with it. I’m feeling a bit burned out, and have applied for a sabbatical for next year, but it’s by no means a sure thing. I should find out in January. Red is the campus database administrator, though really he’s that plus a “do all the other bits and pieces that need doing” kind of guy. Unfortunately he’s been suffering from some pretty serious migraines for the better part of a year. He’s had all sorts of tests that have come up normal (thank goodness for that, but it’s frustrating not to be able to identify a (benign) reason for the problem). We’ve seen an assortment of specialists (including one with a 10 foot tall statue of Neptune in his outer-office, naked except for a codpiece formed out of the tail of a large fish sitting on his feet!). The current approach is to try and find a medication that will help without having too many side effects. He’s been through a number of different ones without success, but hopefully the current one he’s trying will be a winner, though it’ll probably be another month before we know if it’s helping. The one bright side to this is that most of the time he finds that sitting at a computer distracts him from his headaches rather than increases them. So most of the time work is OK, and if he's feeling lousy at home he can retreat to the computer room.
In other news, I’ve achieved my five minutes of fame in the last month. First, amongst the intellectual crowd, I had a letter to the editor published in the NY Times Sunday Magazine a few weeks ago in response to a really offensive comment in an otherwise benign column on obesity. Then, in the more mass media, the January issue of Oprah’s O Magazine includes an article on body image that has a few paragraphs about me (it was agony waiting MONTHS between the interview and the publication to see how totally embarrassing it might be - it’s moderately so, but clearly not too bad or I wouldn’t have mentioned it!) That one’s not on-line so you’ll have to check it out in the supermarket aisle if you’re really interested. I’m “Rosalyn (not her real name),” a 43-year-old teacher from NJ (I went with “teacher” because they were going to use my first name, and I figured that I’d rather not have my students reading about my body image neuroses.) Now that it’s out and I don’t absolutely hate it, I can say that one of the best ways to improve your body image is to be interviewed for an article about body image. The reporter was really nice and it was a lot of fun. The backstory, for those of you who don’t know: I’ve been doing weight watchers for the last two years now, and have lost a substantial amount of weight, though I’ve been fairly stable for the last few months. I’m still “overweight” by BMI standards, but I’m (mostly) comfortable with where I am, and unwilling to decrease my food intake or increase my exercise so I think this is pretty much it for now.

Hope that you all have a wonderful 2008!
Love, Jennie, Red, Alison, and Andrew