Adventures in Maggie Rearing Vol. 2

The best thing about being a part of Maggie's life is that it is never, EVER, boring.  Being Maggie's parent forces one to develop a 6th or maybe even 7th sense. Prior being her parent I was a deep sleeper.  Now I wake up when the refrigerator is opened on the other side of the house. This is due to the PTSD that I now have from cleaning up the messes that Maggie makes when she "cooks". When Maggie is getting into her shenanigans the hair on the back of my neck begins to stand up.  The following are examples of instances in which I ignored that feeling.

Exhibit A

  The above photo is taken from the second story of our home.  Due to the fact that Maggie is largely non-verbal we are typically forced to guess at her intentions.  This picture was taken shortly after we purchased the movie Tangled.  Our working hypothesis is that Maggie was recreating some of the scenes in which the main character jumps out of the window.  Barbie's taking flight is not a new occurrence though, prior to moving to this address they would frequently find themselves pitched into our neighbors yard.  Our neighbor at the time had a good heart and would simply toss them back.  He once stated that he believed they were "camping".

Exhibit B

Maggie loves the water.  Swimming is her favorite activity.   Even if the water isn't deep enough, she is content to sit in a wading pool for hours on end.  When the weather turned too cold for her to enjoy this activity outside, Maggie thought outside the box. I believe we were napping when she first dragged this pool in from the yard because if memory serves what woke us up was the frequent trips up and down the stairs as she filled a 16 ounce glass up in the bathroom sink over and over, then trotted it downstairs and tossed the contents into the pool.  Had I been a deeper sleeper, she may have eventually succeeded.

Exhibit C

This picture was taken shortly after we brought Maggie's little sister Merritt home from the hospital for the first time.  Maggie must have been sick of the late night cry fests and lack of attention.  She packed what she needed for a life on the road, (a suite case filled with Barbies) and headed out.  Luckily she did not get far before my wife convinced her to head back home.

Lately, Maggie's sleeping meds have been failing us and she has been waking up pretty regularly at 1:30 in the a.m.. She almost always stays in her room playing so it has not been much of a disturbance.  The biggest issue is that part of her play includes random screams, singing, and banging on the wall.   Most parents would be concerned about the screaming, but when I check on her I am greeted with an insistent finger pointing for me to leave and either the word "GO" or simply her blowing raspberries at me.

The Costuming is VERY important

It would seem that when I enter her room I am interrupting the delicate role play that she has created and am breaking her concentration.  She may only be saying "go" but the way she says it make it feel more like she is saying, "Do you have any IDEA how hard I have been working on this scene?!"

She has done a better job than we expected of adjusting to the twins joining our family.  We have had a few requests for picture featuring her and the twins.  She may have accepted that they are now in the house, but she still is not crazy enough about the idea that she is willing to sit for a photo.

More Adventures in Maggie Rearing in the future.

L&P

Not the Worst Thing I Have Done, But Close

I must admit that I have not always been the beacon of special needs advocacy that you now know and love.  True I have always had a soft spot for those with special needs.  I have also always respected those that struggle alongside the special needs population so it should come as no surprise that I fell in love with my wife and shortly there after with fatherhood and parenting a child with special needs.

But as I previously mentioned, these skills needed to be honed.  In my defense, my heart was in the right place, even if my head was lodged squarely in my ass.

Enter Prince.

Not that one

I have roughly 15 years of food service experience.  In that time I can tell you that there are several types of individuals that seem to gravitate to different fields of the food service industry.  Those that are very personable and organized, (and occasionally gay) seem to become servers.  Individuals that have criminal records tend to work in the kitchen.  Psychopaths tend toward management.  Prince was a dishwasher.

Dishwashers are usually one or several of the following; alcoholic, special needs, teenagers, migrant workers.

Prince is an African American gentleman from Louisiana.  He has a thick accent, a fairly oddly shaped head, and worked as a dishwasher.  Prince and his brother Kenny both worked with me at a restaurant which will remain unnamed.  For months I worked with Prince but had minimal interaction with him as I was a server and we usually worked different shifts.  When I did talk to Prince he would talk about going to school.  I assumed this was a special needs school where he would work on life skills.

One day Prince came to work directly from school. Prince was wearing hospital scrubs.  It slowly began to dawn on me that if an individual with special needs works in a hospital it is not usually a position in which scrubs are necessary.  A terrible terrible feeling began to creep over me as I turned to Prince's brother (who did not have a criminal history to my knowledge) and asked, "Kenny, does your brother have a learning disability or something?" (Kenny's accent was also not nearly as thick as his brothers.)
"No? Why?"
"No reason."
I had assumed that due to Prince's oddly shaped noggin, slow manner of speech, and employment as a dishwasher, he was an individual with special needs. The following is a list of things that I ACTUALLY SAID to Prince.
"Great job busing that table buddy!"
"You mopped that floor all by yourself!"
"Wow! You carried 1,2,3,4 glasses and didn't spill a drop!"

 The horror of my situation must have been evident on my face as I uttered the words, "My god I gave him all those hugs."

Kenny (again, who does not have a criminal record) must have pieced together what I was going through and laughed the laugh that only a black guy can laugh at a white guys discomfort as I sputtered my poorly thought out reasoning for believing his brother had special needs.  Even more terrifying was the thought that Prince may have believed that I spoke to him in the manner that I did because I was racist and placating him.

Now if you can tell me how to explain to someone that you spoke to them as if they were a child, not because you are a racist, but because you thought that they were an individual with special needs, then I sir or madam will eat my hat.  Because that is a situation that is fucking impossible to navigate gracefully.

Thankfully shortly after this Prince moved on to another place of employment.  Probably one with less racist white people that treated him like a simpleton.  I don't know if Kenny (again, not a convicted felon), ever explained to his brother that I was not intentionally being an a-hole.  But that I was only accidentally being an a-hole.

The moral of the story dear reader is this; much in the way that you should never assume a woman that looks pregnant is pregnant, never assume a person has special needs until they tell you specifically that they have special needs.  Unless they are blind of course in which case you probably should err on the side of blind and not toss them anything.

In conclusion I would like to apologize to black people, those with special needs, my family, and anyone I may have inappropriately hugged.

L&P

Terror Toys

It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Enter the SingAMaJig.  A relative with a good heart and noble intentions purchased our sweet toddler a couple of SingAMaJig's when she was but a new born.  If you don't know what a SingAMaJig is, I will show you.

I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.

Note the open mouth, no doubt preparing to drink the joy from your soul.  Also note the dead eyes, looking through you.  

The SingAMaJig is named so due to the fact that when you squeeze it's belly it begins to sing one of many tunes.  I deduce that this is a quality that was learned by this devil doll in either the 3rd or 4th circle of hell in order to appeal to our human love of Yankee Doodle.  Since this "toy" is mostly of demon blood it is not able to just belt a tune out the way an angle would. It requires multiple squeezes in order to force the joy out one syllable at a time.  This is what ultimately lead to my decision to keep one of these nigh malevolent creatures in the garage.

You see, the tune programmed into one of our SingAMaJigs is Skinnamarink e dink a dink.  Now you may think that this tune is innocent enough.  Well by the dark of night I accidentally trod upon one of these gremlins, which forced out the first syllable.  Had I not been so in tuned to the innate evil contained within the monster, I would have thought nothing of the fact that a toy had just yelled the word, "SKINNNNNNNNN" at me.  

You may be thinking, "Hey, that is just the first word of the song."  Well I pity you and your face which is about to be carved up by a possessed doll.

This was clearly a threat.  I caught the SingAMaJig, or should I say, SkinAMaJig by surprise and it unintentionally revealed it's plan for the night.  To skin myself and my family. 

Be ever vigilant reader for evil may be as close as your toy chest.

L&P