Simon's 2017 Funnies

Here's a compilation of his funniest moments last year:

-----

Context: we are a very physically affectionate family, very playful and don’t spank for punishment but do spank each other playfully a lot.

Simon is eating breakfast and watching TV. Laura jumps up from couch next to him and runs into kitchen (within view of Simon) to grab a quick full body snuggle with me, complete with a butt grab.

Simon: Spank it!

Laura and I: *laugh*

Laura: *little spank on my butt*

Simon: Harder!

Laura and I: Um...

Simon: Mommy! Spank your wife!

Me: *If anyone outside of this house heard this, we are so getting a call from CPS*

-----

Brought home rose Turkish Delight tonight bc Simon has been obsessed with The Chronicles of Narnia.

We all tasted it.

Me: It tastes like soap.

Laura: Yep. Like rose soap.

Simon: It tastes...Narnian.

And, just like that, food snobs of Oakland have a new adjective.

You're welcome.

-----

Simon: Mama, can I get this eggplant?

Me: What are you going to do with it?

Simon: Pan fry it.

Me: That sounds delicious.

Me: *remembering many items purchased and not eaten*

Me: Simon, what do I get if I buy this for you and cook it and you don't eat it?

Simon: Uh...You get to slap me.

Me: *thinking*

Me: That sounds fair.

-----

What one wears to see "Thor".

Post movie:
Me: who was your favorite character?
Simon: Hela. She was hella good. Get it?!

-----

Walking dog with Simon, each of us equipped with the requisite Harry Potter wand.

Simon: *bleats like goat*

Simon: *points wand at something*

Simon: "Alohah-ah-ah-amoh-oh-oh-r-ah-ah-ah"

Simon: I'm a goat! I'm a wizard! I'm a gizzard!

-----

Highlight of the weekend

Simon: "Mama, can we listen to the Screaming Goat Complain-a-thon on YouTube?"

Me: "Uh, yeah! That sounds amazing!"

Me: *fruitlessly searching*

Laura: "Simon, do you mean 'compilation'?"

Simon: "Yes!"

Me: *pouting *

The first version sounded way funnier.

-----

Simon : Who is Joan Jett? (He often asks questions he knows the answers to)

Laura: Simon, you know who she is. How would you describe her?

Simon: Strong, legendary and tough. And she's a fighter.

Laura and I: Um. Wow. Pretty much. Yeah.

-----

Two minutes after I walk out of Simon's room thinking he's soundly asleep, he opens his door, stands there scowling with a toy pistol in his hand and angrily proclaims "Worst sleep EVER!"

Drama King.

-----

Simon: Can you be a valley wizard?

Me: Oh Mah Gah. She is like, *so* Hufflepuff. Ew.

-----

Breaking in his new tuxedo jacket by hawking gelt at Trader Joes. Seriously. He parked himself there and offered gelt to everyone that passed by for a full 15 minutes.

------------------

Simon: I have a crush on Miley Cyrus.

Me: (inside)

Me: (outside) Oh! What do you like about her?

Simon: The power that she presents.

Me: (inside and outside)

-----

Me: "Simon, what's your favorite thing about Mommy?"

Simon: "When she's on call at Summit hospital"

Laura and I: Uh....ok. Let's try again.

Laura: "What's your favorite thing about Mama?"

Simon : "When she goes to work"

Laura and I: "Twerp".

-----

Spider Bobby about to report for duty at the Dickens Faire

---------------

A little regret that we watched a video of a goat delivering triplets. Simon's new "popcorn" word of the week is vagina. As in, we were just mock battling and he threatened to smack me with a...vagina.

Hey, at least I can stand proud as a former sex ed teacher that he knows the proper word, right?

-----

Me: *driving*

Simon from the backseat: "Do otters have a big ole vagina?"

Me: *Nearly running off the road*

Me: *hysterical laughter*

Me: "Nope, I think they're pretty small."

My contribution to the marches for science. Anatomy is science, right?

-----

When Laura and I got home from seeing Get Out:

Me: Simon, Mommy and I went to see a really scary movie.

Simon: Did it have hunters?

Me: Um, actually, yes.

*in my brain*:

You are *hella* creepy dude. How did you vibe the perfect word to describe those crazy ass people while not hearing a single thing about that movie and me not even saying the name of the movie?

*shiver*

-----

Walked Simon into YMCA spring break camp this morning and a twenty-something young man watched him with a super sweet little smile on his face. I said "you could start your day like this" and he shook his head a little. He said "I used to be that person". I responded "you still are!" And my heart broke a little that someone so young already felt like the real him had no place in the world. 💔 Let your freak flag fly, people.

----------------------

Simon: You know where I want to work?

Me: No, where?

Simon: The White House!

Me: Cool! What is your job going to be?

Simon: I'm going to work *for* racism and the Imperius Curse

Me: Well, you'd be in very good company right now.

-----

Sometimes Simon's word salad is freakishly spot on. The word of the day is "homophobia" ( no idea why or from where- never heard him use it before today). He can't articulate that he knows what it means, but he just said, "Do you know what homophobia can do? It can make people go back in time ". Um, yeah. That's pretty much it.

-----

Best part of my day was picking up Simon from camp (no small thing since I had Homeless Court today which I love). One of Simon's verbal "tapes" is to randomly generate codes. Today as we were walking out, one of his counselors said "Hey Simon! What's the code?". Simon authoritatively answered "247". The counselor nodded and replied "got it".

I realized this has happened every day I've picked him up.

Nothing better than seeing my son fly his freak flag high and getting to witness someone salute it.

-----

Simon: How about we listen to"Barbie Girl"?

Laura : I'd really rather not. That song makes me a little nuts

Simon: Well, it doesn't make me go nuts. That song is my jam...always.

-----

Yes that's the Torah and yes, that's Wonder Woman gear. 

They were letting the kids help with rolling the Torah at Hebrew School and he had a very specific place he wanted it stopped so he could pretend to read it. Of course we want to know what the text said where he stopped. 

This child. 

He's some kind of magic.

---------------

Talking about racism and whiteness with a kid on the spectrum is at best...dicey.

Laura and I: *blah blah racism, black, native, MLK, Black Panthers, blah, blah unfair, protest, angry, blah, blah, white people, speak up, responsibility, blah, blah*

Simon : *says something showing he mostly followed what we were saying*

Laura and I: *exhaling*

Five minutes later...

Simon : *echolelia smorgasbord of phrases about racism strung together into KKK worthy statement*

Laura and I: "We are so going to get a call from the principal "

-----

In keeping with his current obsession with placentas (thank you Bear Grylls and Shaq), Simon's imaginary new robot is "Placentron".

-----

I present...Mosquito Warrior. His super power is that he controls mosquitoes with the snap of his fingers.

Also, he just said to me "Mama, you know I'm a fighter, not a lover, right?" For real.

-----

Keeping the streets safe.

--------

Simon always bogarts my bone broth but now he asks me to put it in his Butterbeer cup (from Harry Potter world) and proudly calls it "Chicken Beer" as he chugs it.

-----

Simon's parting words to me from the back seat as he and Laura dropped me off at the airport as I left for England was a fervent "God Save The Queen"!

-----

I love that my Mom gave us a book about how to celebrate the Solstice with kids as a Solstice present.

I also loved this moment:

Mom: “Who wears black and white and red and gives out presents?”

Simon: “Bhagavati!”

That’s about as multi-cultural as it gets.

50/50

Last weekend I was invited to a gathering that included a few other families with kids with special needs, most of whom I had not met before. I was chatting with a Dad who has two kids on the spectrum.  As we talked about our kids,  I mentioned that in addition to being on the spectrum,  Simon had also been very ill with heart disease as a small child. His compassionate “oh man, that sounds so hard” response to that extra bit of news was welcome and also jarring.  It always catches me off guard when another parent with a kid with special needs is shocked by our medical experiences. I forget sometimes that there are multiple clubs under the “Special Needs” umbrella.  I figure that we belong to *three* clubs.

I’m a public health nerd, so I made a Venn diagram with examples of what I mean.
(Simon doesn't have all the things listed under each category, btw, in case that's confusing- just giving examples of what might be in each bucket) 

As I lay in bed thinking about my conversation with that Dad, I realized that Simon's life so far is divided almost equally in half, with the  first half dominated by medical special needs and the second half by developmental special needs.  As a bonus, in the last year we've also been joined by behavioral special needs but I sort of lump that in with the developmental stuff. 

Our lives have been somewhat ruled by whatever issue is on the front burner.  In the first 5 years of Simon's life, we only wanted to go to cardiac camps, freaked out about germs on the daily and mostly lived with the threat of death.  At about age 5, Simon got off the feeding tube, his heart stabilized and we got the autism diagnosis.  From that point on, heart camps didn't work for us anymore, we shifted our focus from keeping him alive to how to best understand how his brain works, worry now about crowded/overstimulating situations and live with the threat of him getting bullied.  Last year he got diagnosed with ADHD and we've added paying attention to how ADHD meds are/are not working for him, how to help him manage his big feelings that sweep through with lightening speed and worry about the executive function challenges of middle school that are coming up in 6th grade. 

While it's stressful to raise a kid with special needs, I've found the kinds of stress to be really different depending on the category of the challenge.  Here's my breakdown:

• The stress of medical special needs kind of feels like getting clubbed to death. 
• The stress from managing developmental special needs might be best likened to death by a thousand paper cuts. 
• Behavioral special needs can feel like there is imminent risk of bodily harm (to yourself or your kid, depending on the day and the tantrum). 

The joys are different too.  We don't celebrate echocardiogram results and dropping meds from the regimen anymore.  Instead, we high five when Simon asks a "why" question and cheer when he gets his dirty dishes from the living room to the kitchen without a distracted bypass to his bedroom with dishes still in hand. One isn't better or worse than the others, just different. Actually, that's bullshit. I'll take the behavioral stress over the medical stress.  The threat of death sucks the big one. 

It's all a lot and with Simon, much of it isn't obvious at first, which also feels hard.  Sometimes it feels like we're carrying this enormous load and you can't tell if you just meet us. Laura and I often talk about how we wish there were some secret signal for other parents of kids with special needs to “flag” that we’re a member of the same club. This has been proposed a few times, but it looks way too much like “Heil Hitler” for me to promote.  Still, how amazing would that be?!

I love getting to be around other parents of kids with special needs, whatever stripe.  And, there's something unique about people who are wrangling more than one. About 7 years ago, a few of us that were in an early intervention program together formed the BAD Mamas (Bitchin' And Drinkin' Mamas). Every couple of months we soak in a hot tub, eat cheese, drink wine (well, the other ones do) and bitch about all our woes.  And because we all have kids that have medical AND developmental and/or behavioral stuff, we effortlessly swing between work challenges, medical tests, new diagnoses, IEPs and who our favorite caseworker is this month and everyone just nods.  There's no explaining, no worrying about stressing someone out, no need to be careful.  We just let it all hang out. 

I'm so grateful to get to belong to so many people. Queers.  Oaklanders. Public Health workers. Parents of kids with heart disease.  Parents of kids on the spectrum.  Parents of kids with squirrel brain (as I call ADHD). Jews. Partners of Chaplains. The list goes on. 

And on extra hard days, I'm extra grateful for my BAD Mamas and all the other parents out there whose lives double and triple up on those bubbles.   It's not something I would choose, but I think those of us who live these wacky realities belong to each other in a way that can only be forged by being squeezed between a rock and a hard place.  Silver linings.  They're everywhere. 

School photo aka Brute Squad application pic

Hawking gelt at Trader Joe's

Sacked out in the airport during a delay

Vikings in Canada!

Headed to the Oakland Women's March with Mamaw