My father was in town all week.

We put him to work so much I’m scared he won’t ever come back.

He watched the twins all day last weekend so Adam and I could take the older boys to Great America. Then he helped our sitter, Angelica, watch them all night while Adam and I attended a wedding. Then the next day he helped me (Along with Bubbie and Grandpa Bill) cover all the kids so we could see Adam run the marathon and so Adam could conk out cold all afternoon after said marathon.

And more, so much more. I left him with the twins often to run. Adam and I went to lunch, dinner, and drinks numerous nights.

I picked the older boys up all week without having to wake the twins from their naps and cart them to two pick up spots.

Lego Building contest.

He cleaned dishes, washed and folded clothes.

On the El to see Adam run the Marathon.

And still he somehow managed to do it all with humor and fun.

Aaron loved getting read to.

We still go around the table at dinner time and say what we are most grateful for that day. Jack’s gratefulness was often pointed toward Grandpa Devensky. He liked the ‘bomb’ ball game they played downstairs.

One day Jack tried to sell Grandpa a book of cars that he printed and colored in to him for $16 (He reasoned $2 a car was a good deal.) Everyone got in on the bargaining. Grandpa offered $3 for a limited time. Ben piped in with $1. Then Adam offered more money, but with the condition of cleaning the basement. In the end Jack chose Grandpa’s $3. Smart boy.

Did I mention he fractured his pelvis a few months ago then threw out his back a week before coming? He never complained about it.

He even wrote in Jack’s Wow Journal this week…

Guess the Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

We miss you already Grandpa!

This morning Adam attempted the Chicago Marathon.

It is his 7th marathon.

Team Calisoff heading to our first viewing spot.

Bubbie, Grandpa Bill and Grandpa Devensky were all in town. We actually had so much support that we had an adult for each kid. Even with the crowds I was feeling confident we wouldn’t lose a child.

At Armitage and Sedwick.

Mile 9 and 1/2.

It’s never a sure thing that someone will finish a race this long and this season he’s been plagued with injuries, especially in his calf.

40,000 participants, and 1.7 million supporters. On the Red line with the other supporters.

He missed a few other races this season, including the Soldier Field 10, because of calf injuries. And mile 9 and 1/2 it too early to tell if he will make it the whole way. I still wasn’t sure he would finish.

We made it to Chinatown, ate some dim sum then saw Adam again.

Chinatown, 21 and 1/2 miles into the race.

He was looking pretty haggard at this point. But with so few miles left, I was confident he would finish.

We were able to track his progress with a running tracker system the marathon provides. They text you when your runner passes 10K, the halfway point, 30K and the finish.

The race started at 8am. He passed the 10K at 8:57 with a 9:06 min/mile pace. He passed the halfway point at 10:07 with a pace of 9:39 min/mile. The 30K was at 11:12, 10:15 min/mile. In the end Adam finished in just over 5 hours – 5:04, the average pace was 11:37 min/mile. So you can see the struggle near the end.

It was an incredible feat for any person to complete. But for someone with so many injuries and so little training it was a miracle.

Congrats Adam! Good Job!

Elizabeth Gilbert, famous author of Eat, Pray, Love was talking on TV the other day about The Hero’s Journey.

Basically, author Joseph Campbell studied all mythology and religion and realized that no matter what civilization, religion, or background every single culture tells the same exact story. It’s called “The Hero’s Journey.”

He broke it into 12 stages, but the short story is an ordinary person is called to adventure, refuses, meets a mentor, goes through setbacks, hurdles and obstacles, achieves reward, goes back to the ordinary world and uses what he’s learned.

Buddha, Moses, Christ, Star Wars, even freakin Nemo, people! Think about how many times you’ve read or seen the same story written differently and enjoyed it immensely each time.

Elizabeth Gilbert seemed to think that everyone alive has their own hero’s journey. That at some point in your life there is always a call and you can either answer it or not. But if you don’t, bad things will happen. Really, there is only one way the story can end happily and that is if you answer the call and go on the long, hard journey.

It seems easy for someone who is already famous for transformation to look back at it all and realize the importance of the journey they walked. And to think that just like them, everyone must have a journey. A purpose in life.

But what if you just happen to be born happy and lucky? I find it hard to believe we are all walking around with a secret purpose that will explode on us one day whether we want it to or not, changing our lives completely.

Having lived a completely charmed and struggle free life up until this point, I figured Elizabeth Gilbert’s idea that every single person had a calling was a bit egotistical. But I am absolutely sure when I listen to her speak that her own journey was pivotal and critical to her life’s happiness.

Perhaps not everyone will learn or see their life’s purpose. Perhaps not everyone has one. But some days, when I look at Ben I think we just might have our own hero emerging. Right here in this household. Surely anyone who looks at the struggles Ben is going through must realize he is in an all consuming constant fight against all social norms.

If it’s true, right now he’s in the early stages – refusal. And like anyone knows who has been in AA, you have to complete the 12 steps for it to be considered a successful story.

We aren’t giving up. Today we are trying to introduce new mentors, (another therapist, a different therapist) to see if it will help. We are also still waiting on for his one-on-one aide to be hired.

It still it feels like we are daily trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I wish we could find the square hole but there doesn’t seem to be one that exists in the world as we know it.

Most of the time Ben feels like a giant snow ball flying down a mountainside gathering more naughty snow. We are trying to push it up hill with our bare hands, along with a team of experts who can sometimes push it up a little before it drops down again. We don’t want the ball to hit the bottom because that would be a disaster, but we can’t see the bottom, and so far all our efforts have made little difference to the trajectory.

I just hope and pray he’ll make it all the way through. That one day this little hero’s journey will have a happy ending. That snowball will make it to the bottom and keep rolling, using all the speed it gathered to climb up to the top of the next hill. And Stop! Just enough speed to make it to the top, not to go down again!

Recently I’ve been cheating a bit on my blog.

Yes, blog, I have another lover.

I’m sorry. It’s divided my time at night, and at least once a week I devote myself to it instead of this blog.

It’s Jack’s WOW journal. He writes us notes every week and brings them home on Friday. I then write a note back and send it to him for school on Monday.

I’m enjoying it entirely too much. Much, much more than he is.

He struggles and fights to write three or four sentences. I stay awake at night trying to top myself with new ways to delight him.

As Jack gets older and the other kids get more demanding, it’s nice to have this one thing with him. Just for him. A connect that we can share each week.

I think I finally managed to pass the stomach bug onto some of the kids.

Sickness sharing is a weird thing in our house. Each person who is exposed reacts so differently and each time I wonder if we didn’t just all pick something completely different up randomly, by coincidence.

I am the iron stomach. I haven’t thrown up since I was sixteen years old (who decided that beer bongs were a good idea, anyway?). But sometimes I wish I could. Not in a bulimia kind of way. I just think that expunging sickness so quickly and violently must make it pass quicker, right? Surely I wouldn’t be so tired and queasy for so long if the sickness had a second outlet as well?

Ben, my dear Ben, all those years of sticking every single thing – I mean EVERY SINGLE THING in your mouth (food from the floor, sticks, dirt, beach sand, more beach sand, then even more beach sand, small choking hazards, licking poles and trees) must have paid off for you. Because on Friday night Ben ate a hearty dinner, followed by a hearty dessert, then walked into my bedroom where I was preparing my bed so I could dry and dress the bathing twins on, and silently threw up.

Then he casually turned to me and told me that he threw up on my bed. No heaving, no crying, and in fact he even tried to go back and finish his lollypop. He was fine by the next day.

Jack. Woes Jack. My goodness you’d think their was an inner demon ripping out his insides when he gets sick. And perhaps because he was always a bit cleaner about things (doesn’t like sharing drinks, freaks out if anyone touches his food, will study his food for any dots or abnormalities and refuse to eat it, never ate copious amounts of sand, wasn’t a big fan of mouthing toys, is my only kid who consistently uses utensils, is my only kid who will wash his hands for a full 20 seconds after any bathroom break) he always gets hit the worst.

Jack was puking for 2 days straight. He ran a fever. He was up all night for two nights. He was coughing and puking up any morsel that touched his lips. He was laying on the ground groaning and moaning. He even TOOK A NAP!

So all of our fun weekend plans were put aside. We had a big day of apple picking on Sunday which we postponed.

And instead of doing things like a family we divided and conquered.

In the morning while Adam took the older sickies to the suburbs to buy a used stroller I was planning on picking up on our way out to the apple orchards, I took the twins to Bauler Park.

Old School Equipment

It’s funny how you can dislike a park with some kids and love it with others. I used to really dislike this park when I just had Jack and Ben. I preferred the newer structures that were completely manufactured. The prefab soft services, devoid of any natural materials. I also liked smaller spaces so I could follow my kids around like a hawk, being overly helpful and unnecessarily liberal with my reprimands regarding manners to other kids.

A big, open slab of concrete in the background and many green areas.

Now with the twins I love a park where I can sit back and let them play as if I’m not even there. From Ben’s therapist I’ve learned that I’m too helpful when it comes to such things. Let the kids struggle to climb things, that is how they learn and build their muscles.

I also really like how natural the park is. Huge spaces to run and do one of Aaron’s favorite activities – collect sticks and poke them in the dirt. And since Jack and Ben’s time, people have dropped off old toys which adds another dimension.

And even though there are three entrances, all are gates and easy to see from any viewpoint.

They also were very productive…

Sorry my loyal readers for the nine day silence. It’s been a long nine days and I haven’t had any time or energy to blog.

The day of my last blog, I came down with some stomach bug that has plagued me until now. I’m still a bit queasy but feeling better.

It drained me of all my energy. Every day I did the bare minimum.

For nine days I have had absolutely no energy to cook anything creative or healthy. Gorgeous, locally sourced, organic veggies delivered from Irv & Shelley’s Fresh Picks have wilted in the crisper while I’ve fed my kids a bunch of pre-packaged white carbs, cheese and processed meats. It was not a high point for me as a mother and not something I am proud to blog about.

For nine days we also had a very difficult week with Ben as school. It is another thing I don’t feel good blogging about and I’m pretty sure when Ben gets older he WILL not like it to be public knowledge so let me just give you a little metaphor for the past week.

I feel like in Kindergarten they basically throw 30 kids in a big pool and see who can swim. Some have had expensive lessons and get right in there. Others cry when they are dropped in by eventually start swimming or realize they can touch their feet to the ground. Ben didn’t do any of these things. Ben sank. But he went down kicking and screaming. And no matter what they did, throwing out buoys, try to give some instruction, nothing worked.

In the end it got so bad we picked him up from school last Thursday.

It has gotten better since then. Wednesday we sent him in 1/2 day, just in the special ed room, and with his own personal therapist. Then we repeated this half day schedule, without his therapist, for the next two days.

We realized Ben needs to just get out of the pool altogether and start at the first step of the stairs and work his way down slowly.

We also got really good news from the principal today. Ben’s one-on-one aide was approved today so we can start the hiring process. When he/she is hired we have a chance at getting him back to school full time.

But for now we’ll keep the 1/2 days up. They seem to be working. All days he got a good report from the teacher and as a result he gets to cash in the prize we dangled in front of him when we told him he was going back.

Ironically the prize is for him to go swimming this weekend.

We met with Ben’s school yesterday.

It was meant to be a meeting with Ben’s school councilor and the special education teacher.

When we entered, there were SEVEN people waiting to talk to us. All had observed him and had suggestions. One was the principal of the school!

I was amazed how many resources they threw at him. And a little scared that they were maybe proving their case to kick him out.

They started the meeting very gently, like they knew I wasn’t going to like what they had to say.

The principal said something like, this is going to be hard to hear but by the time we meet in December it will be a much better meeting.

All I heard was that we were going to meet again in December! They weren’t kicking him out!

In fact, after observation they realized the current IEP, was not helpful enough.

They want to apply for a FULL time aide for him. And they want to put him in the special education classroom for most of the learning portion of the day, about 2 hours and 20 minutes each day.

It means he is so far gone he can’t learn with the other kids. It’s sad, but everything they said in the meeting made sense. He really can’t learn in a big group setting. Not now. But maybe with this help one day he will.

When Adam and I first started this process we found it very difficult to hear that Ben was not normal. We blamed everyone else. Eventually we realized he was not responding to situations in a typical way. We finally admitted that he was different, but not in a good way. In a way that hinders him socially, and hinders his ability to learn.  Even with our new, more accurate viewpoint, it is still very difficult to hear anything negative about your kids.

Having said that, I would say they did an excellent job of seeing Ben’s limitations. Everything they said in the meeting was factual and insightful.

He is disruptive and unfocused enough that someone has to be with him full time. Sometimes I wonder how I did it all those years, with other kids, without any help. I certainly wasn’t trying to teach him anything, but we did keep some sort of a schedule. In hindsight I’m kind of amazed he didn’t get hurt, lost or drowned under my watch.

Afterwards the Kindergarden teacher asked me if she could have some extra one on one time with Ben after school sometimes. She definitely isn’t one of those teachers who punches the work clock. She really cares about the children. Every night she sends me an extremely detailed email explaining the day so I can come up with a visual schedule for him to follow. She sent it to me at 7:30pm tonight, which I quickly created and showed to him before bed.

He was very, very happy to see the schedule. His therapist said he DOES NOT like surprise so the more we can tell him, the easier it will be.

It’s a ton of work for the school. I’m still amazed at how much effort they are willing to put into his education and feel lucky that we are at this school. And that we live in a time period where kids like him do not get shoved into the back of the classroom and ignored, but instead get MORE attention, with early intervention to help them with the hopes of integrating them back into mass society.

Let’s all keep our fingers crossed it doesn’t go pear shaped and I’m picking him up again next week…