Iman comes inside the house crying, having just fallen down.  I pick her up and calm her down and try to figure out what happened.

Me: Iman, what happened?

Iman: I was climbing the stairs, like a cat-

Me: And then what happened?

Iman: And then I fell, like an ant!

Me: Like an ant?

Iman: Yeah, like when momma hits it wish a shoe- BAM!

Thanks to her adoring elder siblings, Musfira is ahead of the curve when it comes to what solids other five month olds have been introduced to.  Like chips, peanut butter, heart-shaped lollipops, apples (uncut, unpeeled), mango juice, and fruit-shaped erasers. Erasers.

SubhanAllah!

So I’ve been sick, the kids have been sick, the business license renewal has been held up for the last two months and two of the therapists who were ready to fly down have now withdrawn.  Everything happens for a good reason.  I remind myself of this not only because it’s true, but because that’s the only way to stay sane in a dramatically insane world.  And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.  

So Khalid pinched Iman today, as he does roughly ten times a day or more.  And it was quite hard, and it was unwarranted given that Iman was trying to show him how a party hat could also look like an ice-cream cone and was being insistent but not offensive and definitely not deserving of a pinch.  I saw it happen from the living room window- she was holding a party hat in his face and try to show him- “Khalid look, it’s like an icecream!  See!  Look!  Like icecream!” and he had already had enough of Iman for the day, so he got off his bike, chased her (shrieking) to the front door, and then grabbed both of her arms in what we call a pinch, but actually involves his whole hand grabbing her arm and then digging in.  Iman’s arms are covered with nail marks, scratches, and bruises.  It doesn’t help that most of the time, she’s the instigator of the fight and will try something insane- like whacking Khalid on the head with a wooden fishing pole just because he’s not paying attention to her- and then running screaming in the other direction while he chases her down and pinches in retaliation.

It’s frustrating, really.  I feel guilty because Khalid resorts too easily to serious pinching and scratching that usually draws blood and Iman is on the receiving end of the pain.  I feel annoyed with Iman, because she deliberately provokes Khalid to get a reaction out of him, but she’s usually trying to play with him, and when it doesn’t work, she then opts to fight with him.  She doesn’t like to be ignored.  Khalid doesn’t like to interact.  She’s demanding.  He’s autistic.  Now what?

So Khalid pinched Iman, and I took him inside and put him on time-out.  And then, because we had accidentally left the kids’ new Leapter toys (thank you Aunty Owlie!) in the car outside, I put on a scarf and walked out to the van to retrieve them.  The automatic doors on the van aren’t working, so it was taking me a few minutes to get inside.  I was pulling ineffectually on the handle when I suddenly heard the loudest, most anguished screaming from inside the house.  I ran back inside to find Khalid shaking, in tears, mashing his face in his hands and crying so hard he could barely breathe.  This from a boy who busted his head open on the wall last month and didn’t shed a tear- and I realized- he thought I was leaving.  Because Iman had followed me outside of the house, Khalid was left alone on time-out, and he thought he was being walked away from.   He couldn’t see Musfira in her baby-gym from where he was sitting, and he did wait for a minute or so (as I struggled with the car door) before going into panic.  But he thought I was gone.  And he was terrified.

So Iman and I hugged him, and hugged him and hugged him and hugged him, and when Musfira started crying and I went to pick her up, Khalid followed behind me with his arms around my leg and wouldn’t not allow any distance to come in between us.  So I fed Musfira and Khalid hugged the parts of me that Musfira wasn’t taking up, and we talked.  I told him I was NOT leaving, that I was sorry he had gotten scared, that I would never leave him alone, that I loved him, that I would stay with him, that I would never abandon him- anything I could think of that he could understand.  Eventually he calmed down and wandered off to play his Leapster.  And then I remembered that he’d reacted similarly when we dropped HF off at the airport when he was leaving for Umrah.  And then I remembered that once upon a time, Khalid was my shadow, and the hardest thing (apart from closing the bathroom door, ever) was leaving him by himself in a room without me.  It was always a meltdown.  Khalid has, and has always had, separation anxiety.  Some children with autism are indifferent to the presence or proximity of other people.  Khalid was in panic without it.  And I forgot- I walked out of the house without him and gave him the scare of his life.

Guys, my mother of the year trophy is so big I’m going to put it next to the house and rent it out as a studio.

I’m not done feeling guilty yet, but I do have other things to blog about.  Like Iman- who is lovely in addition to her aforementioned deviousness.

“Momma, you have three babies! Khalid, Iman, and Musfira!”

“Yes, and Khalid got bigger and now he’s a little boy.  Iman got bigger and now she’s a little girl, and every day Musfira gets a little bigger but right now she’s still a small baby.”

“Yes, a gift from Allah!  Inna gift box!”

Makes sense.  Gifts do come in gift boxes, do they not?  :p And then a few weeks ago I was driving Iman to the beauty salon to have her bangs trimmed, and I said:

“Iman, thank you for coming with me to the beauty salon.  I love it when come for a drive with me.”

Iman replies: “And Momma, I love it when you drive, and when you sit with me, and also, when you talk to me, and go shopping, and when you hug me, and when you laugh, and when we go to the beauty salon, and also?  The park!”

And then yesterday: “Momma, I love you. *happy smile* Can I have gummy bears?”

Oh, and Musfira.  She’s developing the grab-and-cram reflex.  She’s still kind of slow about it, because she looks like someone trying to operate their arms underwater and through beer-goggles, but if you try to drink tea anywhere near her, her little arms will stretch out and she exerts the most adorable, wobbly sort of concentration to grab the cup and ideally cram as much of it into her mouth as possible.  Obviously, this does not work for tea cups.  This does work for toys though, and her blanket, and my scarf, and often, the corner of my skirt if I’ve been standing in her vicinity long enough.   Yesterday she grabbed two big handfuls of my face and -plop!- landed her open mouth on it and attempted to chew my cheek, chin, and jaw in a surprisingly high-speed attack.  It’s the cutest sort of ambush, and the only downside is that at any given time, most corners of whatever I am wearing will be damp and lovingly chewed.  I feel like a walking hors d’oeuvres.  It’s very validating. I may not be yummy mummy, but I am a tasty one.

Oh, and on Thursday Khalid’s shadow teacher was unable to make it to school, so I shadowed Khalid in school for the first time ever.  But that’s another post for another day, and it’s 5am right now. Alhamdulillah

Well, Khalid is back at his old school and Iman is happy to be going along with him. I’ve yet to visit the old school and formalize their removal, but I’ll definitely be doing so- especially since we paid half the fees in advance!

Khalid was immediately happier back in familiar settings- the first day on the playground was a mini-reunion. His KG-1 friends who were now spread through various KG-2′s found him and welcomed him back, even telling their parents about his return. Khalid is a bit of a celebrity in the school, not because he’s famous in any respect, but because he will greet every person he sees warmly. The janitors, the school nurse, the lunch room guy- they all love him and I feel like I’m walking in Khalid’s shadow when I pass through the halls with him. Everyone knows Khalid, almost no one knows me to be his mother. Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. Of course, it’s a completely different issue that Khalid’s class hasn’t had an English teacher for the entire week, but for the moment, Khalid is happy.  And, as is to be expected- SubhanAllah- his spontaneous verbal skills are taking off again.  He was becoming less talkative over the summer with no one but the immediate family around, but now that he’s back in school there’s an immediate difference.  Take, for example, this overhead conversation.

Khalid: Musfira, look! It’s the cut the rope.  I will show you.

Musfira: Pbbbbt?

Khalid: You feed the frog the candy.  It’s Om-Nom. Collect the stars.

Musfira: Eeeee!

Khalid: I’ll show you.  Oops, two stars. You need three stars.  Not four stars.  Like this.

Compare this to conversations that I have with Khalid where he gives me one-word replies for the most part.  Khalid isn’t interested in talking to adults, but he’ll give a 4-month baby an iPhone game tutorial.

Speaking of 4-month old babies, Alhamdulillah, Musfira rolled over about two days ago.  Soon she’ll be crawling.  Shortly thereafter, driving.  Where does the time go? And where did she learn to generate such ear-piercing shrieks of joy? It was my hope that her personality as a child would be an extension of her personality as a baby.  Iman is an intense little girl, and she was an intense baby as well.  Musfira has, so far, been a happy and social baby, and I was hoping that would continue indefinitely.  She’s turning up the volume though lately, and twisting mini-teddy into half-nelsons while chomping his mini-teddy head, and squealing so loud, so long, and so non-stop that a staff meeting had to be put on hold yesterday- three therapists, one senior, one driver, and HF and I- because no one could hear each other over Musfira’s personal opera.

SubhanAllah.

The hunt continues to find Khalid a suitable English-speaking school that is autism-friendly, uses sound behavior reinforcement principles (rather than education through intimidation) and doesn’t cost an arm, a leg, two kidneys and your left earlobe.  I’ve been to three schools just today, dragging Khalid and Joy along for the ride and leaving a trail of bemused registrars in our wake.

“Does he know his colors?’

“Yes.”

“Can he recognize letters?”

“Khalid, what does this bag say?”

“Best Salted Cashews.”

People are generally confused by Khalid.  When we go into visually exciting new places, like schools, his attention is all over the place taking in the new surroundings, and the outsider’s first assumption is that the lights are on but no one’s home.  He has to read every written word on every wall and visually digest every shape lovingly cut and unsteadily decorated in glitter glue.   The various registrars and social workers who try to probe him ask him questions without first getting his attention, and as the seconds tick by in silence, I can see exasperation come over their faces as they assume I am exaggerating Khalid’s cognitive abilities just to get him into school.

“So Khalid, how are you?”

-tick-

-tock-

-tick-

“Big, big giant school.”

(The social worker looks amused)

“Stairs going up.”

(The school has an impressive staircase leading from the reception to the second floor.)

“Do you have any friends?”

(I want to kick her for asking this)

-tick-

-tock-

-tick-

“Boys.”

(Now she looks confused.)

I earnestly explain that he’s telling her about his friends- that they’re boys.

“And girls.” Khalid adds after another second.  ”And kids.”

“Khalid,” I say nervously, “Can you tell me about your friend Omar?”

“He’s not here.”

“Omar transferred from the school,” I explain again.  ”None of the children in his current school speak English, so he hasn’t made any new friends yet.”

“Khalid,” the social worker continues, “What shape is this?”

Khalid looks down at the iPad that she’s pointing to. He’s been using it to play Cut the Rope, and also, to search for walk-throughs on YouTube when he’s stuck on a certain level.

-tick-

-tock-

-tick-

“Rectangle.”

“Very good!” the social worker says, genuinely surprised. “And this?”

Khalid looks to the coffee table.

“It’s a circle.  Like the sun.” He uses his finger to squiggle, in the air, what he means to be the rays of the sun. The he goes back to his own world, reading the walls.  Do not enter.  Push.  Pull.  In case of fire.  I remember- once we were driving back home from Ajman, and the sun was setting in an electric orange ball to the west of Emirates Road.

“Look Khalid, Iman- the sun is going down! SubhanAllah, it’s so big and round!”

Iman says: “Ooooh!”  Khalid says: “Sun is a planet?”

-blinkblink-

Owlie and I took the kids to the children’s museum once, where watched a half an hour presentation on the solar system- once.   This was before Musfira was born, and she’s almost four months old now.

“Actually, the sun is a star.”

“Not a planet?”

“No, because planets don’t give off light. The sun is a star, I think.”

Khalid disagrees.

“Not a star, planet.”

In Khalid’s big-city world view, stars are shapes with five points that exist primarily to be colored yellow.  Dubai has way too much light pollution to see anything other than the moon and the air traffic.  I can see his point of view.  So I offer a compromise.

“Ok Khalid, maybe it’s a little bit like both.”

The social worker says she’ll get back to us.

We pack up and drive off to the next school.  The principal, who I met last Thursday to appeal for Khalid’s admission, is out sick.

“I’ll leave a message please,” I say to the front-desk secretary.  As I’m scribbling what I hope is a friendly, optimistic, and not too desperate-sounding request for a call back, Khalid is taking in the student-made exhibits on traffic safety week.  I borrow the receptionist’s stapler and use it to make sure my business card makes it along with the message.  Khalid’s last school admitted him on the strength of my position in exchange for training their KG department, and I’m willing to make whatever sort of bargains I have to and pull whatever strings I can reach to get him into a school.  I’ve spent hours camped outside of school offices waiting to hound, guilt, impress, and emotionally blackmail whoever I need to in order to get Khalid a fair chance.  I think I’m getting used to it now.  I think I need to order more business cards.

“Khalid, it’s time to go now.”

“I need to fix.”

He’s trying to put the hat back onto the lego victim of a car crash who’s laying on lego street waiting for the lego ambulance to come to his aid.

“It’s alright, I think that’s how they meant the exhibit to look.”

“I like legos.”

Iman goes to school every day and Khalid gets left behind, asking me when we’re going to pick her back up.  Iman’s teacher is delighted that she’s the youngest child in the class and the only one who can already write her own name.  Khalid’s teacher, on the other hand, was openly angry about having to deal with “these kinds of children” when she already has twenty six other children in class she’s supposed to be teaching instead.  The atmosphere on the first day of teacher training for that school was bordering on mutinous, and what was intended to be a workshop on using reinforcement within the framework of ABA quickly deteriorated into an angry argument between the pro-inclusion principal and Khalid’s anti-inclusion (and openly anti-Khalid) teacher.  She walked out of the workshop, returned to argue with the principal in Arabic, and then walked out again.

To her credit, she did come on the second day and exhibited much less eye-rolling.  Today was the third day, and she looked almost civil.  Of course, she has no reason to be mad anymore, because Khalid is no longer attending her class.

He’s been home from school for three days now.  He owns uniforms from two different schools, and when Iman came home in her PE uniform yesterday, Khalid walked silently to his bedroom and came back dressed in his.   He’s honest to a fault, and so sensitive to the world around him but so limited in expressing how much it affects him.  I look at him, with his enormous beautiful eyes and his profoundly hidden profound intelligence, and my heart aches.

“You like legos my Jaan?”

“Yeah. I like it.”

He smiles at me.

“Then I think it’s time to buy you some.”

Me: Khalid, in five minutes it’ll be time to turn off the computer and take a bath, ok?

Khalid: InshaAllah.

___________

Me: What were you doing when you fell off the bed?

Iman: I was going down to get you a present, you know? Like, an adventure crown!

And right about now, I’d much rather have a cookie.

You know what the problem with typing while hungry is?  Even words look tasty.

Musfira is getting properly colicky, crying louder and longer in the past few nights than before.  The Nightly Fuss has been going on for around four weeks now, and it starts at 6pm like clockwork and last night it continued until 2:30 am.  Please remember us in your duas.  I don’t like being nocturnal.  Or cried at for 6+ hours.  No fun. Very tiring.  Want a cookie.

So Musfira is very nearly a month old now. SubhanAllah. All in all she’s a lovely baby. She sleeps reasonably well during the day and although we do have a nightly fuss from around 10:30 to about 1 am, it could be worse. In fact, it was worse with Khalid and Iman, with Khalid being jaundiced, tongue-tied and constantly fussing and Iman being colicky.

So how can I describe her? Well, she’s pink. And her eyes are grey, though they’ll turn brown later InshaAllah. She has lovely little hands and feet, and despite voraciously chewing, gnawing, and sucking on any hand, towel, blanket or shirt collar that comes within two centimeters of her mouth, she refuses to use a pacifier. She cannot yet say it, but I know she’s thinking ‘PTUI!’ as she spits her “New, Natural Shape! Perfect for Newborns!” pacifier out. We’ve gone through three of them already, my hope being that maybe this shape will be better. I only really need her to use a pacifier when I’m driving, because many of the roads in Dubai have lost their shoulders in favor of one more traffic lane, so stopping to feed her isn’t always an immediate option.

What else? She has the most kissably soft cheeks. Really. Her skin feels like velvet. It is unanimously accepted (by Owl, HF, and I) that it has to have been all the cupcakes I was eating before she was born. She’s a red velvet baby, not only for the warm and fuzzy softness, but also because she comes with a distress alert system. Either she’s baby-pink all’s well, or she’s red-alert red and working up to a good cry, complete with pouty face.

Her hobbies? Contemplating fluorescent lights above her changing station in the bathroom and collecting fuzz from her blanket and keeping it tightly balled in her itty-bitty fists.

Her special skills involve remarkable bladder and bowel control that allow her to time her ambushes perfectly for the moment when she has been washed, dried, and just laid down on the changing station to be diapered.

Her top speed is three diapers in five minutes.

Her signature moves are slow-motion baby kung-fu and spitting up precisely down the front of momma’s shirt.

Her pet peeves are socks that fall off in the mall the day after momma bought them (ok, maybe that’s mine).

She’s the most beautiful baby in the entire world. SubhanAllah. And after 20 hours of labor and an hour left before the doctors prepped me for an emergency c-section, she was born a cheerful bright blue with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. But that seems like a lifetime ago, and she’s always been here, always swaddled in the flannel blanket with the ducks on it, and we go to meetings together where she sleeps through the boring parts but wakes up to share her opinions on important things like gas and why it’s better out than in.

Yes, it does take us forever to get anywhere these days, because we have to account for feedings, diaper changes, inconsolable crying, and the stroller being a huge pain to remove from the trunk. And yes, that one time I tried to drive home by myself it took two and a half hours to drive just a few miles because she would not stop crying in her car seat and I could not safely drive with that level of panic in her wailing. I can’t help it- when she’s stressed, I’m stressed- and I think that’s part of the job description of being a mother. If you’re not unable to tolerate your newborn suffering, then you might not be likely to cope with insanely insufficient amounts of sleep and the back-breaking labor of feeding, cleaning, maintaining, rocking, burping, and sustaining a tiny person with no self-preservation skills beyond a cry that tears your heart into tiny pieces.

Khalid and Iman adore Musfira. Really. Khalid wants to kiss her CONSTANTLY. Like once every few seconds. And that can get very frustrating when I’ve just gotten her to sleep and in burst the kids- Iman wants to give Musfira a toy, Khalid wants to kiss her again, and when I whisper at them to leave, they get mad and loud and wake up Musfira up. When I get desperate I lock the door until Musfira is asleep and hope the kids banging on the other side of it doesn’t wake her. But like I said, it could be worse. They adore her. They just adore her a little too much, too hard, and too loud for a newborn.

Musfira is very well loved, even if a little over-cuddled and way too well-traveled for a little girl who hasn’t been in this world for an entire four weeks yet. She and I went to two meetings and spent three hours in a furniture warehouse within the first four days of her being born. We do banks and groceries and summer camp for Khalid and Iman. We stay up late at night watching classic Japanese Anime to bide our nightly fuss, and we have collectively decided that if you make a cartoon in Japan that does NOT prominently feature giant and/or powerful robots destroying and/or saving the city/world/universe, then you are shamed into committing seppuku.

As usual, I digress. Alhamdulillah, we’re tired, busy, sleep-deprived, overwhelmed with the backlog of work that’s been piling up while I’m “on leave,” but very, very happy. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah.

Iman: Momma! The baby’s crying! Because she wants icecream!

______

Me: Here Khalid, you can hold Musfira carefully.
(I put the baby carefully into Khalid’s lap)
Khalid: Oh! Oh! Scareding!
(He passes the baby back)

___________

(Iman sees me laying down on the sofa for a quick break around 11 am today)

Iman: Momma, I bring you a pillow, you want a pillow?
Me: It’s ok dear, the side of the sofa is like a pillow.
Iman: I bring you a pillow, ok?

(She runs off and returns with the pillow from her bed)

Me: Thank you dear.
Iman: Momma, I bring you a blanket, you want a blanket?
Me: (Realizing I don’t have a choice) Sure dear.

(Iman returns with her tiny blanket and covers the middle half of me. Then she starts patting my head)

Iman: Momma, you can sleep and InshaAllah when you wake up I’ll take you shopping and buy you a nice gift! An umbrella! A pink one! With Dora! You like that?
Me: Yes dear, that would be nice.
Iman: Goodnight!

_________
11pm-
HF: There’s this one lone mango in the fridge and it’s late but I just want a mango milkshake…
Me: Ok, go pray Isha and I’ll make you a milkshake.
HF: You’ll make me a milkshake?
Me: Yeah. Go pray and I’ll make it for you.
HF: Thank you, but don’t make the kind that brings all the boys to the yard. Because it’s late, and we don’t want the front yard full of people right now.

I haven’t had a chance to update yet, but Owlie has! Full post here and copy-paste below. Thanks luv!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

On Monday I was sick so I took a day off and figured, hey, this would be a good time to catch up with the super busy preggo rockstar business director big sister of mine Abez. So I call her up and ask how she’s doing, to which she calmly says “Oh, fine. The usual. Working. Responding to emails. Trying to get stuff arranged for the new staff. Oh, and I’m in labor.” 0_0

Yeah, that’s my Abez. Busy having a baby while simultaneously managing her business. “Woman, um, are you ok? I mean, you are nuts. But is everything ok ok? Is there anything I can do?” “Oh, yeah, could you please pick up Khalid and hang out with the kids and distract them while I’m at the hospital.” “Sure thing bob. On my way now.”

So, I picked up my favorite elf boy Khalid and took him home to his sister – the firecracker that is Mini Iman. Meeman as we call her, had been sick at home with a dental infection, and was hopped up on medicine. She’s a hilariously intense and unpredictable child when she’s ‘sober’ . Throw some extra strong meds into the mix and comedy ensues. I bring you the highlights of my few hours with Meeman.

AUNTY! I want the earth!
Excuse me?
The earth!
As in, the planet?
THE EARTH!
(At this, she gestures to my Blackberry. Which has a picture of the earth from space as its background screensaver. Turns out, Meeman wanted to take pictures with my Blackberry. I now have about a dozen pictures of her feet, hands, the ceiling, the sofa, and her lunch.)

(While holding an orange on her head) Look it’s a hat!
Is it? I thought it was an orange.
IT’S A HAT! IT’S KINDA FUNNY!

(after disappearing for a few minutes)
Aunty, find me!
(I find her. She’s on the toilet.) Oh, hi. Do you need help?
Yes. I want a pink pool. You can get me a small circle pink pool Inshallah?

(While climbing onto my arm) Can I ride your muscles?

(After putting on two skirts on top of her pants) Look aunty, I am a double princess!

(Upon bringing me one of her mommy’s hijabs) Make me a Muslim.
*confused* Iman, you’re already a Muslim.
*scowl* MAKE ME A MUSLIM!
Uhhh. With this hijab? Oh, ok.
(I wrap her up and she happily skips away wearing a hijab as long as she’s tall, two skirts and a pair of pants. Goofy child. )

And now I have TWO nieces! Can’t wait for the new model to grow up and amuse me.