Happy (belated) Birthday, Brendan!

Yesterday was not only April Fool's Day, but also Brendan's 12th birthday! It was a school day, but he was
ok with the wait for the end of the school day for birthday fun :) He had requested fruit trays with dip for the school celebration & they were a big hit (the teachers said that the kids appreciated the fruit more than cake or cookies :). When asked how old he was, Brendan chose to make up a math problem to tell them (a school tradition) & even used negative numbers in the equation! (The latest subject in 6th grade math... :) Since Charlie wouldn't be home from work until dinner time he had suggested that Brendan open one gift after school, so I had him open the japanese-language version of the newest Pokemon movie (it hasn't been released in english yet) that I'd found online &, as I'd hoped, he wanted to watch it right away. So I made popcorn & we headed upstairs, where we have Brendan's computer set for region 2 dvds, & had a great time watching it. It's just as visually gorgeous as the other recent Pokemon movies, & there was a great anti-war message, too. We did our usual shout-out of words & phrases we understood, & it really wasn't terribly hard to follow the plot or dialogue at all.

After the movie I showed Brendan the thank-you card I'd printed on the computer, a picture from one of his fencing lessons, specifically for the gift from his fencing teacher of a hand-built foil just for Brendan! He gave it to him on Monday after having him try it our for his lesson. Brendan was pretty floored, to be given a fencing foil of his own, & really excited when he recovered from the surprise :) His teacher told him that he found Brendan's enthusiasm for fencing, at such a young age, very inspiring, & wanted him to have a foil of his own to really get used to. Lucky kid! (Really proud mom, too :)

Another birthday surprise, that arrived in the mail, was a card, sent overnight mail, from Tomoko in Minnesota! She'd had some car misfortune & wasn't able to get a card out in time, so she sent it overnight so it would get here on his birthday (which I found very touching!). Grammie joined us for dinner, too, so she could be in on the birthday fun.

As mentioned in previous posts, Brendan's anxiety has been running higher for the past few months, & he was definitely on higher-anxiety mode anticipating his birthday. Since we really didn't want him to be miserable about his birthday, we asked him to make a list of some legos he really wanted (nothing too expensive!) & told him that he'd definitely get these sets for his birthday. He's been really into the Star Wars legos & has been working hard to earn & save allowance money to buy sets bit by bit, so he was really excited by this plan. That nipped the anxiety right in the bud, too- whew! Just to make things more interesting, I hid the legos & gave him clues for finding them (they were much too easy- next year he's going to have to work harder! :) He even translated my hiragana handwriting (which is notoriously bad...) & understood the clue I'd written in japanese. We told him that he would not be able to make all of the sets before bedtime (he had homework to do, too) & he was ok with just making one... go Brendan!!

As you can see by the above photo, legos weren't the only Star Wars items he got... Charlie got Brendan a lightsabre of his own at the same time that he'd gotten mine, so now Brendan & I have matching sabres! He was soooo excited. So, my sabre is now safe (he's been playing with it a lot...) although the living room furniture won't be until the weather warms up & he can practise outside... :)

And, just a year to go before he's a teenager... amazing...

In honour of his birthday, here's a Brendan story that I've been wanting to share for a while:
A couple of weeks ago we visited the anime store to pick up some new manga. They had some new pokemon plushies, some with light-up cheeks (kawaii!) & Brendan managed to talk me into getting one (not terribly hard- I'm a cute freak, too :). I love how he treats all of them as though they were real friends... Well, when we got out to the car, he pulled the tab from the battery &... the cheeks didn't light up. I sighed & prepared to go back into the store to try & exchange it, but Brendan told me that he didn't want to give it up. "It's ok, Mom, I like this one the way he is. I don't want to take him back." I was a little surprised, & a little relieved... In the car on the way home I mentioned to Brendan that not many kids would be satisfied with a plushie that didn't do what was advertised. He said that he was worried about what would happen to it if he took it back, that no-one would love it. I told him that maybe he's better at loving things no matter how well they work because he knows what it's like to be different. He smiled...

Fifty is fun...

Yep, it is... I know because today was my 50th birthday. :)

It's been a surreal couple of weeks, starting 2 Saturdays ago when I was preparing for our regularly scheduled japanese lesson & a strange guy turned up in the kitchen. Charlie introduced him as the caterer & informed me that the regularly scheduled japanese lesson wouldn't be happening (although our teacher & her husband would be over later). Instead, we were going to have my surprise 50th birthday party! Poor Charlie had been trying to figure out a good date for a party in the face of uncertainty about when the minister search would take me away for nearly a full weekend at least twice in February, so he settled instead on the end of January as being a safe time. He kept the party small- about 20 people- so we could have it at home. He was very fortunate in his choice of date because the weather was gorgeous, for late January in the northeast US. He had invited friends from a nearby town & relatives from Canada to the party & they had not difficulty traveling at all. Amazing...

I spent the next hour, on surprise party day, in a state of disequilibrium, as all sorts of food, & then people, arrived at our house. Brendan's best friend & parents arrived, & he & E happily scampered upstairs to play. When the first of the out-of-towners arrived I cried- I just couldn't believe they were here! Then more arrived- my best friend Roo- & finally a cousin & my aunt from Ottawa, & I completely lost it at that point. I had thought my aunt, who has Alzheimers, would never visit us again (she was here last July) because she hadn't been doing very well, but she'd been on a new medicine for a few months & was not only well enough to travel, but recognised people & really seemed to be enjoying herself. It felt like a miracle. Charlie had the same caterers as when we were married (just over 19 years ago) & the food was just as good as I remembered :) There was champagne & sparkling juice for toasting, then we all munched, then had birthday cake, & I wandered around visiting with everyone. I was a little foggy, partly from crying & partly because I was coming down with bronchitis, but it was just lovely to see everyone! Charlie had asked that any gifts be tea-themed, & it was so much fun opening teacups & teapots, a tea ceremony set from our japanese teacher, fun teas... but the best part was just being with everyone. My husband sure knows what's important to me, & sure knows how to surprise me! (More on this later...)

The following week I never quite succumbed to bronchitis, thanks to a well-timed regular visit to my doctor, who put me on antibiotics & increased my asthma meds. Last weekend I was mostly away on church business, & when I got home Sunday afternoon I discovered that Brendan had visited the pediatrician that morning, rather than going to Sunday school... He'd complained of chills while Charlie was in choir practise & looked kind of ill, & when they got home he was running a fever. The way he was coughing (& by the appearance of what he was coughing up), it seemed as though he'd caught my bronchitis, so we started him on a z-pak (the antibiotic I take) Sunday afternoon. By Monday it was clear that he wasn't going to school, although the bronchitis was responding well to the antibiotic. By Monday afternoon Brendan's fever was way up (102.4!) & he was vomiting :( By Tuesday morning he didn't have bronchitis any more, he had the flu :( :( We kept him hydrated by sucking ice cubes & peppermint tea sweetened with agave nectar, & his cough responded well to Riccola herb & honey lozenges, just as mine had. We also supplemented the tylenol every 4 hours with linden & elder tincture I'd made a few years ago to use for fevers, & not only did he not object to taking it (the flavour's pretty mild) but we think it did help keep the fever under control. The computer in Brendan's room is set to play Japan's region dvd's, so we just cycled through all the Pokemon dvd's we bought last summer, which certainly added to the surreality of the day by providing a japanese dialogue to Brendan's being sick in bed. We were both pleased to discover that we understand even more now than we did last summer, & we'd happily repeat the bits of dialogue we understood to each other (when he wasn't sleeping, I'd sit & knit & watch with him).

Brendan still had a high fever on Wednesday, & a really sore throat, too. That day was Charlie's 45th birthday & he took the day off work (he sometimes works half days on Wednesdays, which is technically his day off), which was great because somebody had to pick up the birthday cake I'd ordered for him! He also bought some essentials like kleenex, riccolas, & peppermint tea at the grocery store. I had already given him his main birthday present- a new flat screen monitor for his home computer- but I'd also managed to make him a spare pair of gloves out of some hand-dyed silk & wool blend yarn & he liked them very much :) Brendan got up for a little while & even ate some birthday cake, but he spent most of the day in bed. I managed to take a nap in the afternoon, which made things much more cheerful- we'd been up really early (between 4 & 5 am) most mornings because Brendan woke up coughing & couldn't get back to sleep. I also had the bright idea to set my old laptop up in his room so he could watch dvd's other than the japanese ones & listen to music as well. Charlie & I also took turns reading "Hoot" out loud to him & he loved that.

Brendan had even more energy today & his fever finally went down below 99, which was a relief! There was a lovely box of chocolates that Brendan had picked out for me for my birthday sitting at my place at the table when we got downstairs for breakfast. After breakfast I got out stickers & cardstock & Brendan made birthday cards for Charlie (belated :) & Grammie (her birthday is next week). He had a lot of fun carefully choosing animal stickers & funny caption stickers to go with them, & writing out his birthday messages with sticker letters. Our dear friend Ros called to sing a happy birthday song (she called Charlie yesterday:). Brendan nearly fell asleep on the sofa before lunch, so I suggested he snuggle back into bed after lunch while I read to him (this time from the Newberry award book "Thief"). I was hoping he'd nap, because he'd been up at 2:30 am & never really went back to sleep :( He enjoyed the story, but didn't sleep. Grammie came by to see us (on her way back from the doctor- she's sick, too!), to bring Charlie a birthday pie, a gift for me, a new video for Brendan, & a copy of the newspaper with the cute ad she'd placed wishing me happy birthday (featuring a picture of me at age 3... :). Brendan watched a japanese dvd until mid-afternoon, when he was energetic enough to come downstairs & have a session playing on the computer. We agreed that afterwards we'd have popcorn & watch "Howl's Moving Castle" in japanese on the laptop, upstairs on his bed. It was pretty relaxing, although we had a visitor- a friend from school who stopped by for some of the tinctures I'd used for Brendan's fever because her son also has the flu. She told me that Brendan appears to have been one of the earliest cases of a flu outbreak at school, & that they have closed the school tomorrow because so many staff & students are sick!! Charlie & I are so glad to have gotten our flu shots (he because he sees so many sick people & me because of the asthma)... & we're going to make sure Brendan gets one next year, too! I also had a lovely phone call from Tomoko in Minnesota.

Wonderful Charlie picked up japanese take-out for dinner tonight & we had some champagne left over from my surprise party. I was not expecting any more presents- the party had been such a wonderful gift & I had Brendan's chocolates, but he announced that there were fun presents for after dinner. We waited until Brendan had one more computer session (he's really missed playing while he's been sick) to open them. Brendan's eyes were drooping (he'd been up for over 17 hours by this time) but he perked up when I opened my last prezzie from Charlie- I simply resumed crying when I realised what it was... my amazing & wonderful husband got me a lightsabre for my 50th birthday! It's a replica of Obi-Wan's from the most recent movies, & not only does it light up, but it makes the coolest noises that respond to the motions you make with the sabre. It is utterly awesome & I just can't believe it. I finally have a lightsabre!! See- 50 really is fun!

Tomorrow my neighbour is coming over so I can go grocery shopping- what a doll! I have not driven a car since last Saturday, I have not been out of the house since last Sunday. I am having trouble remembering what day of the week it is... but Brendan is on the mend & I can actually see him going back to school on Monday (we are hopeful that enough teachers will be well enough that they'll have school...). These past couple of weeks have made this a memorable (to put it mildly) birthday season. Charlie will take a picture of me with my lightsabre soon, so I'll post that as soon as I can :) (I'm trying to decide if I should wear my red hat in the picture, too- I'm entitled to now!) Before he got sick, Brendan & I had finished half of our first podcast, so we hope to have it finished & up pretty soon. Stay tuned!!

Home from Japan...

Here's the view of Tokyo from our hotel window, our last night in Japan.

In a way, I suppose it was a good thing we didn't know how gruelling our trip home would be. Certainly, the trip to Japan didn't prepare us for how difficult the homeward one would be... However, to be fair, there were absolutely no hitches in plane flights or luggage & none of the many things that could have gone wrong did, so we were really, really lucky!

We were up pretty early Monday morning & had a nice breakfast in the hotel restaurant, then finished packing & had some time to lounge & get our last NHK public tv (home of Pythagoras Switch) fix before calling for a cart to take our luggage to the airport shuttle bus station right next door. We got our tickets & were on the shuttle within 10 minutes for the hour-long ride to Narita Airport. It rained on & off & was quite reminiscent of our ride into Tokyo, nearly 3 weeks before. We saw the sights we'd seen on the first bus ride with new eyes...

The bus porter had told us which stop to get off at & we had about an hour until we could check in, so Charlie & Brendan wandered (& finally got Brendan one of those vitamin drinks in little bottles he'd been angling for the whole trip, because it was his last chance :). Check-in, immigration, & security were a breeze- in Japan you don't have to take off your shoes or take the laptop out of the case, so there's so much less fuss, & there were hardly any other people in line with us. There was about an hour before our flight, so we hit a bookstore for last-minute purchases (Brendan has a natural homing instinct for Kamen Rider Den-O books :), for more distraction on the flight. And... we finally ate at a japanese McDonalds :) Yes, the fish sandwiches taste much better there... (naturally!)

When we finally boarded the plane we were ready to go, but Brendan & I soon were in tears, as we saw Japan receding in the window. We really want to go back!! We started out by looking at Kamen Rider books & puzzling out the japanese, then Charlie & I switched places & they played Uno for a while. When I looked up from a puzzle book, maybe 6 hours into the trip (we'd had two meals by then), I noticed Brendan had one of his Kamen Rider action figures out (one with millions of little pieces that fall off...) & was starting into meltdown mode. I decided that it was time to switch back & see if I could get him to sleep a bit (Charlie was glad to have a break :). I convinced him to put everything away & cuddle up with his blanket, & soon he was asleep. He only slept about 3 hours, but by then they were serving breakfast & getting generally ready to land in Chicago. In some ways, the time really flew, but in others, it was very uncomfortable & exhausting. I kept figuring out what time it was in Japan... When we landed it was somewhere around 2 in the morning & Charlie & I had done no more than doze a bit during the flight.

Chicago was the worst part of the whole trip, bar none :( Not only did we have to navigate immigration & then pick up our bags & do customs, having been awake for nearly 24 hours, but Brendan simply could not cope with the noise & the crowds by then. He was in so much distress from OCD anxiety in the immigration line (literally hundreds of people all in the same place) that they noticed, took pity on us, & unhooked the guide line so we could go ahead- no questions asked. We got him through the rest of re-entering the US on pure will-power, but then had to take a train (lugging the bags) to another terminal & go through security all over again. American security: with shoe & laptop removal (& the plush Pochama pokemon he was clutching to his eyes had to go in the plastic bucket & through the xray, too). Everyone was very professional & said not a word to us about our distressed kid, which was a huge relief. I even explained to Brendan that, if anyone asked, I would tell them that he was autistic so that they might understand (he said that was ok), but I never had to do it. We sat just outside security for nearly half an hour, getting him back together & Charlie went for cold drinks while we sat. Then we each took an arm & half-walked, half-propelled him to the gate, found a quiet place to sit, & we parked. Brendan lay down on the bench of seats with Pochama & nearly fell asleep, he was so overwhelmed. Charlie & I took turns hitting the restrooms & getting food. Our next flight wasn't for 3 hours, so we had time to eat & recover. Brendan alternated between doing just fine (regained his sense of humour & everything) & overwhelmed mode at the drop of a hat, but we were able to amuse him with more japanese books & making mazes for the pokemon plushies to navigate, using newspapers, shoes, & bags :)

The plane home was a teesy-tiny one, 3 seats across & acessed from the ground & up the stairs on the plane's door. Brendan was fascinated by this new experience, & then fell asleep before the plane even took off. He woke up about 15 minutes before we landed at our home airport. What a blessing!! Our next-door neighbour, Evelyn, who had dropped us off at the airport was waiting for us there- so nice to see a friendly, familiar face after the day+ we'd just had! The bags were there, too, & we got them to the car somehow & were home in 15 minutes.

Home looked really weird. The wrong proportions, the wrong smells. But it started feeling homey again very soon. We were blasted, of course. Evelyn brought over some yummy dinner & Brendan supplemented it with his favourite "no-chicken" soup from a can (tofu intead of chicken :). I called my mom to let her know we were home ok. Charlie got Brendan into jammies & into bed & he dropped off immediately. We unpacked & I decided against starting laundry that evening (that would have been "baka", as Brendan would say :). My hot shower felt so good I nearly cried. We were home & in one piece, & everything was home with us!

Yesterday was "the lost day". We drifted around, doing laundry, sorting through omiyage, putting things away. My body hurt so much I couldn't believe it, probably from hauling heavy bags & sitting on planes for too long (although it didn't feel bad at all when we arrived in Tokyo after the same length trip...). Brendan played AQ, played with his Kamen Rider toys, played games with Charlie, & watched movies. We watched the "Lucario" pokemon movie together, & it even made me cry in japanese... Grammie visited, to see with her own eyes that we were home :) Charlie went into work long enough to pick up an enormous box of mail & forms to be signed. Sigh...

Today we all felt a bit better, although I woke up at 4:15 & never went back to sleep. It was a rainy 4th of July, which, perhaps selfishly, suited us because we had no plans... We started thinking about the rest of the week- making a shopping list for tomorrow, Charlie going through the load of paperwork, he & Brendan taking Japan pictures & prezzies to the neighbours. I found that I couldn't eat when the clock told me to eat & was exhausted by 2:00 pm, so I took a nap. Charlie & Brendan headed out to spend some holiday time with sailing friends & I worked on tidying the house even more & getting caught up for the next few days' activities. I discovered that the newest Kamen Rider Den-O was online so Brendan & I watched it when they got home. This evening, at bedtime, he asked me to read to him (our usual, sometimes gruelling, routine before going to Japan), but I put him off (I was busy tidying upstairs) in the hope that he might fall asleep on his own. I went in after a few minutes & asked him what his favourite parts of the trip were, & he drifted off to sleep while he told me :) I asked Charlie the same question before he, too, went off to bed (although, with the fireworks right now, I can't believe either of them are asleep!!). Here is what they answered:

Brendan says that the best part of Japan was Kyoto, because Tokyo was too "urusai" (noisy), & because, although he enjoyed meeting japanese kids in Mizumaki, he was overwhelmed by their attention. He said he loved visiting all the temples in Kyoto, because the temples helped him to cope with "fleas" (his new term for "tics" :). He said that the calm & quiet, & the purifying wells & prayers all helped him a lot.

Charlie said that he enjoyed visiting the Onsen with Tomoko's family very much, but that his favourite parts of the trip were experiencing a different place, being totally out of our element & our ruts, & really experiencing a different culture. He said the trip to Uji (while we were in Kyoto) felt like our best full day in Japan.

I find myself also dwelling on how amazing it was to be out of our usual routine (for better or for worse) & to see our usual way of living from the outside-in. (I am still having difficulty getting used to people speaking english to me :) We tried so many different things while we were there, some which we would never stretch ourselves to do in regular life, for very good reasons! I was struck by the realisation of how very intense life with Brendan is, & how unrelenting his anxiety can be (& how demanding). And yet, there were times when he was stretched & rose to the occasion beautifully, & I was so heartened by these experiences. It helps me to understand that Brendan is learning & growing, becoming more capable of managing his anxiety everyday. I told Charlie this evening that, no matter what we might do next year for vacation, it will be easier because he's growing & learning. And the next time we go to Japan it'll be easier for the same reason (plus our japanese will be better :). I also find myself more focused on how I want our day to day lives to be, rather than reacting to how it is (because I'm immersed in it). I want to find ways to help Brendan become more considerate of others, even in the face of his own very intense needs. He has mentioned this to me, that he wants to be more thoughtful of others, so I want to find ways to help him. Like Brendan, I really enjoyed visiting the shrines & temples, & I really loved trying to communicate with people in their own language. There were so many beautiful things to see & experience. Another thing that I enjoyed so much about our trip was that there was so much time together as a family. In regular life, we tend to play ping-pong with Brendan, with Charlie at work all day & then coming home to dinner & then giving me a break from the intensity that is "life with Brendan". I take over right before bed time so that Charlie can do paperwork. The he & I sit for a few minutes & reconnect, then he goes to bed & we begin it all again the next day. While we were in Japan we were rarely apart & it felt very natural to do things together- from managing the subways to managing tics. It felt very good. When we weren't under the stress of keeping to schedules & planning our own days, it was really fun to be together, no matter how unevenly things went. I am left feeling really good about our family, & about being the family that we are. Perhaps the best & biggest gift of going to Japan :)

Japan Day 9- Mizumaki

After our first night of sleeping on futons on the floor (surprisingly comfortable), we all woke at the much more civilised hour of 5:30 am (rather than the 4:00 that has been the norm since we got here) & got up for breakfast around 6:00. Charlie & Brendan went for a walk before breakfast. Nobuko-san made us a traditional japanese breakfast of gohan, lovely soup, tamagoyaki (rolled omelet), kamabuko (pressed fish cake- these were made in her hometown by the sea & particularly delicious), grated daikon radish, & pickles. Brendan had his usual edamame & gohan :) She also made us fresh-squeezed natsumikan juice, a citrus fruit that’s very sour (Brendan had lots of sugar syrup in his) & very refreshing. It was wonderful. Today’s plan was to visit the local elementary school (Eburi Sho Gakkou) where Shin-kun & Dai-chan are students & participate in a 4th-grade class- including the english class- for the morning. All japanese elementary school are within walking distance of their homes & school buses are practically unheard of, so we walked over & arrived at the expected time of 9:30. Brendan was really looking forward to meeting more japanese kids, but also just a bit nervous. Tomoko was with us to translate, though, so I reminded him he could ask her for help any time. It was a very warm day, humid, & looked like rain to boot, - good day to be indoors :) We were greeted by the vice-principal, exchanged our shoes for slippers, & then went to the principal’s office for an official greeting & some green tea.

Then the teacher (Nobuoko-sensei) whose class we were visiting came down with a contingent of kids & led us to the class. Elementary school children don’t usually wear uniforms, so the school felt very like home- like Brendan’s own school. There were about 25 kids in the class & they were all very excited & curious to see us. They were having a calligraphy (“shuu-ji”) lesson, with ink & brush, & were all writing the kanji for the word “bug” (“mushi”). They had set up 3 desks for Brendan, Charlie, & me to also practice writing. The teacher showed us all the proper order to make the brush strokes & we got to work. It wasn’t long, though, before most of the kids were up & watching us. They were very generous with their praise :) After that, the vice-principal took us on a tour of the school during the class's next lesson. Brendan was feeling a bit overwhelmed by his popularity (& the heat), so we ended up in the library (where the librarian kindly put on the air conditioning for a bit) & looked a Miyazaki movie picture books while we cooled down & caught out breaths. Then we went back to the classroom for their english lesson, taught by a man from the US (whom we really didn’t get to speak to much, but was very nice). He made the lesson very fun (they had to guess objects by feel, hidden under a sheet, then say what they were in english), then moved on to talking about the japanese holiday of Tanabata, where you make wishes. He had them write the sentence “I want to be a ___” on a piece of paper (the sort you write Tanabata wishes on, then hang on bamboo trees for the wish to come true) & then handed around a chart with pictures of occupations for them to choose & write in english to finish the sentence. Brendan was given a desk & I sat right beside him to help translate. A girl nearby lent him a pencil, & while they were working, all of the kids were surreptitiously chatting to Brendan about Pokemon :) (We had sent, via Tomoko, self-introductions that explained a bit about ourselves. Brendan had mentioned liking Pokemon, Kamen Rider Den-O & Gekirangers, & I mentioned liking origami :) Brendan wrote “I want to be a Pokemon Trainer” on his piece of paper, much to all the kids’ delight. Just sitting at the desk & interacting with a smaller group of kid really helped him re-equilibrate, & he was really ready to participate with the rest of the lesson- which was a rather raucous game supposedly teaching the concepts “left”, “right”, & “straight”.

The kids were paired as car & driver & the driver had to tell the car which way to go, in english. Things became rather mad when the teacher declared one of the cars a “monster car” (funny eyes drawn on a towel & pinned around their eyes), with loads of squealing as kids avoided the monster car. It was a riot. Brendan was right there in the middle of things & had a great time. After english class, we all took chairs & moved to the larger room next door for introductions.

There was a greeting on the blackboard with lots of pictures of pokemon & one of the kids came forward to give a greeting for the whole class. Then all of the kids came up in groups of 5 & introduced themselves individually, telling us their names & favourite foods & activities (& fave pokemon, of course :). Tomoko translated as they went along. Then each group came over to where we were sitting & gave us origami that they’d made! Amazing origami. I tried very hard to admire each one as it came to us, & Brendan kept saying “sugoi!”, which means “awesome!”. Then it was our turn. We shared a book we’d made of Brendan’s life in the US, following him through a whole year, showing friends, holidays, & school. I had a second copy of the book that I walked around with while Brendan read the captions on the photos. Tomoko translated for us. We left one of the books as a gift for the class. Then, it was time for “kyuu-shoku” (lunchtime) & for us to go home. It was difficult to leave. We told them they were awesome & that we appreciated how well they had cared for us. A group followed us down to the pricipal’s office & we made our thanks & goodbyes to him. Then, we said final thanks, gave final handshakes & bows, put up our umbrellas, & walked home.

Brendan was exhausted after our visit, but he made so many friends! These kids were so interested in him & what he liked, & wanted to talk to him very much. Tomoko had explained to us that for many of these kids, we were the first westerners they’d seen. There is one teacher in the school from the US (the english teacher), but they’d probably never seen a kid from the US before. I was so proud of how well Brendan held up under the scrutiny of so many curious kids. He really wanted to communicate with them, too! Interestingly, one kid who attached himself very closely to Brendan was obviously a special needs kid. From what I’ve read & learned from Tomoko, only the most severly disabled kids go to special schools. (In fact, Tomoko’s father was the principal of a school for disabled kids when he was alive.) On the other hand, what happens to kids who have special needs but can physically attend their neighbourhood school can't exactly be called mainstreaming. Most of them go to school & their teachers just cope with them. The boy who followed Brendan around, Kaishi-kun, seemed bright & very with-it, but was also unable to sit for more than 30 seconds, seemed hypotonic to me (just like Brendan), & was usually latched onto his teacher’s side for guidance (when he wasn’t latched onto Brendan :). Unlike the other kids, who were wearing socks & the special slippers worn by schoolchildren, he was barefoot. He also seemed to be wearing vestiges of everything he’d done that day on his clothes- including the ink from the writing lesson :) The other kids in his class took part in trying to keep him in hand, part of the japanese group-functioning in action, & there were quite a few choruses of “Kaishi-kun!!!” when he wandered to where he wasn’t supposed to be. When we got home Brendan mentioned that Kaishi-kun had been a bit different than the rest of the class & I asked Tomoko if he would probably be considered a special-ed kid if he were in the US. She agreed that he would be, & would probably be having other needs, such as fine-motor skills & social skill assistance if he were in the US, but it wasn’t likely to happen in Japan. Sigh.

We didn’t get home until 1:00 & were really ready for lunch. Nobuko-san made us her famous okonomiyaki for lunch- yum!! Okonomiyaki means “as you like it” & is pancakes fried with any filling you like. She made edamame ones for Brendan (of course) & ours had cabbage & seafood. Mmmmm.... oishii!! (Yummy!) After lunch Brendan lay down on his futon & read Artemis Fowl for a couple hours. He was really tired. I revved-up the laptop & downloaded today’s photos & shared our travel photos so far with Tomoko & Nobuko-san. I spent the next couple of hours writing about the the past couple days’ adventures. Brendan, much to my surprise & delight, immersed himself in the Artemis Fowl book for about an hour, until Charlie suggested that they go for a walk (Brendan brought his new katana set to practise with). He had a “tic attack” when they got home, this first since we got too Mizumaki. We set a kekkai & in time he was able to get back to his book. I can’t say enough how impressed I’ve been with his ability to self-regulate since we got here. We’re still pretty jet-lagged, & he’s had occasional anxiety about saying or doing the wrong thing, but he’s basically been happy & involved with what we’re doing.

Brendan read on his futon (contrary to usual custom. Tomoko suggested that we keep the futons available for napping rather than putting them away in the closet for the day) until dinner, then joined us in the dining room. Nabuko-san made a lovely dinner of squash soup, fish, side-veggies, & gohan (Brendan had his usual soup, edamame, & gohan). Brendan had his first difficult meal-moments when he saw the fish. He’d been feeling pretty confident about being near fish being eaten, but he had trouble with seeing the remaining bones & skin, plus the little bit of smell. He was quiet about his distress & managed to stay at the table with us until he was done eating, then quietly went back to his book. I was really proud of him! After we were done eating Charlie gathered up the fish remains & made the table a fish-free zone for Brendan, so he could rejoin us for suica (watermelon), tea, &- Pokemon!. Tomoko had checked the tv listings & found when it would on & we were very excited to see the new Diamond & Pearl series. There are some new characters, although Satoshi (Ash), Takeshi (Brock), &, of course, Pikachu are still there. It was fun to see. After pokemon was Naruto, which Brendan had never seen. He got sleepier & sleepier while watching it, &, after promising us that he’d shower in the morning, Charlie got him into his jammies & he was asleep as soon as he got under the covers.

We stayed up a chatted for a while, then Charlie went to bed & I went to shower & get ready for bed. Tomorrow we are doing some shopping & in the afternoon we leave for our ryokan & onsen weekend!

Tokyo Day 5...

A funny thing happened on the way to the Senso-ji Shrine...

Well, not quite on the way. :) We all woke up at our usual 4:00 am-ish (big sigh) & so we had resolved to be back from our travels by mid-afternoon so that we could try napping to see if that might help us adjust to the time difference. The idea was to leave the apaato just after 9:00 am (to avoid rush hour), but Brendan fell sound asleep on the sofa just before we were going to leave. Charlie & I have learned that it's best to let Brendan follow his own body's rhythms, so we tiptoed around for a bit, & when it seemed that he was going to sleep for a while, we turned on the tv in the bedroom & found the cheezy samurai show station. (This is a real station- I'd read about it, but watching it was sublime, although I am a sucker for costume dramas :) Brendan slept for nearly 2 hours, so we decided to check out a nearby restaurant that appeared to have "american food" for lunch instead of jumping on the metro. I was psyched- we've been here for nearly a week & I've only eaten in a restaurant once! The tics were pretty well under control on our walk to lunch & they had fries & a milkshake for Brendan (I carry lactaid tablets for both of us :). We enjoyed a leisurely lunch & the waitstaff seemed to enjoy our (particularly Brendan's) attempts to speak to them in japanese.

After lunch we walked back to the apaato &, at first we thought just Charlie would go on the metro to Tokyo station to buy our tickets for the Nozomi (bullet train) for Wednesday's morning's trip to Kyuushu (to stay with Tomoko & her family). But Brendan decided he really wanted to go shopping we we knew there were department stores near the station, so we all headed for the station, Brendan with a cold coke in hand to fend-off tics. He really seemed like a different kid after his nap. More relaxed, happier, & the tics were pretty well under his control. They were there, but he was able to keep them from bothering him by skipping & holding the coke. We took 2 different lines to Tokyo station, which took about 20 minutes. Our only mishap occurred while Charlie (with some minimal linguistic assistance from me) was buying the tickets. Brendan was sitting on a bench behind us when we heard him yell "mazuey!" (which means, literally, "yucchy", but can also mean "this is bad!"). He'd been swinging his coke & then opened it to take a drink... you can guess the rest. I was able to clean it up with just one mini-pack of kleenex & nobody seemed too fussed. They really cut kids a lot of slack here in Japan, which I am appreciating very much! Brendan & I went out after that & let Charlie finish up his transactions.

We got a picture of Tokyo Station, built in the 1920's & only minimally damaged by bombs during the war...

... and Brendan got another manhole cover-ish picture :)

We headed out for a department store but discovered that they had no toy department (Brendan is really keen to look for Kamen Rider Den-O paraphenalia that he's seen advertised after the show. See- this is one of the reasons we don't watch network tv in the US, & normally we're safe from adverts that originate in Japan, but since we're here... & I'm kind of curious myself about them :). Looking at the map, we realised that we were within a couple blocks of the Pokemon Centre, so we headed back there & Brendan was delighted to find a pokeball set he hadn't seen the other day, plus we got a different Deoxys dvd & a couple more plushies :) For me :) :)

We were pretty tired when we got back home, in the late afternoon, so we hit the 7-11 (& finally found some onigiri & sushi there for dinner- yay!) & then went back & vegged in front of the tv until it was time to eat. We flipped between Disney, marvelling at the japanese dubs for familiar shows, & NHK educational tv. It actually was a treasure hunt, since we really were hoping to catch "Pythagoras Switch" on NHK & Kim Possible in japanese. We hit gold!! We saw an advert (during "Riro andu Suteechi") saying that KP would be on at 5:30, & when we switched to NHK at 5:00 we caught Pythagoras Switch!! Both shows were sublime. We took turns shouting out plot developments as we puzzled them out (during KP) & Brendan decided he really liked the character voices better in japanese, even Rufus' :)

After a yummy dinner of 7-11 onigiri & a huge bowl of edamame, Charlie got Brendan into the shower & jammies, & then we played a few rounds of Uno. Then we put NHK back on until Brendan was practically asleep on the sofa. The kids' programming segued into general educational, & a show came on where they seemed to be interviewing a mother... then I caught a word I recognised: "jiheisho". Autism!! I listened more carefully, & indeed, the show was about a family with an autistic child. I couldn't believe it. We've talked to Tomoko about the attitudes toward autism in Japan & she had indicated that Japan is way behind the US & Great Britain in terms of attitude as well as treatments. It makes sense that a culture that depends so much on conformity would have difficulty adjusting to those who do not fit in & that need specialised help. So I was so heartened to see this programme on tv. The tone was respectful, although definitely not upbeat. I heard the words for "terrible" & difficulty" a lot, but the mom being interviewed seemed loving, if sad. There was discussion of the effect on other siblings in the family, & they definitely showed the child, maybe a couple years younger than Brendan, in a school setting. I wished I could have understood more, but Charlie & I were pretty amazed to have caught it at all.

All in all, the best day yet in Japan! I'm hoping this means that we're all getting accustomed to our new environment. We'll try visiting the Senso-ji Shrine today- our last full day in Tokyo!

Tokyo Day 2...

Our first full day in Japan! This is the view from our window. The window has a rice-paper screen instead of curtains- very neat :)

We hit the ground running, up much earlier than we should have been, but that's jet-lag for you. Brendan got to bed about 8:00 pm last night & didn't wake up until 6-ish. Charlie followed him by about an hour, got up when Tomoko called us at 10:00, & then was up when Brendan was. I didn't get to bed until after 10:30, but woke up at 3:15 am & could't get back to sleep, so I dozed on & off until 7:00-ish. We were all pretty fresh & ready to go, though. When we spoke to Tomoko last night we found out that the Ghibli Museum plans had fallen through, since by the time I'd called her from home & confirmed the time we could go, the tickets had all been sold by that time. Plan B was just as good, though. We enlisted her help (& the Tokyo-ite friend she's staying with) to figure out how to get to the Pokemon Centre & arranged to meet Tomoko at the Ginza metro station at 10:30 this morning. Charlie had been worried that we wouldn't get up in time, but that turned out not to be an :) We even had time to watch the latest Gekiranger episode (on the internet, with subtitles, as we usually do). The estimated travel time was about half an hour, so we left about 20 minutes early to find the station we needed to leave from. (All this after a breakfast of Japanese 7-11 baked goods & green tea :) The online weather forecast had predicted rain, but the sun came out anyway & it it was a beautiful morning.

Brendan's first real difficulty with intrusive OCD thoughts (aka "tics", since they make him do so) came on the walk to the station. He was very close to melting-down & even trying to think beyond them & concentrate on where we were going (Pokemon Mecca) wasn't helping. We kept stopping & trying to set a "kekkai" (barrier) but it wouldn't last long. Over the past few days the worst tics have not been triggered by anything he sees (the usual way it happens) but by something going on internally, so it's hard to shield him from them, which makes it hard to distract him from the triggers. After stopping 4 or 5 times beacuse he was so upset he couldn't keep going, & looking madly for something to distract him, I noticed that the building we were standing beside had a map, with some places labelled in english, & wouldn't you know- one of the places was "Pallet Town". Hard core pokemon fans will know that Ash Ketchum (known here as Satoshi) is from Pallet Town. I pointed-out the label to Brendan & he was just as intrigued as I was that it was a real place. Next thing we knew, he was distracted from the tic & able to get to the station.

Once at the station we decided to by passes, rather than figure out the fares each time & that saved a lot of hassle (once we figured out how to properly feed the money into the machine). The first really great thing we noticed was that everything was labelled in english, too, so it was really easy to find the right place to catch the train (heading in the right direction). Having taken subways in New York, Boston, & Washington DC, we found that navigating the Tokyo Metro was actually easier (scary, huh?). Charlie took a good gander at where we came in (vary handy for the return trip) & the ride was just 3 stops, change to another line (easily found), 2 more stops, find the right exit (where we agreed to meet Tomoko) & there we were! So was Tomoko & it was a wonderful reunion. (OK, so it's just been a couple weeks since we've seen her, but we've been missing her a lot!). We walked through the historic Takashimaya department store on our way to the street, & I decided to stop at the restroom there- where I had my first run-in with one of Japan's famous toilets that talk & spritz &... but darned if I could find where the flush button was! I finally decided that I was going to have to do an "ugly American" & just leave it because everyone was waiting for me. When I consulted Tomoko she said that the lack of button for flush (& I pushed most of them, believe me) probably indicated that it was an automatic flush toilet... let's hope.

After a few false starts & Tomoko stopping in a store for directions, we found the Pokemon Centre! It was mobbed... And if you consider that every child over the age of 5 was in school, you can probably imagine the scene of many, very young children plus their moms swarming the place. Brendan held it together very well :) He was quite focused, since we'd been talking about going there for months. He found the "nuigurumi" (plushies) that he wanted (but no Pichu for me :( ) & we found the "Deoxys" movie but not the most recent one (we'll keep looking). Brendan demolished his umbrella for Japan (from Santa) within a few weeks of getting it (it's a teeny one that telescopes out & he had a great time whipping it out like a lightsabre until it just disintegrated...) so we found him one with Pikachu & Pochama (his new fave) on it. We had a couple of gifts to get & I added some keychains & "chirigami" (kleenex packets :) to the mix. In spite of the mob, the checkout line went very quickly, so none of us got grumpy from waiting :)

Tomoko took this picture of us before bidding farewell to go to her conference (that's why she's still in Tokyo- she won't be leaving for home until just a couple of days before we go there, too). She reccomended that we check out a large bookstore, Maruzen, on the way back to the metro station, since she thought they would have Kamen Rider Den-O stuff there. Then we bade her "mata raisshu" (see you next week!) & headed over there. Once at the store, we realised that we couldn't read any of the signs... after some discussion as to the proper way to do it, Brendan approached a clerk & asked, in japanese, where the kids' books were. They understood him perfectly! We easily found the right floor & section & were soon surrounded by Kamen Rider & Gekiranger books & magazines.The magazine had all sorts of goodies stuffed into it, cardboard masks & equipment that you can assemble, & the books were full of detailed diagrams of the different characters & their equipment. Brendan was in heaven.

The trip back home was uneventful :) We were going to stop & eat somewhere, but Brendan (& we) were getting too tired to cope with new stuff, so back to 7-11 for lunch food. I gave Brendan my hiragana & katakana charts & he puzzled through some of the books while lunch was being made. This kid'll be reading the katakana (he's pretty fluent in hiragana already) by the time we leave, I bet! After lunch Charlie made a foray on his own to get some traveller's cheques cashed & explore, & Brendan & I watched the "Deoxys" movie. (The apartment has a dvd player- yay!) When we were at the Pokemon Centre the checkout lady warned usthat this was a region 5 dvd, but we were able to explain that we knew this & it was ok. We have one of Brendan's computers set to region 5, but we'll probably get a region-free dvd player when we get back home. As the movie was loading Brendan said "I'll bet Brock's (known in Japan as Takeshi) voice will be lower in this version." We agreed that we'd probably like all of the voices better than the english dubs, & we did (we've really come to prefer the japanese esthetic for choosing voices for animated characters). We also noticed some scenes that didn't make it into the english version, plus the music was better in places, & the pokemons' voices were better, too. Pikachu is one of the few original voices that makes it into the english dubs, because his name is the same in both languages, but most pokemon have different names in japanese (we picked up an illustrated japanese pokedex at the bookstore, too) so they have to change their voices in the english dubs. We thoroughly enjoyed the movie :) And afterward we were feeling energetic enough to go to the grocery store & a little park, which Charlie had found on his ramble, & buy "real" food.

This is Brendan & me looking over the books we bought :) By the time we got home from walking to & from the store (& puzzling out labels & discovering that they don't sell paper goods at grocery stores, so another stop was needed) we were all feeling very tired. Brendan ensconced himself on the Dragon Fable site & Charlie & I lay down "for a few minutes". I was out for nearly 2 hours! Charlie was just about to get me up when I woke up & realised that I needed to cook some dinner. We'd found rice & edamame at the store, so I made some for Brendan & me (Charlie found a frozen tortellini thingy). It was a bit dodgy, since I'm spoiled at home by having a rice cooker & have never actually cooked japanese rice on the stove, but it worked! By dinnertime Brendan was really exhausted & nearly unable to keep himself together, even in the presence of comfort food. While we were eating, though, he told us that he felt like "something that had just come out the backside of a cow" & started to giggle madly. We discussed how to say that in japanese & his good humour was restored enough for him to eat & get his jammies on. While we'd been cooking we put on the japanese version of PBS, (NHK) in hopes of catching Pythagoras Switch. We didn't, but the show that was on was hysterical (real dogs jumping rope with clowns) so we watched until the kids' programming was over. Charlie got Brendan into jammies & proposed reading to him for a bit. He came out of Brendan's room about 2 minutes later- Brendan had literally fallen asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow!

We spent some time catching up with email & contacting another friend in Tokyo, our next-door neighbour's daughter Marian, & then decided that we'd stay closer to home tomorow. There's a buddhist temple nearby that looks interesting & more of the neighbourhood to see & reataurants to find. We're hoping to go to Odaiba, maybe with Marian, on Sunday morning & see the Miraikon science museum & a few other places.

What a great first day in Japan! We all worked together & managed to do some of the things we'd been hoping to do for weeks: see Tomoko & visit the Pokemon Centre!

We're still here...

We're kind of bleary-eyed, but definitely still here :) Brendan was off school last Friday, of course, & Easter weekend was a flurry of getting ready for church on Sunday & then Easter dinner for 9 family & friends. It also included flurries of snow & Charlie was rather disbelieving as he shoveled snow Easter morning so that we could get everything into the car that was needed for church... (most of the "everything" was 108 seedlings in colourful plastic cups that the Sunday School classes had planted a few weeks ago, & I had nurtured ever since at home, to be handed out to the congregation on Easter as a welcoming of Spring :).

The main plan on Friday was to generate the thank-you notes for Brendan's birthday presents & then on Saturday we'd start writing them. We decided together to make note cards out of a photo (the usual thing). The photo above is what we came up with, because the pokemon plushies & japanese were featured in one of the party games. I asked Brendan if he wanted to generate individual cards with the message for each one typed out, or if he wanted a short typed message in each with a handwritten (by him) mention of the gift & signature. He opted to the latter, so we formatted it all & printed it out. All went well until Saturday morning when we got to generating the notes. We did 4 of them, interspersed with playing Dragon Fable, which is pretty much all he did that morning, play DF & get 4 cards done. I wanted to do 2 more in the afternoon, after japanese lesson, but Brendan balked. We clearly had differing expectations as to how quickly this was going to be done. I explained that I hadn't asked him to work on them during the school week because I knew school took a lot of energy, & that's why I wanted to get them done over the weekend & early part of break week. He was having second thoughts about all the writing, as it turns out, but didn't know how to tell me or figure out how to re-negotiate things. Instead, he blew his top & stormed upstairs (this was later in the afternoon). Charlie & I let him be for a while, even though we could hear the crashing of legos in his room, but eventually Charlie went up (since Brendan was mad at me, I thought it too inflammatory to try to deal with him right then). Charlie talked to him, but Brendan was stuck- something that is pretty common for him- & couldn't get beyond his anger. I went up next, & discovered that he'd scotch-taped his door shut, although he finally let me in. I tried to get him to talk about how he was feeling & how things could have been different (how we might have re-negotiated things, rather than his getting mad & stalking off), but he was really stuck in the anger & kept telling me that emotions were useless so why talk about them, that he was an a**hole & didn't deserve to live, & the like. It's always scary when he talks about not wanting to exist, since he's tried to hurt himself before when he's felt this way. I was also concerned because Grammie was coming over to dinner & then to stay with him while Charlie & I went to the choir rehearsal for the Easter Sunday service, & I didn't want to leave him like this, nor did I want to leave my mom with him in this state. When Grammie came he did come downstairs & was quietly civil to her, but it was obvious that he was still really upset & he didn't want to eat dinner. It was although he'd shut himself away, that the emotions were too intense for him. Finally, Charlie went to rehearsal without me (he's the only regular member of the bass section & was really needed to sing) & I thanked Grammie for coming over & told her I'd manage with Brendan. She was worried, but left us to sort things out. And we did, eventually... I told him that shutting himself away wasn't getting him past his feelings & toward working on a solution. I explained that when people are in a family, they work together on things because they love each other & have a responsibility to each other. He just kept saying that he was too awful to exist, so finally I grabbed a bunch of the pokemon guys, & the Rufuses, & told him that he wasn't too awful for us & that we were depending on him, that we loved him. We both broke down into tears & ended-up in a hug pile of us & pokemon & mole rats. It was very intense, but we got through.

Charlie was gone for only about an hour & a half, & he found us watching "Happy Feet", which Grammie had brought over to watch with Brendan & kindly left for us. It was fun to finally see it, & a nice way to relax after all the tenseness. After the movie, though, Charlie brought in a partly-melted candle that usually sits on his dresser & asked Brendan how it got that way... Brendan looked crestfallen, & it turns out that it wasn't just legos that were shredded while he was angry. He'd gone into our room & destroyed some things, too- he found matches (pretty well hidden) & melted the candle, crushed some popsicle-stick creations he'd made when he was little that had been sitting on both our dressers, & (I discovered later) shredded one of the HP legos that had found sanctuary on my dresser. I was horrified that he'd been lighting matches while angry &, although I didn't get angry or yell, I made sure he understood that he had broken trust with us & would have to make reparations. He started to get defensive again, but when we saw it start we distracted him, explaining firmly that this is a learning time, & that it's important that he learn what to do when he's angry so that irreparable things won't happen in the future. We were able to bring him back before his emotions got too intense again. I was absolutely exhausted by the afternoon & evening, so Charlie read to him before bed while I zoned-out for a bit. Brendan agreed to take a melatonin before bed & it really helped him- the night before he'd been so antsy while I read to him that it took a full hour of reading for him to relax enough to fall asleep. Afterward, Charlie & I talked about what we wanted Brendan to learn from all of this, & later Charlie typed it all up on the computer so we'd have something Brendan could refer to. The first thing was to work with Brendan to see what he thought needed to be done & incorporate them into the list as well. Our main points were: that Brendan learn to find healthy outlets for his anger so that he didn't destroy things inappropriately (a list of things to be determined by us all together), that Brendan would have to repair the things he'd broken (with our help, if needed), that he cannot light matches for 6 months, that he may not go into our room when one of us isn't in there, even for a lego (some of them are stored in Charlie's office, off our bedroom), that Brendan would go shopping with dad & buy him another candle with his own money, that he would look up & type/dragon the definition of vandalism for future reference. Since the next day was Easter, we put off discussing these ideas until last evening at dinner (we were going to do it after but Brendan was getting really anxious about it, & it wasn't going to help him to be really upset going into the discussion, so we just did it). Brendan agreed to it all- he had already decided that he should fix the things he broke & that he'd swear-off matches for a long time. We talked about how we needed to be able to trust each-other, & Brendan has a strong streak of fairness in him, which helped him to understand why he needed to stay out of our room & make reparations, too. Charlie told him that they'd work on the list of things to do when he's angry, & suggested that they go to garage sales to find old pottery for Brendan to smash when he was really upset (we have a friend who swears by this...). It's a work in progress, for sure. but the peace has been restored to our house.

Easter was a mix of work & fun- getting the seedlings to church, sorting out how the kids would distribute them, figuring out where Brendan would be while we were singing in the choir loft, & then actually doing it all... everything fell into place. Then home, eating lunch & pacing ourselves throughout the afternoon to make Easter dinner. Brendan never actually joined us at the table for dinner, but the new laptop is on my desk in the dining room, so he was with us even when quietly playing DF, & very mellow & personable through it all, so we felt that he had a good time, too. He kind of munched on things throughout the day & we decided that every day does not have to be superior nutrition day... what was important was his comfort level with all the people visiting, which went fine.

Yesterday Brendan's best buddy spent most of the day with us, which was a lot of fun, then we watched the latest episode of "Kamen Rider Den-O" online before dad came home from work. Today I slept-in while Brendan watched another of the Marx Brothers movies he got for his birthday. This morning we finished the thank-you notes, after re-negotiating that I would scribe the message & he would sign them. He did some Dragon Fable & then worked on rebuilding the lego on my dresser that he'd broken. Brendan seems to feel much better to be actively doing something to repay us for his actions. Charlie & I feel that it's better to be dealing with these sorts of things while Brendan's younger, rather than when he's in full-teen mode. We've talked about the reparations as creating memories for him to fall back on when he has impulses to damage things in the future. And finding things that help him to direct & get beyond his anger are important life-lessons. In the late morning walked to our neighbourhood japanese restaurant (the weather is finally warming up again!) with our friend Kelly for lunch. While there we discovered that our waitress is a friend of our japanese teacher's :) She was impressed by our japanese (I think, in particular, Brendan's). After we got home Brendan got back to working on a new story (about a "multiverse" that he's illustrated using the go board & stones) & returned to madly building legos to represent the characters & vehicles from the story. I've suggested that he start documenting the story using the his new dragon software, then we can take a photo of the legos & go board to illustrate it. He's intrigued by this idea... Stay tuned!

Pokemon hats!

Here are big Pikachu & Pochama (aka Linus) wearing their new hats. Brendan has made both of them in just 2 days :) For the second hat, Pikachu's, he worked the starting-off row himself, which can be tricky. I have been doing the finishing (knitting two together around & gathering all the rest of the stitches to form the top of the hat) but I've been thinking about how to teach Brendan how to do this, too... He's ready to start one for Skitty, which will require a bit of thinking when it comes to finishing the top because of her ears.

Brendan's had a somewhat pre-adolescent day, with frustrations setting him off pretty regularly. He did (barely) manage to get through japanese lesson, which was good because it was really fun. We learned how to say "___ is ___ than ___" & had a riot coming up with sentences using the adjectives we know. I came up with "InuYasha is noisier than Sesshoumaru." & Brendan followed with "InuYasha is kinder than Naraku." We then degenerated into "Brendan is stinkier than dad." & "Brendan is more mischievous than dad." Brendan agreed with the latter statement, but did take issue with the former :)

Later in the afternoon Brendan was at loose ends & not enjoying it, so he asked me to read some "Eldest" to him. I suggested that he knit while I read, but he didn't want to. However, when I noticed that he was chewing his nails, I told him that I thought knitting was much better than biting his nails & he took the hint... & finished Pikachu's hat before dinner!

We are coping pretty well with the snowstorm that's hit the northeast US... Charlie made a fire in the fireplace which we enjoyed during japanese lesson this afternoon- very civilised. I still hope that Spring isn't far off, though :)

Knitting & chatting...

The transition back to school after 2 days off was the least bumpy in recent memory :) Charlie mentioned to me that Brendan grumbled a bit while getting jammies on Wednesday night, but then remembered that it was just 2 days until the weekend & the grumbles subsided. By all reports he had a great day, & although he swore he wasn't going to go outside after lunch into the dirty, nasty snow to play, when he came home his snowpants were so mud-encrusted that I had to put them in the sink & scrub them. Leaving school was the toughest part of the day, which has been the pattern lately, & is something we've got the whole team- psychologist, OT, teachers- working on. When I arrived I could hear the last bit of music class wafting down the stairs. I heard the teacher's voice & then Brendan loudly declaring "I'm a vegetarian!" (He can say it in japanese, too :) When class finally broke up his music teacher, Joe, said he wanted to ask me a question (I was in the midst of collecting Scholastic book orders), & when I was free he asked if there were foods that Brendan can't eat or be around when cooking. I immediately answered that Brendan can't bear to be near cooking meat, & explained why (he can't bear the thought of animals being killed), prompting the good-natured reply "Well, there goes the fried chicken..." It turns out that Joe is planning to do cooking projects on Friday afternoons with small groups of kids & was discussing it at the end of music class (this is the sort of school where the music teacher plans cooking activities :), hence Brendan's declaration of vegetarianism. With that all sorted out & book orders collected, I aksed Brendan to get his things together so we could go home. Unfortunately, the tics started in earnest right about then & he started exploding about "these parasites" (the OCD thoughts :( I stayed calm & helped him get his things & get to the car, where he collapsed on the seat in relief. I got him talking about the day & what he'd like to do at home & he was back to his usual, cheerful self by the time we were there.

They had been learning a new song in music class today, the Poilce's "Every Breath You Take" which put me in a nostalgic mood (I saw the "Synchronicity" tour back in the summer of 1983... sigh, memories), so I suggested that we listen to the cd that the song is on ("Synchronicity") & Brendan said yes, & he also wanted to hear "Ghost in the Machine" afterwards. Can't help but feel I've raised the kid right when he knows his Police albums... :)

Brendan had mentioned earlier this week that he wanted to knit a red cap for his pokemon penguin plushie, so during the day I had found the set of knitting looms (they're like glorified spool-knitters) I'd picked up a while ago. I got the smallest one going with some thick red yarn & then after his first DragonQuest session we sat down for him to try it out. All past attempts to use something like this have ended in boredom or frustration, so I kept my expectations on the low end... & was very pleasantly surprised that he had little difficulty using it. He actually worked around it about as quickly as I did & I told him so. I also suggested that he think of this as a process, rather than worrying about when he'd be done with the project, & then he'd probably find it more enjoyable to do. At the end of the first couple of rows he needed prompting as to how to proceed, but, as I told him would happen, he got it very quickly. Next thing I knew we were sitting & chatting, he knitting away & me working with a new braiding tool that had looked interesting to try out. He started telling me about some things that had gone on during lunch at school- one kid thought another had put tacks in his shoes, so Brendan decided to ask the accused directly if he had. Then we discussed whether or not this person's reply could be believed & why or why not... when I asked him why someone would put tacks in another's shoes, he told me, "Mom, I am not an expert on how the neurotypical mind works..." which cracked me up. I had to agree, then pointed out that his atypical thinking might help them all find another way to handle the situation.

As we continued chatting about this & that we were listening to "Ghost in the Machine" (which, I have to confess, makes me want to bounce around the house rather than sit still :) & Brendan asked me about the Police. I told him about the band members, how 2 were from the UK & one, the american, is the grandson of a famous composer. He asked me, "Were they really popular, mom? Did people think they were kakkoii?" So I talked about how popular they'd been & still are (to some of us... although I've heard they're getting back together & going back out on the road after nearly 25 years, so perhaps a new generation will discover it for themselves). He wanted to know if Sting was Sting's real name or his band name... It didn't hit me until later that Brendan had used a japanese term while we were chatting. The word kakkoii (かっこいい), although translated in the dictionary as "attractive or good-looking", has the connotation of meaning "way cool" too, & I realised that Brendan used the japanese term because it's more succinctly descriptive than anything we have in english. Plus, he knew I would understand what he meant. I love this evidence that the japanese is taking hold of Brendan's imagination & vocabulary. Kakkoii!

Brendan worked on & off on the hat for the rest of the day & even this morning before school (using the timer for getting-dressed time is working wonders :). I told him that after he gets home we'll be able to cast it off & finish it, since it's big enough. He's ready to knit a whole fleet of hats for his plushies (could take quite a while...) & I'm delighted, for lots of reasons. We have been worried about finding ways to keep Brendan from putting things in his mouth while watching tv (since he's less likely to be monitoring his actions while watching tv). We found that he could watch tv & knit (we watched some Kim Possible before dinner while we knitted & braided) without any difficulty so this looks like it will work just fine to keep his hands busy. Brendan mentioned more than once yesterday that he likes the knitting. I can tell that he's motivated because not only did he pick it up before school & do a row, but he's working with red yarn & nary a tic- red is one of his trigger colours these days. The cool thing is that there's a whole set of these looms in various sizes, so when he's bored with pokemon hats... people hats!! :)

Incentives- the continuing saga...

This morning, as he took his boxer shorts out of the dresser, Brendan surprised me with a hug & a kiss :) The reason was that I had finally tie-dyed 3 pair of his new white boxers & he was quietly, but obviously, pleased. I have been making Brendan's boxers since he was in kindergarten, partly because he preferred to wear boxers & I couldn't find them in his size, partly because I made most of his clothes back then, anyway, & partly because he was so skinny that he regularly crawled out of his trousers & didn't notice. If he was wearing boxers made from fun fabrics the kids were more likely to say, "Wow, neon cats!" than laugh at him... About a year ago I made the final batch (size XL) from the KwikSew pattern for boys' boxers & went looking for a men's-sized pattern that was as easy to make. I finally found one, but what I had trouble finding, when it became obvious a few weeks ago that Brendan was outgrowing the last batch, was the time to make new ones. Charlie encouraged me to find some store-bought ones, since Brendan's no longer too teeny to find them easily, so I checked out the Dharma Trading Company site, where you can get plain white clothing (for dyeing, etc) inexpensively, & found some boxers that would fit Brendan. But, of course, fit isn't the only issue... When the boxers arrived Brendan unfortunately got a look at the packaging, which featured a guy wearing only boxers of course, & it triggered an OCD thought & tic. So for the first few weeks every time he put them on he had to go through an elabourate de-ticcing ritual. I asked if dyeing them would help & he said it would... then he waffled & wasn't sure. It was getting easier for him to put them on, but he's always loved jazzy boxers, so I decided to tie-dye a few anyway. When I asked him which colours would be ok to use (becase there are OCD thoughts attached to certain colours) he said blue would be ok. So, I tied 3 pair & got them soaking in the soad-ash solution that makes the dyes stick (I use Procion dyes because they're really bright & long-lasting). Then I discovered that I had about half an inch of turquoise dye left in the bottle & no other blues at all. So Friday after school we went out to the art store & I had Brendan pick out 3 more blues. Saturday morning I made the dye solutions & did the dyeing, & by Sunday afternoon they were rinsed & washed. He liked them when I showed them to him, but wasn't effusive, hence my surprise when he kissed me this morning upon opening his undies drawer :) Sooo... I am finding that dyeing just 3 pairs wasn't enough & am looking around for more stuff to dye (oooh- I just got Charlie some new boxers, too.... evil laugh).

Charlie didn't have to work Saturday morning so it was one of those unplanned-but-busy-anyway mornings. While I was dyeing boxers Charlie & Brendan made brownies from scratch (we have a great recipe that uses whole wheat flour as the base)- a double batch with some for us & some for church. Our congregation belongs to an interfaith hospitality network that hosts homeless families for a week, 4 times a year. During that week volunteers make the meals & stay overnight with the guests. The families move from church to church & during the weekdays they attend programmes designed to help them get jobs & housing of their own. It's the only local programme that allows families to stay together (usually men go to a men's shelter & women & children go to a women's shelter) & it has a high success rate. So, half the brownies were going for dinner at church for our guests. Charlie dropped them off after our japanese lesson.

We hadn't had a lesson for a couple of weeks because Tomoko was interviewing in 3 different states for doctoral programmes, since she's graduating with her masters in family therapy & counselling in May. We'd really missed her & spent some time catching up (she had some stories about her travels, since this is not the time of year to be flying in or our of the northeastern US...). She also told us that her sister has made reservations, for the weekend we'll be staying with her family in Japan, at not only an Onsen (hot springs resort) but at a traditional Ryokan as well. It's a very traditional place with a fireplace in the middle of the room & sounds way cool. I've seen pictures, & the thought of actually staying at one is mind-boggling. We also talked about the daily rhythms we've found are best for Brendan when we travel. We usually do anything exciting in the morning, when energy is high, & eat out, then have a quiet afternoon at our hotel (or where-ever). Tomoko said she'd let her family know about this. It looks like the afternoons will be spent in the car, over the weekend, which should be just fine since Brendan travels well & sitting in the car would qualify as down-time. We always travel with the laptop (& plug-in power converter) so he can play games or watch a movie. Brendan was getting kind of antsy as we chatted about all these things, so I was giving him some deep pressure on his arms while we talked. He got right to the lesson, though, when we began. It turns out that March 3rd (3-3) was Hinamatsuri, which is the girls' doll festival. So our lesson was a conversation between InuYasha & friends, with the women explaining the festival to him, then everybody going out to a restaurant for special food. I learned the very useful term "okosamaranchi" which mean's "kid's lunch" (the "ranchi" part is how the word "lunch" sounds in japanese) & Tomoko included the kanji for this term so that I'll recognise it when we see it on menus in Japan. We also talked about how to ask them to "hold the meat" when we order one... a must for our veggie kid (he has memorised the phrase which means "I am vegetarian" :).

In the afternoon we watched (& giggled through) the rest of the Kim Possibles I'd downloaded on Friday. Paula came to dinner - we'd been hoping her son Ck would be home from college on break, too, but his flight was cancelled due to bad weather, so we enjoyed Paula's company & are hoping to see him some time this week.

Sunday Charlie & Brendan stayed home from church because the Sunday School classes can't meet in their classrooms on the weeks that we have guests sleeping in the church ('cause that's where they sleep!) & so they all do an activity together (except my Sr. High kids, whose room is only used if there are a lot of guests). Brendan doesn't cope well with this sort of change in schedule, so we've decided to give him the day off. I not only had Sunday School but a music committee meeting after church (I'm the committee chairperson) so I went to church. It was odd to be there without my guys, but it was fun & we got a lot of work done at the meeting. When I got home, around 2:00 pm. Brendan had a school friend over & Charlie was vetting them through their play time together. Friend is also on the spectrum & Charlie has determined that he & Brendan do much better together if they have a schedule. When he mentioned a schedule to the boys, friend piped-up "Yes, I do much better when I have a schedule." which made us grin when Charlie told me about it later. And they did :) They started out playing a 3-way game of war (the card game), which friend won, then the boys moved on to half an hour of Dragon Fable (Brendan's newest Adventure Quest-type game), then settled down to watch "The Incredibles". There was an intemission with brownies ala mode, & after the movie there was time to show friend the sock-puppet easter egg we'd found on disc 2 (it's the whole movie acted out by sock puppets- it's a hoot!). After friend left Brendan played more Dragon Fable & then helped Charlie make burritos for dinner. Charlie told me later in the evening that Brendan told him, when he realised that the weekend was nearly over, that "There will be another weekend soon.", which was the first time he's actually taken a positive philisophical approach to the impending school week.

During dinner Brendan asked me how he was doing with the swearing part of his behavioural charting. During the school break week we had decided to separate out the swearing component (because he wasn't earning anything ever, it was such a problem, so his appropriate behaviours weren't being rewarded) & make it into a separate category with a separate incentive. He had found some supplemental pokemon card packs at the grocery store, so we decided to use them as the first incentive for the swearing chart. When we set up the guidelines for this chart we established which words were considered swear words & I asked Brendan to choose how many days he has to refrain from swearing before he earns the first incentive, & he thought 5 days would be fair. (This means 5 days cumulatively, not in a row...) By yesterday he had earned 4 stickers, but it had taken him 11 days to get this far, partly, I think, because he'd forgotten all about the incentive & partly because when it started he was not as "het up" about pokemon cards as he's been in the past. I reminded him some time last week about the incentive for the swearing chart, & wouldn't you know, he got all excited about pokemon cards again... He earned the last 4 stickers all in a row, he was so motivated. He & dad started playing pokemon card games again over the weekend, to much excitement about customising the decks with cards he's acquired over the past few months. Last night, right before he went to sleep. Brendan asked if he'd earned the final sticker & I told him he had. He then asked if he could open them up before school (in the past he's had to wait until after school because there's no time before). I told him that if he got dressed & ate breakfast quickly, then he could open the cards.

This morning, he was dressed wayyyy before I was, so I suggested that he go downstairs & start getting his breakfast. When I came down he annouced that he was having "bread with butter, & milk". He had cut himself a slice of bread (& done a great job of it- Charlie's been working with him on using the bread knife) (ps: I make most of our bread in the bread machine, hence the need to slice it), buttered it & poured his milk. I put his medicine in the little bowl & then went to put laundry in. He was finishing up as I got my own breakfast, & he wasn't frantic or anything, just moving along at a nice pace. He brushed his teeth & finally got the cards out & opened the packs. I heard lots of ooohing & ahhing (there were 4 "rare" cards & other ones he's been wanting- a real haul :) as he opened them. Then he took them upstairs & played with his legos until it was time to go to school.

I feel as though we had the benefit of 2 different incentive systems going this morning- the timer system for getting dressed, which has given him the ability to make the most of his time in the morning, & then the pokemon cards in exchange for being mindful of his language, which will eventually become a habit that is it's own reward. We've got the next incentive lined-up, too. It's a cute little penguin pokemon plushie from the new "Diamond & Pearl" series & Brendan is just itching to take off the tags & make it his own... :)

Pokemon & music...

I began the day with a hot flash, which would have been a drag, but it woke me up in time to let our friend, who cleans the house very other week, in the door without his having to bang on it & cause a ruckus (the front doorbell is on the fritz). One of the hazards of break week is the intersection of things that occur regularly with a more relaxed, "don't bother to set the alarm" mindset. It all worked out ok, though, with Brendan & me enjoying a leisurely breakfast & then having fun exploring the most recent update of the "Pokemon Daisuke Karabu" ("I Love Pokemon Club") online newsletter. Tomoko found this Pokemon club for us last summer & we've been having fun with it ever since. They have bi-monthly calendar pages that you can print out featuring Pokemon characters (colouring pages, too, but Brendan doesn't colour...), updates on the "kaa-do ge-mu" (card game) releases & also the latest on the movies. We watched the trailer for the next Pokemon movie, the 10th to be released, & found a poster advertising the IMAX release of the movie that featured Pikachu & friends wearing 3-D glasses. We just roared with laughter at the picture... It occurred to both of us that we might be able to catch the movie when we go to Japan (since it won't be released here on dvd for probably a year). Charlie's comment, when we mentioned this at dinner, was to ask wearily if it would be subtitled... (no way! :) I was pleased by how much of the information from the site I was able to get with my still pretty limited understanding of japanese- reading the katakana really helps, since words written in katakana are likely to be english words translated to japanese, & Brendan's getting really good at figuring out the translations so we make a good team.

After he finished a 45-minute stint on Adventure Quest, I asked Brendan to help me with a special project. Our neighbour had shared a treasure with us last fall- a set of 12, 20-year-old cassette tapes called "101 Favourite Songs Taught to Japanese Schoolchildren". The set had been given to him by a friend & our neighbour thought we might be interested in it as well. There's a songbook & list of all the songs as well, & it all seems to have been produced by the Japanese Ministry of Education. I started listening to the first tape a while back, which began promisingly with "Sakura, Sakura" (the famous song about cherry blossoms) & a few other old & well-known tunes that we've even heard in episodes of InuYasha, but then it veers into very weird territory... For one thing, the arrangements of the songs are 80's pop-esque, with a mix of traditional-sounding instruments & obviously synthesised instrumentals. For another, some are actually western tunes, such as "Auld Lang Syne", with japanese lyrics not related to the western tune at all, which comes off as truly surreal. The A sides of the tapes are all in japanese & the B sides are the exact same songs as A, but in english. I had decided that the only way to make use of all this music was to record the songs that seemed authentically japanese on my laptop (in QuickVoice) & turn them into mp3 files so they could be put on cd. That way I could burn a disc for our neighbour & have one to listen to in the car, to enhance our learning of japanese. The only hitch in the plan was that I hadn't done much with the QuickVoice software, but recording the sound effects for Brendan's class play had taught me what I needed to know, so it was just a matter of finding the time & help... I wasn't sure if I'd be able to jump from tape-player to laptop quickly enough to record each individual track, so I asked Brendan to help me get set up & work the tape player. He was a real trooper through the first few songs, but boredom set in, as well as the giggles, & then he started dropping things while we were recording, so I decided that I could manage & let him go back to AQ (with the sound off, bless him...).

On & off for the rest of the day I alternately worked on recording (winnowing out the really cheesy stuff) & doing stuff with Brendan. We had planned to go to his best friend's house this afternoon, but E's mom has the flu & so we couldn't go :( We did read to each other from "Eldest" after lunch, & then Brendan finished weaving a scarf (that his class had been making in school so they could raffle it off to benefit the Heifer Project) while I read more "Eldest" to him. In the late afternoon, just after finishing an AQ stint, the tics started getting to him & he was having trouble being on his own, so I closed-up the makeshift recording studio (I had just begun the 5th of 9 tapes-hooray!) & we watched some old episodes of "Rough Science" that we'd taped probably 5 or 6 years ago for him. Brendan was a bit teary because of the tics & told me he was glad I was alive, & I replied in kind. Eventually the tics went away, & it was nice to relax with him before dinner.

As we were finishing dinner Brendan began telling Charlie & me about some of his made-up Pokemon characters, called "Rabitor":

Although he hasn't drawn them yet, he was describing the habits of the evolved forms, called "RabbitRats", & at one point said, "...and they have a staff...". This struck me as funny & I said, "What, you mean like they have secretaries & stuff?" Brendan gave me a "very funny" smirk & said that, no, they had sticks... A couple of minutes later he was on to a detailed description of how these critters choose their leaders, "... and the one that wins becomes the new leader...", to which I replied, "...and the rest become the staff! You, take a memo... you, make some coffee!" Brendan graciously laughed at my persistent silliness & told me it was a "good one, mom"... and proceded onto another aspect of Rabitor-society life. I'm lucky my kid has such a good sense of humour because my attempts to add levity to his perseveration (as self-preservation) would not be nearly so successful if he didn't...

Tomorrow Brendan & Charlie will spend the morning visiting his psychiatrist, having a haircut, & buying ice cream. I am going to try to start making the duvet cover for our comforter that's been shedding wool since we got it, since it's driving me crazy. In the afternoon Charlie & I go see Brendan's psychologist & Cherie will stay with Brendan, which he's really looking forward to (how many kids look forward to seeing one of their teacher's during a school break ? :). The mitten wool I made over the weekend is dry & wound into a ball, so I can start swatching (to know what size needles to use to knit them). So far we're having a relaxing & pleasant break week- what more could we ask for? :)