The Foorce

I’ll tell you about what we actually did this past weekend.

Friday I took all 3 kids to a party after James got out of school. It was at the kids’ club where my daughter takes ballet and gymnastics, some Friday Family fun night they have every other week. It was supposed to be for ages 6 months to 6 years but I explained my situation with James to the manager and very sweetly she said he could come too.

I was a little nervous bringing him, though I couldn’t put my finger on why. I am comfortable discussing James’s disability and am an open book re: his diagnosis and special needs. He is also very well behaved for the most part and loves to play with younger children – it should all work out, right?

I think it was the other kids. Adults have a filter when discussing your very tall, obviously way too old to be here, talkative, anxious, disabled child. Most of them know what to say, what is okay to ask about, and most importantly, what not to say (“Um, is there a reason your son is hiding behind the pillar crying while Roly Poly Guacamole plays the guitar and sings Baa Baa Black Sheep?” or “Hey, I think your son is crying again because that toddler threw a ball near him.”) Kids generally haven’t developed a filter yet, which can be refreshing until you’re at the NY Kids Club trying to “protect” your 10 yr old from some pipsqueak who is calling him mean because “he is playing with all of the red balls out of the ball pit and he won’t let me throw them back in the ball pit” and not using an indoor voice and his nanny is on her cell phone looking at you like “Hey, take care of it- your much older kid is the problem” and all you want is for the pipsqueak to stop talking so loudly and for James to stop whimpering about “he took my ball” so that you can make sure your toddler isn’t going to flip right off of the trampoline she is jumping on with reckless abandon across the room.

Then, Roly Poly Guacamole played. Two guys with a bass and a guitar singing lots of kids’ songs – my daughter adored them and sang and danced right up front the entire time. The lead singer reminded me of Jack Black from School of Rock, a movie James likes a lot, so I thought he would probably be okay for the “concert,” a.k.a. 30 minute rendition of childrens’ songs with 1 tiny little amp, 2 guys with guitars and about 20 kids and their caretakers. Not exactly Madison Square Garden.

Nope. One song in, I think it was “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” and I look over to see James silently but dramatically crying about 3 feet away from the bass guitarist and about 6 inches away from pipsqueak #2 who is pointing James out to his mom and drawing the attention of the performers as well. I whispered to James that he could sit in the back with a book (“No, that’s not allowed!”) or wait in the waiting room 10 feet away (“But Mom, it’s too far!”) if the music was upsetting him. James opted for taking the fetal position behind a pillar about 2 feet away and occasionally peeking out to make sure I knew he was still crying about each song, especially the ones where they had to jump up and yell “Yeehaw!” as loud as they could. My 2 year old remained blissfully oblivious to James’s distress and my 7 month old nursed and slept through the whole thing.

The second the music ended, James hopped up with a smile and said “That music was good. I had fun. I’m ready for pizza!” and walked to the pizza room with the other kids. In the pizza room, which serves as a dance studio during business hours, there were 3 tables set up with slices of pizza and tiny little chairs. Great, I thought, where is James going to sit without feeling awkward or nervous? Next to my daughter, of course. My gentle giant sat with all of the teeny tiny 1 and 2 year olds on a teeny tiny chair at a teeny tiny table and ate his slice of pizza, completely oblivious to the fact that he was the biggest by a solid 75 pounds and 7 years.

Saturday my husband was home, which is a rare occurrence lately, so we started the day off plus one for the good guys. We ended up at the “beach” at South Street. Here my toddler ran wild in the sand, trying to steal other children’s toys or share handfuls of sand with adults drinking very expensive drinks from clear plastic cups on those white “couches” on the “beach.” Here was James’s chance to shine! He lay in the sand with some modified sand toys – a plastic teething ring, a small rubber hippo, and a brio train with a tiny wooden bucket – and played contentedly for the entire time, only pausing from his bliss to tell us when his sister threw sand in his hair, twice. Wait, thrice. Later, we toured the Peking (the ship next to the mall) and then took James and Margaret to the Ice Cream Truck. I guess we haven’t gone very much this season, because James must have thanked Ryan and I about 30 times before his cone was gone.

Funny thing on Saturday: around 5:50pm we were headed home, coincidentally around The 6pm End of The World, when it suddenly got dark and windy. Did anyone else on the UWS notice that? I bet you were thinking hard about your lists right around then and wishing you had knocked off a few items. We didn’t do my list, but we did get some sand time and good food in there for good measure!

Sunday was baseball at Riverside and of course, the DMF concert I have been writing about for the last 2 months! The concert deserves its own post, and will get one with audio/video highlights as soon as I download “Hershey Love” on itunes and figure out how to share it with all of you. But, long story short for now, it was Awesome (no thanks to some very whiny babies). It was also awesome to see some friendly faces at the 4pm show! I also heard very good things about the 1pm show, especially “Luck Be a Lady” and the Wizard of Oz cast!

I hope you enjoyed some nice weather over the weekend! My blog got a much higher than usual number of hits this weekend, and I couldn’t figure out why until I saw the search terms – about 40 varieties of “end of the world” put into Google.