He loves this plush so much — it was a gift from a friend — that he takes it everywhere with him, and sometimes he does things like this. And yes, he gave consent for me to take this picture. He doesn’t mind that it is on my blog. If he had his way, I would be mentioning him a lot more on my blog… maybe I should…

In theory, I have one child who could have and manage his own Facebook account or Twitter account. He’s fourteen, so he’s old enough to. But I don’t feel comfortable allowing him to use a website that requires the use of his full name, and I don’t feel like he’s at a point where he could use any of these sites, would want to, or would get the same meaning out of them that we do. I mean, I could help him manage something… but I’m not sure about that, because if he weren’t enjoying it and wanting to do it, what would the point be? And in a way, it’s kind of ironic. Kids that he has grown up with have their own social networking accounts and enjoyably use them. And here I am, not even using his real name when I make public posts about him. I could if I wanted, but I don’t feel comfortable doing so given real-life (real life? how do you parse that?) circumstances, so here we are. Also, ironically the child in the picture isn’t the child that I’m writing about. He is too young to have social networking accounts of his own. I’m content to allow him to explore on YouTube and YouTube Kids.

Plus, I wouldn’t want to deal with the idea of having to help him navigate online conversations. Not yet.

So here we are. I feel old writing this entry out and I’m only thirty-five years old (my oldest son is fourteen).

We do this every year (instead of every six months now that we are in a pandemic, and still in one at that). We get up earlier than we normally do, get ready to leave the house, and then leave the house to commute for approximately twenty minutes before arriving at our destination. Then we take an elevator several stories up to the child development — and other things — floor of the building, check in and wait to be seen by the kids’ developmental pediatrician, who has been seeing Monster since he was five years old and Bub like… since he was two, maybe two and a half. He’s glad that I am homeschooling, as apparently a lot of parents and guardians made that decision when our governor took away the state funding for virtual schooling that had previously been there… to find out that the percentage of homeschooled kids jumped from between 6% and 8% to like 11%, prompting the state legislature to advance a bill funding virtual schooling until 2023 that has a lot of risky, undesirable caveats. He made some suggestions that I might like to have Monster engage in.

We also discussed how Bub, being on the highest dose of melatonin that a child can or is supposed to take (10mg)… is continuing to have a difficult time going to sleep, staying asleep, and having restful sleep, even if I do what I was previously told to do and top him up with a dose of Benadryl on these occasions at like two or three in the morning if he wakes up, can’t wind himself back down to sleep, and becomes distressed as a result. So now Bub is on the maximal dose of 0.2mg clonidine at night to see if that helps with any, or all, of these things. If it doesn’t, I can call his developmental pediatrician right back and see if the dose of that can be adjusted or he can be put on something a little bit stronger. It’s become increasingly clear that Bub needs the full 0.2mg dose, and he needs to continue to be on melatonin — I was told that I could also top his clonidine dose up with this if it was clear that he needed it, so we’re seeing how that goes for a little while here, heh…

Mmanwhile, I’m continuing to homeschool with the appropriate books for each child. Monster is working out of a language arts book while Bub works on Hooked on Phonics (and let me tell you, he does not like his +at words), I’m giving Monster problems from a Common Core second-grade math workbook allowing him to answer them however he best comes to the answer and having Bub pattern out n+2 and n+3… that sort of thing. I will say that I miss taking Bub to the nearby neighborhood park for physical education and fun time, though. We can’t exactly do that in the midst of a pandemic, especially when I am as susceptible to complications as I am. If there were any safe way to do that I would be down, but that’s exactly the point — we’ve had to make changes to our life as a result of the pandemic, and we can’t stop making these changes until it’s all over.

And also, thanks Subway for the food. It’s the one fast food item that my kids and I can agree on.