Weekend Journal

Jonah came home singing a Bob Marley song that he’s learning from his super hip music teacher. He was rather shocked that I, his squarish parent, knew the song. So, I dug through our stacks of CDs for the Marley disk, and we played it all weekend. This is the first time in three years that we’ve been able to listen to music in the house.

Until very recently, Ian hasn’t let us listen to music. I put on a CD and he’ll slip into the room and flip off the stereo. Or he’ll insist that only one song is played over and over. Or he’ll like to hear the songs in very particular orders. We’ll get so annoyed by his tyranny of the stereo that we’ll give up and flip it off ourselves.

I’m not sure why he’s driven us so crazy about music for so long. Maybe because it was difficult for him to concentrate on other things, because the music was distracting him. Maybe he loved the music too much. Maybe  the numbers on the stereo were too absorbing. Whatever. It was just one of those quirks that we’ve had to bow to over the past few years.

We’ve dealt with the music quirk, because he really doesn’t have too many of them. There’s a girl down the street with full blown OCD with a little Tourrette’s, and she takes 40 minutes to get dressed every morning. With Ian, it has been the music, some clothing issues, and a couple of other things.

He suddenly got picky about his lunches a month ago, but I discovered that he’ll eat just about anything if I shape it correctly. He doesn’t want the big, meaty Carnegie Deli type sandwiches that Steve makes for him. He wants delicate tea sandwiches. So, every morning, I’ve been making little square sandwiches with just a sliver of pepperoni or Bologna. Each quarter sandwich is wrapped individually. It’s amusing me right now, so I’m not bothered too much.

Ever as the music quirk leaves us, other things have been irking him lately. He’s had some rather spectacular meltdowns in the past week and we’re working through things. The trick is to keep some sort of balance between the needs of Ian and the needs of the rest of the family.

We had a splendid venture into the city today with the kids. Here’s some pix: