“Mom, who is Beethoven?” Payton asks. He’s recently begun a Charlie Brown phase and is intrigued by the character Schroeder.

“He’s a very famous classical composer who wrote symphonies, which is a type of music, in the 1800s,” I answer.

“What did the music sound like?”

“I have a cd of his music. We’ll listen to it in the car when we go pick up your brother.”

True to my word, I pop in a Beethoven cd later that afternoon. I didn’t look at the cd, I simply put it in the player and let it begin playing the first song.

The first song is Beethoven’s 6th symphony, which is titled Pastoral.

Payton and I listen to a couple of minutes of the symphony, and I then ask him what he thinks of Beethoven’s music.

“I didn’t know he wrote summer music!” he says.

“Summer music?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

“That song is about summer. It’s in the medium notes,” he explains. “Can you hear it?”

“Medium notes, huh? Is that something Ms. C (school music teacher) taught you?”

“No, I just know it.”

“You just know it?”

“Yeah, I just know it. In the medium notes. I can feel summer. Can’t you feel it, mom?”

“Feel it where?”

“In your ears. I can feel the summer inside my ears.”

No, I don’t feel summer in my ears. Beethoven’s 6th symphony is just a song to my ears, albeit a beautiful one, of course.

Of all the possible therapies and diagnoses we’ve rejected and ignored, Payton’s hypersensitive hearing is one I catch a good bit of flack for. It’s one of the big bell ringers of autism.

On the other hand, it’s also a bell ringer for gifted children, though we hear little of that in the news.

But in all my human faultiness, and probably because of current socialization, it’s one thing about Payton that often leaves me questioning the wisdom of our decisions.

When a six year old is happily swinging outside and the next thing you know, he screams as if the Hound of Baskerville is eating his leg for lunch, you kinda wonder. You see him writhing on the ground with his ears covered, screaming over and over, you find no blood or bee stings, and you’re looking and looking for WHAT ATTACKED YOUR KID!, and you finally realize a jet flew way overhead, a jet you heard but didn’t notice because it wasn’t that loud and you’re used to tuning it out.

You can’t help but wonder sometimes if you’re crazy to sit back and let nature take its course with this.

Whereas social nonconformity can be open to subjective interpretation, his hearing has a measurable side effect given he can have severe headaches when his sensitive ears are bombarded with too much noise. It’s right there, and the headaches aren’t really open for interpretation other than a) this is a tylenol controllable headache or b) this is a dark, silent room and a two hour nap controllable headache.

Thankfully, interpretation B is very rare these days.

People want to know, respectfully so far, why we won’t do any type of auditory therapies for Payton since this obviously can affect his day-to-day life.

I could debate the validity of such therapies since none are statistically proven to make a difference. I could, and sometimes do, raise the question of who is really causing Payton pain: us, the parents who won’t do therapy or people who insist he stay in a loud environment.

Usually I don’t go into that. My usual response is my fundamental belief that Payton was not born with highly-attuned hearing to be disabled by it, but instead was born with a gift.

I have no earthly idea how his exceptional hearing will serve him in the future, but my heart tells me there is higher purpose.

Will he finally discover the meaning of whale songs because he not only hears but feels notes others can’t?

I don’t know, but I believe in the possibility.

And why should I not?

After I told my boss what Payton said about this particular Beethoven composition incident, we did a little research on Beethoven’s sixth composition and discovered this…

In the program for its premiere, Beethoven famously noted that the “Pastoral” contained “more an expression of feeling than painting.”

…it unquestionably offers eloquent testimony to the importance and power of nature in Beethoven’s life. The composer reveled in walking in the environs of Vienna and spent nearly every summer in the country.

Did the hairs rise on the back of your neck? Because mine totally did.

The connection of the importance and power of nature, and the summers he spent in Vienna’s countryside. How did Payton know? How did an eight-year-old feel with his ears the nature in a 200 year old song?

The eating a naked sole was a last minute addition Payton came up with. (good thing I made that costume last year, huh?) In case you didn’t know, every moment in life is a conservation opportunity in Payton’s mind, so let me tell you that the Australian spotted jellyfish is an invasive species not native to the Gulf of Mexico and it could eat too many flounders, per Payton. We don’t know how this jellyfish ended up in the Gulf, but it’s very important for people to leave species in their original habitat.

You should hear the diatribe I have to listen to every single school morning when we pass the field of kudzu.

Everywhere we went last night, people told Payton he had the coolest costume of the night. That was my cue to take a bow because, damn, I’m good. I’m so good that I managed to take a bow without spilling a drop of the adult drink in my red cup. Even jaded teenagers out trick or treating stopped Payton to compliment his coolest of cool costumes.

In other costume news, how ’bout this category…

Ok, ok, so according to Parents Blogging Network and their contest, that’s not a *real* category, but clearly it *should* be.

Did you know PBN is having a Halloween costume contest and is giving away a cool publish-your-own-book prize with Blurb.com? They are. And I totally should win because it may be the only way my “book” ever sees the white of the printed page.

I’ve made no secret on my blog that I’m sorta not a fan of labeling children. But I have to admit that is not entirely true. After all, I call my son gifted and that is a label.

I’m not a fan of negative labels and, more to the point, how easily our society applies them to our children. Society can be so quick to apply a label to things that fall outside of our increasing small definition of “normal”.

gag! That dreaded “N” word that no one can really define.

So when the question was raised if someone wanted to review a book called When the Labels Don’t Fit, I became the obnoxious kid in the class who shoots their hand up in the air with an “ooh! ooh!” and scoots to the edge of the seat, as if that makes all the difference in being picked.

It totally works because they let me review the book.

When the UPS guy showed up with the book, I sat and savored my first EVER free book from a publisher.

Look at me! Who am I? I am IMPORTANT BLOGGER that has been asked to review a book because my opinion matters! Go Heather!

*ahem*

I immediately began reading the book and it wasn’t long until I ran – SMACK! – face first into the brick wall of a questionnaire.

Very early in this book written by Barbara Probst, you are required to do a temperament questionnaire on your child and yourself, and this helps determine your child’s most salient traits, along with your own.

If you are a bozo like me and don’t know exactly what salient means, we offer no shame here at the Shake-Shake, only answers. I will tell you. Salient means most noticeable or important.

I did the questionnaire and (prepare to be blown away) I couldn’t pin Payton down. Are you shocked? I know I wasn’t. I couldn’t even figure out if Payton is an introvert or extrovert because he has both traits! I thought it was just me and my bozo answers on the questionnaire, but then Wally did the questionnaire too.

What did he get? Hello! Same. Damn. Thing. And I didn’t even hover over his shoulder while he took the questionnaire, questioning why he picked the answers he picked. He was in another room alone and we came out with the same frickin’ answers.

Hello brick wall. Don’t mind us while we bang our head on you.

Of the sixteen traits there are to rank in the questionnaire, only four followed the appropriate answer pattern. Just four. The rest of them, Payton shows behavior for both sides. No wonder I’m in a frequent state of confusion.

This is the life of raising an enigma.

It was then that I scarfed down an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies in a fit of emotional eating and contemplated shipping the book back to the author with a note saying something about how when the labels don’t fit, they REALLY don’t fit because we can’t even determine if our son is an introvert or extrovert. And then I’d end the note with an invitation to make a case study out my enigmatic child.

What good will this book be to me if I can’t even figure out my son’s salient traits? Well, apparently a lot of good.

Payton isn’t the only one in this house with tenacity (or it could be perceived as stubbornness, but we’re all about the positive perspective today!), and I persevered through the book.

I realized it doesn’t really matter if Wally and I can pin down Payton’s salient traits. I would go insane trying to figure out exactly what makes Payton tick. He is so fascinating from a psychological standpoint that I could spend all of my time trying to figure him out. All I can really do is look at the moment, see what we’re dealing with and deal with it in that moment.

What I like most about this book is that the author takes many behaviors common in eccentric/challenging/intense children, many which are associated with development disorders too, and changes the perspective of the behavior.

For example, Payton’s teacher keeps telling us he has trouble transitioning from one subject to the next if he hasn’t completed the work yet. Whereas I could look at this “problem” as typical behavior of one disorder *coughAspergerscough* or another, Ms. Probst explains this is a common characteristic of perfectionism in children. It isn’t unusual for a perfectionist child to want to follow work through to completion and become upset when they can’t.

Who knew the subjective judgment line was that fine? The “experts” can say Payton’s impulsive tendencies are due to a dysfunction of the brain, but they can’t prove it anymore than I can prove it’s from an innate sense of right action. They can’t prove I’m wrong because they can’t prove they’re right.

So see? It’s all perspective and I can make it up just as well as they can.

I also enjoyed the section in the book where the author discusses over-parenting, which is basically when parents are too involved with their children, worry too much over things they shouldn’t, help too much, etc. Not that I would know about any of that (*ahem*), but I did find the insight on that interesting from an outside party perspective. (*ahem again*)

If you are raising a challenging kid like me and don’t want to play the diagnosis game that is the current craze in our nation, I highly recommend this book. It shows how to change your perspective of your child’s behavior, and once you do that, it’s amazing how it trickles down through life. And yes, I speak from experience. Not that I’m an expert at only speaking and seeing the positive, but I have already seen the difference. If nothing else (and believe me, there’s more than just nothing else), this book has given me ideas of how to speak to Payton’s school about his eccentric behavior and that is changing how they view Payton. The trickle effect in his life is already in motion.

The more I learn from Payton about the marine science, the more fascinated I become with the subject. This should prove to you that Payton inherited my awesome persuasive mind superpowers and is even better at it than me.

As a very young and impressionable child, my dad let me watch one of the Jaws movies and from that day forward I hated the beach, the ocean and ALL SHARKS SHOULD DIE!! There are pictures of me at the age of 4-5 at the beach and I refused to come anywhere close to the water.

Now though? My panties get into the biggest wad when I hear about the abuse and overfishing of sharks. Dare to mention the disgusting finning of sharks, (where they are caught, their fins cut off for shark fin soup and then dumped the still living shark back in the ocean to die) and I want to pull a Jesse Jackson and cut a sumabitch’s nuts off and throw his ass in the ocean.

Is that a shark equivalent to PETA? Maybe I could join….

But moving on from my violent tendencies. Remember that aquarium that was suppose to be for Payton’s birthday? He already has all of his fish..

Payton’s grandfather sent him some money for going back to school, but we had already purchased all the back to school stuff, so, of course, Payton decided to spend it on fish for his empty aquarium.

I could have told him no and that he had to wait until his birthday, but if you could see and feel Payton’s utter joy? No way can I put a stopper on that and tell that kind of joy it has to wait. Why would anyone do that?

Next on the list of purchases is the Chocolate Chip Starfish. Payton could have turned a back flip in the store from excitement when he saw the star. I’m sure it’s because of the association with chocolate chip cookies and how awesome mine are and that they are Payton’s favorite cookie.

Because it’s all about me.

But back to the fish…

Payton’s latest addition to the tank has been a black percula clownfish. Think Nemo, but black and white instead of orange.

So far I like this little fish better than the other two (the orbiculate cardinalfish and blue neon goby, by the way). It seems very playful and active, and I love to watch the way its body moves when it swims.

Yes, we have wild times on a Friday night around these parts. Fish watching at 8 pm, asleep at 9!

Have you ever watched a clownfish swim? Truly a beautiful and graceful swimmer when given room to swim.

The first day we got the fish, I heard Payton exclaim how the clownfish was playing with his hand when he stuck it in the tank. I walk in there and sure enough, the fish is swimming playfully but gently around Payton’s hand.

The next day I had to put my hand in the tank to grab a snail off of the filter and I see the clownfish swimming quickly to my hand and I thought…

Oh look! He’s going to play with me too! Pretty fishie likes me too! He wants to play with me just like Payton and OOW! Wha? ACCKCKCKCKCKCK!!! That little fucker is trying to eat my hand!!

The fish attacked my hand. A serious full-scale attack and if he had teeth, I would be maimed for life, people.

I tried to rationalize the fish behavior. But maybe the fish was hungry. Maybe I scared him. It could have been a fluke.

Later that day, Payton comes home and I tell him what happened. He sticks his hand in the tank again (because he isn’t scared at all) and again, the clownfish swims gently and playfully around Payton’s hand.

Hmm. Well, let’s see what happens when I stick my hand in there…

ACKKKAJDKCKKK!!

He attacks my hand again! That fish is so vicious in his attack this time that he almost flops himself out of the tank.

Payton sticks his hand in again…more playfully swimming circles around his hand.

This is yet another example that keeps me believing in Payton’s gift with sea animals.

Clearly I’m not destined to be a famous marine biologist, but I think he is.

I can only hope he’ll grow up to believe in nepotism.

Edited to add: We spoke to the aquarist at the local pet shop today about this clownfish’s behavior towards me. He agreed that the fish is exhibiting jealous behavior and it is totally jealous over my awesome black hair.

P.S. If one more person would like to go tell me just how awesome my hair is in that last linked post, you would break 70 comments for me and I would love you forever.

Almost every morning Parker is the first to get out of bed. Usually he comes to mine and Wally’s bedroom to tell us good morning, and then he climbs into bed to snuggle with me.

This morning was no different, yet it was.

As I’ve told you in the past, Parker refuses to fart on me. Re. Fuses. The one time he did rip one on my leg was a traumatic experience, but we haven’t had a traumatic farting experience since.

So as Parker and I were snuggling, he gets up and hangs his butt off of the bed, then proceeds to rip a fart out of his five year old butt that sounded like it came from my 34 year old butt.

“Did that just come out of your butt?” I asked.

Parker laughed, “Yeah, it did.”

We both giggle.

Parker then says, “Sometimes when my butt does that it means my butt has hiccups.”

Butt hiccups.

A whole new world of fart humor has been opened up.

On our way home from dinner last night, Payton and I had the following conversation…

“Mom, what are silly rules?”

“Well. I suppose they are rules that don’t make sense,” I answered.

“Rules like white people sit in the front of the bus and black people sit in the back?”

“Yes, that was a silly and unfair rule,” I told him.

Payton asked, “Who made it up?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh”

How do you answer that one? Fortunately, Payton moved on without requiring an answer.

“Mom, did you know black and white are antonyms?”

“Yeah, they are,” I answered.

“That means they are opposites. Black and white are opposites.”

“Yep, that is true.” I beginning to wonder where this is going with antonyms and race. I start to sweat a little because it’s hard to predict Payton’s train of thought.

Payton continues, “People aren’t black and white. We’re peach. They’re brown. Those aren’t opposites.”

Whoa.

Never before have I considered the antonym quality of black and white and its implication on race; how the colors black and white are considered opposites and whether that has any psychological affect when we use those words to describe people.

In February I have to register Parker for kindergarten. As I fill out the registration form for a public school, I’ll inevitably get to the section where I have to check a race.

This time though, I’m going to listen to the Way-Shower. Instead of checking white, I’m going to mark other and write in peach.

First you buy a doll.

Then you turn it into a boy doll as requested.

Awwww, he has his daddy’s eyes!

(and when child requests second boy doll, you try to convince him the baby needs a baby sister, not a baby brother, just so you can buy girl preemie clothes)

Next you lie to your child and have Santa bring the baby.

Child is in love with the baby. An innate paternal instinct is apparent.

The boy seems to know, without being told, that one of the best things about a baby is the cute, tiny clothes. He wants to change the baby’s clothes and asks for more clothes.

Baby is hungry! Time to feed the baby.

When food goes in, it must come out.

The child’s paternal instinct must be inherited.

(If you think a man playing with his son’s baby doll is hot, you should have seen him in a flannel shirt, jeans and *gasp* power tools as he put together the gianormous swing set last weekend. A man with power tools and flannel….hawwwwt.)

When a new diaper goes on, the child asks about washing the dirty diaper.

Ooooo! Cloth diapers! Now that’s my boy!

Finally, it’s night night time!

A co-sleeping daddy….crunchiness at it’s best!

What a week of activities that really should be against the law.

Such as….

School Stocking Stuffer parties

As if birthday party goodie bags aren’t bad enough, they have now invaded school holiday parties. (Watch out Jess!)

Instead of doing a book exchange, Payton’s class had a stocking stuffer party and parents had to send in a stocking stuffer for each kid. There are 19 in the class. That means Payton received 19 pieces of craptastic junk, including the craptastic junk I sent. That’s 19 gifts…what am I suppose to send?

Bottom line…Kid goodie bags of all kinds should be illegal.

But swanky goodie bags at BlogHer should totally remain legal because they give out vibrators and such.

Next on the list!

Holiday cupcakes with RED icing should be banned.

This new law will include those adorable cupcake pull apart cakes in the shape of Santa’s head you find at Super Target.

If you question why this should be illegal, I invite you to have you kid eat one, then come down with a stomach virus 4 hours later and throw up on your carpet four times in rapid succession.

What’s even better about these 4 gigantic red stains on my 2 year old carpet is that the puke landed inches from the area rug which I’ve been itching to find a reason to replace. Inches! The massive amounts of red puke landed on the carpet instead.

While my favorite cleaner can remove non-washable marker from carpet, it has met its match with red icing from Super Target.

I think we’re all in agreement now that red icing should be banned, right?

Also up for legal review…

The laundry that follows from your kid throwing up until 3 am.

THAT should definitely be illegal.

‘nuf said.

Oh a lighter note, I’ve had SO much fun shopping for one particular gift that I’m beginning to wonder if there comes a point where fun should become illegal.

I am having the MOST fun of any Christmas ever by shopping for a doll.

For my son.

That’s right! Parker asked for a baby boy doll from Santa.

As a child, I was a total doll whore. No Barbie and false body images for me, thank you. Each and every Christmas as a little girl, I asked for a new doll. My mom would take me to the high end gift store to pick out my yearly Madame Alexander doll from behind the counter. The employee would pull out different ones from the glass case for me to look at and I would eventually narrow down my decision to just one. It was so hard. Picking just one baby.

Sigh…

Fast forward a few decades and I have two boys. I never thought I’d be able to relive my girly Christmas but now I can!

And this is probably my only year to relive it, don’t you think? I guess you never know…Parker could ask for a doll every Christmas from now on. But I’m not banking on it. I’m living it out NOW.

Living it OUT LOUD!

It started with the sex change operation on the doll when I ripped it from the pink box and pink clothes. There are few boy dolls out there that aren’t uglier than homemade sin. Have you seen the ugliness of that boy Baby Alive? It’s like a cutesy Chuckie doll.

The fact is is that boy dolls are hard to find. Period. Boy dolls that pee and poop, which was a stringent requirement by Parker, are almost impossible to find, barring that scary Baby Alive.

We’re talking about Parker, the love child of Adam Sandler. Of course the doll must pee and poop. If I could have found one that farted too……

No worries though! You would never know the Baby Born doll I bought was once a “girl” doll. He looks completely like a boy once I put on all of the preemie boy clothes I also bought.

Which I should mention shopping all over town for days (and I’m not done yet!) for the cutest preemie boy clothes to fit that doll. Oh. My. God. Is it fun or what!?! I gave birth to 3 month old babies who immediately were in 3-6 month clothing. I’ve never seen such tiny things as preemie outfits!

I should also admit to knitting blankets, caps and booties for this doll too, whose name is Peter by the way.

Maybe I can knit his name into the baby cap!

And I should go ahead and come all the way clean.

I’m having a moses basket custom made for the doll, with matching blanket and possibly matching diaper bag.

Is that just a little over the top? Am I enjoying this a bit too much it to be a doll for a boy?

Wally thinks so and laughs at me when I talk about baby Peter. Which is multiple times a day.

Before you ask, let me go ahead and say Wally is completely fine with his son getting a doll for Christmas. Wally is a very secure man. No threats to his or his son’s masculinity.

I guess if having this much fun buying a doll for your son is illegal, the cops will have to chase me down as I run from store to store for cute preemie clothes.

I am wallowing in disenchantment.

I fear my quest will come to an end.

My offer to wash a certain someone’s dirty feet with my hair……

That too may die a disenchanted death, even though I only used it as a metaphor to begin with.

Yes, everyone thought I really would wash feet with my hair. Even Wally didn’t get the metaphor of Jesus having his feet washed with hair. See, I adored that certain someone that much. I worshiped his sense of humor. Oh, the tragedy of worshiping a false god!

The cause of my disenchantment??

I joined the Dirty Jobs message board.

I figured since I had spent time on mommy message boards and survived those that this message board on Discovery would be a piece of cake.

Please laugh with me. Ha ha. Ha ha ha.

Little did I know when I joined the Dirty Jobs message board that I would need to have a dictionary surgically implanted so I’m able to participant in the discussions.

I posted a thread.

No answer.

I tried again.

I embarrassed myself by posting a message very much in the persona of the Queen of Shake-Shake, which is also my real life persona. I posted a question of how I could locate a life-size cardboard stand up of Mike so that Le Binky Bitch and I could take it on our last Mom’s Night Out together before she moved. We’d drive it around town for all to see, take cardboard Mike out to eat with us and ultimately end up in the cool downtown nightlife and indulging in some awesome beer at the hip brewery there. All with cardboard Mike in tow.

I have two replies on this one. TWO! Progress! One said to glue a face picture of Mike on a blow up doll. Um, that’s kinda perverted. And another who claimed she was holding out for the Real Thing.

Let’s keep it real. I don’t want a date with this guy. And I’m not holding out on some real-life giggles with Le Binky Bitch waiting on a celebrity that doesn’t know we exist.

In the meantime, other threads are hopping!

Threads that examine one liners from Mike, asking for clarification of why he thinks you should be wary of all earnestness, and is it “beware” or “be wary” and what the difference is between the two, and why does “all” have to be in there?

My response to such deep, reflective thought was….

Another thread examined, word by word, Mike’s statement of not to follow your passion, ever.

Here’s what I learned….

Then I gazed longingly at the forks in my kitchen drawer.

All the time I’m on this message board, I’m biting down the urge to shout out…

Skids marks! Farts! Respect my authori-tay!

Eventually, my mouth got the better of me.

I expressed my dismay at how everyone took Mike’s words so seriously.

Because serious and Queen of Shake-Shake are not frequent bed buddies.

Someone tried to reassure me. They told me that Mike was a pontificator.

Again, I thought

Is that some kinky form of fornicator?

THEN I read a post where one member pointed out a misspelling of another member and proceeded to say that Mr. Rowe prided himself on being a well-read wordsmith and we (the members) try to keep up with him.

Oh fuck, I’m screwed.

Jeff Corwin is looking might-y good right now.