Sunday

I wanted to write about a recent Sunday we had as a family because it was pretty emblematic of a typical weekend day with Liam.

Sunday is my one sleep in day per week. I get to sleep until 8:00. Angie and I trade off weekend days and Sunday is my day. Yay! On this Sunday I got up as usual at 8:00. Claire was down in the basement/TV room watching TV and squeezing every last ounce out of morning TV viewing since Saturday and Sunday are usually the only days she is allowed to watch TV. Liam was in the living room with Angie snuggling on the couch and playing tickle games.

Although I am pretty much a morning person, I am still pretty useless until I have some coffee. I like to just sit and drink one cup without being hassled or even talked to, but I usually have to settle for either Liam or Chester all up in my morning space while I try to get caffeine rolling through my bloodstream. This morning it was Chester sticking his nose in my lap and begging to be petted…then Liam who decided he wanted to stop playing with Mommy and come over to me with a sense of urgency and say repeatedly, “Wanna go to the farm? Go to the farm?” I tried to ignore him but then he would just grab my face in both of his hands, aim his big brown eyes into my blurry brown eyes, and repeat it louder, “Go to the farm? Wanna got to the farm?” And then carefully rephrase, “I wanna go to the farm.” And smile intently waiting for my response.
“Okay, maybe we can do that.” I said. “But first I need to wake up, and drink some coffee.”
“Go to the farm?”
“After…”
“Coffee.”
“That’s right. After coffee. Now why isn’t there any music on? You want to listen to music?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you want to hear?”
“Abba.”
“What?”
“Abba.”
I was a little blown away. We hadn’t (or I should say Angie hadn’t) listened to Abba in many months. I couldn’t believe he pulled that out of his memory. So I put it on.

When Liam is in a decent mood and there is good music on with a beat, he likes to dance, and he’s pretty good at it. He has many odd dance moves but we realized after watching him so many times that he has perfect rhythm. He really doesn’t miss a beat even though he will stop and start and stop and start and twist and move his body in many odd directions. Abba proved to be good dancing music for Liam.

The caffeine was starting to kick in and I was beginning to perk up a little. Angie decided that if we were going to the farm she’d better take a shower. What? It really doesn’t matter what we do. Angie has to take a shower before leaving the house. If we were going pig wrestling she would have to shower first. I, on the other hand, will go the whole weekend without showering if I can get away with it. In fact I think “pants optional” is a great policy for any day. I think Liam would agree since he is always taking his pants off.

Well, I knew that if she was showering that we had a couple hours to kill, and if Liam got bored and/or anxious to go, it could be a rough morning. The Abba cd was almost done and I knew I was going to have to step it up a notch music wise for Liam. In a flash of brilliance it came to me…AC/DC. I thought, “What a great way to get Liam all pumped up for his day?” I blew the dust off of my old AC/DC box set and cranked it up. Liam immediately got a big grin on his face and actually started head banging like he was a heavy metal pro. No one taught him this. His moves were instinctual and in sync with the driving base and three chord progressions. We danced and head banged together until Angie got out of the shower. “Are you ready yet?” I said knowing we still had about an hour to fill.

I got Liam dressed and I ate breakfast and began the process of prying Claire away from the TV and urged Liam to eat more food to help keep him regulated and keep his mood stable. Then I got Claire fed and dressed and got both kids’ teeth brushed and hair combed and faces cleaned. I got myself dressed and ready. I packed extra food for Liam. I got all the dog stuff together. The timing was good on this day because just when we were ready to go, Angie was ready. We were out the door and we loaded the kids and the dog in the Jeep and headed for the farm.

The farm is on Sauvie Island, which is a completely rural island just north of Portland where the Willamette and Columbia rivers meet. The island is a wildlife preserve and agricultural haven with many farms of different kinds, walking trails, and lakes. It is beautiful and we go there as often as we can. It was Angie’s and my special place before we had kids and now it was our family’s special place. To us going to the farm means taking the dog with us and going for a walk first on a wetland trail on the island where the dog and the kids can run free and then we go to the farm afterward. Whenever we’re on that trail, I feel like all is right with the world.

We got to the trail and began the walk like usual. Claire would keep stopping to look at a bug or an interesting leaf, and Liam would want to press on with all of us together, getting anxious at anyone lagging behind. Chester would run ahead out of sight and eventually come running back. Angie and I would talk about how to try and make our lives easier while being reminded that coming to this place can really help set our minds at ease.

We walked for bout 30 minutes before Liam started saying, “Go home? Go to the park? Go to the farm?” This is somewhat typical for Liam as an indicator that he is beginning to ramp up into an agitated state. It is as if he suddenly gets bored with what he is doing and doesn’t really know what he wants to do. For whatever reason he just suddenly can’t enjoy the moment he was so thoroughly enjoying a minute ago. This is also a clue that he will need some food in him really soon or it will just escalate. Our plan was to go to the farm and buy lunch there. They had hot dogs and barbeque and produce. We also brought some snacks for Liam but they were back at the car. We started to walk back to the car and sure enough Liam started to get more and more agitated. He started letting out loud sharp shrieks, and growls. It’s hard to describe but he becomes really primal at times. He growls and roars and screams and hits and throws things. He was doing all of this on the way back to the Jeep. By the time we got there he was out of control and was throwing gravel from the parking lot. We would have put him in his car seat but we knew he would hit Claire who sits right beside him. We got Claire and Chester in the Jeep and Angie sat in the gravel in front of the car holding Liam and trying to feed him a banana while trying to sooth him. This took about ten minutes and Liam ate the banana and calmed down enough to go into his car seat. He was clearly still agitated and kept hitting the back of Angie’s seat all the way to the farm. We thought about just going home but decided that he wasn’t going to dictate our day and it wasn’t fair to Claire who loves the farm. Liam loves the farm too when he’s not out of his head.

We got to the farm and decided to get lunch first to get some food into Liam (we were hungry too). We found an open picnic table on the edge of the eating area. I sat with Liam while Angie and Claire went to order some hot dogs. Liam was really starting to escalate again. I had part of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on gluten free bread I was trying to feed him. He ate little bites between trying to smack it out of my hand or throw berries at people or swiping things off of the table. I was very apologetic but people seemed to be understanding. I think farm people are cooler than store people. Liam escalated to the point where I had to sit him in my lap facing away from me and wrap my arms around him to keep him from hitting and throwing. He was a little like a wild animal at this point. He was growling and shrieking and trying to kick or hit me. I kept feeding him bites of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich knowing that it would help him when it got into his system. People were doing their best to ignore the scene.

It was taking a long time to get the food and I was feeling like just sitting there restraining Liam was not helping. Then I saw someone with a little red wagon and I remembered that they had a bunch of these wagons at the farm and that Liam always liked riding in them. I said to Liam “Wanna go in a wagon buddy?”
Liam stopped squirming and struggling for a second.
I said it again, “Want to go in a wagon?”
“Wagon.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I think the sandwich was starting to help at this point and he was a little calmer with the prospect of a wagon ride to focus on.
“Let’s go find a wagon.” We got up and went to the front of the farm store where the wagons always were. THERE WERE NO WAGONS THERE! “Where are they?” I said calmly knowing that Liam could explode at any minute. I looked around and saw only the one wagon with a kid in it being pulled by his mother. There were usually about fifteen wagons at this farm. I didn’t see any more. I thought about offering the mother a hundred dollars for the wagon, but then realized what a ridiculous idea that was because I didn’t have a hundred dollars.
“Wagon?” Said Liam. He had a telltale quiver in his voice indicating that I needed to think of something fast.
“Hey Liam, you wanna go see the chickens?” I knew he always like to check out the chickens.
“Chickens.” Said Liam. He was still not happy and barely holding it together but hopefully I could distract him long enough for Angie to come with the food.

We went behind the big barn toward where the chickens were when Liam said, “Wagon.”
“There are no wagons buddy.” I said. Then I realized he was pointing to a big pile of wagons stacked up in back of the barn. They were all in various states of disrepair, but he saw them and I knew this wasn’t going to go well if he didn’t get a wagon ride now. I made sure no one was watching, went over to the wagon pile and pulled one off the top. It looked okay so I brought it over to Liam. He got a big grin on his face and said, “Wagon!” jumping up and down a couple times.
“Get in buddy.” I said with a sense of relief that he was finally turning a corner mood wise. Liam got in and I began to pull him around. There was dramatic and rhythmic “clunk…clunk…clunk.” I turned around and noticed that one of the back wheels was half gone. But it didn’t seem to bother Liam; in fact, every time it went “clunk” it made him giggle. If he was happy, I was happy. I pulled him around the farm while Angie and Claire waited for the food: People looking over to see what that clunking noise was, Liam giggling, and me pretending like there was nothing wrong with the wagon. We finally got the hotdogs and ate them at the picnic table. Everybody was full and happy again.

We decided to go home and drop off Chester because we had to go to Ikea to get a rug for the living room and a new slipcover for our cheap Ikea couch. Angie’s sister and her family were coming the next day from New Hampshire and our current slipcover was trashed. That was not only our second slipcover, but also our second WHITE slipcover. You would think we would have learned our lesson with white the first time around with two kids (one being Liam who is always covered in something) and a dog, but Angie insisted that white was the way to go because you can take it off and bleach it. My logic was, "why would you want to take the slipcover off every week?" It was not easy, and I calculated that if I charged myself labor at, say, fifty five bucks an hour (I don’t come cheap), that’s an hour minimum per week, project that over a year and we are $2860 into this $350 couch. That’s just not good economics. So I was willing to get another slipcover as long as it wasn’t white.

I believe that the Ikea store was designed by an evil genius. First of all there is only one escalator; fine with Liam, but it only goes up and you can only ride it once as you enter the store; not fine with Liam. Then when you get up to the top you are immediately deposited into a rat maze of really cheap stuff that you must have. You cannot escape until you are able to master the maze and empty your wallet of all but enough to buy your whining kids a bag of Swedish fish candy on the way out. Pure genius!

The strategy was to try to get Liam through the store to the elevator on the other side. Once I found the elevator I bought some time riding it up and down with Liam while Angie and Claire meandered through the store at a leisurely pace. Liam and I spent most of our time on the elevator. We would go down (there were only two floors), and the door would open. At one point a polite older lady gestured to us and said, “Go ahead.”
“Oh no. We’re staying on.” I said.
“Up?” Liam said grinning.
Then the lady looked at us puzzled.
“…We’re going all the way.” I said. “…See where this baby takes us.”
“Up.” Said Liam still grinning.
The lady gave me a confused nod and a smile as she exited.

We found a good cheap rug that would really tie the room together and headed to the warehouse section, which was where they keep the furniture and slip covers. We looked through the slipcovers and they had a new color of which we were previously unaware, DIRT BROWN! That’s the color Liam was most of the time! Finally a slipcover that made sense. The only way it could have been any better is if they had peanut butter and jelly color. Angie pointed out that brown was more expensive than white.
“Yes but think of the money we save on labor.” I said.
“What?”
“Never mind. This one makes sense. Let’s get it.”

So we went home with the new rug and new brown slipcover. I got the rug out of the back of the Jeep and Liam had to help me carry it in so he grabbed an end believing he was bearing some of the weight. As we were carrying it in the house Liam said, “It’s a koont.”
“A what?” I said.
“It’s a koont.”
“Okay.”
Then we went back for the slipcover. Liam had to help me carry that too and once again he said, “It’s a koont.”
“This is a koont too? I said.
“Yeah.”
I don’t know where Liam found that word but I guessed that a koont is anything that comes from Ikea.

We spent the rest of the day getting the house cleaned and ready for Angie’s sister’s visit. We vacuumed and mopped; two activities that really capture Liam’s fascination. Just like escalators and lawn mowing, he can’t get enough of those tasks. We put down the rug and put the new brown slipcover on the couch. I rubbed Liam against it…nothing. It worked perfectly. We gave the kids a bath, read them a story and put them to bed.

Angie and I kicked back on the new koont with a beer. Overall it was a pretty good day.