apologies...

sorry i haven't been writing as frequently (actually, some of you might consider this a reprieve...). i've been a bit busy.

aiden had his fourth birthday this past sunday. while it was nice to have the family and family friends over, i can't help but feel that we tend to short change aiden on his birthdays. he's happy and all, he gets to play with his cousins and he gets a whole new set of toys (cars, construction vehicles, trains, wall-e) to play with. but we (i) don't put in as much effort, particularly when compared with what i used to do for willow at the same age. maybe i have less effort to put in...

while i'm making excuses for myself, i could say that our biggest concern since returning home from maui was aiden's "walking pneumonia." well, since employing the antibiotics, it's been a progressive improvement... but there was still a lot of concern, and, on my part, not a little guilt. a little more than midway through our maui trip, lynn kept mentioning that she was concerned that aiden had pneumonia or something. i kept discounting it because aiden's coughing, while frequent and sleep-disturbing, were not productive in the least (a criterion, usually, of pneumonia). still, aiden's listlessness and coughing did concern me, even at that time... but i insisted that all he needed was more rest, and we could continue the trip... upon taking aiden in the following monday, boy was i feeling bad when vince (and subsequent chest xrays) discovered that one of aiden's lung lobes was "solid" with mucus/fluid...

lynn and i actually got into a mild argument this past week. like most things, it was the result of misunderstandings and miscommunication (uncommunicated feelings)... we were still "suffering" through aiden's pneumonia, and at one point, in the wee hours of an anonymous night, aiden woke me up with complaints of congestion. so, as i always did, i took him into the shower with me, hoping the steam would help to break up some of his congestion... while i was in the bathroom, lynn questioned me: "is it alright to take him in there, with his pneumonia?" i think i was still feeling guilty over my lax judgments on aiden's condition, and took lynn's question as another nagging critique, i.e. "are you just doing that to get him to shut up and go to sleep? do you really care whether you are making his condition better or worse?" so i just didn't answer lynn. bad move.

the next day i discovered lynn in a bad mood, without really suspecting why. it was only later that evening that things sort of exploded... (funny how the kids sense things, and try to ameliorate, being on their best behavior, and pointing it out to distract us). during a reluctant disclosure session, i told lynn how i was feeling guilty about the whole thing, and that i thought lynn believed that i "didn't really care about aiden, that i was always just doing the expedient thing." and since i carried that thought around, i was feeling like a wounded animal, and any question or critique from lynn felt like salt... i confessed that, honestly, i wasn't sure of myself half the time, and that i hoped i was being a good father and doing the right thing, but the whole pneumonia thing made me wonder... lynn, half to tears, reassured me that she had never once thought that i "didn't care." she told me that i was a good father. she told me that i just needed to communicate more, so that the two of us would at least be on the same page when dealing with our kids...

all in all, a "good" argument. we rarely argue, lynn and i, but at least when we do, it ultimately ends in some kind of "compost session" that makes our relationship deeper and richer.

***

today, i finished my third assignment for my online special education course. it was supposed to be a "legal synthesis" on some topic from nclb (no child left behind) or idea 2004 (individuals with disabilities in education act). my topic was "research based instruction." this was a phrase coined by the authors of nclb, and reflects the bias or assumption of nclb as a whole, that "science" can solve our educational achievement gaps. (i can just hear double-yuh saying it: "why don't we throw some science at it. make things all scientific.")

it was funny how neatly and nicely this assumption was invalidated. "reading recovery," a remedial reading program designed in new zealand and currently held in high regard internationally, was endorsed by the us doe because it met the standard of "effective scientifically based peer reviewed" intervention methods. and yet: science is, ultimately, a human produced cultural phenomenon, and humans are self-serving and fallible creatures. turns out that the "science" backing "reading recovery" had been skewed in its favor. although "reading recovery" had been touted as a remedial reading program for the lowest performing students at the end of grade one, apparently, several studies had discounted these very students (approximately 25-40% of the subjects) to make the end results "look good."

so much for "science."

my next paper for the online course is to be a "now and then" paper on some topic in special education. haven't even begun to think about what i'm going to write about, but i'm thankfully very ahead of schedule. i hope to get all assignments for the online course done so that next week, when i start my second summer course, i'll have a clean slate...

***

the "anatomy trains" book is awesome. i'm almost done with it, although it's one thing to read a book, and another thing entirely to "embody" the information. myers draws from so many sources, and has so many insights, it's hard to distill it into something concretely practice-able. but i will definitely try.

one thing i'd like to explore (again) is feldenkrais and "somatics" and other movement awareness therapies. i think it would be fun to explore the subtle neuromuscular connections within me... just don't know if i can apply this to my patients...

i have vague ideas about increasing my lung capacity via movement and breath awareness... somehow i am hoping it will make me some kind of better singer. AS IF. i think even with enough air, my vocal chords are now faulty instruments, with only daring approximations for certain pitches. but i can dream, can't i?

***

well. sorry. got to go.