Joy's Autism Blog

This morning I had to take a quick shower and I asked Sanura to keep an eye on Adrian (he was the only other kid awake) I was brushing my hair and stuff and I heard Sanura yelling (loudly), then the pounding of a thousand elephants (oh I guess that was just my two kids running through the house), and Adrian laughing (hard).

I came to find Adrian was running away from Sanura and he was getting a kick out of her reaction of wildly chasing him and yelling at him.

Sometimes I just have to laugh. I explained to Sanura that he was acting the way he was because of her reaction to it and if she changes her reaction to what he’s doing he would probably stop.

It’s been so very hot here in the last week. We did get a lovely break today…at one point today I looked at our computer where there is a little box telling the current weather conditions and it said 66*. Ahh perfect lovely 66* air blowing in through my windows. It was awesome.

Yesterday though I looked up where my van tells the temperature when I was running errands and it said 101* and the heat index was way up there to like 115* or something disgusting like that. It was like walking through a bowl of soup.

I try hard not to complain about the weather. I always say forget the weather let’s have a good day anyway…after all you only live once and letting the weather ruin half of your days seems like such a waste. I have to admit though, it was hard for me to be positive when it was just so terribly hot.

During the recent heat wave we went to Sonic happy hour for slushies a little too much, I know this because every time we get in the car lately the kids say “Slushies?!” and randomly through the day a child will ask me “Mom, is it happy hour?”

I usually buy smaller packs of cheese because the boys around here have the bad habit of sneaking in the fridge and getting cheese when I’m not looking. I got a pack of cheese a day last week and I had made the kids ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch and was planning to use the remainder of the cheese for cheeseburgers that night for dinner.

I put the cheeseburgers on the grill and was preparing buns and stuff for our dinner. When I went to get the cheese out of the fridge I could not find it, it was gone.

I was not having a good day as it was. I am under a huge amount of stress and pressure right now and it shows. I was getting increasingly irritated, searching everywhere for the cheese. I was whining about it and on the verge of tears (yes I know, ridiculous but women do funny things when they’re stressed)Adrian was standing in the kitchen watching me with a smirk.

I asked him:

“Adrian, did you eat all the cheese?”

and he looked me square in the eye and said:

“Cry about it!”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Adrian has been drawing a lot of pictures that look similar to this:

I figured he’d seen it at the beginning of movies and he seems to really like the little things they play at the beginning of movies so I didn’t think too much of it. Well yesterday he came home from school with this fairly dirty envelope with “MOM” printed on the front in Adrian’s hand writing.

I figured it was a mother’s day note or something because his teacher always has him bring home something for mother’s day. Then I opened it and found this letter:

Oh if only it were that easy buddy!

The worst thing a mom can wake up to…”Mom! (Insert child’s name here) threw up in the bed!” Ugh.

It was Adrian and most of the day for him was not good. He never got sick again the rest the day so I’m hoping it was just something that didn’t agree with his tummy and not a virus that everyone is going to get! He was just grumpy and crying a lot today.

Adrian has been balancing some really defiant and undesirable behaviors with some really cool growth. I have so many stories from the last few days because I haven’t really had much opportunity to write lately. One thing he did on Friday was pretty funny. Sanura was sitting at the computer playing a game and he ran up behind her and said “See??” and she turned around to see him standing there in her pajamas. He laughed so hard and ran off from her. He’s been really enjoying poking fun at his sisters, on Easter morning he took Nevaeh’s Easter basket it and hid it in a cabinet in the bathroom. He thought he was pretty clever for that one too. It’s kind of neat to see him do normal things like pick on his sisters a little bit.

When we were at my mom’s house we were all in the backyard and the kids were playing. Adrian went inside without asking me first so I went in and got him and told he had to ask before he goes inside so I know where he is. A little while later he started to go in and I caught him and said “you have to stay out here with us” and he said “I got to go potty” and I said “alright go ahead” well when he came back outside he had a sucker in hand and I’m pretty sure he did not go potty. A few minutes later he looked at me and said “I got to go potty”…hmm, I’m very suspicious that he was lying about the potty thing so he could go in and sneak candy. My brother offered to take him in to go potty and he said “no” so yeah…kids with autism do indeed lie sometimes. LOL

About the last hour we were at my mom’s house Adrian really started acting up. Throwing things at people, kicking the toys in the yard, sticking his tongue out at me and running away. It was not good. Then today when he was grumpy he refused to get dressed to go pick up Nevaeh from school with me for almost a whole hour and he scratched my arm pretty bad. So we’ll take the good with the bad I suppose!

All in all we had a great Easter weekend and a so-so kinda Monday.

I am doing a walking challenge with some friends this year. My goal is to walk 500 miles this year. In preparation for the challenge I got a walk at home dvd that I could do when I couldn’t get to the gym or get outside due to snow or whatever. I’ve tried it out a few times and there is some of that 1, 2, 3, 4, type counting rhythms throughout the dvd.

The other day I was on the phone with my mom and I happened to walk by Adrian in the living room running in place and saying “I’m exercising! 1, 2, 3, 4! I’m exercising!”

Way CUTE!

Sanura:

As she was dragging Nevaeh by one arm I said, “Don’t drag your sister by one arm, you’re going to hurt her” and she said, ” Can I drag her by two arms?”

We were driving down the road and I saw a guy in a cowboy hat riding a horse. To excite the kids I exclaimed, “Look you guys! A cowboy!” and Sanura said, “I wish my Dad was with us. He would be so excited to see a cowboy!”

Nevaeh:

Standing on the end table, waving her arms around saying, “This is my kingdom! This is my kingdom!”

Nevaeh was walking around with her behind sticking out of her pants and Glen told her something along the lines of covering up her butt and she said “We all gots butts!” and then she started telling Glen she was “going to smash him”

Adrian:

Getting off the bus, looks at me and says “Hi Buddy!”

I asked Adrian if he wanted to sit in the stroller and he wasn’t answering me…which is not uncommon for him and I said “Adrian do you want to sit in the stroller? Yes or no?” and he said “Yes or no!”

And since Lincoln doesn’t talk yet I’ll just share about his hair cut. Lincoln just turned one year old and he’s already had three haircuts. I gave him his first one, a trim around the ears. His second hair cut I took him to the salon for. He was an angel. Sat perfectly still and stared at himself in the mirror. This time he was quite wild. The cutest part was when an upbeat song came on over the speakers and he stood up on my lap and started dancing. Poor stylist was really trying to cut a moving target.

And can you believe Nevaeh got stung by a bee today? Two kids getting stung by bees in the last two weeks. I had the kids at the park this time and Nevaeh came up to me saying ow! and I saw a sting in between her pointer and middle finger. I decided to head home and put some baking soda on it. By the time we got home (only about 1 mile away) she was absolutely hysterical. She was screaming and her face was bright red. I took her straight over to the urgent care clinic. The whole way there she was freaking out. She was flailing all around in her car seat and kicking the back of my seat. She kept screaming “Help me! I need a doctor!” and I was really scared for her. When we got to the clinic she was still crying really hard (and loud!) and they got us right back. They gave her some Benedryl and watched her for about a half hour. Her finger was very swollen and red. After she calmed down she’s been fine the rest of the night.

I’m hoping we don’t have any more run-ins with bees this summer!

I was walking down the sidewalk with Adrian, Nevaeh, and Lincoln taking Adrian into school. We were coming one way and another lady was walking towards us with her little boy and I must admit there may have been a couple similar physical characteristics. Nevaeh starts yelling “Look Mommy, It’s You! Look Mommy, It’s You!” over and over while pointing at the lady. I just hung my head and pretended not to hear her while doing everything I could to avoid any kind of eye contact with my look-alike.

There is just something about looking similar to someone else that is very unnerving. One day when I was going into Walmart I saw a lady going in who had the same coat as me and I felt paranoid the whole time that I was going to get near her and people were going to see that we were Twinkies.

My Dad goes to Florida every year and he usually gets t -shirts. One year he came back with two matching t-shirts, one for me and one for Glen. Well we made it a point to never wear them at the same time because, well, it’s just weird. One day we were out for a walk, a few blocks from the house I looked over and we were not only wearing the same shirt but we were also both wearing dark blue jeans. We had a good laugh the whole way home and I immediately changed the second we got in the door.

So when it seems society does it’s best to get everyone to conform and people with autism are trained to be “normal” their whole life, there is only so far you can take this “normalcy” and “conformity” before it just gets bizarre. To me it’s just all too hilarious but then I have an odd sense of humor so maybe it’s just me.