Head

 
Oh, Anthony. He's outside here, in his railroad train pajamas from Halloween. It was super gorgeous here today, they were outside quite a bit. I think maybe he's hitting his head less? He seemed kind of fever-y this afternoon, but he took some Tylenol (thank GOD he is taking it again) and perked up before bed. I will have to keep an eye on him tomorrow. Today is sweet Mike's birthday and he spent it with these children - he took Anthony and Maria for a walk or two, and gave Anthony his bath and bedtime routine like usual. I tried to get Anthony to tell him Happy Birthday, but no dice. Maybe next year!

Snack

 
BOY is he hungry when he comes home from school! He's been eating well at school, too, and he has a snack at 2:30, but I think he likes to eat with abandon here at home. He loves to carry around the big giant thing of pretzels that I get at Costco, and he loves to snatch them away from Maria. He will share with Mike or me, but not her. She's a pain, too, though, so I don't blame him. She only wants things that he has. She does love him, though. She gave him a big kiss tonight when he was lying on the floor so I could change his diaper. "Muah!" she says. Later, Mike asked her if she wanted to go downstairs (he usually takes them both down there so the baby can nurse and be settled down) and she went over to Anthony, right away - "Downstairs? Downstairs?" He went, but not with her.

He is going to start going to his old preschool one day a week, starting the week after next. He's going to get occupational and speech therapy there, so we decided that it would be best if he went from a classroom setting, instead of just dropping him off for therapy. Then he'll be home with us one afternoon a week. We'll see how it goes. I think it will be okay, even though his ABA people seem unsure about it. We're not married to it, either way. If it seems to not be working well for him, we'll stop. The possibilities are truly endless, we could do ABA at home, if we needed to, although I'd rather not. Hopefully it will just work out, we'll see. He is doing very, very well. Monday I went to get him and, with some prompting, he said "Hi! Hi Mommy!" So that's promising.

Walk?

 
Mike and Anthony, going for a walk. He had a pretty good week, even though he was up every damned night. It can be very upsetting to listen to him in there. I try to ignore it and even if I listen, he does sound like he's enjoying himself, most of the time, but man. It's difficult. I worry about what will happen when we put Vernoica in with Maria, what if she can't sleep through that noise? But it's stupid to worry, I'm sure it will all change up here soon. We are going to school Halloween party today, it will be our first social outing with Anthony's schoolmates. I'm looking forward to it and I don't have that normal feeling of dread when we go somewhere, because all the kids will be autistic, all the parents will be parents of an autistic child, and I won't have to worry about Anthony seeming so different. Because he won't be!

4

 
He got a 4 today, in the morning and the afternoon. So that's better! He also fell asleep on the way home, so he is now upstairs at 9:30, banging the hell out of his room. Oh well. We all had dinner together tonight, he ate pizza and about a million grapes and ginger cookies. He ate his whole lunch today. BOY this is boring, huh? Boring is good, for now.

2

 
Anthony got a '2' this morning AND afternoon in school, a '1' is the worst and a '5' is the best. So. Not great. He seems tortured, to me, a lot lately. But just now when we were outside, he was running and tripped and I said "be careful, Anthony" and he said "Careful!"

He did eat a whole hot dog for lunch today, which was good, as he hasn't been eating much of anything. We have to get him to eat something besides hot dogs as his only source of protein, he's off cheese right now. It's amazing how annoying things are to me, now. Like he has forever liked this cheese stick, made by Sargento, it's a colby and jack cheese or something. He doesn't like other cheese sticks, just this one. But a few weeks ago, it started sucking - I don't know what the hell they've done, it's just bad - it's hard and ... bad. So now he hates it and I have no hope, it would seem, of him liking any cheese ever again. I knew a mom from Anthony's old school whose son would only eat sour cream and onion potato chips and I used to think, well, at least he eats cheese. And green beans. And kosher hot dogs! But he's eating less and less. I hope, like everything else, it's a phase. We're making a better effort to sit at the tables for meals, all of us, and it's going well. He is up to eight + minutes at the table. Maybe next will come a more refined pallate. :)

God Knows

 
I don't know what he was looking at here, probably Maria. She drives him nuts and I assume someday it's going to be good for him, but right now I think he just thinks what we all do - QUIET DOWN, Maria! :)

Sunday

 
Anthony is having kind of a fussy day today. He's always out of sorts a little bit on the weekends, but we can all get back to it tomorrow, I told him! In the meantime, it's a beautiful day, so we're trying to get outside as much as possible.

Autism is not the boss

Here's an interesting website for friends and family to peruse. I just found out about it on Twitter and have been reading it.