Watching Signing Time

 
Together.

Anthony Talking

Here's Anthony, talking to me - kind of!

Hair

 
I am really starting to love this hair. With this cowlick to me he seems like a member of the Bay City Rollers or something. He had an okay night, too, except he was up at 5:59 this morning. Last night I put him to bed and I was in his room, singing to him, etc., and he was NUTS. He was sitting up and yelling and flapping his hands around and I thought he would never go to sleep but within five minutes, he had his arms behind his head, he was snoring away. I don't know if we'll ever understand him.

Thursday

 
 
He had an excellent day today at school and at therapy, so that's good. He was up late last night and kind of early this morning so I was worried but it was for nothing. Mike is up with him now, hopefully he is going to sleep and will sleep all night. Isn't he cute?

Tuesday

 
 
He slept well last night, FINALLY. He didn't go to sleep FOREVER and it was making me doubt my whole existence so I had to leave. I think it must have been around 9:00, I checked him at 9:30 and he was fast asleep so I covered him up and I think he slept all night. He seemed tired before but is all wound up now. We are having some friends over this afternoon and I am hopeful that there is no fighting - he is not a good sharer, mostly, but he must do some sharing in school right? Anyway, here he is on Tuedsay.

Monday

 

Tough Guy

 
His collar was bugging him, but we got it straightened out before he left for school. He goes for a full week this week, thank God. We are also going to try to get the letter from his developmental pediatrician to the insurance company so we can get started on what we're going to do. I'm so worried that they're not going to cover *any* of the ABA therapy. I don't have any expectations, though, so at least they won't be dashed.
He is better today, you can see he's not as red. His cheeks get so red (this is to my Mom but anyone can read it) because he wipes his nose and whole face on his arm, my arm, my chest, my legs, Mike's body, the couch, etc., etc. He has very fair skin and it gets marked up so easily. I will never be able to beat him and keep it a secret! :) We put Vicks on his feet last night and plugged in his Vicks thing - it's like a nightlight that also emits Vicks. So maybe that helped? Maybe it was a one day thing? Maybe we are SICK OF WINTER AND IT CAN END ALREADY? On the weather this morning they said it's going to be a high of 31 today, 50 Thursday and then COLD again for the weekend. Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent so I hope Spring is coming.

Sick, again

 

4:30...

 
..is too early to wake up. I agree with him, I could use a nap myself. :) I am just hoping it's not too hard to wake him up to go to therapy later. It's challenging to wake him up and corral Maria at the same time, so wish me luck!

Hair Again

 
Every time I look at a picture of him lately I notice how long his hair is. It's kind of a relief, I forget if I've said. His hair was so wispy thin when he was littler I wondered if he'd ever have real hair and he definitely does now. It makes me feel better about Maria and her non-hair.

He was up this morning at 4:30 rattling that damned door. I went in because I was going to kill him if he woke Maria, so I figured it was the better option. He lay right down but I could tell he wasn't going back to sleep. So I sat in there and tried to figure a way for him to stop doing it. We have to have a door on his room, obviously, and I don't want to buy a new door. I was thinking, maybe a steel door? Maybe a door that we could tie a long rope to and hold the rope in our room so we could snatch the door back when he rattles it? (It was early, what can I say). Then I thought I'll just remove the doorknob and we'll work it from the hook and eye only. I'll just fill it in with cotton or something and put clear moving tape over it. So I'm going to do it today.

Hair

 
Watching Dan Zanes and eating some Saltines. God he is crazy about those crackers lately! I have two boxes, which is good because he hates when we run out of things! :) He's off school today, was off Monday, it's an annoying schedule but what can you do?

To Eastside Dad

This post is for "Eastside Dad", who made an unnecessarily cruel remark about my post from *months* ago when we went to Bouncer Town and the woman at the door was a little insensitive to the fact that Anthony is autistic and freaked out about the hand stamper. Here's the comment (I deleted it):

You're kidding, right? The stamper was an issue? I guess the rules don't apply to you and yours. Get over yourself, my two year old daughter gets her hand stamped with no issues. I'm sorry "precious" is so sensative to....life? You guys need to toughen up, if the stamper is the biggest issue in your life, your doing better than the rest of us.

Eastside Dad - shut the hell up and don't post comments on here anymore. This is a blog that I keep about my son for my family and friends. I have kept it for 3.5 years and have had really no hateful comments in all this time. I assume your two year old daughter isn't autistic? In which case I am, believe me, happy for you, but I would say that you are the one who needs to 'get over yourself'. And I would also look up the spelling of the word 'sensitive', as you seem to not know how it's spelled, you Prince of Irony, you.

Believe me when I say that the hand stamper is not the biggest issue in our lives, nor was it even the biggest issue that we faced that day. We struggle with the same issues as any parent, and we struggle with some other, extra issues, too, since our son is autistic, so we're working on toughening up, believe me. But I don't need some cracker ass bad speller to post on my son's blog to tell me to do it. Later on, Eastside Dad.

School

Anthony is up in the tub and I forgot to take a second picture of him but I want to post and say that we had his assessment today and it went really well - he and Maria were both 'good' and no one had any kind of major hissy, so that's good. He did freak out a little at one point, but one of the therapists was trying to get a reaction out of him and she did!

It seems like it would be really, really good for Anthony. We are going to try to go the insurance route, of course, but man I do not have a good feeling about it. Because Mike is an employee of our federal government, his insurance provider does not have to abide by the mandate for insurance coverage for autism treatment. BUT they do cover some therapy and we're getting a letter from his doctor so we'll see. And otherwise we are just going to take a huge loan on our house - and it's no big deal, really. We were thinking of going to a 15 year mortgage and refinancing and now we just won't. Since we are going to (evidently) have children until we are well into our 50's, there's no point in paying the mortgage off early anyway right? :) We'll know more in a few weeks but we are going to proceed with a refinancing anyway and just decide what amount we borrow here soon.

I told Mike today in many ways, it's like we were built for an autistic child. I mean, obviously NOT my personality, but everything else. I'm so glad that we were so rigid and inflexible about his sleep schedule when he was little because I feel like he really is benefiting from that routine now. Mike is in a position where he can really be home on time, come home for lunch, and not travel a lot, leaving me alone with them. We bought our house with some equity already in it, since I had owned it with my sister, and so now we can afford to borrow more on it and not in a way that will ruin us financially. Anthony is SUPER cute and I swear, everyone seems to like him - and they always comment on how 'happy' he is and really, he is. He's noisy and braying and drives us mad but he is mostly very happy and fun to be around and that, I find, is really working for finding therapists that want to help him.

Now the only thing is that we have to make this work in just one year because we can't keep refinancing the house! I am hoping that in a year's time, hopefully I will have learned more about ABA therapy and maybe I can continue what they do this year, next year, when I am not pregnant (God willing) and don't have an infant and a toddler as well as Anthony, but a toddler and an ... older toddler. We have to really keep the 'early' in 'early intervention' here and strike while the iron is hot. Even with the assessment today I think it will be a month, and since they only have a morning window available for Anthony, he'd have to stop going to school which sort of breaks my heart to think about, so maybe we'd put it off until May? So we have a while to sort out all of our options. But at least this first step went well and we'll just keep moving forward from here.

Monday

 
We're all home for President's Day but we're getting ready to leave for Anthony's assessment at this ABA school. Maria took a short, bitter nap, so we are not expecting much from her but I suppose it's best for them to see us all in our natural habitat. I don't know what to expect from this assessment, I hope we get a clear sign of what we should do. It's a big investment either way, even if the insurance covers it, it's an investment of all of our time since it's so far away. Ugh. Anyways, Anthony slept very well last night and is in high spirits today so I am hopeful.

Spencer Gifts

 
Anthony's OT suggested that I get some kind of toy for Anthony with some kind of fast movement action to it. She thought it might stop him from stimming so much. She has a top that you spin, you actually rub it on a table or something, and it makes these lights inside spin that Anthony really likes. So I've been looking and looking for something but it's harder to find than you'd think. Today Maria and I went to Trader Joe's for some stuff for dinner (and so that Maria could eat like a half a loaf of pretzel bread while we shopped) and I went to Spencer Gifts while I was up near there. I found this lamp that Anthony *really* seems to like but while we were on line, Maria was playing with this parrot keychain that had a tag on it's chest that said "PRESS ME" so I said to Maria, look at the bird, and I signed bird and then I pushed the button that said PRESS ME and you just know that damned parrot said "Squawk! Show me your tits!". Ha. I assured Maria she didn't have to. :)

Our Valentine

 
Dressed in red for his valentine celebration at school today. We sent in little bags with a box of raisins and a little tin of play doh, with Spiderman valentines. The Spiderman valentines came with tattoos but I can't find them so Mike and I are just going to keep them. Ha! Poor Anthony - he had a rough day yesterday altogether, I think, he was a little rough at OT in the afternoon, then he went to sleep just fine and was up at 2:00 for quite a while. I went in there becuase I thought he had turned his light on - it's just his closet light, but since he has no doors in there it gets pretty bright. He hadn't but he was messing with the stepstool part of the potty that's in his room, so he could get up to stuff on his dresser. He seemed tired and I sat in there with him for a while but he was up for maybe an hour or two after I left. I was up, too, my arms kept falling asleep. I think Maria stayed asleep the whole time, so that's nice. Ugh, these nights around here can be crazy, I sometimes think about adding an infant to this mix and I ... well, it's not exactly a laugh, what I do. :)

One More

 

Camera

 
 
 
I think sometimes God sent me this camera or the idea for this blog because I'll tell you what - we have had a BAD day around here - we had a poop incident, the Pop Tart incident, general nuttiness, and I think I can't do this anymore! And then I take these pictures and I think they're so cute and then I feel like, well, at least there's this. At least they look super cute in pictures. :)

Swing

 
 
 
Happy, eventually. See?

Walking Away From Me

 
He'd had it!

See? Mad!

 

Mad

 
He was mad because we were outside in the yard but he did NOT want to be in the yard. In fact, he seemed to want to be anywhere BUT the yard. After a while, as you'll see, he went in the swing and then we went out front for a while and he was good, but at first he was really mad!

Escaping

 
He was running out of the kitchen after unsuccessfully trying to climb up the lazy susan cabinet.

Dreamboat

 
 
His teacher said he had a good day today, she said "they're all good lately!" She said he's doing harder and harder puzzles at school. He also slept well last night. So that's good - God knows when the other shoe will drop. ;)

Love

 
Oh he is so beautiful isn't he? I just think he's gorgeous and sometimes I can feel my heart break with how much we love him. Especially because when he wakes up at 3:20 and rattles that door and wakes up his sister and is all covered in POO by 6:30 when he wakes up for good, I think about it a lot. I think this must be love because I do not want to smack him or yell GO BACK TO BED or SHUT UP. I want him to sleep and rest and feel good. But not today, I guess. The weekends have been HARD around here lately but this week on Oprah I saw a woman who had a flesh eating bacteria and she lost her arms and legs and SHE still has to take care of her two kids so I figure I don't have it too bad. Comparatively. :)