Mr. Yellow Pants

Our latest movie obsession is Curious George.
Thus, we've been hearing a lot about
George and "Mr. Yellow Pants" lately.
I didn't realize there were so many great one-liners until the little guy started randomly repeating things like:

"I have a date with a monkey!"

and

"Yellow's the new khaki."

Here's to hoping insisting his name is "George" doesn't last long.

What does your child do well?

When we had concerns about our sweet boy's development, the first step was to talk to his pediatrician who had us fill out an M-CHAT and when it looked like we may have valid concerns, he referred us to the developmental pediatrician and psychologist at the state Department of Health's Children with Special Health Care Needs. 

We came prepared to talk about our concerns but instead the fabulous Dr. Carbone started out by asking us, "What does your boy do well?"  This kind of caused us to take a step back and remember that, concerned about him as we were, we'd been blessed with an amazing little boy that has so much good in him.  An obvious thing that came to mind was his love of music.  For the longest time we didn't understand a lot of what he said but we always knew what he was singing thanks to his almost-perfect pitch.  Since he's continued to progress he loves changing up words to songs without missing a beat, usually totally blowing us away!

Here's some of his latest and greatest:

Old McDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o
and on this farm he had a carrot...
with a crunch, crunch here, and a crunch, crunch there...

And on this farm he had a giraffe, e-i-e-i-o
with a tall, tall here, and a tall, tall there...
(I wasn't sure how or if I could use it, but check out this giraffe picture!  Love it!)

I looked out the window and what did I see?
Chi-cken nuggets on the apricot tree!
(It's "supposed" to be 'popcorn popping on the apricot tree')

He may struggle with answering yes and no questions or even looking you in the eye but I swear he's the next Mozart or at least Jason Mraz (because it's all about the wordplay, get it). 

So do tell: What does your child do well?

Sweet Dreams

The holidays have come and gone and I'm embarrassed to say that I still feel like I'm recovering!  Is that lame?!  Maybe by St. Paddy's Day I'll get my house clean...  So as to keep the ball rolling (or give it a much needed push?) I thought I'd share one of our latest ventures.  We have been blessed to have a good friend just down the street from us going through similar things with their cute little boy and she told me about DAN (Defeat Autism Now), doctors treating autism through biomedical approaches.  So, the little guy is getting supplements for things he's deficient in, including B6 vitamins.  I guess getting B6 after being deficient in it makes you have really vivid dreams and it's been entertaining to hear about it from his perspective.  At first he'd wake up too early in the AM wanting "the fire" (furnace), or his baby sister or some random thing and I'm thinking: Seriously?  Where do these things come from at four in the morning?!  Now he's starting to understand dreams more and it's fun for him to tell us "I dreamed about a spaceship" or "...a huge bug" and once he wakes up he wants to go back to sleep to dream some more!  Funny until he gets way frustrated in the middle of the day screaming "I want to dream about Grandma!"  Well, okay, still funny.

Deck the Halls

Thanks for inviting me to the blog, honey!  The holidays have been fun and adventurous so far, especially since the little man finally remembers what they are all about and some of the traditions that make this time special.  Yay!  We were a little worried about how Thanksgiving would go since we've started him on the GFCF diet but, lucky for us, he doesn't eat much in social settings so it wasn't much of a problem.  Dessert was the only tricky part, so we were glad we brought GFCF brownies as a sweet distraction.

The only hitch that Thanksgiving presented was the fact that great-grandma had her gorgeous Christmas tree up at her house.  I was happy to see that the little guy remembered the fun of Christmas trees and lights but he was a bit jealous--he just wanted to "take it home"!  We were not allowed to have the lights plugged in as he tried to find a way to lift the tree to take to the car!  Funny and sad all at the same time.  Needless to say, we put our tree up the next day and, although half the ornaments ended up on the same five branches within 4-year-old reach, it made my heart sing that he wanted to help decorate!

I can't believe that the Christmas season is in full force already!  We thought we'd get our neighbor gifts out early this year, so we set out as a family to share treats with loved ones (and get the load of non-GFCF invaders that were the result of a massive sister-in-law baking day out of our house!).  The kids were in their jammies, all ready to fall asleep peacefully during the drive, Dad was at the wheel, and I was running goodies up to the doors of unsuspecting friends.  Instead of drifting off to sleep, however, little Mr. Scrooge was broken-hearted that our supply of treats was shrinking with each stop.  So I thought it might help to let him help spread some holiday cheer by coming up to the door with me.  Instead of cherishing the smiles on friends' faces, however, he freaked out even more and tried to grab each plate back screaming "want the treats"!  We must have been quite the sight with him trying to wrestle the plate back from the recipient of our love, them a little baffled at what to do, and me trying not to laugh and wishing them a "Merry Christmas!" as I dragged him away!  Looks like we'll be working on sharing/giving kinds of things this month!

Apples and Mustard

One day while eating his lunch of hot dogs and apples, our boy decided to try dipping his apples in mustard. Apparently he really liked it. Now, anytime that we pull out the apple slices, he will have nothing to do with them until he pulls out the trusty bottle of mustard. It must be an acquired taste, because he still shutters after the first bite. We figure if he keeps eating the apples, we'll keep supplying the mustard.

Wedding Fun

Today was our nephew's wedding and we brought the whole family to the reception this evening. It's always an adventure taking young children to a social setting like this. Throw in a young boy with Autism into the mix, and it can be down right exhausting. Luckily, it can also be down right hilarious.

Our first funny moment came when we were standing in line to see the Bride and Groom. As we were talking to our son about how exciting it was that they were married today, he quickly replied "Are they making babies?". Where did that come from??? My brother busted up laughing and wanted to know what we've been teaching our children. What can I say? Sometimes a 4 year old is wise beyond his years.

Another funny moment came when we were walking across a busy street back to our car. We were trying to hurry to make the light and my son was putting up a fight. He didn't want to hold my hand all night, so I just figured that was the problem. But half way across the street I looked down and saw that his pants were around his ankles. Ooops! I quickly picked him up, got to the other side, then covered up his Big Bird undies. Oh, the adventures we have!

Funny thing about Autism

It has been a year since our darling little boy has been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. What a year it’s been! We have had so many ups and downs. We have shed many tears. But surprisingly, we have also shared a lot of laughs. While there is nothing funny about Autism, it has been very therapeutic to find humor in the day-to-day things that our bright 4-year-old boy says and does as he carves his place out in this crazy world. Some of these things are way too funny to keep to ourselves. That’s why we have decided to share them with you!