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A snapshot look at Father’s Day 2012

June 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Steffan had to work through much of this Father’s Day, so by the time he got home, it was high time for a LOT of time to be spent on pounces, hugs, tickles and squishes…

This is one of those incredibly awesome photos that didn't quite get taken.

This one is in focus, but of course, not quite the same...

A giggly collapse after tickling each other. :-)

They were pouting at me. Pouting at me to try getting me to agree that it was fair for them to team up and tickle ME. Ash wouldn't do it until I agreed that it was fair, but he had no objections to Daddy's plan to pout (or in Steffan's case, make his "Sad Turtle Face") at me until I gave in.

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Happy Father’s Day 2012

June 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

Happy Father’s Day to ALL the true Daddies I know, including surrogate daddies, foster daddies, adoptive daddies, step-daddies, would’ve-been-daddies, trying-to-be-daddies, daddies-in-the-making (pregnancy totally counts, if you’re both taking the right care), daddies who lost their children, daddies lost *by* their children, critter-daddies, in-loco-parentis daddies, fathering spirits, single moms and gay moms who act as daddy too, and whichever other varieties I inevitably forgot while writing this.  HUGE bonus points go special needs daddies.  Bonus points also go to daddies who are true, rockin’ daddies, despite having had only varying degrees of negative example, from their own fathers.

Most of all, happy Father’s Day to Steffan, that wonderful brand of Daddy who earns the title and still always strives to do more and better with it!

If you keep clicking on this photo until you see it at the largest size I could load here, you won't lose QUITE as many of the cute details.

Every year, I try to make Steffan a collage for Father’s Day, of photos of him and Ash that have been taken since the LAST Father’s Day. (You can see a few previous ones — the first three, actually — HERE.  Unfortunately, there are some years for which the creation or retrieval of said collages was/is made more difficult by computer issues.)  I consider it a very good thing that it’s always hard to choose only as many as will fit. I also try to include a quote at the bottom which reflects something he’s heard a lot of, that year.

Ash and I are so blessed to have Steffan as his Daddy! I can’t imagine doing this without him, or with anyone else.

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Autism, literacy, Halloween and hilarity

May 8, 2012 By 1 Comment

This is the Scarecrow costume design sketch that Ash did on the Magnadoodle. By the way, those aren't extra arms, that's straw sticking out.

There’s a tradition within the delightful (especially for anyone who grew up on Calvin & Hobbes and/or was a sometimes “challengingly” bright child and/or has ever worked in a school) comic strip Frazz, by Jeff Mallett.   The tradition of which I speak is that one of the main and recurring characters of the strip — a young boy named Caulfield (yes, CAULFIELD) — plans his Halloween costume each year around a literary figure, which the staff of his school are challenged to be literate enough, themselves, to guess.

Well, Ash isn’t quite there yet, but he is planning on ending his two-year Halloween run as a dragon — it’s shocking, I know! — and dressing up next Halloween as The Scarecrow, from The Wizard of Oz….which was a book we got him last Christmas and which he read shortly thereafter.  (We got the classic version of the movie from the library for him, on the heels of that.)  Perhaps I should provide a little more context for this phenomenon-of-sorts that leads to the bit with the hilarity.  See, we got the book because a like-new copy found at a thrift store for the price of spare change, was too good to pass up, and we thought, well, if Ash wasn’t ready for it then, he would be soon.  Not only was he ready, but he ate it up.  I got to prove to his teachers that he had reading comprehension skills they never would otherwise have had reason to believe he had, by having him do his reading log on the book, and having him answer questions like what The Cowardly Lion did that was brave.  He loved the story, he loved the characters, and he was engaged by their personalities and their plight….we had to “pretend” our way through him interacting with all of them, multiple times, after he was done with the book.  The Scarecrow, in particular, attracted his interest.  In fact, that character completely changed Ash’s perspective on face paint, which previously distressed him to even look at, let alone consider having ON any part of him.  I’m not sure what it was about the way that character’s makeup was done, but after seeing the movie (after seeing the illustration on the cover of his copy of the book), he was very enthusiastic about wanting to try having face-paint on him.  He even followed through with the professed intention, when Easter came, as a way of starting to get used to the sensation.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow.  He insisted (and has yet to change his mind, despite things like a more recent love affair with the How To Train Your Dragon series of books) that he wanted to be Scarecrow for next Halloween.  I, “Need to make sure that he has the floppy hat with the point,” and that I, “Paint [his] face yellow-that-turns-into-[his]-neck with the brown mouth and brown triangle nose and black eyebrows” — (actually, he wants to try putting on some of this face paint himself) — and, “Make him the blue shirt with the rope belt, and the brown pants, and [he] needs boots for all that walking on the road,” and oh yes, “A crow so that [he] can pretend to try to scare it, and be silly.”  I must also be sure to not forget to make him some fake straw out of yarn, so that it can, “Stick out of [his] feet and hands and shirt and brains.”  Just in case he wasn’t clear enough, he drew me a costume design sketch on his Magnadoodle.  Early on when he was first going on with me about this idea, I asked him why Scarecrow was his favorite character.  He told me, “Scarecrow is my favorite because he keeps wanting more brains so he can get smarter and help his friends.”  Allrighty then.  I’ll take this as another one of those times when he shows remarkable empathy for a character, shows self-awareness through what he casually relates to and admires.

It doesn’t end there, though.  Oh no, he’s got it allllllll worked out.  Although I keep trying to damage-control the fact that it’s hard enough for his Daddy to get off work on Halloween, and the chances are next-to-nill-would-be-generous that the entire, semi-extended family will not only go trick-or-treating with us, but also dress in costumes of his choosing….that’s just what he thinks should and hopes will happen.

Already once before, Ash told me about what character from the story, he has assigned to what family member.  Today, he brought it all up again, and I got him to provide explanations for why he chose each match.

  • He should be The Scarecrow, “Because he likes him best because he wants brains to be smarter.”  (Yes, of course we talked again about how Scarecrow, just like him, was very smart….he just had to find the right ways to show people that.)
  • I should be the Wicked Witch of the West, “Because then [I] could pretend [I was] riding on a broom, which would be fun and wouldn’t hurt [my] leg so much.”  Also, he thinks, “It would be funny for [me] to pretend to be evil and chase [him].”
  • Daddy should be the Tin Woodman, “Because he is kind.”  (That should get extra, delighted attention from those readers of mine who know the long- and much-used nickname I gave Steffan 15 years ago, and the derivative linguistic meaning thereof.  But if you do….shush, it doesn’t belong here, as it has been used in too many other places.)
  • Uncle S- should be the Cowardly Lion, “Because of the mane.”  It would seem — no surprise here — that Ash does not agree with his uncle about the notion that all men should have hair as short as possible.  For reasons I won’t get into here, I went from finding it very amusing that Ash picked that character for this uncle (who is probably the most concerned with issues tinging on machismo, of anyone in the family), to finding it rather satisfying that Ash would just love to see him with a big ol’ mane of hair.
  • Auntie L- should be Glinda, “Because then she can have kids being her Munchkins.”  Oooh, that’s another loaded one, even if he’s just vying for a cousin again.
  • Uncle A- should be The Great And Terrible Oz, “Because he would dress us as a giant, green head on a throne.”  Well….yup.  If anyone in the family was going to think it sounded like a perfectly enjoyable idea to dress up as a giant green head on a throne, it would be A-.  Ash nailed that one.
  • Last but not least, “Grandma should be Dorothy and Grandpa should be Toto because they live together and are companions just like Dorothy and Toto are.”

Oh boy.  When I’m not fretting over how to even get all three of us dressed to Ash’s satisfaction, I’m still cracking up over all that.  To be honest, this was also one of the only things I had to post that didn’t involve editing and uploading a ton of photos. ;-P

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A first experience dying Easter eggs

April 12, 2012 By 2 Comments

About a week before Easter, we had a couple of “narrow escapes” on behalf of the fact that Ash felt the need to “check” the eggs in the fridge, “To see if they were ready to be dyed for Easter yet.”  Obviously, he was going to have his first experience dying Easter Eggs this year, and that was that.  Naturally, this became a complicated thing for me, as much because I’m me, as because he’s him.  I didn’t have time to seek out a non-perishable alternative that could be decorated in the same way (yes, I know there are many ways to decorate eggs, but he wanted to try DYING them), the smell of hard-boiled eggs has always been an immediate and severe gag trigger for me, and I also really, really, reaaaaalllllllllly was hoping to be able to keep Ash’s first-ever Easter Eggs, too.  So, I taught myself how to blow-out eggs, and practiced until I was confident that I could do it without breaking them.  (In the end, with the help of a thumbtack to make the holes and a nasal bulb for the blowing, I could have an egg sitting on our drying rack in about 2 minutes.)  Since Ash would want to share the activity with us, Steffan and I could dye the eggs that had already been blown out — since we are more capable of handling them without breaking them — and Ash would dye the at-least-significantly-less-fragile raw eggs, and I’d blow them out afterwards.  It’s not as if we wouldn’t be right there on hand to help anyway, so that would be good enough when it came to any potential mishaps with the raw eggs.

The evening before Easter, Ash got his chance…

I showed Ash more or less how these things work, and then he gave it a go by himself.

I had actually put him in one of his plentiful white undershirts, intentionally, just to find out how much dye ended up on it. Can you believe that it remained completely white?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, so we were a little surprised that we didn't have any broken raw egg emergencies.

A watched egg never dyes?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting for eggs to get to the color you want, is haaarrrrrddddd!

After a little while, Ash no longer had the motor control to handle things by himself, so he "helped" me follow his instructions when it came to what to do with the eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These were Ash's eggs, drying a bit after their first round of being colored. Note that he decided to make them all various shades of blue, green, and purple.

This was the first egg that was almost completely done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following are the eggs that Ash made this year — with a little motor help, but no artistic guidance — his first-ever dyed Easter Eggs.  Are they not GORGEOUS?!  I am so glad I planned things so that they could become keepsakes.  At this point I just have to find my spray-shellac, give them a few coats, and then use bead caps over the ends to protect the holes from being snagged and chipping further.  They did lose some of their vibrancy because of having to be blown-out AFTER being dyed, unfortunately.  It wasn’t being cleaned/rinsed that did it, it was stray egg that got on the shell while being blown.  You know how being “egged” is horrible for cars, houses, etc?  Well, that’s because egg is pretty darn good at stripping surface coloring.  :-P   I’d forgotten about that.  Next year, perhaps I’ll experiment with shellacking the dried, dyed eggs BEFORE blowing them out.

Blue/Green/Purple Egg -- View 1

Blue/Green/Purple Egg -- View 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue/Green/Purple Egg -- View 3

Blue Marbly Egg -- View 1

Blue Marbly Egg -- View 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Marbly Egg -- View 3

This one was a really rich, mossy, loamy, forest-shadows green, before it faded.

 

This one had a kind of turquoise/green/yellow ombre fade thing going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one reminded me of a piece of turquoise.

This one....was just sort of Robin's-Egg-Blue. Ash had run out of spoons for involved dye jobs, so a blue egg was good enough for him!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The morning after Easter, Ash told me that he’d dreamed about dying eggs.  I guess this tradition is a keeper.  ;-)

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Easter 2012

April 12, 2012 By 2 Comments

Last year Easter was ON Ash’s birthday, and Steffan still wasn’t allowed to take the day off.  I had staged an egg hunt in the living room (see photo HERE), and that was about that, for what we could do for the holiday.  This year, Steffan has a boss that tries harder to remember — and accommodate — the fact that my husband is a person with a life and a family, and not just a hard worker in a cruddy job.  (♪♫ And the choirs of angels sing! ♫♪)  Despite the fact that April currently has more events, occasions, appointments and meetings than days, Steffan has had his work schedule arranged in a dysfunctional way that actually allows him to have the time off he needs for them, instead of a dysfunctional way that doesn’t.  This is a considerable relief, as well as cause for celebration!!  (I mean, Steffan even manages to have a day off for the family birthday party, for Ash’s actual birthday, AND for Ash’s birthday party!)  And after a day when Ash had a show to do, followed by an Endocrinologist appointment for me, followed by a doctor’s appointment for him….following a day when a doctor’s appointment for him was followed by a Rheumatologist appointment for me and then his show….a day off together that was only being spent on Easter, was going to come as a celebratory relief anyway!

There was another photo in which Ash's new hat wasn't falling over his eyes, but he happened to have his arms outstretched in a "Ta Da" gesture, and it looked like he was trying to crucify himself. Just....no.

Steffan is Cathoic, so Easter Sunday started with church.  Now, normally if Ash and I accompany Steffan to church, it’s to a special GLBT & Friends mass held in the evening.  That mass has the benefit of being smaller, being quieter, being more personal and informal, and being entirely comprised of people that are so happy we’re willing to let them get to know our son, and let him get to know them, that they are more than happy to be extra understanding of his special needs.  (It’s quite sad that that’s the way it is….but that’s the way it has been.)  This, though….this was a standing-room-only, 9am Easter Morning, gospel-style mass.  Honestly, Ash held up pretty well.  It might actually have helped that, with nowhere else to fit, we ended up being herded into the front pew, where few people automatically go no matter how friendly the church.  Being in the front put us closer to the loud music, but it did allow him to watch the amusing antics of the man at the piano, as well as randomly get smiled, winked and waved at by the Pastor, as well as a member of the choir that knew us.

I have to say, too, that I am ever impressed by this church.  I mean, it’s not every Roman Catholic church that a spiritually eclectic woman can show up at on a High Holy Day, and not feel offended by or at least uncomfortable with a regrettable chunk of the proceedings.  I mean, the Pastor is such an avid and outspoken supporter of….well, the same kinds of things we are….that we sometimes find ourselves wondering how he has managed to not get stomped on by Vatican hierarchy, yet.  Eniways, there were only two bits that made me twitch a little, instead of cheer.  One was a direct bit of required liturgy straight from Paul, in which the Jewish tradition of Passover was used as a metaphor for purging yourself of the sinfulness of Judaism.  Paul’s so good at that kind of thing.  The other was a line from the homily in which it was noted that eggs have been a symbol of Easter for hundreds of years, and went on from there….but the part of me that knows about things like “pagan” traditions older than Christianity, and Eostre, and eggs coming into things as a fertility springtime symbol….well, it got a bit fidgety, and wished that among the many religions the Pastor made a point of including in his goodwill, he’d thought to include those “New Age” ones that are actually really, really Old Age.  Ahh well.  It’s a learning process, at at least his mind is far more open to lessons, than most.

Overall, since Ash handled things well, it turned out to be an enjoyable Mass.  One cute moment thrown in was when the Pastor surprised a child congregant with a 4th birthday cake, and having everyone sing the birthday song to him.  (He also snuck over to Ash afterwards, and whispered to him about how he knew HIS birthday was coming up soon, too, and he hoped to be able to do something to celebrate it.  As it happens, our annual mass family birthday party thing is this coming Sunday, which is also the GLBT & Friends Anniversary Mass, so the Pastor, as well as some of our friends from that, are probably going to stop by the party on the way there.)  Another highlight was watching the baby who got Baptized — a baby who looooooooved bathtime, and considered water dribbled on his head to be close enough to provoke a lot of giddy arm-waving, drooling grins, and hiccupy giggles….also a baby who apparently passes out cold, mid-giggle, several seconds after bathtime is over.  ;-)   It was pretty adorable.  And of course, Ash loved getting to wear his own special outfit that let him be dressed-up like the grown-ups.  Steffan and I both wore burgundy-and-black-based dressy stuff, so that we’d match Ash, and we drew a lot of attention that Ash quite enjoyed.

There was an egg hunt for the kids after the Mass, but it just involved some eggs scattered loosely over a small patch of lawn, and by the time we’d spent a few minutes taking the pictures Ash wanted, all the eggs had been collected.  Excess candy was offered to us for Ash, but it’s not really a candy thing for him, it’s an issue of the fun of the hunt, so we thanked them and told both them and him that I’d just give him an Easter Egg hunt in our yard.  He wanted to change into a bunny for the egg hunt anyway.

I didn't get around to making face paints, so I just used some of my eyeliner to give him a bunny nose and whiskers. His re-used froggy Easter basket was still waiting, full of things like filled eggs, so we just did the hunt with empty eggs I had left over, glued together from broken ones, and a basket that the parent of another child in his class, had given out.

Doing the egg hunt in the front yard worked out rather well.  We got through one round of him finding the eggs after I hid them, and then N- the neighbor’s boy, and a young cousin of his, noticed us and came over.  Ash showed them the basket of eggs he had found, and they decided to get involved.  We spent the next hour or go getting into switched-up teams, and taking turns hiding the eggs and finding them, in different combinations.  Ash was re-introduced to the game of “Hot / Cold” during this activity.  Now, our front yard does not make for a very challenging egg hunt despite the need for mowing (and our back yard still has piles of deer droppings all over it), but everyone had a good time anyway.  In fact, N- later whispered to me, “You know, I did not think it would be so much fun to play the Easter Egg Hunt game.  I was just doing to to be nice to Ash.  But actually, it was a lot of fun!  I had a really good time doing that.”  Of course, as the mommy of a sensory kid, I also have to note with pride that Ash kept those ears-on-a-headband and that almost-face-paint on, the whole time.

He's just as giggly as a bunny as he is as a boy.

Ash's method of hiding eggs is to toss them around randomly. Then even he doesn't know where they are. ;-)

After we’d used up our steam for finding eggs, N- and his cousin wanted to know if Ash would like to come to the park with them and play “soccer” — which really meant taking turns trying to show off how far they could kick or throw a soccer ball.  That itself was amusing because N- in particular wanted to show off for Ash, but N- has only a smidge more athletic prowess than Ash does….and Ash doesn’t really have any.  Still, it all worked out well enough for them.  N- and his cousin were eventually ready to move on from there to the playground, still with Ash, but Ash was wearing out between his continued recovery and the excitement of the day, so I thanked them and excused us, so I could take him home to rest for a bit.

"Daddy, wake up! I'm pretending to be the Easter Bunny and I found and hid and found all the eggs, so now you have to see what I gave me!"

Easter goodies left under the Easter card that Ash had made the Easter Bunny.

After a bit of a breather, it was finally time to discover what the Easter Bunny had left him.  I’d covered the area with a blanket, earlier, because I knew if he got distracted by it before church, things would not go smoothly.  When the great unveiling occurred, Ash found that under the card that he’d made for the Easter Bunny (and mind you, I had just suggested making an Easter picture….it was Ash’s idea that it was meant to be a card to be left for the Easter Bunny — we’d never put much fuel into the EB myth, but he’d picked it up at school), was left a bunch of goodies for him.  The EB had filled his old froggy Easter basket that we’d left out.  There were Easter/Spring-y pencils, since he enjoys choosing between thematic pencils whenever he does his homework.  There were two brother-bunnies, both small and soft and otherwise identical, but one with blue fur, one with purple fur.  The EB must’ve heard about his interest in matching up his stuffed animals into likely genetic as well as emotional families.  There were a few shiny plastic eggs, one filled with a few sour-sugar-covered jellybeans to try (in a tiny ziplock bag, so they wouldn’t spill all over the floor when he opened the egg), one filled with a new red wiggle worm to replace the one that broke, and the rest filled with animal stickers of that variety where if you tilt them, the picture changes.  Ash can’t get enough of looking at animals, after all.  There were 3 small chocolate bunnies (he gets to eat half of one of them, if he first eats a significant quantity of something healthy he doesn’t normally consume a significant quantity of).  There was also one of those gel-and-air-filled sensory fidget squishies, shaped like a yellow chick, that had an LED ball inside it that flashes colors for 15 seconds or so, after you whack it.

There was also a DVD of “Pete’s Dragon” from our friend Jessica.  On top of that sat this year’s traditional bunny, which actually looks a bit like it might be the baby of the bunny featured in that linked post.  There was also a fabric flower with a bendy-stem, from us.  I’d thought of getting him a blue flower mylar balloon for Easter, since he enjoys them so much.  I’d also thought of getting him some manner of blue flower, for his school performance.  Since I didn’t have the opportunity to get that far, I reconsidered the balloon plan, and decided to get this sort of blue flower, for Easter, instead.  Now it can be a (somewhat) permanent prop for his imagination play — whether he’s acting out a more elaborate story in which a flower is featured somewhere, reflecting on the number of times he’s come across a reference that people often give flowers as a token of affection, or merely pretending that he can smell flowers.

This is the Easter card that he made the Easter Bunny.

Oooh....all kinds of good stuff in there!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can't see it in-frame, but Ash is holding up the DVD triumphantly.

Ash is "smelling" his flower. Just take his word for it.

Those stickers are pretty cool, and it hasn't even factored in yet that they are stickers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chick glows!

The chick's head kind of goes BLORP, when squeezed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magic Wiggle Worms. $6 at the zoo gift shop, $1 at DollarTree.

After a while of playing with his new things — by the way, the chick is no longer capable of going BLORP, although it does still light up — Ash settled down to watch Pete’s Dragon, while Steffan made ham for dinner.  Specifically, pieces of ham were grilled up in a base of orange juice and cinnamon.  Ash likes ham, but has never had it coated with anything before.  He ate it anyway!

Under all of the circumstances, he was allowed half a chocolate bunny for dessert. He kept making it hop to his mouth. Gee, and as a kid, I wasn't sure which made me feel worse....going straight for the head, or torturing it by eating up from the feet.

And that, my friends, was Easter.  Well, aside from the bit where the evening before, Ash dyed eggs for the first time…!

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St. Patrick’s Day, 2012

March 17, 2012 By 2 Comments

Ash watches, through the conveniently located bubbles, as his bath water turns green.

Last Thursday, Steffan put out this little, “stone-cast” style statue of St.Patrick that he’d found at a thrift shop a while back.  He asked Ash if he knew who it was.  Nope.  He asked Ash if he could recognize what the man was holding.  Nope.  He told him to think about how it would be green, if it wasn’t a statue.  (It is a shamrock.)  Nope.  It relates to the holiday that’s coming up on Saturday….

“Ohhhhh!” said Ash, “It’s a statue of a LEPRECHAUN!”

Nope. ;-)

Steffan then went on to try some clarification.  He told Ash that it was Saint Patrick, the man that the holiday was named after.  They looked up “saint” in Ash’s dictionary, but he was still a bit confused, so Steffan paraphrased things into a Saint being someone who loves other people, and God, above and beyond the level most people do.  Of course, the history lesson gets a bit more complicated, care of the fact that what St.Patrick is most famous for, directly relates to how he most certainly didn’t love ALL people.  Y’know, like the “snakes”….aka those pesky, Nature-worshiping Druids. *ahem*  Eniways, as he was unsure how to go about the next chapter in that lesson-book, as it were, Steffan left things there for the time being.

Naturally, that backfired in an amusing way.

Just so you know, “Saint Francis was a saint because he loved all the animals and was really nice to them.” (We have a small, St.Francis birdbath in the yard.)  Also….“Saint Patrick was a saint because he loved all the leprechauns.”

Can you tell that Ash is a bit leprechaun-obsessed, this year?

Last night he told me that today we’d need to look for rainbows, because he had to catch a leprechaun so that it could tell him where to find the pot of gold.  What did he plan to do with the gold?  Was he going to use it to buy something?  No, he thought maybe he was going to keep all of it, because it was shiny.  (What?  MY little dragon?!)  I told him that in most of the Lore, leprechauns don’t exactly appreciate being trapped by people who want to take their gold, and tend to use magic tricks to get away and teach the humans a lesson.  Did he think it was a good idea to get in trouble the day before his friend’s birthday party, because he wanted to take something from someone else and keep it all for himself?  “Welllll you’re right,” he conceded, “I guess I’ll give one of the gold to A- for her birthday then, and the leprechaun will see that I am nice.”

Mmmmyeah, we’ll work on it.

Today’s non-stop adventures — which began a bit before 7am and after I’d had only two hours of sleep (possibly because those were the first two hours in which Ash actually slept quietly, himself, or possibly because at that point my body simply didn’t care what I thought my Mommy duties were) — have had several holiday-themed things scattered through them.  A bath in green water….care of one yellow and then one blue color fizz tab (a Christmas present previously featured here)….was the extra incentive for staying still through a hair trim.  Ash got to wear a new shirt I made him last night.  (He asked me to surprise him with a special shirt, the way I had for Valentine’s Day.  Thank goodness for DollarTree t-shirt selections, and iron-on printer paper!)  A couple of hours later, the shirt needed to go into the laundry as the result of Ash’s sudden and overwhelming urge to do a bouncy dance while in the middle of drinking (occasionally, I miss the days when he hadn’t yet graduated from AutoSeal cups, to standard ones)….but he accepted the temporary substitution of a far more boring, green t-shirt, given the fact that the stripy green shirt he’d picked out himself recently was in the laundry since he wore it to school yesterday, and his green sweater (which was another thrift store find and originally grey, but mommy sees 100% cotton and thinks, “Dye!”) was being saved for later.  I also had to promise to wash today’s special t-shirt, tonight, so he could go back to wearing it tomorrow, when he went to his friend’s party.

This is the graphic I put together, for his shirt.

Let’s see….oh, there was also listening to some Celtic music of a few styles, dancing along with (our old VHS of this performance of) Riverdance, innumerable rainbow-checks, multiple confirmations that, yes, he was doing a VERY GOOD JOB today, and was definitely earning his Leprechaun Fizz treat tonight, so far…

There was a holiday-prompted inchstone, too!  For the very first time ever….and not for lack of opportunities….Ash pushed through his sensory issues on behalf of his interest, and had his face painted!  (Really, it was the first time he had his SKIN painted.  He’s had the option of having something done on his hand before, if he didn’t want it on his face.)  He wanted a shamrock on his cheek, and he wanted it to be a four-leaf lucky one, and he wanted it to be green, and he wanted it to sparkle, and he didn’t just want it to be a sticker, either.  Alllllllllrightythen.

Ash shows off his shamrock.

I didn’t have any face paints anyway because he’s only recently changed his outlook on them, so I took a toothpick (he warned me to be careful and gentle, because it looked sharp, and then accepted that, since he’d called my attention to the issue, there’d be no problem) and used it to draw the shape on him with green glitter nail-polish.  Then I colored it in with DollarTree green eyeshadow, put a little clear nail-polish topcoat over it, used the hair dryer on low to dry things, and….there you had it.  An improvised job, but it made him happy.  He did an excellent job standing still and not touching it.  Actually, it stayed on his cheek until he asked me to remove it, at bedtime!

Later, we'd make corned beef. At this moment, it seemed we had a little ham. ;-)

Of course, once the special shirt I’d made him had to be swapped for a plain green shirt, he had the extra face-painting-incentive of needing to replace the lucky shamrock….after all, he was aiming to catch a leprechaun!  I mean, he’d been talking for a while about how I was going to paint a shamrock on his cheek, but now he really had to go through with it.  Blessedly, he also kept up his enthusiasm for this latest bit of magic, all day, without ending up upset that it came to naught.

I guess next year I need to be one of those parents that rig something for this holiday, too.  Maybe I’ll find a pretty, prismatic suncatcher, and have him help me hang it so that the little rainbows it makes on the wall, will lure a leprechaun over.  Then, when Ash isn’t looking, I can leave little glittery green footprints and an “accidentally dropped” gold coin.  Hmmm….yes, that could work.

Ok, not QUITE Irish. A lot closer than most of the Irish-for-a-day in the USA, though. I thought about putting something more like this on his shirt, but then I had flashbacks to the years when complete strangers, wherever we went, would quite regularly try to grab Ash without permission -- or even warning -- to hug and kiss him. Sometimes one would try to glomp him AS I'd be whipping him away from someone else. Of course, HE didn't mind one bit, but I had several reasons to be a bit concerned by the societal expectation that any child of a certain caliber of cuteness, is now public property.

Any way, that’s the sort of way that the day went.  There were some things we didn’t end up doing, but what we did do, worked out well.  We managed to do all of the things (excepting ACTUALLY catching a real leprechaun) that Ash really, really wanted to do, so that’s the big thing.  This was the first year that he was involved in celebrating St.Paddy’s at all, beyond some school crafts, and holidays are always….a process.

The climax of the planned day was to, after Steffan got home from work, all change into our green sweaters, and take a family photo for the holiday.  Ash apparently agrees that only one decent photo of all three of us together, a year, isn’t really enough.  Plus, he’s been really into the idea of matching, lately.  Well, we got the photo, though unfortunately it kind of sucks.  I mean, it WOULD be a really cute photo of us, I think, except for the fact that, even after using my Photoshop-fu, it’s still a crappy photo.  The lighting just wasn’t good enough by the time Steffan got home….apparently it was just bright enough that the flash didn’t feel a need to go off, but too dim to get anything but a super grainy shot in which you can’t even TELL we’re all wearing green.  Boo.  (So yes, if you’re one of my many friends getting brand new DSLRs and even pocket-variety digital cameras, lately, I am happy and excited for you, but also jealous.)

We're all wearing green sweaters. I have a Celtic-knotwork St.Brighid necklace on. As is holding his new, shamrock-printed, green mug full of frothy "Leprechaun Fizz"....just take my word for it.

Ash was going to be disappointed that you can’t clearly see us all matching in our green sweaters, but there was nothing for it.  Even if I fiddled with the color awkwardly, the fact that all three are SWEATERS would not be clear.  (Note: Yup…. “Mommy, I think the photo was a little messed up or something.  Can you fix it?”)  At least his mug of “Leprechaun Fizz” distracted him, at the time.  Oohhhhhh that Leprechaun Fizz!!  He might not have been talking about it for as long as he talked about wanting the photo, or with as much drama as he talked about catching leprechauns, but he might actually have brought it up the most often of all.  Leprechaun Fizz was made during Speech Therapy, on Thursday.  The kids had to talk about what they did to make it, what happened, what they thought of it, etc., of course.  Ash never STOPPED talking about it.  Ever since coming home from school on Thursday, all of his actions and choices revolved around — or tried to revolve around — earning some Leprechaun Fizz at home, on Saturday.  (Thankfully, I got a reply from his ST on Friday, after asking what flavor of green ice cream was used, and if Ash actually did drink his all up as he claimed….because if all he did was take one sip, it wasn’t really worth us buying the stuff to make it.)  We cracked up when we read the sheet that came home, on which Ash wrote answers to questions related to the activity, and his response to the question of whether or not he liked the drink, was, “O yes!”  Heheh…well, thankfully, Ash did earn his Leprechaun Fizz — which, by the way, is made with lime sherbert and Sprite-type soda.

Fizz and frothy foam are lots of fun, but after finding out that it was hard to drink straight from the mug without getting bubbles all over his face, he opted to go for the tactic they used in Speech, which was drinking through straws. We had to find him a green and white one to keep with the theme, though.

Ash definitely loves the stuff.  He could only handle just so much at once because he has a tiny tummy, but he couldn’t resist continually running back into the kitchen for another slurp.  Oh, and I do mean running….for certain understandings of running which include running, jumping, climbing, flipping, spinning, rolling, somersaulting, ricocheting, twirling, bouncing, randomly breaking out into dance moves, and even stopping to catch his breath in a fashion that suggests you might get a huge static shock if you get within a yard of him.

Granted, that’s not unusual for him, let alone already-excited him, but this was his usual with….added flare.  He doesn’t usually have that much sugar in a go.  I’m just glad the recipe didn’t call for something caffeinated.  Dear lord, if there is something this child doesn’t need, it’s caffeine.

Eniways….that, with the addition of our traditional corned beef and seasoned fries, was pretty much how St.Paddy’s went down.  Steffan and I had Strangely Sobers (using the rare splurge of the happily-discounted-for-the-holiday “Dublin Mudslide” ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s, along with some vanilla cream soda) because we’d rather have that than Leprechaun Fizz — although we did drink ours from green glasses, too.  And, in the end, it was finally time to take off all the green, say an extra prayer for and because of those who think that drunk driving on March 17th is the celebration of a holiday, and not the same dangerous, selfish, arrogant stupidity that it would be on any other day of the year, and get some sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Of course, that wasn’t that simple, either.

“Mommy, when Saint Patrick’s Day is over, will it be my friend A-’s birthday party?”

“Yes, sweetie….this year, A-’s birthday party is going to be on March 18th, which is the day after Saint Patrick’s Day….and also tomorrow. That’s why we need to let our exciting holiday end, now, and why we need to calm down, so we can get enough rest to make good choices and have a wonderfully exciting day tomorrow with your friends, too.”

“And then after A-’s birthday, it is going to be Daddy’s birthday! And after Daddy’s birthday, it will be YOUR AND MINE BIRTHDAYS!!!!”

“Well, not after only one sleep, but yes, those are the birthdays that come next on our calender. Let’s wait and think about those on another day, though, ok? It’s going to be hard to calm down and sleep if we have too many exciting thoughts at once.”

“But I think maybe I can DREAM about our birthdays!”

Ahhh well.  Tomorrow is indeed another day.  We’ll see how it goes…!

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Valentine’s Day 2012

February 17, 2012 By 2 Comments

I hope that on the 14th, whether or not you celebrated Valentine’s Day, whoever you did or didn’t celebrate with, you knew, and truly felt, that you are loved.

Ash had school on Tuesday, and while he was there, Steffan had work.  The few hours of family togetherness that remained between homework and bedtime were to be dedicated to celebrating the holiday with Ash.  After all that, Steffan and I were — fairly predictably — too zonked to celebrate more privately….but that’s ok.  Steffan and I are a little more able to take it in stride when things aren’t best-manifested on their pre-designated dates, than Ash is!  Steffan had presented me with a chocolate rose (in, “Festive red foil,” Ash would like to be sure you know) at 4am when he woke up and realized that putting the finishing touches on the shirt I was making for Ash had not yet released me to bed with him.  We’d get to our own more extended celebration on Thursday night, after he’d had the day off and before he’d have another day off.  At random times during the week, I’d find myself surprised by some little token — such as when Steffan sidled up to me with adorable dramatized meekness, then with a huge, proud grin, whipped something from behind his back and said, “Happy whatever we feel like celebrating about us today, day!”  Yeah, Ash gets a whole lotta CUTE from his Daddy.  Hee!  Eniways, it was all good.

I'm pretty sure that all Mommies still working on something for their kid 3 hours before their kid is going to need it, aught to get one of these from their counterpart Daddy (or whoever).

This was the design I put together, and then put onto a shirt for Ash, for Valentine's Day. The frog is not my artwork. I'm afraid I didn't have the kind of time needed for my own artwork, this year!

On Tuesday it-was-morning-for-all-of-us-at-that-point, I went to wake Ash up, and was greeted by, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mommy!” as soon as his eyes focused.  After some extra hugs and kisses, we set about the morning routine — a routine which was made considerably more exciting by the fact that I had set out a special outfit for Valentine’s Day, including the shirt I’d made for him as a gift.  Oh yes, my little froggy prince charming quite loved it!

PSA: Special Little Prince Valentine shirts might make little princes twirl like princesses singing, "I Feel Pretty"...

So dang cute, it's hard to keep your feet.

Of course, giggles knock you over regularly, around here, also.

We have our own version of the old, "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" commercials, in our house.

Supposedly the shirt was a hit at school, too.  I don’t really know how the other kids reacted, beyond not-badly (or I would’ve heard about it), but I had notes from the staff about how adorable it was, and about how everyone was surprised when Ash told them I had made it for him.  Ash told me that one of his teachers told him that it was going to be hard not to kiss him, but that that was ok, because he was already a prince charming to them — to which he claims the reply, “Why yes, I AM, I know!”

The holiday-based changes in the school day made for a fun — and exhausting — time, for Ash.  He came home with a sack of valentines from his classmates, the half-Halloween‘s-haul equivalent of another sack of candy taped to those valentines (apparently the agreement to prepare goody bags of sweets to go along with the typical array of sticker-folded cards, did not reach my planet), a few warm-n-fuzzy stories about thank-you’s and hugs from kids after getting valentines from him, some holiday projects for us (which decreased in number relative to last year, predictably), and a tightrope-routine along the fine line between holding it together, and mark-your-calenders-for-meltdown.

This flower, which Ash made in one of his therapies, actually came home on Monday. It was supposed to come home on Friday, but had gotten pushed back and overlooked in the shadows of Ash's mailbox, and didn't make it into his backpack like he'd thought it had. He was SOOO proud and excited to give me, "The beautiful flower (he) made for (me)" -- it was the first thing he mentioned when I got him off the bus on Friday -- and he had been crestfallen when it appeared to have gotten lost. I was so, so relieved, for a few reasons, when it was found and secured in his bag for him, on the next school day!"

This is the valentine that Ash made for both of us. :-)

This is the valentine that Ash made just for me. :-D

And this....made me cry. Sentence one reads, "My hero is mommy." Sentence two reads, "I have just one daddy." Sentence three reads, "I said hello to a friend."

Thankfully, both Ash and I managed to hold it together, and worth through his “3 Steps” after getting home from school.  After eating his snack, Ash asked me if I would share my chocolate rose with him.  I told him that I’d be happy to, but that I wasn’t ready to open it yet.  He accepted this without struggle, and decided that, instead, he’d share one of the miniature chocolate bars he’d ended up with, with me!  A miniature Hershey bar — something I am normally loathe to refer to as chocolate — has never before tasted so sweet.  We finished off the whole thing, taking turns bite-by-bite.  I’d say we did so at his direction, but that doesn’t even cover it, since he fed me my bites of chocolate.  Once we were done, he asked for my help cleaning off his fingers and his mouth, “So [he] could hug and kiss [me] without making [me] dirty.”  Then, after another love-you, he went off to the bathroom with, “Ok, ok, I’ll catch ya when I’m done with step two.”

Glass crayons used on medicine cabinet mirrors make trips to the bathroom more exciting, too.

Homework -- "Step 3" -- was done with a new, Valentine's Day pencil. Much as both Steffan and I dislike pink, Ash hasn't been raised to object to a pink-and-white, heart-adorned pencil as too girly. By the way, it's still odd to see a mature pincher grip, a supported writing arm, and the other hand holding the paper. So odd, and so wonderful.

Part of Ash's homework was a sheet of math problems you solved to end up with a Valentine's Day coded message. Oh, in the background you can see the board game we're currently playing as a family again. Ash gets the blue piece, Daddy gets the green piece, and Mommy gets the red piece.

We always take a lot of "hug breaks" ....and sometimes, kissy breaks, too! On this day, there were at least a few hugs, kisses, cuddles, and verbal proclamations of love, along with Valentine's Day wishes, every hour. You can bet I soaked in every moment of it, and gave as good as I got! In fact, at one point I kind of had to remind myself that if I didn't want Ash to have a potty accident, I really needed to stop squishing him, even if he DID tell me that he loved me about five times while on the way to the bathroom.

Daddy got home from work around the time homework was being finished up, so then he went out to get the pizza we’d promised Ash for dinner.  (And so, the last of the Christmas gift cards went *poof*, into a big, tomato-sauce-covered grin.)  While he was out, Ash kind of randomly turned to me and asked, “Mommy, am I a man yet?”  After I replied that he had  more growing-up to do first, he told me, “Well, I will be a man when I get married.”  I asked him who he thought he was going to marry, some-day.  “I think I will marry Daddy,” he said, “Or maybe, no, I was wrong.  I will marry you.”   Yep, we’re pretty equal-opportunity, around here.  I guess it shows.  ;-)

After enjoying dinner, we gave Ash his valentines from us and from his great-grandma, and his other gifts.  He had asked for a shiny frog balloon like the one we’d gotten him two years before.  (A mylar balloon filled with helium is only $1 at DollarTree, you know, instead of $2-6 elsewhere.)  Thankfully, he didn’t get upset that they’ve changed the model slightly since then.

He might be high-maintenance (for example, as you can see starting here from one photo to the next, he chaps horribly around his lips in the winter, even when he DOESN'T have a cold, if he goes more than a few minutes without medicated chap stick freshly applied -- because he's so often licking and sucking on his lips, as he mouth-stims), but he sure isn't "high maintenance"....he could've been set with that smile, all day, with only the $1 balloon.

One of the things you can do with balloons, is have "bopping battles"....and it is nearly as funny, to just bop yourself!

You can run back and forth with them, or spin around while trailing them...

...until you get dizzy! (That is, of course, assuming you're CAPABLE of getting dizzy, at that time -- which Ash isn't always.)

You can listen to the noise they make while you yank them back and forth, or let them go and watch them float up, over and over.

You can pretend the balloon is your head...

We could easily have left things at balloon-play, but there was one more present for Ash.  A friend had sent him this adorable Valentine Dragon, that she found at Target:

The Valentine dragon doesn't have a name yet.

Actually, she claimed that the toy thought it was a dinosaur….that happened to have wings.  Yeah, whatever — it’s totally a dragon.  Once he had checked to confirm that it was not going to surprise him with any noises, Ash was all over it.

Apparently, if this dragon kisses you, your hair is set on fire. The photo above is of Ash watching me react to the information. It’s all right for him to be amused, because in this game of pretend, when a love-dragon sets your hair on fire, it doesn’t hurt, it just turns red…..until Ash blows it out, at which point, “Whew! It’s black again. Ok, Mommy, it’s your turn to set my hair on fire.”  Hmm….perhaps not the version of being set on fire with kisses that one would expect from a happily-married couple, on Valentine’s Day, but I didn’t mind the additional version. ;-)

After a little more family play-time and some shared cocoa, it was time for bed.  Ash didn’t want to take off his special shirt, and when he finally did, said, “But Mommy….I can wear it again even if it isn’t Valentine’s Day, right?!”  As if he needed to prove that he wasn’t done being my little prince charming yet, he decided to break his own routine — YES, YOU READ THAT RIGHT — and switch up the order that we took our turns wishing on his star-lamp during the bedtime routing, telling me that I could go first, and his Daddy could go second.  (Normally, he goes first, I go second, and if Daddy is home for that bedtime, he goes third.)  Naturally, extra wishes included variations on the theme of always being each others’ valentines, having had a happy Valentine’s Day, etc.  Also naturally, the traditional last wish of each of us, remained the same.  To help avoid wish-interrupting, the cue is always saying, “And also…” or, “And for my last wish…” — if Steffan or I is wishing, Ash completes the sentence for us with a triumphant, “….for lots of hugs and kisses!!!”  If he is making his wish, we say it all together.

It was a good day, filled with lots of love.  The best part is that it didn’t end there.

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Looking back on 2011′s Christmas season (Part 5)

January 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

Ok, THIS really aught to be the last part.  Part 4 brought us to the edge of Christmas Eve, so there’s only so much left to cover, relative to the month of lead-in we had.  This was IT….the big days….

The funny thing is, it feels like there’s less to say about Christmas Eve, than the preceding days.  I mean, a lot went on, but more of it was all the same kind of thing, if that makes any sense.  That, and it went pretty much as Ash had anticipated the night before — and the things done in the morning and afternoon when it was just us, were mostly done together (and fairly lazily, because the day before had left him majorly depleted spoon-wise, and he’d need all the recuperation he could get before the next day), with no one to point a camera at us, and some of the things done later involved family that I only get into just so much, and don’t show photos of, on the blog.  There was one period, though, which I was distanced enough from to capture…

Yep, Ash has his own little wooden nativity set.  Some women volunteering at a charity Christmas-craft sale set up in the foyer of Steffan’s church had noticed Ash’s desire to play with it as we headed in past the table, last year, and surprised us by having chipped in together to gift it to him when we headed back out.  It was one of the little blessings last year, when, by the by, he pretty much just knew that the figures in the set included three wise men, three animals, an angel, Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus.  This year he knows a little bit more of the context, in a vague kind of way.  This lead to the following amusing quotes:

“Baby Jesus was born in a barn instead of a hospital….which is more fun.*”

“And then he lay down in the hay and the animals looked at him and two white men and one brown man** who were very wise came to give him birthday presents, and then someone pushed a button to make the sky light up around him and sing “Silent Night”***….I think maybe it was his Mommy Mary or his Daddy who was named Joseph except or sometimes God.”

* Ash went into a barn during the Pumpkin Farm field trip his class took in October.  He got to pet a calf, twin goats, a lamb, and a bunny.  This was quite distinctly more fun than his times spent in a hospital.  He assumes that baby Jesus and the others share his preference for furry animals over needles and such.

** He is basing this on the paint-job of the figures in his set.

*** He is basing this on a book his Grandma gave him a year or two ago.

I also snagged a few shots while Ash helped with Santa’s cookies.  This year his help was a bit more effective than last, after having had the practice with the gingerbread men, along with just more developmental time, in-between.

Ash has placed and pressed in the letter-shaped cutters. Other cookies will be made....snowmen and Christmas trees and stars and the like....but these are the important ones for him to do himself.

Ash double-checks the cut-outs before trying to peel them out and hand them to me for placement on the cookie sheet.

I think my favorite part of the period when my in-laws were over, was that Ash, fueled by his pride and excitement over having helped make Santa’s cookies, because vaguely obsessed with the idea of being helpful in general.  This wasn’t just the usual interest in being helpful via wanting to break in and “help” someone do whatever he realized they were about to do for themselves (often in a counter-productive way, of course), or the also-usual leaping at the chance to do what someone has asked him if he could do for them.  This was stuff like him distributing cookies to everyone in the room, along with cups of things to drink, in case the cookies made them thirsty.  Granted, the cups he distributed were not always the cups left around by the family members he was handing them to, but hey, he was trying, and it was all his idea.

This is how things were left when Ash went to bed on Christmas Eve. I hope the reindeer aren't as hungry as Santa is expected to be!

We added the Christmas characters, but Santa did the rest. From the looks of it, I caught him when he was returning with the mostly empty carrot plate, to place one last special thing under the tree. He also snuck some candy canes onto it. Perhaps they no longer fit in his pockets (every child has noticed that Santa always carries candy canes in his pockets) after this latest stack of cookies and quintuple-scooped-cocoa was downed.

Honestly, I was surprised to find that any crumbs or drips had made it through the night, when I checked things Christmas morning! At least it seems like Santa was smart, and ate the special cookies spelling out his name, first.

Christmas morning.  Ahhhhhh, Christmas morning.  For once, Ash waking up at 7am when he didn’t especially have to, was him waking up LATER than other children.  In any event, with a whole two hours or so of sleep painting festive circles under the eyes of us parents, and perhaps the world’s best fuel source twinkling in the eyes of our child, we began our day.  The plan was to, like last year, begin with some us-time under our own tree….then get dressed and go over to Uncle S- and Auntie L-’s place — where we’d also do the family gift exchange — for brunch with them, Uncle A-, and Grandma and Grandpa….then come back to our place to let Ash unwind (and possibly open something else)….then go over to Uncle A-’s for dinner with just him and Grandma and Grandpa, since Uncle S- and Auntie L- would be having dinner with her family….and then finish the day with some more us-time at our place.  It was a rather full day, but at least it involved a number of flexible escapes, and we’d have the next day to share a more relaxed, just-us-three, Christmas-Day-2.  Typically, Steffan works a late night on Christmas Eve, and a very early morning the day after Christmas.  For once, he was opening on Christmas Eve, and off the day after Christmas as well.  HALLELUYAH!  Yeah, we were grateful.

Someone asked, for Ask Ash!, what his favorite thing about Christmas was.  I kind of lost track of who, so I hope whoever it was, is looking.  In any event, he answered that, “My favorite thing about Christmas is that family is there to have time smiling together….and also, things are sparkly and Santa comes if you’re nice.”

Ash starts on the outer rim and works his way in. The Christmas characters were an obvious place to start! This Rudolph started off as a moose from DollarTree. I clipped the felt antlers into a more reindeer-ish shape, sewed on a sparkly, red craft poof I'd had floating around for years to be his nose, and used a $1 jingle-ring like Ash had played with while caroling at school, as a special collar. BAM! Almost-instant, semi-DIY Rudolph.

Another DollarTree find from Mommy and Daddy was this piggy bank. Ash has learned to identify different coins and bills, in school, and has done some simple math related to them....now it's time to try AGAIN at working on some of the context and concepts related to money.

The stockings were no longer limp. Propped against the small pile of gifts from Mommy, Daddy, Great-AuntiePat, Emily Elf and a couple of family friends, were a few packages in Santa wrapping paper -- as gifts from Santa tend to be wrapped in, around here. Only one gift under the tree wasn't marked like the others, as if it had been prepared at the last minute, only upon arrival. It was a little, red, velvet box with a green ribbon. Inside that was a red satin pouch. Inside that...

...was the silver sleigh-bell that Ash had asked Santa for!!

“Santa gave me the bell I asked for when I wroted him my note!  And it was like the HeroBoy, because I believe!  And it rings for me, and it sounds beautiful, do you hear, Mommy?!  And you know, I think I won’t put it in a hole in my bathrobe.”

Ash gives the bell a good jingling. Actually, based on the scratches on his cheek and nose, this photo must have been taken later in the day. Every time we came home, the first thing he did was go to the tree, locate his bell, and ring it. It has also been the first thing he's done upon coming downstairs in the morning, every day since.

So….the scratches.  See, Uncle S- and Auntie L-’s house has a very, very enticing feature…

This is Cole kitty. He thought his placement under the tree suggested that he was trying to hide, NOT that the chance to pet him was going to be his gift to Ash.

"The PURPLE kitty doesn't scratch and make me wear a band-aid."

Really, it wasn’t so bad.  If the scratches hadn’t been bleeding at first, we wouldn’t have bothered torturing Ash with a band-aid on his face.  He didn’t care in the slightest that Cole had scratched him.  To Ash, no matter what he’s been told, the inevitable occasional scratches from one cat or another, guard as we do, are a sign that the offending kitty was being silly, not a sign that he should probably feel less of a desire to try to pet it….or the next cat that doesn’t seem as interested in him as he is in it.  Perhaps if his nociception wasn’t often off-kilter, his eiditic memory would counter-balance his complete lack of danger sense, in these matters.  Whoops?

Some conveniently-timed snuggle-squishes were put into effect, immediately after Cole's less than merry mood was made known to....the rest of us. At this moment, Ash and his Daddy were listening to someone or other else in the family.

Another thing of note from that part of the day was that Ash ate about half of a Belgian waffle (¼ from Daddy’s plate that Mommy didn’t know about, and then later, ¼ from Mommy’s plate that Mommy was, therefore, extra impressed by)….which was something new for him.  He ate plain parts, but still.

One of Ash's presents from his aunt and uncle, that he broke into once we got home again, was this toy-and-book set. "Jingle" the Husky puppy, if you have pressed his ear first, responds to certain phrases read from his storybook, by barking, howling a tune, etc. The book is quite simple, relative to Ash's reading level, but the "interactive" aspect delights him.

"You're a GOOD dog, Jingle!"

An interesting thing about Jingle is that he was first set off by Ash’s uncle, while at their house, before Ash knew what to expect….and Ash was barely startled, and only for a moment, and was not scared.  Apparently, Jingle was exempt from the stuffed-toys-or-otherwise-made-decoratives-that-look-like-creatures-and-make-noise-and/or-move-especially-if-it-was-unexpected-the-first-time-are-going-to-terrify-me rule.  Possibly this is because the first sound that Jingle makes is a bell-jingling sound, which rather blends into the overall audio backdrop of Christmas anyway.  I was intrigued, but mostly glad.  I had, after all, told my SIL that yes, I thought he’d enjoy that gift, and I had a feeling they’d pay attention to the abnormality of his reaction, and not any overlooked disclaimers about the manner and timing of introduction, if he reacted horribly a few seconds after they gave it to him.

One highlight of the part of the evening spent at Uncle A-’s for Christmas dinner, was Ash’s continued desire to be helpful, being taken advantage of by me to get him to practice utensil use.  Ash is not so good with eating utensils.  He has only recently improved when it comes to spooning anything that doesn’t stick to the spoon (like pudding), thanks to cocoa.  You’d think that spearing things with a fork would be easier than balancing things on a spoon, but he’s never gotten the hang of forks at all, with anything.  Don’t even ask about knives, ok?  Some day, we might just see how he takes to the old chopsticks-rubber-banded-around-their-rolled-up-wrapper thing, for the heck of it (I never needed that, but I know a lot of kids….and some adults….that required that trick for early chopstick learning stages, and Ash has far from the average kid’s motor coordination)….but in the meantime, he sticks largely to finger food when he’s feeding himself, whether or not anyone else thinks it is finger food.  Well anyway, Ash really wanted to “help” me eat the Christmas ham, so I told him I’d love it if he helped me, but I wanted to eat it with a fork, so he would only be helping if he tried to feed it to me with the fork.  Gee, did he think he could try to do that for me?  Pretty please with dragons on top?  It would be sooooooo nice and helpful for my tired hands…  I think everyone else in the room popped their jaws grimacing and wincing, waiting for me to be speared in the throat or stabbed through the cheek.  With cues to move the fork very slowly and gently towards my mouth and wait for my teeth to close on the ham before he moved the fork away, though, Ash did a fine job of feeding me without injuring me, and was so pleased with himself that he decided I was hungry for seconds, and would I please cut them up so he could stick them with the fork again?  Heheh.  Mommy wins.

Indeed, by the time we neared the last part of our Christmas day, Ash was still having a pretty darn good one.

By the time Ash went to bed that night, the living room looked like this…

Ash sits amidst the rubble.

The impressive part is that the room looked like that, but not all that much was opened.  It’s rather nice to have a child that gets so much out of each gift, and takes such time with each gift, that even without GETTING that many gifts, he still takes an average of one to two weeks to open everything and go through his stocking.

Speaking of which, here are a few post-Christmas highlights, mostly for friends that I know look here…

Ash and I play "The Magic Labyrinth" game, a gift from his "Big Cousin C-", for the first time. It has been played since, too. It turned out to be a GREAT game for Ash, in many ways.

Ash looks at the "Big Cats" book, also from "Big Cousin C-"....and tries to see if he can stick out his tongue as far as the yawning lioness can.

By the way, he says that lions are his favorite big cat, because the boys have manes which look so soft and fluffy, like his Daddy’s hair used to be.  Is anyone surprised?

These ladybug slippers come from Grandma.  They match his PillowPet.  Ash faces two challenges when it comes to making good use of them.  First, he must reconcile himself with the concept of “inside shoes”….secondly, he must master actually walking in them.

Ash and the Amazing Aurora, who is taking a turn balancing on the large weighted ball.

Aurora, a velvety-soft, blue and purple dragon with shiny parts, was one of Ash’s belated birthday presents from his “Auntie A-” that I set aside and saved for Christmas so she would lose one excuse to send him MORE for Christmas.  Aurora is Ash’s most playful stuffed dragon thus far, a character trait determined when she was so impatient to get unwrapped and pounce Ash that she somehow….magically, I suppose….managed to roar while still in her box, despite it normally taking precision effort to squeeze her neck in just the right way, to produce that effect.  As you might have guessed based on Abominable Snowmen, et al, this unlikely feat of impatient enthusiasm on the dragon’s part, was rather counterproductive.  Aurora’s box took another day after being unwrapped, to be opened, and it took the rest of that day to get Ash comfortable with playing with her, first indirectly, and then, handling her himself.  Had she not been such an endearing dragon, I suspect it would’ve taken much longer.

This no-bake gingerbread house book was another gift from "Emily Elf" -- there was too much sickness in our household to make one over Ash's winter break, but the book contains ideas for all seasons, so I expect another good excuse will come up soon.

“This is a mushroom gnome home, do you see, Mommy?  It looks like a mushroom, you know, and gnomes are kind of like faeries I think.  And do you know, Mommy….Mommy….when you say gnome, the ‘g’ is silent.”

This animal calender was from Ash's great-grandma. Ash thinks it's great, especially because the snow leopard cubs are on the cover AND inside, and that's his Daddy's favorite big cat. Naturally, Ash and I have taken turns pretending to be all the depicted animals inside....generally, a Mommy-baby set of them, whether or not that's in the photo.

A new, blue hoodie lined with super-soft plush fabric puts Ash in a good enough mood that I get him to try Ramen for the first time -- after he asked me to make him some and then immediately decided he wanted something else -- by getting him to imagine that it was squiggly-wiggly dinosaur seaweed, and he was a baby brontosaurus with a big belly to fill. This is the first time a trick like that has ever worked.

With it already being mid-January, I don’t know if I’m going to get as far as writing a separate holiday-gratitudes post, like I did last year.  So here, before I go, I want to add a few thank-you’s:

  • Thank you to E, my Fairy Blogmother, and Ash’s “Big sister”….all these years after you needed me to be a Mommy to you, you still always think about how to help take care of us, in turn.
  • Thank you to Mo, who sees no reason why saving our asses….sorry, arses….should be enough if she hasn’t filled Ash’s tummy with his favorite pizza yet.
  • Thank you to “Santa” for being sneaky again this year, so I have to let you get away with it.  You got our medication.
  • Thank you to Wolf, for giving us the ability to give Ash the animals that inspire him to aspire.
  • Thank you to Mike, for choosing us to be the adoptive geeks for your books.
  • Thank you to Moobs, for the sassy fashion show I just put on for my husband, and the chocolate we’re pretending isn’t bulging out from under it
  • Thank you to C-, for honoring Ash as one of the only little people you care for at all, let alone adore.
  • Thank you to E-, otherwise known as “Emily Elf”, for being insufferable.
  • Thank you to Kat for the….uh….reminder to snag a photo of Santa in the act.
  • Thank you to the friends and family — some who know about this blog, and some who don’t — who sent cards, sent gifts, have been thinking of us enough to be planning to send things, came to visit, are hoping to visit, etc. etc. etc.  Thank you to all who cry with us, scream with us, sigh with us, cheer with us.  Thank you for the wishes, hopes, and prayers.  Thank you for being you.

 

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Looking back on 2011′s Christmas season (Part 4)

January 8, 2012 By 1 Comment

When Part 3 left off, we were a bit past mid-way through December, and had a rather impatient Ash trying oh so hard to be patient for Christmas.  You might be relieved to know that this update starts with December 22nd.

First off, Ash prepared for the last day of school by making a card for his teachers.  Ok, so I had to trick him into doing it by setting it up as a fake part of his homework.  I can get him to quite happily do things by pretending they are part of his homework, that he otherwise resists doing.  (Writing practice on all days that he doesn’t have homework assigned, is what this primarily comes down to.)  I think it mostly has to do with how he compartmentalizes activities, in his head.  In any event, he wasn’t given any normal homework on Thursday, so I had a gap in his routine to fill.

It says, "Happy Holidays"....then there is a heart, and a hat-wearing snowman on the snow.

Having covered a fine art, it was time for a performance art!  Yup, that’s right….you’ve heard him read a story, and now you get to hear Ash sing.  I give you: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, in the key of Giggle!

I’m pretty sure I’m not imagining it, and he really is saying, “Used to have to call him names,” instead of, “Used to laugh and call him names.”  Hello, language processing….if you’d be so kind as to step over here, I think we need to clarify a little something…

Thursday’s other main event centered around “The Bumble” — yes, the one from the old Rudolph special.  See, we have this little stuffed Bumble-holding-a-star that Steffan found on Christmas clearance for me, a number of years ago.  It’s very soft and very cute, and most of the time we’ve just had it sitting up on a shelf next to a miniature fake tree, where it makes us giggle.  If you press on its free hand, it softly makes a roaring sound, and then shifts into playing Burl Ives’ “Holly Jolly Christmas” while doing a little wiggle-dance.  Now, Ash really likes this Bumble.  He thinks it’s hilarious.  Unfortunately, the very first time he encountered it, it got set off before he was adequately warned, so in addition to finding the Bumble hilarious, Ash finds it frightening.  It’s quite a conflict of interests.  Because Ash’s SPD-riddled brain has issues organizing information — and that includes giving it any sense of relevant chronology — and because it also gives him modulation issues….and because he also has an eidetic memory, and remembers bloody everything….Ash automatically goes into sensory-defensive mode and the feelings of anxiety and fear that go with it, every time he encounters anything that ever so much as startled him.  It doesn’t matter if he is now familiar and comfortable with whatever-it-is, likes it, desires it, and/or anticipates it.  It’s reflexive, like blinking when something comes towards your eye, even if that something is the contact you’re about to put in, that you’ve been wanting to have as an option for ages.  You can get over it in time, with effort, but simple logic isn’t going to cut it.

Well, on Thursday afternoon, after finishing his….*cough*….homework, Ash asked if he could see the Bumble.  It had yet to come out this year, anywhere in the house; with all of us varying degrees of sick all month, the tree was pretty much the only thing that got decorated.  I was a little surprised, since a toy Bumble (that didn’t even have a sound/movement feature) at the house where the Christmas party was, had terrified him on sight….but hey, you learn to roll with the inconsistencies, around here.  So, I delved into the box marked as containing “Christmas Critters” and fished it out.  Immediately, Ash bolted across the room and peeked at it — with a huge smile on his face but fear in his eyes, mind you — while hiding behind the couch.  Ok then.  He then asked me to push the button so he could hear the Bumble sing.  I asked him if he wanted me to pretend I was the Bumble wiggling and making the sounds first, and he said yes, so I did that.  That was all good, silly fun, of course.  He insisted that he wanted to hear the Bumble do it.  Well, all right.  First, I set the Bumble off, but hid him behind me so there was sound, but no visual.  I made a point of giggling as the soft fur tickled me on my back.  He cowered under a blanket he yanked over himself, while protesting that the Bumble was supposed to be in front of me, not behind me, and I had to do it again.  Are you noticing the pattern, here?  Yeahhhhhhh….things continued on that track.  While Ash thanked me and exclaimed delightedly about how it was so much fun to hear the silly Bumble sing and see his wiggle dance, and laughed at how the soft fur was so tickly, he also made a point of letting me know that we “couldn’t” push the button any more, until another day.  He reassured….me….that the Bumble couldn’t do anything unless you pushed his button, but still moved around it and generally treated it like a live grenade….that he wanted to keep in the room with him.  Or, perhaps, more like a psychotic killer, that you had to watch for any sign of impending attack.  In any event, all the way into the evening, we worked on Project Bumble, aiming to help Ash get over his reflexive and conflicted fear.  We took turns imitating it.  We talked about how he’d become afraid, and different ways we could try and help the Bumble get less scary to him.  I pretended to be scared, so Ash could comfort me.  We talked about how the Bumble might feel.  We arranged a very “safe”, controlled, and quick touch of his fur, so that Ash could feel for himself how soft it was.  We sat snuggled together under a blanket (while the Bumble sat OVER THERE) and started watching Rudolph together, for the first time, so that he could see the Bumble and see his story (with a little flexibility of interpretation, provided by me), but on the TV, where it was even easier to remember that Ash couldn’t be hurt by him.  By bedtime, we’d gotten far enough that Ash was — after running upstairs to get his Blankie, “So [he] would be safer.” — able to sit next to the Bumble, and….and this was his idea, mind you….sing the Bumble the lullaby that I usually sing for him, “So that the Bumble will sleep well.”  He wasn’t feeling confident enough to kiss the Bumble goodnight, but really, for a day’s progress, it was pretty dang good!

Ash and the fearsome Bumble

Yet again during the wish-making part of bedtime that night, Ash tacked on to his usual wishes (although he’s been expanding upon those more in general, lately) the wish that Witch Winter Grey would not come to steal him away in her Cloak of Darkness.  This is a reference to the show his class went to see, and a wish he’d been making ever since that field trip.  Lo and behold, he passed through the night safe, his dragons having done their duty.  Onwards he went, to the last day of school before winter break.

Yep, this year — possibly for no other reason than that Christmas Eve was on a Saturday — Ash had school all the way up until the 23rd.  Also possibly, with the assumption that the day before Christmas Eve was going to be a moot point, educationally, in an elementary school….someone decided to have the kids spend the full day in school BECOMING EVEN MORE WIRED.

If you equate overstimulation with, say, cocoaine, Ash’s brain overdosed that night.

But hey, you know….it’s tricky to not enable the addict when they are positively bursting with thrilled anticipation for their doom, starting two days before (when they first found out about the potential for it).  On Friday, Ash’s class was going to DRESS UP IN ELF HATS in the morning and GO AROUND THE SCHOOL CHRISTMAS CAROLING.  Then they were going to go back to their room to DRINK COCOA.  They’d fill the rest of the time until lunch by LEARNING ABOUT CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS AROUND THE WORLD.  Then, after lunch, THEY WERE GOING TO HAVE A POLAR EXPRESS PAJAMA PARTY, during which, of course, they’d watch the movie.  Ash was soooooooo excited and soooooooo wanted to do all this with his classmates.  He wanted to wear his “Christmas pajamas” to school and everything, whereas last year he couldn’t conceive of wearing his pajamas to school for pajama day, because you just don’t do that kind of thing.  Ok, so really, we couldn’t hold him back from that experience….especially not since he might handle it better than we had reason to worry he would….I mean, that sort of thing has been improving, over the years….and really, there’s a certain point at which how far over the edge you go, doesn’t really matter any more.

We were able to be there for the part in the morning with the caroling, before we had to go home to that Steffan could get ready for work.  All the kids got elf hats, some of which trailed jingle bells and some of which had lost their bells and stuck straight up like garden gnome hats (much to my amusement).  Those, they got to keep.  They also got to use an assortment of hand-bells to accompany themselves as they marched around the school and stopped at various classrooms and offices, singing.  Ash, who had been providing a several-shows-daily Christmas concert at home for months, naturally zoned out whenever it was the appointed time to sing one song or another.  In part, it was the change in routine.  In part, it was the excitement.  In part, it was the overstimulation of the activity itself for him, combined with the visual, audio and tactile effects of having 20-some singing, bell-ringing, dancing kids, plus their staff and a few supporting parents, packed into someone else’s already-full classroom.  Partially, it was the distraction of getting to be in environments not yet explored, full of people not yet interacted with, and riiiiiiiiight next to a bookshelf full of enticing, higher-grade, more-skill-level-appropriate books not yet read.  By the time they got through that first part of their day, he was exhausted, and yet still convinced that he had been fully involved, had had a blast, and was going to continue having a blast for the rest of the day.

This was an ok bell.

This was a better bell.

This is a very worn-out elf who was told he was not there to look at the books vaguely across from him.

Pooped elf is pooped.

Luckily, classmates D- (next to him) and A- (in front of him) don't hold it against him much.

Now, just in case you didn’t think it was enough that the day before SANTA COMES AT NIGHT WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING was going to be spent DRESSING UP LIKE ELVES AND SINGING CHRISTMAS CAROLS AND DRINKING COCOA AND LEARNING MORE ABOUT CHRISTMAS AND HAVING A POLAR EXPRESS  PAJAMA PARTY, I should note that the day was slated to contain yet another unusual element of excitement for Ash.  I had….while trying not to be overly optimistic about the chances of being taken seriously….suggested to Ash’s SpecEd teacher that, since the class was going to watch The Polar Express on Friday, they might do well to give Ash the chance to sit by himself in front of the class, and read the book to his classmates, before then.  This would not exactly be extra-curricular, but would both give Ash a moment in the spotlight that he would love, and would, at the same time, shine a spotlight on something which he very much does not need extra help with — which is always pretty useful, socially, considering he’s in an integrated program.  Much to our own excitement, both the SpecEd teacher and GenEd teacher were supportive of this idea, and planned a slot of time for Ash to do it.  Unfortunately, things ran late on Thursday and he never got the chance to do it, which left Friday.  The problem with this is that part-way through a wacky and draining day of the nature of that particular day, crammed between more cocoa and a pajama party with a movie, neither Ash nor his classmates were especially….focused.  Knowing that he’d later get the chance to read a whole book to his classmates was actually another one of the things which kept distracting Ash while he was supposed to be singing….he was soooooo looking forward to it, so proud….but when the time came, he was ill-equipped to perform at his best, and they were ill-equipped as an audience.  He did get the chance to read, but things ended up with him and the SpecEd teacher next to him taking turns reading pages.  She felt this was necessary to both re-focus him — in that he couldn’t drift off-track looking at the pictures or talking about the related scenes in the movie, before turning the page, because SHE already was — and to re-focus the class, in that their attention was re-grabbed more effectively when a teacher was up there talking.  Certainly, the experience was still worthwhile, but….but it wasn’t what it could’ve been, for him or his classmates in regards to him.

Ahhh well.  He had a blast that day, and came home one last precarious surge of adrenaline short of passing out cold.  For once, he was perfectly happy about the fact that when he woke up the next day, school would be closed.  It was time for Christmas Eve!  We would watch Christmas movies….we might even drink cocoa and have our own Polar Express pajama party, since Mommy and Daddy weren’t able to stay for the one at school.  We would sing Christmas songs.  We would open the last window in the Advent calender.  Grandma and Grandpa would stop by on their way to Uncle A-’s, since both he and Daddy had to work until the evening.  We would have….well, I can’t remember what it was, any more, but we would have something he had asked for, for dinner.  He would get to help us make cookies for Santa again, and put together the special tray with cookies and cocoa and this year baby carrots (a careful 9 of them) for the reindeer as well.  And then….AND THEN….then, after bedtime, Santa would come and leave presents under the tree and in our stockings.  Would he bring Ash the silver sleigh-bell he’d asked for?  Ash had dreamed back in November that he had told Santa that Santa needed to bring his Daddy three watermelons (Steffan really likes watermelon)….would Santa be able to find any in the winter?  Mommy wasn’t so sure about that, especially since no one had written to actually ask Santa for them, so Santa wouldn’t know to ask his elves to try to grow some.  But….y’know….MAYBE.  Santa and his elves probably had a lot of magic sparkles to work with, after all, being up at the North Pole where there was already so much sparkly snow.  There was no particular reason to believe they COULDN’T be related.

Stay tuned for Part 5…

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Looking back on 2011′s Christmas season (Part 3)

January 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

Part 2 took us through early December, and left us with Ash pretending to be Santa, in the hopes that Santa would be inspired to do things BY HIMSELF a little faster. ;-)   Obviously, it didn’t work, but also obviously, Ash — who in one recent, iconic moment, quite literally drank some orange juice and then raised up his cup and said, “Mommy, look!  My glass is half full!” — was not especially discouraged.

It didn’t hurt that some gifting went on, Santa quite aside.

For starters, my friend E-, mommy of A-1 (aka “The little girl with lots of curls,” not to be confused with A-) who was Ash’s first peer-aged buddy, had sent Ash a number of homemade pajamas to keep him cozy.  The top part of the scull-and-crossbones set (aka his “Pirate pajamas”) can be seen in this post.  Most, though, I’d saved for December, with the excuse that an “Emily Elf” was leaving extra presents for him with me, every time she came to check on his Naughty/Nice List status.  She had told me that the pajamas didn’t need to be saved for Christmas, because she knew we were all dealing with being sick, and didn’t want us to be cold.  Feeling like he was getting fragments of Christmas itself, early, helped Ash deal with waiting for the real deal.

Ash calls these the “Clifford pajamas” — they are big, red, fuzzy, and covered with puppy footprints.

The “Clifford pajamas” are still a bit long for Ash, so usually he only wears them at bedtime, even if there is no reason to wear anything but comfy PJs during the day. Depending on the timing of baths and such, though, sometimes Ash ends up changed for bed a little earlier in the evening. If he requests these pajamas, that would be a set-up for many faceplants as he trips over the pantlegs while running amuk, so I try to redirect his energy into some more controlled PT.  Look, we’re wheelbarrow-walking!

Did you notice in the last picture that there appeared to be “Clifford pajama”-clad legs not his own, holding Ash up?  Yeah, “Emily Elf” made us matching family pajamas.  It is Christmas Eve, here and we should ALL (haha) be getting to bed soon, so we are all wearing them — and having a picture taken, for the elf’s benefit.  I think this is the, “Help!  We’re all melting into a puddle of fleece, and at least two of us are too tired to save ourselves!” photo.

We were all laughing at someone or something.  It was probably Uncle A-

He almost looked sleepy in those other pictures, huh?  Almost.  But guess what?  Up he sproinged!  “Mommy!  Daddy!  Wait!” he declared, “I think you are tired, and it’s time to go to bed.  Please!  Mommy, Daddy, you need to get ready for bedtime now, so Santa can come and bring presents because we’re NICE.”

All three of us were also invited to the annual Christmas party (for which I made these) of some friends from Steffan’s church.  Now, this was a grown-up party (albeit a fairly well-behaved one), and Ash was actually the only child even invited.  He was wanted there, though, and he knew it, and we would’ve had a hard time NOT bringing him there.  In the end, he spent most of the time we stayed, curled up on a comfy chair, in mild sensory overload from the new environment and the new people, sleepily watching everyone.  Steffan and I took turns sitting with him, and providing support for whatever conversations other people came to have with him.  Now, Ash was somewhere in between the last cold and the next strep throat, and everything combined to make the overall experience appear less stimulating to him than it normally would’ve been.  Did he think it was time to go home?  Of course not.  The church friends had invited him to a party.

By the way, he now owns a cross.  I can’t get into the details, but it’s a cross with a lot of significance to the person who felt he should have it, and it’s also a cross that has been blessed.

He only wears it if we go to church, on Christian holidays, or other special occasions when he either wants to or we think he could use an extra blessing....and we'll be around. The thing is, we REALLY don't want it to get lost, if he feels the need to have the chain off of him.

The next seasonal adventure on the agenda couldn’t fail to be stimulating.  Ash was going to meet Santa!  We knew it would have to be quite the experience, too  Last year’s meeting of Santa (for the first time) occurred, in combination with a “Christmas Train” ride, in a new, local, indoor venue.  This year, said venue was not even open.  That meant that not only would the experience — and the Santa — be particularly different, but part of it would be missing.  Boy oh boy.  One option, discovered this year, would guarantee Ash 15 one-on-one minutes with a Santa used to dealing with autistic kids, in a sensory-friendly “workshop”.  Consideration of whether 15 minutes with Santa would be spent doing better than recovering from having anticipation literally restrained during the 45 minute drive there, was moot, since they didn’t have any free slots available at a time compatible with Steffan’s work schedule that week.  We decided to go with the (also free) Santa experience being offered by a local Parks & Rec department.

So it was that one Saturday evening, we shuffled into the “warming room” in a community center, where we got our tickets for the horse-drawn-wagon ride past a Christmas lights display along some water, which would take us to meet Santa.  The “warming room” had tables with face painters, tables with coloring/activity booklets, and….ahhhhhhhh, there we go….several chests and tables full of books….oh, wait….guarded by a story-teller who was remarkably touchy about children touching her books, and reading, even silently, to themselves.  That was a problem.  Thankfully, we’d dressed all of us warmly with the wagon ride in mind, and there was also a playground right outside, and away from the tempting books.  Steffan decided to spare my joints and stay out there with Ash while I listened for our turn approaching, inside, and picked from a tree which had been decorated with donated ornaments which each family was supposed to take a few from to bring home with them.  (It occurs to me that when I went out to tell them it was our turn, I saw Ash climbing all over some of the playground equipment, while his Daddy stood below.  I wonder if Steffan would remember whether the steps and platforms were solid, or whether it was the darkness which allowed holes to not matter.)  Soon enough, it was time for HORSIES! and the special ride past PRETTY LIGHTS!, and then we were at the place set up for meeting SANTA!  As luck would have it, by the time Ash was done looking at the decorations, all of the other children that came in on our wagon had come and gone again, the next wagon full of kids had only just set out, and Ash got about 15 minutes of one-on-one time with Santa anyway.  Santa was quite good with him, although I have to say, Santas who require fake facial hair really aught to do some grooming of it so that their traditional flowing white mustache and beard don’t completely hide their smile.  Ash was quite pleased, however, to see that Santa was wearing a candy-cane-striped watch, which gave him hope that Santa would not be late for Christmas.

Big Santa and Little Santa :-) "Santa! I am pretending to be you, but I am not really you. It's just pretending. So you can still come over on Christmas Eve and bring presents, please, ok?"

The other good photo was part of our Christmas Card.  Eniways, after his bonding time with Santa, Ash got to have some cookies and cocoa provided by some elves, and then an extra goodbye minute or two with Santa before we caught the next wagon back.  On the ride there, we’d gotten the uncovered wagon and the black horses, and on the way back we’d gotten the covered wagon and the brown horses, so all bases ended up being covered….bonus!  All in all, quite a successful adventure.

Christmas was still taking too long to get here — and for some reason, Mommy claimed that opening extra Advent calender windows and feeding her extra chocolates all at once, would not make the month go by faster — but at least we had a fresh source of inspiration to help pass the time.

Ash puts on his snow boots, to stress the fact that he is impatient for it to snow.  There is supposed to be snow on Christmas, and a head start that he can play in, wouldn’t hurt!

Ash drew a Christmas tree on his Magnadoodle.

 Stay tuned for Part 4, which might even be the last part!  Oooh…

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