Four Fabulous Seconds

Beautiful

My Kind of Shop

Those who know me well know that I love to shop, but hate to pay full price. I like to make a bit of a sport out of seeing how much I can buy for as little as possible (no wonder my house is so cluttered, eh?).

Anyway, today's shop was the kind of thing that I love. Braeden doesn’t need new jeans for school because we stocked up in spring for $7 a pair in his current size and the next size up. He does, however, need new shirts, mostly long-sleeve and then turtlenecks when those become available.
For today’s shop, I got:

3 new short-sleeve shirts, $5 off

7 new long-sleeve t-shirts, $14 off

2 other long-sleeve shirts, no mark down

1 hoodie, $2 off

I found a promo for $10 off

Had two $50 gift cards from credit card points

That got my total down to $5.50

$5.47 in tax

$5 shipping (gas would cost more right now)

You have to like being able to spend only about $1.23 a shirt!

C'mon Mom!

“C’mon, Mom. Let’s go find penis!”

This was today’s unique way of requesting a diaper change. I know I am not supposed to laugh, but it was funny to me and I did snicker.

Summer's Slip-Sliding Away

Possession

Me trying to engage in some pretend play: "I'm Ollie"

Thane: "No silly! You're Mama!" placing his hand on his chest "Faney's Mama!"

It's cute as now it seems like I belong to him.

This weeks rots. I mostly have my more pleasant Braeden back, but this being in two places at once is way to much for me.

We have a partial family date for tomorrow night. Dave and I are going to dinner with Braeden while Thane plays with Kim. There is definitely something going on with Braeden so it seems like this is a good idea. Thane wouldn't do well in a restaurant because it is conventional to actually sit and eat your dinner, and trying to find things that he can and will eat in a restaurant still feels daunting. I really don't want him being glutened because he is just getting over a sinus infection and his speech clarity is not back to normal yet.

Which brings me to his speech evaluation. It was pretty depressing in its own right as he still is over a year behind in some areas. He did score as high as 3 years 3 months, which is only 3-4 months behind, in comprehension, and at age level for articulation, so those are huge leaps forward. I guess it is all coming, but . . .

You also have to love new goals such as "In a classroom setting, Thane will demonstrate ability to follow a two-part command such as "Thane, please put your Kleenex in the trash, go get your coat and line up by the wall." First, that is more than two parts. Second, he has no clue what a Kleenex is.

Oh, and my email has been out for 5 days now. I have to keep calling the satellite company, and talking to tech support in India. "Thank you very much, how may I be of your most valuable service?" I have to say that the 3-4 hours I have been on the phone with tech support, only to learn is all their problem and nothing I can do, I have to grumpily say that all the politeness doubled the chat time, maybe tripled it. There is something funny about it . . . though I realize I am being totally un-PC here:

"Hello, my name is Sean, thank you very much for calling HughesNet. How may I be of your most valuable service?"

"My email is reporting an "error, in-use, mailbox locked . . . "

"Thank you very much. I am so sorry for your inconvenience. I will help you. Thank you for being patient with me. Can you open your mail program."

"Yes, opened."

"Oh yes, thank you very much. I will help you. Do you see tools?"

"Yes."

"Thank you very much. Please click tools."

Duh! "OK"

"Thank you very much. Please click on mail.hughes.net."

"OK."

"Yes. Thank you for your patience. I will help you. Now click delete."

"OK."

"Thank you very much, did you delete it?"

"Yes."

"Thank you! What do you see now? There should be no mail servers. I will help you. We will set up your mail again. Thank you very much for your wonderful patience with me today."

When politeness becomes so time-consuming, I confess that I find it rather annoying.

Thank you very much for your patience!

What Fresh Hell is This?

To say I am out of sorts is putting it mildly . . . my home has been invaded once again by a friend of Braeden’s, so there is no peace to be found anywhere. It is finally a beautiful day outside and they have quite successfully ruined any chance of my enjoying it.

It started with Dave being particularly stupid. I was actually asleep. Peacefully asleep. This is pretty rare and I really needed it. I’m tired, coughing until I puke on daily basis, and constantly sick to my stomach. Why men’s brains fly out the window, I still have not figured out. He woke me up and while I was incoherent asked if Braeden could have a friend over. Never mind that Braeden’s behavior has been wretched all week and none of his friends should be subjected to any more of his ill behavior . . . nor should any of us have to be tormented into having to correct him every two seconds as he appears to have lost all ability to understand words like “stop” (I tried unsuccessfully last night to get him to define it without using the word in the definition) . . . but we had already discussed not having a play date on Sunday.

We simply can’t have two successive weekend days where we’re unable to catch up on chores or go run errands – it sets us up for too little sleep all week as we try to have the house somewhat ready for the invasion of the therapists.

The deeper issue is that Braeden seems to have this brat-intensifier that hones in us when he has a friend over. So not only do we have trip over extra people, constantly feed them and find wasted drinks and food all over the house, we get rewarded by having to put up with Super Snarky Boy.

I ended up totally furious with Super Snarky Boy on Thursday. There are two pieces to it. The first is that he annoyed a friend so much that he decided he didn’t want Braeden over, which led to the boy’s mom driving 25 miles to get rid of him. How embarrassing. I would have gotten him, but I think she was trying to do me a favor since things have been so awful lately. Then Super Snarky went far enough that she said something totally offensive to him, so now I feel very angry with her as well. I put up with a rotation of children through play dates and carpools, so I know how annoying these children can be. I’m an adult, though, so I tend to vent elsewhere and keep my cool with the kids.

I commented to the mom of the friend who was over last night that he had been rather mellow and well-mannered, but Braeden was driving us crazy. We had a few instances in the pool where I had to intervene and get Braeden to stop. She very gently explained that something went on when Braeden was over at her house the other day too – that her son asked if they could call me to have me talk to him because he was being more aggressive and not listening to his requests to stop something, but then they seemed to work it out and they never called. We pretty much have consensus among all adults who have spent time with Braeden this past week that he has been unusually obnoxious.

Now that Staples commercial where the parents are dancing in the aisles while they buy school supplies is going through my head, but the reality is that I think my life is going to be equally miserable after the school year begins. The children will still be on different schedules and we’ll still have absolutely no reliable support other than a single mom who works seven days a week. When I do accept help from someone else it, it seems to bite me in the backside (Thursday) . . . not that we get many offers.

ABCs

Stinky Chicken

Some chickens visited preschool yesterday. I guess one of them decided to poop and Thane called it a "stinky chicken" repeatedly. I think it is funny, but at the same time it draws my attention to the fact that he repeats himself a lot and I am not sure it is fully acknowledged by his therapists. During DT on Monday he kept repeating "I don't swim." He wanted to swim, but it has been a cold July and our pool has been giving us fits.

He did get to swim today, and I took 594 photos of the guys in the pool. Unfortunately, I missed the best picture . . . I blew up an inflatable duck ring for young children after having chosen a duck since Thane adores them. Thane whipped off his diaper, wrapped the duck around his middle, and started running around the living room saying "I don't swim. I don't swim." I blew up a yellow swim boat and then he was running around naked with a duck around his waist and a boat in his hand repeating "I don't swim." He was so excited to go swimming. It's hard not to be charmed by his enthusiasm.

I also found it cute that he decided to hoard pool toys. Check out this face . . .


We also got a taste of what the teenage years with Braeden might be like.


These pictures were taken at near 8 p.m., hence the iffy lighting.

686

That's the number of photographs I took yesterday after getting a new camera. I finally settled on getting a Canon Digital Rebel Xti. I got a professional CompactFlash card and found that I could actually take 43 pictures rapid fire at 10.1 megapixels, so I was playing with that as the boys made faces, and as Dave had a battle of "Diego vs. Diego vs. Diego" where one Diego figure took down two others.

The disconcerting part is that I put a picture of Thane as my screen wallpaper, but that makes him larger than life. It feels like he is staring me down. I would post the picture here, but I also transitioning to a new computer, so I don't have things remotely set up yet (and I have to say I am not convinced that my $30 investment in an easy transfer cable was totally worth it as it seems to get bogged down and just stop, but for some reason my old computer doesn't feel like it should fully function on our home network). Add to that that my Blackberry and Vista don't like each other the way I want them to, and I have lost a lot of time trying to simplify my life.

But I still managed to take 686 pictures.

Braeden quote: "All prosecuters will be shot." He was trying to say, "All violators will be prosecuted," but it came out wrong!

Kisses!!!

We're on a roll as far as kisses from Thane go. I actually got 12 of them in the month of June and I was really celebrating. Now we're up to that already in July, including goodnight kisses each night. He still doesn't quite have the pucker down, but I actually saw him do it once when I was making an /o/ sound.


This became a game -- we walked to end of the bench, then back to give a kiss to one of us.


Of course I needed a picture of Mist getting in the act too. She's always trying to upstage people!

Playhouse

Nothing like coaxing your father into a small plastic playhouse.


Then inviting the 80-pound dog in through the window.


Three's company!

Dandelion

It is always fun to try to get a picture of a child who keeps getting closer, and closer, and closer . . . but I had to post this cross-eyed image because Thane was successfully blowing the dandelion seeds. This from a child who didn't go through the usual baby ritual of blowing raspberries.

Thane has also given me six kisses so far this month! He can't really pucker yet, but the fact that he is trying to kiss is wonderful!

He is now an eBay model. It's kind of cute seeing him there in an auction for overalls (what else?).

I may have posted a little too soon on the name thing . . . the last few days his answer to the question “What is your name?” has been “Kipper.” I think some of it is him teasing us – he has decided he is pretty funny (must get that from his father!).

Marvelous Mug

Thane's picture is currently in a contest on Discussing Autism he's picture #3 if you want to cast your vote.

Frank!

I wanted to post this yesterday, but according to Hughes.net I taken up more than my “fair use” of bandwidth over the weekend downloading game patches for Braeden’s computer. Pffffffffffffffft to them! It seems like a recipe for making new computer installations drag on for ages.

We had a few big leaps this weekend – not just one! I always find it a bit odd that these things tend to happen on weeks when Thane has no school and minimal therapy (he had one hour of developmental therapy this week, that’s all). It also seems that many big leaps happen when big brother Braeden is home too as Thane totally adores him.

I give total credit for the first big jump to Braeden . . . Thane went into a dirt pile without having clothes on. We have a big mound of dirt in the yard waiting to be smoothed out for a new swing set. Braeden has always loved a big pile of dirt, so he has been climbing in it since it arrived. Thane has taken steps toward it. First he approached it and backed away. Next time he was fully clothed, with shoes, touching only with a long-handled shovel and not climbing on it. Then he climbed a bit while fully clothed. Yesterday we moved up to undressed, bare feet and actually picking up some handfuls.

It may sound like a strange thing to celebrate, but when a child has sensory issues, it is really huge to have him accept the feel of dirt lightly touching him. Another cute thing is he realized completely that he was doing something different and special so he kept saying “Look at me, Mommy!”

Thane was also playing in a small pool in the yard, so at some point he took off the diaper he was wearing when the sand photo was taken. Dave, my ever-joking husband, looked at a naked Thane walking back from the dirt pile and said:

“Hi Frank! What’s up Frank?”

Thane shook his head and said, “No. No Frank.” He put his palm on his chest and continued, “This is Thaney!”

This isn’t just huge, it’s monumental! We have been working with him for months on trying to answer the question “What is your name?” – I’ve posted it about here in discussions, including my social story adventures. I wanted him to be able to answer the question because he is always asked when we go shopping and people seem confused when he doesn’t answer.

It wasn’t just a one-time deal, either. We got him to repeat similar scenarios. I asked him what a toy’s name was, and he replied, “This is Elmo.” Then I pointed to him, asked his name and heard, “This is Thaney.” I also find it wonderful that he is no longer “a Thaney” but just “Thaney.”

I even got a direct answer to the question, “What is your name?”

“This is Thaney!” again putting his hand to his heart.

What wonderful, beautiful payoff! Can you tell that I am totally thrilled? I know in the vast scheme of life, this may sound small to some, but around here it is the kind of thing that makes tears well up in everyone’s eyes.

To accompany his fascination with letters and words, we’re seeing an increased interest in numbers. Thane definitely counts with purpose and quantifies things nicely. Yesterday he counted backwards from 17, which is a new skill. I’m not really sure what to make of what he was doing on the deck, but it seemed rather cool . . . he was pacing behind me on a slatted bench counting, “2, 12, 3, 13, 4, 14, 5, 15, 6, 16 . . .”

Wired

Because Thane loves Diego, I decided to purchase a Diego computer game. I loaded it up this evening and he was so excited he really couldn't contain himself whatsoever. It is so hard to know what to do in a situation where you know he is extremely happy, but he gets totally wacky. He was screaming and throwing himself on the ground, jumping up, running back to the laptop to watch, flapping his hands and bouncing, answering the questions, throwing himself down again. It was just, well, extreme . . . even for him.

In retrospect, I wonder if his weighted vest might have helped. He was chewing on his fingers so hard I was sure that he would cry out in pain. He didn't, but then he started chewing on his shirt and flapping it around.

Then we had one of those life as we have known it will have to be altered moments -- he grabbed the cord plugging the laptop into the wall and was about to chomp down on it when I stopped him. His face with his teeth in full chomp mode and the cord stretched between his hands is now etched in my mind. It totally freaked me out. The laptop cannot possibly be left in the living room with Thane in there, and obviously it is no time to get casual about electrical cords or safety covers for outlets.

I know I can be a bit over the top, but either Dave or I have been in the room with him all evening.

The other day I was happy that he seemed to be understanding that he needed his "red pool coat" to go in the big pool, but he isn't yet getting that he can't go in it alone. Braeden left one of the backyard gates unlocked and Thane set me to panic mode by heading over there. Luckily I saw the gate was unlocked and Braeden raced over to fix that. The stairs aren't in the pool yet, so it isn't usable for me.

Bravery

I'm bravely posting a picture of myself with Thane. As I was making slide shows for both boys, I realized there were very few pictures of Thane and I together, so Braeden took this one. Thane didn't want any part of it . . . and in some ways I didn't either . . .

It has taken me a week to get this far, and I am still resisting uploading it reduced to the size of a postage stamp!

Stinky Playdate

I guess I was so taken with Thane and his blanket that I forgot that I wanted to post that yet another baby skunk was spotted in our yard. Braeden had a playdate with someone who lives elsewhere during the school year. They were out back when a baby skunk decided to try to get in the yard, at the same time as the other boy's mother drove up.

She asked Braeden for a box, caught the baby skunk, and removed him from our yard. In the process, the little one sprayed while in the box so there was a heck of a stink again. She came back up to the house and asked if she totally reeked. Luckily she didn't, but I had to kid her that it was a heck of a way to pick up her kid after a play date!

Therapy Blanket

Thane seems to be growing like a weed lately. We ordered him a weighted toddler blanket months ago. I knew we'd need a twin-size before long, but since he never would consider even using a blanket I didn't want to invest the money. I got in a Wiggles pattern as he was in love with The Wiggles. He screamed at the blanket the first day, but when he finally tried it he loved it. The toddler one was five pounds and it just calmed him right down for sleep.

He likes to sleep totally under the blanket at first, and he is just too long to be covered head to toe in a toddler-size blanket. He's wearing 4T sleepers from an OMOM friend -- who knew he would catch up so much so fast?!?

Anyway, I ordered a twin blanket in a Go Diego Go! pattern as that is one of his current favorites. He was cheering and jumping up and down when Dave was opening the box. I should have had the video going!

But what happened after that was priceless. He grabbed the pillow and tossed it on the floor to stand on it and jump off. Then he pulled the blanket out of the box, dragged across the fuzzy carpet, and put in on the couch. Then he dragged it back and climbed in the box, covered himself in the blanket, and asked for the pillow.

Dave joked:

"Therapy blanket and pillow, $119.99”

“Shipping for blanket and pillow $30.00”

“Child climbing in beat up cardboard box and covering himself with therapy blanket, priceless!”

It was cute! I am editing this as I published this post to my blog and then Braeden came in with a picture of Thane that actually shows the box. The second and third pictures were taken earlier -- the second shows how happy he is with the blanket, and the third shows a silly smile and the pillow.







Anyone who is interested in a weighted blanket should consider this Natural Remedies for Autism ADHD . . . I have gotten my orders very quickly, even special orders, and they are nice fluffy blankets. She makes all sorts of sizes and lots of fabrics to choose from.

Sigh

Today is our 20th wedding anniversary. It wasn't very exciting . . . The sigh is for one of those moments that makes a mom cry. Thane is really, really off today. He was crying and wanted nothing to do with me. Braeden tried to calm him with a hug, but something happened and Breaden's finger got smashed under the roof of a rugged log-cabin doll house. Braeden started crying and sat in the corner of our sectional sofa. Thane climbed up on the couch, still crying too, and plopped himself in Braedens lap. B wrapped his arms around him and cuddled, but admitted it was
sometimes very hard to be his brother. It was really painful atching the two of them crying like that.

I imagine there are always times when having a sibling stinks, but the looks on their faces today was difficult.