Nice Little Moments

In ABA the other day, B. stacked one block on top of another. Just one, but that was a missing milestone that always stuck in my head, because it seemed so basic. He also picked up a bean off the table and dropped it in jar. These aren't things he's working on...his therapist helped him do them a few times, and then he did them himself. That is a big, big change.

More importantly, he seems to look at us a little more, and smile at us a little more, as the days go by.

G. is very into "hiding" these days. When I say "It's time for bed", he runs and hides behind some curtains. Then, If he manages to sneak his tiny penguins into bed with him, he bunches up a blanket and holds the penguins under it. To me, that shows some "theory of mind". He knows the penguins are there, but he thinks we won't. He's not at all subtle about the hiding, which is kind of cute.

J. has been coming out with comments like, "This is a fun morning", "This is a good breakfast!", etc. Maybe he's learning to butter me up, but hey, it works.

Why does she keep giving me bananas?

I had a revelation yesterday. G. did what I thought was his sign for banana, and then said "Chugga, chugga, woo, woo!" (the woo, woo is a new accomplishment, and I'm thrilled about it). He ran across the room and got a train. A light went on in my head, and I finally understood why he'd been signing banana in strange contexts and refusing the bananas I offered him (when they make a request, I fall all over myself trying to respond, thinking it'll encourage them to keep requesting). Overall, G. is much more interested in trains than bananas, so it all makes a lot of sense. I wonder how many other of these misunderstandings we're having. It's got to be frustrating for him, but I think he's getting a lot more motivated to make us understand, which is so great. Yesterday he said "hot" and "backpack"--two new words in one day

On the B. front, I'm meeting with a woman who may provide us with ten hours of ABA a week, just for B. She seems very experienced, and is really reassuring to talk to. Really, I felt so relieved talking to her that I think I'd pay her just to come to our house and hang around.

Tomorrow is G's MRI. Now this is a child who has never drunk a clear liquid in his life. And the MRI is at 12:30, so he is going to be like an angry grizzly cub at that point. My plan is to give him apple juice in a medicine dropper and see how that goes. B.'s MRI came back totally normal. it almost seems that we could cancel G's, since they're identical twins, but I don't think the doctor would go for that.

I signed up for a scrapbooking retreat in July. I'm not that much of a scrapbooker, but I am definitely ready to retreat. I have never, ever been away from all of my children since the day J. came home.

Feeling Optimistic/ Autism vs. the Easter Bunny

This morning I woke up feeling optimistic about the whole situation. As far as I know, nothing in particular has changed (although G. did come back out of his no talking/no signing stage, which was, as always, a huge relief).

Anyway, I just have the feeling that things will be alright. I spoke to my "autism mom mentor" this past weekend, and she gave me a lot of encouragement. Her son was never as delayed as the twins are, but she thinks he was more distant and aloof. Now he's doing very well although of course he's still on the spectrum. Part of her advice to me was not to worry about money for the next year or two, and get all the therapy we possibly can. My husband is always more laid back about money than I am, so I'm lucky in that way. The last few days I've put a lot of my energy into sensory integration--learning about how to do the brushing protocol, and ordering a swing which we can hang in a doorway. Since we've put a little climbing structure in our backyard, B. has been so happy! He has stopped biting his hand, and I suspect it may be because he now has the outlet of climbing. I'd like to get him something to climb on inside, but right now he settles for hanging off the back of the couch. One of the reasons I love our current OT is that she gets so excited about B.'s climbing or even about his sitting on the arm of our rocking chair. She is always able to see strengths in him that I so need to hear about right now.

G. said his first three-syllable word today. It was "Tortoro", the name of a character in a Japanese children's movie that a friend gave us. It's funny, he'd only said two or three words all day (although he has been signing a lot), and then suddenly he was saying "Tortoro......Tortoro" very quietly.

Next week we have B's MRI. I'll stay home with the other two boys, and my husband will take him. I wish I could go, but we couldn't find anyone who could come over early enough to babysit. A few weeks later, G. will have his MRI, and we can both go to that one. I'm not expecting that there is anything wrong in their brains, but the devl. pediatrician said they have strangely-shaped heads. They were monoamniotic twins, meaning that their cords were tangled throughout the entire pregnancy, so things have been unusual from the beginning. For three weeks we believed that they were conjoined, and someday I plan to blog about that crazy period of our lives.

Oh, the second part of the title of this post refers to a comment we got recently. I didn't actually hear it. A friend of mine was with B. at a playspace when a man and his son joined them. The son really wanted to play with B., and B. was happily ignoring him. My friend mentioned that B. has autism, and the dad said, "Oh, I don't believe in any of that!", along with a few comments about everyone having a diagnosis these days, etc. When my friend told me, for some reason it struck me as funny (If an in-law of mine had said it, I'd be outraged.) It hadn't occurred to me that I could choose not to believe in autism. Is it like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? Even if that were true, I'd keep believing in it, because it helps me understand the odd, funny, loveable ways of my twins.

For some reason, this got me wondering about what Tom Cruise and Scientology think of autism. I'll have to Google it.

My new attitude about blogging is that I am going to try to stop being intimidated by the blogs which strike me as so well-written and wise and the type of thing which could actually be turned into a book someday. I feel my style is more of a stream-of-consciousness, sleep-deprived, I'm-trying-to-ignore-the Heffalump-sounds-coming-from-my-older-son's-room style. It does feel therapeutic to blog, and it's definitely very helpful to read other autism parents' blogs and comments.

Moving Onward and Upward

To get the whole hospital visit thing out of our system, my sister and I took the boys to the Moody Gardens aquarium on Galveston Island today. it's so wonderful having my sister here. When I was living my single life back in Boston, we saw each other every weekend, which was great.

The last time we went to the aquarium in July or so, B. and G. seemed completely unaware of where we were. This time they loved it. G. (who has a slight penguin obsession) stood with his face squashed up against the glass, staring at the penguins. Some of them swam right up to where he was to check him out. B. went into his happy dance, clapping his hands and doing his fancy footwork the whole time that he watched the penguins. J. enjoyed it, too, although he was torn between the penguins and the seals and had to keep running back and forth. He especially liked a glass tunnel in which you could see sharks swimming overhead.

We had a picnic lunch and then walked down to look at the water. We happened upon a great playground, and spent a while there until all three boys started to hit the fatigue wall and get cranky. This time it was J. who got into the fire ants, but we got them off before they bit him. He wanted to play with the giant chess set which was near the playground, so we gave it a try. He's starting to be very interested in playing games, although chess for him right now consists of hugging the knights and ignoring all the other pieces. I can't wait until we can really play board games.

This afternoon I felt as if B and G were trying to prove the doctor wrong about the MR thing (which at this point is pretty meaningless to me, anyway). B has been saying "up", and a few other things. G. was trying to do the motions to "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes". When J. and I were playing hide-and-seek, both the boys tried to chime in whenever I counted to ten.

Playing hide and seek with J. is funny, because first of all, he usually hides in plain sight. Then when I try to ham it up, and look all over, saying "Where could J. be?", he can't help yelling out, "Here I am!" Today the twins got very excited whenever I counted, and ran around the house when I got to ten. It was nice because we were all playing together, even though they weren't actually looking for J., as far as I could tell. Although, I can certainly see how the point of the game isn't clear to them, given the way we play it!

My short term goal right now is to replace some of G's lost wooden penguins. He started with three, and right now we are down to one, which has been chewed on quite a bit by the dog. I actually called the toy store in Massachusetts where my friend bought them, but they were out. I'll try the internet. I know he'll deal with it if the last one gets lost, but he's so cute when he plays with it. It jumps around, goes for a ride on a kiddy bike, kisses other little animals, etc.

It's the Little Things that Get Me

When I bent down to kiss G. good night, he started fake snoring.

After carrying G. up to bed, I started down the stairs to get B., and met him crawling up to meet me, with a big smile on his face. This had never happened! He also had his bedtime animal, Sprinkles, with him. It's a little thing...he realized it was bedtime, and he was coming upstairs on his own initiative. But it's also a huge thing, in my book.

Quick review of Ocean's Twelve: the most unlikely plot I've seen since Ocean's Eleven, but I still enjoyed it. At no point in the movie did anyone in a dinosaur costume sing or dance, so right there you know it's got something going for it.

Next in the queue, Impromptu.

Un-nerving moment of the day: J (the supposedly NT big brother) has discovered dimmer switches, of which our house has many. As I tried to clean up this evening, he dragged a little chair around and adjusted the lighting in each room until I finally put a stop to it.

Seeing Progress

It's funny, I would normally feel uncomfortable "bragging" about my kids' achievements, but since they're so far behind, it feels okay to go on at length.

Tried to get G. to wear rainboots for the first time. He threw a big fit, and kept pulling them off. I heard J. say to him, "You want to wear boots or shoes?" G. then signed "shoes", which he's never done before. J. answered him by saying, "Good choice," which sounds like an echo of my special ed. teacher-y way of speaking.

G. later allowed me to put the boots on him when he realized it was the only way to get to splash in puddles with J. Luckily the pants I was wearing were essentially mud-colored to begin with.

Other recent G. triumphs:

I said, "This is a book about hats", and he patted his head.

He pretended to sleep on a pillow on the floor, and imitated our fake snoring.

He falls down on purpose, and laughs when we do it together.

I hate to ignore B. in this post. His progress is a little harder to track, because we have a lot of "Did he just say that?" moments. The speech therapist heard him say "Ready, set, go!" very faintly. He also said "Q,R,S", after we paused in an attempt to get him to sing "P". He uses a few signs, but very tentatively, often when he thinks no one is looking at him.

On the other hand, he is definitely the only boy in the house ever to have urinated in the potty! This happened last night at bath time, and I think it was an accident of timing, but we cheered like crazy. Now if it would just inspire some competitive feeling in his big brother.
A funny J. moment: After having a toileting accident, J. apologized to the character on his underpants-- "Sorry, Benny!"