Happy Birthday

Today was my birthday, so Husband took me out for the afternoon. While we were gone, Daughter made me a cake. (Isn't she sweet?)  So we get home a few minutes ago, and of course Aaron wanted in on the cake surprise, so he did what he knows how to do best....

That is my birthday cake.  I didn't get to see how it looked before Aaron got his grubby little hands on it, but I'm assured it was beautiful.  Thankfully Daughter has a good sense of humor as well and didn't freak out when the Little Monster destroyed it.  I love my family!

Sympathy pains

Oldest Son STILL hasn't lost all of his teeth.  Aaron has.  The tooth-losing process has been a not so fun one for Aaron.  He lost his first four during oral surgery when he was in preschool.  Given his "issues" we have just recently been able to clean his teeth at the dentist.  We have a fabulous dentist who works great with him.  So when he was little she was able to see that he had a couple of cavities, and the only way to take care of those was to put him under.  So we did.  We gave her permission to do whatever she needed to do while she was in there, so when he came out he was missing his front bottom four teeth and had 8 silver caps on his molars.  Poor kid.  It was pathetically cute though.  Anyhow, I'll spare you the long story about his teeth and cut to the chase.  If Aaron had a loose tooth he would mess around with it until it was a bloody mess, it would hurt, he would be grumpy, and I would want to pass out (I don't do teeth).  So we tried the dental floss trick with him--you know where you wrap floss around the tooth and then pull hard to pop it out?  Well it works great (and we've extracted a few of his teeth that way) except now he's afraid of dental floss.  Oops.  So now when he's at the dentist office, they pull the floss out and he freaks.  It seemed like a good idea at the time....anyhow, full circle to today...Oldest has a loose tooth that's been bugging him.  I tell him to do the floss trick, and he's reluctant (he's such a worrier).  I convince Husband to convince him that he NEEDS to do this, and Husband humors me, even though Son is protesting like crazy.  So there we all are, standing in front of the mirror, with floss wrapped around Oldest Son's tooth, trying to convince him to pop the tooth out.  Aaron walks in and sees what's going on.  He stares at Oldest Son, and starts having a sympathy reaction.  He starts messing with his mouth next to Oldest Son, like he understands what Oldest is going through.  It's quite sweet.  Oldest didn't want me to take a picture of it, hence the dirty look I get in this picture, but you can see Aaron just checking him out.  Then he keeps looking at himself in the mirror, playing with his teeth, and having fun with Sister.

Q-tips

You know how your mom told you to never run with a sucker in your mouth?  She most likely didn't have to tell you not to run with q-tips sticking out of your ears.  And yet, I found myself yesterday telling my child to not run through the house with q-tips in his ears.  He has a fascination with his ears that have sent us to the doctor's office numerous times for a good old "ear flush".  Those are fun.  I'll save those stories for another time--but a word of advice to you parents with autistic children--the nurses at the doctor's office are your BEST FRIENDS.  Do what it takes to win them over.  I don't even have to identify myself on the phone when I call anymore.  Even better, I can be sitting in the grocery store food court and see them walk by on their lunch and text them "I'm watching you.  You look hot in those white pants."  Then I just peek around the corner and watch them look around for me....I did that one last week--it was pretty fun.  It's the little things in life for me.  Anyhow, back to q-tips.  So Aaron went running back and forth getting q-tips and then running through the house with them sticking out his ears.  He looked like a little alien.  It was pretty funny--for a minute, and then it turned quite nasty.  After one of his runs he chewed the cotton off of the ends of the q-tip (after it had been in his ear).  It fell out of his mouth, so rather than picking it up and throwing it away, he picked the little piece of cotton up with his DIRTY (and I mean covered in dirt from being outside) FOOT and then PUT IT BACK IN HIS MOUTH!  Gross.  I may have thrown up in my mouth a little.  Now I have to hide my q-tips too!

The art of manipulation

The Great Sheet Battle continues with my son.  I continue to lose the battles, but I'm hoping to win the war.  Tonight I got the brilliant idea to put the fleece sheet on upside down.  It's nasty polyester on that side, so maybe he'll like it....who knows. 

This child is a master at stealth autistic naughtiness.  It's been established that he likes to make mud.  Thanks to having bored dogs, we have a couple of mud holes in the backyard that are perfect for filling with dog water and any other liquid he can get his hands on.  Husband and I were on the back deck this evening having a conversation, when out walks Aaron with a glass of water.  I know full well where this kid is going.  In my "mom" voice I say, "Aaaaaaron", and he looks right at me with this expression that was like, "what"?  He pretends like he's not holding a cup of water, puts it down by the hose, and then starts making funny faces at his reflection in the window.   I'm humored, so I pretend like the whole thing didn't happen.  He walks away, and I make the mental note to bring the cup of water back in the house (which I surprisingly remembered to do).  Of course that didn't prevent him from running out of the house later and dumping the dog water into one of the holes before I could get to him, which subsequently led to him tracking muddy footprints all through the house.  (I am SO thankful we don't have carpet anymore!!!)  So it was time for a bath and bed.

I saw the stealth autistic naughtiness earlier in the evening, but when it was time for bed he pulled out the autistic manipulation card.  He loves my comforter.  He is always taking it off of my bed, and I'm having to get it back from him.  If you've followed this blog, you know that getting a non-verbal autistic kiddo to understand the importance of using words is key.  So that basically equates to: if they ask it, you should must do it. 

Now before you criticize me for giving my kid everything that he asks for, I have two things to say to you: 1.  Take a walk in my shoes, you have NO IDEA what you will do to get your kid to talk (although listening to my other two argue I sometimes wonder why I'm trying) and 2.  He doesn't get EVERYTHING that he asks for (he asks for pizza like 10 times a day), but if it's something he hasn't asked for before, you bet he gets it (like the $40 Lego airplane he spontaneously asked for in Target one day--which is now broken, of course)

Which brings me back to tonight.  I'm putting the Little Monster to bed, and he runs into my room and tries to take my comforter.  I tell him, "no, that's mine".  He looks at me and says, "bwanket".  Are you kidding me?  So off he went with MY comforter.  Yay for using new words!  Good thing it's not cold tonight!!!

Sheets

Aaron goes through these phases that are crazy-making!  Currently he's having an issue with fitted sheets.  All of a sudden he started ripping his sheet off before he goes to bed.  Every day I would put it back on, but he would rip it off.  Nothing changed...he's got the same sheets he's had for a long time...so I don't know what the deal is.  His mattress is starting to get nasty from his grubby body and sleepy time drool that I decided I needed to do something.  So I figure I'd get him some new sheets, and to make it enticing to keep it on, I'd go soft.  He loves soft things, so I bought him some flannel sheets.  I got them washed and was excited to put them on his bed (I LOVE the feel of new sheets--why shouldn't he?).  The next morning--they were off the bed.  We played this "game" for a few days when I realized that the flannel sheets were a bust.  What else is soft?  Fleece!  I saw fleece sheets at Costco recently and thought how I would love to have those sheets, but Husband is a human oven, so there is no way he would sleep with them.  Hmmm....now there's an idea...oops....um...never mind.  So off I went to Costco to find fleece sheets.  It was a successful shopping trip, and I excitedly put on the new sheet when I got home.  No dice.  Sheet was off the next morning.  We are currently playing the fleece sheet game, where I go in and put it on before he goes to bed, and it's off when he gets up--unfortunately I'm losing.  I'm $40 into new sheets that he doesn't like, and I'm not sure where to go from here.  My next thought is satin sheets....but do they make those for twin size beds?  Aren't those for big people beds?  Another option is higher thread count, but I really am not interested in paying $40 for a SINGLE sheet.  I could sew the sheet onto his mattress, but what do I do when he pukes on it in the middle of the night?  At this point I'm in $19.99 each set--so I've got additional pieces here, and I've been getting them in "gender neutral" (white) so that one of the other kids could have them if they didn't work out for Aaron.  (My poor older two kids, they get the rejects from their younger brother--isn't it supposed to be the other way around?)  Anyone have any good ideas?

Makeup brushes

According to "experts" (or women like me who have too much time on their hands and post all kinds of advice online that you're not even sure what type of authority they have to be posting this stuff) you're supposed to wash your makeup brushes every 2 weeks.  That's what "they" say (whoever "they" is).   For Christmas last year I got a nice set of makeup brushes and some brush cleaner.  I'll give you a hint on how often I clean my brushes...when I packed up our bathroom a couple of months ago I packed the cleaner because I hadn't used it.  Despite my good intentions, I never took the time to clean my overworked, dirty makeup brushes.  Never.  Until today.  I should look at my search history and see if Aaron has been reading up on makeup brush protocol. Aaron must have just seen the part about needing to clean them every 2 weeks, and didn't scroll down to the part of what you actually use to clean them.  So he assumed that shaving cream, hand soap, bar soap, and contact solution would be the perfect concoction.  Of course.

I'm going to assign blame to Husband on this one, and here is why:
1.  He HAD to refill the hand soap containers yesterday.  I was just happy with everyone having to walk to the kitchen sink and use the dish soap to wash their hands, but that wasn't good enough for him.  So Aaron spent the day today dumping all of the hand soap that husband filled yesterday.

2.  He wants dinner.  Talk about unrealistic.  So being the good wifey that I am, I thought it would be nice to make chicken corn chowder and cheese bread for dinner.  How awesome is that?  Aaron repaid my kind gesture with the equally kind gesture of cleaning my makeup brushes.  So mid cooking I had to take a break to finish the makeup brush cleaning that Aaron started for me.

Aaron is snuggling on the couch with me right now, and I have clean makeup brushes.  As a form of paybacks, I'm leaving the dishes for Husband to clean while I sit and watch him and enjoy a glass of wine.  It's only fair, right?

Puppy love?

We have reached a new low.  I am currently delirious because Aaron SOMEONE was up most of the night.  I'm not going to go into the details of how I was running around the house in the middle of the night looking for a stinking battery for his nightlight.  Needless to say, I couldn't find one, and I wasn't happy.  Anyhow, I'm a little sleep deprived, which is probably why I think this is so funny in a really sick sort of way:

Yup, that's the dog and Aaron.  Daughter and I were sitting at the table working on homework and we looked over to see Aaron with his mouth wide open and puppy going to town.  What's horrible is that it kept going on and on.  Daughter and I were totally grossed out, yelling at puppy and Aaron to stop, and they would...for a second.  We were laughing so hard though I don't think either of them took us seriously.  The madness finally stopped, but not before I was able to snap a picture with my phone!  YICK!