Moving update and funny story

Well, Aaron made it through the move.  I have to say I was very concerned about how he would do because the last time we moved it was a disaster.  With him being older, and his parents knowing how to prepare him better, I think he ended up being okay.  He's been sleeping through the night and didn't start looking for ways to escape out of the backyard until today...Today he paced the backyard fence looking for the best way to get outta here!  Luckily we've become friends with the people who bought our old house, so if he shows up there they know how to get a hold of us!  :)

Anyhow--the funny story.  One of the reasons we moved was to spare our neighbors from a frequently naked 10 year-old (sparing them from the naked part that is).  Well new neighbors, here we are!  One of the things that drew us to our current house is there are no neighbors behind us, none on one side of us, and a rambler on the other side of us--theoretically no one can see in our backyard (and if I catch them, then I can report them).  HOWEVER...apparently windows are a different story.  Let me leave this part of the story, give you another story, and then I'll connect the two.

One of Aaron's favorite things about the new house is the master bathroom.  It has (in the words of a friend) "a party tub"--a nice, big corner soaking tub.  Aaron is a bath-taker.  That was the first thing he wanted to do, so he enjoyed the tub before anyone else.  The next night I told him it was time for bed and he ran into my bathroom and stripped down really fast.  I said, "do you want to take a shower?" (because I really didn't feel like sitting there while he took a bath) and he said, "bath".  Fine.  Well tonight I decide that I was going to try the "party tub" for the first time.  I get the candles lit, the bubbles in, and my Pure Moods music going when I hear "the boy" running down the hall to come into my bathroom.  I lock the door as fast as I can as I see him round the corner--selfish--I know--but it was MY TURN.  He could have his turn after I was done.

This is where the two pieces of information collide.  (Remember we were trying to get away from neighbors seeing a naked kid all the time).  There is a window on each side of the bathtub.  In the corner of the tub (between the two windows) is a seat.  Aaron doesn't want to step into the tub from the side, so he has to get to the corner so he can step down onto the seat.  There he is, standing on the side of the tub with his naked butt pressed up against the window as he slowly inches his way across the side to get to the corner of the tub--his rear end sliding across the window--a "full moon" for all of the neighbors to see.  I'm not sure how many neighbors were looking out their windows at that particular moment, but those who did....well...sorry for the unexpected show!!!  I just threw my hands in the air and gave a big "oh well"--welcome to the neighborhood!

Social Stories

So we're getting ready to move.  Hopefully Friday.  Any time a major even happens you need to prepare an autistic kid.  A major event is about to happen.   I'm going for the award of "Autistic Mother of the Year" so I'm trying to prepare him.  In the "autism world" preparation comes in the form of a "social story".  A social story is basically a story telling a person what is expected/going to happen/etc.  Before technology this would be quite laborious (how's that for your word-of-the-day?); however, thanks to technology, writing social stories are now quite easy...if you're good at technology...of which I am good enough to be dangerous.

I know I need to prepare The Boy, and the experts say the best way is through a social story.  So I open up Keynote (the Mac version of PowerPoint) and create my genius story.  Visualize this:

Slide 1: A picture of our current house and Aaron's current bedroom with a big red "x" through them and the caption: "Mom and Dad want a bigger house."  (How materialistic is that..but I couldn't think of something better)...what next?  I'd better let him know that we're ALL moving...Slide 2: A picture of the new house..."Mom (I always come first..it flows better), Dad, Cameron, Madison, Aaron, Pippin and Lucy (gotta make sure you include the dogs) are going to move in this house". Then comes Slide 3.  It's a picture of his therapist, McKenzie, and a picture of Chuck E Cheeses with the caption: "On moving day you will go to Chuck E Cheese with McKenzie..."and from that point on he doesn't give a rip about the rest of the story.  It doesn't even matter what comes next, because now all he's doing is looking at the slide with the picture of Chuck E Cheese on it!  He gets his shoes on and tries to drag me out of the house!  I'm trying to explain that he doesn't get to go until Friday.  As a pathetic substitution he scrolls through Google Images looking at different pictures of Chuck E Cheese.  I can only imagine what's going through his head right now--he doesn't care that we're moving, he wants Chuck E Cheese!

The beauty in all of this is that I get out of taking him to Chuck E Cheese!  (Sorry McKenzie) That place is like crack cocaine for kids!!  So in a sick way, I'm thankful that I'll be loading boxes and scrubbing toilets (although I'm trying to figure out a way to have Husband clean them), because that means I won't be at Chuck E Cheese.  McKenzie, if you're reading this...it'll be fine...you have way more patience than I do!  :)

Rocks

Aaron has a thing for sticking things in his ears.  When he was really little (like 3 or 4--but my memory of those times is a little fuzzy--heck my memory of these current times is fuzzy, so don't quote me on exactly how old he was) we would hang out in the doctor's office (multiple times) while they dug Play Doh out of his ears.  He took a break from Play Doh for a few years, and decided it was time to start shoving things in there again.   In April of this year (I remember it was in April because it was my daughter's birthday that day--yay for holidays) I got a phone call from the school saying they thought Aaron had something in his ears--so off we went to the doctor's office.  We were about to go to Children's Hospital to have them put him under to dig it out (they were originally going to send him to ENT, but they couldn't get him in for four days.  The doctor told me to make sure he didn't play with it while we waited.  I almost laughed out loud.  I gave his this look, and kindly let him know that was impossible--thus the decision to get it taken care of right away), but the awesome MA said she's the ear flushing master--so we gave it a shot.  They didn't want to traumatize him, but I was like, "Are you kidding me?  I want this kid so traumatized that he'll never put another object in his ears!!!" 

Well...two weeks later (I kid you not) I got a phone call from the school, "Hey Danica, Aaron is in the office and we think he's got something else in his ear."  Crap!!!!!  Off we go to the doctor.  Sure enough, this time he had a ball bearing crammed in his ear. 

A couple of days later (again, I kid you not)--I saw the school phone number on the caller ID.  The voice on the other line said, "Hi Danica, this is Laurie" (she's one of the secretaries) and I interrupted her "DON'T TELL ME AARON HAS SOMETHING IN HIS EAR".  I later found out the secretaries drew straws on who was going to have to be the one to call me!!!  :)  Off we went to the doctor AGAIN.  Luckily this time it was a false alarm.  However, after all of the times that I spent watching how to flush his ear, I got the privilege of  taking home my very own syringe-ear-flusher.  That way I could "try this at home" first.  I took Aaron back to school after that appointment only to find out that there was a substitute that day.  Apparently he was a new special ed teacher right out of college.  He was really nice, patient, and the kids loved him.  A young guy whose feet weren't wet--yet.  I decided to capitalize on this perfect opportunity.  The regular teacher was there, but it was her paperwork day, so she and I talked about the incident and about the substitute (whom I'd never met).   My prey walked into the classroom and the teacher introduced us.  I told him how relieved I was that Aaron didn't have something in his ear, but that he (the substitute) owed me $30 for a copay that wasn't needed.  He gave me this deer-in-the-headlights look as I told him this with a serious face.  I couldn't keep it long though and told him I was just kidding.  Poor guy.  I had way too much fun with that one.  Anyhow....

Fast forward to this morning.  He's been at school 10 MINUTES.  The phone call comes in, "Hi Danica, this is Laurie...Aaron has a huge rock stuck in his ear and we can't get it out".  Dang it!!!  I told her we would be there in a few minutes.  I'll be honest--I was still in bed--yup, mother of the year.  Since I was still in bed that meant: terrible breath from the pico de gallo & wine from the night before, no makeup, no shower, and some wicked striped fleece pajamas that I'm sure did wonders for my butt!  Not only that, but Husband's car was in the shop, so he had my car and was supposedly working out.  I was able to get a hold of him (he was in the driveway because he forgot his key to the gym because he had my keys--yeah right), so he went and picked Aaron up.  It ended up that while Husband went looking for a tooth pick (because he didn't think the water flush would work--and he tried the tweezers and they didn't work--for him), Daughter pulled his ear open and popped out the rock with the help from the tweezers.  She's a great big sister, and she's going to be a great mother (when she's 30).  No doctor's visit this time, and back to school he went. 

I took a picture of the latest rock, and put my hand in the picture for a frame of reference!

Excuses excuses

So it's been a while.  It's not because Aaron hasn't been getting into mischief--because he has--don't worry.  I've been a little preoccupied because we're in the process of moving.  Our current house closed, and we're in the process of waiting for our new house to be finished.  Needless to say, that puts a little extra on my plate.  So bear with me for the next couple of weeks until we get settled into our new house (hopefully sometime in the middle of November).  Moving is going to suck for Aaron (and I'd venture to say it's going to suck more for me because of how much it's going to suck for Aaron), so I'll have all kinds of stories I'm sure.

Tonight Aaron and I went "shopping".  Oldest Son was at Civil Air Patrol, Daughter was at youth group, and Husband is gone for a couple of days (please don't come and assault me) so it was just me and The Boy.  I needed to replace a window screen that Aaron had painted earlier this summer, so we went to Lowes in search of a screen kit.  I've done this once before because "someone" ruined another screen--so I'm a pro.  We walked through Lowes without incident, so he could handle another store--right?  Sure.  So we went to Michaels.  I think every male on the planet hates Michaels (it's a craft store)--Aaron is no exception--but he did ok.  He did well enough that I decided to kill the last 26 minutes at Marshalls--there may have been my mistake, I apparently overestimated him. Luckily my amount of public humiliation was minimized because the store wasn't busy.  We walk in and he starts making noises, which makes people stop and stare.  I walk over to the shoes and he sees a mirror so he drops to the ground, screams (a happy scream), and makes funny faces at himself in the mirror.  I'm trying to get him off the ground, and an employee is peeking around the corner staring at me.  I just smile at her, and pull my son up to standing.  Awesome.  We walk through the store and people just look over at us because he's making funny noises--no big deal, I'm used to it, and I hardly notice it (not really, but in general I don't care what people think).  And then he decides to go big or go home (or maybe it's go big so he can go home).  We walk by a fellow shopper and he lets out the longest, loudest burp you could imagine.  It echoes.  She looks over in horror.  I want to die (ok, maybe that's a little extreme).  How about I want to pretend like I've never seen this kid before in my life.  To make it worse he starts gulping air in preparation to let another one go.  I'm telling him to knock it off, while trying to get out of there as fast as I can.  Good times for a Thursday night.  I decide it's time to wrap it up because I don't know how many more of these he's going to let off, but I know he's not going to stop until we're out of the store.  I hate being manipulated like that!!!  We got back in the car to go pick Daughter up--of course he was nice and quiet on the ride home.       

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!