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Just a single mom of two small boys somewhere in the middle of Minnesota. My older son has been diagnosed with autism. Both sons have been diagnosed with awesome.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

What we've got here is a failure to communicate

Max loves to sing and play the piano. He can read pretty well, too.

But Max isn't a talker. It's not that he can't talk at all, he just doesn't do it much. It doesn't come easily to him, and he has to be pretty motivated to do it. I swear, over 90% of  his speech has to do with eating.

For the most part I think we manage in our own way, but last week I was really feeling the limits of our communication. Max was not having a good time at school. It started out okay, but as the week wore on he seemed less and less enthused. The daily schedule sent home started out with the usual smiley faces drawn in, but soon there were more of these :-I faces, especially toward the end of the day. The phrase, "Could do better." was used... more than once.

He even gave them trouble on the school bus, which he normally loves. It didn't occur to me that he might be sick. He was eating okay, and other than being a little extra snuggly, he seemed fine at home.

I tried to talk to him about it with no luck. I wasn't expecting an answer but I had to try.

Then on Friday evening he came down with a pretty nasty stomach bug. He seems much better today, but I'm still on the fence as to whether I will send him to school tomorrow or not.

So the question in my mind is, is his moodiness related to his stomach bug, is he just having the post-holidays blahs, or is it something else altogether?

I just wish I knew.

Friday, January 7, 2011

I wear my sunglasses on Christmas...

It's been a while since I have posted a blog entry. If I did new year's resolutions, blogging more regularly would definitely make the list.

We had Christmas dinner at my nana's nursing home. I wasn't sure they would have anything Max would eat there, so I packed some food from home. As it it turned out they had mac & cheese and Max ended up eating better than his baby brother, who was both bored and tired.

I haven't quite adjusted to the fact that Max has been much less rigid about food these days. He's still pretty picky, but anyplace we go there is always something on the kids menu he will eat. Just yesterday he ate pineapple at school, something that was a favorite of his as a toddler but he hasn't touched in years.

If anybody was the problem on Christmas, it was me. I ended up hunched over my plate wearing dark glasses. I didn't even touch my food. I'm certain everyone at the nursing home thought I was hungover, but the boring truth is I woke up Christmas morning with a migraine and as the day went on, it just got worse. I had meant to take all kinds of pictures and basically ended up spending the day just trying to hold myself together and not be too much of a little dark rain cloud.

Christmas break went pretty well even if the day itself could have gone better for me. Max has had a hard time with days off from school, but other than a little cabin fever he did great. He also seemed to need less time adjusting to his new toys than in past years.

Sam is feeling a little post holiday let down. He's been a bit moody and keeps asking when Santa is coming back. He is also a little ticked off that we still have snow even though Christmas is over. Personally, I think he has a point, but the weather doesn't listen to me.

I'm not sure if it will make things better or worse when I take the tree down.

We'll see...