The ABCs of Oliver

There is nothing so lovely as the ABC song as sung by Oliver. Or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. At first he just said the words in a haltingly staccato voice, but now he manages a more sing-song delivery and I take such joy in listening to him. Oliver learned both of these songs, and how to count to 10, from watching videos. I used to feel bad about parking Oliver in front of the TV when I needed a break -- or when he needed a break -- but now it appears that so much of his recent language acquisition has come from the TV and so I have been looking for videos that will enhance this. (Curiously though if he was first exposed to an image in the trailer at the end of another video it takes some work on my part to get him to agree to sit through the actual video.) The whole series of Dr. Seuss beginning reader videos have been great because we have also purchased the books that go along with them and one seems to reinforce the other. Since we introduced the ABC book and video Oliver has taken a great interest in the alphabet and can now recite all the way to "V".

Some time ago my mother tried to teach Oliver his ABCs by association: T is for Truck, M is for Mom, etc. So now that he has developed this new interest in letters I hear him calling out random words from time to time: "Truck!" or "Egg!" or "Bear!" For example, if he sees the word "Start" he will call out "Truck! Truck!" It was only after a few days that I realized he was calling out these words when he saw the letters that he recognized. I'm not sure where this interest in letters will lead us but I believe it is a sure sign of abstract thinking.

Also, a fun new development at our house is Oliver's new interest in having his picture taken. In the past it was quite a challenge to get a good picture of our little guy because of his refusal to look at the camera. Last time we tried to get a family photo the photographer nearly gave up and we had to settle for the only one in which Oliver was looking in the general direction of the camera. But last night I pulled out the camera and Oliver actually began posing for photos. Not only that but when I put the camera down he grabbed my hand and shoved it at the camera wanting me to continue taking pictures. I was only too happy to oblige. I will try to post some of the pictures from our photo shoot as soon as I can figure out how to download them!

The (Mostly) Good, The Bad, and the (Sometimes) Ugly

Yesterday I was leafing through Oliver's communication log and was pleasantly reminded about what a lovely, good-tempered little guy I've got. Almost every entry goes like this: "Oliver slept well last night, woke up at 6am and is in a good mood." Now here's the thing: aside from the fact that he wakes up a touch on the early side, this simple statement marks how far we've come in the past year. For the first two and a half years of Oliver's life, there was no such thing as a good night's sleep. There were bad nights and awful nights and some even worse than that. Most weeks were punctuated several times with episodic night terrors that left me a limp and soggy puddle by morning. Now there are occassional bad nights but they seem few and far between. Mostly he sleeps.

And the good mood part? Given everything our little guy has to deal with -- all the demands we place on him daily -- he seems to be remarkably easy-going. This is no doubt a testament to his father's genes. And it is true that he is virtually always smiling, quick to laugh and displays his own, quiet brand of humor. But once upon a time there was the little matter of those tantrums. Those really blow-out, nuclear melt-downs that seemed to fuel themselves and leave the whole sorry house sagging in their wake. Those have all but disappeared, too.

Having more good days than bad make you almost forget what it used to be like -- which made the writhing, sobbing mess that I held in my arms on Saturday evening all the more wrenching. The issue at hand was Oliver's insistance that he be allowed to wear his banana smoothie soiled shirt to bed. Nine times out of ten changing clothes is no problem at all and if it is then I can sucessfully divert his attention. But on this particular night it started with: "I want shirt!" and ended with a nuclear explosion. Most ironic was that I had just remarked at dinner time about how it had been a great day with lots of successful outings: first bowling, then the library and finally to the livestock auction (it's purely a spectator's sport for us. Oh, and the animals are interesting, too).

After Oliver was at last in bed he fell asleep almost instantly leaving Nik and I to finally exhale. Since the diagnosis last August we've gotten pretty good at reading, predicting, forecasting, compensating, adjusting, and well, just parenting. We haven't had a tantrum since early November. But I didn't see this one coming and once I could see that it was getting ugly I just wasn't flexible enough to change strategies. After a long day of successfully dealing with all kinds of stimuli I should have just let him wear the shirt or anything else his little heart desired.

Parenting Oliver, I've learned, isn't so different from parenting any other child. And navigating this mother-son relationship isn't that different from navigating any other relationship. We all have good days and bad days, we all have silly days and sad days. And we all get tired from time to time and just want what we want.

Nobody keeps a communication log charting my daily moods and cycles, but if they did I am fairly confident the majority of the entries wouldn't mirror Oliver's. Yes, it is true that sometimes Oliver's autism makes things a bit ugly. Once in awhile we have a bad day. But mostly they are pretty darn good.

Everyone Should Have a Worry Monkey

In another lifetime I lived for several years in a bamboo hut overlooking the sea surrounding a small island that I called home. When I moved there I thought I was beginning a career in community development but what I mostly did was get sick. Dengue Fever, Typhoid, Amoebiasis and myriad other tropical bugs plauged my immune system. In my native habitat I am a relatively healthy speciman but when I plopped myself down in the middle of paradise I also, apparently, put out the welcome mat for every germ on the island looking for a bloodstream.

When I first arrived it was suggested to me that I hire a housekeeper who would do my cooking, cleaning and laundry. Being the sort who imagines herself relatively self-suffcient, I demured, thinking that it was hardly necessary. After providing the locals with a week's worth of amusement over my attempts to do laundry (in the creek) and to haul my drinking and cooking water up the mountainside (now I understood why that particular hut with the stunning view was made available to me), Baby was dispatched by them to be my "assistant". It was understood that, being American, I had strange ideals about civil equality and, while I wouldn't feel right about having a housekeeper, I could definately use, um, help.

Baby turned out to be a very useful and welcome addition to my household. She helped me navigate and negotiate. And, while I'm not a real girly-girl, there was the matter of those big-ass, jumping spiders that even the cat didn't want to go near. She also took care of me when I was sick. Which was often.

One particular illness struck me at the end of a long and unhealthy year. On the third day I became alarmed that my fever was so high and unremitting and I set out for the hospital in a nearby city -- over an hour away by boat and then taxi. The doctors there told me that it was a virus and that the only thing to do was go home and wait it out. Two days later things had not changed I was hallucinating and spent a lot of time in a deep, fever-induced, sleep. I told Baby in earnest that I just wanted to die.

Two hours later my fever was completely gone and I was, for the first time in five days, asking for food. What happened in that two hour interval is something that I find quite interesting.

After telling Baby that I wanted to die she shushed me, told me to put on some fresh clothes, that she would change my bed and that I would feel much better soon. Unbeknownst to me she then took my sweat-soaked shirt to the local healer's house to ask for a "cure". After performing a ceremony the healer gave Baby coconut oil to burn beneath the house so that I would inhale the vapors and a medicinal ointment that she used to give me a sponge bath.

I only found out about Baby's trip to the healer a few weeks later when I found what remained of my shirt, which had been shredded to burn the coconut oil, in her room. When I asked her about it she reluctantly told me what she had done. She hadn't wanted to tell me because she thought I might not understand. "Baby," I told her, "the only thing I don't understand is why you waited five days!"

I can't explain why some things happen in this world. A lot of it is just beyond our knowing. Perhaps my fever had already ran its course and would have receeded without the healer's intervention. Or maybe I was truely "healed". Maybe Baby's belief in what she was doing was powerful enough to tip the scales in my favor.

Estee, from My Son's Autism, writes: "There is not one person with autism who hasn’t told me that there was someone believing and pushing them to succeed (and that success is different for everyone). " Above all, it is my role to be that person for Oliver; to tip the scales in his direction as much as possible, and to remember the incredible impact that we have on one another-- not just by what we say and do, but by what we believe.

And to help me remember how counter-productive fear can be, I have this monkey.

As you can see, a crack right down the middle threatens to break him in half but for the strength of his arms holding his head together. The Worry Monkey has made the rounds among a group of my friends; each of us claiming him in time of need, heaping our own worries on top of his. A few months ago I called up the monkey-keeper and said that it was time for him to come home.

I really need this monkey now so I can't go around lending him out anymore. But if you are in need of a place to put your worries, I invite you cast them on him from afar.

Go ahead. Try it.

I Just Had A Thought

Indistinguishable. What a strange thing to wish for.

Whose idea was that anyway?

Nostalgia

My baby, the little one, is now technically a toddler. At 9 months, 3 weeks he has decided that walking is the thing to do. I tried to keep him segregated from bi-pedal society as much as possible so he wouldn't get any ideas but he went right ahead and did what he wanted to anyway. In that regard he is joining the ranks of the rest of the household Y chromosomes, I suppose. Yesterday as I chased him out of RTs bedroom for the third time and pulled Oliver's finger from his nose for the hundredth time I thought to myself: "I just wish one person in this house would listen to what I say!" But then I guess I can't really blame them because most times I don't even listen to myself. Like when I say I really am going to cut back on the caffeine and drink more water. Or that I'm going to start checking to see if the toilet seat is up before I sit down in the middle of the night.

Anyway, between the walking and the two new (razor sharp) teeth, and the spate of sleepless nights leaving me unable to string together two sentences coherently, I'm feeling a bit of nostalgia for when my babies really were babies.

Take a look at how my first little guy has grown. And three cheers for my favorite letter Y.

What it Takes to Win the War

I was in the middle of drafting a long, unfocused, sad post about this little internal war I've been having -- the war between the accepting part of me and the part that wishes I could simply get rid of the autism, as if it were something I could extract like a bad tooth -- but then realized that my heart wasn't in it at all. I'm sick to death of this internal conflict of mine so why belabor it here? Because the fact is that autism is a part of our lives and so I might as well get on with the accepting. I know for certain that Oliver and I are the only casualties of my little war and that scares me 100 times more than the unknowns of autism. Thankfully, I have the wisdom of my fellow travellers to read that so often helps me find the way. Messages like this one and this one inspire me everyday to make my peace. They remind me of what it takes to win the war.

So instead of what I was going to write I'll share a few highlights from the past few days:

Oliver crawled in bed next to me on Sunday morning and said: "ABCDEFG" just like that. Then later when I was counting his fingers to make sure that they were all there after the long night of sleep, I got to five and he continued: "six, seven, eight, nine." All ten fingers were actually there but my guess is that he wanted to leave a bit of dramatic tension in the air. He's got quite a sense of humor, my boy.

Also, yesterday, there were no clean pants for my boy to wear, as we hadn't finished the laundry yet, and so he spent most of the day running around the house in his underwear. Mid-afternoon I saw him dragging the bin of dirty clothes to the playroom but thought little of it -- Oliver likes to dump things and it seemed a harmless way for him to occupy himself as I cooked dinner. About 10 minutes later he came walking into the kitchen wearing RT's (Resident Teenager's) sweatpants. He was struggling to hold up the waist while attempting to walk without tripping on the too long legs. It was the first time he independantly found an article of clothing and put it on. He looked so delicious standing there that I wanted to eat him.

We had a good 4 day run of no toileting accidents. We've spent a LOT of time in the bathroom since November and it's been a long road.

But I think we are almost there.

Parenting Is A Contact Sport

Parenting is harder, and requires more personal endurance than any other contact sport I know of. I'm sure of it.

I don't mean hard in the manner of sustaining the body blow I received two days ago when I routinely emptied Oliver's backpack, eager to read what was written in the communication log so I could know a little bit more about how my guy spent his day only to find instead his first "progress report". The progress report, covered with a cheery little note from his teacher, listed each of the goals in his IEP followed by a code, "ES", describing his progress mid-way through the year. I scanned the page eagerly for the key to tell me what ES meant. ES, it turns out means "Emerging Skill", and that furthermore it is unlikely that he will meet this goal in the current school year. I sat down limply on the floor feeling as though the wind had been knocked right out of me. Later, after Nik had extended his hand to mine helping me off the floor and after I had gotten the kids in bed, I marveled to myself that I could keep breathing at all when everything inside felt so damaged and broken up. But having kids to parent isn't for those without emotional stamina. So we DO keep on breathing, and smiling, and laughing. At first it is just for their sake, but then pretty soon the breathing and smiling and laughing take over and you get so caught up in playing the airplane game -- you know, the one where you lie on your back, balancing your child on your feet high above you and then, on the count of three, eject him into the air so that he lands, bouncing on the bed, giddy and red-faced with laughter -- that you aren't that terrible mess who wanted to just sob into her shoes two hours earlier. In fact, you become that other mother who knows that all the wonderful achievements your child has made in the past few months can't be measured by some shitty piece of paper.

No, when I say that Parenting is a contact sport I mean that in the most physical way. This thought occurred to me yesterday when I again found myself wrestling with a surprisingly strong 10-month old in some vain hope of getting the diaper on straight and secured tightly enough so that it won't fall off 5 mintues later. Satisfied that I had done a reasonable job I watched him crawl away in the vague direction of the one electrical outlet in the house that remains uncovered as I calculated how many more seconds I could sit and rest before having to grab him. During this 3-second lull, Oliver, who has taken a fancy to climbing up on the coffee table and launching himself on me with the complete trust that I will catch him, whether I am looking at him or not, does just that. 40lbs of boy hit me from the side, hurtling me to the ground which luckily enables me to grab Sammy's ankle and drag him backwards just as his little wet fingers are zeroing in on that ever-so-enchanting electrical socket.

And that is just a five minute snap-shot of the game. It goes on and on and on. I haven't completely figured out the rules yet. I keep asking the two little guys but all they've told me is that we haven't even reached half-time yet.