Toy hoarding

GRRRR. Gage's toy hoarding is driving me crazy! He always has to have a hand full of toys where ever we go. These toys are usually some sort of vehicle. Mostly the CARS characters these days. When you tell him to get ready to go he starts collecting them. By the time we are ready to leave we've got 3-6 toys we have to take along. He also does this for bed time. I don't see how he can sleep with all those toys surrounding him! Last night we had a big Lightning McQueen, a big Hess helicopter, small doc, small Sally, Medium Mator, 3 Thomas trains, a stuffed puppy, stuffed pig and stuffed bear. And I think I may have missed some somewhere. The toys seem to give him some sort of comfort. I guess its the familiarity of them in unfamiliar places. They often get left behind in the car. Cleaning out the car can be fun because we find forgotten friends that are like having a new toy again. My favorite thing he does is call out for one of them when he can't find them. The other night it was Doc. He went around the house calling "DOC!! Where are you?" With such limited language I love to hear all those words strung together. I guess for a while we will just have to have these tag along friends. If only I could convince him to carry them in a bag.

Bittersweet Birthdays

Gage turns 3 tomorrow. Birthdays are always bittersweet with any children. You watch them grow and mature and leave babyhood and toddler hood behind them. You lament the baby they used to be and wonder at the child they are becoming. With Gage its different. I am so proud of all the progress he has made. At this time last year he had only 4 or 5 words, today he says over 100 (I stopped counting). But tomorrow he will be 3. Not 2, 3! It is painfully obvious next to other 3 year olds that Gage is delayed. Its obvious that he is different, very different. When he was 2 and didn't talk, ran around like a crazy man, threw tantrums, and didn't follow directions he didn't look all that different ,at first glance, from other 2 year olds. But now at 3, expectations from society are different. When we go to the store and he sits on the floor crying because he doesn't want to wear his shoes, or kicks me because he does not want to sit in the cart, or screams because he can't tell me that the lights in the store hurt his eyes, he looks like a spoiled brat and I like a bad parent who won't discipline her child. That's the hard thing about autism. He looks normal. He doesn't have a limp or a brace to wear. So, to the passer by he just looks "bad". Luckily I am developing a tough skin. I pretty much don't care what the old lady at Wal Mart thinks of my parenting. I have been lucky enough not to have anyone say something to me yet. (or maybe they are the lucky ones!!)
With autism the birthday not only brings the joy of celebrating another year of growing with your child but also the stark reality of how far there is to go. The road is exhausting. The road is slow. But I am finding when you travel the road slowly you see things you may have missed otherwise. When Gage said "mama" for the first time ( at the age of 2 1/2) it meant so much more than it would have if he said it at 10 months old. Our frustrations may be bigger but so are our joys.
Tomorrow Gage turns 3. We will have cake and ice cream. He will sing "Happy Birthday" (not very coherently but he knows the song) and he will blow out his candles. That's so much more than he was able to do at 2. What a joy.

School: Its comming all too fast!

I received the school districts newsletter in the mail the other day and there it was... right on the front page..."Kindergarten Registration is March 19th" Just as I was recovering from the trauma (mostly mine) of sending my "baby" to a special needs preschool weeks before he turned 3 I get this in the mail! It seems like yesterday Makinna was a tiny little baby and now I will be registering her for Kindergarten. Of course she is ready. Oh yes she lives for preschool! She is quite the social butterfly. When I pick her up we walk out to the car and she insists on yelling across the parking lot "Bye Katie!!" "Bye Megan!!" She yells goodbye to anyone she sees as we leave (except the boys of course). Before my eyes she is metamorphosing into a beautiful young girl. No longer the chubby cheeked toddler who wanted to wear nothing but the same holey sweatpants. Now she is a tall, slender, blond, who insists that her headbands match her outfit. I remember a time when she was a baby up every 3 hours that I thought the endless nights would never end. That girl cried for the whole first year! But alas they have! Now she sleeps through the night, wears big girl panties, and even sets the table for dinner, but the hard part of parenting is just beginning I suspect. With school comes the influence of peers and teachers. I hope we have laid a good foundation as parents and provided her with the warm nest to retreat to. Yes this school thing is coming way to fast for me. Next year I will have one in school all day and one in school half a day. Hmmmm wait a minute this may not be so bad!!

My first blog post

Well I decided to start a blog. I always liked to journal as a teenager its cathartic. These are the chronicles of our family. Meet the pack: Wes: Father extrodinaire, Katrina: Super mom, Makinna: Princess of the household and the great manipulator, and Gage: or Gagezilla as we like to call him, leaving a path of destruction in his wake!
Initially I was going to start a blog for our son Gage. You see about a year ago our life took a different path than we had expected. Gage was diagnosed as autistic. But I decided that our whole family is worthy of documentation, although I imagine that autism will dominate my posts as it dominates most of my thoughts these days.
So I guess this blog is to inform our family, friends, and complete strangers about the day to day events of our not so typical lives. Please comment, and let us know you have visited. More to come.....