PoPcOrN

We are a popcorn loving family. My oldest eats at least one bag a day and doesn't share. Long ago I made the mistake of sharing a bowl of popcorn with Emily. She is a nasty eater. There is no other word to describe it except nasty. After I piled a handful of popcorn in my mouth I knew it was bad. Real bad. The popcorn was wet. I at first thought she spilled her drink in the bowl. Until I left the room and saw her putting the popcorn in her mouth and spitting it back out. Nasty!! Since then nobody shares with Emily.

Every afternoon she gets a snack. She chooses 1lb bags of puff corn from the gas station. Sometimes she gets cheese flavored and sometimes just butter. But always puff corn. After a ball game in the fall I took her to Walmart where she found a 2 lb bag of popcorn. I tried to talk her out of it because I knew that all 2 lbs of it would be hers. No sharing. She wouldn't hear of it. I don't know what it is about the corn that makes her want the biggest bags she can find and I don't know what makes her spit it out. But if you ever think of sharing popcorn with Emily, don't.

Smelly Cat

Like many individuals on the autism spectrum, Emily has a sensory processing disorder. She uses her sense of smell to relay things in the environment to her brain. It's how she knows if she likes something.

Now we don't have a cat. I personally don't even like cats. Several months ago while in a store I caught her, as I have many times before, smelling packages. Usually it's in the checkout aisle that she uses her sniffer. Like it's not noticeable enough that she is asking me repeatedly if she can have gum, she smells every package before she chooses one. It's odd I know but I let her do it. I mean really it comes down the fact that if I'm going to pay $1 for something that is not a necessity on my grocery list, I want to make sure she likes it and chews it. I suppose it was the picture on the package of cat food in Walgreens that caught her eye that day. Or it could have been that her super sniffer could smell the vile odor that cat food has from afar. I don't know. Either way right there in the middle of the aisle she stopped to smell. She didn't like the smell. I know because she said, "That stinks." I am ever so grateful that she didn't like the smell because there is no way in this world I would have bought smelly cat food for a smelly cat we don't have.

Tell the truth

"The only honest people in the world are small children and drunk people."

I would also like to add those with Autism. It is one of the things I like most about individuals on the spectrum. They tell the truth. Lying is a pet peeve of mine. I've heard some tall tales over the years. Like when my son made up some story about signing the OOPS pad at school so he wouldn't have to go the next day to accept his punishment on the no fun fence at recess. Or when he cut his hair and blamed it on fake scissors. Now Emily on the other hand never makes up such stories. She is just not capable. She ate her brothers special snack one day while he wasn't looking and caused great strife with him. He asked her if she ate it and she said matter of fact, "Yes". She just always "tells the truth". Which ironically is one of her favorite Eric Clapton songs. Mine too.

However, knowing that she is honest, I still sometimes second guess her. Like yesterday when I went into the bedroom downstairs and was nearly knocked out by a smell so fierce it made my eyes water. I asked her if she pooped and she said no. She will at times attempt to clean herself up so I thought maybe she had gone into the bathroom, where the smell was even more pungent, and pooped. I even asked her if she was telling the truth. We went to dinner and she said her tummy hurt the entire time. We got home and she had the loudest, smelliest gas that no 10 year old girl should ever have. She did poop a short while later. It was at that point that I realized she was telling the truth earlier.

So it can be said that the only honest people in the world are small children, drunk people and those with autism.

1800 I need a miracle

This post is about the desperation we as Autism parents feel when we can't help our children. Emily did not sleep the first six years of her life. I would have done anything if I could have gotten her to sleep longer than 2-3 hours every night. This story by my friend, Angie, is a humorous tale of one such night of desperation.

*As a side note she says "please know that calling for a miracle is not my standard practice. This was a desperate act-----I do believe God grants these "miracles" in the form of therapist, teachers, many "angels" - Learning Tree/Woodys Song".

I'd like to thank my fan

No really I'd like to thank the portable space heater that nearly burned the house down before Christmas, but Emily calls it a fan. I plug it up on cold mornings to keep the kids toasty while they get ready for school. I can hear Emily talking to herself as she comes downstairs, "Good morning. Oooohhhh there's the fan". She says the same thing every morning before she plops down in front of it. I'm not so sure she likes it for the warmth as much as for the relaxing light and sound. I put the beloved "fan" away when temperatures reached the 70's recently. The morning she came downstairs to no fan was not pretty. There was crying, hitting, refusal to go to school and I was frazzled before 7 am. The "fan" is now a permanent fixture in the living room. It might be 90 degrees but I will have it turned on daily for her relaxation before school and to prevent meltdowns of epic proportions. I'd like to thank my "fan" for that little break.

If I'm really lucky I might get to thank my "fan" for losing a few pounds while I'm running around every morning trying to get 3 kids ready for school sweating profusely from the heat of that little magic maker.

Thanks for reading~
Jessica

I'm sexy and I know it

Those who are closest to me know that those words would never be spoken by me. My struggles with low self esteem prevent thoughts like that. However those 6 words play through my mind like a broken record every day. For hours. Here's why...

Car rides create severe anxiety for Emily. Music is one of only a handful of things that soothes her. She has a wide variety of songs on her iPad that she uses in the car. The one song she plays is "I'm sexy and I know it". But not the whole song, just backing it up to replay those 6 words. Over and over. One hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. Every day. Sometimes if she's feeling bored with it, she will somehow speed it up to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. All while I'm driving with my eye twitching from this noise. Now if she only played this then it might not be so bad but...that's just background music for her. She likes listening to the car radio as well. She is quite bossy from the third row. "Turn it up. Turn it down. Change it. Go back." She will have me flip until I find a song that she likes. If that's not enough to add a head jerk along with the eye twitching, she also likes to ask me questions. Constant questions that leave no room in my head for anything else. Yet the only thing my mind can focus on is those 6 horrendous words that NO 39 year old mother of 3 feels after 2 hours of the above...

"I'm sexy and I know it".

Pictures of Autism

I just wanted a picture of us in blue for Autism Awareness Day. However anyone who has a child on the spectrum knows how hard it is to get them to A) Stand still B) look at the camera and C) smile.

Today's Autism funny was the distraction that my new deodorant brought to our little photo session. The distraction came shortly after the first picture. She smelled something different on me and pinpointed it to my armpit. Her request to smell it made me laugh. She liked the smell so much that in her excitement she nearly took me down.