His Window Will Open

I want to introduce you to my #2 son. His middle name means laughter & he is aptly named. He loves to laugh, tickle, sunggle & play. The term gentle giant applies to him. #2 son is rather large for his age. He is about 4 ft tall & his weight hovers around 70+ lbs. But he is SO loving. When given, his love is generous & fun. He'll offer kisses at rare times, but will usually extend a forehead, nose or lips for kisses. He likes the contact, the affection & happiness he gets from the love. Other times he'll be walking by & I can say, "Kisses?" And he'll make a u-turn he'll come back around to bestow some wonderful, rare, sugar on me. How can anything be better than that?

I should add that #2 son doesn't talk. Everyone we say that too seems to think that means he's mute. Far from it. He makes sounds, jabbers like a toddler learning to talk & tries on occasion to say "Mama" & "Dada". And if you listen really carefully at night when Daddy tucks him in& says "I love you", you hear a sound that resembles "love". The time he says it, the inflection he uses tells us, his smile, show he knows what it means & that he feels it. Yes, #2 is sort of trapped in his mind by his Autism. His words & thoughts are essentially behind this window that won't open. Someone has painted it shut. We see some of those thoughts, most of his emotions, but they are filtered through the glass of his window that keeps the sounds from reaching us.

Our middle son used to play with his toys & look at his books for hours on end. Entertained himself really. Until almost 2 years ago. Someone took the curtians down from that window. He figured out there's a world out there beyond himself & his things. #2 son became VERY curious & left nothing in our house unexplored. I could tell you many stories of climbing cabinets & picking locks all to discover the feeling of vaseline or Crisco all over one's self or powdered sugar & what it feels like to roll in it on the floor. He was in every sense a 60 lb. two year old. Sure he walked at 8 months old. But this was his first time to really LOOK at the world around him & realize he could interact with all those things. So now he'll walk by & lick the tv when one of his favorite characters is on. The tv that before held no real interest to him. Now he hears every little opening of doors, cabinets & especially the fridge. And he comes running. Food is fun. Food is entertaining & he has expanded his palette by leaps & bounds. He isn't afraid to touch anything or see what something tastes like. #2 loves the outdoors. Of course not being afraid of things means orally testing almost ANYTHING one comes in contact with, no matter how much stress is causes mommy & daddy.

Now #2 son is at the level of being bored with everything & wanting to be entertained. If you have or have raised a three-year-old you know this stage. He is just without the words to say, "Mommy I'm bored, there's nothing to do. Entertain me." In his mind he stands at his window seeing all that's out there to be had & wants to try it. That brought on the frustration. Our loving, affection, gentle giant became angry. It was gradual & had many contributing factors. New things were all around him. Starting school for the first time, mommy going to work a couple days a week, Papa & Nana taking care of him, a new baby coming & WAY less room on mommy's lap for snuggles. Frustration came in many forms but most often the screeching & fog horn wail we came to dread, knowing from that point on there wasn't much to be done. It came in scratches on himself & those of us trying to prevent them, bites to anyone within distance & pinches. Those tiny, little bitty pinches that make your eyes water.

After what was one of some of the hardest times in our lives, we put #2 son on medicine. We had resisted for as long as we could. It was no longer about us & our aversion to smothering their personalities with medicine. The bruises & marks were metaphorically there, from him running at his window, trying to get out. The hurt, the confusion, the sadness & most importantly the words, trying to get out. It became about safety & love of our third son that had just been born & not knowing how this one last obstacle would effect #2. There he sat at his window looking out at the world & how as one family member went away, a new one arrived. SO many changes for such a young mind to comprehend. And that young mind was so much younger than his beat up body.

Luckily we have an incredible doctor. The Lord has blessed #2 with something #1 didn't find for years. A doctor that "gets it". We've driven many miles, waited for appointments, and tried many things so that #2 would be somewhere he felt safe & more importantly was patiently understood. There were no pokes & prods that didn't absolutely HAVE to be done. There was such love at that office for our children & their needs. No stares of confusion or concern, just acceptance. And as a parent of Autistic children, that is a gold mine. We couldn't really ask for anything more. When our doctor left Pediatrics, she amazingly enough went into Behavior Management. Something we were needing at just that time. And to our astonishment, the first medicine we tried was "the one" for us & #2. #2 sits at his window now much happier. He's content to see it all & take it in. No longer frustrated with us or himself. He takes us by the hand & leads us to drinks, food & other things he may want or need.

So now #2 son is back to affection, his loving, happy, giggly self. He plays with #3, the baby. #2 really LOVES that baby so much. Has never hurt him. Not once. We are very careful but he has a bond. You can see it when you watch them on the floor together. The way they look at each other in the eyes. There's love and maybe some sort of connection & understanding we don't get yet. I do believe that God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. We work with #2 son with DVD's, word echoing, and we are making picture cards to try & help me communicate anything we might miss. His school this year is much better than last year & he seems to like it. He loves the bus & seems to enjoy the one little girl in his class much more the other boys. He IS a flirt & has been since he was little. He has the darkest brown/black eyes you'll ever see. His dimples & a smile that could win world peace.

The medicine, the love from us, family& friends, the new school & teachers, the maturity/growth he's gaining, are all chipping away at that paint sealing his window shut.
I see his eyes twinkle when we praise him for a correct word in context or a word said. I see his his reasoning & problem solving skills at work every day and it shows me how far he's coming. He's chipping away on the inside of his window too. Every day is one step closer to that paint being gone & my second son opening his window. I don't know when, but I know. But for now I wait. I clean, polish & shine that window waiting for the day it opens.

Knots

I had a thought this morning. Rather early for "deep thoughts" really, but there they were none the less. And since I remembered them, I thought that was a sign to write them out. Please don't take this as someone on a soapbox, but see it as someone trying to sort out their thoughts & discoveries throughout her Christianity & life.

My kids have been playing with this tunnel made of parachute material for a day or so now & it collapses flat & ties closed for storage. This morning after #1 son was already gone on the bus, #2 son wanted the tunnel "open". I realized #1 son had tried to open the tunnel himself & in doing so the ties knotted up.
It was gonna take some time to sit down & pick at the knots until I could get ahold of one end & undo the knots. It's funny how sometimes someone will offer to help you pick at knots in stuff. And what do we do? We refuse! This is a battle of wits & you want to show you can do it yourself & beat a stupid piece of string right?!

For some reason while sitting on their toy box and picking at the knots at 8:30 in the morning, I saw a correlation between the knots I'm working on & life. God loves us as His children & although we don't have it as nice as Adam & Eve in the garden, He doesn't give us struggles. God gives us choices-Free Will. Satan is the giver of knots. Satan presents us (as he did with Jesus) with temptations & stumbling blocks in our Christian walks & lives. We as adults, taking on Christ in baptism, choose to follow Christ & His example. Being human, we can create knots for ourselves quite easily in our choices. And then what happens? We sit & try to pick out the knots by ourselves. We don't want any help. We don't need any help. We break a nail, let a cuss word slip, get utterly frustrated & sometimes we give up. Or we make it worse. The knot gets bigger!

God wants & asks us to let Him help us with the knots. He wants us to humble ourselves before Him & pray, but most of all He wants us to NEED His help. God will never let Satan give us more than we can bear or handle. It sure seems like a lot on our plates sometimes though. There are some knots we work on only to set them down for awhile & come back to them later on with more patience & prayerful determination. And some knots seem to tighten as the years go by. I was talking with someone yesterday about when do we know when to "let go & give it to God" or when God's wanting to act through us. The knots this morning had me thinking that maybe we are taking the "let go & let God" to literally. Maybe, that is meant to say we stop working on the knot & talk to God & others about it. Then return to our work on the knot, encouraged, inspired, uplifted by God, in knowing with His help, one day the knot will be loosened, if not freed.

Perhaps that sounds rather pesimistic to say loosened. But in reality Christianity isn't easy. It's not all fixed in one prayer is it? Not the Christians I know. Everyone I know has knots. We are in a society today who loves a quick fix & that pertains to religion too. (that's a soap box for another day) However, this isn't TV & there isn't always a happy ending in 30 minutes. Sometimes those knots are slippery little devils. Pun intended.
I got my knots this morning undone in record time & without breaking a nail. But I think I got their point. We're always going to have knots. Some big, some with many layers & some easy. In any case, they are our life lessons. But how we go about working on untying them is left totally up to us. Free Will.

24

***WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT-PARENTAL GUIDANCE SUGGESTED***

November 5-6, 2006

10pm-11pm: ate leftover Arby's roast beef sandwich for very late dinner

11pm-12am: regretted roast beef sandwich;pondered if meat had gone bad

12am-1am: writhed in anguish in bed wondering if it was possible to reach the sink to puke into while sitting on toilet (yet can't puke!)

1am-2am: kicked by #1 son & every time I roll over to change positions I feel the need to vomit again

2am-3am: get up to return to sit upon the throne-burps, bad smelly, foul burps like I've eaten a 10 day old skunk

3am-6am: tossing & turning, kicks from #1 son, get baby his bottle & go back to sleep wondering if it's possible #1 son is part donkey (still feel need to puke & can't)

6am-8am: sleep, deep, heavy, wonderful sleep!

8am-10am: trips to the water closet-too many to count, for various recreations

10am-noon: toss & turn in bed while watching a Lifetime movie where the boyfriend tries to kill the girlfriend & she never saw it coming-obviously a new one....NOT

Noon-2pm: clean up poop, puke & saltine crumbs in just about every room & floor covering in my house
3/5 of us have flu

3pm-5pm: take my turn watching volcanic activity amongst the children (and self) while husband naps

5pm-6pm: call best friend to bring 7-Up, more saltines & diapers to leave on porch

6pm-6:10pm: I FINALLY GET TO PUKE! Ahhhh I feel better already!

6:10-6:30pm: new mantra-I WILL NEVER EAT ARBYS AGAIN! (something terribly wrong with something that stays so unwelcome in the upper half of your digestive system for so many hours)

6:30pm-8pm: baby finally succumbs to flu-in all venues

8pm-10pm: cleaning of more poo, urps & saltine crumbs; getting children ready for bed, almost crying at the thought of having uninterupted sleep soon; (sniff sniff) I smell "weakness" from last of the herd. I'm sure he'll fall prey soon.

Halloween

Monday night our family carved their first pumpkin. #1 son wanted a "silly scary face".
It was a learning experience for us all. I learned you don't cut the top off straight down because then the "lid" will fall down in the pumpkin. I taught dear husband that you can scoop out the pumpkin innards in less than 5 minutes using a metal ice cream scoop. (thanks Martha Stewart!) #1 son learned that pumpkins stink & almost make you gag. #2 son who isn't afraid to taste anything (and I DO mean anything) discovered raw pumpkin isn't the same as pie.
#1 son had been waiting months to dress as "Lord Vader" & be addresses as such. He was also very concerned for weeks now that I wouldn't get his Darth Vader mask fixed in time for him to use it. Luckily mommy found one on clearance at the local supercenter. For $.50 I got 6. I need backups & my nephew needs a stocking stuffer right? Of course I did have to do the "last-minute-sew-something-together" thing by fixing the strap to #1 son's pumpkin he gathers loot in.

Being the yearly designated parental unit to take the #1 son trick-or-treating, I got his black sweats on, his black t-shirt, his Darth cape & mask. We didn't have the red light saber Darth Vader uses. Just the double ended one Darth Maul uses. Somehow my son wasn't upset by this. He even went with the blue light saber that didn't light up or make noise. Meltdown averted.
I don't mind going trick or treating with him because I sort of have a peeping-tom thing. I like driving or walking by houses with doors open or lights on at night so I can peek into their lives.
So I left dear husband with #2 son to try & hand out treats, keep #2 son out of candy & watch for the next piece of furniture the baby would pull up to & fall from. Somehow I think I got off easier.

Off we go house to house. Not many with porch lights this year. I think the news said more churches were doing "Trunk or Treats" this year & people were wary of child predators.
Most people were patient with #1 son's need to impart unconsequential information.
He told one lady,"Look! It's me! (insert first & last name)! Look at me in my REAL eyes!" (taking off his mask)
As soon as another guy answered the door he asked him where his computer was.
One house almost gave us second-hand smoke poisoning just from the 5 seconds we stood there.
And there was the one house with a fire in the fireplace that distracted #1 son so much he told the kid handing out candy, "No, no, no! Move so I can see the fire!"
Of course although he doesnt' eat many or much candy, he still feels the need to try & control what he receives. He loves red. Any red candy is superior in his mind. So occassionally we bartered for red instead of what we got the first time. (sigh!)
Being old, tired & cold I only lasted 45 minutes. Thank goodness #1 son isn't into it THAT much so he didn't care.

Upon arriving home I see the treat bowl had dwindled. I ask dear husband how many kids came through here exactly? He shrugs & says a few.
When I go to the garage to put more candy in the bowl I see a pile shoved to the side & back. There in an orange mound & hidden like precious stones, are all the Kit Kats I'd had in the bowl when I left. Hmmm. When I asked dear husband if he'd done this, his confession was a big fat grin. Fun was had by all & the best part was we were all in bed by 11pm.