A Day Out with Thomas at Essex, CT

My daughter had a FABULOUS time playing with the balloons.

Here comes Thomas puffing down the track! My son looking out the window during the train ride.

My son and daughter driving a fire engine from a local fire company near Essex, CT.

My son watching a model train set up at the museum.

My daughter playing at one of the several train tables that were set up in the museum.

Sunday afternoon the weather was absolutely gorgeous (nearly 70 and sunny), we got itchy to do something outside as a family, and we decided we'd go to the Mystic Marine Life Aquarium. The last time we went there, it was our tenth wedding anniversary. I took an adorable video of my son and the beluga whales they have there. The tank is built above ground so that you can watch the whales through the glass, and it looks like they're swimming right past you. My son kept running to try to catch the whales. They were swimming in circles, so they came around on a regular basis, so we told our son to call the whales and they would come. So he would say, "Whale! Whale!", the whale would come, and he'd run after it until it swam around the tank past where he could run. It was adorable. And.......I taped over it! So, we thought maybe we'd try to recreate the experience.

As we were driving, we passed the Essex Steam Train Museum, and I thought I remembered Thomas the Tank Engine was supposed to be in town around this time. We had done this over the summer in Massachusetts, and it was great. You can read about that here.

So, we decided to drive past and see if he was there...and there was Thomas! So, instead of the aquarium, we spent a day out with Thomas. Both my son and my daughter absolutely love Thomas. For the entrance fee, you get a half hour train ride (the train, of course, is pulled by Thomas), kiddie rides, musical entertainment, stories, tattoos, and photo ops with Sir Topham Hat and Thomas. The weather was perfect, and we had a great time being outside with the kids all day. The train ride was beautiful, and both kids were well worn out by the end of the day.

Breakthrough!

Well, we've finally had a breakthrough. I hope it lasts. As you may know if you read my blog, my son has an obsession with hitting me in the head and saying, "boing". I've been trying to get him to be gentle for months and months. FINALLY, yesterday he did it. And if he starts up with the boing thing, I tell him, "Remember, gentle", and he strokes my hair instead of hitting me in the head. Awesome! I am so thrilled I'd do a cartwheel if I could do one...I've never been able to do one, though, except for the time I accidentally did one while in the process of falling down the stairs and breaking my collar bone when I was 7...don't try that at home, by the way.
Anyway, I am so happy and so pleased and so proud of my son. Patience, consistency, patience, patience, and more patience. Go Boo!

Electronic Experiments, Take Two

My husband bought another electronic experiment set for our son. This one records and plays back sound, and it can also be programmed to play a sound when it detects rain or light or sound or some other disturbance. It's pretty cool. Right now it's set up to modulate the recorded voice so that it sounds either too high or too low, depending upon which way you turn the modulator. It's time consuming, but fun. Our son was only slightly interested in it tonight. He's still very hyper. Really, if he's not strapped into his Special Tomato Height Right Chair, he isn't able to focus on much, and he wasn't tonight.

I could have used this electronic experiment lab before I took my hearing aids class, which was basically an electronics class. There were many classes in audiology I never expected to take like physics and electronics, but they were interesting and fun. Thank goodness my husband was a missile technician in the Navy and had electronics books and was able to help me with my hearing aids class. Without him, I would have been lost.

Without him, I'd be lost even when I'm not taking an electronics class. :)

The Date Night That Wasn't

Well, we were supposed to go out on a date last Friday. Our next door neighbors graciously offered to watch the kids for a few hours while we went out to dinner.
However, both kids were sniffling, and my son started coughing that morning, so I didn't want to get their baby sick. So, we cancelled, even though my neighbors said they'd still watch the kids. I just couldn't let them in good conscience.
However, I tried to keep a positive outlook, and I figured, why don't we all go out to dinner? We've taken the kids to nice restaurants before with success, and so we didn't give much thought to not going.
We brought with us the usual arsenal of quiet books and toys for the kids to occupy themselves with. I made sure that my son was seated in a highchair with a seat belt because the pressure on his lap usually helps to calm him.
However, Friday night continued to proceed as unplanned.
My son was extra hyper active, and despite all our efforts, he continued to scream and bang on the table. No matter what book or toy we gave him, he threw it on the floor. He banged the silverware on the table. We took everything away. We tried to ignore him. We tried to redirect him. We tried to distract him. We tried to discipline him. I eventually removed him from the table and took him to a quiet corner near the entrance and the bar area. I sat him on my lap and proceded to talk to him very quietly, trying to calm him. I gave him deep pressure input by squeezing him and pressing firmly down on his shoulders. I did joint compression exercises where I pushed his joints together in quick pulses of ten counts for each finger, each wrist, each elbow, each shoulder, ankles, knees, and hips. He seemed better.
So, we returned to the table, and he started to scream again, and while I was trying to tell him to be quiet, my daughter managed to pull my bread plate onto the floor, where it very noisily shattered.
By this time, we were ready to leave, and the owner of the restaurant came over to talk to us.
I was so humilated that I heard very little. He sounded something like the adults do in Peanut's cartoons. I just knew we were being thrown out of the restaurant.
I was horribly upset, and packed everything up very quickly, feeling every eye on me. I don't know how often it's true, but I often feel as if everyone is looking at me and thinking what a HORRIBLE mother I am because I can not control my son. And it's true, I can not control my son. My son looks perfectly normal, so I'm sure that most people naturally assume that he is a brat and do not realize that he's autistic. Of course, if someone just wants to eat in peace and quiet, it doesn't matter.
It is so difficult knowing that I am being judged all the time, and sometimes it gets to me. Friday, it got to me. Later I talked to my husband, and he had a very different experience. He said the owner just asked us if we could please get the children to be more quiet because two tables had complained to him. He said he really didn't care what anyone thought because our son is autistic, and there simply isn't anything we can do about it.
Our son's behavior is completely unpredictable. One minute he can be a precious lamb, and the next, a holy terror. We never know. But, we probably won't be going to a nice restaurant again for a very long time, and I don't know if I'd ever go back to this one out of sheer humiliation.
Anyway, we wound up going to a local pizzaria and eating in the car. Then we took the kids to the most boring Halloween party ever. The only saving grace was that my neighbors were there. Otherwise, we wouldn't have stayed as long as we did. All in all, the night was a horrible dud, and the best thing we did was go to sleep.

This wasn't marketed as a sled, but...

But my son has a great imagination when it comes to using his toys for purposes the manufacturers could never have imagined. Thank God there are no stairs in our home.

Tonight was one of those nights. My son was sent home sick from school yet again, and I'm sick. So, my patience is not all it could be, and oh boy, was my son an imp today.

As an aside, my daughter is teething, and she still nurses, so she teethes on me, which is VERY painful! She also likes to pinch me, which I am trying to stop. As you may know from reading previous posts, my son has an obsession with hitting me continuously in the head and saying, "boing". So tonight, I was being simultaneously hit, pinched, and bitten, despite my best attempts to stop this behavior, and I lost it. So, I did what I always do when I lose it. My daughter went in her crib, my son went in his room, and I went out on the terrace and closed the sliding glass door and breathed.

That wasn't the end though. My daughter is pretty easy and was absolutely traumatized by being separated from me, so the biting and pinching stopped. However, my son's behavior only elevated. He eventually started hauling his driving toy up onto the couch and then sledding off onto the floor. I was pretty sure he was going to kill himself, and so back into his room he went. As I've written before, ignoring my son's bad behavior does not help one bit. By this time, I was expecting his father home any moment, thank goodness.

My husband came home, and because he is a wonderful husband, he took care of the kids while I cooked dinner and did a Jumble puzzle to remove myself from the situation. After dinner, we went for a drive because I had to get out. We went out for ice cream and we voted. That helped tremendously. By the time we came home, it was time for the kids to go to bed.

I hope tomorrow is a better day.

He was supposed to be taking a nap...

A common behavior in children with autism is destructive behavior. My son has been known to break the slats on the blinds in his room and tear apart the strings that hold them together (so we never close the blinds anymore), tear the pages of books to shreds, put holes into toy boxes, break toys, take his dresser apart, take the humidifier apart, take his lamp apart, break the CD player I put in his room because he likes music, and just generally pulling out everything from every shelf and drawer. This includes my kitchen drawers for which we have yet to find a locking mechanism that will fit or a gate that he is unable to climb. He has a tendency to swipe things from my kitchen drawers and cabinets and hide them under his bed or under the crib.

I have tried everything to get him to stop. I have changed the environment, I have punished him, I have made him clean up his messes, I have had him throw his favorite things that he destroyed away in the garbage, you name it. I've tried every suggestion from the professionals. And still, the behavior continues. It's just a matter of patience, time, patience, consistency, patience, and patience.

This behavior makes it impossible for me to keep up with cleaning our apartment. I used to get very frustrated and angry, and I still sometimes do, but sometimes I have to stop and appreciate the sheer scale of it all.

Today, instead of taking a nap, he tore his room apart. I became suspicious when there was a particularly loud sound coming from the room. When I went in to take a look at what was going on besides napping, I was rather stunned to see the extent of mess in my son's room. It was truly astounding. I had to get the camera so I could show my husband when he came home, and so I could share it with you all here.

Although he didn't pull the drawers out of the dresser and empty them, I still think this is pretty impressive...and I'm quite sure that given time, he would have done so. Besides his toys all pulled out from under the bed and crib (I used to have them in a toy box, but he broke the toy box), he got the mattress off the bed, disassembled the guard to keep him from rolling out of bed, took apart the humidifier (there's a green round thing on the floor, and that's the water receptacle), emptied out his hamper (there's a towel and a pair of pajamas peeking out from under the mattress), my colander that he secretly swiped from my kitchen cabinet is on the floor next to the rocking chair, my barbecue tongs are on the floor all the way on the lower right hand corner, half of the bumper is torn off the crib, and there are toys in the slats of the bed...the only one visible is his Little People airplane balanced over one of the slats.

So, he had to help me clean it...I keep thinking that maybe if he hates having to pick everything up again he won't make the mess, but no such luck yet. Then I gave him my well practiced look of death and said he wouldn't like it if I heard another sound and had to come back in.

He took a nap after that. It must have been a good look.

Trick or Treating Parade!

These are just pictures from ads, but this was my son's costume...He was James, a friend of Thomas the Tank Engine and this was my daughter's pink unicorn costume.

Our front door

Every year for the past three years, we've been going to a local Halloween Parade for children. It's organized by our Fire Department, and the community participates. The fire department closes off the local streets, and folks on the roads where the parade goes through decorate to the nines and get dressed up in costumes to give out treats to the kids in the parade. It's great.

This year, the weather was misty, but warm. There were a LOT of children participating! Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. I know we did.

This is the first year my son actually participated in Trick or Treat. Every other year, he melted into a tantrum at the first house. Last year he was at least interested in the fire engines so we could finish the parade. However, this year, he had a wonderful, wonderful time.

The parade started by the fire house, and there are fire trucks at the beginning and the end of the parade. The children stopped by each house along the way, and get their treats. One house was all spookily decorated with tombstones and webs and spiders and fog. Another house gave out whole Nestle bars. Our favorite house was guarded by Pinkbeard, the Pirate. He invited us to share in his treasure. He admired my daughter's costume because it was his favorite color, pink.

At the end of the parade, the firemen gave out doughnuts and apple cider. It really was a lot of fun.

Before we went to the parade, we went trick or treating in our building, and my son had fun knocking on the door and saying Trick or Treat...or "buh oh bee" and thank you. He did terrific. My daughter enjoyed it too. Both kids ate several lollipops, and my daughter also had a doughnut, some cider, and a Tootsie Roll. They were both literally bouncing by the end of the night. I was so happy we finally had our first "normal" Halloween.

The only disappointing thing was that we only had two trick or treaters. That was so sad. For decorations, we had our jack-o-lanters lit up outside on our terrace, and we had a beautiful group of pumpkins and a lovely apple that my son made at school. We also had a big, black, hairy spider that would go down on its web whenever there was a noise. I also had lots of stickers and tattoos to give out. Now I still have a bunch of stickers and tattoos...

How was everyone else's Halloween?