He Gets It! He REALLY Gets It!

Reiss turned five years old today. His first words when he saw me this morning were, "Today is my birthday!"

and right after that,

"I'm five!"

I nearly poured out buckets of tears. Tears of joy, that is!

My first thought was that he gets it. He finally "gets" the whole excitement surrounding birthdays. It was like that line Sally Field became so famous for in her Oscar acceptance speech in the 1980's: "You like me! You really like me!" Except for the fact that she didn't actually say that. That was simply the gist of what she did say and what has gone down in history in the minds of the masses.

Reiss, however, does "get" it. He really gets it now that birthdays are something special. I must say with each of his previous birthdays I have wondered if he would ever understand the concept of birthdays and the anticipation of one's own birthday, let alone when he would ever understand. Even around this time last year, Reiss demonstrated no understanding of the concept of birthdays or of them being cause for celebration. He exhibited no interest in opening gifts or any of the traditional birthday celebratory activities.

And this is where I interrupt our regular programming for a public service message.

When I try to describe all the things that make up our particular world of autism, it is extremely difficult to describe to someone who has only experienced having or being around neurotypical children. While Reiss is one of those children who definitely falls onto the spectrum of autism, his particular challenges are not easily pinpointed without going into great detail.

Birthdays are one of those areas where parents of "normal" children take for serious granted. Neurotypical children have birthdays, they get excited about them at a fairly young age, and their parents usually do their best to make their child's big day special. I would venture to say that many of those parents cannot fathom their child not being excited about his or her birthday. On the other hand, many parents of children with autism often wonder if there will ever be a year when their child will get excited over his or her birthday. My husband and I are no different from most parents in that we have tried to make Reiss's birthdays special but the whole concept has always eluded him...until now. His excitement left me with such hope for the future that I am certain is way bigger than any gift anyone could give to him.

My point?

When your "normal" child is sitting there whining and being a little patoot about his birthday gifts not being exactly what he wanted or when your little princess's heart is broken because you rented pony rides instead of a royal bounce house, just thank your lucky stars that your little turkey is even aware of that one special day each year.

End of public service message. Getting down off my soapbox now.

We are having a big bounce house bash for Reiss on Saturday but here are the photos from this evening....




The cake is gluten-free and casein-free, of course, and can be viewed HERE. We purchased three of them from our local health food store. If you are interested in purchasing this kind of cake, you might check with your own natural foods market or health food store. From what I understand, the Shabtai website is frequently out of stock on this item because so many distributors buy up their stock whenever they get them made. Plus, I paid less buying ours from the health food store than what the website charges.

Their photo, nor mine, does this cake justice. Theirs does not look exactly like the cake we have, as the flower in the center of the cake we have is made of chocolate icing, while the one on their website has colored flowers. I am pretty certain they have gone to the chocolate flower and just have not changed the website photo. The chocolate flower makes the cake seem so much more elegant, in my opinion.