Rules of the Tent

Yesterday, Reiss and his new therapists built a monster-sized tent fort in his room constructed from blankets, beanbag chairs, and aluminum-framed kids papasan chairs. Reiss loved it so much, he asked if he could keep it up and sleep in there last night. And that is exactly what he did.

Of course no fort would be complete without rules so Reiss and his cohorts drew up a list. These make me laugh out loud:

1. No stepping on the roof.

2. No licking the wand. (Referring to the princess wands Milla brought to the project.)

3. No sitting on beanbags.

4. No running.

5. No stepping on the chair.

6. No knocking down the (Lego) tower.

7. No taking the blankets off.

8. No pushing the chair.

9. Do not tell anyone the password (which was "blah blah." Oops...I told the password.). Only friends.

10. No banging the wand on the floor.

Those ten rules completed the list yesterday but after playing in the tent for a little while this morning, Reiss and Milla felt they needed to added an eleventh rule.

11. No tearing down the chimney in the tent.

This last one may prove itself to be a difficult rule to follow, especially considering I have no idea where the chimney is located inside the tent.

Pigging Out to "Princess Loser"

This evening at dinner in the sweetest imaginable voice ever, Milla told me, "Mommy, I want to watch "Princess Loser" with you tonight."

It is presumably obvious to most that what she really meant was she wanted to watch Biggest Loser with me. I can only imagine as to how she came to this association but my guess is somewhere along the way in her three-year-old mind she married her princess obsession and her love of Mommy & Me couch time and gave birth to "Princess Loser," which is almost certainly nothing like what it sounds.

All of it was, undoubtedly, too cute for words.

At 8:00, we sat down and tuned in and, as is always the case when I watch Biggest Loser, the junk food cravings began.

There was a time when I actually believed most of America sat perfectly postured, watching Biggest Loser, with a bottle of water and on the edge of their couches, listening intently to Bob and Jillian advise and verbally assault the show's contestants. And then, very slowly, I began a process of waking up as I watched my friends' Facebook posts.

I began to see that my husband and I are not only not the exception with our open potato chip bags and homemade muffins and assorted other goodies that grace our Tuesday evening Biggest Loser tv-watching sessions, but rather, we are the rule. And that is ironic. With children with autism and the never-ending unpredictability we face, we are almost never "the rule." Usually, we set a precedent for being the exception to the rule.

This evening's Biggest Loser buffet consisted of buffalo chicken snack rolls, mint Oreo's, and mint M&M's. Good stuff. I am sure Bob and Jillian would be disgusted beyond belief.

Anyone who knows me, knows how I love a good case of irony.

My family's life is full of irony on a daily basis. Sometimes the irony is good. Sometimes it is the kind of bad that angers me to no end. With all the irony constantly going on, I also crave normalcy like nothing else. How funny is it that I finally get to feel just a teensy bit "normal" because I sit, pigging out, on Tuesday evenings right along with millions of other Americans while we all watch a show about extreme weight loss?

That is irony. The good kind.

Feel the Love!

Halloween Haircuts

Not sure why I never got Milla some bangs much sooner than I did...

Yes, that's right, my son can touch his nose with his tongue...and he does it quite often - too often.

Just a Bunch of Pics

Reiss preparing to wrap Milla's birthday gift in wedding shower wrapping paper. (Because we're fancy like that!)

Milla trying on her new Tinkerbell costume she received as a birthday gift.

Sassy!!!

Reiss getting into one of Milla's gift bags...

Notice the legs coming out of the bottom of the bag?

Birthday cake!!!

This is what a sixty-nine-year-old man (my dad) looks like jumping on a trampoline.

Reiss trying on his chef's costume for Halloween that I have not been able to get him to wear to either of the two costume parties we have gone to this week. Thank goodness, the tags are still on it....bwahahahaha!

Milla in her peacock princess costume...

We went to a Halloween dress-up/family fun night this evening at the preschool where Milla goes a few mornings per week. Here, Reiss is high-five-ing one of the teachers in Milla's classroom.

LOVE this photo! Reiss, Milla, and Christina, Milla's lead teacher in her preschool classroom.

Princess Milla Turns 3!!!

Today is Milla's birthday!
She has been looking forward to this day for weeks now, begging to wear her "Birthday Girl" cupcake t-shirt.

Here she is showing off her birthday gift from Reiss: a pink paper heart that he cut all by himself.
This may seem like a minor gift to the untrained eye but Milla loves it and it is of especially high value since it is the heart Reiss cut out to "master" hearts in his ABA cutting program. After finishing his cutting yesterday, Reiss was so proud of himself he decided to wrap up his own heart and give it to Milla this morning on her birthday.

For This, I Will One Day Pay Very Dearly...

(But for now it serves as pretty darn good blog material!)

This is Tomato Man.


Tomato Man is mysterious. His mission is unrevealed. His origins are unknown - even to us, his family.

Tomato Man only recently began appearing in our lives - always unexpectedly and never without his tighty whities adorning his head and oversized sunglasses gracing his face to mask his true identity.

Rock on, Tomato Man!

Apparently, I Am Older Than God

Or so Reiss thinks, anyway.

All this week, Reiss has been asking me questions about elephants:

"Is an elephant bigger than Kong?"

"Would an elephant eat as much as you weigh, Mommy?"

"What would an elephant do with it saw a mouse?" This is not a typo. Reiss almost always uses the word "with" when he means to say "if."

"Do you weigh as much as an elephant, Mommy?" I am terrified he may ask this to someone out in public, and as my luck would have it, it will invariably be directed at someone who is rather large.

Reiss has been asking questions about God for a couple of weeks now as well. This generally happens right after he has watched a few minutes of a Veggie Tales dvd but has occurred at random, out of the blue, times too. For instance, I picked him up from his social skills playgroup one afternoon and he asked, "Is God higher than the sky?"

I had to quash my urge to laugh and reply with "Well, I hope God is not high at all." That one I kept to myself and instead of telling him the truth - that God is all around us - and encouraging mass confusion and a long series of other difficult-to-answer questions, chose to go with the explanation that no one knows where God is.

This morning we were eating breakfast and Reiss asked, "Is God seventy?" to which, my response was a simple "No."

Reiss thought about this for a moment and then came, "Mommy, did you come before God?"

So now I am trying to decide which is worse: to be older than God (because that is really old!) or to weigh more than an elephant.

He Rode A Freakin' Pony!

Our annual trip to our favorite apple orchard could not wait a single week longer, so today was our day. Partly sunny, no rain, and a bit of a chill in the air made for absolutely perfect weather for such an outing.

Milla, Reiss, and James walking down the gravel lane from where we parked. I may have to have this photo expanded for framing....

Reiss being such a big boy and feeding a goat. Even just this past Spring he was quite hesitant to go anywhere near the animals.


This is where I got my blog title. Yes, I know the title does not sound very nice but I was so ecstatic when Reiss was riding that pony, I was flapping my own arms! By the time he got off it, I was crying tears of joy and squeezing the life out of him, telling him, "Reiss, you did it! You rode a freakin' pony!" People around me almost certainly thought I was nuts but they very likely were not there last year either, when Reiss thought he wanted to ride a pony and got near one only to end up screaming bloody murder. Yaaayyy, Reiss!!! He was so proud of himself too and that, in itself, is reason to be ecstatic.

Milla riding a pony. She looks cute and all but it definitely was not going to top Reiss doing it, and on his own, at that!

Luckily, our computer photo program has a "crop" feature. I told James I am getting him photography lessons for his birthday so he can learn how to take photos that do not show my huge caboose.

Kids....I tell them to look at me and smile and this is what I get. It is cute though...

Reiss climbing Mount Strawverest.

Reiss' proud face, as he calls it, on the train. We were like sardines in that little train car but I was definitely not complaining. Some very nice mommies in front of us had eleven people in their party and let us go our turn before them.

Milla....

And since this is my blog and few posts seem complete without some form of irony, here it is: We came home empty-handed. That's right! Not a single apple to be had - the lines were way too long.

Swimmin' at the Y!

Who on Earth could have imagined two or three years ago that this is where we would be now?

A Monster Of A Party!

Last week, our first-born monkey turned five years old!

I always have to laugh when other parents make the observation of their children growing up so quickly or empty-nesters whose grown children reached adulthood "in the wink of an eye." They all seem to say the same thing: "Where in the world does the time go?" Well, I will tell you where it goes or at least, where it went for me. For the first three-and-a-half years of being a parent, it ticked by so incredibly slowly all while I wondered if my "baby" - who was definitely no longer a baby - would ever stop waking every hour through the night, sometimes two or three times per hour, and if I would ever get any sleep again in this lifetime.

Alas, after starting our special diet and being convinced of its effectiveness on the very first night (the first night Reiss ever slept through the night in his whole entire short life!), we were finally getting some sleep and everyone thankfully survived. And now we are at five years old! FIVE! Who knew I would make it this long and live to tell about it? But I am definitely here and, unlike back then, time does not tick by nearly as slowly now that I am asleep for at least part of it in any given twenty-four hour period.

Enough of my woes....Can you tell I am so thankful for sleep?

Last Saturday we had a party for Reiss and rented a bounce house in the shape of a monster truck. Yes, I know how much bounce houses cost and I am also aware that our rental cost almost as much as buying one. And furthermore, I have chosen to say "enough is enough" regarding toys and clothes and stuff and things that require space for storage and I made the wise decision to go with the option of having someone else worry about where to store such a large item as a bounce house.

Yes, renting a bounce house is not an investment with endless returns but not having to store it makes up for all those "lost" returns.

Reiss wanted to keep the bounce house, as trucks are one of his favorite things but, as we explained to him, by having people who come to get the bounce house (instead of keeping it), we get to choose a different one every time we rent one. Milla has already called "dibs" on the princess castle bounce house for her birthday in October. Little do they know that renting a bounce house is not something that will happen with a whole lot of frequency.

We took some really adorable photos, however, due to privacy issues with other parents' children, only photos of Reiss and Milla are posted.






All of the above photos were taken before Reiss's party began and while Reiss and Milla were the only children playing in the bounce house. Just prior to the start of the party, I changed Milla into a perfectly-party-appropriate dress with a cupcake on it.

Reiss painting a car bank. It was one of the prizes leftover in the prize bin after the party.

From left: Crystal (Reiss's BCBA for his ABA therapy), Reiss, Milla, Heather (one of Reiss's ABA therapists)

Reiss getting ready to open his first gift. In this photo, we also have Anne, who is not one of Reiss's therapists but works for Crystal and was here with one of the children present at the party.

Reiss had $23 from his birthday to spend at Toys R Us. So what'd he get? A princess dress for Milla! We tried to persuade him otherwise but that is what he wanted to buy. He also bought himself one of those hippity-hop balls. I have no idea what the real name is for them. They are those things a child sits on, holds onto the handle, and jumps around on.

My little five-year-old prince and princess....

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.