Owen fell asleep pretty easily last night. And then he woke quickly. By eleven he was wide awake. Instead of coming to my bed he ran to the living room. He got under a “bwanket” that’s really a heating pad with a massager that I use for my leg. He didn’t turn the heat on, but instead the massager. He wants to hear the noise. He will come running from all areas of the house to turn it on. I’m not sure if this was on his mind or he woke for another reason, but as I came around the corner there he was half asleep. The key is half awake as well. I thought I’d leave him to see if he would fall back asleep, but that dream quickly turned into four hours later and then he was finally back asleep. Sounds have been more of a concern for him the last few days. Everything seems to be “making de any noise”. Between sounds and foods, we have been having an interesting few days. He has always been a messy eater. But it’s more for sensory input than technically being messy. He will rub food up and down his face before putting it in his mouth. And he will put food between his toes. More sensory input for him. When he started putting more food in between his toes than in his mouth I had to come up with ways to give him the sensory input he needed. I put together sensory bins and we did more tactile play with things like jello, whipped cream, and slime. He still loves getting into the sensory bins I made for him using large plastic totes full of cut up pool noodles, rice, and beans. His favorite is the rice, but even putting a huge plastic tarp under it didn’t keep the rice from flying. The last few days have been tougher than rough and all I want to do is hug my baby tighter. I wish he could tell me his cares and concerns, but today I’m thankful for the growth he has made and look to his future. There are no words to express the emotions that sit on the crest of my heart, but the love gets me through any moment in time. Believe in the miracles of tomorrow and know that it is a brand new day. Smiles to all and donut daze!
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Yesterday was one of those days I would like to scratch off the calendar and move forward. Behavioral issues, meltdowns, and what felt like backward steps kept us in a loop all day. I work really hard with Owen to keep his aggression in check. And I don’t know that he truly understands that it is aggression, but more of a release from everything that is going on inside his body. Add that to the fact that he thrives on my reactions and emotions. He will come up behind me and push me. Sometimes it’s because he is upset and other times he laughs, waiting for my reaction. The more I react the happier it makes him. The biting, hitting, kicking, chewing on my hair, and pinching had all stopped, but somehow he is cycling back through it. The calmer I act the less he repeats a behavior. Then there was the whole he forgot he was potty trained train wreck. I changed his underwear so many times yesterday that I lost count. It didn’t matter how many times we went or I asked him he wouldn’t go. Today has been much better only with a few rough around the edges moments. He wanted to go bowling since five o’clock this morning. We went, he loved it, but he cried through many of the balls that didn’t go according to his plan. He wants strikes and he wants those pins to go down. We still bowl together. The concept of throwing the ball isn’t quite there for him, but he doesn’t want to use the ramp at all. Occasionally he will roll the ball himself, but he likes putting his fingers in the ball and me helping him with it. On our way to bowl, we stopped at our beloved coffee shop. There was a line, but Owen did exceptionally well and easily waited our turn. For this I was thankful. We even went to lunch after bowling and he did amazing at the restaurant, eating almost his entire lunch, and not screaming, even when I could tell he was ready to. There are days I’m still afraid to walk out of my door. My emotions want me to stay in the safety of our home, but I know it’s good for Owen and me to go out in the world to the stares, the smiles, and the moments of acceptance and understanding. The emotions of yesterday still carry a huge weight today. I cried more than I’ve cried in a long time. Owen felt my emotions and that caused even more behavioral issues. Staying calm is truly one of the best things I can do, but crying got me through those rough edges. His smile is as big as his beloved moon today, but the rays are my pure son shine. The clouds will clear and the sun will shine again. Find your strength and look for the silver lining in your days. Smiles to all and donut daze!
Church has been the discussion for hours. Owen was ready to go since we finished our adventures yesterday. The dude loves to go to church and loves his routine. I hate to even think about the fact that he doesn’t go to school Monday and Tuesday. He knows that tomorrow he’s supposed to go to school so having a holiday and a teacher planning day are not something he comprehends or wants. I got him a new calendar that we can write his schedule on. Well, he erased many days off the calendar. I told him he would have a holiday and he wiped his hand across the days. I don’t know if he completely understands what he did does not affect the outcome or if he even understands the calendar yet and the days he wiped off were random. We talk about the days of the week, he can say them all and we talk about the months of the year, but how that relates to him wiping some of the days off is not a concept I think he gets. Or maybe he understands it completely. My mind spins with how to explain things to him. I sat his breakfast plate down on the table. A few minutes later he came over to it, putting his tablet directly on the corner of his plate. His food went flying. He screams, “ut oh” and starts crying. I told him it was fine and he could move his plate. He does this multiple times a day with the same results. Other times he will move his plate first and then put his tablet or a different object down in the open space. I can see growth in him and his connection to the world around him is getting stronger every day. He is saying words that I had to believe he would say and telling me concepts that I know he heard when he was younger but couldn’t express. Autism is as much about how I handle it as it is about Owen having it. Never give up. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Smiles to all and donut daze!
There ain’t no volume like a turned-up Owen on a Saturday morning requesting to go to the potty and wanting milk. This all means he wants his tablet, but he knows the drill. Saturdays are not a day to sleep late, Saturdays are exciting. We go to the coffee shop and bowling and then Owen goes to visit his grandparents. I have a couple of hours to run around and breathe. Owen has found screaming to be more fun than usual today. He comes running across the room, getting an inch from my nose, and letting out a huge scream. He then runs away laughing, only to return a few minutes later to do the same thing. His need for sensory input is huge. He rotates between jumping, screaming, and throwing himself on his mat, covering up with his blankets. He has not been wanting me to do as many compressions or massages lately, but the pretzel move is in full swing this morning. The bigger he gets the harder it is for me to do, but he will sit in my arms, one behind his head and the other under his knees. I basically fold his knees to his chest. He will then stretch and push through movements for the input he needs. He works his muscles through these different positions. He bends his body in angles that I can’t even imagine and his flexibility is incredible. He can balance on the tiniest of things. He will squat on his chair, feet flat on the seat, hovering, eating or playing on his tablet. And as much balance as he has he will quickly fall as well. The dude is ready to start our adventures. He’s been practicing his bowling technique on one of his apps, yelling, “good ball you can do it watch your elbow ahh man no gutter” so we are off to start our day. Through rain find your sunshine. Today is one moment in time. Let go of yesterday and make today matter. Smiles to all and donut daze!
I’m really trying hard to not be cranky, but I’m cranky. But the dude’s smile keeps me going. He is making so many connections and some of them downright make me laugh. If he rushes off to the bathroom I will follow him as quickly as I can. I open a drawer in our cabinet and set my phone down if I’m carrying it when I go to help him. This morning he had grabbed his tablet and he went running to the bathroom. He opened that drawer, stuck his tablet in the drawer, and did his business. I was like way to go dude, way to go. Owen is fascinated with the moon. He has been learning facts about it and we sing several songs related to the moon. I got him a tiny replica that’s like a nightlight and it changes colors. He immediately liked it. He wanted to take it to his room with him and put it in his bed. I made him put it on his nightstand, but several times he has moved it into bed with him. When he gets attached to an object he wants it to go to bed with him and then when he wakes up in the middle of the night and depending on how awake he is, he will bring it to my bed. The other night he took his radio to bed with him. When he fell asleep I put it on his nightstand. When he came running to my bed there it was in his hands ready for round two of sleep. Once he fell back asleep I moved it to my nightstand. And so it goes. I have a feeling that the goodnight moon will be a traveling moon soon. He usually cycles through different items he likes to sleep with. Right now he has to have his lovey that plays music, his radio, and the pillows he doesn’t use at a certain place at the end of the bed. He wants to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar every night and he has three videos that he has to watch. He has learned the fine art of bathroom request and now every night when he is almost asleep he pops up, says he has to go to the potty, and then instead runs to turn all the lights on or off in the house. He does eventually make it to the bathroom and then back to bed, but this adventure can take place multiple times. How do I refuse the bathroom break. Through all our adventures I see growth. He couldn’t wait to walk to the bus stop to “see de moon”. In these moments I rejoice his happiness, even through my crankiness. This week has been rough, but tomorrow is a brand new day. Find your inspiration, share your smile, and remember you are important. Smiles to all and donut daze!
The weather has not been kind to me in the last few days. Owen woke at some point and got into bed with me. I have yet to figure out how to convince him that he needs to stay in his bed. And trying to get him to go back to his bed does not go well. There’s a process. It takes time and you have to stay with the exact same strategy every single night. But this momma is tired. I already knew there would be screaming and meltdowns this morning based from the behaviors of the last few days. I braced myself for what the morning would bring. I woke early, maybe I really never went back to sleep once he got in bed with me, and I had a massive headache. I needed to get up. I needed to take something for my headache. But I knew how upset Owen would be. Me moving around the house would wake him again and he wouldn’t be able to handle it if I turned any lights on. I managed to accomplish everything without the lights, but then I went to the bathroom. There isn’t enough WD40 in the world to keep my house from being a musical festival of noise. The floors creak, the door squeaks, the lights hum, and the world throws its own cacophony of sound at us every day. He came around the corner to the bathroom and said, “bed your bed go back to bed”. He didn’t want me up. He didn’t want to be up. I told him he could go back to bed, but mommy had to do a couple of things. I couldn’t lay back down, my head was throbbing too much. I tried to distract him, but I could tell he was so upset. I had to remain calm. We work really hard to keep his aggression in check. He cycles through his emotions and actions. He’s back to pulling my hair and pushing me, saying, “we don’t hit”. I breathe and I have him count to ten. As the morning went on he was ready to go to “school school school” and I was thankful that he loves going. Find your strength, push forward, and know that you are not alone. Smiles to all and donut daze!
One of the hardest things is to watch Owen gag over the smell, texture, or taste of food. My heart aches for my little boy when I’m wanting him to try a new food and the smell alone gags him and he runs from it. You have to keep pushing forward I tell myself. He was dairy and gluten-free for years. I believe taking him off the dairy was exactly what his little body needed. The gluten I always wondered about, but I do feel like it helped as well. He used to drink tons of milk in a day and wouldn’t want anything else. The transition to almond milk was not an easy road, but within a few days of taking him off of dairy, he was pulling letters out of a box and saying what they were. I feel like it helped clear his mind enough to be able to speak. He used to lay across everything he could, pushing on his gut. Once the milk was out of his system that slowed and it seemed like it decreased more when the gluten was gone too. In the last year, I’ve opened his diet up to more foods. He still drinks almond milk, chocolate almond milk at that, it’s about the only sweet food he likes, but he is now eating a wide variety of foods that he would never have considered before. And then along come the rules. The banana is probably the easiest example of how hard it can be for Owen. A bunch of bananas is fine, pretty much anywhere for him. A single banana has caused huge meltdowns for years. However, there are some places the banana can be and he’s fine with it, like at school. One of his favorite videos to watch, and we have been watching almost every day for two years, he took a couple of months off from it, is about a child that gets a banana for a Christmas present. I have tried many ways to get Owen to accept the banana and this video is actually helping us get through it. I wrapped one up for him and gave it to him like the video. At first, he was beside himself and upset, but then he started acting out the video and laughing. The reason the banana is so important to me for him to like is that it’s one of his favorite things to eat. If I put it on a waffle he will eat every bite, saying, “yum” as he eats it. If he sees me putting the banana on his waffles that’s when the meltdown begins. I try to find ways to bend and break our rules, but stay within the guidelines of keeping Owen happy and content. I’m thankful for how far we’ve come. Today is a brand new day. Find your happiness and make today matter. Smiles to all and donut daze!
Owen gets fixated on a particular sound or motion. Sometimes it has to do with my reaction and other times it’s about the way it makes him feel. He has extremely sensitive hearing and any noise can be a noise to him. I have a heating pad that has a neck massager built into it. If I leave it running, while I get up for a moment, he will rush over to it, putting his ear close to the noise. Sometimes he leaves it on, other times he turns it off. There are lights throughout our house that he doesn’t want on. He will scream “de making any noise”, and flip them off. And there are lights that he doesn’t want off. I lay in bed, in the middle of the night, trying to decide if it’s worth it to go to the bathroom. The creaks of the floor, the closing of the door, I shouldn’t flush the toilet, and the outside world has its own noises that come racing into our house to wake him. I tried to use white noise to drown out some of the sounds for him, but he woke up every night and turned off the noise. I tried a couple of different machines and even his tablet with songs and noises. None of them worked. One day at a time, I remind myself. Yesterday, on the way home from school, he brought up painting. I have to say it brought a sparkle to my smile. He listed things he wanted to paint. “Wanna paint a background let’s paint a church Donald Duck let’s paint Mickey wanna paint a fire truck”, he said and kept listing so many things I lost track. I don’t have him paint with me every day, but more when I can sense his ability to focus on what we are doing. We started painting together to work on his fine motor skills. We do a hand over hand method and he helps me paint the backgrounds to our art. Lately, he’s been talking about painting more and saying things like “we make a de cards from our painting”. He has been painting more of his own paintings with me holding at his wrist and him going through the motions. It’s exciting to watch him paint. I will show him a picture, help him with the paint on his paintbrush, and then explain what part he needs to paint. I’m so thankful it is all coming together for him and that he enjoys it. This is a year in the making and his progress is amazing. I tell him he is my miracle and I’m thankful. Never give up on your dreams and know that amazing things can happen when you set your mind to it. Smiles to all and donut daze!
We are on the no sleep train again and I want to get off. Owen came to my room right after midnight, but luckily he fell back asleep. It’s still hard for me, it seems like I toss and turn for a while. He woke happy this morning and that’s what matters. There are some days his words flow easily and other days it feels like he can’t find anything but the sounds to scream with. I watch him when he sings and that seems to be one of the times he has the most focus. Singing comes so naturally to him. As a baby I wanted him to feel the music and what it could do for your soul. I would take one of his hands and put it on my throat, and the other hand on my lips or my heart, singing songs and letting him feel the vibrations. He has several instruments that we work with and he is learning to sing and play at the same time. He doesn’t truly understand the concept of a melody or how to play a tune yet, but when he sings through songs using his voice and not trying to mimic a character he has an amazing tone. When I picked him up from school he had one thing on his mind. “Wanna ride”, he said. And that excitement carried him through the meltdown light without so much as a scream. I still braced myself for it though. He’s been enjoying riding his long-forgotten “old MacDonald had a farm tractor” as he calls it, singing the words. But it’s also frustrating to him. It’s a push pedal and that concept is still very hard for him to grasp. He’ll hold it down for a moment with his foot, but then lets it go to move his feet to a different section. And steering is not something he understands at all. It moves fast enough that I can’t really help him steer and move at the same time. Running into things, with a “whoopsie” is what he continues to do. I thought I would take him to the park because it had a flatter area for him to try and drive his tractor. Instead, he wanted to go down the slide, but that meant going the wrong direction down several of the other sections and then running off from me. He can outrun me in a heartbeat so I decided that we would try another day and another park. Through challenges, I still see progress, for both of us. Know that you are a lot stronger than you think you are. Make today matter. Smiles to all and donut daze!
“Church”, Owen screamed at four o’clock in the morning. Well, yes son, we are going to church today, but I don’t believe anyone will be there quite yet. I think I begged him to go back to sleep, telling him it was nighttime repeatedly. He moved on to the next keywords to get me out of bed, “wanna go potty”. I told him he could go potty anytime he wanted to. He can go by himself, but he’s not completely self-sufficient in the bathroom and sometimes decides the toilet is a multipurpose playground. I don’t want to even think about that. He is back to wanting to talk about animals and their sounds. When we are in the car it is something that helps distract him while we are driving. Yesterday I asked him about the sounds of many animals. A few of them I wanted to hear what he would say for them. I asked him what sound a giraffe makes and he said, “giraffe giraffe giraffe”. I moved on to more that I knew he would mimic and then I asked him about the octopus. He said, “pus pus pus swish swish swish” in a singsong manner. He’s my little musical artist in the making, turning anything and everything into a song. I don’t know if he understands the difference between languages and music. He will sing the notes and melodies to a song like they are the actual words. The progress he has made in the last few months with his vocabulary is outstanding. He will still mimic the character or person singing a song or even phrasing he uses to explain something he has learned. I hear my voice coming out of his mouth all the time. When church time approached he still kept yelling to go, but to put his clothes on him took forty-five minutes. He can’t always separate his excitement for the actions we need to do. We made it to church and he was happy the entire way there. My heart is full. Through life’s twists and turns remember that today is one moment in time. Smiles to all and donut daze!
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AuthorI'm Lynn Browder. Owen's Mommy. The best moments in time are when I get to see the smile on his face and that giggle come from his heart. Archives
March 2024
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