In So Many Words

Michael with Santa and Mrs. Claus

Last Sunday, we took some time out of our day of rest to go to the annual Autism Society Christmas Party. Every child receives a present from Santa, and Mrs. Claus is there as well to greet each family and get a photo op.

Although it is loud and crazy, I enjoy getting to see some of the parents and kids I don’t see all the time. Bob and Michael don’t care for it as much as I do, though, as both of them hate sitting and waiting our turn in the noisy, chaotic environment. After we had been there about an hour, Michael asked why we hadn’t gotten on the VIP list!!

Michael did enjoy doing some karaoke and getting to select a small prize for that. This year, I was also successful in distracting him when they were drawing raffle prizes, so he wasn’t aware that we didn’t win anything. He loved seeing and talking to Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Once we got back to our table and opened his present (a Lego Hero Factory item that had been at the top of his list only a couple of weeks earlier), he declared that he was tired of them and didn’t want it. Now after we got the present home and started playing with it, he was happy to have it. Also, we talked about he could use some of the money from his grandmother to buy a toy related to his newest interest, and then he admitted that he still liked Hero Factory but had thought that meant he couldn’t get anything else.

I’m guessing this might be the last year we go as a family as both Bob and Michael were completely stressed out once it was over. Maybe next year I will sign up to help in some way so I still get to see everybody and hear what’s been going on over the last year or so.

Check out more great pics at Special Exposure Wednesday and Wordless Wednesday.

For anyone who may not have seen this meme before, To-Do Tuesday was started by Lisa @ Crazy Adventures in Parenting for the purpose of attacking our to-do lists each week, blogging about our lists and what we’ve got going on, and sharing it with each other to help keep each other accountable.

We had a wonderful time at the Autism Society Christmas Party on Sunday. The only difficult part was the raffles; Michael was so upset not to win anything. I need to remember to talk with him ahead of time about these. Later that day my husband surprised me with a early 40th birthday party when I thought we were going to a friend’s house for dinner. It was very nice – I had a great time and was so touched that he did that for me.

I’m sure he got some great pictures of everything, but I just haven’t had the time to post as much as I would like to lately. I’m still hyper-focused on getting everything done for Christmas. Once we get all the family gifts mailed and delivered, it will be smooth sailing for the rest of the holiday season.

December 13-19

December 20-26

What are you doing to celebrate the holidays this year?

For more To-Do Tuesday, visit Crazy Adventures in Parenting.

I finally downloaded the pictures from last week, and I didn’t really get any good ones from Trick or Treat. But I took a bunch of shots at the Halloween party at school and thought these turned out pretty well.

For Halloween at my son’s school, the students and teachers dress up in their costumes and go on a parade through the neighborhood. After walking about six blocks, they make their way back to the school playground and dance to some fun songs before going inside to their class parties. These were taken during The Hokey Pokey.

Check out more great pics at Special Exposure Wednesday and Wordless Wednesday.

SCARY BINGO

The first scary thing is a fun thing. Tonight I finished the bingo cards for the school party this Friday. They are a mix of handmade and computer-generated, and each kid will get a bag of candy corn to use for markers. The homeroom parent had done a similar game last year at the Valentine’s party and the kids loved it, so I just adapted it to Halloween. She said they played until every kid had his or her entire card filled up!

Each card has the squares in a slightly different order, and they will get the SCARY space and their own names as freebies before we start drawing cards.

A BIG SCARE FOR BOB

The second scary thing actually happened yesterday when Bob and Michael were out running errands, and luckily I didn’t know anything about it until they were both home safe and sound.

They had gone into the mall near our house and needed to go up to the second floor. Bob didn’t realize that Michael, who had been right behind him, didn’t get on the escalator, so as soon as he got to the top, he came back down to get him. But Michael took off before Bob got down there and then Bob couldn’t find him. It was several minutes before he was paged by security to come get Michael upstairs.

After talking to both of them, it turns out that Bob didn’t know Michael is afraid to step onto an escalator without holding someone’s hand and thought Michael would get on by himself when prompted. Of course, he also thought Michael would wait at the bottom for him to come back down.

Michael, on the other hand, had the idea that if Bob would wait at the top of the escalator, Michael could go up on the elevator and meet him there. So that’s what he did, but then of course Bob wasn’t there because he had come back down and was searching the first floor of the mall for Michael. When Michael couldn’t find Bob, he went into one of the stores nearby to look for him and then approached a “policeman” (mall security guard) for help.

I talked to Michael for what seems like the 100th time about how he has to stay with Mommy or Daddy at all times when we are out somewhere, and also that he can’t just go do an idea he thinks about, but has to talk to us about it first. I did tell him he did the right thing in going to the security officer for help.

This was definitely a big reminder to me that, no matter how well things are going, we need to keep ourselves within an arm’s reach of him at all times when we are out in public. I am just so incredibly thankful that this ended as it did.

I had such a great time last night partying with the Ultimate Blog Party 2009! We totally crashed the 5 Minutes for Mom site trying to link up our posts (sorry ladies), but Twitter came to the rescue and we were able to start the party there until the Mr. Linky was available.

Or I should say Mr. Linkies, because they not only have separate sections for Entrepreneurs and for Dads, they also have linkups for your Twitter profile and your Facebook profile. Pretty cool!

I stayed up way too late, but I was a good girl this morning and did my chores before turning on the computer. Now I’m off to visit blogs and do some Twittering! (Oh, the hashtag is #ubp09 if you want to get in on the Twitter conversation.)

My party post is here, and you can find tons more at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Thank you to everyone who left get well wishes on my last post about having contracted scarlet fever. After a few days of resting and antibiotics, I am on my way to feeling better. I was even able to log a couple of hours of work from home today, although getting myself up and into the office was beyond what I could do!

I finally got the pictures from our ASA Christmas party downloaded and wanted to share a few. Our local chapter (Greater Harrisburg Area Autism Society of America) does several large family events throughout the year, and this is one of the best. Santa brings a gift for each child (including siblings), and it is always a fun time of catching up with other families and enjoying the holiday season.

Here’s Michael with the Head Elf:

Smiling big for Santa and Mrs. Claus:

Opening his Speed Racer Legos that he “didn’t know he wanted” – i.e. they weren’t on his Christmas list but he loved them:

And trying out karaoke for the first time with a rousing rendition of Jingle Bells:

Obviously not everyone who attends a big event like this enjoys being around lots of people with its activity and noise, but the volunteers and board members work hard to find a way for everyone to participate and enjoy the afternoon, and no one has to worry about other people judging their child’s ways of expressing either happiness or displeasure. We have all learned to expect the unexpected, and sometimes the unexpected is that everyone has a great time!

Well, this is officially the Week ‘O’ Fun at our house. The Little Guy has one more week of daycare and then starts his summer program on Monday, which means he will be gone from 8:30-3:30 each day instead of 7:30-12:30. His TSS is at a training out of town this week, so yours truly is in charge of filling the social schedule every day.

Monday we went to his best friend’s house and they played while best friend’s little brother was napping. Later on we all went to a park near their house so they could play on the playground and then roll down the big hill many times!

On Tuesday he had his last music therapy session until school starts, and from there we went to Toys ‘R’ Us to buy a present for a birthday party. The party was held at a park with a small pavilion and some nice play structures, and the kids had a blast. As the guest of honor is a little girl from his daycare class, there were quite a few kids he knew, which made him very excited. I was a little worried that the ground would still be wet from the big storm we had last night or that it would rain, but we ended up having very nice weather.

Today we are going to be staying home for the afternoon and probably watching lots of PBS Kids, as the wonderful man from Verizon will be installing FiOS phone/internet. Hopefully I will actually get some housework done since the computer will be unavailable for several hours (yes, this rambling is coming to you through the magic of scheduled posts).

Thursday we are headed to Hersheypark for the afternoon/evening – hopefully with friends if they are able to score some passes. Then on Friday, I will let the Little Guy pick what he wants to do, since he will probably be sad about his last day with his preK friends.

So lots of fun stuff this week, but I am looking forward to establishing our new routines for the summer.