A lot of ground to cover...but I'll still make it relatively brief.
Since the last post...well, the post BEFORE the last post...the post about the walk, lots has happened.
Okay...yesterday when I was writing this post, I also had the story about the pool included in it. THAT story ended up being so long that I just made it its own post so this one would still be relatively brief (as previously promised).
School's out for summer, for starters, which presents a whole new set of scheduling challenges to work out, Father's Day happened, which we hosted, and we took the kids to Kennywood again.
Summer Schedule:
Lily is struggling a little bit with the new routine. She's still pretty happy go lucky, but there's been a little more biting, a bit more screaming and slapping, and more overall...what? Stubbornness, I guess...foot-dragging, shouted "No" responses...then compliance. So her accidents are up, her behaviors are up, and we're not doing her any favors with new TSS support for the summer who she has never met.
We're just sorta playing it by ear, trying to always keep in the back of our minds: She needs time to adjust to this new 'routine', whenever she struggles. And she does struggle BUT...she's also still very much "Lily"...happy spinny dancey giggly Lily. So no biggie so far. This made me think of the troubles that many of our kids have when Summer arrives with its chaos and freedom from the structure of the school routine...which tends to manifest itself in...behavior/anxiety/issues. This in turn led me to think about The Game of Thrones, and House Stark and the doomy "Winter is Coming", which finally led me to THIS meme...which is a little on the late side in terms of being a timely meme that people will find funny, but I'll trot it out next Summer...
And before I continue with my two week look back, I want to toss in a couple caveats...
1) Probably someone will find this offensive, but I chose the cat as the sigil of House Autism because there have been lots of comparisons in writing about the similarities, but also because there is a perception that autistic people like cats, and in my heart of hearts, I really hope that nobody feels like this is a hateful stereotype or that I think autistic people ARE cats, or that ALL autistic people like cats or whatever...but the puzzle piece is out, and a rainbow didn't really suit the meme.
2) Because the "Winter is Coming" sigil for House Stark is a wolf, I wanted the House Autism sigil to be an animal of some kind, but not anything scary or savage or whatever. And because of the above-referenced cat stuff...I thought...KITTY CAT!!
3) Shout out to my niece (she thinks she's people) Pamook. Lauren, if you're reading this, I stole a picture of Pamook off your instagram and turned her into a silouette and then added eyes a nose and whiskers to make my sigil. So...famous kitty!
4) The idea of the meme is that, like House Stark, who preaches being prepared for the coming of winter and all its terrors (white walkers and 100 years of shit weather), autism families need to prepare for the coming of summer and ITS aforementioned terrors.
Sorry...but past memes have been misunderstood because I sometimes think people know what I intend in my brain when I put stuff down on "paper". It's a fault of mine.
So on the first day of Summer break, we took the kids to...
Kennywood:
I feel like we learned some lessons from the first trip, and even more from this one, and hopefully we can apply it to "the big dance" amusement park-wise in August when we go to Orlando. But the kids had a blast.
Some lessons:
1) Take a friend for Emma. She can ride on the fun rides while we take Lily on the Kiddyland rides.
2) Take two cars so that if Lily gets overstimulated, we can leave if needed, or just leave when it's bedtime, and let Emma stay and ride with her mom (since I don't (not that I'm scared or anything)).
3) Identify a quiet uncrowded area to just let Lily walk without hand holding or pushing or pulling or carrying...to let her unwind and recharge.
4) Find a McDonald's either to eat before we go to the park...or after we leave it.
Father's Day:
Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there who are active participants in their kids' lives. Fuck you to the dads who aren't. Fathers' day isn't FOR you.
Anyway, LOVELY Father's day in the backyard of our house. We got ribs and cornbread and I drank Moscow mules and we opened a couple gifts (one of which was a graphics tablet for my PC and another of which was marshmallow skewers for when we have fires in the back). And the baby Jesus made it stop raining so that we could enjoy.