Little Sister

L. has been fiercely loyal to, and inseparable from his baby sister from the moment she was born. When we brought her home from the hospital for the first time he was completely and totally enamored with her. Since then he remains very over protective to the point of being a tad obsessive. It was difficult to explain to friends and family when they wanted to hold the newborn and he would throw a fit and tell them to give her back to mommy. This included grandparents. They would hold her and dote over her and he would cry and try and take her away from them.
As the years have gone by, three to be exact, he is not as bad about it as he use to be. L. is still very protective of her but not to the point that he won't let others touch her now. However, if I have to take hers with me and he isn't going he gets upset, even to the point of tears. So the other night when she fell off of the bunk bed and had to be taken to the emergency room for stitches, there was some high drama.
My husband, who hands blood, needles, gore, and the likes, much better than I do took her to the hospital. I'm sure that with all of the frightened shrieks coming from me, L. wasn't exactly sure what was going on, but he was upset, and even more so when my husband left with his baby sister. He stood at the window for hours whaling, "My daddy, my baby, come back." To see his innocence and his pure love for that little girl not only makes me happy but at times like that it breaks my heart. I want to explain to him what's happening but he can't understand.
After awhile, he eventually fell asleep, as they were out quite late. But the next morning he was so pleased to see her. Such a tender moment for such a big hulking kid like him.

Movie Parrot

There is nothing like when L. repeats something he's heard from a movie in public, when no one else knows what he is talking about. For instance, my husband and I took the family along with my husband's brother out to dinner the other night. As we sat in the crowded restaurant L. says, rather loudly, "Shut up and eat your garbage!" Overhearing that little remark may have made others wonder what kind of a mother would say such a thing to her son, for surely he learned if from someone. It was actually complements of Ratatouille, the Disney movie. He also likes to say, "BUGS!! BUGS!!" when he eats, thanks to an episode Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, another of Disney's finest. I'm sure that the proprietors of the establishment we are eating at appreciate the fact that he is yelling bugs for everyone to hear.

Then there's always the, "You'll never take me again." Don't know what that's from, but it's fun to explain that I'm not kidnapping him, he is actually my son. From Jumanji he got the phrase, "I'm never talking to you again!" which he generally uses in the heat of battle. Lately he's been on a Robin Hood kick. He uses a towel to fan whatever is cooking for dinner at the time and he says, "You're burning the grub, Sunshine." At least I can laugh at that one. His capacity to recall lines from any and every movie he's ever seen is amazing. He's like a little movie parrot, ready to repeat anything that might be offensive, rebellious, or down right funny. It is a constant source of amusement for us.

Some of our other favorites:

"You're breaking ranks, Major... or should I say traitor!" Toy Story 2
"For heaven sakes, let him go. Let him go!" Robin Hood
"Can't you stay?" Series of Unfortunate Events (He says this as he's pushing someone out the door)
"Listen here, pussy cat." Tom and Jerry
"I've had it with you and your emotional constipation!" Tarzan

The Haircut

L. has always hated haircuts with a passion. I think it must be a sensory thing. The clippers make that buzzing sound and it really bothers him. His brother H. is much the same. It has been a real struggle to keep them properly groomed because we put the haircuts off until it is absolutely necessary. Lately, and I say this with a great deal of gratitude in my heart, they have both been much better about it.
So it was quite a surprise to me when L. said he wanted a haircut. But then he specified that he wanted a "Buzz Lightyear" haircut. Who knows what the heck Buzz Lightyear's hair looks like? I mean he's always wearing that helmet of his. I thought maybe L. had heard the term "buzz cut" and thought it meant Buzz Lightyear. Anyhow, not one to argue with the kid when he wants something I want for him, I took him to get his haircut. He made it through about halfway, and then began to fidget and get annoyed.
He says "All done now!" and he wants up. With much persuading he managed stay in the seat until she was finished. Then he tells me that he wants a Buzz Lightyear and Lenny. It was then that I understood that he wanted me to go buy him a Buzz Lightyear in exchange for getting his haircut, because apparently that's what his father got him the last time he had to get his haircut. Let me tell you something, it is totally worth bribery if he does something he detests so very much without throwing a royal tantrum. I was more than willing to oblige him.

Home Lunch vs. School Lunch

I generally pack home lunch for my kids. Just your average PB&J, chips, fruit or veggie, and a juice. I like to mix it up with a slice of homemade bannana bread, freshly baked brownies, you know that sort of thing, to make myself feel like a decent mom every now and then. Lunches are especially good if I am doing penance for something. Anyway, the other day L. was throwing a monster of a fit because he didn't want to take his lunch. I finally slipped it into his backpack without him noticing and he got on the bus without any further disturbance.
When I picked him up from school that afternoon, the teacher tells me that for some reason he just wouldn't leave that lunch alone. They stuck it in the basket with all of the other home lunches and went about there business. But every time they turned around his lunch had some how landed in the trashcan. They would fish it out, stick it back in the basket, only to find it within the confines of the trashcan yet again just a short while later. For some reason, he just didn't want that lunch. The teacher commented on how sneaky and covert he was about the whole thing, waiting until the coast was clear and then quickly tossing it, no one the wiser until they noticed that it was missing again.
Why was he pitching his lunch into the trashcan all day long? L. simply wanted the chicken sandwich that they were having for school lunch that day. He ended up crying out, "Chicken, please!" They have chicken sandwiches there every day so the next day, I wisely did not pack home lunch. I let him eat school lunch. Now how will I console myself when I want to feel like I'm a good mom?

Another One Off To School

Monday was L.'s first day of school. He was against it for the first part of the morning. I tried to tell him the bus was coming and that he would see his teacher. He tried to resist, and then, just like that, he decided he wanted to go and went out to wait at the corner as if the start of our morning were a distant memory. When he was at school they asked him to draw a picture of what he had done this summer. He drew a few pictures of some animals, and then wrote http://www.hooglezoo.org/ at the top of his page.
Every now and again he surprises me. He will hardly put words together, and only appears to drift from day to day without any recollection of what he did an hour ago, and then he comes up with a doozy that really takes you off guard. Like the time we went to the zoo and the alligator jumped out of the water and snapped a plastic ball between his massive jaws. It frightened the whole family, but especially L. Since then he refuses to go into the reptile house. Every once in a while he'll say, "The alligator bit the ball." Which goes to show you, he does remember things from yesterday, last week, and last month.
For the past three days he has gone to school without any problems at all. That is heaven.

School Starts

As I have said before, I have two children that fall on the spectrum. Well, this week my younger son H. started school again. He is now in first grade, completely main streamed and doing pretty well for a kid who didn't speak until he was four. Two years later and I am amazed by his progress. I count it as a miracle.
He still has his quirks to be sure but he is so smart. The big problem is this - he doesn't quite understand how recess works. You hear the bell, you go out and play for awhile, you hear the bell, and you go back in. He gets the going out part, it's the coming back in that seems to be his problem. Last year when he was in kindergarten he would leave the kindergarten play ground and go play on the big toys. Often times they would be searching for him, only to find him on the big kids play ground. Now that he is in the first grade and allowed to play on the big kid play ground he just doesn't come back in.
Yesterday, my husband tells him all morning, "When you hear the bell you need to come in from recess." He says it enough times that H. begins to repeat it with him. Later on that day his teacher was in the office and I asked if he had come back in when the bell rang. She smiled and shook her head no. At least she is extremely understanding about it, and seems to take it all in stride. Apparently, he also was insulted by her snacks. She offered him pretzels and he scowled at her and asked her what was up with that. (He doesn't like pretzels.)
It's quite honestly like having a little Kramer from Seinfeld on our hands. He makes some pretty outrageous faces, he jerks and acts shocked over the littlest things, he lets you know when he doesn't like something, even if it's socially taboo, and he's kinda spacey. But oh how we laugh.

My Photos Keep Disappearing

I don't know why. It makes no sense to me. But then it must make some sort of sense to him. L. will not leave my framed family photos alone. I have them neatly adorning the top of my piano with a lovely vase of flowers. I go in, they are there, arranged artfully along the top ledge. I leave the room and come back and they are nowhere to be found. He keeps hiding them in different locations too, to throw me off the trail.
Just why do those photos bug him so badly I'll never know. Every time I find them and go to put them back, he protests. "Put it back!" he says. One of his weird, quirky habits like stuffing toys in any hole he can find. It use to disturb me when he took his Winnie the Pooh and slammed his head shut in the oven. Until we discovered he was just re-enacting the cartoon where Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit's hole.
It didn't end there. At school, a few years ago, he found a whole in the wall where the door knob had banged one too many times. He shoved all sorts of things in there. His aid Adrienne thought it was so funny when they finally patched it up. She said that when they demolish that building years from now, they will discover in the rubble all of those toys he stuffed in there. Maybe they'll be collectors items then?