Coping with Autism

Peter apparently hates shoes. The first chance he gets, he takes them off. I think it's because he is sensation seeking and feels so much through his feet. We have issues with this constantly. For Nathan this isn't a problem. He likes wearing shoes but because he took so long to walk (he was 26 month's old when he started walking), he went a long while without them and I think that he thinks they make him look like a big boy. Peter, however, echews shoes (LOL) every chance he gets. His teachers (with whom he has been since late last year) have experienced the "shoes-off" phenomenom but Peter surprised them a little by insisting on taking his socks off. My first thought was that he was REALLY comfortable with his teachers now :)

Peter, again, refused to cooperate last night at bedtime and ended up finally going to sleep at midnight. And he didn't want to nap today so, being the Houdini that he is, he managed to escape my seemingly impenetrable jerry-rigged blockade while I was writing downstairs. He then decided that our upstairs bathroom needed to be turned into a swimming pool or small lake. I know this because, as I wrote, I suddenly heard additional water-dripping sounds apart from those made by our fishtank. My kitchen ceiling was leaking. I ran upstairs to discover, to my horror, that my bathroom was (and still is) greatly flooded. So I sit here, exhausted, out of clean and dirty dry towels, trying to decide if I should call my husband now or later to tell him. Later, definitely later.

It's amazing what we take for granted as "normal." Getting the boys haircuts is so difficult. They are too old for a stroller so I can't strap one of them in while getting the other one's hair cut. And often I have to sit with each boy to keep him calm while this is going on. So I have to go with someone else-- I can't get their haircuts done by myself but it seems like my husband is always at work and he's the best one to go with me. Yesterday, I finally broke down and bought a hair clipper kit. Up to this point I thought if I tried to cut the boys' hair I would tear their hair up and it would look awful. However, Nathan was beginning to look like a girl with his hair so long and fluffy (my husband and I both have thick hair so each of the kids has really thick hair). So I clipped the boys' hair late yesterday and, even if I do say so myself, they both look pretty good. Granted they could have held still longer so I could trim the temples a little...