Our Snowy Valentine

When you live in autism land, your days tend to be like Groundhog Day.  Kids with autism generally like predictability, so we tend to do the same activities over and over.  Our days honestly tend to look just like the one before.  We are always beyond excited when we find a new activity that is acceptable to add to the rotation.

The sameness of this winter has been almost mind numbing, the rest of the region is finding out what it is like to live in autism land.  It's the same story...2+ inches of snow predicted, which tends to be 4+ inches of snow.  We haven't seen the grass that are our yards for weeks.  The kids have been averaging going to school 2 days a week with those days having a great chance of being 2 hour delays.  Here's the view from my kitchen this morning.....

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and the kids didn't have school.  I kept reading on facebook how upset many kids were because they were going to miss their Valentine's parties.  Yes, this is how bored we all are....kids are upset because they aren't going to school!  Bobby, yeah, he could care less about a party, but he is stir crazy like the rest of us.  How many days can you spend inside your house???!!!!

The good thing about yesterday....the temps were in the lower 30's, meaning the snow was clearing off of the roads that were treated.  Bobby's caseworker called yesterday morning to see if she could come and do his home visit earlier in the day since he was off of school.  Well, she couldn't make our hill and I had to go pick her up down the road from a gas station parking lot.  When I got to the main road, it was clear and I didn't have any trouble on our hill, Daddy bought me the best snow tires he could find!!  After I took her back to her car and came back home, we decided to get out of the house.

Grandma Carolyn has been staying with us for a few days because she has been stuck in her house through all of this snow by herself.  She was bored so Bobby and I went and picked her up before the snowstorm before the one we had last night.  Funny, I don't even remember when that was...the days are alllllll runnnnning together!!!!

Grandma, Bobby and I got out of the house yesterday!!  Whoo Hoo!!  We stopped at Barnes and Noble so that Grandma could run in a buy a new puzzle.  As soon as I pulled into the parking space, Bobby took off his seat belt....HE WAS GOING IN!!!!!!  I took Bobby while Grandma did her shopping, he had a mission in his head as soon as we walked through the doors.  He walked at a very fast pace until he made it to his desired location...the music and movie section.  He walked straight to the back right corner wall, stopped and said "ELMO."  He couldn't reach them because they were on the top shelf, so I pulled a few different titles off of the shelf and he picked the one that he wanted, which funny enough, he doesn't already own.  We went to the front of the store and found Grandma checking out.  She was so excited that he picked out something that she wanted to buy it for him for a Valentine gift.  He carried his new movie out to the car and held it in his hand.

I also needed to run into Sam's Club.  When I pulled into the parking space there, he said "I'll be right back."  This means, you run in and get what you need Mommy, Grandma and I will be right here waiting for you when you get back.  He just does not want to go into that store.  He knows what he likes!!  I found a couple of Sam's Club specials to be our Valentine's dinner.

 Cupcakes so that Bobby could blow out some holiday candles!!  Fisherman's Seafood feast....

Zoi cracked us up....she waited patiently right beside Daddy just praying that she would get some scraps....

 She looks so pitiful....like, I've been such a good girl Daddy...ppppllllleeeaaaassssseeeeee!!!

Yes, she got a couple of bites and I took the broth and put it on her dog food....she gobbled it all up!

More pictures of us playing in the snow (yes, I know if you follow Bobby's World on facebook that you have already seen these....sorry, I got nothing else going on!!!)........

 Good snowball snow.

 Mommy and Bobby doing a little sledding.

 Resting on a snow pile.

 Building a snowman with Grandma.

 Watching me to see if I am watching him, so that he can.....

 knock the snowman's head off.

 Catching snowballs that Daddy is throwing.

Yes, Bobby got to blow out some holiday candles on the Valentine's cupcakes.  Our snowy Valentine's Day!!!

Bobby at Play

We have had enough of the snow already!!  Since the kids have been back to school from Christmas break, they have had ELEVEN, yes ELEVEN snow days and two 2-hour delay days from school. We have been trying to get as much of Bobby's energy out by playing in the snow, but some of these days the wind chill was -20 degrees, not great days to go outside and play.  Bobby has been spending a lot of time playing in his play room and when I went up to check on him, I thought that everyone would probably love to see what I saw.  Through Bobby's play in his room, it is clearly evident that his brain works in a different way!!!

Bobby needs his room to be cleaned and tidy before he will really go up there and play.  If his mess is still there he avoids playing and takes some of his blocks and cars to another area of the house to make a mess, or rather play in his way.  He has no problem helping me pick up the toys in his room. I have many bins for his toys and a different type of block, car, toy goes in each bin.  I hold up a type of block and put it in a bin and he will gather all of the rest of that type of block and fill the bin. However, he would not be able to do this if I just went in there and said "clean your room."

This is how the room looked in this particular time that I went to make sure that he was ok....

 His two shelving units were emptied and place back to back.  The baskets were removed from his dresser and they were moved across the room by Bobby and arranged just the way he wanted.  The small, lighter colored shelf was in it's original location.  You may wonder why I would let him move furniture around like this?  He isn't hurting anything and heavy lifting is recommended by his Occupational Therapist.  In fact, he has a sensory diet written into his school plan and heavy lifting (moving chairs or heavy items) is written into the plan to help him have a more successful day.

 Yes, notice that a baby doll high chair, that he found downstairs in storage and carried up two flights of stairs to his room, is angled up to the wall.  Bobby loves angles and spends a great deal of time getting things to sit in a perfect angle until it is just the way he wants it.  If he can't get it just right, he is known to cry and fuss.

 For some reason, unknown to the rest of us, this Sesame Street bus and McDonald's cash register need to sit on top of the xylophone.

The large basket on top sits inside of his dresser, but for Bobby's purposes it is the top layer of his masterpiece of stacked laundry baskets (yes, he dumped out all of my dirty laundry first) and a mega blocks set.  These types of Bobby artwork can be seen all of the time around our house.

More angles, these dollar tree baskets work perfectly for more basket stacking.  He had a DVD playing on a small tv in the room while he plays.  When he comes back downstairs, you know that his room is perfect in his eyes and he needs it all put away before he can play some more.

...

It only takes about 5 minutes to get his room back in order.  I like to keep like things together so that it makes a little more sense to him.  Something else that I have noticed about Bobby over the past snow days, he doesn't like the globe to be in his play things, I always find it thrown out of the room and the only thing that I can come up with is that it doesn't have any angles, it is round. Bobby also likes this play room much more since Daddy pulled up the carpet and put in this flooring...he can move things around and line things up on this flooring.

 The bins full of Bobby's favorite types of toys....construction sets that are a bunch of the same thing.

There is a small nook in this room and this larger shelf filled the area perfectly.  It houses his books, musical toys, cars, and toddler type toys.  By the way, these curtains roll up from the bottom and sit in the straps on each side....Bobby prefers them down all of the time.  When I put them up to get some light into the room, he immediately puts them down as soon as he steps into the room.

Toddler toys....uh, a major dilemma to many autism parents.  Do you allow them to continue to play with toddler and baby toys that they love or make them get rid of them and play with more age appropriate things even if they don't play with them appropriately.  I am not going to debate that topic, but for me, I didn't throw these last few things out or give them away and he doesn't have much of an interest in them other than to line them up.  However, we don't really buy him new toddler toys...unless you count an Elmo Christmas decoration.  In all honesty, I could get rid of everything on this shelving unit and he would not be the least bit upset.

These Blue's Clues toys on the top shelf are like autism kid crack!  Every kid that has autism who comes over to play has had these toys in their hands at one time or another.

Bobby just came downstairs and sat down at the kitchen table beside me.......meaning, his room is finished and it is time to move on to something else.  Hopefully the kids get back to a normal school routine soon...not sure how many more snow days we can take!!!