1:22 PM 2/23 Updated with links galore!
For some reason Google is ranking this blog #11 for "Squid." That's ahead of Laughing Squid, Squidfingers, and Turbo Squid. Odd yet nifty.
While I would prefer that this site ranked within the first 50 hits for "autism" or even "autism blog," hitting the top fifteen with my pseudonym is not the crappiest thing that has ever happened to me. It also makes me less bummed over the random sliding of my Technorati numbers. Don't get me wrong--I know that people with better written and more entertaining blogs have shockingly worse rankings. But, if you wanted to link to this site or favorite it, and nudge me back skywards, I wouldn't mind ... not at all.
---
I will be grateful when Seymour gets home. Today I had two ten-minute windows to read in the car. Both times I fell asleep instead.
Negative sleep balance aside, I've much to keep me amused and grateful. Leelo participated in his school's kindergarten Chinese New Year parade, as the tail of the dragon. He was adorable. He got to follow a line of noisy and colorful kids/dragons in a path around the school, while all the other classes turned out to cheer them on. It was perfect for him! I was so happy to see Leelo and his crew join in and be welcomed by their school community, as they are usually segregated from the rest of the campus. I was even happier to have a Leelo school event that I could participate in with joy rather than unease.
Leelo misses his dad, though, and the crappy food I let him eat during our road trip has resulted in a lot of acting out, pushing, cackling, and having to be told multiple times and in therapy-speak to do things like put on his shoes ("Leelo! Put on shoes!") when lately one normally-voiced, normally-phrased request had been sufficient.
He still isn't on the playground. Supervisor M received no response to her Emergency Behavioral Plan. His principal is being slippery when I try to discuss it. I don't know what else to do. Those friends who were with me tonight after the very successful second DEPTAR (Deadwood Special Ed PTA) meeting got to see that I still can't talk about it without crying because there is no way to make Leelo understand why he can't go on the playground.
Anyhow. Iz is on Geography, constellations, and politics jags. She squealed when I showed her the Statistics section in the back of my atlas, and immediately read the entire ranked list of world's fifty largest islands out loud. She thinks that Alaska should secede from the U.S. so that it at least can sign the Kyoto Accord. She convinced almost all the attendees at last week's Rosenberg extended family dinner down in San Diego to come outside with her, individually, so that they could point out and discuss their favorite constellations. (Thankfully the Rosenbergs come from whaling and fishing stock, and know their skies.)
Forgot to write during yesterday's Mali transcript that our littlest girl doesn't just never stop talking. She is also a squealing, dancing, hopping ball of happiness and joy. She is unfailingly and appropriately polite without prompting, with the exception of affirmatives--those are all still, "Okay!" She mixes up her letter sounds sometimes--yesterday she told me that "K is for Care Bear," but usually she's spot on. She likes to count while dripping drops of juice from her sippy cup onto individual toes. She is a great mimic; five minutes after Iz was practicing headstands in the living room, Mali was doing the two-year-old semi-prone version and yelling, "Mommy! Mommy! Look at me! Look at me!"
All those Maliisms are great for vanity mommyblogging, letters to grandparents, and reconfirming neurotypicality. But they don't bring me the joy of watching my youngest during Circle Time at Iron Gate Nursery School. Neither Iz nor Leelo really grokked such things, but Mali dances, sings, claps, imitates, and anticipates the Circle Time routine right along with her classmates. That sweet, funny-looking baby girl has given me the gift of parenting a regular kid, and I am full of gratitude.
Technorati Tags: autism blog, Iz, Leelo, Mali, parenting, squid
No comments:
New comments are not allowed.