Weekend Roundup

Kevin, my sweet boy, has such a contented nature about him. For the most part, he is very patient and compliant, (except when he can't find one of his precious letter Y's or wants the ceiling fan on,) I call him my gentle giant. When I ask him to do something, like "put your plate in the dishwasher," I get a sing-songy "oh-kay" in reply.

His autism turns his communications into echolalia, his room into a sanctuary for thousands of plastic alphabet letters, and his teenage years with crazy sleeping patterns into a non-competitive happy child.

Sunday was a St. Mary's Special Olympics event for basketball, one of the qualifiers required for the state competition in two weeks. The venue was about an hour south of Bowie in rural southern Maryland. I got to take Kevin this time, Dan usually gets the honor. Kevin participates in the individual skills competition, because, despite his height, he doesn't have the basketball concepts or concentration to play on the 3v3 team.

The athletes complete three skills activities, 10-yard dribbling "dash," bounce-passes, and shooting. Each of these earned the athletes points and the medals were give out for the points totals in each heat.

During the awards I watched three young women get their medals. The bronze was awarded first, then silver. The third girl stood there waiting, gears clicking into place, then she broke out into the most joyful squeal when she figured out she got the gold. It's hard not to smile along with her when you witness such pure glee.

Kevin did well, as he always does. Without the underlying competitive current, he has no expectations, he just enjoys being there and being with the other kids. I was a smidge disappointed he was the only boy in his heat, but I was glad to hear he got 68 points, so the automatic gold was well deserved.


Yes, it went in.

My husband and I took our son to Chesapeake Beach Water Park last night. Kev loves water parks and we use them as leverage, "Do you want to go to the water park? You need to go to bed... You need to get up... You have to brush your teeth." It's hard to negotiate with a autistic child without a solid prize involved. We never actually take the prize away, he always complied with our requests. We can usually milk about a months good behavior out of a trip to a water park.

Chesapeake Beach Maryland is in "Southern Maryland," land of big hair, and definitely out of the direct influences of the big city. Therefore it was quite easy to pick my bald-headed boy out of the crowd, since he cut his own hair again over the weekend and to salvage it, I had to buzz it down to the nubbins. In neighborhoods closer to the Beltway, you will often see boys with the close-trimmed look. But not so in CB.

He had cut his hair with kid scissors while under the watchful eye of my parents while my husband and I played golf with my brothers on Saturday. My daughter, Fern, was quite upset. I think because, 1. Grandma and Grandpa should have been watching him better, and 2. Having an older autistic sibling is hard enough, but one with self-cut hair is very hard to deal with and embarrassing.

She's away at camp for two weeks and when she gets back, she'll have a week without her brother around.