fiddlyfart with a side of honesty

Wow.
Even though I knew people loved us, and especially our little Noah, the response to my sharing the news was... well... wow. I just want to say thanks. As soon as I hit "publish"; the comments, emails, FB messages, etc all came flooding in. I don't know why it shocked me so much, but it did. People I haven't seen or heard from in ages, sharing their stories and pledging their support. People hooking me up with their friends via FB, because this particular person's child also has autism. Friends sending me invites to festivals and support groups. People offering their encouragement to my family. It made me a little teary hearing all of the sweet things they had to say about not only Noah, but myself.
Sometimes a girl just needs to hear a nice compliment from someone besides her husband and mom. You know what I mean? It's great when your mom says your beautiful, but she's your mom. Of course she's going to say that. But when that guy you've been crushing on hard (in this case, my husband when we were 15) admits to his buddy that he thinks you have nice legs, then it makes its way through the friend vine back to you? Suddenly, you feel like a supermodel... all while feeling slightly self-conscious about your legs now.

Anyway, I just really really wanted to say thank you to everyone.

But I also wanted to make it clear that I didn't "come out of the autism closet", as I phrased it to my friend, because I was looking for people to react the way they did. I wasn't asking for pity or all of the amazing words our friends sweetly offered us.
The reason I decided to write about it is because I've been wanting to share our journey here.
This will definitely not become an "autism blog", but if this is a for real diagnosis for Noah, then it will be a part of our lives. And to hide that? Seems silly. And disingenuous. I want to get how I feel about it out in the open, because that's how I process stuff. I want to document when Noah responds to a question or makes a friend... even if it all happens later than other toddlers.

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We met some friends at a park on Tuesday. It's Spring Break here for public schools, so the place was packed out. Kids.Were.Everywhere. Noah gets a little overwhelmed in large, crowded scenarios. Sometimes his "red flags" become more obvious in these situations.
But he surprised me. He ran around, in the middle of the action, and played with all the other kids. He climbed through tunnels, went down slides, and giggled when other kids ran around him. He ignored the mulch (his go-to sensory tool he obsesses over when we're out) and actually played on the playground.
A little girl that's in his class at church recognized him when we walked in and shouted, "Noah's here!!" Noah has never really acted as if he notices other kids that I'd consider to be his friends. But hearing toddlers get excited when Noah comes around? Makes me happy. He's the kid that other kids remember, and I think that's really going to come in handy later on.

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I bought Kelle Hampton's new book, Bloom. It came out on Tuesday and that morning, after the park, I ran and grabbed it. I was originally going to wait until we went to the beach in a couple of weeks and read it there. But I couldn't wait. I decided I'd pace myself... read a little bit every other day... that way I'd have some left to read when we got there.
I should've known better. By that night, I was at chapter 7.
Although Noah doesn't have Down syndrome, I found myself relating to some of the sentiments she wrote. Like how she originally felt about therapy:


     "...when four therapists show up at your house at once to evaluate your baby. And one is pulling her arms and testing her reflexes, mumbling scores for each reaction while another who's set up a makeshift office at your living room chair is typing it all in. And you see the way your baby's head is a little floppy and how she doesn't turn to look at the bell that's being jingled outside her left ear and, although the therapist is quietly and professionally rattling off these number scores without alarm, you know d*** well that '2' and '3' aren't the winning numbers.
     And while, at this point, you have no idea that these therapists will later become your friends and will love your baby and that someday, you won't even frantically clean up your living room before they arrive - at this very moment, you want to cry and make a big scene, kicking paperwork and screaming, 'For the love of God, leave my baby alone, take your portable office and your laptop and these d*** bells and books and get the hell out of my happy house because I didn't sign up for this club and certainly, you've come to the wrong place.'"

When professionals were showing up regularly to our home to evaluate Noah... his speech, his eye contact, his cognitive skills; when a pediatrician recommended we take him for genetic testing; when we had random people mentioning "autism" around us; when I felt like everyone in his world was analyzing him instead of loving him; when my baby sat in the corner and had broken heart-ed tears trickling down his cheeks because he couldn't understand why the SLP wouldn't blow bubbles with him anymore... all those times I fought back the urge to tell everyone to leave my beautiful, perfect, tender hearted, sweet baby boy the heck alone. To take their boring toys, their MCHATS, their pamphlets and get the heck outa my house.
But I didn't do that. I knew they were trying to help, and I knew that Noah needed it. And when I saw the realization hit the SLP's face that he wasn't pitching a fit and being too stubborn to say the word "bubbles"? That she know knew she had hurt his feelings... and this made her so sad? I knew that these people weren't "after" my baby... they sincerely wanted to help.

But it was nice reading that someone else had to fight those same feelings. That I'm normal.
If you haven't grabbed a copy, I'd recommend it. It's an easy read... and it has pictures! What grown up book has pictures these days? I think it's great. :)

***

Noah caught a cold this week. I'd blame it on one of those millions of kids at the park, but he started sneezing while we were there. He's pretty much been himself, just a little extra cuddly, which is so nice. Yesterday, we sat on the bed, cuddling and talking (his version of talking). No tv or other noise. Just us. It was really, really nice.

***

Hope everyone's having a fantastic week!
I'll be back with some Easter related stuff tomorrow!
Lots of egg dying and family time going on around here.