Thank God for Fish Faces

Andrew has had a rough few weeks and today was the worst. I went to pick him up from school in hopes that the teachers would tell me he had a good day....those have been few and far between here lately. As I walked into the school I could hear screams coming from his classroom and I thought "Wow, who is that?!" Never in a million years would I thought it was Andrew. But indeed it was. He was in the middle of the most violent tantrum that I have ever seen him throw. The teacher was trying to get him to calmly sit in time out, so I didn't let him see me so she could follow through and make him obey. While I waited, I witnessed him slap her and kick her all the while screaming. She finally got him calmed down and then tried to calm me down. I expressed that I felt he was regressing and she promised me that he was still making strides, but was just testing his boundaries right now. Then she told me she was sorry I walked in while he was doing that....she said SHE was sorry!!! I'm telling you, she is one in a million. She didn't want me to think that he was like that all the time....she says that he is still doing his work great and following directions better. This all coming from the woman that was just abused by my son! It's hard to stay encouraged when I don't see progress and see these horrible fits coming back. He hasn't acted like this since before he started school. Please just pray that we would find answers to help him and that his behavior would improve. And that he would sleep better....that may be the cause of all of this, I don't know. Autistic children don't tend to sleep very well, and while Andrew hasn't really had too much trouble in this area before, he seems to now.

Thankfully he's not like this all the time, he still has moments of adorableness. In the picture above he is doing his fish face, which cracks me and Jay up. I wish you could see it in person...it's so funny.

Andrew's Eating!!!!

Unfortunately it's not food he's eating. He's been having VERY fitfull sleep the last few days and Jay and I have been wondering what in the world is going on with him. Well, as Jay changed a poopy diaper last night, we found the answer. *WARNING The following may gross some of you out.* Jay called me into Andrew's room and said, "you have to look at his poop", so I looked and discovered an ear plug in his poop!!! There is no possible way this just fell in his diaper. No friends, he really put this in his mouth and then swallowed it. He still won't eat most real food, but apparently ear plugs are pretty tasty. (He also tried a leaf a couple of weeks ago, but spit it out...I guess they're not as good as ear plugs.) We are so thankful that ear plugs are mushy and it was able to pass through his little body. I'm still a little worried it might have done some damage, but I guess we would know if he was in pain. We are also thankful that we had a great night's sleep again last night. This let's me know that this was indeed the cause for his unrest. I think we're going to start laying real food miscellaneously around the house to see if it might try it.

Visitors

As you might remember from a previous post, Alyson came and stayed with us for a few days a couple of weeks ago. Here a some pictures of her and Andrew:



The day after Christmas we got to have some more visitors! Perry & Kendall came all the way from Tennessee to go to a youth conference with us. It was great having them around and the conference was great also! (I took two pictures of the boys together and I thought this one captured their personalities better).

Christmas party at school

The Wednesday before school let out for Christmas break, Andrew's class had a Christmas party. If you've never been to a party with 6 autistic children, well, let's just hope you never have to. There was too much sugar and too much stimulation, but overall Andrew did ok. Here he is on the swing they use for sensory therapy:

These next two are of him actually sitting down!! Let me just say, it was short lived.


And this is his teacher Ms. Becky. I wish I had a million dollars to give her....she deserves it.

Andrew goes back to school tomorrow and we're praying that he adjusts back ok. As you can imagine, we've been far from any kind of routine or structure so Ms. Becky may be in for it.

Christmas

Since I have been such a slacker in blogging, these posts are kinda going to be lumped together. I'll start with Christmas.

Andrew & Alyson on Christmas day at Mamaw's.

Andrew and Mommy at Mamaw's.

This isn't actually on Christmas, but I thought it was cute.

This microphone was in Andrew's stocking from Santa. He also got a fish tank from Santa, but he wouldn't move his head when I was trying to take the picture, so I never got a good picture of it. But he loves it!! He really loves feeding them.

This is Andrew holding his transformer, which he opened first and really didn't care about anything else he got.