birthday boys

 herschel turned 4 on february 4th and reagan turned 14 on march 16th! 

just a quick recap, i made an ugly cake for herschel. he was quick to let me know it was a thumbs down. i have to agree. thumbs down for effort but thumbs up for effort. the bottom was a brownie layer and the top was cake with a buttercream frosting all over. the next day when it was all falling apart and had sat in the fridge all night, it tasted perfect. secrets revealed, everything tastes better the next day. except spaghetti noodles. just toss the old ones and make a fresh batch.

 i told hersch that we would plan an actual friends party, but time got away from me so we had one little friend over for dinner on sunday and he was appeased with that friend party.

 customary breakfast present opening.

herschel is really into transformers right now so he got a bunch of those. it only took me a solid weekend to master changing them back and forth from trucks and cars into "wobots". the best day came a few weeks later when herschel himself learned how to transform those tricky little rascals. 4th child learns his fine motor skills through daily survival of older siblings and despite old, tired, borderline educationally neglectful parents. hersch also received a tyrannosaurus rex backpack. since a t-rex's arms are pretty much useless, it's apropos that this little bag is pretty useless too as it will only accommodate three or four hot wheels cars.  

loving a 4 year old is like running in the wind. happy 4 year old and the wind is at your back and you're loving life. grumpy 4 year old is like running into the wind and that's the only way home. you can do it, but pretty soon everyone is crying. those are my deep thoughts of the day.

 on hersch's actual day of birth, i took all the kids to the park after school and we ate chik-fil-a. the wind was at my back. 

for reagan's birthday more than a month later, we had a "sunday dinner party" at reagan's request. he was very specific about menu and guests and the date. not on the actual day or even the same week. he made sure to invite families that had kids that athena blythe and hersch and scarlett could hang out with too. thoughtfulness is not something i expected from this teenager.

he wanted a chocolate mickey mouse cake. i made the vanilla for funsies and then a bunch of blondies. the blondies were the big hit. next time i'll just make tray and trays of those. i spent all day saturday getting ready which included making 5 pans of baked ziti and all the meatballs that costco had in stock. i must love reagan because i am still tired just thinking about it. 

i'm always humbled by all the people who show up to support reagan. final count was 35 people. most were wearing green.

and then a lone clemson fan came just to taunt me. but you can't affect me like that. i am titanium. alabama is down but not out. 

still not able to grow grass this year either thanks for the copious amounts of rain washing our backyard away.

 costco had alllllll sizes of adidas three stripe pants in stock this week so everyone now has a pair. we wore them in honor of reagan. he's right. let's just wear comfortable things! reagan's tie and sweats combo just proclaims, "it's a party but i also plan on eating cake".

just in case this is as good as it gets, expect this same picture in december with the caption:

 merry christmas from the simpsons!

tuesdays with reagan

 i had a dental hygienist ask me once what "reagan's special autism trick is". it was a rude and stereotyping question and yet she wasn't trying to be insensitive. she was working with what she knew from pop culture. there's no such thing as people with autism all possessing impressive parlor trick. some people blessed with autism have incredible and unusual capabilities, but like the rest of us, most special people are rather ordinary. reagan does have an affinity for routines and schedules. i've almost become immune to a lot of his idiosyncrasies that keep him feeling regulated and balanced. i feel that his autism allows him to tap into something that a lot of us dismiss because of busy schedules or our innate flexibility. being a creature of habit can be very comforting when we are overwhelmed with our lives. i have to say to myself often when i'm angry or feel overly emotional, "what has changed in my life or what did i miss doing today that helps me feel regulated?" oftentimes it's as simple making my bed and checking that box. my brain can continue in a productive path once a few self soothing habits have been completed. taking and nap, eating something when i'm hungry are high on my list. reading scriptures not only has spiritual benefits but taking time to sit quietly and read removes me from too much chaos from a very loud world. i am able to reset and better self-regulate. reagan's rigidity can often be frustrating to deal with but it's also amazing to watch a body take care of itself in the best way it knows how. 

one reaganism that happens every day of the week is when he opens shop each morning. reagan gets up without fail at 6am(or before and we both pretend he's not) and turns on his signage and turns around the three framed photos on his shelving unit. then, right at bedtime, reagan closes up shop and turns off his sign and turns his frames around to face the wall again. closed for the night. the pictures in the frames look a bit random but he scoured the blog a few years ago and decided that these were his favorite family photos. 1. when reagan "sold" ants and acorn pancakes by the side of the road. 2. a very non-posed journalistic style photo of the whole family getting ready to go into target for back to school shopping. 3. dad holding herschel on his blessing day. the fourth photo he loves is on top of his dresser. it's terribly blurry and it's of our whole family when herschel had just come home from the hospital. we are at pinewood derby and it might be the worst picture of us ever. 

reagan also religiously checks the weather report each morning(or more often if there's rain in the forecast to check for lightning bolts or signs of improvement). this ensures for him that he will be able to go outside to the backyard the minute he gets home from school so that he can stim and hop around and sing songs and decompress to his heart's delight. 

reagan also announces every day at 3:56 that it is 3:56 by shouting, "my old number!" 356 was his car ride pass number for 2 years in elementary school. 

if you ever got a bad not in school or a speeding ticket, he wants to talk about it often and with details so he can understand how these clearly preventable things happen.

all of the remote controls in the house are checked throughout the day to ensure battery viability and to make sure they have been placed in the very precise proper position so that they never get lost. reagan likes to have at least one full jumbo box of AA batteries on hand at all times so that nothing interrupts his television routine. otherwise, i hear numerous times throughout the day, "are you going to the store to get more batteries!?"

reagan is just recently warming to the concept of staying up past bedtime as a fun tradition on weekends. otherwise it is 8pm sharp and he will put himself to bed. he still requires me to sing to him every night and it is a delight. i hope i get to sing to my 40 year old son each night someday.

reagan is known for wearing his three stripe adidas pants nearly every day of the week. he even has a certain color pair that needs to be worn on certain days. he plans all week to make sure that on thursday he is wearing an electric blue with green stripe pair and on friday he is wearing a black pair. and not just any black pair. he prefers a ratty, old heavyweight pair. he's moved up to men's sizes and he does not like the weight of the men's size pant. it has taken a bit of coaxing to convince him to add them to the rotation. the new navy blue pair has required even more coaxing and i still can only get him to wear them on saturdays, despite the fact they are his nicest pair. 

this brings us to jeans tuesdays.

inexplicably, reagan has deemed jeans appropriate wear for tuesdays. i'm not sure the origination of jeans tuesdays, but somewhere along the way, jeans must have been required for a school event on a tuesday or this is simply his way of silently protesting  wearing jeans casual fridays. nothing disrupts wearing black pants on fridays. 

jeans tuesday has become a special day for reagan. he has an extra particular plan about how he spends his tuesdays. this is a picture of him in his only pair of jeans, blocking access to the chocolate milk:

access to chocolate milk on tuesdays is a big deal because if you check reagan's planner, 

(that's how reagan writes on the fly. clearly, all that extra practice is paying off. sarcasm we're so proud.)

tuesdays he has specifically scheduled his quiet time. quiet time is when i take the three other kids to scarlett's drama class in the next town over and we are gone for a considerable amount of time because of distance and rush hour traffic. reagan stays home and he drinks copious amounts of chocolate milk and watches a disney pixar movie that he has seen 546380942520T5482 times. he's always very concerned about the chocolate milk levels because he knows i only buy chocolate milk once a week and it has to be properly rationed to ensure supreme quiet time enjoyment.

we also have hamburgers and hot dogs and french fries at 430pm on tuesdays so that we can get to scarlett's class on time. that's more due to my schedule requests but reagan has no complaints. he loves hot dogs and i love easy meals on busy days. 

every day i wonder how i can take this love for scheduling and help reagan apply it in a real world job. i just don't know. but if you want to know the exact day of the week your birthday is on or what day christmas was on in 2012 and what presents reagan got that no one else could possibly recall or conversations we had over dinner that night, he's your guy. there has to be a profession that requires that skill.