Here are all the pictures that I have been neglecting to post. (Scroll down for the last few posts.) Some from this summer, some from Halloween, and a few from last weekend. A couple I have no idea how they got up there, except that all the pictures go up in code for some reason and I can never tell what I am loading. Harvey is loving kindergarten. He is obsessed with knowing the names of every single person who comes into his classroom, and their mothers name and their fathers name. These are the first three questions he asks everyone he meets. His teacher, Mrs. Smith, is expecting a baby, and Harvey is going crazy because the baby does not have a name yet. Every day he comes home and tells me "Mrs. Smith baby not named yet Mom, not yet, not yet." If I ask him how his day went, he tells me "I a good boy. I get my penny. And I play with my friends, like friends Sammy and Bella." He tells me all about how he sits by his friend Darius at lunch, and he plays cars with his friend Clayton. He talks about the sixth-grader named Quinton who comes in to his class every friday to read him stories. He thinks Quinton is the coolest kid ever. Yesterday he told me all about how it was Kole's birthday, and he got a blue Buzz Lightyear cupcake with a prize on top. Every Friday I go have lunch with him, and every Friday he makes cookies with his class. Jed's semsester is going to be over in seven days, and I cannot wait. I am counting down the minutes. Because some of the classes that he needed this semester were only offered during the daytime, he has been having to leave work to go to class 5 days a week, but thankfully it is almost over. I stayed up until 1 AM on the opening day of registration to get him signed up for the early-bird classes next semester, so we won't have to do that again. Grey is also loving preschool. He goes on Wednesdays and Fridays, from noon to 3. He is obsessed with Humpty dumpty. He makes me draw faces on hard boiled eggs so he can play humpty dumpty every afternoon. Everytime anyone laughs he asks them what they are laughing at, because he is afraid they are laughing at him. If he does something cute and Jed and I laugh, we have to tell him that we're laughing at each other, or he'll start crying.

Kindergarten has started. More on that an other adventures coming soon.
In the meantime, there is this:

Me: How was school today?
Harvey: Mrs. Smith had the hiccups.

There are a lot of things that stink about Autism. I say that, and I don't even have the disorder. I can't imagine how much harder life would be if I was autistic myself.

One of the main things that stinks is how other people perceive autism. You would not believe the things I have heard, the things that people say to me, directly, to my face, occasionally even in front of my sweet son. People say that autism isn't real, that autism is over-diagnosed, that I shouldn't label him, that he's perfectly average and I'm a hypochondriac, that he can't possibly have autism because he doesn't flap his hands, that he has autism because I immunized him, or because he was adopted, or because my kids were born too close together, or because he eats gluten, or because he's allergic to potassium and stomach acid. (Stomach acid?) Those are the ones I have heard personally. Maybe there is truth to some of them. But probably not. I have discovered that I could waste his entire childhood away, chasing down other people's theories about why my son is the way he is.

Or, I can just enjoy him. I can laugh at all his charming idiosyncrasies and coach him through the tougher ones.

There is another group of people, though, who don't say stupid things about autism. The people at Harvey's school this year have changed our lives. They have cleaned up messes on my son that I wouldn't even want to clean up myself. They have voluntarily babysat 36 autistic children plus siblings on more than one occasion, so that us parents could have a date night.They have listened to my problems. They have scheduled his doctors appointments and administered his medicine and fed him applesauce. Those are not small things. They have helped my son without trying to fix my son. And they understand that there's a difference.

My parents have loved Harvey so much. mom helps me get him to doctors appointments, she taught him how to say "Drink. Please. Grandma." Now she's teaching him to read. My grandparents and siblings and my sister-in-law Lindsay have tended when I needed a break. They have taken the time to look Harvey in the eye and figure out all the things that make him tick and those efforts mean a lot to me.

This year, Harvey had a classmate who's father is a member of an up-and-coming local band called Neon Trees. The band agreed to do a benefit concert for the school, and a lot of people put in a lot of probably-unpaid time to make it happen. Timpview High School hosted the concert in their auditorium free of charge. My favorite religious band, The Lower Lights, volunteered to open. News and radio shows promoted the concert. Fifteen hundred people showed up.

There was seating reserved together for the children and their families. While we waited for the concert to start, we visited with the other parents. Mainly we chatted about life with autism, since that was the thing that had brought us all together. As I was talking to them, I felt a deep gratitude for the experiences that had brought me to that auditorium and the company of those parents. I think they must be among the most dedicated and remarkable parents I have ever met.

As the auditorium filled up I started to get a sense of how many people had come to help these kids. Probably most of them were there for the band, but not a single soul complained when the students crashed the stage. That evening gave my faith in humanity a solid boost. When I saw the sweat bead up on the lead-singers forehead, it warmed the cockles of my heart to know that that sweat was benefiting my kid, and thirty-five other children like him.

I won't pretend to have Autism-parenting figured out. I struggle to find the balance between seven-daily-hours of early intervention and letting my son have a childhood. Sometimes the line between normal kid behavior and autistic tendency is blurred.I have given up on trying to control the situation. I am flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants and scared out of my mind. Maybe, fifteen years from now, this whole autism thing will turn out okay, and maybe it won't. Even if it doesn't, even if everything comes up worst-case-scenario, all of the big and little sacrifices that these people made will have made an immeasurable difference in my sons life and my own.

Things.

Whew. I haven't written a real blog post in months, and I'm still not even sure I have anything important to say. *** In some respects, I feel like our lives are creeping by so slowly that progress is almost indiscernable. This house, for example. I am so ready for a change. I was ready for a change five years ago, after we brought Harvey home. I wanted everything to be new, to have a fresh start. Without all the baggage of his adoption reflected back at us in the faces of people at church, or the tough memories associated with these rooms. Back then, we put an offer on a house that I adored. Needless to say, things fell through, and even though in retrospection it is definitely good things didn't work out (it was an expensive house, and we were buying right before the market crashed) I am s.t.i.l.l. waiting for my change of scene. It's getting under my skin now more than it used to, probably because with Jed in school I know that it is going to be another two years at least. *** My writing. I hate to think about how much of myself I have dedicated to this pursuit. Years. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to throw in the towel. I don't believe it's a worthless wasted effort. When I look back at everything I've written, I can see how much I've improved. Things I wrote two years ago are embarassing to me now. Which, perhaps, is part of the problem. I hate for anybody to see what I've written, because I can't help but think about how much I am going to hate it a year from now. The sum of all my fears is, essentially, this: I cannot write a book that is more mature, more graceful, or more insightful than I am. Right? When I am fifty, and I have a wealth of life experience to draw from,everything I wrote today will still exist. What idiot would want these writings to be public? The minute you publish a book, you, as a writer, have a label that is going to follow you for the rest of your career. This is a huge mental barrier for me. Unreasonable, maybe. But it is what it is. Do you know how many query letters I have sent in the history of my writing? Three. Zero three. All on the same project. *** In regard to the kids, time is zipping by fast. Much, much too fast. Harvey is turning five this month. His head comes up above my elbows now. We have made an IEP for Kindergarten next year. He is starting to read. *** My baby is almost three and a half. For whatever reason, just thinking about Grey being three gets my old clock ticking. I am 29 this month. By all appearances, Nielson baby #3 is in no rush. This is weighing on my heart, perhaps because I had two new nephews born last night. Two. Not twins. (The twins were born three months ago) These two were from seperate Mama's. Being infertile in the world's most prolific family is un-fun. Un. Fun. When Jed is finished with school, when we have better understand of Harvey's autism, then maybe we can start thinking about home studies and adoption profiles again, but right now I just don't think I can muster the required emotional stamina. For now, it is enough that I have these two beautiful little boys. Not a single day goes past that I forget the miracles that brought and kept them here. If I go to my grave a mother of two, these boys are enough. We are so happy. We love them so much. *** Jed's school is the only aspect of our lives ticking along at a reasonable pace. He finished the spring semester with (another) 4.0 (Yes, bragging. I am so proud I can't help it) and is taking a huge math class this summer. Next semester it will be time to think about transferring. *** Business has been booming. Last semester was the busiest five months of Jeds admittedly-not-very-long-life-thus-far. Even though Jed's work is unpredictable, and there is no such thing as a paid vacation, I love his job. I love that he is always in the garage, just in case anyone needs stitches. I love that he comes inside for lunch with the boys every afternoon. I love that I never have to worry about him getting laid off and being unemployed for long periods of time. I know he's not going to stay young and strong forever, but I will sure be sad watching him get up every morning and head off to a nine-to-five. I will miss the week-long breaks between jobs. They give me much-needed time to put my life together. And when I say life, I mean laundry. He has one such break this week, but it sounds like he has picked up another kitchen early next week, and hopefully he will stay busy after that until our annual back-to-school lull.