Manic Monday

  What an amazingly emotional Monday. Today was our yearly evaluation with a panel made of specialist and teachers and autism experts that all know and love my boy. Same as last year at this exact time. I am scared to go back and read what I wrote about it honestly. I probably wont right now because I am reveling in all the glorious milestones Aidan had checked off his list at this meeting. The path from last year to here has been completely heart wrenching and filled to the brim with struggle. With all of those seemingly impossible hair greying stretches of insanity, watching him just be, not improve, not regress, but time standing still. There have been massive miracles. I am happy to say we finally have communicative speech at a level worth documenting with certainty of at least some permanence. Longest time period without regression. Real attempts at sharing and also showing patience and restraint. So many things to list because the pages and pages we all read over together as a group was just overwhelming.

 I cried like a tiny baby. Lump in my throat with both relief and pride through all of it. I wanted to scoop the boy up and cover him with thankful kisses every time his teacher moved on to another area of honest to goodness improvement. Each goal we made together as a team seemed actually achievable this time where as I remember feeling like "who knows" or "wouldn't that be nice" when we put pen to paper about it last year. I didn't have that same secretly pessimistic thinking I was being realistic and not allowing myself to get my hopes up sort of feelings this time. This is real. He is really doing it. And he is officially moving up the food chain into a larger ratio in the fall. Again, more crying. What I thought was a dark cloud called Kindergarten is really only a year away in the planning world. Again, more crying.

 I must have been a crying mess because I tried very hard not to wipe away tears with my hands. Mainly due to the newly discovered fact that habanero peppers will adhere a terrible terrible amount of searing capsaicin into your skin. Deeming my own hands weapons. I made peach pepper jam this morning like an idle handed idiot. So basically I added to my own tears. I digress as usual but the jam turned out amazeballs in case you were wondering.

 This meeting was one of the more important ones for me selfishly because this is the first one we walked away from overjoyed and smiling. As hard as this stuff is to live, it is epicly rewarding to hear the pride all of these women feel for my son and his accomplishments having also put in so much hard work and love into his needs. We basically all hugged and high fived.


 So raise your wine glass tonight and keep thinking happy thoughts for us. The good vibes seem to be helping fight the bad.