We come to you tonight live from Adam's bathtime! I'm sitting on the closed toilet, and Adam's in the bathtub right now, being a goofball, doing his repetitive stimming on the very popular LUNA carpet commercial tagline, saying it over and over again. 773, 202 [doo doo doo doo] ... Luuuunahhh!
He's stopped for the moment now mimicking some scenes from an Arthur learning CD where there must've been a spelling bee: "pee i c t u r e." He's also doing the oral stimming again, bringing water into his mouth from the bath and letting it run out of his mouth. I noticed specifically that he didn't do any of that last night, so maybe the B12 makes him stimmier the night of the injection? Who knows. This oral stimming with water drives us batty at bathtime and in the pool...but part of dealing with this junk is picking your battles and trying to not let every little anomaly and non-productive thing they do drive you apesh*t.
The Adam's Dad mystery of last night has an explanation. Dad says he went out to dinner with someone for their birthday, and he said something else quick that implied a "she" was involved. And when asked directly, he claims to still be sober. He stayed home from work today which lent additional suspicion, but he claims he didn't feel like going, has more vacation than he knows what to do with, and is resting up for inventory here soon, where they keep him around for 12 hours or so. I asked him directly if he was bullshittin me and he said he wasn't, so, I'll take that as a better than half chance that it's all as he stated. I'm not aware that he's lied to me before, and has been if nothing else, pretty honest with me about his problems and where he's at. I didn't press for why he didn't respond to my phone message, because that too could have two explanations. He's never been a reliable responder to phone messages. End of day: who knows. He did appear sober and fine when he dropped Adam off, and for that, I'm thankful.
When Adam got home here tonight, he went into the toy room and was playing with the 3 year old's train setup appropriately. That was good to see... he and our son are really about at that same level functionally in a lot of ways. Any time Adam's playing with toys appropriately and it's not something that makes noises, has lights, or is attached to a CPU, I'll take it.
The wife had a pretty good "crazy busdriver" story from this morning. The busdriver, who's WAY more erratic than the god-send woman of last year, and who we know is coming because she's speeding through the neighborhood up to the turnaround yelled at the wife this morning. Adam got on the bus, and the bus driver motioned for my wife to come out. The woman says "You have to keep him home--he's sneezing!"
"He doesn't have a fever, he doesn't act sick--what do you want me to do?"
Crazy erratic woman, we come to learn just got over pneumonia, so we probably had more to fear from her than she had of a special needs kid who's allergic to everything. This also explains why we had a cavalcade of bizarre sub bus drivers the past few days. Nothing like a sub bus driver assigned to the special needs short bus.
Bat-sh*t crazy bus drivers aside, this got us thinking "why IS Adam stuffy in the morning--it's not a high allergen time of year?" Then it dawns on us that that nice puffy new coat his uncle bought him... yup, sure enough, goose down. Doh. This burned us once before when I unwittingly made his bed once and mistakenly put the down comforter (to which he's allergic) on his bed, and puzzled for two nights over his sudden onset stuffiness at bed time. Duh.
Okay, he's ready to come out of the bath. "Adam, open the drain." He struggles a few times. "Up and left" I remind him. He gets it. "Put away the toys." After about 5 seconds (that's how long it seems to take for him to register a response), he starts doing it, and it slowly putting them all away. This is pretty good, actually--better than average. He puts all of them away, and steps out. Starts to nearly shiver.
I throw the towel over his head and he says "I'm cold." I tell him to rub his head to dry it. He doesn't do this well, so I put his hands on top of the towel, and help his hands make this motion. Then I tell him to dry his chest which he does, then his arms, then his hum (his 2nd language's word for his crotch), his butt, and his legs which he now can do okay with me pantomiming to him to give him a visual.
Now, we stand on the 3 year old's stool and he asks me for the hair dryer. I fire it up on high fan, medium heat and hand it to him. We've been working up to that. He has it for about a minute and then tries to give it back. "Turn it off, Adam." He does it.
"Go to your bedroom, get some underwear." He makes a detour en route to the 3 year old's room, I redirect him pushing him toward his room/closet. "Underwear" I say pointing to his closet. "On the floor, in the basket." He's unfocussed, I finally point his head toward the goal and he takes a pair. He thumbs through the shirts to pick one but I give him the one he wore last night. I come out to the hall to type some more. He sits up on the bed, puts his underwear on (hey, he got em on the right way tonight...hrmm... this he seems to be doing better with this finally!), and puts on his shirt (which he's done very reliably now for several months) and his sweat pants. He asks for his light to be turned on, I keep typing... and... hey how bout that, he's figured out how to turn it on with that rolling thumb wheel switch that's in line with the cord. Score for fine motor skills.
"Adam, go brush your teeth."
Right now, he's in front of the mirror in the bathroom. I'm trying to take a hands off approach here and just tell him what to do. He lathered up his hands with soap, and he's looking at himself in the mirror, making exaggerated faces and making Capital One noises and being silly. Now after prodding, he's turned on the water to rinse his hands. For about a minute now. "What's in YOUR wallet?" he asks me.
"Turn off the water, goofy." He does.
"900 dollars a month! No hassle payments. 900 dollars a month!" he says, looking at himself talk in the mirror, thoroughly pleased with his own performance. I'm having an idea that maybe he access to someone's YouTube connected laptop at Grandma's tonight? Toothbrush now moving around his mouth, and he's biting it pretty hard--must feel good.
"Adam, is there toothpaste on that toothbrush in your mouth?" He rolls the soap dispenser around looking at it down on counter level, toothbrush now hanging out of his mouth.
"Did you put toothpaste on the toothbrush?"
"Yeah"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes I am sure," says Adam.
Wow, score one for Adam. Usually you get a contradictory "No I am sure" or "Yes, I am not sure." I had to take over the toothbrushing--he hadn't put any toothpaste on that brush. Rinse, and done. Wipes his mouth on the handtowel, and runs it up to his nose too (ick, but ... ). And off to bed.
He wanders out of his room into the 3 year old's room again looking through his toybox. I get up from the hall, turn the lights off in the 3 year old's room to make him lose interest, and redirect him to his room. He crawls into bed. He's smiling and verbalizing more random commercial stuff to himself. He crawls under the sheet and I kiss his right cheek good night (Uncle remembers just a year or so ago before we took over when that then-poorly-kept mouth of teeth smelled like morning breath on steroids because no one was willing to fight him to get them thoroughly brushed every day--old habits die hard), tell him to have a good night, and he had that big goofy grin like he often has when he's in a good moon. "Good night Adam." "Good night Uncle Tah."
He's quiet... and breathing sounds clear. Ahhhhh.
Goodnight.
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