One Month

Yesterday was a very hard day. I've been dreading the day for a while, especially as the end of the month was here and I knew that 1 month mark would be coming up. I had an appointment with the Autism Center Coordinator that morning, 9am. Thankfully she came to our place to see where we live and to meet Dawson. I woke up and was ok, just thinking about the meeting. It went well, she's excited to start working with him. They'll have everything set up and ready to start in a couple weeks.

We got some errands run. Target was our biggest stop. It's connected to the mall, and Dawson loves walking around the mall for fun. We got to the food court and Dawson wanted a cup of cinnamon bites. We did that often when we went to the mall, Dawson and Tyler would share a cup, they both really loved them. I gave Dawson money and he paid the lady for the cup. We went and sat down and he burst into tears and didn't want any. I asked him if he's sad and he said no. I gave him a big hug and instead of pulling away like he usually does, he totally leaned on me and started sobbing even harder. After a few minutes he was better and decided to share the cup with me.

Then we got to the ramp. Our mall isn't level, so there's a ramp and 4 steps on each side of the mall loop where the level changes a bit. He used to run down the ramp, go up the stairs and back down the ramp with Tyler. They had so much fun. He went down, back up and down again. I told him it was time to go and he got fussy. He finally did cooperate, but after walking a tiny bit he had another emotional meltdown. So we stopped and cuddled for a bit before moving on. He really followed me well, it's amazing to think back at where we were a year ago. We got around the loop and back to Target to do some Christmas shopping. He wanted to walk, but was already starting to fight me on some things. His behaviors were escalating so I put him in the cart for a while. Thankfully the things I needed were easy to find, so I hurried through my shopping and managed to get out of there in decent time, but not before dealing with 2 more meltdowns. He fell asleep on the way home and then wanted to cuddle me for quite a while when we got home. He seemed ok the rest of the night. He never wanted to talk about things any of the times he was having problems or even afterward.

Today (Saturday) I left him home with Daddy and just took Gabriel shopping. We went to 2 stores and he did great. I got some things and and got out of there when the stores started to get busy. I got home and Dawson was in a great mood. We set up our Christmas Tree this evening and Dawson was excited about that. It was sad for me, I found handprint ornaments from the school for 2010 from both the boys. Tyler's handprint is so little, but it hadn't really even gotten much bigger over the next year. Dawson has school project ornaments and all Tyler has is his first Christmas ornament and the handprint ornament, which is just a paper plate, but it's cute. Those 2 1/2 years felt like a long time in many ways, but things like this make me realize how short it really was.

Dan and I went rollerskating tonight. It was nice getting out and getting some exercise. Dawson loves seeing my friend's daughter. We were practically shoved out the door tonight. He said "bye mommy daddy!" and closed the door as we were walking out and even locked it. They had a lot of fun. We got home and Dawson was all smiles. He came over for a hug and said "happy!". He never admits when he's sad, but he sometimes tells me when he's really happy. :)