Itsy Bitsy Spider

Toddlers just don’t get Day Light Savings time; I think most parents will agree to this.  Before day light savings everything in the sleeping department for Jackson has been fairly consistent with bedtime around 8:00 PM wake up between 5:30 – 6:00 AM.  Around 30 minutes after Jackson takes his medicine, he will walk himself to his bedroom. He has also been staying in his bed overnight a few weeks.  Luckily Day Light Savings didn’t screw that up, however Jackson still an hour behind and. He starts getting sleepy at 6:00 PM, by 6:30 PM he is nodding off without his medicine.  We have been trying to wait as long as possible to give him his medicine and we are barely making it to 7:00 PM.  The earlier Jackson goes to bed, the earlier he rises.  So for the past two weeks he is getting up at 4:45 AM.  High fives all around… NOT!

     

Jackson was getting super crabby over the fact we would not let him go to bed a few days ago.  He was getting so frustrated with us he started to bang his head, so we decided not to push him further. He was sitting on the stairs between my legs as we gave him his apple sauce with medicine.  Sara went to walk away when she spotted a creepy crawly spider in the entry way.  “Eeekkk!” she shouted “Get it, get it….”  In our house it is my designated job to be the bug killer, only this time I couldn’t take care of it because Jackson laying on me and I was keeping him from banging his head on the steps.

“You got shoes on, step on it” I answered.  So Sara stepped on the spider, but when she lifted up her foot, the spider started to run away.  Those darn New Balance shoes have too many grooves and are not the best at killing creepy crawly things. 

“Eeekkkk!” Sara shouted and then she stomped and annihilated the spider.  Jackson looked up at Sara with a huge grin on his face.  When Sara lifted up her shoe, the spider was gone.  “Eeekkk!  Eeekkk! Eekkk!” Sara shouted again while she was shaking her foot faster than Michael Flaherty from Lord of the Dance.  It was about this point where Jackson and I started hysterically laughing.  “It’s not funny, get it off…Eeekkk!  Get it off!”  Then Sara starts swatting at the thin air.  She is still Lord of the Dancing across the play room.  

“Eekkk!”  Finally what was left of the spider flew off the bottom of her shoe onto the entry way floor.  She then kicked the welcome mat at the multiple body parts that were laying there.  I think it was a burial service, maybe even closure for Sara.  Jackson and I are still laughing hysterically. Sara tells us “It’s not funny”, but that just makes us laugh harder.  I am seriously laughing so hard that tears are rolling down my face.

After Jackson and I are able to slow down the hysterical laughing, I tell Sara, "That shit was YouTube funny" and we head up the stairs to go get PJ’s on. I opened the gate at the top of the stars and as Jackson stepped up into the living room he said, “Eekk! Eekk!” and continued to laugh.  I was so proud of him, not necessarily for making fun of Sara (well I will admit I got a kick out of it), but for imitating Sara.  Jackson has worked very hard in his therapy sessions on imitating motions.  This time Jackson imitated the sounds Sara made, not the Michael Flaherty routine that went with it.

Bubbaahs

There are some evenings that I get to have Jackson all to myself. I find them very rewarding because I don’t get to experience some of his accomplishments without Sara telling me and then having Jackson show me.  Sometime I am lucky and I discover something that he hasn’t already done or something that I got to teach him.  Tuesday night turned out to be night where he showed me something he has been doing that I didn’t know about and I also learned later that I taught him something.  Sara was out of the house because she had rehearsals for her show “The Big, Fat LGBT Everything You Need To Know Show of Shows”.  

Jackson and I finished dinner and played a game of chase up and down the hall way.  Then I needed to call Sara to find out when he last took his cough medicine. While on the phone with her I wasn’t able to get Jackson to the potty in time, so we had a poopy diaper.  It was bath night anyway, so straight from the changing table to the tub we went.  It was also a great positive reinforcer to get that diaper changed, “First diaper Jackson, then splish splash”.  Jackson had so much fun in the bathtub and I was drenched by the time he was done.  He really loves splashing and putting his face in the water.  After bath time I gave Jackson his cough medicine and Seroquel.  Then we went down to his play area for the rest of the evening.

We played a few games of match the flash cards, but Jackson wanted to do something different. He kept going over to his shelf and showing me a sign that I wasn’t familiar with.  I thought he was trying to tell me to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.  He promptly told me no by shaking his head.  He does that a lot these days, we are working on yes.  He kept doing the sign and he was getting frustrated and then he said, “Buubbaahs”.  I still didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, but there were bubbles on top of his shelf.  “Did you say bubbles Jackson?”  Jackson responding with jumping up ond down and shouting, “Eeennnwww!” Duh Na-na.  Jackson has these awesome bubbles that we bought at Gymboree, probably one of the only affordable items in that store. They are called Bubble Ooodles and they do exactly what the name says they make ooodles of bubbles.   The bubbles are also stronger than your normal cheep ones and they don’t pop easy.  So as millions of bubbles fill Jackson’s play area, he is running around very excited and laughing.  He would run towards me, tug on my shirt, and run away. I thought maybe he was trying to tell me he wanted to blow the bubbles.  So I got down on my knees and tried to show him how.  He would run up to me and run away. I showed him the wand and he looked at it from every angle possible, I mean he studied that thing in great detail.  I showed him how to hold it up to his mouth and blow.  He ran away, but came back. I tried again, this time he put his mouth on it, laughed, and ran away.  I kept giving him directions and showing him how to blow them and each time he would run away laughing.  Then he stopped, I held the wand in front of his face, he put his mouth on it, and blew.  Jackson made ooodles of bubbles.   I was so excited, I cheered, I clapped, I pretty much did everything besides giving him a parade.  This of course made him run away laughing, but he came back and did it twice.  We played bubbles for about 10 more minutes and it was time for bed.

I was so proud of Jackson and naturally I wrote about it on the Fragile X Facebook brag page.  While I was sharing this experience Sara came home from her rehearsals.  She was surprised to see me still awake.  I was still so excited.  I asked her if Jackson had ever blown bubbles before and she said no.  So then I got really excited to tell her how he went over to his shelf, used a sign I had never seen, then used the word “Buubbaahs”, and how he played when I blew the bubbles for him.  The best part was watching her face light up when I told her that he blew his own bubbles.  Although she might argue, for her the best part was when Jackson and Sara were home together the next day, he did the same thing for her.