Picnic at the park on Saturday

John climbs an ancient silo at the park. The park is on the site of an old farm, and a few things, like this stone silo, have been preserved.

As we ate our picnic dinner, we saw a grandaddy long legs walking across the sidewalk. Carolyn remembered when John was 3, he called a "Grandaddy Long Legs" a "Grand Old Spider".

She told the kids this. John got a huge grin on his face.

The kids are always fascinated to hear stories of when they were "babies".

Somewhere in the shambles we have little post-it notes, scraps of paper with cute quotes from the kids over the ages. This is likely all that is to come of those dreams of writing a book.

John's Status

No timeouts today in school. One verbal warning. Much better than last Friday with a record 6 (or was it 7) timeouts.

He seems better than last week.

Father-Son Ride

"Can we go for a motorcycle ride, Dad?" he asks.

"Sure," I reply. It doesn't take any persuading to get me out on the bike.

Sunday morning, skipping out on church. Singing hymns while riding past church parking lots packed full of cars. Rolling on the throttle and zooming past. Twisting through the hills, twists and switchbacks, the tree-lined streets of the Fall Creek area.

"Do you like twisty roads?" I ask.
"I ... don't know yet," he replies.
"Fair enough," I shrug.

"Do you like going fast?" I ask.
"I like going as fast as we possibly possibly can," he replies.
"Okay," I reply. Rolling on the throttle and pushing toward the redline. Rapid acceleration is the desired sensation. It matters more than top speed. It doesn't matter to him that I travel the speed limit; it matters that we reach the speed limit in under 3 seconds.

"Are you doing okay back there?" I ask.
"I am doing good," he replies.

"Slug-bug blue!" he yells, pointing at a passing VW Beetle.

"Are you getting hungry," I ask.
"Kinda," he replies.
"Would you like to stop for something to eat?"
"Yes," he replies.
"Would you like to eat our picnic lunch or just a snack," I ask.
"Just a snack," he replies.

Stop at a park, eat our snack. Explore. Find a baseball in the outfield. Play catch.

"Good throw!"
"Thanks, Dad."

Lots of time spent exploring, tossing a ball, exploring some more.

"Ready to go?"
"Yeah"

"Okay, let's gear up," I say. "Do you need help with your helmet?"
"No, I can do it myself," he replies.

Then, after a moment, "Is this right?"
"No, here, look at my fingers when I do it ... see?"

"Okay," he tries again, "How's this?"
"Good job!"
"Thanks, Dad."

Austism Speaks

Autism Everyday

The link above is the site for viewing "Autism Everyday" that was on Good Morning America last month.

We identified with pretty much every quote out of every mom's mouth.

A Blog For Us

A blog for us. It's time. Blogging is easier than maintaining a website. It's a time thing. We'll try it out and see if it works. If it works, there'll be more frequent updates than what you're currently seeing.

What's a blog? Blog is short for Web Log. Just a special type of website that people use to log their thoughts on the web.