La La Laaaaa

More and more, The Princess is mimicking things we do.  More and more, those things include sounds.  More and more, I'm absolutely gobsmacked by the progress she's making and overwhelmingly grateful that I am here to witness it.

About a week ago, I sat in my computer chair with an extremely engaged little person on my lap, smiling and staring into my eyes with an intensity I never would have thought possible if you'd have asked me three years ago.  The twinkle in her little peepers said Come on, Momma.  Let's play.  

I said, "Puh, puh, puh."

She said, "Puh, puh, puh."

I said, "Tuh, tuh, tuh."

She said, "Tuh, tuh, tuh."

These are two sounds she's been mimicking for a while now.  She was still all engaged and twinkly, so I got brave and tried a new one that's never worked before.

I said, "La, la, la."

She snapped her little mouth shut and looked at me - I mean really looked.  She reached out and touched my lips, stuck her tongue out and I could almost see the gears turning in her head.  She moved her little hand on my mouth, very effectively asking me to say it again.

Me: "La, la, la, la, la."

Her: A determined look slapped on her pretty little face, she stuck her tongue out between her teeth and said - perfectly, on the first try - "La, la, laaaaa."

Loved to Hate It

Every week since she turned three, The Princess has brought home a potty chart in her backpack.  This evil little scrap of paper loves to mock all of our efforts, and I love to hate it.

I suppose I should really say, "I loved to hate it."

Why, you may ask?  See for yourself.

That's right.  A perfect record.  It only took two and a half years at school, and - damn it - it was worth every single second of the wait.

Potty Training, Picture Day and the Death of a Dishwasher

Buckle up, folks...this post is gonna be a rambler.  ;)

Since we talked last week, a lot has happened.  We've continued our daily trips to the local state parks, and The Princess continues to love it.

Don't believe me?  Here's your proof:

Go ahead...just try to tell me that's not a happy kid.

She is still a major fan of the stroller rides, and I'm so unbelievably proud of her.  Are you sitting down?  No?  Grab a seat.  I'll wait.

Not only is our girl rockin' the big girl panties every day, but she's decided to take things up a notch.  She now stops what she is doing, gets up, runs to her potty, goes, pulls up her drawers, removes the pee bucket from the pink froggy, and attempts to empty it into the toilet herself.  Without being prompted.  I mean, like, all by herself.

I know.  I almost plotzed the first time it happened.  And the second.  And the third.  I think I'm finally starting to get used to it.

Just shy of five and a half years of wearing diapers every single day...and it was so totally worth the wait.  Sure, it took years of grueling potty training, but when this girl gets something, she gets it.  There are no words for the pride I feel.

***

Thursday was Fall Picture Day at school.  I have a hard time saying that without a snarky little whine creeping into my voice.  Autism + Picture Day = Hell On Wheels for everyone involved.  At least, that's been my experience over the last couple of years.

Unbelievably, this year seems to have been different.  I'll have to reserve my final judgment for after we hear back from her teachers, but it doesn't seem to have thrown her at all.

Five minutes before our alarm was set to go off on Thursday morning, The Princess woke up and started singing.  As we walked into our room, I noticed that her hair looked amazing.  Yes, my girl, the one whose bedhead is epic and can last for days, woke up with not one single hair out of place.

We cruised through our morning routine with no hiccups, The Princess cooperating every step of the way.  She even chose her own outfit for her school picture.

After putting her on the bus with her backpack and an in-case-of-emergency change of pants, The Hubbs and I returned to work.

No phone calls.  No emails.  No panicked correspondence of any kind.  For Picture Day, it was eerily silent.

And then her bus arrived at the end of our driveway.  She greeted us with a smile and a song, still wearing the outfit she had chosen that morning and giving no indication that anything remotely out of the ordinary had happened.

We were warned in advance that this year's pictures would be taken in the gym, and that this can often be unbearable for at least some of the kids in the autism program.  No kidding.  We live with one.  Big, cavernous space + lots of antsy kids + waiting in line and being expected to do specific things = the mother of all meltdowns just waiting to happen.

But there was nothing.  She was happy.  No notes from teachers, aides, therapists.  No worried calls from school nurses.

Nothing at all.

I can't wait to see this picture, y'all.

***

And in totally non-Princess-related news, we've been fighting with our dishwasher for some time now.  We received it as a hand-me-down about six years ago. and I couldn't have been more thankful.  There was no way we could have afforded one at the time, and, hey...it was free. 

Over the last five or so years, I've torn that machine apart more times than I can count.  My momma didn't raise me to be a needy little girly-girl, so I dive head-first into repairs in my own home the way she always has with hers.  Probably a month and a half to two months ago, the dishwasher started acting up again, and I just didn't feel like I had time to check it out.  Fast-forward to September, and The Hubbs and I were just totally O-V-E-R the idea of hand-washing everything.  All meals in our little yellow house are made from scratch, and we do a lot of crock-potting and baking. 

Something needed to be done.

I ripped apart the dishwasher yet again, pulled diagnostic codes from its onboard computer, flipped it on its back, removed and tested all of the electrical components and came to a decision.  The capacitor and pressure switch alone would cost over $100 (plus shipping), and I didn't even know if that would fix the problem or not.  My first attempt - replacing the heating element - didn't do it, so my usually sunny outlook was gaining more than a little cloud cover.  With so many things testing in the bad-to-dead range, I was afraid there was a short somewhere in the machine.

Never one to give up, I called every store in the area that carries dishwashers.  I found one for $224 - brand new - and borrowed Momma's truck.  A few hours later, our new dishwasher was running the first load of dishes, and it does a great job.  In fact, I'm listening to it now.

And, can I just say that I'm feelin' pretty good about myself here?  I'm no helpless girly-girl, for sure, but this is the first time I've done this type of project from start to finish completely on my own.  Between the mechanical, electrical and plumbing aspects of the job, this has inflated my ego just a smidge.

***

All in all, I'd say it was a good week in our little yellow house.  But I can seriously do without any additional appliance weirdness for a while.  Here's hopin' the next week is on the quiet side, and we can have lots of uninterrupted family time.

The Princess and the Pee: Part Two

Whatever you do, don't read this out loud.  She'll hear you, and the spell could be broken.  I hesitate to even type it.

Remember when I told you about how long The Princess has been using diapers of some kind?

And then when I got all excited about our recent potty training efforts and the leaps and bounds our girl has made?

For the last solid week, The Princess has been prancing around her world sans training pants.  Did you hear that?  We're only using Pull-Ups at bedtime now.

She's using the potty consistently, and there's a glint in her eye that says she gets it.  She's proud. 

She even holds it when we're out for a walk at the state park.  For two hours. 

On Saturday, she had her first pit toilet experience (You know, the ones that are like glorified outhouses?  The ones that blow cold air up your butt and look like a 41-lb skinny minny of a thing could fall right in and never make it out?  Mm-hmm.  One of those.). 

She'd been riding in her stroller over some really rough terrain for a couple of miles.  We're talking straight up and down, bumpy stuff...yeah, that's right, we took her all-terrain stroller on the most difficult part of the trails.  And it was awesome.  I can still feel it in my shoulders.

We came up to a potty house, and The Hubbs and I could tell it was going to be pit toilets by the look of it.  The Princess, however, hadn't experienced these things before.  As I ran with her to the potty, she was getting visibly more excited by the moment.  Her bottom was dry, and she was getting antsy.

I opened the door, she took one look around and tried to bolt.  Fortunately, I caught her and was able to explain the situation.  She very cautiously walked around the toilet on all sides, casting suspicious glances into its fragrant depths before looking up at me with one last plea.

"I can tell you have to go potty, Princess," I told her.  "It's either this or have an accident in your pants, because it's going to be a while yet before we get back to the big building where we started."

She thought about this for only a moment before dropping her pants and hoisting her little bottom up onto the tall pot.  The look on her face as the cold air hit her bottom was priceless.

It took a few seconds, but she went.  And went.  And went.

Grinning from ear to ear, she hopped off the pot and pulled up her panties and pants.  She then proceeded to do laps around the toilet in an effort to figure out how to flush.  I did my best to explain that this kind of toilet doesn't have a flusher, and she listened intently.

Finally, she decided that closing the lid would have to do.  Leaving the little outhouse, we skipped back to her daddy, hand in hand, to complete our hike.

If my pride isn't evident through my words, maybe hers will be in this picture.

I am so unbelievably proud of this little girl, and I am once again in awe of how much the little things impact our lives every single day.

After nearly five and a half years of diapers and three to four years of potty training, we've arrived.  I can't imagine any other victory that could be this sweet.

The Princess and the Pee

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named The Princess.  She was super-sweet and unbelievably adorable, and she was diagnosed with autism at a very young age.

By the age of five, she was nonverbal and still wearing Pull-Ups.  Her momma and da knew it would be hard, but they were beginning to burn out on this whole potty training business after starting it when The Princess was about two years old.

And then one day, something clicked.  Momma put a pair of panties on under The Princess's Pull-Up, and she finally started to get it.  She still had accidents, but not nearly as many as before, and she seemed to be getting better and better as time went on.

This made her momma and da very happy.

Kindergarten started - The Princess's third year in school, if you can believe it - and she kept improving.  The Fabulous Mrs. G. didn't send home any wet pants or notes regarding misbehavior in the first two weeks.  In fact, the only note that she did send said that The Princess had taken herself to the bathroom twice during the school day, without any modeling, prompting or coaching from any of the staff members in the room.

Things were looking up.

Then, twice in one week, The Princess pooped in her little pink froggy potty.

And everyone lived happily ever after.  The end.

Who's Counting?

5 years, 3 months, 27 days: this is the current running count of how long we've been using diapers of some sort in this house.

1: this is the number of children in this house.

10: this is about the average number of diaper-type contraptions she's gone through on a daily basis for the last 5 years, 3 months, 27 days.

Some days, it gets so frustrating I could just scream.  There are those days when it seems like every time I turn around, she's wet.  No matter how many times she sits on her pink froggy potty (with this cute little face that mocks me relentlessly), she just can't seem to make it happen.

And then there are other days.  It's like a switch; we're going to have a good day or a bad day.  There is no in between.  Typically, the stellar days are followed immediately by the rip-your-hair-out fests that leave us all exhausted by dinner time.

We have a budget for Pull-Ups, which we routinely break, but somehow I just can't bring myself to raise that number.

44: the number of generic potty training pants in a package that should last us two weeks in between paychecks.

13: the number of generic potty training pants remaining after less than one full week.

These were the numbers running through my head as The Hubbs and I discussed where the extra "dipe money" was going to come from last week (for those of you who are interested, we raided our gas fund).

Something has got to give.  The Fabulous Mrs. G insisted at the end of last school year that our girl had no need for Pull-Ups at school anymore.  We didn't understand how.  Home has always been different somehow.  Home is the land of regression and slipping effortlessly into old habits.

We've tried everything at one point or another.  Everything. 

Somehow, it seems like we consistently try things too early, and if we have the presence of mind to revisit them at a later date, we're nearly always pleasantly surprised.

And that's the phase I'm in right now: pleasantly surprised.

4: the number of days our girl has been wearing panties (under her generic potty pants)

3: the average number of soiled panties/dipes per day since we started this time

3: the number of dry nights in a row, including last night

I'm aware of the fact that these things ebb and flow (pardon the pun), and that I just need to roll with it.  I'm aware of the fact that The Princess is not any of the other kids I know who were potty-trained at lightning speed during any part of almost four years we've been working on this skill in our little yellow house.  I'm aware of the possibility that typing this all out loud could very well invite a hair-pulling bad day back in where things have been going so well.

I'm aware of all these things, but I just had to share this with you.  Why?  Because I really think you'll understand.  Because, even though things are going well, sometimes it's easy to dwell on the negative. 

Because, without sitting down and putting this into words, I wouldn't be able to see the biggest number clearly.

5 years, 3 months, 27 days: this is the running count of how long I've been a momma, the running count of time since my world changed forever.  This is the running count of my new life, of time elapsed at the most important and fulfilling job I'll ever have.

But who's counting?

Proud

Family picture: Easter 2012

The Princess absolutely loves Nana and Grampy's hill.

Don't believe what I said above?  Here's more proof.  :)

You should have seen her, y'all.  My girl, the one who would scarcely make more than a second's eye contact a mere eighteen months ago, flaunted her advancing social skills all over the place on Sunday.

She ran and played with her cousin.

She ran and played with her daddy.

She ran and played with me.

She approached her great aunt and numerous other grown-up family members without prompting, made eye contact, and engaged them in interactions too numerous to count.

She showered us all in smiles and giggles.  The audio from one of the video clips just kills me.  She cackles, sings and squeaks.  She and her cousin scream together in glee as they fly down the hill with Auntie G.

Sure, she spent a good amount of time in her quiet room, but - dammit - The Princess gets better and better at being around our huge, rowdy family every time we get together.

I can't begin to tell you how proud I am of her.