Settling Into Summer

Ben has begun work with his new therapists, and has continued to ride on a roller coaster of emotions during the day. Yesterday was not one of his better ones. I had about had it by the end of it. After tormenting his new therapist for three hours, he seemed reasonably stable, so I had the bright idea to swing by the library so that Katherine and Caroline could sign up for the reading program. The idea was a sound one, as we have taken many trips to the library before this and been okay. Although we did get the girls signed up, we had to make a quick exit when Ben decided that he was NOT waiting for the girls to pick out any actual books. We did hurriedly get a few, and I could feel the entire staff of the library breath a collective sigh of relief when we finally left. Ben even got signed up for the book program too, and so far, with a total of two books having been read to him yesterday (Green Eggs And Ham and The Spooky Old Tree if you want to know), is winning the reading program contest. I am crossing the proverbial fingers that he will stay upbeat and happy today. I'll be heading off to NYC this weekend with the girls and leaving Ben alone home with dad. We'll see how it goes.

Dear Ben,

I've forgotten how fun you are when I just sit down and play with you. You were crying this afternoon, on the last day of school, after I had taken you and Katherine and Caroline to Wendy's. I thought Oh no, it's already begun. Crabbiness rooted in boredom, and your crankiness makes me cranky very quickly. Poor girls. It's not their fault they have a crank for a mom and a crank for a brother. But I made a decision and brought you up to your bedroom and blasted some of your favorite music from your boombox, and I let you decide what we'd do. The only rule was we had to stay in your bedroom. At first you cried harder and didn't want to do anything but escape. I just lay on your floor. Finally, you sat on top of me. After that, you calmed down and let me play a couple of things with you. We laid on your bed and went pretend "ni-ni". We took turns putting blocks on top of one another and I showed you how to knock them all down. You dumped out all your elephant links, but you decided you didn't want to play with them so we put them all away. We just hung out together. And before we knew it, it was 4 o'clock. Time for your therapists. Your mood was much better by then, and so was mine. Perhaps we are too much alike. You are my baby boy and I love you. P. S. It was so cool when you said "mama" today when I was helping you change your clothes. Could you do that again sometime? Love, Mom

Busch Gardens is Ben's Personal Hell . . .

and we forced him to go back. If you want a refresher of how Ben did the last time we took him and the girls down there, just look up June 2006 here in the archives. I think Ben had finally recovered from the last time and here we go, dragging him there again. I mean, come on, isn't 3 years enough time? It was Free-Military day a couple of weekends ago, so we made an overnight trip, much to the delight of Katherine and Caroline, who btw, thoroughly enjoyed themselves even if their brother didn't. It one of the very few advantages to having a disabled child that most theme parks seems to be very accomodating towards our family once the situation is explained at their guest relations area, and we can bypass most lines using the handicap accessible entrances. We didn't push Ben on any scary rides this time, but took turns watching him while we rode with the girls, and in some cases, by ourselves. He balked at the Grover themed roller coaster in the Sesame Street kids area and almost tore the hair off of Rob's legs during the ride, so we thought better of it and only made him go in the River Ride (once!) and the sky ride (purely for transportation purposes, I swear) . He more or less forgave us and mellowed out as the day went on, obediently using the public potties when asked, and enjoying the German Ooom-paa band that played for us while we ate dinner. All in all, this trip wasn't quite trumatic experience that the last one was, and he's still riding his bus to school without fearand isn't suddenly afraid of baths or haircuts. Still, he's now terrified of riding his little green bike again (sorry therapists!) and was quite wary of the pool yesterday, but warmed up to it after a few minutes. I think we hit a happy medium.