The Easter Bunny Hunt---A Story In Pictures

The quest begins.

 Those of you who have read this blog much mostly know we don't give Janey chocolate, because when we do, especially after noon, she doesn't sleep.  At all.  Whether it makes sense or not, it happens, and it's why I don't discount anyone's food issues or theories.  It doesn't seem like just a little chocolate could have that big an effect, but still, it does.  However, we make one exception.  There is nothing on earth Janey likes more than a chocolate bunny.  She often asks for them at random times, like the middle of the night in the middle of the summer.  So, for Easter, she gets a bunny.  We usually get it on Easter day, not to have it around the house ahead of times for her to find and eat at the wrong time.

Empty Rite-Aid bunny rack!

We set out this morning to get her the bunny.  The first place we went was the Rite-Aid.  It's where we get prescriptions, so we are there a lot.  The pharmacist said a big hi to Janey, and she smiled at him.  But...no bunnies!  The Easter area was completely empty of any chocolate rabbits.

Picking out salami

So we moved on, to the grocery store.  Janey and Tony often shop there together.  We picked up a few other things we need before we looked for bunnies.  High on the list, as always, was salami, Janey's hands-down favorite food.  Janey picked out some with Tony in the main salami area, and then ran off to a nearby auxiliary salami area to get another kind she wanted.  After we'd loaded up on salami, we got a few other things, and saw a worker who is always so sweet to Janey, and told her Happy Easter.  She has a grandson with autism, and it's always fun to have her talk to us.

Auxiliary Salami Area

Finally, we went to look for bunnies at the grocery store, but again, no bunnies at all!  It was like there was some huge run on bunnies!   Janey saw some Easter cakes that looked interesting near the cashier, but we resisted them.

No bunnies at the grocery store either!

Some interesting cakes

Salami choosing

 We went to the quickest line, and missed going to the line of a cashier who is yet another Janey fan, but we waved to her, and Janey gave her a smile.  Out by the car, Janey picked which salami to first try. 

We continued our quest at the Walgreens, and there, finally, we hit pay dirt.  We found bunnies!  Janey picked out the one she wanted---not the biggest one, but a smaller sweet little guy.  The cashier there didn't know Janey, but was so sweet to her, talking while realizing she probably wasn't getting a response.  She asked Janey to give her a high five, and Janey did.

The whole quest made me happy.  In our little part of Boston, where Tony has lived all his life, where Janey has lived since birth, we feel included.  Janey is part of the community.  She is valued and treated with kindness and respect.  What more could we ask?  Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate it, Happy Passover to those who celebrate it, and Happy Day to everyone!

Finally, bunnies!

Bunny time!

Janey is Thirteen

Janey is officially a teenager.  Her birthday was on Wednesday.

Janey blowing out candles

I've been having a bit of a hard time with this birthday.  The day itself went well.  It went well mostly because we didn't really do anything for it.  That was a conscious decision.  Janey's birthdays have a checkered past.  She doesn't like things to be different.  She hates wrapped presents.  She is unpredictable with gatherings---once in a while, she is okay with them, but more often, gathering around and singing and candles and so on upset her.  My wonderful friend Maryellen, who was present at Janey's birth, made her a cake and had us over last weekend and we had candles and a sing then, so I let that be the cake of the day.  On the actual birthday, we had no cake, no presents, no ceremonies, and I think Janey enjoyed her birthday more than she has almost any other year.

Janey on her birthday morning

Some of you might know that Janey's birthday is also her older brother Freddy's birthday.  Janey was born on his 7th birthday.  That gave the day a weird distinction.  From 6 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, I had no teenager in the house, in the middle of an otherwise unbroken 17 year stretch with one.  Freddy prefers very little birthday ritual too, so his 20th birthday, shared with his sister, was also low-key.  The one ritual we did enjoy, though, is a family dance to the unofficial official birthday song of their shared birthday, "Birthday" by the Beatles, the only song I know that talks about a shared birthday.  We all danced to it, and I have to admit I was crying during much of the dance, a poignant kind of crying.

Janey and her brother Freddy

The way we passed the birthday reflects two sides of my feelings about Janey turning 13.  On one hand, I feel like we've somehow passed some kind of barrier.  We know Janey.  It's taken a long time to really know her, but I think we do now.  We knew what she would like on her day.  She liked having lots of bacon made by Daddy, a trip to McDonalds to get Freddy a birthday breakfast and Janey hash browns, another trip to McDonalds right at 10:30, the minute they started serving lunch
, to get her nuggets and fries, lots of videos, lots of snuggling, lots of music and car rides.  We know Janey well enough now to be able to give her the kind of day she loves, without trying to make it the kind of day I picture a girl's 13th birthday being.

However, the day to me also felt strangely like some kind of deadline.  I wasn't anticipating feeling this, but I did.  I think of myself at 13.  That was the year I entered high school.  I can picture myself very clearly that year, and although of course there were many life happenings far ahead of me still then, in a very real way I haven't changed.  I was me---the me I still am.  And Janey is Janey, the Janey she is now and will be.  And the birthday reflected that Janey.  She might or might not have understood it was her birthday.  She did not have friends over---she has no friends.  She didn't long for some special teenager present, like a phone.  It is not in her realm of knowledge to even know she could want something like that.  She didn't sign up for Facebook, as I remember Maryellen's daughter Julia eagerly doing on her 13th birthday.  She doesn't know what Facebook is.  I picture her life as a line that at junctures like this birthday takes a different route than most life lines.  It is, in a computer word Freddy has taught me, a hard fork, one that is never coming back to the main line.

When I think back on this birthday, I hope what I remember is all of us dancing to the Beatles, laughing and clapping and singing in a way that no only includes Janey, but celebrates her.  And my wish for her is a life full of moments like that, shining moments in her own personal life story.

Birthday ups and downs

Janey is nine today.  Most other years, on her birthday I wrote sort of a summing up of how she was doing.  Today, though, I thought I'd write more about her birthday itself, as a way to share the ups and downs of special days with a child with autism.

The last few days, I've been talking a lot to Janey about her birthday, trying to get her prepared.  I knew they were having a party for her at summer school, as it was her last day there and her birthday, and I wanted her to get used to the idea.  I sang her the birthday song quite a bit, which she sometimes has a hard time with, as do very many kids on the spectrum.  I think with Janey, part of it is that the song is often sung off-key, and that upsets her a lot.  But it's also a time when all attention is focused on her, and that can be too hard, too.

I decided I wanted Janey's birthday to be as low-key as possible, and wanted to do things she would enjoy all day.  The time while she was at school, I planned to focus on her brother, who shares her birthday.  He turned 16 today, and I always want to make sure his birthday is special as well as Janey's.  As their needs are obviously very different, it can make for some tough decisions.

Janey started the day in a mood.  She didn't like the clothes I tried to put on her, and threw a tantrum and screamed.  I decided what clothes she wore was less important than her having a calm day, so I let her choose her clothes herself, and she made a pretty nice choice, and was happy by the time we left for school...  While she was at school, the rest of us went to the mall, and got Freddy his present, a couple pairs of sneakers.  I managed also to get a few presents for Janey, at a nice store at the mall called Marbles, the Brain Store.  I went there because I'd read they have a lot of toys that work well for autistic kids, and they did---most for higher functioning kids, but I got Janey a very cool circle of wooden balls of various colors, which is sort of a big fidget toy, and also a wooden robot that can be folded up into a square.  No pieces to lose with either, they look nice and they are something she can play around with.  I felt very happy to find them.

Then we went to pick up Janey, and it seemed she had a great day.  They really did it up for her!  Here's a picture...

 of Janey with her teacher and one of her paraprofessionals.  They gave her cake, pizza, a balloon, a bag of presents---she is a lucky girl!   She left the school happily, walking along with Freddy, her birthday twin.

Then we went to a friend's house.  She wanted to give a present to Janey and Freddy.  That was probably the high point of Janey's day, as she loved the present, a giant pillow (thanks, Christine!!).  She was happy there, but we just stayed a short time as we were headed to the store for cake.

Janey was good at the store and picked out her own cake, and we headed home for a little family party with just us and Janey's uncle.  That is when things started to go downhill.  I guess Janey had had enough birthday.  I think she was tired, and just wanted cake without all the ceremony.  We did the candles and sang, and I tried to get a picture of Janey as we sang.  I have always vowed not to take pictures of Janey as she cries, but this time, it just happened.  I have been trying to decide whether to put this picture on here, and decided I would.  I've always tried to be honest when writing, and Janey's screaming and sadness are a huge part of her life.  It would seem kind of untrue to her to only post happy or neutral pictures.  So here's Janey, very sad about the birthday song and candles...

Janey actually cheered up a good deal in just a minute after that, when it was finally time to have the cake.  She likes blowing out candles, and she did her best, with Freddy helping too, as they shared a cake for the first time ever!  (I got a second cake for Freddy to have at a party with his friends later this weekend)

After the cake, Janey had had it.  We were upstairs at my brother-in-laws for the cake, so I took her downstairs.  She screamed and cried for quite a while.  Finally I thought to say to her "Your birthday is all over now!" which is not what you'd think the birthday girl would want to hear, but she looked hugely relieved!

It's so hard to know how to handle occasions like birthdays with Janey.  I wonder sometimes if it were just Janey's birthday, and not Freddy's too, if I would choose to almost not celebrate it, or keep it so low key as to almost not be detectable.  But somehow that doesn't seem like the right thing to do.  I want Janey to have memories of a cake, of presents (I gave her the presents just a little bit ago, unwrapped as she prefers, and she looked them over, but wasn't quite ready to be interested in them)  She certainly loved the pillow, and the cards she got, and she seemed to like the party at school.  Maybe overall she didn't cry much more than a lot of days lately, but it felt like more because I had been wanting so much to make it just a happy day for her.  But that is often impossible.  I guess I just can do what I always try to do---do the best I can and hope for the best.  

Happy Birthday, my sweet nine year old girl!  

Calming Down

Just now, Janey did something she's hardly ever been able to do---calmed herself down (with a little help).  She had just been at the grocery store with Tony, and had seen a cake she wanted.  Tony didn't mind getting it, but in the bustle, forgot to.  At home, Janey asked for the cake, and of course there was no cake.  She had been in a wonderful mood all day, but fell apart at the cake news---I guess she really had quite a craving.  She screamed and cried and looked to be in sadness/hysteria mode.  I went over to her, put my hands on her shoulders and asked her to take a deep breath, and said if she could calm down and ask nicely, Tony would go back and get the cake (he believes very heavily on following through on promises to kids, and he had told her at the store she could have it).  Janey took a minute, looked at me, and said in a controlled voice  "Do you want to get a cake?", her usual means of asking for things.  We gave her a big hug, got on her shoes, and they are now off to get the cake.

It made me realize there is progress.  It's slow, it's back and forth, it's inconsistent, but it's progress.  Her getting upset is no longer always the sure sentence to hours of hell it used to be.  It often still is, but not always.  It's a combination---we are figuring her out and she is figuring us and herself out.  And we'll have some cake to celebrate.