Spring is in the Air: Early March

Spring is in the air! I am so glad! It has been a really long winter. Having two little ones stuck in the house for so long has been getting on my nerves. Hannah came in yesterday and told me, “Mommy, spring is coming.” I think I trust her more than the groundhog.

Here in Missouri we went from high twenties last week to high sixties this week. Nice weather makes it so much easier to keep a child with autism entertained! Zion loves to go outside. He loves to go to the park, and if I give him enough exercise and stimulation it really makes a difference in his attitude. He doesn’t get as frustrated with other activities and he eats a lot better the rest of the day. He just seems a lot happier.

We are trying to get Zion ready for our new baby. I show him baby pictures and tell him that there is a baby in my tummy. He now points to it and says baby, but I can tell that it just isn’t clicking. He probably is thinking the other word for tummy is baby. How am I exactly supposed to get a child that has limited understanding ready for a new addition?

We are also trying to potty train Zion. He will be four years old this summer, and it would be so great if we could only have one child in diapers. He hates to be dirty, and will bring me the soiled diaper and say “yucky”. He looks at the inside of the diaper like it is a surprise. I am not sure if he knows that the contents come from him. We put him on the potty seat and he sits there so well and wipes and loves to flush, but nothing has ever come out. If I could just get him to pee or poop once in the toilet that I think he would love the praise so much, he would do it again.
Oh, well. If anyone has any ideas let me know.

Also, Autism Speaks and Cure Autism NOW have completely merged, “uniting the nation's two leading autism advocacy organizations and their cutting-edge programs for research, treatment, and family services”. (CAN website) The new name for the Walk for Autism Research will be Walk for Autism. We are already starting to plan for it. The planning meeting is next Monday night, so I am excited to take more of a role in helping. Zion’s Tribe raised over two thousand dollars last year for autism research. That money helps fund research like the Autism Genome Project. They just released a study last week about how they are researching the genetic link to autism. Here is a summary of the research article.

http://autismspeaks.com/press/agp_results.php

It is a really interesting article, especially since the CDC just updated the rate of autism in children. It has changed from 1/166 to 1/150. It makes me cry every time I hear that more children are dealing with this disease. We must do everything we can to find the cause and possibly the cure to this problem.