Mr. Go Home

We are on vacation this week. The opportunity arose unexpectedly and thankfully, we were able to pull together friends and family to help take care of Stella and the chickens. 

Isaac has become increasingly attached to our home and his daily routine. He is a creature of habit and also pays close attention to detail. In his mind, everything has an order in which it should be completed and every group of toys has an order in which they all stand, and if, say, Walter, is not aware of this order, things get ugly. We encourage him to be flexible and talk him through many situations while stressing that, for example, if his toy on his high chair tray is moved out of its very important spot, life will go on. We try to be respectful of the order he has in his head while still easing him into flexibility. A couple of his therapists have asked if he has been diagnosed with OCD--he has not, and though many children with 9pminus do have OCD, we are hesitant to think of his habits at this point as anything other than his nature or related to his challenge with sensory processing disorder. We'll see how things play out over the next few years. 

We became aware of his attachment to our home, when his verbal capacity increased about six weeks ago to the point that he was able to say, "go home". Since then, if we are away from our house for too long, he does not tire of repeating, "go home" until we finally, go home. Knowing this, we were a little concerned about how he would respond to being away from our home for several days. He has done quite well, but we've heard the phrase, go home about three hundred times since we got to the lake house. We lovingly call him, Mr. Go Home.  

First sunflower to bloom

Our front garden space looks a bit like a jungle, but I like it that way. I'll never have a perfectly manicured lawn because that just isn't me. 

Doesn't he look so darn happy? This is quite a refreshing change from what is mood used to be.

Isaac is really interested in superheroes. He walks around saying, "Me a Hum". Somewhere along the way we discovered that his word for Superhero is, Hum (pronounced with a very guttural 'h'). We have no idea why, or how he came up with this, but we go with it and are glad we at least know what he is talking about.

Our superhero after a bath. Baths = torture for this superhero.

There is no doubt in my mind that Isaac will be extremely happy to arrive back at home, but for now, we are enjoying family time at a lake house on Lake Keuka in New York. Oddly enough, this is where I began my blog three years ago. At the time, we were in the midst of Isaac's hours and hours of relentless screaming, and we were also in the throes of determining what was ahead in regards to his craniosynostosis. I remember one night on that trip, when my dad strapped Isaac to his front in the Beco, and walked with him until he fell asleep. On Sunday, as we watched Isaac walk around the yard of the lake house, Walter said, "what a difference three years makes for this little man." Indeed, time, has made all the difference.