Our interesting life

My life has taken a few turns over the last week. Last Friday I went to a terribly heart-breaking funeral, and it made me sink into a little patch of the blues. I didn't have much time to wallow in sadness as Marcus started kindergarten on Monday.

 My little mannikins did beautifully. He was playing with other children, not just next to them, and we were all confident that soon I wouldn't have to attend kinder along with him.

Wednesday was even better. I went home 15 minutes after I arrived, and left him there with his aide. It was unbelievable. I thought my week couldn't get any better.

Thursday Marcus went off to my parents, as he always does on Thursdays, and had a fairly lazy time, as you can see.

Friday went terribly. Marcus was hyper-crazy as soon as he woke up and didn't improve at all. The moment we pulled into the kindergarten carpark he started crying. It took a few minutes to coax him into the classroom and then Claire (Marcus' aide) and I spent the next hour trying to calm him down, which was almost impossible at times. Eventually he ran off to the water table and I bolted for it.

It looks like it's going to take a while for Marcus to settle down there and I can be patient. Knitting is something I do because I have almost no patience, and hate just waiting. Knitting is something I can do while I'm in a queue, or watching a movie at home, or just when I need to turn my brain off. I needed it quite badly on Friday as it was an anniversary of sorts.

Last year, on Valentines Day, Marcus was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Two weeks later we found out that he is severely autistic. The first part wasn't a total surprise to us (although for a while there denial was my default position) but the second was, as I didn't think he could be that bad. I was also genuinely shocked by the amount of governmental support you receive in Australia when raising an autistic child. Holy heckmonkeys, it's an eye opener. I'm also quite glad that no-one has been stupid enough to suggest that vaccination led to this because an assault charge would be in my future.

It's been a hard year. There's been a lot of crying, buckets in fact. We've been so very fortunate to have such amazing support from our family and friends, and every idea and suggestion and offer of help is deeply appreciated and usually needed! Marcus spent most of last year in speech therapy, which has helped a lot, and this year is gonna be a doozy with speech therapy, occupational therapy, more respite care (thank you Knox City Council!) and Felix and I undertaking ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) training to help Marcus, and Dot too. Turns out she's also on the spectrum, but slightly less seriously than her brother. Mind you, this still has her pretty high up on the spectrum, which is a whole 'nother can of worms. I think this year will go a lot better than last year, and next year will be better and so on. It can be difficult but we'll cope. It's what we do.

But the one thing we never forget is this: our little boy is perfect. Just the way he is, and anyone who says otherwise is just plain wrong.