He sure told me

Burgers and mashed potatoes for dinner, one of his favorites. A little too favorite on this night.

"Please stop putting the potatoes on your back."

A look of pure pity and disdain. Gosh, mom, how can you be so dumb? "This is not the future of fashion!" Jeez, woman, what are you thinking?

Clearly, I am not smart enough to realize that potatoes are not clothing, but merely a natural skin cream. Silly me.


P.S. Gus's cycling success motivated his sister to jump on the bandwagon. We are now a training-wheel-free zone! Yippee!

How Amazing is This Boy?

Tonight, Gus was a little amped up, so I told him we'd go out for a little bike ride after dinner, which we almost never do. On a whim, I told him to try out his sister's old bike - the one without the training wheels. Three tries, and I swear he was riding, all on his own! He's a natural! I'm amazed and so very proud! He's got me beat by two years - I didn't ride a two-wheeler until I was nine.

Once he got the hang of riding the little bike, I took the trainers off his bike and went riding around the block. He's still got to get the hang of starting off, but that'll come quickly, I'm sure.

This is the site where I got the 'instructions' for teaching a kid to ride, which I learned about from a discussion at AutismVox.

On our way home, Gus took a bad spill. He forgot to turn and went over the curb and landed in some grass. He was completely fine - he's got amazing reflexes when it comes to falling - but the bike handlebars somehow twisted all the way forward. So when my husband and I - brilliant as we are - tried to fix them...

It's a very simple concept: lefty-loosey; righty-tighty. Someone forgot to mention that you have to be facing the thing you're trying to loosen to the lefty, not the top, because then you're turning righty and the nut is becoming tighty. It only took us an hour to figure out why it was getting harder to turn the nut despite the blasts of WD40. Good thing our kids are smarter than us.

So Gus's bike is all fixed and ready to go! Yay, Gus!!

Good People

It occurs to me now and then that while there have been a number of people - children and adults - who have been less than kind to Gus, there have been so many who have been really wonderful. We're very fortunate to live among some great neighbors.

Yesterday at the beach, one woman was there with her daughter and two nephews. Gus and MM had played with the little girl once before - they're all Pokemon enthusiasts. The nephews were much older, but played with the kids and were so patient with Gus, I actually went and chatted with the woman to tell her what nice boys they were. Then there's the family down the street with the two teens and two little ones. The older ones are really amazing with all the smaller kids in the neighborhood, but I don't think they know how much it means that they show Gus such patience and never exclude him from games.

We're surrounded by parents of children who show their kids by example that Gus is not "weird" as he's been called (not too long ago), but just different and totally acceptable.

They may not all understand the intricacies of autism or Asperger's (only one person does, actually) but our neighbors are good people. We're lucky to have found them.