Two Years Old

From two to three, we came a long way. When he was two, we had no idea there was anything wrong, and when he was three, he was already diagnosed and through early intervention. Big year!

I'd say in this year he really started having trouble staying asleep. I look back on his blog and can see so many days where he didn't nap, nights where he fell asleep early but woke up and was babbling away in his room. He was so engaged, though, we had no suspicions that he had autism. After we brought Maria home, he used to look at her all the time, lick her head (okay that is kind of weird), etc. He used to get very upset if she cried and we went to get her - he wanted no one to touch her! Now with Veronica, he literally never looks at her. Is that regression? I don't think so, I think he was always autistic, but still, I can see how people have that experience.

He started looking at things upside down and peripherally sometime around 2.5. I thought it was weird, I thought his sleeping badly was weird, I thought his love of small spaces was weird, but I never thought it meant he had autism. He was never off in his own world, like I thought of kids with autism being.

He started First Steps in February of 2008. When they came to do the evaluation, and I swear this is true, he started walking on his toes. I remember I thought he was reaching for something! Those women that came must have thought we were idiots. He took occupational therapy, developmental therapy, and speech therapy for a while and then we cut out speech therapy and doubled up on occupational therapy. He still wasn't talking but we found out more about his sensory issues, which was that he had a LOT of them. We got him a trampoline, a bean bag chair, all sorts of things for him to play with.

I started hearing him up in the night when I was downstairs nursing Maria. At the same time, this movie was on HBO in pretty heavy rotation and I watched it in the night, nursing the baby, and I would cry and cry because I thought that the kids in it sort of sounded like Anthony. There is one child in it who is profoundly affected by autism and they show a video of him in his room, naked and pacing and stimming and he sounded like an animal and also like Anthony. I feel like I accepted that Anthony had autism during those nights in the chair with Maria, nursing and crying and nursing and crying. It really does feel like a loss and I think it's important to deal with it that way. You of course still have your baby, but it is a different way than you thought it was going to be.

I think it can be especially hard when it's your first, although of course we don't know any other way. It's just - you have so many hopes and dreams for your child and it's hard when those dreams are dashed, so slowly and over so much time. It is easy to get lulled into the idea that your child's life is over, just because his life as you knew it or dreamed it is over. The fact is, Anthony can be anything, it doesn't have to define him, that he has autism. We have no idea what the future holds for Anthony, just the same as every other damned parent in the world. So we act like every other parent - we try and set him up with the best resources possible, so he can do the best that he can with what he's been given. I do believe that now, but man. I guess I didn't back in the spring of 2008.