I'LL HAVE A SLICE WITH PEPPERONI, MUSHROOMS AND SOME ASPERGER'S

It's been another interesting week on the autism spectrum.  Monday was Family/President's Day so this week's been short, which is nice.  Again the ride can be best described as being on a roller coaster.  On Wednesday, I was reading a post from Lizbeth at  http://four-sea-stars.blogspot.com/ in which she talked about how her kids have all been sick, off and on for months.  So of course, I jinxed myself by commenting on how Jacob hasn't been sick in a long time.  Then on Thursday morning, Jacob woke up and ran into our room, jumped in bed and said "I'm sick."  He spent the morning with the puke bowl at his side.  Jacob was better today so we sent him to school and he had a great day today.  He even completed his spelling test.  This week Jacob's received:
  5 OUT OF 6 STICKERS

5 out of 6 stickers is pretty good when you consider that Jacob was ill one day this week.  Jacob can become very emotional when he's sick, as I'm sure all kids do.  But kids with Asperger's tend to have heightened emotions anyway, so you can imagine how Jacob was feeling.  Thursday evening, Jacob began to feel better once he had something to eat and drink.  His emotions however, were still heightened.  He came over to me at the computer and said "Look outside dad, it's too dark, now we can't go to school."  He sounded so sad.  We've never seen him so upset because he missed school.  Usually it's the other way around.  Before I could ask a follow up question, Jacob explained how he missed his teachers and friends, so much so, that he almost began to cry.  I had to promise to "let" Jacob go to school today.  Really?  I can't count how many times in the past, that we had to argue with Jacob, just to get him to go to school. 

Then when we put him to bed the real emotions he had came through.  "It's your fault I was sick dad.  You made me go downtown with you and eat french fries and now my belly's too full and I'm sick."  That's right readers, I carried Jacob the 30 blocks it is to go downtown, then in the food court I tied Jacob to a table and force fed him french fries.  I don't know about other dads, but around here, if I hang around long enough, everything becomes my fault, according to Jacob.  I quickly told Jacob that we wouldn't go downtown anymore and he actually showed some relief.  He'll want to go to the mall again, just not today.
Today was pizza day at my son's school.  You should see all the pizzas that get delivered to the school.  My son hasn't eaten pizza in years   He used to love pizza and he'd eat it all the time.  Until one day a few years ago, he took a bite of pizza and it burned his mouth a little.  He immediately stopped eating pizza and has never touched pizza again.  The same thing happened with a straw once and he's only began using a straw again this past year.  All it takes is one bad experience and that's it, he'll never use/eat/try that thing again.  At least he doesn't run around warning other kids about the dangers of eating pizza.  It's too bad too because Jacob is tall and skinny and pizza would fatten him up a bit, but pizza can be unhealthy so it's probably better in the long run.

Jacob's behaviour has improved so much lately and we're very pleased.  He's been on such a good run, that it's hard to come up with fun rewards to do on the weekends.  So I told Jacob about all the snow we were going to get.  We were supposed to have our biggest snow storm of the season, but right now it's sunny outside and there's been zero flakes.  Meteorologists have about the same chance of predicting the weather, as I do predicting Jacob's behaviour.  It's my own fault though, again I jinxed my self.  Maybe we'll go to the mall or to Grandma's or something.  Either way, Jacob definitely won't be having pizza.