The stress in my life lately has been palpable and ravenous, requiring the delivery of an increasing diet of effort, guzzling sleep while leaving behind far too many regurgitated memories of middle of the night hours. Last night was the first night in several days I slept more than 6 hours. Tony was awake a couple of those nights, yes, but I think at least for one of them the noise I was making from my constant detours out of my bed was what woke him. As my thoughts have stilled and settled around what was needed, I reflected on changes I am going to be making to my writing format.

Shorter. Fewer comprehensive therapy posts. More happy moments. Definitely more happy moments. I think when I first started writing, I wanted family and friends to have a bit of a better understanding for what I was going through. I wanted other parents to have as comprehensive an idea as possible for at least one way of attempting to handle certain situations.

More than four years into writing posts here, I think I’ve definitely done both of those solidly. So for the time being, what I need is to give my stress level a little time and content consumption restriction.

Last Friday certainly was a day I was feeling that my emotional bones had been picked clean by every bit of what can go wrong sometimes, so when Andy and I headed into our community pool with Tony, I decided not to clock in and do any of his habilitation hours. I still planned on working with him on safe behavior, I just really didn’t feel like having to do any of the requisite paperwork.

At one point on our trip, he climbed out of the pool, water flying from his hands as he jumped up and down, flapping. I told him to stop (walking, not flapping…I literally do not care if he flaps as long as nobody is getting hurt), which he did. And then I noticed him look down, his face conveying a sharpened concentration. My eyes followed to a little girl sitting a few feet in front of him happily munching on her McDonald’s french fries. Tony’s favorite. Crap. I knew there was no way I was going to reach her to block before he had his hands on those fries.

As he stepped his left foot forward towards acquiring his target, I called out “Tony stop right there! Those are not your french fries, don’t touch them!” And he stopped. Literally I have had to dig his hands out of other people’s McDonald’s bags in public as I apologized profusely, and this is the first time he’s ever stopped on his own in this type of situation. I told him to come back, and he did…without me having to step out of the pool.

I praised him, I tickled him, we focused on having a good time. We drove home, and because Tony and I had to meet an RBT for an ABA session, I asked Andy if he could drive in to the magical land of the golden arches to procure for Tony a large helping of his favorite slices of fried heaven. I reminded our little man periodically as he was waiting, “Papa went to go buy you french fries because you stopped when I told you to and didn’t touch that little girl’s fries.”

Tony ran around jumping and flapping as he waited, his eyes glowing when he was finally handed the bag of french fries. As he ate, I continued to celebrate what he had done and tell him how proud I was. Yeah, it’s a little thing. And sure, he’s 10 so really everybody would have liked to have seen him independently cooperate with something like this sooner. But around here, if you want a little thing that’s quite important to ever happen again, I have found that you need to celebrate a big. And so we did…