It’s 4:22 and guess who’s not even close to asleep? Did you guess Tristan, or did you think I was going to gab about someone else’s kid?

Tristan’s nap time has officially moved from 3pm to 4pm. He’s also been taking his naps lately without unnecessary waking and screaming, although he’s getting really bratty about going DOWN for them (not a problem, just parental refresher course necessary for me!). Anyway, anyone who thinks they’re all ninjalike and smart because they figured out when to call here needs to reconsider, because we’re off by an hour and change suddenly.

I’ve been looking for a way to say this, but it’s kind of hard. It’s hard because it’s uncertain.

Please don’t panic. We’re not panicking. We’re just following the steps.

Don’t Google this shit, either. I want to impress upon you that Tristan is in great health and doing very well.

A chromosomal abnormality has been found in Tristan. There is a duplication. I do not have the numbers straight, so I will not divulge further lest we scare the shit out of people.

We’ve been told that this may not even relate to his autism.

I also want to impress upon you that chromosomal abnormalities exist in many people; testing for such is fairly recently widespread. Him having an abnormality doesn’t mean a whole lot yet.

We have a tiny bit more information but no more RELEVANT information. Just a little bit of description that has changed per person who has told us, so I don’t want to repeat it. Something about WHICH chromosomes and all. I’ll talk about it all when we have it in writing and not just talking to people on the phone.

Now, the relevance. If you’re a member of Tristan’s biological family, we’ll be interviewing you shortly about family health and reproductive stuff. If you’re familiar with me or James during childhood, please; we need your help. They will be studying us extensively to see if this comes from either of us.

No worrying. Just information, please. Send it to me or James privately if you want or post it here if it’s part of our social network.

* If anyone asked what age Tristan went from eating “toddler food” to eating “people food” I would probably mark now as that time. We had luck with a plastic baby fork and lots of stabbable foods like chicken pieces and smushy garbanzo beans. He can jab the fork into his mouth but has to work very hard to overcome the urge to remove the pieces by hand to place them in his mouth instead.

* Tristan has still been demanding chicken soup whenever it is present. This actually requires that either Tristan be served in his high chair (haven’t done that in a while) or I will have to keep the tap flowing at the expense of my bowl. James has been quite the trooper for our sakes and has been doing the bulk of the spoon-feedings with Tristan involving my our precious chicken soup. But just like me, Tristan will continue to require this chicken soup steadily until no more evidence of it exists. This is easier accomplished for Tristan, who isn’t yet aware of every possible container that soup could be stored in. (Since I am aware, I have to cook soup a LOT to feed Tristan some!) But I think that we firmly have a spoon back in use. We’ll have to see if he will try it with less-adored foods. Or whether it really even matters yet. He’s not exactly handicapped without utensils – he just looks weird eating adult food that way.

* It has taken me three days to write this entry, so I will post it for now and try again later.

We decided to head to a local healthyish buffet tonight. The interesting bit is that Tristan was in a “try new foods” sort of mood. Turns out he really likes garbanzo beans. And corn (which we knew from last weekend, where he was eating rice with corn in it). Also, shredded carrots, of all things. He even ate some macaroni and cheese off of a fork (which is a first…). He actually took a liking to the peas, as well (even though he’s never much been into non-dehydrated peas, before hand).

All in all, he really seems to like garbanzo beans – we actually sent me back to get more for him. We managed to roughly finish eating before he really started getting restless (and in this case, restless mainly means grabbing food and dropping it on the floor, repeatedly).

That “one thing” I forgot that Tristan has started doing?

Humming a recognizable tune and using that to request a certain song to be either played or sung! Specifically “This Old Man,” although he’s not particular about the words. He probably got used to the tune because all of his Little People toys play it with different lyrics (in and out, stop and go, etc.).

One of those silly little things I got for him was the Discovery Kids MP3 player (you can probably get it for $49.99 if you look around; we got ours at Marshall’s for about that much). It comes preloaded with a lot of kid-oriented music and there’s room to still throw a couple of other songs on top of that. He now knows how to find “This Old Man” and/or request it over and over, and he can even carry it around with him.

So, yeah, if you were wondering when to get your kid a music player, I’d suggest 20 months. Of course, my suggestion is based on one child’s experience, so take that with a grain of salt. And we’re one of those families who gets our kid his own MP3 player, but we’re also one of those families that don’t give him our MP3 players, phones, or keys to play with.

Now, to get Tristan interested in some of our musical tastes.. muahaha!

On Monday, we started Tristan’s evaluation/ABA sessions. On Thursday (right now), I finally managed to get around to writing. So far I’ve spent five minutes writing and erasing everything. Not a good start so far!

Anyway, they are going fine. We’ve met all five of the therapists.

I have to interrupt this to mention that I can’t look at the word “therapist” without giggling.

Five ladies, all seeming to be in the mid 20s-early 30s age range. All of them seem nice and all of them are positive and caring with Tristan. Of course, since ABA relies on positive reinforcement, I’m glad to see positivity! A big bin of toys and materials for observation, play, testing, teaching is present in Tristan’s room, which has been designated as the therapy area since it’s about the only place he can be corralled.

I feel very bad for Tristan being stuck in this little bedroom of his for three hours a day of his awake time. He’s taking it well, though. I think. He’s been a bit tantrummy but also a bit sick – that level of having a cold that is just short of calling off work/school. Like many males (sexism!), Tristan likes his snuggles and not a whole lot of conflict when he’s not feeling well.

Tristan’s teachers/therapists come in very quickly, in rapid succession, one relieving the other in many cases. Food has to be sneaked in, because there’s actually no time for him to eat in many cases. He’s not supposed to be idly munching during the sessions – that’s a bit distracting. He hasn’t been taught to eat his meals quickly or with purpose and he might need to learn that out of necessity.

I sat in on the first two days of sessions and James sat in on the first session. The time went very quickly for me; I was watching someone else play in a directed manner with my baby. This is what I’ve wanted for so long – someone ELSE to focus on him, engage him. I’m one of those freaks who likes to see my baby bond with other people so long as he doesn’t decide to replace me or something, so I really enjoyed it when Tristan finally became comfortable enough with his new friends to let me leave the room without screaming. In general, we can sit in on/watch/even record with permission these sessions but it defeats the point if we participate more than requested to, so by Wednesday we were out of Tristan’s “work” area. Actually, we had a meeting with the supervisor of the program on Wednesday so the first day of our nonparticipation was required.

I had something rare happen yesterday during Tristan’s second session – I got housework done! Of course, he came bursting out of his room hungry while I was in the middle of said housework, making me go from idly cleaning stuff up to having to collect a few things frantically.

Tristan himself has been making progress. Since Monday, he has:
* shown that he can make the sign for the word “more” at least with regard to being tickled
* learned to roll toy cars back and forth
* been making more attempts to communicate his choices for desired foods
* been impressing everyone with how much eye contact he does make and how much of a cute little baby ninja he is
* not taking his damn naps! more on that later

(there’s one more thing I’m forgetting, but that is the liability of not writing immediately!)

We went out to Thamien Park yesterday afternoon at around 2:30pm – we’re getting to the point where I slip in park trips that technically cut into his nap time. The park was fairly dead since most normal babies are asleep at that time or something. One other family was there – two little boys, older one was 3 and younger one was 2. The 3 year old wandered around chasing Tristan and being chased by him – they both loved it! It was so sad when the grandma of the 3 year old called him off, but I went to make friends with them later. Turns out that the 2 year old, who spent some time next to Tristan in the swings, is also autistic. I learned this after I complimented the kids’ mom (pushing the 2 year old while 3 year old was off with grandma) because the 3 year old was so good with Tristan. Turns out he has had practice! The family had to leave around then, but I gave them contact information and hope to run into them again.

So.. naps. We’ve been having all of this nap trouble lately. We’ve been racking our brains to figure out What. The. Fuck,. Child? So far, we’ve come up with:
* he probably wakes up because his stomach hurts – when he farts he tends to calm down
* he may just be waking up from an excess of environmental noise
* he may also be waking up screaming because he needs less sleep, though he tends to wake up happy when he’s had enough sleep
* teething again? There are still a set of molars to go and we don’t even HAVE any Tylenol until they figure out that clusterfuck with the recalls

I should note that for the most part, he sleeps through the NIGHT with minimal interruptions. There are times when he wakes up screaming, but he can be calmed down quickly or will actually calm himself down quickly still. He does not calm himself down from the naptime screaming anymore. I don’t know if that’s because he’s in pain or because we taught him that screaming during your nap gets you comfort. He seems to be in true pain of some sort during the naptime awakenings until he lets out a huge fart and then relaxes enough to be held. He actually will push my hands off of him while he’s having the episode, and he wants to be touched any and every other time, ESPECIALLY when he’s just fussy.

We’ve been trying various things, such as:
* putting him down later/earlier for bedtime
* putting him down later for naptime – earlier is no longer an option as his schedule extends until 3
* making extra special sure he’s fed/beveraged enough to last through a nap
* attending to him quickly before he’s exceptionally worked up
* giving him time to settle back down before going to him
* giving appropriate medications to known situations: Tylenol (before recall), Mylicon, and now our new favorite, Benadryl —

WE ARE LUCKY! Our kid does NOT go all hyper and unable to sleep on Benadryl! We started giving it Monday night to help him with the symptoms of this cold. We figured that 20 months isn’t so far off from 24 and we know the proper dosages. Anyway, I believe we have Liquid Airplane Insurance on hand should that ever become an issue. We should discuss whether we should try a dosage prior to his nap today and see if he sleeps through it.

But he won’t go back to the nap after being soothed through these episodes anymore for me as of this week. He’s taking 1.5 hour naps instead of the solid 3 hours he used to take. I also think part of this is that he will need substitution for the exercise he’s missing while indoors for his sessions. I’m sure 20 months is also in the midst of a predictable sleep regression according to the toddler literature, so none of this should even be surprising to us.

Anyway, therapy is going well/fine/good/great etc. and his midday sleep could use some improvement.. in case you didn’t much get through all of that.

Tristan decided that he likes Oreo cookies today.

Normally we do not keep such things around, but we had a barbecue yesterday and we brought home some cookies. We offered Tristan one yesterday and he examined it over and over but ultimately fed it to me. Today he sat down and played for maybe 20 minutes trying to take an Oreo cookie apart. Once he broke off a piece or some of the filling separated, he’d feed me. It actually took him about that long to even become interested in trying the wafer of PURE SUGAR himself.

Once he took his first lick of the filling off of his hands, he quit feeding me. He was all about shoving them into his OWN mouth and hoarding them. The generous spirit is dampened quickly by the promise of sugary goodness!

Within the past ten minutes, Tristan has been a little thief. He stole my chicken soup – my rare chicken soup now that I’m dieting a lot these days. But that’s ok.

HE ATE IT FROM A SPOON!!!

He ate from a spoon for the first time since about 12 months. Not even cashew butter, yogurt, fruit, or chicken rice could get him to do this in the interim. He came over to ask for some of my soup and with James manning the actual spoon, many of the noodles made it into Tristan’s mouth.

Even more impressive is what it is that he ate – noodles in broth. You may or may not recall, but Tristan has eaten things that resemble pasta about twice in the past, making this time number three.

I’m NOT surprised that this was his choice to accept on the spoon. This child seems to adore all of my favorite foods, which are foods that pretty much nobody else eats or likes. And he’s getting fairly picky about his preferences lately, too, so I don’t think it’s mere hunger speaking in any way. He just “cracks out” on certain foods.

In other communicationy news, Tristan has begun to grab my wrist to manipulate my pointing finger to designate something he’d like to have. Now, it would be neat if he just stuck out his little index finger and pointed as a next step!

We have made official contact with Stepping Stones and we have a schedule.

The first month is the assessment month. This is where people actually spend a month worth of work hours doing something with our child. This ‘something’ is generally ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) related, and for the first month others will be figuring out what Tristan needs in the way of ABA. We will find out if it means what we think it does, because everything is very “new job-esque” right now and I feel like I don’t know shit. Anyway, people shall come into our home and get to know Tristan and hopefully not be scary.

People? Five therapists and and a supervisor are listed on the schedule as putting in some 17.5 hours per business week. Most of those hours are in our home. We will also have to attend meetings, whereby I have no idea what we will do with Tristan if there’s not some sort of kid accomodation.

All righty. So, our days of therapy shall be sort of like this for the next month (until 6/4), with a holiday in there somewhere:

Monday: 10:15-1:30
Tuesday: 12-3
Wednesday: 9:30-1:45
Thursday: 12-3
Friday: 9:30-12:30

There seem to be minor variations per week, as well. I don’t feel like figuring them out now, as they’re all the same idea with maybe 15-30 minutes of difference.

Anyway, it’s been arranged for Tristan to keep going to playgroup, but he’s not going to have a lot of time to himself anymore. I hope for his sake that he doesn’t require intensive therapy to continue at this rate for so long unless either he needs it THAT desperately or he enjoys it. I’m going to start having to make park playdates at very concise times, but that even takes just about every moment that anyone I enjoy seeing is available.

I also don’t know how much of my participation is written into this yet. Of course the PLAN will receive my participation, but I’m not sure which parts of the program are parent- optional, required, or disallowed.

So, I suppose this post is more of “Tristan starts in-home preschool this Monday.”

Tristan is becoming far more opinionated when it comes to food – oh my!

First of all, he’s decided that he ADORES nuts. This is fairly stressful because nuts? Someone once told me they were choking hazards. Anyway, I’ve been nail-slicing cashews down to ice cream sundae size and he’s been gobbling them as quickly as I can break them. We have some chopped pecans that he’s also been demolishing whenever they’ve been added to his plate. The good news is that this kid obviously does not have any allergies to nuts!

Second of all, he’s getting persnickety on his fruit choices. He’s starting to recognize packaging at a ninjalike rate, and he’s rejecting foods based on it. His little fruit pouches – if the design on the front is GREEN (apples and pears) he’s been just tossing them straight aside in negation. He’s also been not a fan of grape, which he used to like before. He still gobbles up all of his old favorites – the berry flavored one, anything that’s primarily banana, strawberry. I suppose that we might have to alter our buying habits in order to not create so much waste if this continues. I’m actually not sure how to proceed, since he usually operates more like me with regard to food: “if it’s generally non-offensive and doesn’t contain certain things, I’ll eat and like it.” I have no intention of forcing him to eat foods he rejects, but I do want to stagger the offerings so I’m not throwing money in the trash at every mealtime. (I suppose this is something toddlers just DO, but in Tristan’s case, should I approach it like “toddler” or other, y’know?)

And we’ve been watching our weight around here as per usual, with the weight-loss portion of the diet back in full swing. This means that as an evening ‘meal’ I usually prepare a piece of cooked mozzarella that rather resembles the top of a pizza, complete with tomato powder ’cause I can’t handle sauce. Guess who eats this stuff as fast as I do? Did you guess Tristan? If not, I suppose Samurai would also be technically correct but I don’t indulge him as readily as I indulge Tristan. Anyway, Tristan loves the stuff so much that he sees me preparing it and tries to eat it AS I am preparing it, and then continuously asks for help accessing it from the microwave during the 3 minutes it needs to cook. After THAT, when it’s done cooking and needs to rest and cool the fuck off, he pretty much wraps himself around me much like any of the pets do when dehydrated chicken is available. I actually had to give him a bit of a time out for groping the stove in the meantime – see, stove’s off limits in all situations to him but he was holding it to get a better look at the cheese substance, and like any of the pets, you never feed as a ‘reward’ for misbehavior. (Think about it – would you tell your child “no, don’t do that” and “thank you for doing that” with regard to the same behavior? Food is a powerful motivator in animals, including humans.)

And he also actually asked me for a piece of chocolate a couple of days ago. Tristan notoriously does not care for chocolate much. He liked this piece, though (we’re talking half a fingernail sized piece, like the nuts) and asked for more. Since it was sugar-free chocolate (very useful in low carb dieting!), I didn’t really want to feed him much – that stuff notoriously causes the farts and shits. I shoved the rest of it into my mouth so he couldn’t “logically” ask for more.