Second Week at Summer Camp was Successfull

I am learning so much from Jonathan and from life. This week has been particularly difficult, yet rewarding. One of Jonathan's uncle, daddy's older brother, passed away on July 4th. It has been a very sad week. Daddy is away until next Tuesday and I am home with the kids and my dad. My dad has been a tremendous help and company. The kids have been great. They miss daddy and Vanessa cries every day because she wants daddy, but they have behaved beautifully.

This week's summer camp has been different than what I expected and due to our recent loss, I had a mixture of feelings. A realization of what is important versus what is not. An appreciation for life and for what we have. Jonathan has been a little miracle in my life. He has taught me more about life than anything or anyone else without really knowing. Every day to me is like a little miracle. New words, no behaviors, the "awakening" phase as I call it. And Vanessa has also been a miracle in my life, complementing what Jonathan has given me. Her energy, happiness and charisma are contagious. She has been Jonathan's best therapist. And this week I have appreciated them more than before.

During this week’s camp, Jonathan had to really be on his own. I have been so scared, but I contained myself from pulling him and played it by ear. I wanted to push the envelope a bit more to see how much he can tolerate. And to my surprise, he has coped quite well. It is hard to fully know how he is doing compared to other NT kids since I don't get feedback or a report from the camp organizers. But since I don't get negative notes nor have I been called, I assume he has done well enough to fit in with the other 6 year-old kids.

Each day went something like this: I dropped him off at 9am every day. I signed him in their master book and he would put his backpack on the floor among all the other backpacks (at least 20 other ones) and would join the kids in the playground. They would remain in the playground until they were pulled together to board a school bus that would take them to a local elementary school. It was his responsibility to pay close attention and when his group was called, he had to go join Miss Shana and his classmates, without forgetting his backpack. And he did. They would remain in the elementary school until 11:45am, when they would return to the recreation center for lunch and afternoon activities. He had to feed himself (which he was very used to because at kindergarten he learned to do that) and clean after himself. I put 3 bottles of water in his backpack hoping that was enough for the day. He told me it was. In the afternoon, they would go to the indoor swimming pool for an hour. He had to change and put on his bathing suit all by himself, remember to put all his clothes in this backpack and put his backpack somewhere in the pool area. When the hour was over, he had to go to the boy’s bathroom, dry up on his own, and change his own clothes and put on his shoes, put all his wet clothes in the backpack and follow the group to another activity area. They were supervised but there was no hand holding from the leaders (I asked about this). The first day, he came home wet. It was a little bit of a mess. And he lost his snack bag and flip flops at the pool. As time has passed, he has learned to take care of his belongings, dry up better and change his clothes appropriately. So far, he recovered the flip flops but lost one of his bathing suits. And today, he came home wearing someone else' underwear. However, given the circumstances, I am very proud of his accomplishments. I honestly say that I underestimated his ability to take care of himself and his belonging and I will start to push him more to be more self-sufficient.

He told me today that he really likes summer camp. He has another week of sports camp next week. I am more comfortable now.

He is also more talkative this week. It could be because he is now spending 7 hours a day with other children, older than him in most cases and he is learning from them. This week he is very interested in watching Ben 10 on TV and he is really getting into it. He also told me today that he wanted to go see the journey to the center of the earth movie. And we are now having meaningful conversations like never before. We had a very long conversation for about 10 minutes on Wednesday regarding life and death. It was coincidental to our current circumstance because he doesn't know what is going on. But it was sparked by a Ben 10 episode when Ben 10's grandfather dies. The day after watching that episode, he asked out of the blue "mom, where do people go when they die?" As you can imagine, that caught me by total surprise. I said “to the sky” which is what we Hispanics believe in. He kept asking why. So I improvised some of my answers. This is a tremendous breakthrough. This is my "why is the sky blue" kind of why question. In my opinion, we have graduated from the “why” questions and need to continue to observe how the “how” questions mature and evolve.

He is also reasoning very well. A note to make is that although he is recovering and improving all around, he will always be a "numbers and letters" kind of kid. He may always carry the "aspergers" diagnosis (whenever he gets it, hopefully soon) because he is just so fascinated by numbers. His latest fascination is people's age. He wants to know everyone's age. But now, when he is pretending with Vanessa, he adjusts their ages depending on the game and makes sure that Vanessa is always 2 years younger than him. He says "well mommy, if I am 40 then Vanessa is 38". We went to his pediatrician’s office yesterday for his allergy shot, and he just spoke away with the nurse like never before. This nurse has administered the shots for the last 3 years and she knew Jonathan at his worse. Her mouth dropped after a few minutes into the conversation. He told her where daddy was and where he was going for camp, answered every question she asked and if she said something incorrect, he would politely tell her the correct answer, etc. Then he goes "hey Mrs. Karen, do you know how old my daddy is?" and she started guessing ages. He played along until the 4th miss, when he told her 36. Then she said "wow Jonathan, you know? I am 20 years older than your dad. Do you know how old I am?" And he looked up a bit and then said "well, that makes you 56 years old". His pediatrician was there, listening in the background and they looked at each other’s eyes and said "wow Jonathan, you are really smart" and then told me how incredible it was that he could do math like that. To me is like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and I reject that a bit. But I know that he will do well in math. So that is a relief. I am grateful that he is starting to come out of Autism and if he is going to keep some traits, I welcome math.

For the record, I took Vanessa to her 4 year-old checkup and brought the measles vaccines to have her pediatrician inject it. I spoke with her about it last year and told her that I wanted to break them apart. She told me that she only purchased the MMR together, but if I purchased it on my own, as long as the vial was intact and with a good expiration date, she could administer it. Jonathan’s DAN! Dr. carries them and I purchased it last month. The pediatrician injected it on July 9th. That day she seemed a bit more tired than usual and irritable. But I pumped her with probiotics and Vitamin C. Because we travel, I feel more comfortable if my kids are protected. If I didn’t have a chance to separate the MMR, I would never give it to Vanessa. But since they can be administered separately, we decided to do it. I will have the doctor administer the Mumps vaccines late November and the Rubella in May 2009.