5/10/14

Grounded

Charlie, upon learning that Dixie used his Darth Vader marker to color her toenails, issued the following punishment.

"Daddy, you have to ground her from everything, except eating or drinking, for the rest of her life. Unless I tell her to," he declares.

Dixie begins gasping and gestures to her mouth. Dowlan, after half a minute, figures it out and asks if Dixie can breathe.

"Yes," he says. Relieved, she lets out her air.

"What about going to school?"  She's hopeful about this one.

"You're grounded from NOT going to school, from NOT cleaning, and from NOT doing what mommy says and from doing anything else, unless I give you permission."

I need to take a page from his book when it comes to the thoroughness of punishments.

5/3/14

Autism talk

This morning is our town's Autism Walk. We didn't put together Team Charlie because we were supposed to be camping with the Cub Scouts. Due to a series of unfortunate events surrounding, primarily, my inability to be organized with paperwork and registration, we are now doing laundry instead of walking OR camping.

Eh.

Instead, we had some spontaneous Autism Talk instead of an Autism Walk. Charlie brought up the subject like this:

C: I am one of the smartest people in the world.
G: I agree. You are one of the top seven billion minds on the planet.
C: That number is too big. God is the smartest person on the planet, then people with autism come next.

After Charlie left the room, the girls were talking about how they have the best little brother possible.

In the last year, he has figured out that he has autism. We never sat down and told him, but he picked up on the idea somewhere. I asked him what he thought it meant and his logic was something like this:

C: I am awesome. And I have autism. So autism must be another word for awesome.

He's also made comments like, "I have trouble controlling my anger, because I have autism. It means it is hard for me to not explode and be really mad."

Earlier in the year, his teacher had the 2nd graders write an autobiography. His went something like this:

I was born. I really don't remember much after that. When I was three, I learned to talk. I have autism. Now I am seven, and I am writing my autobiography.



Bathroom Talk

Charlie just came out of the bathroom announcing, "Download complete."

Apparently, it's toilet humor day. We have a new dual-flush toilet with two buttons. they symbols are one water drop for a lower-volume flush and two buttons for the higher-volume flush.

Melody just ran out of the bathroom, looking worried. "Mom, I just pushed the one-drop button for a two-drop load."

"Did everything go down?"

She nodded.

"Then don't worry about it."

Sigh of relief. Back to her Legos.