OH!

In the cast list of characters, I forgot SuperChar and Secret Agent Charles Michael. After all the heavy quizzing, you'd think I'd remember.

It seriously cracks me up that we* named this child Charlie and he goes and nicknames himself Charles.But he lets us be on his team, so we're willing to go along with it.

*By 'we' I mean 'Melody'. Melody named him Charlie. The rest of us just went along with it.

***

I cannot believe there are only 17 days of school left. I know things began in a blur with that whole eight-days-notice thing followed by the seven-weeks-of-back-and-forth while we packed and moved. The mono, flu, four rounds of strep, three sinus infections, two stomach bugs and killer increase in allergies (all mine!) definitely kept it blurry, and everything from Spring Break on just flies by.

But it's exciting to think that we've nearly completed a school year in this new home. We're quite nicely settled--the girls know all the neighbors, I've made some good friends at school, we've found a church and Charlie's thriving in his class. I keep hoping Dowlan will make some friends, but it's hard when he's home all the time and I know that will pick up once he finds a job.

Now that we're hitting summer, he has started to really look. While Charlie was in school only 3 hours a day, there weren't many things available to him. (In this smaller town, childcare options for an autistic four-year-old did not seem to exist.) I'll be home all summer and Charlie's PPCD program will be full-day next year, so we're finally to a place in life where all the kids are in school all day.

Hopefully, something will happen in the next few months. Having our other home rented out is helping to keep it all afloat, but I'm rather looking forward to another paycheck entering the house on a regular basis.

Speaking of our old house, Melody was quite worried the other day. She couldn't quite remember what parts of the old house looked like. She remembered her room and all the other rooms, but couldn't quite picture how they all fit together and how you would get from one room into another. I described it all until she connected it and she seemed quite relieved.

It's strange to think that they may grow up not remembering it. Charlie won't. I certainly don't remember my first home, although I was two when we moved away. I didn't move again until I left for college and my parents are still in the home I grew up in. This large-scale change isn't really something I know how to do.

There are things I so greatly miss (like a bathtub and a second bathroom!) but this is definitely home. Even Charlie has accepted that he can't only have Wound Wock Peopwe on his Team.