Having a Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve. I sometimes wish I could get into Nathaniel’s head and see what he is thinking. Generally Nathaniel puts the past behind him as if he checks something off his list. But Christmas is different. Nathaniel still fervently believes in Santa Claus and puts up his stocking on Christmas Eve. Although he can't vocalize it, we can tell that he is excited. For one, Nathaniel sweats when he gets excited. He knows it means Santa and “packages” will be under the tree sometime soon. He might equate the reciting of “Twas the Night before Christmas with the coming event, but we’re not sure When Nathaniel was 3 years old (and for every Christmas Eve for the last 28 years) I recited T'was the night before Christmas. On his 4th Christmas he recited it with me. Yes, he remembered the words for a whole year! Pretty good, huh. He does like to look at the lights and, for some reason this year, wants to only watch Christmas movies. And we have lots of them! I have to admit that I get frustrated with him on Christmas day. He likes to unwrap the packages and is not all that interested in what’s inside. The unwrapping usually runs 4 hours; he not only likes to unwrap but also to strip small pieces from the wrapping paper. Very small strips! Well I hope that everyone has a good Christmas. Enjoy your packages. Read more!

Nathaniel has made it and Shelley has survived her trip to Baltimore to get Nathaniel. I told Shelley that there is nothing to do at this airport, but she only went with two books and a blanket. She expected 10 hours there while she waited, but as it turned out, the weather made the wait even longer. Nathaniel ended up waiting with her the last 4 hours (she should have taken the DVD player). So the trip began at 4:30 am Sunday, and the return was at 10:30. They got home at 1:30 am. However, Nathaniel still wanted his usual snack of cheese-crackers. Merry Christmas everyone. Read more!

Happy Return

With Nathaniel living in Maryland and since we live in Alabama it is always exciting when he comes down. This time, of course, for Christmas. To prepare, his mother, the Holiday Princess, has already finished decorating for Christmas, and it's only Nov 23. Shelley likes to have the house all dressed up by the time he arrives, which will be Dec 12. It is always a challenge with Nathaniel. Since he need full supervision, one of us has to go up to Baltimore to bring him back down. So this year, Shelley flys up in the morning, waits 10 hours for the next flight back to Alabama. About 2 hours before the plane leaves his care provider brings him to the airport (or as Nathaniel calls it, "Airplane!" The real challenge is to make sure that he sits with his mother both ways, but even more complicated is that Shelley must make a one way trip set for Dec 12 and return Jan 14, then two round trip tickets for her with Nathaniel Baltimore - Alabama for Dec 12 and Jan 14. Logistics the army would be proud of. Read more!

An interesting research article recently appeared in Science Translational Medicine (Here for abstract. There is a more user friendly site for those without a science background here). The authors try to determine why the autism syndrome is so prevalent in males. Check it out. Read more!

One of the most defining moments in our lives (my wife Shelley and me, Dave) was the realization that we could no longer put off plans for Nathaniel's adult life. Nathaniel is a tall but lovable kid who has been a runner throughout his life. This was one of the few ways he communicated with us - nothing like a good chase. The chasing stopped around age 13, but the roaming did not. So he would find ways to get out of the house and run wherever he pleased. We lived in the country so there was a lot of farmland around and very few neighbors, maybe 10 houses around an intersection. We couldn't watch him 24 hours a day, so we tried out best to find things that would interest him at home. But..

His roaming would take him in to houses uninvited.

You see, Nathaniel is "addicted" to coke.

As in Coca Cola! Even now, his greatest pleasure is to go to "Ronald" McDonald's at least once a day (but this is a story for another time). As a young adult he would invite himself in to our neighbors and check out the refrigerator. Our neighbor would say "Hi Nathaniel" as he passed through (they knew he didn't speak). In fact, he met neighbors we didn't know.

We had a fire hall nearby, a small place with a coke machine in front. Nathaniel didn't know it was there until we needed to use the post office in their basement. That's when the trouble began. Unbeknownst to us, he found some loose change and headed off to the fire hall. When we realized that he was gone, we went on a search.

It was dusk which made the search difficult. When I drove up to that intersection, I noticed a guy, more like a silhouette, on the porch swing across the road. The guy got up and then drew back his head to get the last few remaining drops of coke out of the can. This was cute until we realized that here is this big hulk of a guy on somebody's porch looking threatening to anyone in the house. As I said, we life in the country. Everyone has a shotgun.

This was our defining moment.
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