"Start Clean"

They say cleanliness is next to godliness, and I tend to agree to a degree.  For instance I believe in taking a shower everyday, but I have been known to not shave everyday (uh, sometimes more like every week).  Likewise I never wear dirty clothes, however I tend to keep clothes long past retirement age.  I think hygiene is important, and despite often looking ragged, I rarely smell ragged.  Even when I was touring full time, I would always find time to take a shower everyday.  I have even been known to take a shower on the bus, while driving down the highway.  I strongly encourage people not to try this, as it is both dangerous, and not a very satisfying shower, but well worth it after a long day of sweating under the lights.  I should state I toured full time in the time of high powered incandescent lights, the new (not that new anymore) LED lights are so nice, and let off almost no heat.  Well as you can probably guess this is leading up to something.

Holden has recently become quite obsessed with doing laundry.  The thing is, he often doesn’t want to wait for dirty laundry to be generated, and will start pulling his clean laundry out of his drawers and fill the laundry basket.  He often bipasses the washing stage, and tries to put them straight in the dryer.  To even further complicate things, he wants to put laundry detergent on the clothes he is putting in the dryer.  He also obsessively cleans the lint trap several times per load, often trying to stop the dryer to check the lint trap again and again.  This has become a daily battle for us.  I never let Holden out of my sight for very long, and to me very long is around 90 seconds.  That is the maximum I will let him out of my sight for.  Believe me, in 90 seconds Holden can fill a laundry basket in the bedroom, and drag it down the hall, through the kitchen, and into the laundry room.  I try to never let him get this far, because he is past the point of no return in his mind, and a major meltdown will ensue when I stop him from putting them in the dryer.  Most days I catch him when he starts pulling out clean clothes, and immediately try to redirect him to doing actual laundry.  With there being three of us, and me working out at least once a day, and often twice a day, there is usually laundry to do.  So I have to redirect him to the actual laundry.  It’s not like he just gives up on his clean laundry, because I tell him there is actual laundry to do, it is much easier to just grab some clothes that is all folded up, and toss them in the basket, than to go round up the laundry.  In the end he usually accepts this, and we start in one room, and go room to room emptying all the baskets into one.  As I said, we are three guys, there is no separate loads in our house, laundry is laundry. So what if my socks have a slightly blue tint to them from being washed with jeans, chances are they are also being washed with legos, sand box sand, rocks, and whatever else the boys have left in their pockets.  I try to drag this out as long as possible, with the hope that he gets distracted along the way.  Once we get to the laundry room, I put the clothes in the washer, pour out detergent, and let Holden dump it into the machine, and push start.  At this point he tries to go back to the bedroom, and start grabbing clean clothes again, cause he knows there is still nothing in the dryer.  

Needless to say, this increases our water bill, electric bill, and is somewhat wasteful, being that they are not always completely full loads.  This is just one of the many ways that having an autistic child can increase your expenses.  He also likes to change out the trash and recycling bags before they are full, hell usually before they are even half full.  No one will ever accuse Holden of being unclean, or lazy, that is for sure.  As a friend of mine put it the other day, he is quite industrious.

"I'm So Sick"

Something that has always plagued Holden is that he gets sick a lot.  I don’t want to jinx this, but ever since we have been in Santa Barbara, he has been sick less.  However, either way, he tends to catch more than his fair share of colds.  I believe one of the reasons is that Holden still sticks things in his mouth, including his fingers.  It is one of those things that most kids grow out of, but for some reason Holden’s disability has made him cling to this for longer than most kids.  The logical answer is probably sensory.  Our mouths are incredibly sensitive to a lot of sensory information.  In fact as I write this, Holden is fighting a cold, nothing serious, just the sniffles, but a cold none the less.  There is nothing particularly interesting about this fact, except for one thing.

Zane has managed to have another perfect year in terms of attendance.  This is the second time in a row that Zane has managed this feat, something that his teachers haven’t even accomplished.  This achievement in itself is quite a great one, but couple it with the fact that his brother is a walking cesspool of germs, it makes the achievement all the greater.  I would love to attribute his great immune system to the fact that he was breast fed, and breastfed for longer than most kids are these days, however so was Holden.  I have to take a second and say that I think that breastfeeding is a natural and beautiful act between a mother and her child, and that there is no place that this necessary act is inappropriate.  It truly amazes me that people get so bent out of shape over such a natural act.  What’s next, having to clothe our pets in public?  Okay, I digress.

I should state for the record that Zane indeed does get sick.  He does not have any super power, like being unbreakable or anything.  He just doesn’t get sick often, and usually doesn’t get very sick.  Once again, I hope I am not jinxing myself in stating this.  To his credit, Holden tends to power through most common colds too, but he does have a tendency to get some nasty bugs as well.  In fact about the only time Holden is still, is when he is sick.  It makes it all the more obvious that he is not feeling well.  I have watched him sleep for 18 hours in a day, only waking to be sick before.  

Ironically, Zane was the one who required surgery for Pyloric Stenosis at the age of 6 weeks.  I can tell you, having a baby have to have surgery, is about the worst experience a parent can have.  Having your first baby have to have a surgery, really tests new parents.  It was a horrible experience that probably deserves a whole blog dedicated to it, but suffice to say, I don’t recommend it to anyone.  Ever since he came home from the hospital from that surgery though, Zane has been one healthy kid.  I believe in rewarding achievements like that, and I have rewarded Zane both times he accomplished his perfect attendance.  He usually does pretty good with his grades too, so the end of the school year has typically been hard on the pocketbook, but well worth it.  Now if I can get him to clean his room, and not talk back, I could retire as a successful parent. . . I guess I won’t be retiring anytime soon.