Thinking about blogging, and crocheting, and motivation

I've come out of my early-fall fog a little bit, so I think I might be ready to start blogging again. We'll see how that goes. With the cooler weather, Sam's not escaping the house as much any more, so I'm less stressed out about that. Our family just got over a bad stomach bug, so I'm still a little slow on the cooking. Today I'm making homemade yogurt and taking pictures of the process. I'll post about it tomorrow, including the recipe.

So I looked back over what I was doing at this time last year, and my gosh, I was stitching up a storm. Anything to keep my hands busy. I stayed that way until Sam started preschool in April. I suspect that that was my way of dealing with Sam's autism diagnosis. It was something that we'd sort of known was coming since the summer prior, but hadn't really processed (and let's be honest, we probably never will, completely.) Doing this blog, and making all that stuff, kept my mind on other things than the elephant in the room. Working (caring for Maggie) was much the same. But eventually there was a breaking point where our family as a whole had to accept and embrace Sam's diagnosis for what it was, and begin the hard work of giving him the best start we possibly can.

I thought I knew Sam a year ago. I knew what he did, sure. I knew every detail about how he did things, and what he was saying, and I normally knew exactly what he wanted or what was wrong. But I didn't know why he needed to bundle objects and hum, or memorize letters and numbers. I might have had some clue about his triggers, but the need he was fulfilling with his behaviors wasn't even on my radar. "Yeah, he does that a lot," was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea how much visual and auditory stimulation he craved. I had no idea how badly he wanted to make music. I had no idea why he craved certain motions and not others.

In the big picture, of course we don't know why he has certain sensory needs, but we have learned a ton about how he meets them. Most of the time, I can redirect his humming to singing, and his bundling can be done in a way that's safe for everyone. Food is still something we're working on. I have a feeling it'll be a long process. He drinks milk and eats chicken, so between those and all the junk food, he's growing and reasonably healthy.

Anyway. I'm not going to set a schedule for updating this blog because I don't want to use it as an escape as much. I'll update when I have something to say. We're finally done with most of our classes, the exception being three more weeks of More Than Words, which we have tonight. Sam got pretty bored over Thanksgiving break, so he's pretty happy to be back in school. We put up our sad little tree yesterday with only one ornament--a star that I crocheted at the top. I'm debating about bringing the big one out for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but for now, this is what we can handle. It's a little Charlie Brown, but it works.