Speechless!

Sometimes as a parent we go thru our day struggling with the day to day drudge work. The ever growing-never-shrinking pile of laundry, the car pool, the dinner prep and clean-up. Helping with homework and arranging appointments....it can feel overwhelming.
Then you get a run of snow days that you LOVE .......
                                                                         at first.
Then they go on and on! The boys eat like locusts during a biblical plague! The food prep/cook/clean-up  never seems to end. Neither does the bickering. And you forget the first day or two of fun with movies and couch cuddling and board games, cocoa and time for long chats. Shoveling snow and snowball fights fade away replaced with the sound of grumbling, bored, frustrated kids who want to be entertained, who are tired of each others company. And still school is out, and you are snowed in.

That has been this week at the little house on Clover Ridge. The giggling and teasing is gone and now it is just a contest to see who gets to the WII controller first. I have hit the mommy exhaustion point where I am willing to let them try to kill each other as long as they don't ask me to make another sandwich! Hey, don't judge me until you have been in my boot style, sweater slippers for a few snow days!

And in the midst of my self preservation beer and chips break my sweet boy with autism, the one I have spent a large portion of my day on the phone or in messages with therapists, pharmacists and teachers for, looks me in the eye(an accomplishment on it's own) and says, "you are a great mom, not all moms would do all the stuff you do for me" And my heart melts. Mama guilt for feeling so frustrated settles in the pit of my tummy but none of that matters because my boy, my sweet special boy who can't even tell me when his throat hurts just verbalized a feeling of love and appreciation! He noticed me! And all the extra work I do for him, above and beyond just being a normal mama. I am so floored I just stared at him for a moment! I realized he was uncomfortable and stopped it but I was so filled with joy! He has been working so hard on stepping out of his comfort zone. Trying hard to become more aware of ways he is "different" or responds differently then others to things and find ways to handle those situations. I am so very proud of him.

All moms, all parents want to hear praise from their kids, validation we are doing something right. And while I heard that from him, it was the bigger picture that I was overcome with emotion for. Him being aware that the extra meetings, phone calls, emails and a million other things that a parent of a child with autism does in a day were even occurring, let alone different from what a parent of a neuro-typical child does is enormous! But add in gratitude for it and verbalization of that gratitude and it elevates to phenomenal progress. This is the child who won't allow me, his mama, to hug him because it is literally physically painful for him to be that close to another person. That rarely responds to my consistent I love you's. That must always be reminded to say please or thank you or even notice other people are in the room.

So you see that I am overwhelmed, speechless, in my genuine joy of his progress. I am one proud mama!