Monday, December 21, 2009

Anthony is now consistently pulling every sheet and cover off his bed, sleeping nightly on a bare mattress with the bedding in a heap next to him. I have reverted to tucking in his top sheet and instead removed the plastic protective sheet, hoping that was the source of irritation. I am also waiting to put him to bed to allow his twice-daily medication, which supposedly has a calming effect, to take effect. Nothing works yet.

I dress him warmly enough to do without covers, I suppose, if he insists on that. I nevertheless find it unsettling to see him sleeping on an uncovered mattress. Additionally, I am guessing he must be at least a little cold, because I still hear him making noise when he should otherwise have gone to sleep.

A final concern I have regards the mattress itself. I suspect sleeping without covers damages the mattress to an extent, yet I don't know how long I will continue to put sheets back on each night if the effort is in vain.

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My wife makes various goodies to take to friends at this time of year. Anthony has become her nemesis in this regard (as though he weren't already). If we are not vigilant in keeping him out of our small kitchen, he mashes cookies under plastic wrap. Or he eats entire plates of them. Or, as is the case with iced sugar cookies, he scrapes off the tops to render them worthless as gifts. Even with us in or around the kitchen, Anthony looks to commit these atrocities with the single-minded obsessiveness he shows in other pursuits. As I write this, I have been forced to drag him away from the kitchen to our basement family room to try to keep him out of trouble.

Monday, December 14, 2009

I have mentioned Anthony's tendency to pull the covers off his bed, either before going to sleep or when he wakes up. He has begun to do that every night lately, so I thought that perhaps I could save myself some trouble by not tucking the sheet in or replacing the blankets. That seemed to work well enough the first night, but apparently he feels the need to pull something off. Yesterday I found both the bottom sheet and the plastic protective--against accidents--sheet underneath pulled off the bed. Both are of a fitted design, and the latter apparently didn't come up as easily as he hoped. We now have a plastic sheet that hugs only three of the four corners of the mattress.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Our two children other than Anthony had a second round of mandatory school testing today. My wife had taken Anthony with her the first time during the week when I wasn't available to watch him. As anticipated, that didn't turn out very well. Today's tests were to take a significant portion of the day, and I wanted to see if I could get more sleep, so I took my chances at home with Anthony.

I put him in his bedroom, broke up some puzzle pieces, and took apart the LEGO's he had painstakingly stacked together by color. Then I closed his door and went to lie down, hoping he would somehow be sufficiently occupied to stay in his room for an hour or so.

I was indeed able to rest for that long, but I did hear sounds that I couldn't quite identify coming from Anthony's room. I decided that the potential risk of whatever it was he might be doing would be worth the undisturbed time.

When I got up, I found that he had pulled out a box of videotapes rendered obsolete by the DVD format and had taken them all out, examining each one. Perhaps because I am used to Anthony regularly creating extra work for us, I felt relief when I learned that putting them all back was the extent of the price to be paid for the snooze.

More interestingly to me, though, was being reminded of Anthony as a toddler. Before we knew that he was autistic, he would sit on the floor, oblivious to us watching him, taking CD's out of a rotating rack. He would look at the front, look at the back, and place each on the floor. It is one of my favorite memories about him, probably because, as a baby, Anthony was as cute as any we have seen. I am of course certain that I have no bias in asserting that.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

This is probably low on the list of items worth mentioning, but it is still a little out of the ordinary. Anthony broke a chair at the dinner table this evening. It wasn't the sturdiest chair to begin with, part of a set we had bought at a thrift store. He had worn it down over time through his periodic tantrums and sitting on it at odd angles. We noticed recently that the support structure seemed to be failing, so I wasn't surprised when it gave way tonight even though his behavior was nothing unusual--well, not unusual for him.