Anthony has suddenly started regressing with regard to using the toilet when he needs to.  Whereas the occasional problems with him wetting himself in the past could largely be attributed to change of routine, for the last month or so he has defied explanation in choosing to wet himself rather than going to the bathroom when he needs to.  We had a period wherein he wet himself every day for several in a row, and two or three times in some instances.  I thought he was getting better, but yesterday was yet again another day when he did it twice despite us feeling like we were reasonably on top of things with regard to sending him to the bathroom. We're not certain what to make of it.  The only other thing we have noticed is that he has twice gotten up out of bed at night and wanted to sit on the toilet.  Once when I thought he had sat there long enough, I got him up and sent him back to bed, but he wasn't happy.  The other time (last night), I allowed him to stay as long as he wanted, but he didn't appear to do anything before he was fine to go back to bed.

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I have mentioned that we have a rabbit.  For our rabbit's litter, we shred cardboard, newspaper, paper bags and the like.  Out of convenience, we keep the shredder in Anthony's bedroom and have a stash of shreddables piled up there.

Anthony has noticed us taking toilet paper cores and shredding them, and lately he has decided it was something he wanted to try.  I have watched to make sure he isn't getting his fingers into the machine, although the design makes that nearly impossible.

Unfortunately, Anthony is so interested in shredding that he will do whatever necessary to get to the toilet paper core.  If that means unrolling half a roll of toilet paper, so be it.  If it means pulling the core out of a cheaply-made roll--we have vowed never to buy that brand again!--he will do it.  To make matters far worse, toilet paper off the roll must, in Anthony's mind, be in the toilet.  So, yes, we have had entire rolls of toilet paper in the toilet.  Obviously, a full roll will not flush.  What is worse than that is the ones he has had to unravel and put in the toilet.  Those have taken more attempts than I want to count to unplug the toilet.

Anthony likes music.  In fact, we are finding that his interests may be very similar to those of our music-loving daughter, two years his junior.  When our daughter has been listening to Taylor Swift in her bedroom, for instance, Anthony has shown up more than once at her open door to listen--I guess there's no accounting for taste!  We have also noticed that, when we are playing music in general, Anthony makes a lot of noise at a fairly constant pitch, unlike the random noises he makes at other times.  An acquaintance at church recently also heard him doing this and commented to us that it appears he is trying to sing; that is the conclusion we have come to ourselves.

Another similarity we have found between Anthony and his sister involves eating habits.  Anthony will often leave any meat in a dish until the end of his meal, and won't eat it unless we urge him to do so.  Our daughter would also refuse to eat most meat if we let her.  Relatively speaking, we don't eat a great deal of meat anyway, and are moving toward even less, but what we do eat is almost always chicken or something else on the lighter side, and it is there as a balanced part of the meal.  So, for the time being, they are required to eat it.

Speaking of eating dishes with a minimum of meat, my wife made Pad Thai the other day.  When I dished some up for myself, I doused it with a little lime juice from a plastic bottle.  I then asked Anthony if he also wanted any Pad Thai--he had been eating another dish--and he immediately got up and brought his plate to me.  After I dished it up for him and handed him the plate, he made a shaking gesture toward the bottle of lime juice.  He apparently had seen me shake some lime juice out for my meal, and wanted the same for himself.

I recently experienced what appeared to be a negative reaction toward Anthony.  We were in an aisle in a grocery store when Anthony sneezed.  Although he didn't sneeze on anything in particular, a store clerk who came into the aisle just as it happened commented on it, and continued to do so as he walked by us.  At first I wasn't sure what to make of his comments, but then determined he was trying to make a point about it, so I said something about Anthony being autistic and not having an understanding of what he was doing.

Offhand, I can think of only two other instances of people reacting negatively toward Anthony and being unsatisfied with my explanation of him being autistic.  One also happened in a grocery store when Anthony suddenly got into a silly sort of mood and started jumping around.  In so doing, he bumped into a lady who was close by.  The other instance was at a zoo when Anthony went over to a baby stroller near us and tapped on the tray in front of the baby before I could reel him in.

These instances are clearly the exception to the rule; otherwise, I would never attempt to take Anthony outside. Thankfully, people are almost unfailingly understanding toward Anthony, or are at least willing to give him the benefit of the doubt even if they don't understand him well.

One thing not directly related to Anthony that bothers me, however, is a general use of the word "retarded" in society.  I hear people that I otherwise like and respect using that word which offends those who deal with people who are involuntarily mentally disadvantaged.  But the people I hear using the word are generally also not close enough to me to actively appeal for a change in their behavior.  Thus I fully support the "Spread The Word To End The Word" campaign at http://www.r-word.org/.  The more people that are made aware of this, the better it will be for a great many people.

We have a sport-utility vehicle that is old enough to make us start thinking about what kind of vehicle we might want to buy in the future.  Of course, we have to take Anthony's seating into account.  Not only is he a stocky kid who takes up more room than his siblings would like, he can be annoying to them and even dangerous depending on his mood.  And even if neither of his siblings are present, he has been known to reach over the seat and try to hurt others in the row in front of him, which means we need three rows to provide a buffer between him and the driver.  As third-row head clearance varies considerably between models, we have been looking forward to going to the annual auto show to check out a lot of vehicles at the same time with Anthony in tow.

Here is a picture of Anthony at the show.  He appears to enjoy it, and seems to like sitting in the cars, even to the point that he stands by one waiting to get in even if we were just perusing from outside with the intent of moving on.

We told Anthony to "smile".  Not too bad, I suppose, for not understanding the concept....

Anthony turned 18 recently and, as such, became a legal adult.  My wife and I had to go to court to get ourselves declared his legal guardians so that, for instance, a doctor can discuss Anthony's medical care with us. Isn't that silly--despite Anthony being clearly unable to speak or do anything on his own, a doctor could not legally tell us anything about him without us getting ourselves declared his guardians?  I understand the state must take a blanket approach to anyone of legal age, but it seems that it could be simplified for those who can readily be declared by a medical professional to be incapacitated.

The downside to having to go to court (besides having to use a vacation day from work) was that the process cost us several hundred dollars.  The upside, interestingly, is that Social Security will now pay his living expenses, so we can charge to have Anthony live with us!

Better late than never, I guess.  It's kind of sad to us; how we could have used funding from an early age for him.  It would have helped at least a little in our attempts to provide therapy for him when he was younger, and then later with all the damage he has done around the house as he has gotten older.  Speaking of which, normally that entails things like holes in walls and broken tables and counter tops, but occasionally it is something like rendering our daughter's disposable contact lenses useless when, as happened a couple of days ago, he was in one of his ripping/peeling moods.  It's too bad that insurance doesn't cover damage or loss due to autistic siblings.

Anthony is fat--or at least chubby, but certainly approaching "fat".  He doesn't exercise on his own, of course, and lately he lies down a lot on his bed and watches old Disney VHS tapes since he broke the DVD player in his room.  But I have an idea to slim him down: Each of the other four of us in the family will take turns getting him to copy an exercise he or she is doing.

Anthony copies much of what I do, and he also complies with others if told to do whatever it is that they are doing.  To test the exercise idea out, I had Anthony stand opposite me behind a couch. My wife briefly objected to me putting my hand on the couch for stability, correctly noting it would lessen the intensity, but I was actually doing it for Anthony, knowing that he would mimic me and he would not be able to do the exercise otherwise on his own. Then I told him to squat down as I was doing.  He clearly is not used to doing that, and, after five or six times of him huffing as he followed my lead, he refused to do any more.  He also got a little upset when, after he sat down, I tried to get him to raise his legs from his seated position.

Going forward, we will have to arrange times for him to join each of us in our exercise, whether it be out for a brisk walk, ascending and descending stairs in rapid order, or anything else we can think of to get him moving and breathing a bit harder.  We do have to be careful though: we have already tried in the past to get him to jump on our mini trampoline, and he gets upset fairly quickly over that.  We will have to push him, but not push so much that he flies off into a rage.

I have a plum tree that is finally producing fruit this year. The fruits are red, and as soon as they started changing colors, birds pecked at two of them, causing them to fall off. Since then, they have not touched them, despite the fruits staying on the tree a long time. I am guessing the birds thought they were cherries, and, being disappointed in the initially sour fruit, left them alone.

I also have grape vines that are popular with the birds; a couple of years ago I didn't pay them enough attention--there were only a few grape clusters then--and the birds stripped them completely clean before I knew what was happening.

That the birds have left the plums alone after an initial couple of bites while systematically pursuing the grapes leads me to believe communication between birds is sufficiently advanced to be able to identify specific ideas, such as "fruit/food", "that tree/over there", "sour", "don't eat". My daughter and I were discussing this, and we both also remember reading an article about the complexity of prairie dog language.  We wondered if humans might at some point be able to decode and duplicate animal sounds to be able to communicate with them.

But that would likely depend on the complexity of the animals' communication.  The reason this is of interest to me is that Anthony simply does not get many specifics of language.  Recently I told him to bring me his cup from the table so I could give him something to drink.  First he brought me his plate, which was the nearest item on the table.  I told him again to bring me his cup.  This time, he brought me his bowl, which was the next closest item on the table.  The third time of telling him to bring me his cup was the charm, but perhaps only because it was the last item left on the table.

I have the same issue if I try to tell him to turn on a specific switch for a light or a fan; if there is more than one choice, he clearly doesn't get it when I specify a particular one.  This leads to a fair amount of frustration for him, frankly, and sometimes makes him upset.

I wish I understood more about how language is learned.  Clearly, nearly all humans learn it from infancy, and their brains can match specific and complex concepts to electrical impulses--or something of that nature--to allow for high-level communication.  Is Anthony's brain no longer capable of being taught language? I have given up hoping for him to be able to communicate verbally, but there are those with autism who are non-verbal, who can nevertheless communicate via computer or with other means.  But so far those avenues are largely closed off to us.

We haven't had as many negative issues with Anthony lately compared to other periods.  I think part of that can be attributed to understanding better how to deal with him when he does show signs of aggression; for instance, we have learned when he wants to engage us, it is best to ignore him--including not looking at him, even as he tries to hurt us--and get him into his room as quickly as possible where he can create more holes in the walls if need be.  But I also wonder about the role puberty has played in his aggression, and think that as he gets older, perhaps some of that is subsiding naturally (I can always hope!).

However, some days are of course worse than others, and we wish we could tell what the underlying issues were to keep things on an even keel.  Today he went to our family room and took several DVD's out of the cases; that isn't terribly unusual, but it does seem to happen when he gets in certain moods.  He also helped himself to three bananas.  I am rather certain that it would have been more, except that we ran out of bananas.  Then later when we were at a family gathering at my parents' house, my sister was trying with little success to get her son to obey her, when Anthony got upset at that--he has a history of getting angry when anyone is being scolded, for some reason--and pushed the nearest chair into the table.  Unfortunately, his young cousin was sitting in the chair at the time, and he hurt her arms in so doing.  He wasn't intending to hurt her, but his action had that effect all the same.  I apologized to both my sister and my niece.  They both understand about Anthony, but they aren't used to being directly affected by him (and shouldn't have to be).  My wife and I agreed that we should probably have our younger son sit nearest Anthony in such circumstances so an unsuspecting child--who can't anticipate the situation--doesn't have to suffer because of him.  

I took the day off recently for our anniversary, and my wife asked me to see Anthony off to the bus while she briefly attended to a job-related matter before we went out together.  I had Anthony all ready to go: coat on, shoes on, harness for his bus seat on; and we waited for the bus.  I heard the bus come, opened the door and nudged Anthony outside with, "See you later Anthony!", knowing that is how my wife sends him out; he dutifully gets on the bus by himself.  But Anthony paused, looking at me. I told him to go ahead, and he stepped down another step, still looking at me.  "Oh, that's right," I thought.  My wife always gives him a kiss on the cheek.  So I did the same, and he went on his way. 

Anthony is, perhaps more than most, a creature of habit.  When my wife and I laughed about this incident later, our younger son (11 years old) reminded me that he had also resorted to kissing Anthony on his cheek when my wife once asked him to get Anthony out the door as well.  I felt a little strange kissing Anthony on the cheek; our younger son felt even stranger.  (I'm not sure that's grammatically correct, but I'll keep it that way.)

Sometimes we create our own problems with Anthony, and sometimes they are of his own doing.  I give Anthony a hug every time I put him to bed, so he expects that as well, and I don't dare break the routine.  But something as simple as expecting to take a shower in the evening when I am not ready (or too tired) to get in the shower with him, can have serious ramifications for us.  So, I do what I can to avoid presenting him with a situation that strays much from what he expects. 

Anthony's communication skills are extremely limited, but one thing he can do is give us an idea of what he wants to eat, if we give him choices.  For example, we show him several breakfast cereals, and he taps on the one he wants. Through this process, we have ascertained that he quite likes Reese's Puffs® cereal.  Recently we were out of that cereal, and Anthony was looking through the cupboard and tapped on one cereal only to realize it wasn't the Reese's Puffs, so he kept looking.  We ultimately had him eat the cereal he tapped, but he clearly wasn't terribly interested in it.

Being the good parents we would like to think we are, we dutifully bought Reese's Puffs for Anthony and looked forward to him enjoying them again.  At breakfast, we opened the cabinet door expecting Anthony to look through the cereal boxes.  It was behind others, so we cleared away the ones in front.  However, as we were doing that, he immediately reached for a bag of caramel chocolate popcorn that his grandmother bought for him as an Easter treat.  We laughed and tried to tell him that, no, popcorn is not for breakfast, while proffering him his heretofore favorite meal.  He pushed away the cereal box and continued tapping the popcorn.  As keeping Anthony from getting upset is a top priority for us, we determined that caramel chocolate popcorn would indeed be an acceptable breakfast for one day.  We then took steps to put it out of his sight.