unrelated

Hey guys! I decided to start a blog just for fun stuff like links, reviews, things I like etc. Nothing personal or heavy at all. If you wanna follow it you can find it here, if not that's cool too. Thanks for reading and I hope all of you have an absolutely wonderful Holiday Season & New Year!

Christmas Dread

Secret Santa is a pastime that I'd like to keep that way. I've never liked the idea of giving a gift to someone I don't know well or getting a gift from someone who doesn't know me well. Gifts should be personal and special and not something you are required to do.

This brings me to my point. Alden's class does Secret Santa every year. Every year I agonize over what I should get. There's a $5 maximum which even in the junky stores is hard to adhere to since the good stuff is all at least $5 most of the time.

Then there's the whole autism bit, lots of kids with autism are fixated on one thing, or have irrational fears of things, or just plain will not play with certain toys. For instance if you gave Alden a Matchbox car he'd probably set it down, and go get on the computer. He doesn't care about them at all.

I NEVER know what an appropriate toy is for his randomly selected classmate. I end up buying a Batman toy every single year because I'm at a loss for what to get. Some parents don't let their kids play with the "bad guy" action figures, which is stupid, Batman can kick Spiderman's ass just as easily as the Joker's in pretend play (and let's be real DC > Marvel & Batman > Spidey & could totally take him down.)

I have a hard time shopping for people I know and love, so shopping for a random 6 year old kid that I've met once for 5 minutes is impossible.

success!

The Christmas Cut Out Cookies were absolutely delicious. Except for the ones that Alden thought a Sour Skittle should be added to...those were just interesting. haha If you want to try the recipe out you can find it here.

I am so glad that Alden has good teachers who let me know what to send him for his class parties. I'm also really glad he likes these cookies. Good GFCF cookies are hard to come by and a lot of the time they crumble so much you can hardly eat them. I'm very pleased with the turn out of these cookies. We kept some dough for our annual family Christmas Cookie party that my aunt holds every year. I'll update with what the rest of the family thinks of the cookies after that goes down.

excuse me, WHAT did you say?

I have mentioned before that sometimes I have the luxury of briefly forgetting that Alden has autism. This is because he's somewhere in the moderately to high functioning demographic of the spectrum. What I have failed to mention is that sometimes I forget that he's about to be seven years old. His speech is still developing and while he's building a really good vocabulary, he still has a long way to go. Recently he has been surfing the net and getting on YouTube where he's learned some new words & phrases. Sometimes that's a great thing, sometimes it's a not-so-great thing. He's started using words like "stupid", "shut up", "I hate you", "PEWPEWPEW (gun noise) DIE!", and the most strange one "butt-cheese". I have of course been discouraging this language and even giving him some alternatives that get his point across in a nicer way. If you have a child whose autistic qualities are like his you will know that scripting is hardwired into them and once he learns something he WILL NOT forget it. I've been explaining that I'm glad he's learned new words but some words make people sad or angry when they hear them. The other day while sitting around thinking about ways to curb this behavior but not discourage him from picking up new language I started thinking about his age. I sometimes forget that neurotypical children around his age also use those words and usually get into trouble for them as well. It did make me feel slightly better to realize that I'm not the only parent of a child this age dealing with this. As usual I'm also pleased that he is learning language, using it appropriately, and to be frank I'm glad he's using words that kids his age use even if they are rude. Sometimes 7 year olds are rude. We recently acquired an Elf on the Shelf and that has been helping somewhat with the language.

On a much more lovely note we have acquired the ingredients to make gluten free casein free Cut Out Christmas Cookies. This is something I've missed terribly for the past 4 years. Christmas Cookies have always been a huge part of my family's Christmas and not being able to make them with Alden has been sad. I remember the last Christmas we did them he was 2 and he kept shoving his face in the flour, I took a picture & captured it "Tony Montana". If the cookies turn out well I'll link to the recipe in my next blog. Speaking of Christmas I'm almost done shopping. I have just a few more little things to pick up and two more big things to order and I'll be done & ready to start shopping for Alden's birthday.