I’m Thankful For When My Special Needs Son Surprises Me and For Disney Pixar

When I started this website, I’d already gotten through too-often shattered dreams and years and years of wanting to have a baby. When I started Finding Ninee, I’d already had my baby. Maybe this would be a different website or a different story, had I started it in younger years. Maybe it would be about pregnancy loss, expectations, or something about living skanky back in the 80’s.

Sometimes, I know, it’s also about all of those things. But today, it’s about the special needs little boy that I love now. Today. It’s about life lived here, shattered expectations, and gigantic thankfulness for what I have. This life, and this boy of mine. It’s about today.

Before having my son, I wanted nothing more than to raise a tiny human into a not-so-tiny-human and to teach him/her a love of life, of words, of magic, and of kindness. I dreamed of playing catch, french braids, swimming, the telling of and listening to stories, and teaching my own tiny person to whistle using only their lips and a few blades of woven grass grown from the springtime sunshine.

Back then, when I wasn’t yet a parent and knew everything about parenting, I knew that I’d have a child who would grow up to love words as much as I do. After all, I have loved words since the age of three, when I brought home my first Froggie Does (Something) book from my Montessori preschool. I wanted the same for my son or daughter.

I ended up being blessed with a little boy who not so much loves his words. I ended up with the kid who needs endless help in pronouncing them, embracing them, and sometimes, even acknowledging their existence.

I ended up with an awesome human who sometimes hates words.

He wants to love them, I know, because he understands their power and usefulness and he understands all of the very best of things about them but he and the rest of us do not understand why he cannot say them.

Words are hard for him. They suck for him. They are clear in his head and in his ears and yet they come out twisted and broken from his mouth. He knows what he wants to say and he wants to say it.

But he often can’t.

Sometimes, though, he surprises me.  Today he surprised me.

When my husband and I met, we both loved movies. A perfect date night was sitting at one of our apartments with take-out, a few beers or a bottle of wine, and a great movie. When our son was born, my husband couldn’t wait for the day that Tucker, too, would love movies.

It became evident early on that he may never have the attention span to love them the way that we did, and we stopped watching them together, focusing instead on other things.

One day, a few years ago, we tried. We took Tucker to see Cars 2 I think, and left after 10 minutes, defeated.

He spent the entire time crawling on the disgusting floor, looking at the exit lights. We never did use that refund.

Today, though, I’m thankful for Disney Pixar and Big Hero 6 because we watched it, and he said in the way that he does “That was incredible!” when it was over.

Here’s to progress and ABA.

Even more than movies, Tucker surprises me with a knowledge of words and song to the point where he knows the mini-climax in a tune.

He makes me thankful and he makes me realize that while I know a lot about my little boy, there are so many things that I’m still learning.

Things like that he knows when to put his arms up in the middle of a song. And that, my friends, is a little bit life changing.

It’s hard to hear the music here, but he’s dancing to “You’ve Got To Move It Move It” from Madagascar. And? He totally nailed the ending.  See for yourself.  It’s 16 seconds so not exactly a commitment.

This has been a thankful post that I actually wrote for last week’s thankful but somebody *cough* closed the linkie early so… um, yeah… which maybe means that it’ll be the first time ever that I do two in one weekend. I know!

Your hosts: A Fly on our (Chicken Coop) Wall, Amycake and the Dude, Considerings, Finding Ninee, Getting Literal, I Want Backsies, Mother of Imperfection, Rewritten, Thankful Me, The Wakefield Doctrine

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