What a day...

Well today has really been a challenging "day in the life of autism." Some days I think we've got it all under control, but today was definitely not one of those days.
Every morning when I drop Waylon off, I make a point to make eye contact with him and say, "bye-bye." And he usually echos "bye-bye" before I leave. Today was his first day back at Parker after the Thanksgiving break. He covered his eyes and walked in the school backwards and refused to repeat "bye-bye" back to me. After I tried for quite a while I was sure the teacher was ready for me to give up and leave so they could get on with their routine, so I did. But it was a little disheartening.
His note said he didn't work very well at school today, but he was happy to see me when I picked him up, and was even pretty well behaved this afternoon. I caught him multiple times messing with the Christmas tree ornaments, but he wasn't just being ornery. He was sorting them out onto different branches- shiny bulbs on one branch, dull bulbs on the other.
Later, he started getting out shirts to put on (this has been a new thing for him lately.) By the end of the afternoon he had put on five long-sleeved shirts all by himself. He looked like a marshmallow.
He spent a lot of time by himself, (I was trying to get homework done) and of course he pooped in his pants while he was alone in his room. (But just once!)
The post-Smokeoff family get-together was tonight at Pizza Hut, and I decided he wasn't going to wear five shirts to town. He didn't go down without a pretty good fight. I got the shirts off of him, but as soon as I turned around he was putting them back on. Finally, we bargained on a long sleeved flannel shirt and a sweater over that. Then of course, when we were ready to leave he refused to wear his coat. So we let him go with the jacket that he loves. (I'm sure he was warm enough.) He fell asleep on the way into town so we were able to sneak past the claw machine on the way into Pizza Hut (That was God doing us a favor- the claw machine is our biggest nightmare.)
He woke up in Pizza Hut, but spent most of the time underneath the table, of course until he realized the door to the party room was open and he could jet out of there at lightning speed. So after we chased him down a few times (thank the Lord he didn't make it into the parking lot) we decided it was time to go. We snuck by the claw machine again successfully as we headed out the door.
When we got home we got him out of the jacket, but he crashed in his flannel shirt and sweater after spending a little time lining up cars on the coffee table.
Hopefully he doesn't want to wear it to school in the morning.

Waylon's line of vehicles tonight- notice that they
are in order of color: one red, one tan, three blue.