After a wonderful visit yesterday with family that I haven't seen in years, I was on cloud nine. Our boys don't have friends and there aren't any boys around us that are their ages so you can imagine how happy I was to have my aunt and cousin and her family come to visit. Two of her children are roughly my boys' age and they played so well together! It wasn't like going to the playground and watching my kids get pushed around by the other kids for being different - it was pure fun... the way kids are supposed to play. I was able to show my family our farm and do one of my favorite things - cook for them. I'm sorry, I must pat myself on the back a little here, but I am a pretty good cook. And I love to do it. Sure sometimes,
usually when I'm cooking for other people, things don't turn out just the way I wanted but every time is a learning experience and I get better with each mistake. We had roasted chicken (that we raised and butchered ourselves), potato salad (using potatoes, chives, and parsley from our garden and my homemade mayo), a salad (sadly I had to buy the ingredients as we didn't have any in the garden yet - but I bought them at the local farmer's market), homemade apple pie (using apple pie filling that I made from our apples and canned myself. The crust was made using lard from our pigs.) and homemade ice cream (using raw cow's milk and eggs - from our hens of course). Everything tasted fabulous!
Then today, Tyler volunteered to get the mail. He ran back into the house, practically jumping with joy, and exclaimed, "It says 'Tyler Dickson'!" Sure enough he had received a package. (My children have inherited my love of the postal service - we all love to get mail/packages.) To backtrack: I recently reconnected with an acquaintance from high school on Facebook (it's been 17 years). After previewing my profile and subsequently seeing my blog, she sent me a message saying how excited her husband was to find someone else who shares a passion for electric poles. (giggle) She mentioned that her husband was probably somewhere on the spectrum and after reading about
Tyler's obsession, he wanted to send him a book. That was what arrived today. Upon opening it, he did not react like most children would at the sight of a book, he was intrigued and curious. I tried to explain it and show him a few pages but after seeing a couple of the pictures, he took the book and set about to reading. I gave him a couple of minutes before I went looking for him and I found him like this:
He was actually reading! He has never shown so much interest in a book! And here it was, a book about something that he is fascinated with, and he was sounding out words and reading on his own. This lasted maybe 20-30 minutes but that is infinitely more than he's done before. I was almost in tears! Who knew that clicking a simple "Add Friend" button would lead to that?
