I never had the kids but have the boobs and the belly ...
Oh, and well done Clod! Can you do my birthday not-cake too? Srsly, you could probably start a business right there!

Looks fantastic! I actually have a Pineapple and a watermelon at home - may pick up some grapes and try to replicate/duplicate your creation.

You are doing an amazing job! Hope all goes well with the surgery.

oh, and what Limey said.

He's a cute kid, Clod. Get the Chloroseptic ready.

Hope the surgery went well.

Surgery went great! They did not, in fact, end up taking out his tonsils, but the surgeon said they just weren't inflamed at all and he couldn't justify it. The adenoids, on the other hand, were large enough to be blocking 50% of his airway, so aside from the infection they were almost certainly interfering with his sleep as well.

Immediate post-surgery was fairly unsettling for me, though. Even with the lightest of anesthesia drugs (which the anesthesiologist was a total dick about, but in the end he agreed not to use the drugs I told him were unsafe for my son, which is all that matters,) he still hadn't woken up an hour after surgery, even with the nurse physically shaking him, and we had to resort to wiping him with a cold wet cloth to force him out of it. At that point he leapt outward in a confused rage, one eye more dilated than the other, drooling profusely, with his head lolling about uncontrollably. But after another half hour of restraining him in my arms and trying to convince him to drink some water, he was finally clear-headed enough to travel to a real room and watch his favorite DVD for another hour with only moderate yelling.

When it was time to go home, I sat in one of their wheelchairs while continuing to restrain him, and a kind nurse wheeled us all the way out to our car, and then helped me force him into his carseat. Halfway home, he threw up all over himself... and from that moment on, he was basically fine. We got home, he calmly changed clothes and ate a big meal, and happily played for the rest of the day. The surgeon called that evening to see how he was doing, and seemed sort of bewildered at my description, especially after seeing how he was in the recovery room. What can I say, he's a kid of extremes.

Less than a week later, we've seen a huge reduction in the OCD behaviors that led us to this point, and he's back up to his peak. I'm very happy with the way everything turned out. Meanwhile, I've compiled another progress video. He's begun teaching himself to play songs on the toy saxophone:

Jeez, what a horrible experience, but I'm glad it all turned out positive. Our kid has had tubes put in twice, and it's been unsettling for me to be in the recovery room when he wakes up, but nothing like what you had to go through. Just 5 minutes or so of inconsolable crying and some minor thrashing around.

I'm glad you are seeing big improvements!

Just had a chance to watch the video. So he's reading some at his 4th birthday? That's pretty impressive. My kids knew their letters before entering kindergarten at age 5, and could read and write their names, but reading for them (and their classmates) wasn't anywhere near that advanced yet. Based on my experience, I think Minifob is almost 2 years ahead of most other kids in reading.

He's looking good in that video. Sitting still and focusing.

Clod, glad to hear everything went well.

your doctor story reminds me of a former cow orker. BIG guy. 6'5" easily 230 lbs of solid muscle. he had to have his knee put back together and because of previous experiences he warned the doc that he needed A LOT of the knock out juice and it could only be a particular type and he absolutely must be restrained otherwise he would have a involuntary violent reaction. He gave the warning, his wife gave the warning, and his mother who is a surgeon gave the warning. They were all ignored of course.

They hit him with the first med and it only made him twitchy and shaky so they gave him a second even though he was begging for them to listen to what they'd been told. When they hit him with the first try he sat straight up hit the doctor breaking his nose. At that point they restrained him and jammed him full of whatever the hell they should have used the first time around and out he went.

the doctor wanted to press charges but the nurses all verified the numerous warnings and requests the doctor had received so it went nowhere.

So glad to hear that Clod. Hope things improve as he heals.

Yeah, but the funny thing is, for a lot of kids on the spectrum, reading early is actually expected. He knew all his letters, upper and lower case, and the (multiple) sounds they made, at 18 months. I want to say more than half of the kids on my local biomedical messageboard were starting to read at 3. Yet at the same time, he can't write any of his letters, or shapes, or anything. The only thing he can do with a crayon is imitate a rough closed-circle shape. That's more than 2 years behind where he ought to be.

Anyway, the reading (and the saxophone playing, for that matter) are both nice, but for him, the spontaneous commenting on what he sees in the pictures is far, far more impressive.

Clod - what terrifying experiences for you and him. Really glad you're out the other side of that, and seeing such great positive results so soon!

Clod, fwiw, that's my kids too. especially Thor and Hebe a bit. reading early, drawing/writing skills of a drunken sloth.

That play video -with the train track- struck me as a regular 4yo. nothing seemed odd. WHat you're doing is working.....

We're pretty happy with the results for him so far. :) Still not getting a lot out of Minifobette, sadly. Round after round of antibiotics, and the stool tests keep coming back just riddled with bacteria. She does better when she's on them, but we always lose it again when she goes off them. At this point I think we're going to change tack and focus on aggressively addressing her immune system instead, in the hopes that if we fix that she can kill the infections off herself. But that might translate into a weekly needle in the arm, which would suck. We'll see...

Craziest fucking thing happened today.

Okay, so, you may recall a bajillion posts ago I talked about how Minifobette couldn't seem to tolerate calcium supplements? Didn't really understand what to do with that information, other than not give her the calcium supplements, so I just sort of shelved it and moved on. Well a couple weeks ago I got hooked up with a series of research papers on the apparent subgroup of autistic kids who can't process calcium, the biological mechanics behind it and the typical symptoms and all that jazz. Long story short, the treatment is high-dose vitamin K, plus a few other things you're supposed to do alongside the K to mitigate some side effects.

So we started her on the K, and saw big improvements in both speech and awareness. Speech therapist was very impressed with the change. Hooray! But I was waffling on the necessity of the supporting supplements. They're just supporting, right? But two people on the K treatment discussion board stressed that if nothing else, you absolutely need to be doing this electrolyte drink (made from salt and potassium chloride; basically homemade Gatorade without the colors and sugars) alongside the K, because otherwise it will dehydrate the shit out of you and/or cause weird water retention problems. But Minifobette is really, really picky about her drinks, and I was unconvinced I could get her to drink it anyway. She was drinking plenty of plain water, I rationalized, and I just never got around to ordering the container of potassium chloride.

So today, we went to our local pool, and while we've been several times already this summer, this time the kids got into this whole drinking/spitting game with the pool water. Both of them had to have swallowed at least a quart, despite me telling them repeatedly to cut it out. And as we're leaving, Minifobette is just talking up a storm, doing fucking fantastic. They're always happy after a couple hours of water exhaustion, but this was different.

After we got home she peed a ton, like 3 or 4 diapers bursting at the seams. And still more talking. Curiouser and curiouser. This continued to nag at me, until tiny hints of memories and seemingly useless facts started to coagulate. It couldn't possibly be! But it is:

Last year, the district converted all our pools to saltwater. A search of our MUD website confirms that our saltwater pools are salinated with the more expensive, but higher-quality chemical combination of... magnesium and potassium chloride. My daughter guzzled therapeutic pool water.

That's bizarre. Then again, so is your life.:)