Memorial Day weekend - swimming!

We visited my SIL for Memorial Day weekend, and they have a pool so that is pretty much where the boys wanted to spend all their time. They LOVE the water, and as Barbara has noted, pool time is therapeutic. After repeated field testing of this hypothesis, my boys concur :).

Look at those smiles!!




Last year, Bitty didn't venture past the steps at the edge of the pool. This year, he got brave and did more exploring :).


He even let dh give him a ride, swimming all around the pool!



Cuddlebug and Bearhug practiced their swimming skills - they continue to improve! If you can't tell them apart, Bearhug is wearing blue swim trunks, Cuddlebug red.






They also had fun playing with the huge inner-tube :).




Little Bitty had a smaller floatie. At first, he wasn't interested because it was a turtle, but after much discussion I was able to convince him it was actually a green duck (ducks, after all, are one of his favorite animals!). :)




Looking forward to next time!

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Autism and Empathy blog

Rachel recently started a new blog devoted to the topic of Autism and Empathy, with the purpose to "undo the myths about autism and empathy that have stigmatized autistic people for so long." (quoting from her blog description)

I think it's a fantastic idea and am happy to have one of my earlier posts shared there, "Lullaby by Bearhug: Goodnight Baby" about a sweet "brotherly love" moment :).

Go check it out!

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Spring break

From April... we did our annual road trip to visit the grandparents :).

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Cuddlebug and Bitty took turns pulling each other in the wheelbarrow...




Bitty got quite a workout




More "heavy work," Bitty had fun loading and unloading the wagon with firewood.





At the park... traffic jam on the slide :)




Bitty asked me to take this picture, he loved the "triangles."



When you don't have water balloons on hand, you have to improvise... (yep, that's a plastic shopping bag filled with water. pretty sure it would qualify as a "redneck water balloon" haha)



Jump!



I love his expression in this one, he loves to jump in the water :)



Taken at the zoo... Cuddlebug stretching to give Bearhug "rabbit ears" LOL



Bearhug wasted no time returning the "favor" :)



Why walk when Grandma will give you a ride?



Highlight of the zoo - feeding the ducks and catfish...



...and themselves :) (hey, we have to make sure it tastes good, right?)




He looks so calm here, you'd never know that just a few minutes earlier he was in stubborn / bossy mode insisting that we not stop at the park and then when we did, trying to get a guy nearby to stop flying his kite. Luckily it was windy and we were far enough that that the guy couldn't hear him yelling, "you DONE fwying dat kite?! You aww-done! No more kite, aww-done wif dat KITE!" (not sure why he didn't like the kite). Finally he decided to swing and he loves that so it helped him relax :).



A little sprinkler fun in the driveway





And bowling... Bitty insisted on filling the entire area with bowling balls, even though we obviously didn't need that many.



Yes, that's tape on Cuddlebug's brand-new glasses, they broke while we were out of town and couldn't be repaired so we had to improvise until we got home and could get them replaced.



Bearhug made some great shots!



It was a fun and busy week! We spent a lot of time just hanging out playing in the yard, and otherwise went to mostly places that are already familiar to the boys. The bowling place was new, but was pretty much empty so that helped :). They had a laser-tag game there too that I played with Bearhug and Cuddlebug (they totally beat me, of course). It was lots of fun, and great family time :).

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The flowers are thirsty

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Palkia strikes again

In today's news... traffic came to a halt this afternoon when a sudden Pokemon battle in the middle of the Island of Sodor made a local bridge impassable.



The citizens of Sodor were frightened but no one was harmed in the incident, other than Pikachu being a bit dazed. He was airlifted to the nearest Pokemon Center and is doing fine.

The city remains under an electrical-storm watch as Palkia is still in the area, on the lookout for more formidable foes.

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Kirby

A while back I posted about how Bitty gave himself the nickname "Spunk."

Well, soon after that, he decided his new nickname would be "Kirby."

As in, this guy:



From this game:



What could be better for a guy who loved pink and video games?

So for months his nickname has been Kirby. Until just recently.

He woke me up one Saturday morning, waving his pink pinewood derby car in front of my face.

"I don' WANT da pink one, I wan'da RED one. Pink iss not my fay-brit cuh-wer. My fay-brit cuh-wer iss RREEEDDD!!!!!"

And on and on. I rolled over and told him to go ask Cuddlebug if he could play with his (red) car.

This was about the same time he started reading Olivia.

"Oh-wivia's fay-brit cuh-wer iss RED!"



He tried to get me to start calling him "Olivia" instead of "Kirby."

Dude.

That's where I draw. the. line.

I refused. He eventually gave up and let me call him by his real name for once.

The other day he called himself Kirby again.

I'm loving this continually expanding pretend play thing he's got going on, I really am. But some days I can't keep up! ;)

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