Trip to the Zoo

Spent the day yesterday at the Zoo with Sebastian's best friend John and his mom. Despite the drizzle and two worn out momma we had a good time. As usual , when the weather is less then perfect the Zoo is pretty much empty. Something amazing happened there, the boys played on a playground set while the momma's sat on a bench , snacked and talked !!! Now this may be an everyday occurrence to some people but when you have two special needs kids who require nearly constant assistance of some sort this is a wonderful moment. We watched in amazement (and some moments sheer terror) as our boys climbed up little ladders and slid down slides on their own .

I am particularly proud of John climbing up the little three rung ladder behind Sebastian , it was the first time and despite the urge to lunge across the playground and pull him to safety of solid ground his momma just quietly walked nearby him in case he slipped or needed help , all without him ever seeing her.

At the Zoo we managed sit within touching distance of an amazing Bengal tiger who constant lip licking kept us in check of where we sat on the food chain... thank goodness for that insanely thick glass between us.

I love when there are nice, cool days and we can spend most of the day outdoors, Sebastian needs to run and go-go-go so much that he just goes slightly bonkers when he is cooped up , of course who doesn't ?

Steroids are DONE and my boy is back !!

Finally , finally , finally got my son back !! The steroids are totally out of his system and Sebastian is back to his normal happy go lucky self !! I am so grateful, I missed him so much , it was almost as if I had a totally different child while he was one the steroids, you can tell he is relieved to be off of them too.

We have been busy around here lately, back tracking just a bit , we have been to Thunder Over Louisville, Pegasus Parade Preview, The Zoo a few times ,saw Everclear and Gavin DeGraw in concert and not too mention visited a ton of parks.

Sebastian did surprisingly well at Thunder, I thought he may be scared of the fireworks , he just named the colors and informed me they " Go boom" and "They sparkle". He spent the entire 30 mintues in my arms and wrapped in his blanket but otherwise didn't seem all that phased. He did get a bit irked when they played a snippet of his favorite Jason Mraz song "I'm Yours" ( Yeah the one that is played a million times a day everywhere you go !) and then went into another song, he wanted to hear the whole thing.

At the Pegasus Parade Preview Sebastian wore a plastic pith helmet ( he usually loathes hats) around while visiting all the floats and balloons then ended his evening dancing for about 30 minutes straight to a dance groups music while they performed, totally upstaging them !

We have hit quite a few local parks since the weather has been nice , suddenly Sebastian LOVES to swing . He will swing as long as you will push him , after the 45 minute gig I did last week I realized it is time to really work on teaching him to swing himself, phew !

Headed to the Waterfront for a concert which is poured down rain the first 20 minutes of , we hid under neither the overpass with all the sane people until it stopped then joined all the happy , rain soaked people to enjoy the concert a bit closer. After Everclear played we were lucky enough to get to meet them and get autographs from everyone. Once we were done meeting them we watched a few moments of Gavin DeGraw , who I have to admit sounds pretty dang good live ! I have heard him on the radio and always thought his stuff was okay , a pleasant background filler , if you will , but live I actually enjoyed it.

Yesterday we spent most of the day at the Zoo watching all the animals, including Sebastian's current favorite , the lemurs, lol.

Last week we *FINALLY* got the paper work back from the local school district making official what we already knew ... Sebastian has mild autism. I am excited now we have a "name" for it so we can go about looking into local services to help us deal with it . We are fortunate because unlike many dealing with autism , Sebastian's symptoms are not major . Infact, many people just meeting him would just pass him off as a silly or odd child and most people are perplexed Sebastian would be considered to have autism. Now we will head to some local places for more in depth studies , I am thinking in the end we will end up with an Asperger's label as well. We are okay with all it though , like I said , in our case , we are blessed in the fact it is only mild and I honestly feel that with services Sebastian will be able to have a totally "normal" productive life.