You've Had a Birthday

What a year its been for this guy! In the last year, Kent has been diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, and dysgraphia, has had some major diet changes due to constant stomach and headaches, gotten rid of most of his stuff to move into our travel trailer, lived in 3 different states (in one of them two different times), made friends with cousins, become obsessed with Minecraft, Sonic, and Pokemon, had his bike stolen and replaced, homeschooled, and learned and grown in many many many different ways. 

Jacob and I have had to open our minds to a new way of thinking and parenting and teaching where he is concerned which has been really good and really hard.

We love Kent so much and love all the things about him. 

He is so strong physically and mentally. He is extremely determined and even though in general its hard for him to notice others feelings and he doesn't the typical way to social things, I have found his boldness and directness in social situations to be supremely comforting and useful. 

One quick story about Kent. I already posted about my disaster of a birthday, but there was something about it that I loved. Because of the dark mood I was in all day, my family mostly just tried to go around me and give me space, and I felt lonely and sad. But Kent didn't. It was probably the normal thing to do to leave someone alone when they are highly reactive and prone to tears, but Kent kept coming to me and telling me he loved me or doing small things to show he cared. It wasn't big, but it was what my lonely heart needed that day and it was something only my autistic son could give me. 

Here is Kent's traditional giant cookie with a few modifications this year. Dairy free, sugar free and gluten free. It's hard to make desserts with those requirements, but we managed it! We had to make it at a friends house since our oven in the trailer works so poorly. (We actually use our oven as a storage space.)

 Kent's 9 year old birthday interview:

1. What is your favorite color? Orange, you already know that.

2. What is your favorite thing to do? Invent, or hug you

3. What is your favorite toy? Probably Lucky or my superman blanket.

4. What do you want to be when you grow up? Everyone knows that I want to be an inventor.

5. What is your favorite food? My favorite food? I have a lot of favorite foods. One of them is eggs and bacon, one of them is burgers. 

6. Who do you like to spend time with? Um...I like to spend time with my family sometimes, sometimes I don’t like to spend time with anyone. Most of the time I like to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa.

7. What do you do really well? Everyone knows what I do really well. Invent.

8. What makes you laugh? Not really anything. 

9. What is your favorite time of day? Everyone knows it’s after lunch.

10. Who is your best friend? My best friend is someone we moved away from. Remember, I think his name was Rylan. I don’t really have any friends now.

11. What do you like to do with your family? Um...I like to play games and I like to play games. 

12. What do you love to learn about? Um…programming. I don’t actually know because I know all I need to know about programming to be able to program a robot. I can program a sprite and I can make my own blocks that I can make do whatever I want. 

13. Where do you like to go? Arizona, Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

14. What is your favorite book? I don’t have one, I have like 10 million. The only ones that aren’t my favorites are the ones I don’t like. I either don’t like them or they are my favorites. I like that robot book where they build giant robots, Monster Mayhem...Keeper of the Lost Cities. All the books in Keeper of the Lost Cities. 

15. What are you afraid of? NOTHING!

16. What is your favorite animal? Dog, tiger. My favorite breed of dog is a mutt. It's a bunch of breeds mixed together.

17. What is your favorite snack? Probably Larabar or pistachios.

18. What is your favorite song? Everyone knows my favorite song is Christmas Bells.

19. What is your favorite game? Sorry

20. What do you like to sleep with at night? Lucky and my superman blanket and my heavy blanket. 

21. Is there anything else you want to tell me about you? Um...I don’t know, that I like to sneak and invent. I like to invent. So one time I invented a game where it's like a soccer game where you have to be the first to get to the end and when you get to the end you have to stop the other people from getting to the end. You are a little straw thing and once you get to the end you have to roll a dice, so you roll a dice to move, and when you get to the end  you roll a dice when someone is close enough to get onto the win place and if you roll higher than them then they can’t move and if they roll the same as you or higher then they get to go. I want to invent a super cool robot that can shoot bolts of electricity out of its hands like lasers and it has flashlights for eyes and it can turn on the flashlights when it's dark. And I know how to program it and I can program it with scratch and Dad thinks it's impossible but I believe it's possible. I want to also make it so that it has rockets on its feet so it can fly. And I also want to make a bunch of them and sell some of them so I can get lots of money and some of them will be tiny and some of them will be huge and some of them will be just the right size for me. And it will be remote controlled. That’s the part that Dad thinks will be especially impossible but its not, especially with Scratch. And I can create my own blocks and that is what will make it even easier because I can program Scratch with Scratch. And I’m going to make the coolest robots in the world!!!