First Impressions

Our aspie started a new school this Wednesday.  It's a wonderful program in our area that incorporates a few autistic kiddos with "neuro-typical" kids in a structured, small classroom environment forcing interaction.  The goal is for the children with autism to socialize with all the other kids to prep them for attending mainstream school in the year to follow.  While at school, they incorporate OT and speech therapy as well as your normal pre-school things like writing, arts and crafts, etc.  We were extremely happy that there was a spot for our aspie and really hopeful that he was going to like his "new" school.  Of course, with a new school come new friends, new parents and a new teacher so this mom was dead set on making a great first impression.  I didn't want their first impression to be, "oh, here comes the family of crazies" like I feel that happens so many times when we go places visiting, or when we go to playground, or the when we go to our other school with the crying, screaming, yelling, running away, and all the other random acts of looneyness.  So when day one went great, without a hitch, with my little man walking in pretty excited and coming out telling me this was his favorite new school because it was very quiet ,I thought we were in the clear.  And then came day two.

On day two of our new school routine, my aspie was excited to go back.  He wanted to see his new teacher and see what new things they were going to do that day.  All went well for the drop off and I couldn't be more relieved.  But when it came time for pick-up, all hell broke loose, and our true crazy colors were exposed.  I had the baby with me, and since it was such a beautiful day, I got him out of the car to do a little running around while we waited for our aspie to emerge from the door.  The baby was so excited to see his brother that he stood next to me holding my hand, while I was talking to another mom.  In the back of my head, a little alarm was going off that I kept ignoring.  Warning, Warning, this is going too well.....something nuts is about to occur.  Warning, Warning...my head was saying and I just kept shaking it off, hoping that we have turned over a new leaf and we have entered in the new arena of normalville.  Well, I probably should have listened to the alarm. 

Aspie came out from behind the door happy to see us.  He rushed up giving me a hug, telling me he had another great day.  The baby hugged his brother so hard, happy to see him while aspie stood there looking annoyed his brother was touching him, but allowing him to do so at the same time.  Aspie took off for the car which was a pretty good jaunt away and baby and I were following behind.  About half way to the car, the baby realized that we were about to get back into the car, which was not what he wanted to do.  Apparently, he wanted to play outside because he started to whine and then cry, saying  "NO CAR!  NO CAR!"  When I was just about to grab the baby to prevent a tantrum from occurring, I heard my aspie say, "Mommy I need to go pee in the grass."  Oh no, I knew what this meant.  My aspie doesn't really ask to go pee, when he says those words that means he is going at that moment.  And sure enough, when I turned around, there was my aspie with his pants and underwear around his ankles, wee-wee towards everyone, peeing in that high arc fashion he does right into the grass in the front of the preschool.  At that same moment, baby went into full on rolling and screaming, terrible-two style tantrum that was drawing the attention towards us and my peeing aspie.  I didn't know what direction to head in first.  Screaming baby or peeing aspie, so for a few seconds I stood there like a bump on a pickle in a panic moment.  After I came too, I grabbed the baby and tried to block the non-block able view of my aspie seemingly never ending pee until he was done.  When he was done, I kept telling my aspie to pull up his pants as I headed to put the baby in the car.  Of course, baby was in full on crazy, hitting me on the head with his bottle.  This action caused for my sunglasses to fly off my head right into the middle of the road.  My aspie, felling bad for my glasses, wobbled into the middle of the road, with pants still around his ankles trying to rescue my now broken glasses, blocking leaving traffic from the school.  As I hurried up and threw the baby in the car, I ran over to my aspie picked him up with pants still down and threw him in the car.  As I walked back to the car, the first car that had stopped for my aspie was still stopped waiting for me to pick up my glasses.  The dad  rolled down his window and said, "Looks like your glasses are broke," with a big smile on his face.  "Guess so," I relied with probably a crazed look on my face.  I collected my glasses, waved to the line of traffic waiting on me and causally walked to car to buckle up the crew and to get out of there as fast as possible.  Well, it only took two days for our cover to be blow and for our new school to be introduced to the "house of crazies."  I think next time, I will not try so hard for the first impression.  Instead, I am going to have t-shirts made saying, "Family of Loons, have cameras ready, you will not be disappointed!"