Moving blog to Wordpress.com

I am moving this blog over to Wordpress.com because they have Facebook integration and since this site is a google site, they only integrate with Google+ which I currently do not use. So please go to http://tracyautismblog.wordpress.com to follow me there. Thanks!

Zach's stance on marriage

So the other day I asked Zach if he thought he was ever going to get married. Now to understand Zach you must know that anything you ask him that requires an intelligent response means that you must have patience while he is answering. He has such trouble getting his thoughts out of his head and gets frustrated. He swallows hard and tries to avoid the question by saying "I don't know mom." which used to detour me but not any more. So after a few minutes of this swallowing activity and stammering he said,"are kids allowed at weddings?"

Now if you know Zach you know that he cannot stand kids crying or even worse grown ups near by causing the crying (I.e., spanking them) and so he would prefer that wherever he went, there were no crying children lol.

I said "Yes, kids are allowed." and he immediately said "Um no, they might interrupt."

I said,"Ok you don't have to have kids at your wedding. So you want to get married then?"

He said "Yep" then paused for 30 seconds while he pondered and said "Do we get to stay here with you?"

Hahaha I love that kid!

Cap and Gown order problems with Jostens!!

So this is all I needed! I am told that our order from Jostens.com for Zach's cap and gown that we made in February isn't going to include 25 announcements (it said it did when we ordered it). Cliff said the man he spoke to on the phone said if we want those it will take another 2 weeks and cost extra! Also the cap and gown won't be delivered to the school until May! What if it doesn't fit or something is wrong with it? He graduates June 2nd!

What is wrong with these people? I emailed the company and told them this was bad business practices to not only email order confirmation without the parts ordered (just send email that had cost, no listing of cap, gown, or announcements) but also it didn't tell us it wasn't going to be delivered to our house or the school so after 6 weeks we had to call them to find out where it was. But when we called 4 weeks ago they told us that the invitations would be at the school in April! And today we are told the invitations were not on the order? Wtf?

----Later note----
So the email I sent to the company got some attention! They wanted to make the order right and wanted our phone number. That was this morning and no phone call yet!

Graduation coming up!

I can't believe my little baby is 18 and will be graduating on June 2nd this year! What are we going to do? Where is he going to go? (I.e., School? Work? Both?)

We have been to some meetings and we have tons of brochures and we have gone on one college tour, which was a waste of time (they wanted to teach him how to apply for a job, he is already getting this training at school!) I might add that I am very happy with the program at Martin H.S.. They have very highly skilled people who genuinely want the best for your kid. Rare!

So this past weekend Zach tells me he was bullied at school. This is the first I have heard about him ever being bullied. He said two boys told him that he would not be graduating this year and said "ha ha" and kept bugging him. We asked if he told the teacher and he said yes but I guess it really bothered him. Then we had a little issue with him over Easter where he got overwhelmed with the Easter activities and started to get upset. On our way home from the trip he was looking sad for quite some time and I finally asked him what was wrong. He said in his stammering speech "I'm tired....of being....autistic."

Talk about heart breaking! It was the first time he had ever acknowledged self awareness of his autism. Up until now we weren't sure if he understood. Now we know he has figured it out (or maybe he has always known but just couldn't find a way to tell us). So now it begins, he will figure out that his autism might limit him in some ways, but in other ways he will shine. I pray every day for a cure for autism. I love Zach and accept him but I hate autism and I want there to be a cure so Zach can go on and lead a normal life without social security disability, without living in a assisted living center. I want him to have the joy of being with someone he loves, being married, having children. Right now, he is very far away from any of those things.