Thomas the Tank Engine and lots of Friends

Eli has been having a good time lately watching "Thomas and Friends" on YouTube. He can do this pretty independently once I set him up. I just make sure I am in the room and that I can hear it, to make sure all the things he watches are appropriate. Believe it or not, there are people who think it is funny to post videos of the toy trains bursting into flames. Most of the videos we find are made by children and are completely child friendly. Watching other children play with and make up stories for their trains on YouTube has inspired lots of train playing in our house lately.

This has made me realize that we sure do have lots of the suckers in our home. There are 4 of the plastic battery operated trains, (Skarloey, Molly, Emily, Duck.) They have their own plastic track. There are also wooden trains, which include his first train, a Thomas that he got on his 2nd birthday. They have two tracks, (generic brands,) with more pieces than I care to count. There is also one small plastic track for the die cast trains. There are about twice as many die cast trains as there are wooden trains. That makes a lot of friends.

These toys really are not that cheap, and we were at the time trying to get through college while raising our boy with autism. Recently when I was trying to put my head around why we have so many, I realized that for awhile there, those trains were all Eli really cared about. He did not care a great deal about playing games with us or getting hugs. He did not care about Daddy coming home from work. He didn't really get excited over anything like that, but he sure got excited about looking at trains at the toy store and picking out one to take home. If the new train was not electric, it would also have a bath with him that night and go to bed with him. Although he was not equipped at the time to understand social things, Thomas trains made sense to him and gave him comfort. His play with them has evolved as he has grown in understanding of the world. Now as a five year old, he makes up simple conversations and stories to play out with his trains. He asks me, "Play with me, mom?" And my job is to "be" a train and play out his script with him. :)

Eli is 5!

After having a bit of technical difficulties, it is so great to be able to post a couple of pictures of Eli's birthday from earlier this month. He was so excited about his birthday this year. I wrote it on the calendar for him, and he showed everyone that came to the house his birthday on the calendar.

Eli read a book about Thomas the Tank Engine's birthday about a week before his. He decided that because Thomas had balloons and silly hats for his birthday party, that he needed them for his birthday party, too.

The desserts we have for birthdays at our house always require a bit of planning. Usually we avoid sugar for him like the plague, because his stomach is so sensitive to it. For birthdays among the three of us, however, we make an exception for small portions of the birthday treats for him. They are always GF/CF, of course.

If you were looking at his cake closer and right-side up, you would see it is a homemade cake with a simple glaze that was baked in pan the shape of a simple train engine. I found the recipe for his cake in my cookbook, "Cooking Free" by Carol Fenster. The recipe is called "Apple Spice Cake." I chose this one because it was lower in sugar than the other recipes I saw. Of course, like always, I made it my own way by eliminating walnuts and raisins and adding a small can of crushed pineapple. EVERYONE complimented us on the cake, not just my sister in law with celiac! It was moist and yummy! We served it with Bryer's all natural vanilla ice cream and we had a small serving of Berried Treasure sorbet from Ben and Jerry's for Eli.

Another fun thing we did for Eli's birthday was take him to the arcade. Yes, that was major over-stimulation, (he was jumping up and down excited!) but he had a blast and had no melt downs. Here's a pic of his dad helping him play skee ball for the first time. We played everything, even air hockey, (where he would score on himself and then say, "I did it!") Near the end he had singled out the racing games as his favorite. Some of them were car racing games and some were motorcycle ones. That's my five year old. All boy!

Eli's birthday was a reflective time for me. When my husband and I got married, we figured that by the time we had a five year old we would probably live far away from our college town, own a house, and have more than one child. In our family we are constantly reminded that life simply does not always happen the way we plan it, and it is ok. Life is much more like a journey than it is a destination, and we have so much joy in that journey together!

Speech Progress!

Autism causes caused developmental delay that often severely tampers with speech development. Our son not only has autism, (inherited from the family,) he also has additional issues with speech. (Also inherited from the family.) He has had many "Eli" words for many of his favorite things for a long time. For example, "Go-Go" was Gordon the train from Thomas and Friends for quite a while. I just had to write a little post to say that we have had some things going for us in the speech department lately.

Eli's doctor has put him on a pretty high dosage of vitamin E, which of course he monitors. He said that it helped with speech development. Also, at Eli's new autism preschool he receives significantly more speech therapy than he used to. (Next week the speech therapist is even meeting with me to teach me things we can to at home with him. Exciting!) The result of these changes has been just pure awesomeness. Yesterday after some coaching Eli learned how to say "Thomas" correctly. He has always loved Thomas the Tank Engine, but for the longest time he has called him "Boo-Ess," then he was "Mum-Ess." Now at age 4 and 1/2 he can finally call him Thomas! We could not be prouder. Now if I can just get him to stop saying "Bups" for "Grapes."