Kick Me While I'm Down

Thirty-eight weeks pregnant and a swift kick to the belly is how my day got started this morning. Not the best way to kick off a positive day. Get it? Kick. Off. Nevermind....

Actually, I was not down either. I was sitting on the side of the bed trying to wake Reiss by patting his bottom. As soon as he woke, he hauled off and kicked me and it just so happened to hit the big fat target called my baby bump, which is more like a baby whale. Typically, I am pretty quick to react and can fend off his occasional hits or kicks but they usually come at a time when he is being placed in timeout and I am more conscious to what may be coming. This kick was his first action of the morning and as soon as his eyes opened. He was not in trouble at the time or being hauled off to a timeout - just annoyed apparently, with his bottom being patted or by being woken up or annoyed that it was me waking him and not James or who knows what. You just never know. The kick caught me by surprise.

He has been a little "off" for the last two weeks anyway, so this was just icing on the cake. This, too, shall pass and hopefully, I will not have to endure any kicks to the belly once there is an agonizing c-section incision to contend with as well.

Kicking must have been his thing for the morning because he then proceeded to try to hit (and missed) the director of his school at drop-off as she tried to get him out of my SUV. He was preoccupied with the air vents in the back of the console and clearly did not want to exit the vehicle. Once out of the SUV, he then hauled off and kicked her too.

I do not tell people things like this to publicly criticize my own child but rather, to demonstrate how autism can facilitate inappropriate responses from the child involved. I do not condone him kicking and am certainly embarrassed by it, but I also do not use autism as an excuse. Yes, autism is what causes the inappropriate responses, including those physical ones, but it does not get him out of disciplinary consequences when he uses such a means to react. Does that make sense? Long story short, yes, he is being a brat and it is because of the autism but we do not let it slide when he does such things.

In other news, as if we did not already have enough reasons to believe our neighbor is an oddball, we got a knock on the door this evening by a local policeman with quite a story to tell. Without going into major details, we now have even more reason to consider our neighbor a nut job and it involves delusional behavior, a physical altercation, and our neighbor's beliefs that some local teenagers are selling secrets to radical Muslims. I knew he was weird.

The cop came knocking on our door because he could not get anyone next door to answer even though he saw someone walking around inside. Now, this neighbor has lived here for over five years and I can honestly say that I can probably count on one hand, with a finger or two leftover, how many times I have physically seen his son who lives there with him. Supposedly, the son has a disability from a work-related accident and cannot work. There must be something else going on as well though, and I mean something mental. The guy can walk so it seems odd that in that amount of time he has been outside or left the house so few times.

Whatever....I just hope to goodness that they keep their freaky-dink stuff to themselves. Coming near my kids with their weirdness would let loose a fury that I do not want to consider right now, considering my current physical condition. Or ever, for that matter.