So I totally thought I’d be writing about Kai losing a tooth over the weekend. I thought I’d say something about how much trouble those teeth had caused us when Kai was a baby—sleepless nights and ear infections and lakes of drool. I thought I’d write about my thoughts on saving the teeth, which would essentially force the adult Kai and Ryan to figure out what to do with them (along with their umbilical cord stumps, every card and letter I’ve ever received ever, and my high school art portfolio) after I die. I figured I’d write about what a Big Kid he was getting to be, what with his tooth-losing and kindergarten-graduating and what-not.
But as the hours of the weekend wore on with no forward movement on the whole tooth situation, I did a little sleuthing on the internet and discovered that it might be weeks before the damn tooth falls out.
So now I have to find something else to write about.
So, you know.
Uh, how’s it going?
:::
Just kidding.
We had an awesome weekend.
On Friday after dinner, I tossed the kids in the stroller and walked the few blocks to the toy store. We had presents to buy for a couple of birthday parties.
When we got there, Kai was immediately sucked into a stack of scooters in boxes.
“Can we get a scooter, please?” he asked.
Before I could even respond, the twee hipster who works there found the display model and Kai was soon zipping through the aisles.
Spoiler alert! I bought him a scooter.
To my credit, I did pretend to deliberate for 10 minutes.
Also to my credit, I bought one for Ryan, too.
But here’s the thing. It was a nice day. For once it was kind of warm, it was sunny. Also, it was Friday, and though my job is “mother,” therefore rendering the concept of Friday meaningless, there’s still a sense of optimism that comes on a Friday afternoon around 5 pm. And then there’s something that happens to me when Kai wants to do something, you know, normal. Like own a goldfish or try gymnastics. It’s hard for me to say no.
We put Kai’s scooter together in the store because Kai wanted to ride it home.
“You have to stay with Mommy,” I told him. “And you have to do what I say.”
“Oh yes,” he said.
“Kai,” I said, “what did I say?”
Kai was practically salivating.
“Tostaywithyouanddowhatyousay.”
I held up my hand and he high-fived me.
On the way home, he fell twice. He caught a sidewalk edge and crashed forward over his handlebar. But he got right back up. I followed close behind.
“Kai,” I said, “Watch out for that family. Slow down. Say ‘excuse me.’ You’re coming up to a street. Stop. STOP!”
Kai followed every direction, if reluctantly, and when we got home, the kids spent an hour cruising up and down the sidewalk. Kai became increasingly confident, leaning into his turns, mastering the foot brake. He started to hone his style, or at least that’s how Scott described it as Kai sped past us crouched low on the scooter. And we passed a mellow spring evening this way, until the shadows got long and we ushered the children inside for bed.
Rainbow rainboots. Fashion over function any day of the week. She gets it from me. Okay, who am I kidding? She gets it from her father.
:::
This weekend underlined the fact that we have been enjoying a period of peace with Kai, a sort of Pax Judy, part of the ebb and flow of a spectrum disorder. Every day his teacher tells me something that Kai said or did that caused everyone’s jaw to drop. Kai tried to cheer up a kid in his class that was melting down. Kai told his substitute special ed teacher that he wanted to do his math himself without her interference.
He’s taking an art class on Saturdays, soccer on Mondays, gymnastics on Fridays. He’s reading at grade level. He’s sleeping through the night. He asks me a ton of questions.
“What’s muchtime?” he asked me today.
“What?” I asked.
“We don’t have muchtime. What’s muchtime?”
“It’s a unit of measurement,” I said, reaching into my butt for this one. “’Much’ refers to quantity, and ‘time’ is time.” I smiled in what I hoped was a helpful way.
So okay, the questions aren’t what a regular six-year-old kid would ask, but they show that he’s figuring things out.
And then there’s the loose teeth.
For months, I’ve been asking him if he has any loose teeth.
“No,” he says. “My teeth are tight.”
He still thinks so, despite evidence to the contrary.
But I find myself strangely excited for those teeth to fall out. Normally I’d dread a milestone like this—tangible proof that all traces of baby Kai are long gone.
But there’s something so fantastically, deliciously, amazingly typical about it.
The funny thing about a family with a spectrum kid, is that we aspire to typical. We covet it.
So I had a great weekend. We did what every family with kids did—we sat outside in the promising April sunshine, watching our kids be regular kids. We grilled brats. I went for a run on the lakefront.
All weekend I’ve had that feeling that you get when you buy a new pair of really awesome shoes, watching my children race up and down our sidewalk on their scooters, helmets askew, cheeks flushed.
The teeth will happen in their own time, as all things do. In the meantime, I want a million more weekends like this one.