It was a beautiful day in the Lou. A perfect day for a local delight – Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard. While enjoying our treat on an outdoor bench, I noticed that the car parked in front of us had the license plate “VATICN”.

Me: I didn’t know the Pope was in town.
Ellie: What’s a Pope?
Ben: It’s someone who shits does stuff in the woods.

Ellie is playing with her friend Lucy. I love listening to their conversations. I could hear the girls stomping up the steps toward the living room.

Ellie: My Mom is SUCH a liar. I’m going to tell her that TOO!
Lucy: Wellllll, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I told my Mom that one time and she was NOT very happy about it.

When they arrived at the top of the steps, Ellie said to me: Mom, I’m not sure the idea you had is working out for us.

Nicely done, Lucy. Ellie is allowed to live another day.

I was up at Ellie’s school the other day waiting for some testing. While seated on a bench at the intersection of two hallways, I got to watch a lot of cuteness. I was also witness to something straight out of a sitcom. A special ed teacher’s aide was walking down the hall with her arm around the shoulders of a fourth grade boy. Her other arm was behind her back. I wouldn’t have really noticed until the two of them rounded the corner and I watched them walk away. The boy kept moving his hand from around her waist, south, to her buttockal region, her hand strategically placed for its gentle removal. Time and time again.

We recently had an IEP meeting. Who doesn’t love those? They make my pits a little juicy even though we are in the fortunate category of not having to fight for any services. Ellie went into Kindergarten with only push in services – so, fully integrated.

It’s hard to believe that this is the same kid who, at the age of two, was fascinated with our local St. Louis map. Like for two hours at a time fascinated. She’s also the kid who refused to go to a park if other children were present, didn’t make eye contact, and showed little emotion other than screaming for three years. She would scream in the doorway of her bedroom for sixty solid minutes (sometimes a few times a day) because I would leave the room before her. Or not unbuckle her baby seat the same way. And, she was a bit of a poltergeist (see the parade of objects 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), and well, you get the idea.

This is also the girl whose first word was at nine months. And, it was “pretty”. She had a vocabulary of 250 words by twelve months. 500 words by eighteen months. She could recognize/demonstrate the ASL alphabet, knew all her colors, differentiated her lower and uppercase letters by twelve months. She knew more about bugs by the age of three than I ever care to know.

This is also the same girl who didn’t pass her language assessment last week. I’ve seen first hand how Ellie reacts when not understanding directions or conversations . She wants to understand. She knows she’s supposed to understand, and since she doesn’t, she compensates with the verbal virtuosity of a Michael Jordan. “I’m not sure…Well, let me think…It could be that one…It’s not?…Oh, I see what you mean…That makes sense.” It’s really quite impressive and high-five worthy.

Luckily, her team at school SO gets her. It’s easy for people who don’t spend a lot of time with Ellie to be dazzled by the cuteness and smoke screens. She will be having a more in-depth language evaluation which will then be compared to her I.Q. score to see if she qualifies for language services. It’s another point, in my opinion, to the importance of early intervention. Ellie has made strides that never fail to impress me and it gives me a lot of encouragement to see her with a team of professionals who all understand Aspergers. They are dreamy. I love them and I want to marry them.

Here is my Petunia in her glasses. She did great with her eye exam. The only glitch was that her mother, unaware that five-year-olds need glaucoma tests, didn’t include the eye puffer as part of the social story. As a result, Ellie’s posterior clenched the upholstery clean off the chair she was seated in. And, I think it serves them right.

Tomorrow marks the infamous “100th Day of Kindergarten”. A celebration of achievement for making it halfway through. The kids were supposed to design a shirt to wear. I gave Ellie the puffer paint tube and told her to go to town. Below is a photo of the front. I understood the “100″ but then asked for clarification about the surrounding blobules (not the actual word I used) of white. I was informed they those were indeed “sweat drops coming from the 100″. Hopefully the second 100 days will prove to be less grueling.

Opening Scene: Ben making a scowly face at Ellie.

Ellie: Why are you looking at me like that?
Ben: Because I want you to read me that library book.
Ellie (condescendingly rubbing Ben’s arm): Now Daddy, I can’t read library books you know. Those books have words in them I don’t know yet. Think of it like this – people we don’t know, we call hoosiers. So, words I can’t read, are called hoosier words.

This, my friends, is how I plan to get through every Monday for the rest of my days.

I decided to tackle the front closet yesterday. It required donning hockey gear to prevent injury. At the bottom, was a box with lots of pictures I’d forgotten about. As I unwrapped them and handed Ellie the bubble wrap to play with, I came across a picture of my Mom walking on the beach. The tears just came rolling down my cheeks.

Ellie asked if I had the happy tears. I showed her the picture, told her that I hadn’t seen it in a long time, and it made me miss her. I explained that she was absolutely the best Mom in the whole world. Ellie thought maybe I shouldn’t look at it since it made me sad. That made me giggle and my tears disappeared as quickly as they welled up.

A few hours later, Ellie and I were quietly working on our Thanksgiving tree project together. Out of the blue she said, “Mom, I know it makes you sad to not have your Mom here. But, you know what that means? It just means that now you’re the best Mom in the whole world.”

Ellie usually looks at something in her lap while I’m combing her hair thus rendering her a version of Cousin It. I thought I was combing the side when I callously poked her in the eye.

Ellie: OW! MOM! Why did you do that?
Me: Sorry honey, I didn’t see your eye there.
Ellie: Well that doesn’t even make sense! My eye is always in the same spot!