I grew up with a dog, hamsters and gerbils, so I love animals just as much as anybody, but nobody told me when we moved into our house that it would become the neighborhood "zoo." When we first moved in, we had squirrels that sounded like they were running laps around our family room rafters. Once we managed to get them to "move out" then one day when we had our garage door open a bat decided to fly in. My husband was chasing him/her around our house with a shoe until it flew out our front door. Then, one day when my daughter was much younger, she was like, "mom, come down here we have snakes." Sure enough, there were two snakes slithering around on the basement floor. Since then, we have had field mice, a baby frog, and most recently a family of raccoons that decided our fireplace was their new home. Living in our front bushes we have a nest with a family of birds and in the back of our house we have a few woodpeckers having a contest to see who can drill the most holes. A very frequent visitor is the chipmunk, affectionately called, "Chippy" that runs past our front door several times a day. A few weeks ago I saw a black squirrel sitting on my chair I keep outside by the front door. I think he actually looked back at me and laughed!!! About a month ago I watched as a very large something (we think it was a woodchuck) crawl under our deck, not sure if he/she ever came out the other side. The "parade" of animals outside that we have seen are: possum, deer, foxes, cats, dogs and a skunk. About a month or so our smoke alarm actually was set off by the stink of a skunk! Good grief, that was one powerful smell. It wouldn't have been so bad, but it was 5 in the morning. Not the kind of alarm I like waking up to!
When Dominic was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2, I went to our local library and took out every book I could find about Autism. Sometimes I would bring back 20 books. This was 2006, so a lot of the information was very "dated." I guess I was looking for a book that would tell me what I should do next, like a "manual." Autism doesn't quite work that way! The saying is, " if you know one person with Autism, you know one person with Autism." Every mom to an individual with Autism follows their own "path." I think as moms, we judge ourselves much harder than anyone else does. I was 41 when I had Dominic. Did he get the diagnosis of Autism because I was an older mom? because I drank a lot of pop? I could sit and think about that every minute of every day. I am pretty integrated into the Autism community around Lansing and have told more than one person that it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis. It is so incredib...
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