Pain and silence

It's been a topsy-turvy weekend so far and we aren't even to Saturday yet! On Thanksgiving morning, we had just finished breakfast and going through all of the ads for Friday when Staci turned on the oven to start baking a few pies for Thanksgiving dinner at her parents' place. A few minutes later, the oven starts making a hideous sound - metal on metal. What? If there's one appliance I would not expect to break, it would be the oven. But there it was, complaining loudly as if to say - you don't need to eat any pie, you big lard! And so it quickly became clear that we needed to move into serious "get our butts out the door mode" so that Staci could do her cooking/baking at her mom's house. Thank goodness we weren't having the holiday at our house this year!

Over at the in-laws, Grant and I had a great time wandering over to see the farm animals across the road. He loves watching them, saying their names and making their sounds. Doing this always reminds me of one of the early autism questions - "does he make animals noises?" - he does now! We must have played there and then in the yard for a good hour until dinner. The food was incredible, as it always is - of course, I am all about the pies. I would trade the dinner in a heartbeat for the pies if I had to, but please don't make me!

And then Grant starting making this coughing/choking sound. It sounds like he had something in his throat, but he also started holding his stomach. Before long, we were running to the porcelain. I felt so bad for him! He was clearly in pain but he had no way to tell us how he felt or ask us to help. He put my hand on his lower belly and he had me kiss it, but he could only whimper and curl up. I held him and then ran him to the bathroom, back and forth for about an hour. After about 6 trips, whatever caused it left his body and he was back to his chipper self. What a strong boy he is! I'm so proud of him for getting through that tough time; I can't imagine what I would feel if I couldn't explain my pain.

On Friday, it was normal health for everybody and when we went for our regular trip to the park, Grant did great on his bike!! We've definitely moved past him requiring me to have a constant hold on the bike and he just seems much more at ease. He is steering all by himself and is riding in the proper spot on the path instead of right on the very right-edge. I might be fooling myself, but I think he actually enjoyed his bike ride on Friday.

I hope I've made it sound like we actually did something with our weekend, but in reality every spare minute I didn't describe here was spent playing Guitar Hero III. Everybody is hooked, except for Grant, although he has picked up the guitar once or twice. Staci is just about to finish the Easy career, I'm about midway through the Medium career and Cassidy is just about to finish Medium. If the boys were on vacation somewhere, it's safe to say that every waking minute would be spent playing that game - somebody stop us!