Tristan is my son. He's 3 yrs old, a middle child and the only boy and has been identified as having autism spectrum disorder by the local school system. He frequently does odd things that make me smile. My sister thinks I should make a comic about him. Not to sure that would work out (I'm not that funny) and my drawing skills are rusty (I was pretty good in highschool), and part of me thinks that might be construed as making fun of him, but I decided I'd create a blog to post the funny and cute things he does to share with family members and friends (so they don't get like 3 emails in one day), so here it is, my tribute to my son. I may in the future create blogs for my daughters also, but I think Tristan sometimes feels left out and I want something special for him. I'll start out with the conversation that prompted my sister to suggest a comic. She was talking about her own three year old son growing plants. Here's a paraphrase of my response:

"I'm not real good with plants. Lola is, though. At school, her plants are always one of the biggest or best looking in the class. Then they come home and something happens and they die or Tristan eats them."

Now, that seemed like a normal comment to me. he eats everything. (from what I understand a lot of neurotypical kids eat everything, too). However, it made my sister chuckle.

Cute things from today (and yesterday):
I make him a sandwich every morning. He eats breakfast at his preschool (they switched from snacks to breakfast as they felt it would be a good learning experience) but needs something before the long bus ride and I'm usually in a hurry so he gets a sandwich frequently and now has decided he needs a sandwich when he first gets up or he's grumpy. Cereal's fine, but he has to have a sandwich first.

Today, he's sitting on the couch in the living room waiting for his sandwich. So I get the bread out and put it on the kitchen table and then I turn to get the knife and the jelly from the fridge. I turn back, he's still on the couch. I can't find the piece of bread I laid out. I was positive I'd put it on a saucer, but I don't see it. Turns out, he managed to go in the kitchen, grab the bread and walk back to the exact place he was sitting beforehand in the little bit of time I had my back turned. He's a sneaky little guy, when he wants to be.

As mentioned before, he eats everything; everything goes in his mouth, he like textures, especially smooth ones. He also likes his baby sister's pacifiers. Usually he chews them like this:


Today, he was sucking on the pacifier like a baby does. I think I just need to get him his own, blue ones. He had a John Lennon, Beautiful Boy one when he was a baby and I think I saw some of those at the store recently (He was sucking on his sister's pink John Lennon one - the one in the pic is a classic pooh one from Target)..... My excuse will be that if he sucks on a paci, he's not putting other things in his mouth ;)

Tristan also will often communicate to us by giving us something similar to what he is asking for or taking us to what he wantsn though if you leave something in his reach, he typically just grabs it, especially if it's sweet. His sister had a bag with a couple king sized candies in it yesterday. She left it sitting on a chair. Now, I've never seen him take her hand to ask her for something, but he must have figured they were hers, and not mine or her father's. He took her hand and walked her over to the bag, instead of just trying to grab the chocolate. She obliged and let him have a piece of candy. Now this may seem simple but that level of communication with his sister, instead of his parents appears a breakthrough to me. We cheered the fact that he asked for the candy, even though it was well within his reach to just grab himself.