Saturday marked Ethan’s first basketball game; in fact, it was his first game (ever) playing cooperatively with a team. Until this year, (Ethan turned 8 last fall), we didn’t feel Ethan had the self-control and intuition to handle a sport which would require cooperating with other kids while working to coordinate his own physical movements. He has participated in individual sports like swimming and Tae Kwon Do, both of which offer great exercise and fantastic opportunities to develop coordinated movements with both sides of his body, but didn’t force him to worry about anyone beyond himself very often.
When Ethan began requesting to play soccer a few months ago, I started looking for appropriate leagues which could effectively incorporate Ethan but at the same time challenge him. Many families living with ASD find success with leagues offering a buddy (like Miracle League or Buddy League) – Ethan just wouldn’t find that challenging at this age. He wants to be like his friends from school and I can’t say I blame him! Actually, I’m glad he wants to do some of the things his friends at school enjoy.

Every so often I manage to step out from under the shroud of autism, look at Mason and see glimpses of a completely typical 6 year old boy. Those times aren’t as often as I’d like and the dark times are pressing. I'm ashamed to admit that Autism has negatively impacted my faith over the course of the last few years
But then Mason restores it in small bits & pieces.

Mason has a fear of water.
We've been partially thankful for this for a long time. It does make summertime water activities a bit more of a challenge. We never have had to worry about Mason wandering off and heading for a body of water. It simply wasn't in him. It took an act of Congress just to get him into the baby pool. With his anxiety around it, getting him in the water is much like getting my wife on turbulent flight.
Since he's 6 now, we decided it was high time we enrolled him in some sort of lessons and help him overcome, or manage, his fear of water.

Allergies have been killing my girls for the past few days. We had an entire Sunday afternoon to fill up, though. Hmm, what to do. It had to be indoors, it should hopefully provide exercise, and it had to be cheap (or better yet free). I may not have mentioned that last (cheap) part, though those who know me should take that as a given. I had a brief daydream (aka unreachable fantasy) of sitting in a comfortable chair and reading while the girls played games on the floor, periodically pausing to run over to me and give me a hug and tell me how much they love me.

We went with some friends to their lake house for Independence Day. (Yes, I’m a little behind in my blogging…) Thankfully, it was not a Joey-style July 4th.

Angie is in Houston this weekend assisting her mom as she recovers from a half knee replacement. I'm not really sure whether that means that they left the other half of the knee on the operating table and sent her home partially fixed up or if that just means only half needed to be replaced. Either way...it sounds very painful and is a difficult recovery. Our good friend Mr. A had a full knee replacement 5 weeks ago but instead of replacing half...the doctors made it a whole and were kind enough to toss in some additional work.