One of those days...

Today is just one of those days. I am feeling overly emotional and guilt-ridden.

The morning started fairly uneventfully. The kids were dressed, ate breakfast and brushed their teeth without much nagging on my part. As long as we leave the house by 7:25 I get to school in time to walk Taylor into the playground and watch him play for about 10 or 15 minutes before the bell rings. Today though, he had a hard time finding anyone to play with and just kind of wandered about until maybe 5 minutes before the bell rang when his friend Brennen showed up. But Brennen was running so fast Taylor had a hard time keeping up and went back to wandering. It was the first time that he actually looked a little sad, I guess I've always thought Autism kept him blissfully unaware of these awkward social moments.  So seeing my Little Man like this, I began to think of what I could do to make this better...this playground is so big and there are more kids then he has ever gone to school with. Would he be better at a smaller school? But then what about college? College will be big, will he have adapted by then? And then of course my big fear wondering if he will even be able to go to college. And then I started thinking about me working- if I were working, I would miss all of these moments. Is that really worth it? Can I convince Brooks I should stay home just a little longer?

I think that what might really be happening is that we are just coming back from our weekend visit with Brooks' parents who are now on a plane headed back to Madrid for the school year. The kids really enjoy spending time with their grandparents and this was the first time Jazzy was realizing they were going very far away for a long time and I could see her getting sad and concerned about that. I know I felt bad this weekend watching them play with their grandparents and thinking about their relationship with their other grandma. My mom last visited with the kids in January- 8 months ago. She did see them briefly during the drop off and pick up when my little sister spent the night. Taylor remembers Grammy and enjoys her company although it seems to take way more phone calls, texts and effort on my part to make that happen anymore. The last time we saw her when Katie was being dropped off, I had to actually tell Jazzy later that the woman visiting was her other grandma.

So there I was this morning thinking about all the things in Taylor's life that I could not control and feeling sad for him. I wish I could make other kids want to play with him, I wish I could help him run faster or have an easier time doing the monkey bars so he could be involved more in what the other kids were doing. I wish I could only fill his life with people who loved him and always wanted to be around him. I wish we could win the lottery so both Brooks and I could be home with him and help him learn these things.

I hope when I pick him up from school he has a big smile on his face, because I know I will when I see my sweet Little Man again.