The Good, the Bad, and the Alex

Last night was not a good night. Alex started to melt down around 2 in the afternoon and nothing we did could change the terrible path of destruction he was on. Sometimes, there's a trigger for his meltdowns and we watch and we learn to adapt and eliminate the triggers from his environment. But sometimes, like yesterday, the meltdown is like a fantastic spring storm that you first see on the horizon. You take measures to try to prepare for it and take precautions to minimize the damage, but sometimes no matter what you do, the storm is inevitable. Sometimes it's too big to try and avert with our meager human ways and all we can do is resort to damage control.

Yesterday, the storm started at 2 and didn't end until it was knocked back with medication and wrestled to bed just before 7, leaving a swath of destruction and tears and a fair amount of pain in it's wake.

But today. Today, Alex couldn't have been more wonderful. He hugged and kissed me when I got home from work, he stopped playing his airplane game without complaint to get in the car and fetch Mackenzie from practice, he sat down to eat with just one no and then moseyed off to the bath after I asked only once.

Then, he signed that he needed to sit to take his shoes off.

He signed "sit!" And I've never seen him do that before. We communicated! He told me what he needed, and I was able to help him!

It's days like today that make the very gray and stormy days fade into the background of our consciousness and allow the Baby Steps that we yearn to see float to the surface and restore our Hope.