***Side note: Spencer's new favorite game is to stand up at the foot of my bed and let me push him back. He really loves it when I lift and throw him backward. We just laugh and laugh and laugh. Tonight I started just pretending that I was shoving him and he would jump and throw himself backward. It was so cute, even FIL was laughing.***
We went to my friend M's for play and lunch. Her girls are older, so there's not that much playing going on between the kids, but it's nice to chat with her. She's also 9 months pregnant, but looks amazing and seems to be keeping the same pace she always has. She hadn't had much sleep though and her girls were pushing her buttons something fierce. Part of parenthood. We had a great time.
Came home, put the kids down for naps. Started cleaning. Didn't do to much b/c my arm is actually sore from scrubbing so much. It doesn't hurt at all through out the day but as I got out the grout scrubber and started on the corners of the kitchen floor my arm was throbbing. So I did a little and decided to spend some time relaxing.
That's when things turned downhill. I decided to stop putting off the calls I need to make. Not the insurance ones - though I do have to do that all over again and I just got another bill today for Spencer that wasn't paid so I have to do even more. I wish it was the insurance ones. It was the ones for Spencer's therapy/psychology/pre-school. The psychologist was not in our network so they had to call me back. Which is kinda pointless since the insurance will deny it regardless of who I see, but that's another issue. So they called back and we have an appt for November 19th. Called the closer Children's Hospital about speech therapy and they can get him in TOMORROW at 8AM! But not for therapy. The info from the farther Children's wasn't sufficient so we have to restart the eval process. I can't even begin to describe how much I don't want to do this. I just don't know how long I can keep doing this. Sitting in a room with a 'professional' who is telling me that my son, my beautiful, amazing, smile-that-lights-up-my-world son, isn't quite normal. It's awful. Absolutely awful. So as I'm bracing myself for that, stomach churning, tears running down my face, I should have just stopped. But no, I wanted to get it all done, so I called the school about preschool. Talked to the school psychologist who previously thought it a little odd that I was expressing interest in starting mid year. Read the pathetic excuse for an evaluation that farther Children's sent me which says "referral to psychology for evaluation of autistic symptoms". Reading it didn't bother me. Saying it aloud didn't bother me. The change in her tone and the click of understanding that was almost audible? That bothered me. A lot.
And that's my fear right there. Not that Spencer is a little different. Not that he has the label autism, or xyz syndrome, or quirky or whatever. It's the reaction that I will get and that eventually HE will get from others because of it. And I know that I shouldn't care about what others think, but I guess I'm just not enlightened enough to really do it all the time. I just want to shelter him from all of this so he never has to hear someone tell him he's not 'normal'. What's so fucking great about being normal?