Seeing the JOY in JACK: Christmas 2016

A sled-ful of cousins, with Jack leading the pack.

Well hello there! Wow, that was some Winter Break. I don’t remember really sitting down at the computer for about two weeks! It’s been a little rough to get back up and running around here. So why not reminisce a little about the holidays that just happened, shall we?

Before I break into an explosion of family pictures and captions, I want to state my bottom line: this past Christmas with Jack was truly a JOYFUL season. He was fun, he was engaged, he participated, he was excited. I believe the season was a happy one for him. I tend to think of Jack’s autism as taking years off of his true age. For example, when he was 4 he acted like maybe a 2-3 year old acts at Christmas-kind of excited, but mostly weirded out and overwhelmed by the strange events going on. Now I think of him as maybe a year behind, having grown up a lot since he started school. So as a 6 year old with maybe a 5 year old personality he was FUN. He was finally seeing the EXCITEMENT of Christmastime.

We spent a good chunk of time celebrating with my side of the family. I asked my mom about her thoughts on hanging out with Jack. She was happy to answer, “It was so fun to see Jack excited and in the moment during almost all of the time we were with you during the holidays. He joined in just like the other kids and interacted with those around him.”

Christmas Night 2016, Jack age 6, front & center.

Now, lest you think Jack has turned all ‘typical’ on us, I want to show you a scene that I found fascinating. In my last post, I told about the year Jack spent Christmas morning in Grandma’s kitchen ‘hiding’ from the cousin chaos. Well here we are in the same place 2 years later. Jack is very much in the center of the action -yay!- but he is also very much checked out during a lively present-opening session. That is Jack. And it is fine.

When thinking of attending events, I tend to build things up in my mind as a potential disaster. However, Jack pulled through for me in most everything that we encountered. I can think of 2 out-of-control meltdowns, but that was only 2 in a packed calendar full of diverse situations. So if you’re up for it, I’ll share some highlights:

Chillin’ with Santa. (Jack’s poor eye-less sister!)

We had 3 encounters with Santa. The third time struck my funny bone: Jack hopped up on this Santa who we passed in a restaurant, crossed his legs and made himself comfortable. His request for Santa? Candy. What kind of candy? Kit Kat. Hmm, where’d that come from? Can do.

Jack’s school performance. Triple tasking with singing, bell-ringing, and chewing at the same time!

The holidays brought to light a new talent—Jack sings! There’s nothing like repeating a bunch of lively Christmas songs all month to get a kid to sing. We caroled to neighbors, he sang in his school program, and he even spontaneously volunteered to sing with his sister at our family Christmas Eve gathering. (Check out that video on the instagram account @gojackgoblog) The song from his school program, “Hot Cup of Cocoa” was pretty much pouring from his mouth on repeat for 2 weeks.

One highlight each Christmas, much to our dismay, is a gift a well-meaning neighbor gave us a few years ago called “Mr. Christmas”. It is an electronic box which hooks up to the Christmas tree lights. It plays music and makes the lights flash along with the tunes. It has an ornament controller where you talk to a mouse named Mr. Christmas to tell him which song to play. The holidays are spent with Jack trying his hardest to request song after song on the tree. That darn mouse has no tolerance for wavering childish voices, responding only to clear (aka adult) voices. This means I spend a lot of time at the tree talking to Mr. Christmas as Jack whispers song requests into my ear. Well, we had a miracle about a week before Christmas—Mr. Christmas started to understand Jack, which makes it doubly exciting!! I really wanted this recorded for my memory’s sake, and I’ll share a video of it here. This was filmed in the midst of taking down Christmas, right before Mr. Christmas’ long year’s sleep. (Jack’s sister is probably the real star of this show, as you’ll see!)

I’ll spare you any more pictures and videos! Thanks for sticking with me. What a wonderful time to be with Jack as we saw some of the MAGIC of Christmas pass through him!

>> I truly hope you had a JOYFUL holiday season as well. If you have a special needs child in your realm, I hope you saw some progress, excitement, and happy moments during your celebrations. Here’s to a New Year full of possibilities and memories! <<

One more: Our family Nativity scene with Jack as a Wise Man