play-dates, what if's, and Zpong OH MY!

Yay! Zander had his first official playdate today with someone who isn't related to him, one of his classmates from school, Tristan! It went pretty good. It's hard to say playdate because it's not what you'd probably expect, there's not a lot of direct interaction but there was definitely some side by side playing here and there which for my son is AWESOME! Even a year ago a play date would have consisted of my son immediately walking as far away from the other child as possible or asking to go home. Now it's more like what you see a 2 or 3 year old do, small observations, interactions, little imitations. But holy cow balls it's progress and you all know that in Autism any progress is a great thing!

I feel so bad for Z because I know not having siblings around has really been detrimental to his progress. We were just so overwhelmed when typhoon Autism hit that we couldn't even wrap our heads around having another child. Would it be fair to the other child, fair to Zander? Plus there's always this thought in the back of your head what if the other child also had Autism, what if it was worse than Zander's? How in the heck would we manage? Blah! What if, what if, what if, the two most hated words in an Autism parents head. You can't block them out no matter how hard you try. You get to a point where you lie to people and pretend that you don't sweat the "what if's" but that's just because you've already lost friends and family who don't want you bringing them down with more depressing Autism talk that you want to salvage the few friends and family that have somehow managed to stick with you!

Screw the "what-if's" today (totally lying HA!) and focusing on another playdate for next week!

Here's a random unrelated video of what I call Zpong. This usually goes on for a good hour at night before bed, just him moving non stop back and forth. I've heard older people with Autism say that sometimes it feels as if their limbs are on fire and they don't know what else to do but move, that it's just a natural reaction. I'll never know if that's what's up with Z or if it's just hyper active energy he doesn't know what to do with.. I guess I shouldn't say never; maybe someday he'll be able to tell me but for now it's just Zpong.
 (My apologies if the video doesn't load, it's been bugging out.  I'll see if my husband can help me figure out why it loads on my admin page but not once it's actually published, maybe I have to convert it to a different type of file...)