An Asperger Christmas

Christmas this year was fun and as always, very interesting! We decided that the kids needed a big surprise so we made sure Santa knew that they really, really, really wanted a kitty cat. So Santa made some arrangements and delivered a very pretty little boy that we named Moses. Ewan had many, many questions this year. Did Santa bring Moses to us? Where did Santa find Moses? How do you talk to Santa? I want to see his sleigh, and then ride in it."

When the children saw the kitten, Skye cried she was so happy. Little Vaughn jumped up and down with obvious joy. Ewan said, "Where's it going to live? Where's it going to sleep? What's it going to eat? What if we move, does the cat move too? Where do kittens come from?" And so on and so forth. Ewan is officially known in our house as "The Question Master". If the kitten goes to the bathroom, Ewan must inform everyone and then promptly ask "Where does poop come from? What is cat litter? Why does the cat eat so much?" Oh my. Cheri said this was going to be a teaching moment every day, and boy was she ever right!

On Christmas Eve though, I always let the children open ONE gift--one that I pick out that always happens to be pajamas. This year, I got quite the honest response to what Ewan thought of getting pajamas. As the kids unwrapped this one Christmas Eve gift, Skye's face lit up with comfy new pajamas and Vaughn exclaimed, 'Oooohhhh I LOVE Transformer pajamas' and Ewan said, "UH! Pajamas! I didn't put pajamas on my Christmas list! I don't want pajamas. NO Pajamas ever for Christmas mommy. NO! NO! NO! NO pajamas! Never again mommy!" Needless to say, it was not difficult to discern whether or not Ewan liked his present!

It took quite some time to peel him off the ceiling so to speak. He was pretty riled up over the whole pajama incident. We were able to calm him down by telling him tomorrow Christmas would come and who knew what Santa would bring. Many, many, many, many minutes later Ewan and Vaughn fell asleep. The next morning at 5:42 am, they come running through the house and Ewan was pumped up to open some presents that he said better come from his list. When he opened one gift of a racing game for his Nintendo DS, he very loudly exclaimed, "NO! I do NOT like these games. This was NOT on my list!" So we took some time to explain that it's ok not to like your gift but it's not necessary to let everyone in the entire subdivision know that you didn't like it!

Honest to a fault he is. I wouldn't have it any other way. (We'll work on tact this year AND we'll stick to the list!)

Hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year!

By the way, we had to peel the pajamas off Ewan after 3 days...he decided they weren't so bad after all. Just not on the list.