Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A Heart-warming "Motherhood" Moment

Anyone with an autistic child will tell you that there's rarely such a thing as spontaneous gestures of affection.  Bryce has never brought me a flower from the yard, or come up to me and said, "Mommy, I love you."  I don't get kisses "just because." I may never get a Mother's Day card that was not purchased by Daddy or created at school.  This is not to say he isn't affectionate at all.  But his affections are usually in response to ours.  It's a learned response.  Just like, "Hi, how are you?"  "I'm fine, thank you." Or "What do you say?"  "Excuse me."  So the other night, I was saying goodnight to him like I always do.  He was in bed already and the lights were off.  I kissed him on the forehead and said, "Goodnight, I love you."  He responded, "Goodnight, I love you."  But then he did something totally unexpected.  As I turned to leave the room, he grabbed my wrist and said, "One hundred kisses."  I was surprised and it took me a minute to respond.  I realized he was asking for 100 kisses instead of a kiss goodnight.  I countered with, "How about five kisses?"  He then negotiated, "How about TEN kisses?"  How could I say no to that? So I kissed him all over his face while counting to ten and then he just giggled  then turned over to go to sleep! I came out to the living room and told Jared I'd just had one of those heart-warming mommy moments that so many others take for granted.  My sweet boy- how I love him!