Pumpkin Hunt and the Air Horn.

Some times autism just plain sucks! There's no sugar coating it, no back  up plan, no distraction. There's only running, running as fast as you can out of the situation before a group of strangers see the silent tears streaming down your face.
Today was a town sponsored pumpkin hunt (it's a bunch of plastic eggs filled with candy that the kids run around and collect) Last year it went GREAT, it was one of my best memories with John.... this year not so much. It was outside this year, I thought that would make it easier on JJ I was wrong. We put on his motorcycle rider costume and went and played at the park because we were early, of course we were early on purpose so he could get comfortable with the change from last year. About 10 minutes later it's time to go over for the hunt. I decided I could do this alone with JJ, so I left Andrew and Julia at the playground took JJ's hand and headed to the field. There were about 20 kids there all dressed up in anything ranging from clowns to GI Joe to Cops... complete with a whistle. I walked John over to a quiet section of field and explained the rules to him. No running, No hitting, No grabbing pumpkins from other kids. Then it was time to start, all the kids lined up then the volunteer sounded the air horn. That was the end of us. JJ started crying and clung to me saying over and over again "No loud noise". We walked away from the field both of us crying silent tears holding onto each other.
It was another reminded of how different our lives really are, a reminder that we've come so far but still have so much further to go. A reminder that sometimes a moms love just isn't enough. So we left and went to the playground, I got a much needed hug from my husband, JJ got to run around and go down the slide with his little sister. Then we went to Friendly's for dinner because sometimes you just need to see your kid happy, and if toppings will do that then damn it it's toppings for dinner. (Yes just the toppings please, no ice cream!)