Crappy Holidaze

The artichoke appetizer was warm and ready to go, my ornament for the exchange was purchased and wrapped, and I was buzzing with excitement to finally meet some parents who experience my life on a day to day basis...a Christmas party for parents of kids on the spectrum.  I thought about it all day.  It carried me through the speech therapy appointment where he tackled his sister on our way to the car, causing her to bring me back into her office and suggest, given how deeply worried she is about his future, weekly appointments with both me and dad as well as him.  Add this to the other two parent/therapy appointments, and I now am in therapy 3 hours a week to learn how to gracefully deal with a child on the spectrum.  It's not helping.  I'm as graceless as ever.  Tonight I was finally going to meet another human being who has walked in my shoes and who wasn't going to judge me or my parenting or my child.   Babysitter didn't show.  My disappointment was immense but I didn't let it show.  Children on the spectrum DO let it show.  They don't handle change...at all.  After a few items of mine were broken and 1 hour of screaming and tantrumming over HIS plans that fell through ended, he is asleep but I will be awake for the next six hours waiting for the cortisol to eventually exit my system, leaving me all dressed up in a holidaze.  Just another disappointing but unsurprising day in Spectrum Land.