Apple Picking & more....

We were soooo excited to go apple picking last weekend with my mother and sister, Lucy. We're always looking for family adventures that Brian can really enjoy, not just be a tagalong which unfortunately sometimes happens. Brian LOVES apples- his body, on the other hand, has had a love/hate relationship with them.

A little history on the apple front: Last year at this time he was just starting a new preschool and was eating apples a LOT as the gluten-free lunches he was getting just weren't cutting it past his picky nature. He was also throwing up and having awful BMs every day or two which was something we hadn't dealt with since a year before that when we successfully switched to a GF/Casein-limited diet. After seeing undigested chunks of apples in the mess we decided to cut apples out of his diet and just like I thought the yucky side-effects ceased. After a few months we carefully and slowly added them back into his diet and were glad to see that on an apple a day he did not have the digestive problems again. Apples have always continuued to be his favorite snack- the way he wants them goes through cycles though- sometimes he'll only eat them cut up, sometimes with no peel, sometimes only whole, sometimes he even wants to eat the whole thing- including the core. But his love of apples has never changed. In fact as of right now Brian has a list of twelve spontaneous words/phrases: mama (my favorite of course), Tings, up, bye, hi, ju (juice), bubbles, car, no, yah, all done and apple.

So like I said this was an adventure I was positive he would enjoy. I had never been to the apple orchard part of the farm we went to and Corbin, who had been there on a preschool field trip, was delighted to be the leader (who would've thought?) and showed us the way. Brian came along a little hesitantly as the path followed alongside a busy road- he loves vehicles but being that close seemed to be a bit too loud for him on that particular day. I immediately showed Brian the trees and he said "Ahh-pu" and I showed him how to pick one off the tree. The apple instantly found its way into his mouth and that was that. No more picking for Brian. Why pick some to put in the bag? He had his one and only and that was all he needed!

Corbin continued to pick until our bag was almost too heavy to carry!

I tried to do a photo shoot but of course the one elusive shot of me and my boys- all looking at the camera and all smiling- was not going to happen on that day. I did get some nice shots though.

notice the Rubicks cube toy that was his "hand toy" for the day


After we had our fill of apples we went into the shop to see what yummy snacks we could find. After picking up a bunch of fresh green beans, ears of corn, flowers, gourds, and of course a bag of sesame seed/honey candy (my favorite), we joined the growing checkout line- as it seemed we of course managed to get there during their peak business hour. It became very crowded as my mother, sister, myself & the two boys waited in line to check out. In the meantime, the woman at the cash register dropped a beet and it rolled right to Brian. Well what a wonderful thing to happen to a little boy who was at any point going to lose his cool in the congested area. A ball came right to him! What a lucky day! He kicked it, not one, not twice, but three times before I could manage to reach him and stop it. The beet was under a display shelf at this point and honestly, I could've cared less- I was pretty much giggling over the scene playing out in front of me but by the look I was getting from the cashier I could tell she didn't agree. I picked up Brian to bring him out of the tiny area so we could wait outside at the same time that the cashier was leaving so she could get her customer a new beet from one of the bins outside. She got held up a bit behind us as Brian was NOT happy with the idea of leaving his ball behind and was being a bit vocal about it. She made it quite apparent she wasn't happy with us by rolling her eyes very obviously, over & over. I did not see this, thankfully as I might've lost my cool at that point, but my thirteen-year-old sister did and of course she was very upset about it. We talked on the car ride home a little bit about how people don't always know Brian has autism and may just think I'm an awful mother who can't control my "spoiled" child.

On a good note when I did get Brian outside of the tiny shop he decided he wanted to explore the pumpkins and was really able to calm himself after the disapointment of losing a ball by rubbing his hands and face on the smooth hard skin of the pumpkins- he was crawling all amongst them and trying to squish himself in between them. And I finally got some really good shots of him looking at the camera.