Wow the weekend went by fast! It was busy, but fun. We celebrated my sister's birthday on Saturday with a clam boil at my mom's house. I made stuffed quahogs and two ice cream cakes. It all came out good...the ice cream cake with the brownie base was a little soft. It would have been better if I had made it the night before. The presentation wasn't the best...but it tasted good:)
Yesterday we went to a pond with our friends. It was a lot of fun...until we lost Peter for five minutes. He had been sitting with a snack at the picnic table. I was starting to pack up and Jay was chatting with our friends. Peter must have seen that we weren't paying close attention to us and walked away.
We all spread out to look for him. It was a hot day and very busy. Our friend's son spotted him first walking around. He was chewing something that wasn't his snack so he must have taken food off of some other family's picnic table. A modern day Goldilocks!
We finished packing up and went home after that! Peter is so much better than he used to be, but is still challenging out in public. We were both right there when he wandered off...but Peter is quick and quiet! Like Jay said when we were talking about it last night, the problem was that we both relaxed for a minute.
Thankfully, nothing bad happened and it was a good reminder that, in public, Peter needs constant contact. Hard fact....but that's just where he's at.
I only half-jokingly said we should color his hair when we go out in a public place like that next time. (In case you're wondering, we don't do big outings often because it is SO much energy to keep Peter and Luke safe!) But it would be easier to find a kid with bright colored hair in the crowd! You know, like that Halloween spray paint!?!
Sometimes it's just really hard to be a parent to a special needs child....especially when we have two other little children that need close supervision, too.(Thankfully, Kate's not moving around much yet, but next summer it will be a completely different story!)
Hindsight is 20/20 and it's a reminder that bringing someone along to help with Peter would have been a good idea yesterday. Especially since the girls and Jon and Mike weren't with us. We only had Andrew, who was helping a lot with Luke. It's just where we are at right now with our family. If Jay and I want to actually have a conversation with our friends, we need extra back-up. Even though we took turns with Peter and/or Luke, it still wasn't enough if we don't have our own family back-up structure present.
Lesson learned!
