Kim’s Story, Chapter 7: Getting Around
Kim’s Story, Chapter 7: Getting Around.
Many children crawl on hands and knees,
but there are other ways of getting around.
And so our child grew.
I hold out a finger of both my hands, and she grabs them.
“Up, up, up. That’s the way!”
And she’s standing on my lap, legs straight and strong. No trembling, or bobbing up and down. When the right time comes, she stands as if she’s always done it.
And that’s how our little Kimmy is.
Kim’s Story: Our Journey on the Spectrum
We’ve shared about Autism Spectrum Disorder before, here, here and here, but now we decided to tell Kim’s story, and our journey on the spectrum (without knowing we were there). Because when a child is on the spectrum, the journey involves the whole family. This article studies the effects of autism on the family.
To start at the beginning read this post, then follow the links.
This begins “Chapter 7”.
Kim’s Story Chapter 7:
Kim was never one to try things and fail, only to try again, the way most babies do.
We’d get to the point where we’d wonder, “Is she ever going to roll over?” And then, one day, she rolls over, as if she’s always been doing it. No swinging a leg over her body, then swinging it back, until one day the swing surprises her and she rolls over in spite of herself.
This baby of ours seems to wait until she knows she can do something, and then she does it. It might be completely on par with what the charts say to expect, but more often, she makes her own chart.
And then when she accomplishes a milestone, we get a little puffy, and see if the other littles her age are as good at rolling over as our baby.
Whenever she reached a milestone we celebrated.
She was clicking off the usual firsts. First time to roll from her tummy to her back. Roll from back to tummy. First time to pick up a toy and examine it. First time to make a toy do what it was made to do.
Her eating was typical also. Time to start the cereal before bed, and then nurse, so she sleeps longer at night. And even though she didn’t eat as much cereal as the boys had, she slept just as well at night.
Get her up in the morning, eat cereal and nurse, then bathe and dress. Like clockwork. Most mornings were exactly the same. Her oldest brother started first grade the fall after she was born, so our life went by the clock. We were scheduled people.
Little did we know that we were doing exactly the right thing for her. The thing hovering in her that we didn’t know anything about loved schedules. Doing everything the same all the time was comforting and calming. She knew what to expect, and seemed to thrive on clockwork.
The only thing she didn’t do like clockwork was getting around.
Kim was a contented child. She was happy to be held, then okay with laing on her blanket on the floor. If she was clean and fed, she was a quiet baby. I don’t remember a lot of giggles or cooing, but I wasn’t the mom that talked baby talk. I loved when the other moms jounced, jabbered at and tickled their babies, making them gasp and laugh so hard they could hardly breathe.
Sometimes, I would try it. Do the “this is the way the ladies ride, the ladies ride, the ladies ride.” She put up with it, but it didn’t make her crazy with glee. Do the pat-a-cake, “and mark it with K for Kimmy and me!” This she liked more. Anytime we said her name, she smiled. She seemed to feel a belonging then, as if hearing her name made her feel like someone. I didn’t think of this at the time, but as I write this now, that’s how it played out in her life. So often, which we only found out many, many years later, she felt as if she lived an observer’s life, not actually a part of what was happening.
This observer’s life was maybe why she didn’t try things until she knew she could do them. She had watched someone do it so often, she had the moves memorized in her brain, and then, one day, did them.
Sort of that way she chose of getting around.
She’d get up on her hands and feet, like a cute little monkey, and speed around the house. She was fast and agile.
My friends commented that she probably did that because of wearing a dress. If she crawled in the usual way, the dress would get caught under her knees. But they only saw her on Sundays, or dress up occasions, when she wore dresses. At home she wore “bubbles.” Yes, that was the style in the 90s. Big, blousy, puffy things that gathered into snaps under her diaper. Sooooo cute. I sewed them for her, buying the fabric and using the patterns that the store displayed. That was the days of Laura Ashley with the Victorian prints, splashy roses and/or strawberry borders. Like this Daisy Kingdom line of fabric and patterns…
But no, it wasn’t the outfits that kept her from crawling on hands and knees. It was her particular style. She decided that worked best for her, and that’s what she did. And did it well, just like all the things she tried.
It was her special way of getting around that first year of her special life. There’ll be more about this in another chapter.
