Saturday, April 23, 2011

the morning routine

i'm pretty sure i come from a different planet than brooke does. she comes from the land where feelings have colors and numbers have food.

on planet brooke, red is mad, blue is sad & yellow is happy. those are pretty normal, but there are also combinations of them, and she doesn't feel like explaining what she means because in her mind, no one understands her anyway, so why bother. like sometimes she'll just yell "PURPLE!" there's nothing else, just that loud purple and a ticked off face. i've learned that means she's combining the mad red & sad blue and getting purple. sometimes she'll say, "dark purple," which is even worse than a standard purple because there's some black mixed in & no white in sight.

she also associates numbers with food sometimes. i can't remember them all, but the one she keeps saying lately is "mustard" whenever the answer to a math question is 14. we don't even eat mustard, i'm not sure she's ever tasted it, but for some reason, mustard & 14 are synonymous.

and she's got these little routines that must be followed in order for her day to go right. like when she first wakes up, she goes into the bathroom, whips back the shower curtain & yells "RAAR!" she's always alone in there, but just in case there was a monster, she wants to get a jump on it before it has a chance to get her. she does the same thing when she walks into the kitchen when it's still dark. flips light, bellows out an angry raar.

one day we forgot to fill her little zip bags of cereal before going to bed the night before, so when she came down first thing & went to the fridge to find them, they were no where to be found. the cereal boxes were within her reach & she knows how to pour it into her own little bag, which she did, but then she couldn't just eat it. as she told us later, she filled the bag, put it into the fridge, turned the lights off, went back upstairs & "restarted her day." apparently it's more important for the cereal to be in the fridge when she first comes down than it is to just get the food into her hungry belly. i'm just glad we've gotten to the point where she took care of it herself rather than screaming & howling until we woke up & filled it for her.

she's been mentioning her "morning routine" to us for a while lately & since she generally gets up before us, we didn't really know what the details of the routine were. she was irritated at our ignorance, so she wrote it out for us and included her night routine too. you know, to help us come out of the darkness & into her light. here is the picture of the list.

she might drive me bonkers some days & leave me feeling purple, but most of the time, brooke makes me very yellow.

19 comments:

  1. I love that "RAAR!" routine. Although I might use it when my wife is in the shower.

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  2. I think the colour/feeling relationship is genious. I think I am going to use that one myself.

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  3. I think it's good that she's learning to create her own structure.
    Is 14 good (yellow) or bad (sharp mustard)?
    All kids can turn parents purple or yellow.

    Maybe the "Raar" is a good idea....Hmmm.

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  4. i feel sorry for your wife, al. but i'll bet she gets you back by flushing when you're in the shower next time.

    i find myself declaring feelings through colors sometimes too. or even more, i say my feelings through taste now. like an experience can feel delicious or a phone call can be bitter.

    i have no idea if 14 is a good or a bad mustard. she doesn't usually like to be questioned about her things, she just says i don't understand her.

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  5. LOL@ Al, he's in for some trouble there!

    It's so interesting how kids interperate things. My son didn't really have this colour/mood thing. Although he did learn colours way earlier than all the other kids.

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  6. I'm stuck trying to figure out what LPS is...

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  7. That is precious! Brooke is an adventure, I'm sure.

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  8. I went "RAAR!" but the joke was on me. She was in there with the milkman.
    (SOCIOLOGICAL NOTE: The fact that "milkmen' no longer exist in the U.S. is proof positive that I was deliberately making this up to enhance its 'laugh' factor. it was actually the guy from Verizon).

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  9. I'm sure she keeps you on your toes! You've been awarded with the Versatile Blogger Award.
    http://joy-southernsocialite.blogspot.com/2011/04/versatile-blogger-award.html

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  10. That list is adorable. She's going to be a high achiever when she gets older, no doubt.... By the way, just on a whim I Googled "mustard" and "14" to see if there's any correlation. Oddly, French's Yellow Mustard comes in 14 ounce bottles...or maybe not so oddly...

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  11. LPS? At first I thought it must be lips because she might wash her lips and even spritz her lips, but #5 says play with lips and that's even a little weird for Brooke! So help us out here.

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  12. She likes things just so, doesn't she? Wow, I bet she's always going to have you amazed!

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  13. sorry, i should have clarified that LPS stands for littlest pet shop. little toy animals that she currently loves & feels the need to bathe and spritz with body wash daily. she never takes a shower without them.
    lol, mom, that would be pretty weird if she was playing with her lips.

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  14. Red is mad, blue is sad and yellow is happy in my world too! Always has been that way. Also in my world colors have subjects. Like red is math, green is science, and blue is history. Always had to have the correct color notebook for each class. Also to me, scents have seasons. I am totally with Brooke on all of this stuff!

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  15. Those colors are perfect for what they represent. :) She definitely keeps you on your toes. I actually knew what LPS was.. go me!

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  16. Wonderful Sherilin--thanks for sharing this little window into your world of colour. The brain is a fascinating, fascinating thing. Sometimes I wonder, in our kids' cases, if being on the spectrum actually means a part of their brains have been opened to a far deeper, more innovative way of thinking than us mere mortals are aware of, or could comprehend. Yeah, the socially acceptable part of the brain may be shut down a bit, but there's so much more going on in these little heads it seems to me.

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  17. I love this! I especially love her spelling.

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  18. I get it when she talks about the colors. I also read somewhere that there are other people who associate things with numbers.

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don't let me be the only one doing the talking around here. spill your guts!