{"id":137,"date":"2012-08-17T11:19:30","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T11:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/?p=137"},"modified":"2012-08-17T11:19:30","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T11:19:30","slug":"without-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/17\/without-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Without them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Amazingly my twin autistic wonderboys have been at camp for six whole days now &#8211; without me!\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I was expecting the call long ago that they bolted into the woods, had a nuclear meltdown, or the counselors were simply sick of their quirks and sent them packing.<\/p>\n<p>Without them, I&#8217;ve had a week of space and time to catch a play, a museum, time with the neurotypical daughter, self care errands like the periodontist (OK that was not my idea of vacation fun), and husband-talk.\u00a0 Having dinner solo with the hubby last night, no kids, was weird.\u00a0 Shades of the future when child rearing years are done and it&#8217;s just the two of us, like it was at the journey&#8217;s start.\u00a0 OK I worked a lot while they were gone too; kind of what I do with myself.\u00a0 But there was a white space to the margins that was soothing, yet also lonely in a way.<\/p>\n<p>Without them, I&#8217;ve wondered what they missed about home &#8211; what they&#8217;ll first crave when back at the cradle &#8211; what they learned.\u00a0\u00a0 I always hope my boys know they&#8217;re loved, even when they&#8217;re not with us.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow morning I&#8217;ll no longer be without them.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll probably smell like real men after a week in the woods, and probably weigh 10 pounds more given the stash of cookies W&#8217;s counselor showed us as his secret behavior-inducement.\u00a0 I&#8217;m already thinking about the long soaking bath I&#8217;ll give J., and whether Will still will crave his computer and his iPad.\u00a0 &#8211; Yet my life will be complete, in a way &#8211; and the source of what has made me good, focused, and whole will be back to further reshape me into the person I&#8217;m meant to be.\u00a0 I know they&#8217;ll be things W and J will do that I will not entertain as happily.\u00a0 Yet refreshed for the journey, I&#8217;m eager to see what they are &#8211; and bend the sapling into\u00a0a mighty tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amazingly my twin autistic wonderboys have been at camp for six whole days now &#8211; without me!\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I was expecting the call long ago that they bolted into the woods, had a nuclear meltdown, or the counselors were simply sick of their quirks and sent them packing. Without them, I&#8217;ve had a week of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}