A Valentine's Surprise

I've lamented before how Mister Man's Asperger's means that he just doesn't get things sometimes. He doesn't care about the things that to me you would want to care about - and admittedly there are times it drives me nuts. Little Miss, on the other hand, has a personality that just draws people to her, and things come naturally to her. She's lucky in that things tend to come easy and right for her.

Last night, I - the star parent of the week - realized that the wee ones needed to write out Valentine's cards for all their classmates. I set each child down and explained what they needed to do. I placed the class lists for each of them on their homework desks and pointed out how they needed to write a valentine to each classmate using the list I provided. I suggested they mark each name as they do it, and I showed them where to write the to and the from.

Then I walked into the kitchen to make dinner.

Little Miss bounced into the room less than five minutes later. Mommy, I'm done! she squealed with delight. I wasn't surprised that she had managed to write out all 23 valentines in less time than Mister Man wrote out his 16. I continued setting the table while waiting for Mister Man to finish.

As they finished dinner and cleared up their places, I popped into the homework room to gather up the valentines. I peeked at Little Miss's first valentine and saw that she'd spelled her name wrong. And the student's name wrong. I looked at the next and the next - over half of them had misspellings. Bad misspellings. She was trying to phonetically spell names after looking at the list to see who was next. Oh, and she had forgotten one of her friends.

I called her into the room and pointed out again how to fix the valentines - checking the spelling versus the list, writing carefully to make sure no letters were backwards, and oh I don't know - counting to make sure she hasn't missed anyone. After every card, she'd run over to me to check it. Most of them were right after that, but some she had to check again to make sure she'd spelled them correctly - again.

With dread, I walked over to Mister Man's desk. And there I saw the class list open with a very neat X next to each name. And one name crossed out, because apparently the boy had left the school last month. Every card was written neatly, and he'd even done the teachers' cards. Somehow, he knew to use the big cards for the teachers, something I'd forgotten to mention - and the Little Miss completely missed.

I smiled to myself, realizing that I need to not underestimate my boy. No, things don't necessarily come easy to him, but with some cues, he'll figure it out and do just fine. It's a lesson I need to take to heart - and I couldn't ask for a better Valentine's Day present.

(And yes, those are homemade crayons that we put onto each card with a Happy Valentine's Day! label. Silly me, I didn't do the math to think about how long it would take to make 40 of those suckers when you can only make four at a time. Fortunately, I have an awesome husband who took on that job!)

I am also giving away a Progresso Souper You Debut gift pack here.

Oh, and while you're at it, I finally set up a Facebook Fan page for my blog. It's way overdue. Go like me on Facebook if you would so I can get an official username - once I get enough likes. You can also follow me on Twitter, too, if you're so inclined.