About
Sid the Awesome Kidxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
About Sid
(continued from homepage) …and then quickly gave us a scare. A one week stay in the NICU (the biggest baby they had!) to treat probable aspiration pneumonia was the toughest week of my life so far. Once he was home, eating, growing, laughing, smiling, and being entertained by his big sister were just a few of his favorite things. After his 1st birthday I started noticing small things about him, he rarely responded to his name, eye contact was minimal, certain noises caused him to cover his ears, he rarely talked, and he loved playing on his own. He was very lovable and cuddly, a very happy and smiling boy, so in the back of my mind autism seemed impossible. When he was about 17 months old after we ruled out deafness, my world was rocked when an old stuffy neurologist drew me a picture. ‘This is a spectrum, your son is on it somewhere’. That’s it. I left there, sought out specialists, Sid started speech and occupational therapy, I moved the 3 of us to Bay village to join the best school district for him, and I learned how to engage with him and communicate. (continue below)
Artwork
Sid’s Creative Corner
…To say he flourished would be an understatement! His eye contact improved, he started talking, and by age 2 1/2 he had taught himself how to read! He read everything and anything, letters of the alphabet became his passion, and he began his love of the letter X. Each time he reached letter X, he would giggle, then finish the alphabet with a serious face. X’s became his ‘thing’, he carried letter X’s with him everywhere – plastic letters, cardboard letters, drawings of letters, and if he couldn’t find an X, he would create one. For Halloween at age 3 his costume was the letter X! His love of reading would always impress us and people we met; he would order his own food off menus (much to the shock of waitresses), read billboards, read store names, street signs, and obviously books. Books and letters were soothing and comforting for him. …❤️even his sheets had letters on them!
Living across the street from our library was absolutely perfect, we spent a lot of time there reading and playing. My favorite memory there has 2 parts. We were playing with letter puzzles on the floor one day, he was spelling out words and phrases, quickly running out of letters when he tried to put together the name ‘Arthur’. He only had one letter R and he needed two. After a meltdown, we left the library with me carrying out a screaming 3 year old. A few days later, we tried the library again, I told him where we were going, he ran back in the house and told me in his little raspy voice ‘I need to get something Mom’. No idea what he was doing, we walked hand in hand to the library and dared to try out the puzzles again. As he started to spell words, I looked down and saw A R T H U and panicked, thinking about the last time we had to leave there. My little bugger, my little genius, reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter R that he had grabbed from his collection at home. He placed the R at the end of the word, looked up at me and smiled-that’s what he went back for when I told him we were going to the library.
He then began his love of books, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom quickly became his favorite for many reasons. We have several copies of this book, he took one everywhere we went, reading it to himself, his sister, animals at the zoo, strangers walking by. Everyone was always amazed. The times I had to discipline him, taking away the letters was very effective, but he soon learned that he could make his own with anything. Who knew that food, sticks, toys, ripped paper, and crayons could be molded and shaped into letters! On a beach vacation, not wanting to bring his foam letters to the beach, he made his own. He spent forever walking up and down the beach with me, his cute little finger writing words and letters in the sand all down the beach. To say Sid is a special child is a huge understatement, he is simply amazingly incredible, sweet, funny, brilliant, charming, clever, lovable, silly, creative, quirky little boy and I’m so lucky I get to be his mom. On some mornings Sid would climb into my bed with his sister and we would sing ‘we’re the 3 best friends that anyone could have’ over and over. He loves milk in a specific blue cup, Woody from Toy Story, Monsters Inc, playing with Summer, cuddling his mom, eating hot dogs with no ketchup, popsicles, the Cleveland Indians (lots of names and numbers to read), playing outside, chalk, coloring, drawing, giggling, and the color orange. He thrived in preschool, the Bay Village SEEDS program at Glenview is out of this world. He made his first friends, had jobs to do (passing out cups seemed to be his favorite), and learned how to follow rules and socialize. The bond between us was strong and I believe it still is, he comes to me in dreams when I need it the most. I see X’s in nature all around me and in the sky and I can feel him watching over me. He is a great cuddler, loved to hug me, and when he kissed me he always took his two little hands and put them on my face. I’ll never understand why he was taken from me way too soon, but I have so many moments that I hold in my heart and in my mind. My daughter Summer is my world and my rock, there is a huge piece of us missing, we carry on his memory – he’s always going to be our little guy. I love you Sidney with all my heart.
