Ryan's first team sport

This past Saturday I signed Ryan up for a bumper bowling league that is every Saturday from now until mid-April. Bet you weren't expecting bowling to be the sport ;-). He LOVES bowling and is finally mature enough and patient enough to take turns and wait for his turn, so I thought this would be a good start. Maybe someday we'll try soccer or something (he's really uncoordinated, so this makes me a bit nervous lol.) All I heard from the time he got up Saturday morning until we left was, "Is it 9:30 yet? Is it time to go bowling yet?" LOL.

Let me back up a little bit for a minute. Back in September we took Ryan for an evaluation to try to get him some more services for his PDD diagnosis that he received at the end of July, like a TSS for home and/or school. The first agency we went through really dropped the ball and we ended up switching to a different one at the beginning of last month. We got the approval for home and community right away, but the insurance wasn't wanting to approve it for school. We were going to try to appeal it, but the school has changed their mind and no longer feels Ryan needs one since he is doing SO much better since the start of the school year :-). His TSS is Miss Arlene and she spends 5 hours a week with Ryan (and me). Her typical schedule is Tuesday and Thursday from 3:45 to 5:15 and Saturday 9:00 to 11:00. When I told her I wanted to sign Ryan up for this Saturday mornings, she said if I wanted her to, she could just go along and I told her that was fine with me. I thought it would be a help if Ryan had one of his meltdowns or couldn't handle the stimulation with all the kids and noise because sometimes that can be a problem.

So Saturday morning she got here at 9:00 and we left here at 9:30 to make sure we had time to sign him up and all that before it started at 10:00. Before we left, we talked to him a lot about being polite and waiting his turn and not throwing a fit when it was time to leave. We ended up with about 15 minutes to spare after signing him up while we were waiting for it to start and he did really well with the waiting (NOT one of his strong points). He is used to bowling with those ramps and they don't use those for this, so it was a bit of a learning curve for him to figure out how to get the ball down the lane with some speed behind it lol. But he got it :-). He had a lot of fun and was cheering on the other kids...so cute :-). All was well until he was going up to take his turn on the 9th frame of the 2nd/last game. Miss Arlene and I were talking and the next thing we knew, Ryan was flat on his face and his ball rolling across the floor :-(.

Ryan doesn't even handle someone bumping into him well, let alone falling down on the floor in front of a bunch of people. He was extremely upset and even let me pick him when usually he doesn't want anything to do with anyone in a situation like that. He was screaming and crying and SO mad. He wouldn't take his turn and someone else took it for him, but he did calm down enough to take his last turn, although it just escalated again when he realized it was then time to leave. I had to struggle with him to get his shoes on and then there was NO way he was cooperating to get his coat on. Miss Arlene just scooped him and carried him right out to the van. Luckily it wasn't freezing cold out anymore, but really it wouldn't have mattered anyway because there was no way he was going to calm down while we were inside, so no way he would have gotten his coat on. Once he gets to a certain point, there's no way for him to calm down unless he's removed from the situation. She got him out to the van and somehow buckled in to his booster seat and he finally calmed down. We left there and headed to my in-laws' house where Brooke had spent the night. It was there that I realized he had hurt his right thumb and I almost took him to the ER. It was red and swollen and really bothering him, but he got extremely upset at the idea of going to the hospital. So I let him go for a bit and kept asking him to move it and wiggle it and I pushed all over his hand and the only part that was bothering him was his actual thumb. The more time went by, the easier he could move it without yelling in pain and within an hour he was able to play the Wii so I knew it couldn't be *that bad ;-). LOL. It has gotten better every day since then, but I can't believe we almost had to make an ER trip after his first week! Hopefully no more injuries ;-).