It's been more than a week since my last entry.  Lots of things have been happening.  For the most part Johnny has been doing well.  I worked a lot more than usual this past week and the week before and he handled it very well.  My other children, Lanny and Riley who babysat him handled it well too.  Hardly ever a complaint out of those two.  God love them.  :)  There were a few pretty big fits in there from Johnny though so I guess I'll start with our school-shoe-shopping adventure.  We talked about shoe shopping for a few days before we actually went and did it.  I told him all about how it is quiet in the shoe store and if he used any bad language everyone would be able to hear it and they would make us leave.  I asked him several times how we are expected to behave in places like that, what are we supposed to do when we get angry, which is STOP AND THINK ABOUT IT and make good decisions, calm down, all that good stuff.  When we walked in the door the lady asked if we needed to be sized.  I wanted to shout at her "NO JUST GO AWAY AND LEAVE US ALONE WE'RE GONNA TRY TO DO THIS AS QUICKLY AND PAINLESSLY AS POSSIBLE."  But of course I didn't.  After about 3 or 4 minutes in the shoe store the cursing began.  There were maybe 5 other people in the store so it wasn't over-crowded or anything.  I couldn't figure out what it was.  Could have been a number of other things but I can't figure it out.  Could have been that all the "foreplay" about going to the shoe store had stressed him out about it.  Who knows?  Several times I had to stop looking at shoes and speak to Johnny about his language and how people do NOT spit on the floor in stores.  He did pick out a pair of shoes he liked though and we found his size and all that good stuff.  You know, side note here, when Johnny was 3 he would only wear this one pair of Tonka sandals.  We lived in Florida so it didn't really matter what time of year it was, it was never SO cold that he was in any danger of freezing his toes off but we did go to Maryland to visit my family and he still would only wear the sandals.  I tricked him into wearing a pair of slipper socks with the sandals so his feet would be at least a LITTLE warmer.  It was January.  The first pair of shoes he would wear after the sandal phase was a pair of Thomas the Tank Engine tennis shoes that lit up when he walked.  I bought those shoes until the size of his foot was bigger than the average Thomas fan's shoe size and he wore that last, biggest pair until they literally fell apart.  Then he had no choice but to move on to a different style of shoe.  Thank goodness those days are gone.  So, back to the shoe store.  I grabbed the pair he liked and also a different pair in a half size bigger because they had the BOGO half off thing going on.  Things are getting heated with him and he is getting ballsier by the minute....spitting and cursing, etc.  The pair  he liked didn't have a box and when I put it on the counter the lady says "Oh let's get you a box for these" and she walks out from behind the counter.  If I could have reached her I would have grabbed her by her bun and yanked her back behind that counter with a quickness but I couldn't, so I settled for saying "NO NO NO NO NO we don't need a box, he's getting upset LET'S DO THIS."  Meanwhile Johnny is standing next to me saying "I'll say SHIT mommy, I'll talk about weenies.  Boobies are NOT private.  I'm PISSY."  Then as this nice lady is clearly working as fast as she can now because she GETS IT and her customers in the store can hear the little boy up front cursing at his mother LOUD AND CLEAR, he looks me straight in the face and starts to do this yell that I can't describe.  It was something like "AHHH AHHH AHHH AHHH AHHH!"  Just opening and closing his mouth like a little goldfish and letting out one hell of a noise.  This is when I really feel a big sign that says "My son has autism, please pick out your freakin shoes and stop staring" would come in handy.  Bless that poor clerk working that day.  She was just doing her job and trying to take care of us.  So I made it through that with only a minimal amount of sweat and not one iota of embarrassment because I'm getting REALLY good at not giving a poop about that.  He fought me all the way to the car.  In the car I turned to him just in time to get hit in the face by a big splatter of spit.  I wished so badly he could tell me WHY!!!!!  What set him off in the shoe store?  The smell, maybe?  Oh if my boy could answer one question I would want it to be WHY.  Actually a whole SERIES of WHY questions.  So we talked about it.  I kept my cool throughout the entire ordeal and I calmly told Johnny we would have to go home now, there would be no trip to Walmart (which was a very very necessary stop for us that day) and there would not be any McDonald's french fries either.  He quietly said, with his bottom lip quivering, "I'll be good" and that's when I almost lost it.  He had the saddest look on his face.  It's so so so hard when you don't know if he couldn't control himself, or is he confusing the excitement of getting new shoes with anger?  Not knowing is the worst part of autism.  And the WHY.  It's like a big cloud in your face and you can only see the tiniest bit of your child through the cloud but no matter how hard you wave it away it's still there and you just can't see clearly through it.  So I really talked to him like he was any other 8 year old boy and not one with autism.  And he got it.  I said I was very disappointed in the way he behaved and how we hadn't been going anywhere the past week because of how he behaved in Walmart the last time we went.  And that I hadn't left him at home when I went to the store all week to PUNISH him, it was because I don't know what he's going to do.  It really sounded ridiculous, me talking to him that way but I stayed calm and I think he really got the gist of what I was saying because all of a sudden he started crying HARD and said "I'LL BE GOOD MOMMY!  I'LL BE GOOD!"  So I said we would try Walmart.  And if he's good in Walmart he can have McDonald's fries.  Again, he said "I'll be good" and held up his hand to a passing telephone pole and squinted his eyes like he does at certain telephone poles and just acted like NOTHING had happened.   The trip to Walmart will forever be in my mind as the day I gave Johnny a second chance and he made me proud.  He was an angel in there and although I only had a couple things to get, we were in and out without incident.  We even went INSIDE Mcd's and sat down to have our lunch.  He was so good in the store that I had to text both of my sisters as soon as we got in the car to tell them about it.  I told Johnny repeatedly how proud I was of him and I knew he could do it and how happy he made me.  This all happened a week ago.  He has had some really great days lately and only a few fits.  There was a time when his teacher was counting as many as 30+ fits per day at school, so I'd say he's definitely improved quite a bit.  Johnny is learning to deal with things a little better and I am learning how to help him through his fits without a time-out or a threat.  We both continue to learn every day and I think we've both come A LONG WAY.  But there is still a LONG WAY to go too........