I laugh as I spoke to someone with a son that is just trying to navigate her way through the newly diagnosed Autism/ADHD/Sensory Processing Disorder world. As she told me that her son ONLY wanted and carried around a Spiderman stuffed doll, I laughed. Oh how the memories came flooding back to my mind.
As soon as Hayden was able to speak, he knew what he wanted and what he liked. From before the age of one until two and a half years old, it was Bear in the Big Blue House on Playhouse Disney. Anytime he saw Bear, Ojo, Pip, Pop, or all of the Bear in the Big Blue House characters. Then, all of a sudden, almost overnight, he switched to Elmo. I felt like we were living in "Elmo's World". I sang the song to Hayden more times a day than I could count, and would even sing it as "Hayden's World"... La la la la. After Elmo it was all things Toy Story but especially Buzz Lightyear. I think Buzz is in every family picture there is for that couple of years. Spiderman was the next to hit the scene. He ate drank and slept for the Spidey superhero. We potty trained him stating that all the superheros came together to boycott being pee'd on. If Hayden went in his spidey unders...well, all things Spiderman disappeared for the day. Since Spiderman, he ventured out into all super heroes. Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, and the list goes on... he loved them all and was never caught without at least two different ones in his hands and pockets.
His latest obsession or fascination is with legos. He absolutely loves legos. He builds them incredibly fast, then takes them apart and tries to find a cooler way to utilize the legos in each box. He loves taking them apart and finding better ways to accomplish the same task.
With Hayden's love for all things legos, he requested for everyone to give him legos, for both his birthday and Christmas. With both his birthday and Christmas being only two weeks apart, he received an incredible number of gift cards to Walmart and Target. He had been itching to take his gift cards and purchase more legos since before Christmas. Not wanting him to pick out ones that were already being gifted to him, we made him wait. After Christmas, we told him that he needed to again wait until the new lego sets, he was dying for, came in.
After waiting for over a month, on Mommy day, Hayden called Grandma Julie to see if she would quickly run us to Target or Walmart so he could spend the money on his gift cards. She quickly agreed, headed over and took Hayden and I to Target.
While in Target, Hayden was playing with the Skylanders for a moment, while a worker went on a hunt for the new lego sets. Hayden sat one of the figures (in the Wii box) on the Skylanders portal. It was supposed to bring him into the game....instead the alarm system went off. About six Target employees came running over. Not one of them knew how to shut the security system off. The noise was horrific, it was loud and Hayden about died of embarassment. I was done with walking and quickly fading. But, Target didn't have any lego sets, so my disappointed boy was feeling defeated that he couldn't spend his gift cards and pretty upset about the alarm system that was still blaring. It was still going off, even as we left through the doors and into the parking lot. Oops...
I couldn't stand Hayden's face. He had waited for this day for over a month and no luck with his purchases. I put my arm around him and told him if he could conquer Walmart in less than ten minutes, I could probably make it.
Walmart was a HUGE success! They not only had every lego set he was dying to purchase and build, but they also had some incredible sales on some of the lego sets he wanted. Keeping to his promise, he headed straight to the lego aisle, picked up the lego sets he wanted and was headed to the check out within five minutes.
Miraculously, I held in there with him. I know...less than 25 minutes in two stores and I was completely and utterly worn out. Even so, I was able to give my sweet son exactly what he needed. (Thanks, Grandma Julie for being a lifesaver and take us running around for a half an hour).
I made Hayden pose for a quick picture. I really wanted to remember this day forever.
I wanted Hayden to remember that no matter how sick I was, no matter how horrible I felt, no matter how little energy that I have, that he is number one in my book and I will always do what is best for him. We did it! We had a great day, even if I came home from Walmart and completely crashed out for the next several hours. We did it! We had the perfect mommy and Hayden day. It really did almost feel like the perfect day!
I am looking forward to a lifetime of more memories with this sweet boy. But, for the moment, I will relish in any good days we have. And, today, yep, it was DEFINITELY one of the sweetest memories of all.
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