Happy Halloween!

We went to a halloween party at a friends house, with a gaggle of children.

Let me say that again.

We
Went
To
A
Party

A normal party with a ton of people Dominic didn't know.  With food he had to ask before eating.  And strange toys. In a new environment. 

Not only did Dominic do amazing behaviorally  (even with losing one of his little fidget toys somewhere in the backyard, we had ZERO anxiety/meltdown), we got comments from a solid 5 people telling us they see a HUGE difference in his verbals in the last few months.


The funniest part of the ENTIRE experience was the scavenger hunt.  There was a plethora of small children running around finding clues while Dominic happily hogged the playground.  Note that he is wearing a witches hat (i know, he wore a costume.  HUGE). 

One of the scavenger hunt clues told the kids that the next clue was under the black witches hat.

About half of the children lined up in front of Dominic swinging and insisted he remove his hat.  The other half of the children found the proper hat.

All the adults laughed until we nearly cried.

There appears to be a small witch in your tree

boys.

He LOVED being on top of the monkey bars

As the biggest kid there, he also got to weaken the pinata for the littles to break the rest of the way open.

he had so much fun

Pumpkin guts!!!!!!

These pictures are from the occupational therapy session pm Wednesday that Dominic was really having a meltdown during - and then he proceeded to be absolutely awesome at the fire station

I think he was just so excited about the fire truck that he just didn't want to be there, and its a reminder that his central nervous system isn't quite all the way wired in for appropriate ways to express excitement.   We will work on htat.

This is our OT, Miss Beth.  Yes, she's wearing a superhero cape and mask because this therapy clinic rocks.

I love the facial expressions on the both of them and how they progress.  Pumpkin guts are apparently The Bomb for sensory work.

Fire Station tour

We almost didn't go.
Dominic had a HORRIBLE therapy session from 4-5 (tears, non compliance, running off, throwing a fit that the waiting room was not how he wanted it, etc), and I almost cancelled the visit.

I'm really glad I didn't.  Turns out he was in a mess at therapy because he was so excited about scouts.  I cannot tell you how happy I am that we are sticking to this.  He's really enjoying himself.  Daddy and I are kind of handing off the actual going along part because he is NOWHERE near ready to be dropped off.  It's so sweet to see him interacting with his peers.

Here he is super excited just to be in the room with a FIRE TRUCK.  Well. Fire Engine, we were corrected.

Listening to a safety presentation.

All the boys in the troop with FireFighter John who gamely put on all his gear.

We were almost last in line to get to SIT in the truck.  He waited beautifully and totally thought that was AWESOME.

Pretend Play. With unrelated photos

So we are sending Dominic outside as much as possible before it truely turns cold outside.  He's got a rubbermaid bin with water in it and yesterday he spent a solid 45 minutes floating pieces of bark in it, telling me they were boats.  Then he upp'd the ante and caught grasshoppers to ride on the boats.  And they were either dead or obedient grasshoppers, because they didn't hop off.


Here we are working on our superman pose....

And here we are after telling me he was Harry Potter (we have almost finished watching the movies as a family - we still have to buy Deathly Hallows 1 and 2)

Conversation!!!!!!

So tomorrow, Dominic's scout troop is going to be meeting at the fire station to talk about fire safety.

He has been talking about it for DAYS.  He's very excited. So excited in fact that I got a back and forth conversation with him about it while he did his footbath tonight. 

Oh and yes, he's totally looking at a book and telling me about the pictures.  Not the words, yet, but he's *so close* and clearly wants to.

Wait, what???

Since we keep track of gains... here's a biggie....

Out of the blue, Dominic now has the manual dexterity and fine motor control to use a key to open a deadbolt.

He did it one day. Just reached over for the key that we keep close to the door for fire safety purposes and did it.

Right now, I am really glad we have a security system here that we can set to chime three times when a door is opened or closed. Also really glad his gps tracker should be here within another few weeks (I got an email recently that they'd gotten FCC approval to start manufacturing)

In which I talk about myself

so... I'm 10 days into a modified Keto diet in which i'm attempting to keep my daily calories under 1300, and eat almost no carbs (i do eat vegetables and there is about 1/3 of an apple in my daily glass of veggie juice).
 
This is the third time I've gone KEto, and I've done low carb probably 2 dozen times in the last 20 years.  My body likes it and I tend to normalize weight on it pretty quickly.   Normally when I do this, I get major cravings and thats what tanks me. 

This time I've been taking 2 products from a company called Victory Nutrition Inc, prodovite (a liquid vitamin that is encapsulated in phospholipids to get it thru the stomach into the small intestine where it is much more likely to be absorbed) and brain reward (an amino compound that was designed and has 29 studies around it for the addiction community). I actually started these to trial on myself before trying them on Dominic because together they seem to be neuroadaptogenic.  It was a coincidence that the timing worked out to be the same as my Keto start.  These products claim to reset dopamine receptors.  Our ND does not like them, because they are not very cleanly produced.  They were made for adult addicts, not autistic kids - no way around that.

Here's my current observation about these.  The way the schedule goes, you are supposed to take brain reward either 1 hour before or 2 hours after eating.  There is a loading phase at the beginning (for both products actually) where you take more and then you phase it back because it takes about 2 weeks to create the new dopamine receptors.  So for the Brain Reward I have been taking 2 hours after breakfast, which is working out to be around 10:30am.    Yesterday at about noon I realized I was craving Sushi. And then I realized I'd forgotton my brain reward, so I took it and waited an hour t eat lunch.  Today I saw someone post online about Olive Gardena nd thought - oh that sounds delicious all those wonderful breadsticks, looked at the clock and realized I was an hour late taking the brain reward.

It is definately removing my cravings and that makes perfect sense if we think about food as an addiction. 

Its an MLM.  Which I don't really like.  But I'm signed up because there's no yearly fee for the membership and you don't have a committed amount to purchase every month - you get 20% off.  If you are interested in trying these and want to get the discount, please use me as a referral.  My number is  818265.

Nobody's perfect. AKA Food Infraction weekend...

2 Funny stories about this weekend.

Mind you I have been killing myself to keep his diet as clean as possible given all his current inflammatory reactions.  So we have hidden our non-appropriate treats from Dominic, generally on a high shelf in our bedroom.  This had included a costco size bag of miniature halloween candy bars that we were enjoying here and there. 

So... first funny.  Saturday night I turned in early and took a muscle relaxant because my back was bothering me.  So I was watching TV in our bed and I lost the remote control (I blame the muscle relaxant. Just sayin).  In the process of taking the bed apart to locate said remote control i discovered a pile of candy wrappers shoved behind the bed.

Kiddo figured out how to get to the high shelf silently and had been snacking, then hiding the evidence.  We have no idea for how long as we've pretty consistently hid treats in our bedroom.


Second funny...  Sunday night after Dominic went to bed, Daddy and I ordered our weekly diet cheat meal -  a pizza. we might have eaten 2/3 of it and I put the rest in a baggie in the fridge. Monday morning we waited until the bus was 20 minutes late before we realized there was no school, so we had an unplanned kid at home day.  Around lunch time, Daddy went looking for the leftover pizza.  We still haven't found it.   The only thing we can come up with is that Dominic found it, snuck it somewhere and ate it.

The Cool part about all this is that he's suddenly AWARE and COGNIZANT of things he's not supposed to have.  And he's plotting / hiding things from us.  This is a huge developmental piece.

Also, he's doing REALLY well for having this many dietary infractions.  Yes we've had reports of extra silliness from school, and yes he was downright non compliant at the chiropractor Tuesday - but overall he's doing remarkably well.

The Downside - Mommy and Daddy are done having hidden food and we cannot have any leftovers of non approved food anymore.

So proud of himself....

Dominic's school does these cute little certificates for the kids when they work hard.    They then get their picture with the certificate posted on a wall of fame for a month.  They are for rewarding S.O.A.R behavior (safety, organization, attitude, respect & responsibility). 

Yesterday as Dominic got home from school, he reached into his backpack and handed me a stapled stack of 8 SOAR certificates. 

Showing them off.

As in he is proud of himself!!! 

This is so huge.

Then this morning, he got them again and took them to Daddy and showed the off again.

Mind you we have no idea the time frame he got them in or the reasons for them, we are just so pleased to see him realizing that he's done something to be proud of and showing it off.  

Integrating our Reflexes...

Honestly, you would that I was asking this child to rip his fingernails off as much as he's been arguing about doing his reflex integration exercises, which we are doing 3x a day.  If he didn't argue, we'd be done in NO TIME.  I figured I'd record them for everyone's amusement.  Right now we are focusing on doing superman and egg 5x each, 3 different times a day, holding each for 15 seconds.

First up, Superman:

Then I wanted him to do egg on then floor, but he wanted to do it on the Bosu, which didn't go so well.

For your amusement:

Then we did egg on the floor and that went MUCH  better.

I know we will be adding more exercises to this regime and i'm so hoping he gets past the arguing about it stage and just does them.  we've also got all the eye exercises we do every day too.    Yesterday we saw our on-maternity-leave-damnit OT at a social event and she referred to us as the parents everyone wants for OT because we are doing the homeswork.  I didn't realize there was another option lol.

Finding it himself and playing with a kitty....

One of Dominic's long time fixations has been his fidget toys, that he carries in his pocket or his hands.  USUALLY they are super tiny little animals.   And he loses them on a regular basis, which, until today, has led to DRAMA.

Crying for help, for us to "find it", usually unable to tell us which toy is missing.  I remember searching outside with a  flashlight for the car he lost because he would not stop screaming without it.

This morning we had a lazy morning.  Daddy and I laid in bed and watched TV for a few hours while we ate breakfast before we took a shower.  At one point Rod got up and checked on Dominic because it was TOO QUIET.  He was out watching Airplanes in his pjs.  Rod called me over to see something.

Dominic had taken the cushions off the couch, MOVED the hide-a-bed about a food (those things are HEAVY), and was laying on his stomach with a little flashlight searching.  When asked what he was searching for, he told Daddy "Baby Squirrel".

Wait what?  He realized it was lost and started looking for it himself. He did not melt down, did not ask for help, he just did it.
(we ended up finding baby squirrel in our bedroom where he'd put Shanti's collar on him)

~~~~~

Then we went to visit some friends of ours who are like adopted aunties.  And they have cats.  Dominic looooooves animals.  These cats are somewhat skittish, but he was calm enough to interact beautifully  with them.   He had a small fidget mouse in his hand that the kitties were VERY interested in.   I can't remember when we visited them last but it was long enough ago that they were blown away by his progress and his verbals. :)

I think we are out of inchstones and to footstones folks.

Mommy FIX IT

Tuesday Night Dominic noticed a tiny hole in his sock.  This freaked him out.  So he asked me to fix it. I told him that it was probably better to just throw the sock away and he got it out of the trash, put some scotch tape on it, and wore it until he took his shower and went to bed.

Yesterday morning he noticed a tiny hole in the leg of his jeans.  TINY!!!  And I was on a work related conference call so when he asked me to fix it, I had to tell him I was sorry but he would have to either go get a different pair of pants or wear those until after school...  He went to get the fabric I could patch it with and was so sad that I still said I couldn't do it right then.

So... he got some scotch tape and taped it over the hole.  Problem solved.

...we have problem solving and creative thinking, people!

(note to self, get the tape off before they hit the laundry....)

Showers....

Three years ago, on our trip to Washington state (side note, really, 3 years? thats too long), Dominic went wading in the ocean.  The picture doesn't show it but he ended up messy enough that he needed a quick shower (it was a camping ish area) before we could put him back in the rental car.   Rod remembers the screaming and flailing that went along with it. For a sensory kiddo used to baths, the shower was absolute torture.    I believe that was our first attempt at a shower since pre-regression rinse off's at the beach.

While I was at Generation rescue a few weeks ago, Dominic and Daddy got haircuts.  And when they came home, Dominic allowed Rod to shower him off.  In our bathroom not his (our shower doesn't have a tub attached down there, whereas his has a tub).   He tolerated it.

Fastforward to Sunday night.   We were all cuddled in hanging out downstairs and isntead of bringing Dominic upstairs for the bathtub, I asked if he'd like to take a shower.  And he agreed to it.  And he took a shower, washed his hair and body and then dried off. Like Nothing Happened.

Monday I ran the bath like usual and he insisted upon a shower for his hair.  When i turned on the shower in his bathroom he didn't like it.  So after his bath we went downstairs and he took a shower in Mommy and Daddy's shower to wash his hair.

Tuesday.... he just wanted a shower.  No bath.

This is a really random and odd gain, but its a huge gain nonetheless.   The reduction in his sensory defensiveness is ASTONISHING.  Its also going to make the bedtime routine much faster because there won't be all the water play. 

I think we might have to install a towel rack downstairs for him.  That would be SO COOL. :)

SkittleGate and the IonCleanse....

Last week on Thursday, Dominic came out of vision therapy happily munching on a handful of skittles.

Blink Blink.

Rod immediately took them away and asked the therapist what she was thinking.  They were rewards.  Rod advised her that Dominic's allergic to artificial anything and she brushed it off with a half hearted apology.

I called the office and threw a fit.
I followed it with a terse email.
It won't be happening again.

Who in this day and age gives food based rewards - particularly ones full of known neurotoxins - to a child without first asking if they have food allergies????

So we gave Dominic a 60 minute footbath immediately - if you blow this picture up you an actually see Red, yellow, and green from the artificial colors coming out.  If there was any doubt in my mind that  the IonCleanse by AMD pulled toxins out its gone.  I didn't have to taste the rainbow, I saw it!  After the footbath, we administered activated charcoal.  

Even with both first aid interventions in my tool box on board, he was more wound up that we've seen in YEARS.  Windmilling his arms, screaming, jumping on and off furniture.. took several hours for him to go to sleep.  At least he's a HAPPY child when he's poisoned (and many aren't) but it was ridiculous.

We are now 5 days post skittle exposure and we're still getting notes from school that he's extra silly.


I'll take extra silly over aggressive, but you better believe that therapist will never be giving a child a food based reinforcer again.

Stop calling it Autism

We have got to stop calling it autism.  Calling it autism not only makes the parent stop searching for answer, its makes the provider stop as well.  I can't tell you how many times a particular symptom gets dismissed because "its just his autism, he's wired differently". 

Two such instances about Dominic come to mind:

The First, an OT years ago came out of session and told me that Dominic had developed a new stim sticking his fingers in his mouth.  I looked in his mouth and removed the food that was stuck to the back of his tooth and the stim went away.  Imagine that.

The second was when our ABA providers quietly told me that he'd started to touch himself on the genitals inappropriately.  Turned out his underwear was too small and once we went up a size (and switched to boxers), that touching went away.  Again.. imagine that.

And because he has the autism label, the first place both of those therapists went was - its just a new feature of the autism.  We need to start forcing medical providers to actually get to the bottoms of our issues.  And Every single one of our kids is going to have a different answer.

Is it Pyroluria (a metabolic disorder that leads to "incredible hulk" style rages and can be treated with B6 and zinc)?

Is it a traumatic brain injury that requires specific tailored therapy to heal?

Is it a bacterial infection that has led to an autoimmune illness and psychiatric symptoms (PANDAS)?

Is it mitochondrial disease?

Is it Lyme disease?

Is it parasites?

Is it heavy metal toxicity?

Is it a food allergy?

Is it seizure disorder?

Is it early emotional trauma?
Is it gut dysbiosis leading to either constipation or diarrhea and pain?
Is it not enough stomach acid to digest food?
Is it adrenal fatigue?
Is it sluggish / blocked metabolic pathways?
Is it toxicity?
Is it .....

Or is it 3+ of the above / all of the above / none of the above?

Here's what ICD10 says about Autism - which is incredibly frustrating

F84.0 Childhood autism

A type of pervasive developmental disorder that is defined by: (a) the presence of abnormal or impaired development that is manifest before the age of three years, and (b) the characteristic type of abnormal functioning in all the three areas of psychopathology: reciprocal social interaction, communication, and restricted, stereotyped, repetitive behaviour. In addition to these specific diagnostic features, a range of other nonspecific problems are common, such as phobias, sleeping and eating disturbances, temper tantrums, and (self-directed) aggression.

Autism has become a diagnosis of "well we don't know what else it could be so its this".  Because doctors don't look for weird stuff first.  Its our job as front line in this fight to work to change that.  To insist on testing to rule in or out all of the above conditions (and more!!! I'm sure I'm leaving some out) before slapping a permanent label on our kids that says "don't look any deeper, we're just wired differently"

It's so easy to get sucked into the latest and greatest treatments on facebook and at conferences. I've done it many times.  Occasionally we have  had amazing results - usually either nothing or it makes him worse.  And some of the things - including footbaths - that Dominic has soared on, I know other kids who haven't done well on.  We know that our kids are NOT the same.  They don't come to Autism with the same injury.  And so the way to fix them is never going to be exactly the same.  Yes there are often things that work for MANY of them, but there is nothing that works for every child. 

We need individualized medicine in a world of cookie cutter 5 minute appointments with doctors who don't have time in their day to think outside the mold

Ask me about my art

Dominic came home today with a sticker on his shirt that said "Ask me about my Art".  This was unusual so we did.  He opened his backpack and handed me a bundle that consisted of these:


The original artwork:
(look at how legible his name is!!  I suspect a teacher did the outline of the bird for him, and I am positive the coloring was all him)

A teaser page of stickers... these are awesome.  I don't know what to do with them, but they are AWESOME

And an order form.  He is participating in a school fundraiser with this.   Let me say that again.  He is participating in the school fundraiser.

This is a total first here folks.   And I'm so excited I'm going to go order some cool stuff with his art on it.  If you would like to support his elementary school, you may go HERE and use access code zh4zj4lk3.

. 

Tweaking protocol... one little thing at a time

So the last few nights, Dominic's footbaths have been jet black, with zero foam or bubbles.  This means a couple of things.

1. a huge liver release (finally!!!)
2.  we've finally got our anti inflammatories and anti fungals to the right level (HOORAY!!!!!)


I texted a picture of the footbaths over to our Naturopath and asked her about increasing liver support.  We had a consult today and decided to both increase the dosage of liver support supplementation by 50% AND add castor oil packs to his liver 3 days on / 1 day off.   The castor oil should do double duty as bringing his body into "rest and restore" versus "flight or fight".







Which segues nicely into the biggest concern I've had. Dominic's adrenals are tapped out.  They have been for years and none of the plethora of adrenal supps we have used over the years have helped.  Specifically, his corstisol levels have historically been flat (last test was back in the DAN days), he ALWAYS hits for tapped adrenals at our chiropractors office, and we've got this funky dilated eyes at the end of the day after a hot bath.   One of my TMR friends watched the videos i put up the other day showing our vision therapy exercises and gave me the feedback that he looks completely in "flight or fight" mode.

So, using the logic that I learned from Charlie over at MitoSynergy - my brain is doing this.  If the body is not making enough ATP (cellular energy at the mitochondrial level), then the body has to use the adrenals to function.  I asked Dr Kara to take a look at Dominic's genetic mutations with an eye for mitochondrial disorder. He does have at least 2 of the classic mito mutations, SOD and  NADH and he's got some of the lower tone stuff (an awkward gait when running, difficulty with fine motor), and none of the plethora of adrenal sup's we've tried have done anything.   So, all together those logically point to a possible mitochondrial disorder.  We're going to start Dominic on a mitochondrial support supplement as our next official thing.  Unfortunately MitoSynergy products make Dominic go bananas.  Dr Kara will research and pick the best mito supplement for Dominic given his allergies (her preferred brand has cornstarch in it and he's allergic to corn)

After 4ish weeks on the mito supp, we will add the methylated B vitamins.   The idea here is to get all the pathways functioning (which is why we've got Sam-E and Glutathione onboard) before we add the methylated B vitamins so that his body can actually have its best possible shot at maximizing them.

This means I need to do a couple of more things related to mitochondrial disease
1. probably get him formally diagnosed with it - as that will forever exempt him medically from vaccines AND mean that we get special treatment should he need surgical anesthesia. (nitrous oxide is a huge no-no for mito kids)
2.  Research the crap out of mito. Its not my forte at all, but my gut says we need to go this direction.
3.  Get an Autism Is Medical USB bracelet/key chain and get all his records condensed there.

Mito is controversial.  Not going to lie, I don't like going down this path.  Lots of doctors don't believe in it, because its an emerging field and they weren't trained in it.  Makes it hard to navigate and makes medical kidnapping peer over the horizon.  

Speech therapy update

So I had asked our speech therapist to give me age equivalencies last year vs this year with the testing she does.

And lets all remember that we've been pushing Dominic so hard to move along his speech, both receptive and expressive, which both require an integrated rooting reflex.... when his rooting reflex is disintegrated.  So we've been trying to get walls to stand up when there was no foundation.


So - here we go

Type of test              This year           last year
expressive                 4years               3 years 6 months
receptive                    6years 3mo      5 years 6 months
articulation                he missed 13     he missed 16 (both of these score as less than 5 years old, nothing more specific)

Then we did the Social Pragmatic  test which has a range of scoring.  Last year he got a 69 and in order to be age equivalent, he needed a 132.  This year, he got a 99 and needed 136.  So huge improvement.


I also expressed to our lead speech therapist my displeasure that the new ST has started with yes/no pecs.  I feel like not only is that a step backwards, its undoing things that we are doing.    It will either be handled or i'll pull him off the new girls schedule and we'll focus on the rooting and moro reflexes and build that foundation so that the speech therapy will actually get us somewhere.

Vision Therapy, Homework, day 1

Documenting so we have something to come back and look at.  This is our first effort at doing the vision therapy exercises at home and I've documented them via video so we can come back to it later and compare.

First up is the Marsden ball. He's supposed to keep his head still and follow it with each eye, one at a time (hence the pirate look).  His eyes are totally not moving at all.   Its a starting point.

And

Then he has to read letters off a block of letters in a certain order, with one eye patched, while crossing midline with the open eye.  He is better at this. I think he just doesn't understand the ball.

So. We are supposed to work up to 15 minutes a day of vision activities like this.  I think we got 3-4 minutes on our first shot.  I'll time it on the next go around.

documenting for posterity....

One of our EVERY day things is that I make fresh vegetable juice out of (organic all) carrots, celery, beets, cucumber, kale and apple.   This is for all of us.   We've been doing it about a year now.  Beets are VERY RED.

yesterday morning, I had an early conference call for work, so Dominic was finishing his juice and breakfast in the other room with Daddy.  After he went to school I wandered into the kitchen for more caffeine and it looked like a crime scene.   Red on the ceiling, walls, floor.  Most of it was in distinct splatter looking spots, but the normally white cubbard doors right under my sink were a fairly uniform pink.

Upon further searching, we discovered a VERY pink (when it should've been cream colored) dish towel.  Which explained the pink cubbard doors.

Kiddo made a huge mess.
and
ATTEMPTED TO CLEAN IT UP INDEPENDENTLY.

Do ya'll get that?????  How big that is????


Then.
After school, I was in the office finishing up work and Dominic came in to show me a hole in his jeans.  I told him to take them off and i would fix it later.  (intending to put them in the goodwill bin because they're pretty worn out.)

He went to the guestroom, opened the closet, got in my sewing basket for a random purple fabric with skeletons on it, took his pants off, and brought me both.  Then he emphatically said "FIX IT".
I got my scissors, thread, etc, and took the purple fabric and he said "CUT IT".  I put a purple patch on his jeans, he put them back on, and everyone is happy.

Field day!!!

Yesterday was Dominic's last field day as an elementary school student (I KNOW).  So 5th graders parents are invited over to watch and be supportive.  We snuck over for an hour over my lunch break.   

First.... He was doing really well following social cues.   I was very impressed.  He stayed with his group -= we got there for the 50 yard dash, which he got a first place ribbon in, long jump, relay race, and tug of war.  We left before the sack race which probably would've been HILARIOUS, but I ran out of lunch hour.

Here are pics and videos.  He's in the red shirt and jeans.

We had a quick conversation with our SPED coordinator and she mentioned that in the last month his verbals have gone through the roof (with the removal of screen time / videos).  We had to call an early IEP because several of his goals are computer based... and he's supposed to get zero computer time for the duration of vision therapy.   IEP will be end of October.   I love my school / sped department - they have not given us even an iota of grief for these changes and totally scheduled the iep within the legally required timeframe (1 month).    We are lucky.  I am nervous about the transition to middle school.  New staff / new school,.  I will have to get them trained up.

And he is a bobcat!

Tonight's cub scout meeting was held at the park up the street....  The plan was to do a hike and then an awards ceremony.  We knew Dominic would be getting his Bobcat Badge, so we were there will bells on.   As the park has a playground... of course he wanted to go play for awhile first.... 

Then the hike got underway.  This is Dominic with his friend Sidney.  Actually a number of the boys are his friends.  It makes my heart happy when they tell me that he's happy at school.   He is definately well known with his peers, and that makes me happy.  They've been with him since Kindegarten and they get him.    The hike started with a bang - lots of little boys running....

And Dominic pretty rapidly decided the place he wanted to be was at the very front.  Here he is where he spent most of the hike - holding scoutmaster Tim's hand at the lead of the pack.  So grateful its an autism Dad who is our scout master.  By this point I'd fallen behind because a little kiddo fell and scratched his arm and because I had my GIANT purse, I had bandaids.  Have to laugh.

At one point the front of the pack lost the back of the pack and had to sit down while Scoutmaster Tim went to locate them.  That was mildly amusing.

Once located, we all headed back to the pavilion and did the awards ceremony.  

In true Dominic fashion, he was offended at something being pinned to his shirt, so we had to take it off basically immediately, but he's officially a bobcat. Which is so cool.