Special-Needs Parenting Fantasy Vs. Reality

Parenting a kid with special needs doesn’t always go as planned. Sometimes I need to remind myself to just go with the flow, like in these 5 scenarios:  

Fantasy: Take kid to a children’s museum on his day off from school. Pay 8 euros for admission. Have a lovely time exploring the museum together and enhancing kid’s education.  
Reality: Discover admission is 14.50 euros, and pay begrudgingly. Kid decides to spend the majority of time practicing going up and down museum’s stairs and riding the elevator. While wearing a costume from the firefighter exhibit. 

Mental note to self: Go with the flow.

Fantasy: Buy fun stickers of little eye balls, noses, mustaches, and bunny ears. Use them to decorate hard-boiled eggs with kid the day before Easter. 

Reality: Stickers won’t stick to egg. Kid just wants to roll egg around anyway. Kid discovers egg can be spinned and finds this hilarious. Then kid tries to eat egg with shell on.  
Mental note to self: Go with the flow. (But don’t let kid eat egg shell.)

Fantasy: Put kid in his new “big boy” bed for an afternoon nap. Take a quick power nap on the mattress next to his bed and then sneak downstairs to get work done while kid sleeps.
Reality: After being put in bed, kid peaks over bed railing and smiles down at Mommy. Kid tries to climb out of bed and onto Mommy’s mattress, and succeeds. Kid snuggles with Mommy briefly, gets bored, and crawls off of mattress to play with toys. Kid gets lonely, climbs over Mommy to get onto Mommy’s mattress, snuggles briefly, crawls off of mattress to play with toys, and then repeats. Mommy dozes in and out of sleep for an hour.  
Mental note to self: Go with the flow. (And try to go to bed earlier.)  

Fantasy: Go to grocery store and buy 4 loaves of bread for kid’s sandwiches for school lunches. Go home and put 1 loaf in kitchen cabinet and freeze the other 3. Feel nice and prepared.  
Reality: Go to grocery store and discover that they’re out of their only kind of bread that is nut-, peanut-, and sesame-free and therefore safe for kid to eat. Stock up on Cheetos and wine instead.  
Mental note to self: Go with the flow.   

Fantasy: Have an indoor Easter egg hunt for kid, who will find eggs and giggle with glee.
Reality: Have an indoor Easter egg hunt for kid, who does not want to look for eggs because new bucket with which to collect eggs is way more interesting. Mommy collects the eggs herself and puts them in bucket. Kid dumps them out of bucket and puts them back in himself.

Kid has a runny nose and cough and spends a good portion of the morning snuggling with Mommy on couch, being read to and doing puzzles. Kid eats chocolate bunny ears. 

Mommy eats chocolate bunny eyes.

Mental note to self: Sometimes reality is pretty awesome.