obsessive compulsive weekend

Adam is home this weekend, and he is totally obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, the water, and crayons. We have a mound of crayons on our bedroom floor, and I've probably spent $100 on toy train engines in the past couple of days. But I'm glad to see him identifying with something, and kids with autism really love Thomas. We had a crisis today, when Adam took a messy dump in the pool. I drained it by pulling it over, with him climbing in and out of the now-underside that was still draining. This was quite an effort, actually; that water weighs a ton, especially when you're trying to drain it in a hurry. I hosed off Adam, and hosed down the pool with clorox, then reset it and refilled it. In the meantime, I dumped his pool toys into a wheelbarrow filled with water and clorox. I brought Adam in for a bath a little later. It was a neat trick, and I'm surprised I pulled it off. Then there was the trip to PetSmart. Adam is obsessed with the automatic door at that store, and he has become obsessed with the sales-circular rack. I had to adjust it back to its proper position (they had moved it to a rather awkward place, actually), and we rearranged the circulars into a situation agreeable to Adam. He got upset when someone actually took one of the circulars from the rack, but he got over it quickly, and we were back to playing with the automatic door.

Update: Adam woke us up at 3 a.m. today. Ugh. After we dropped him off, we picked up Toby for a couple of hours on the town. Toby has become obsessed with the swimming pool at the local hotel where we spend one or two weekends a month, and he kept shouting "swimminapool" the whole time we were out. He refused to enjoy himself. It seems pretty typical of a 9-year-old to be more interested in going into the pool than seeing his parents.