#3 "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time " PART I

Princess Layla

Irish lass

My wife is getting our youngest daughter Maggie (16 months) ready for bed, sitting her down on her lap reading a book that our daughter chose before rocking her to sleep. I am in the kitchen with my oldest daughter Layla (3 1/2 years old) feeding her homemade ground up spaghetti by mouth from the "Deceptively Delicious" cookbook. We're trying to sneak in those veggies our youngest isn't too fond of. Soon after feeding Layla I put her on the floor and get her nightly bath ready putting a mixture of Epsom salt and baking soda in the tub. While the tub is filling up I go to her room to lay out all the items she will need after her bath: her pajamas, a diaper, Tubie Topper, lotion, Aquaphor, and a cover to put on the bed to keep the bed sheet from getting wet. After the bath is over I take all the items and put them all on our daughter. She looks at me like I am her hero as she pushes out with some exertion of her lips and tongue: "Da". I smile at her and respond back with "yeah I'm your Da" and give a kiss on her soft cheek. I bring her out to watch one of her favorite shows, Jeopardy, a nightly routine. While she watches her show I get her nightly medicine prepared to administer after her show is over with. So with this small allotted time while she is on the floor giving smacky kisses to Alex Trebek I turn on the computer to write my next blog.

I'd like to mention that two things occurred which are not a routine in the Blanton household.  1) Our 3 1/2 year old Layla ate a whole meal orally and 2) she said the word Da. Our 3 1/2 year old suffers from a brain disorder called Lissencephaly. Basically this disorder disables a child to the point where they completely rely on others to do everything for them and it is terminal and degenerative. Having a daughter like Layla gave me a unique perspective while reading my next book "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon.

Haddon's book is about and written from the perspective of a 15 year old boy named Christopher Boone who has a disorder that's on the autism spectrum. He found in his neighbor's backyard a dead dog and he makes it his goal to find out how this dog died. This story is much more than a detective story about a dead dog.  The book takes us though the mind of a teenage boy with autism while he jots down in his own detective book his observations and the interactions with the people around him while he tries to discover what happened to the dog. Stay tuned for my next post giving more detail about the book, my thoughts, and how this struck me personally.