My Little Odd Man

Leo attended the birthday party of one of his classmates on Saturday. It was held here at this funny kind of creepy party space.

They corralled all the kids and parents into a room and presented them with a variety of I guess you would say excotic animals. The guy who was introducing the animals spoke in this really annoying sing-songy kind of cutesy voice. I wanted to tell him to cut it out. I mean he was talking to kids but come on. They don’t need that.


When we first walked in Leo kind of freaked out. He tried to run into a closet and hide. He doesn’t like big crowds right away; it takes him a few minutes to warm up. I think he might have also panicked when he saw so many kids from his class at school. I think maybe he thought he was suddenly on a school field trip or something or I was going to leave him there. Who knows.

So I sat with him. There was one other parent that did this with his also freaked out kid, so I didn’t feel too self-conscious about it. You do what you have to do, right? Also, there were no more grown-up chairs left, so I figured I'd just sit with him and not make a big deal out of it. Besides, I got a front seat to all the animals! (all the other parents were seated in chairs in front of the kids). Within a few minutes Leo had completely calmed down and was really interested in all the animals. He was very gentle with all of them (I can’t say that about all of the kids) and so curious. There wasn’t one that he didn’t want to touch (some of the kids were really afraid, especially of Jacklyn, the squaking 49-year-old parrot).

After the animal presentation there was pizza and cake. Just like at the last party, Leo insisted on sitting on the floor at first, while everyone else crowded together at the long table. I laughed about it with some other parents. Leo is definitely his own person, that’s for sure. It was funny, he was in a room full of kids with Down syndrome and he still has to be the odd man amongst the room full of “odd men.” And just as I predicted, halfway through the pizza he got up on his own accord and sat with his friends. In the past I probably would have fought him and tried to reason with him. I’ve come to learn though that Leo does everything in his own time.

And of course there was cake.


It looks like Leo's friend is talking to him about something. It also looks like Leo is saying don't bother me I'm eating my cake.

This picture cracks me up. They are so serious about their birthday cake eating. It’s like they’re working or something. Must. Eat. Cake.

On the way to the party (it was about a 30 minute drive) Leo and I played a new game. He’s really into pointing things out (clocks, numbers/letters on a sign) and asking me about general things that he sees: “Dee-Dee, Whas Zat?” So we talked about what we saw, and then I started quizzing him on colors (What color is that sign? What color is the truck?). He answered them all correctly. Then I put a spin on things and asked him the colors of things we weren’t looking at, like, “Leo, what color is a cherry? A school bus? Ellie’s hair?” He answered them all correctly, and loved the game. He kept asking me for more. Is this called abstract thought? I don’t know, but it seemed advanced to me. And I just felt like bragging about it.

By the way, I escaped the party without meeting up with any centipedes. The armadillos ate mealy bugs (if you click on the photo you can sort of see them-ew!) which bear a striking resembelance (creepy crawly-wise) to centipedes-I was sitting a mere feet away from them. They were sort of like a car accident--I was repulsed but also couldn't look away.