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"I love being a Mom. Part of me knows that this is always what I was meant to do. I have a blast with my kids most of the time, and we&amp;#039;re definitely in the business of building memories we can cherish for a lifetime. My kids are two of the brightest, kindest, most wonderful people you could know, and I&amp;#039;m very proud of that. They have their moments, of course (more and more as we head into puberty - ugh!), but I think for the most part, I&amp;#039;m pretty blessed. This last weekend, though, it felt like a curse. Mostly it was David. Anna had a friend over the entire weekend, which ended up being a real help because it took every ounce of my attention to deal with David. He wasn&amp;#039;t misbehaving - far from it. He was incredibly social this weekend. Too social, if such a thing can be said about an autistic child. He was in my face every single waking minute, calling my name roughly every thirty seconds, and endlessly repeating himself again and again about everything. I could get nothing done without him under my feet or glued to my side, and it was impossible to even sit and watch a movie or a TV show with him because he jabbered all the way through it, asking the same questions over and over even after I answered him. This behavior fairly common with children who have autism - they call that kind of repetitive speech &amp;quot;echolalia&amp;quot;. It&amp;#039;s a comfort behavior, but in his case, this time it was extreme and it was driving me bananas. It made me very keenly aware that I&amp;#039;ve had them without a break for a week and a half, and gone two weekends in a row with them as well. It also made me laugh at myself a bit because I lived this way for years, without much in the way of respite besides going to work. Now I get some &amp;quot;me&amp;quot; time every now and then, and it really makes a world of difference. It&amp;#039;s one of the mixed blessings of being a divorced parent, for me anyway. Peter is back in town and he&amp;#039;s taking them tomorrow night as well as next weekend. I&amp;#039;m looking forward to the silence like you cannot believe. I love my kid, but whoa nelly, do I need some time to unwind! Do you ever feel guilty about wanting some alone time? Even when you deserve it? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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