Kids are still kids

So, I have every intention of penning my next, potentially brilliant blog detailing more of Caleb's story soon, but for now I figured I'd share a little window into raising boys.  When we learned we were having another boy on our third and last go-around, I immediately started having visions of my two little ones as best friends - envisioning them playing together, fighting with each other, growing up together, and being there for each other after their father and I are dead and gone.  You know, all that cheery maternal fluff.  The day we had to explain to our 3-year old that his baby brother was a little different was one of the hardest days of my life, and there have been times that I have mourned what I thought was the loss of that special sibling relationship.  And then there are nights like tonight, which shine a little hope (and a healthy dose of humor) into our situation.  Poor Caleb was engrossed in the TV and absentmindedly decided to sit down on the lip of the half-full laundry basket currently residing in my living room (I'm getting to it, I promise).  What resulted was a basic function of physics - weight overbalanced, he dropped to the floor, the other lip of the basket flying up and knocking him solidly on the back of his head.  During this process, Cade, my 3-year old, is sitting on the couch nearby.  There was a moment of silence after the thump, Caleb trying to decide if it hurt enough to cry about, Cade trying to decide how mad Mommy was going to be if he laughed at his little brother's pain.  Typically, laughter won out, and he cracked up.  Caleb took one look at Cade, rejected the possibility of joining in the laugh fest, proceeded to shoot his brother an ugly look, then ran to me, boo-hooing pitifully.  I might have believed it wasn't ALL for effect if it hadn't been for the smug look he then shot Cade over my shoulder once I had picked him up and shown him suitable attention.
Who knows what the relationship between those two will be one day.  Autism being the fickle monster that it is, it's impossible for us to get any solid sense of what it will be now.  But incidents like this help keep me positive.  Their relationship may not be the partners-in-crime-and-friends-forever scenario I had planned, but that doesn't mean it can't be good - even great, maybe.  Hopefully we can do a good enough job raising all three of them that each child's differences will be seen as a part of who they are, and accepted instead of being seen as something that's "broken."