The Ruel family just returned from a great vacation, our first real family vacation, and I'll write about that soon, but first there is something far more important to share. Curtis wiped his own ass.
According to Yahoo! answers, kids typically conquer butt wiping somewhere in the 2.5-4 year old range. I envy those parents of typically developing children who had such a temporary butt wiping assignment. For us, butt wiping started on January 8, 2004, and was still going on as of last night before bed. Usual toilet time starts with Curtis exclaiming, "I need some privacy" and a little while later, "Okay, I'm ready now". This is when we enter the bathroom and help him to wipe his butt while he decides what animal or artifact his excrement most resembles.
This morning, I heard a door open upstairs and the bathroom door closed shortly after not knowing if it was Curt or Laura going in. About 10 minutes later, Curtis came down the stairs and proudly exclaimed, "Dad, I wiped my own butt!" At 7 and a half years old, this was music to my ears and took place not a moment too soon.
We have worked with Curtis on butt wiping numerous times but something about the responsibility just wasn't working out for him. On the scale of developmental delays, I have to admit, this one peaked the frustration meter more than most others but it's tough to throw down the gauntlet. Curtis would just turn it around and tell everyone he saw that he took a poop and no one wiped his butt over immense laughter had we gone that route.
If you give Curtis three articles of clothing, say a t-shirt, shorts, and underwear, at least one of those is going on backwards. This is delay that can be cute, that we can live with, and talking to a mom of an autistic 25 year old, I learned this behavior can continue for years and years and we may just have to live with correcting him on it. But I really hoped that light of un-assisted ass wiping would go off soon and this morning, unprompted, it did. I share this not to embarrass Curtis, who luckily is not embarrassed by such details, but out of pride that Curtis tackled another major developmental delay. To celebrate, we got hash browns at Dunkin Donuts. I'm guessing those will afford him another opportunity to practice those butt wiping skills in about 30 minutes. So congrats to you, Curtis. You wiped your own ass!

Greg, Dad