Every Day is Autism Awareness Day

Today is World Autism Awareness Day. If you're a regular reader you know that my middle child, Pickle, has autism. Or is autistic. I never know which is the "right" way to describe him. Person with autism, autistic person, it's a subject of debate. If Pickle ever claims a preference, that's what I'll go with, but for now I vacillate between the two. The label makes no difference to me - he's just my Pickle, and he's awesome. Sometimes he acts or reacts differently than one might expect, and the label comes in handy as explanation. Sometimes it can be difficult being his parent, and the label gives me something to blame. Every day is autism awareness day for us. Every day we experience challenges, every day we learn something, every day we are amazed, and every day we love him more.

Pickle has a puzzle peanut butter sandwich for Autism Awareness Day, made with a Lunch Punch from the Match & Munch set. It's packed in his lego brick sandwich box, with a Hersey's Kisses chocolate, that I popped into the smaller lego brick container after the photo.

The puzzle piece is the recognized symbol for autism, and the blue Hershey's Kiss represents the "Light It Up Blue" campaign for autism awareness. 

Pickle painted that background for me, to use for my blog pictures, he said. I think he may have been inspired by the pattern on the scrapbook paper his sister's muffin tin meal is sitting on, below:

This "muffin tin meal" is actually served in a baby food freezer tray. It contains:

• cantaloupe puzzle pieces
• peanut butter sandwich puzzle pieces
• yogurt with blue sugar sprinkles
• baby carrots
• mandarin orange segments
• blueberry yogurt covered pretzels & a Hershey's Kiss

Check out my friend Jenn of Bento For Kidlet's fantastic post about her amazing kidlet, and his Autism Awareness Day lunch too :)

Some stuff used for these lunches: