Laundry day musings

We are having a nice day.  It's cool outside, but we have sunshine and we were spared the monster blizzard that is hitting the Northeast.  It's laundry day, which always makes me sigh.  Not because it's a horrible chore, but because my son is a chewer.

He chews on books.  He chews on headphones at school. (Oh yeah, add getting new headphones to my to-do list.) He chews on stuffed animals, and he'll chew his fingernails, too.

But mostly, he chews on his shirts.  He will chew holes right through them like a hungry little moth.  Sigh.

Laundry day is also shirt sorting day

In the picture above, the shirts he can wear again are on the right.  The pile on the left?  Those can only be worn around the house or to bed, because I do have enough pride to not let my child out in public with nasty holes in his shirts.

Collars get the worst of it on short-sleeved shirts

But, Kristin, you ask, doesn't it get expensive?  Why yes, yes it does.  I have become a thrift store shopper.  I don't care if he wears a random shirt with a 10K in Chapel Hill on it as long as it costs a dollar or less. (My brother-in-law Jim and I have several favorite places we check out when I go down to visit.)  Sometimes I find good deals at Target or Old Navy.  And some shirts actually last awhile.  But overall, this is one of many things that vexes me about Fragile X.

This is what Ian does to the cuffs of long-sleeved shirts

Because Ian is not doing it to be naughty or to give his Mom a few more gray hairs.  He needs the sensory input that chewing provides.  We have tried other options, including chew tubes and the perfectly named "Chewelry."  They work for awhile, but then he goes back to his shirts.

So, this is one of the things that I hope and pray the STX209 medication will help with.  In the meantime, I'll keep looking for bargain t-shirts.  Sigh.