Josh's appointment today - homeschooling critique

I didn't mention I was going in today because I was SOOOO nervous about it. The psych had mentioned that she would like to have an appointment with me to go over the details of our homeschooling and see if I had any questions or needed any suggestions on things. I think secretly she wanted to be sure early on that this really was the right decision for Joshua. LOL

So, I went in and showed her our current lapbook on rabbits which she thought was a neat idea and very hands on for him. We then talked about the OT and ST and how the first ST evaluated him incorrectly. She couldn't believe some of the things I was told by the first therapist and she was very happy to hear we have a new one now.

I gave her a copy of our schedule and she was totally blown away by how well it was planned out. She even commented that not only was it great that I had spread things out the way I did and broke up the activities in the manner I did, but to think I had 3 other kids was really amazing. LOL

We then talked about the goals I had set and the accomodations I have been making for Josh. She said that my accomodations are wonderful and very appropraite for him, and the goals were great and right on target. She gave me a list of things from a test they give so that I could figure out where he needs to be on a more detailed level for his age, which was wonderful! She added a few things I hadn't thought about (mainly in socialization areas - like reading emotions and facial expressions) and then said my overall program I have set up was wonderful! YAY!!!

She was really happy that there was a change in routine today and yet no meltdown from Josh - this was a huge improvement! She also commented that his eye contact was fantastic today, so she can tell we have really been working on that a lot. She is planning on starting the socialization classes up again in October, so I can hardly wait to see how he improves in there.

So, as we were walking out the door, I asked her if she thought it was still a good idea that I am definitely homeschooling him and not sticking him in the system. She told me again my program is wonderful, and then added that he is getting much more at home with me than any school system would be providing him right now. I told her how nervous I was to go in and talk with her today because I was worried I wasn't doing enough. She laughed and said that there are a few people she wishes she could send to me! LOL How awesome is that?

So, now I feel validated I guess...and relieved. I am so happy to see that all of this is really for the best and not me just thinking it is, kwim? And I am so happy to have such a great psych for Joshua that really cares enough to meet with us like she did and offer honest opinions on things. Anyway, I was so excited that I had to come share real quick. LOL

Other than that, all has been going well. Elena is really keeping me on my toes now that she is walking. I can't get over how quickly she has done it. She also stands up in the middle of the floor without anything to help her get up. She has been watching the kids so much, and I think she just sort of soaks it up like a sponge, thinks about what she wants to do for a few days, and then can suddenly do it...no trial and error for her, no sir! I think I have a perfectionist on my hands.

Cassidy is a real pistol this week too. She has decided that jumping on the bed at naptime is a good way to pass the time. She will be utterly exhausted, but yet once I leave the room she is up and clearing off the bed for bouncing. Silly girl.

And Jacob is doing great. He is adding and subtracting with little trouble now. He has taken to reading the bedtime story at night to the younger kids. It's cute really. He also is still really great with the drawing. We are supposed to be getting a bunny tomorrow for his 4H project, so we have been talking about rabbits this week and learning the proper care and feeding of them. I am hoping this bunny will be a good match for our family, because he is really excited about it. Carrie told me the rabbit was raised by a homeschooling family and is "litter trained. leash trained, and kid-proof" That's some bunny, eh? LOL So hopefully this will be a better idea than I am thinking it will be at the moment. Something tell me I'm going to have this as my 5th child to care for.

We have walking!

My little baby isn't a baby anymore. Elena is now officially a toddler. {gulp}

She has been cruising for what seems like forever now, and no matter what we did we were unable to entice her to let go of anything and everything. Today however, she did it!

I usually fix all of the kids their lunch at the same time, put Elena in the highchair with her food and then pass out teh rest to the others. Today, I switched things around without even thinking about it. I gave the older kids their sandwiches, and Elena was a bit upset about it. She stood there fussing at me and looking at their food while I stood at her highchair across the room and broke up her sandwich into smaller bits. I told her that if she came over to me I'd put her into the highchair I would let her eat while I finished cutting it up. Next thing I know, the little stinker walked halfway across the living room before finally falling! Talk about a shocker!

She was so cute...the boys started laughing at her walking and so she REALLY thought she was cute and started clapping and doing her "evil" laugh and that is what finally did her in.

So, now the real fun begins. :)

What we've been up to

I thought I would give a general update on all of the kids and what they have been up to lately. I'll go from youngest to oldest. :)

Elena is doing well. She's growing like a weed and is able to share clothes with her sister now. She is getting quite the little attitude, espcially considering she still isn't walking yet. LOL She cruises everywhere, but refuses to let go to walk. She will stand in the middle of the floor and clap and dance, but no way will she take a step without gripping something with all of her might. She still has only 8 teeth, loves playing cars with her brothers and includes the sound effects, will push her way through a crowd. The funniest thing she appears to be doing now (which I really shouldn't laugh at) is sassing us. If you tell her "no, no" when she goes after something, she will sit down and bob her head from side to side and say "ya, ya, ya, ya". It's hilarious! Totally backtalking, and only 13 months old. LOL Can you imagine what she will be like as a teen? Yikes!

Cassidy is still sweet as ever. She is totally into the princess scene right now. EVERYTHING is princess this and princess that. She is showing some interest in potty training again, so we have restarted the process. Hopefully we will have success sooner than we did with Jacob! She loves playing wiht little purses and plastic bracelets and she carries her "purple baby" everywhere she goes. She is such a little mama.

Joshua is doing well with therapy. This week's speech went a little better, but he is so overly distracted in the room that it makes it hard for him to get much accomplished. OT was a little different this week because Mindy was sick and not there. So, we had a sub. She was great and Josh never missed a beat. She asked if he does ok with the beans and rice, and I told her yes and that he needed work with messier things. I also explained that we had just started the brushing and joint compression. She took out some foam puzzle pieces and some shaving cream. She called the shaving cream snow and had him roll the puzzle pieces in it and then put them together. I couldn't believe it, but he actually did it. He got upset if even the least little bit of the cream touched his hand, but he never once cried, which to me was amzing progress for only 5 days. I'm hoping to see even more progress next week.

Jacob is doing well and school is going well also. I have discovered LapBooks on the net and as soon as I saw them I knew the kids would enjoy making one. So, today Jacob and I put together our first one - Animal Habitats. I have no idea if we did it right, but I am assuming so long as he learns from doing it and retains the info, then the goal is met, right?

So, here are some pictures of our first lapbook:

Cover:


Inside:


Inside left - flaps open: Inside right - flaps open:


My printer is not currently hooked up to my computer, so Jacob had to actually draw out things we didn't have stickers for. He was not too happy about having to do school today, but once we actually started the lapbook he had a blast! He had so much fun finding the stickers, figuring out where the animals live, what the book should look like, decorating the cover, and drawing the animals. I think lapbooking will become a regular addition to our homeschooling routine.

Brushing and Joint Compression

Josh had therapy on Wednesday this past week. I screwed up a little with our typical schedule. Any day he has therapy, we do not do school until after we return home. I get the kids ready and make sure Josh dresses himself, so that in itself takes a ton of time due to his lack of cooperation with the socks and shoes. He can do it though...he did it two weeks ago with no trouble at all (other than the amount of time it took). Afterwards, we all pile in the van and I drive over to my mother's house where we all get out of the van. I get the other kids settled and Josh usually gets a few minutes to play before we take off for therapy.

Well, lo and behold, Wednesday was a mess as far as weather goes. I was running behind, so when I dropped the kids off it was a quick let everyone out of the van except Josh thing and then take off. This totally threw Josh off his routine, and boy did I pay for it the rest of the day.

We had speech first (and were 2 minutes late due to traffic being horrible). He was so incredibly whiny about 20 of the 30 minutes. Jessica had a really difficult time getting him to answer questions. Hopefully it will go much better tomorrow. {fingers crossed} In the end, he did do his work and even had a few minutes to play with the train.

We went immediately to OT. He was extremely distracted in there though. We usually are either alone in the large room or have one other smaller child doing something quiet. There were not only 2 other kids around or close to the same age, but also one little boy that was playing with trucks - his favorite thing in the world! Mindy put him in the ballpit and tossed in some beanbag animals for him to find. He couldn't concentrate. He wanted all of the blue balls out of the way because he "doesn't like the blue balls". He did eventually (after a good 8 minutes) find the beanbags and throw them in the basket like he was told to do, but it took a LOT of effort to get him to do so.

Since he was so highly distracted, Mindy had him pick two trucks and bring them into one of the smaller rooms where there were no other children bouncing and swinging. She took out some theraputty and hid 10 pegs in it for him to find and then line up on a peg board. Josh refused to actually touch the stuff. He would start to, but would then totally break into tears over it. He kept saying it felt yucky, but he wouldn't even try to feel it before assuming it would be. That's when I remembered Mindy told me last session to remind her to tell me about brushing! She couldn't believe she hadn't gone over that wiht me yet!

So she set Josh up with some beans and some little rubber fish that he needed to find and stick in the truck. While he was doing this, she explained about brushing and then demonstrated it. By this point it was time to leave, so on the way out I asked when to do this. We do his arms, hands, feet and legs every 2 hours right now. Whew! Eventually we will lessen it, but not sure when. I asked about whether or not we were supposed to end with some sort of proprioceptive type thing, and then she rememebred she forgot to tell me about the joint compressions, so I got a quick lesson in that as well. :) Josh actually enjoys it and seems to think it tickles, which I don't think is supposed to happen. I'm applying some pressure, so I will have to question that tomorrow.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better. {sigh} I feel like such a failure sometimes when we have days like Wednesday.

Elena's (late) 12 month check-up

Silly me didn't even get around to posting Elena's latest stats! I had her check-up last Thursday (when mom and dad's house was broken into). She is 25 lbs, and 31" long. She is in the 90th% for both height and weight, and head circumference is in the 75th%. So she is growing well.

Dr. V. looked through her chart and mentioned that she couldn't believe how sick my sweet girl was last month. :( She said she was "hospital material" and asked if I was told she had rotavirus. I told her Dr. B never said that but that it was likely just a bad tummy bug. Apparently the rotavirus test is the only one that never was ordered...not that it mattered since there was nothing they could do for her if that was what it indeed was. She's fairly certain that's what it was. Poor baby. :(

She is doing everything she should be doing at this age. She is very close to walking, but still a bit timid. She is so stinkin' cute I can't stand it sometimes! LOL She still has only 8 teeth, is starting to become a little clingy to mommy, sings along to Beethoven's 5th, and does this adorable little waddling crawl now when she is excited about coming to you. I just love her to pieces.

Unbeliveable!

My mom was here at my house babysitting the kids while I took Elena for her late 12 mth checkup. Right after she left, she called to tell me my father had gotten home and their house had been broken into. They broke in through the back door, and the dog never moved from the middle of the yard from what my neighbor could figure.

I went over to mom and dad's after dinner to try and wait for the crime scene police to show up and then help them clean a bit. 7 hours after their original call, and they just showed up.

Apparently several people in the neighborhood saw a black male hanging around on a girl's bike and swerving around like he was scoping out the neighborhood. This same male banged on the door next door to mom and dad's and then when she answered he said it was the wrong house. When she opened the front door (not her screen door) a black male was standing there and got real nervous and said something about being at the wrong house. He went to the side of her house and had hidden his bike behind her garbage cans!

About 10 minutes later is when the dogs went crazy, but when she looked out the window she didn't see anything, so she assumed it was an animal of some sort that the dogs were chasing.

The guy went on their back porch and tried pulling off one of the dining room screens. It is bent where he had pulled the thing, but he apparently had no luck getting it off. So, he went to the other dining room screen and slit it so that he could try unlocking the window. Then he went to the next two windows, which are the kitchen, and slit both of those screens and had no luck getting them open as well. Then he went over to the den/garage area and removed the screen completely and then I suppose used something like a credit card to unlock the window. When he climbed in through there, he simply stepped onto the deep freeze which was layered with a thick coating of dust, and he left finger and shoe marks. Of course, it had too much dust for the police to get anything off of it.

He completely bipassed the den and went into the living room where he simply went through 3 out of 6 drawers in the hutch and left them partially open. He then went to my 16 year old brother's room, and I guess he figured he was a kid by the contents of the room or something, because he only messed with the top drawer of his dresser from what we can tell.

Then he went to my 21yo brother's room. He took all of the coins from his tips except for the pennies. He also left Glenn's ATM card and some cash that was in plain sight. And to top it off, he moved some of Glenn's pants to the bed (don't know if he tried them on or what) and a shirt and then left a towel that did not belong to my family on top of them. Ick! He also stole his camcorder which Glenn is furious about.

From there he appears to have gone into my parent's room, and that is where it was the worst off. He emptied my father's chest of drawers. Don't know if he took anything or not, because they were told not to touch anything until after the crime scene crew came. He emptied my mother's purse and left the contents neatly piled on her bed. He also removed a candle from a candlestick holder and placed them nicely on the bed. He got into several drawers. Here's the really crazy thing - he only took change!

I felt so icky in the house. You could just sense how things played out during the time the guy was in there, and it was such an awful feeling. I hated it, and I know there is no way I would be able to sleep in that house if it were me.

The most eeire part about all of this is the coincidence...this is four months after my grandmother died. 4 months after my great-grandmother died is when my grandparents had their home broken into. I can't get over that.

Ugh. I don't know how much more bad news I can take. I seriously want this year to be over with. I am getting so stressed from everything that has happened this year. All of it is just piling up into one huge mess, and it seems to just keep getting bigger and bigger. I just want to go into hiding until January. :(