Josh's Progress Report

I spoke to the psych about how Josh did in his socialization classes this time around. He did pretty good, and she noticed improvements in the same areas I did. She said in the beginning there was the resistance that she expected and she attributes that to the fact that most of the kids were older and more advanced, so he had to play catch up and that posed a challenge. He did step up though, and did what he needed to do, so that was good.

Speech was not so good this week. I had my mother bring Josh last week because I was feeling so rotten still. I gave her the entire routine to follow...told her which entrance to go through, where to try to get a parking place, etc. And it went so wonderfully that it was joked that she should bring him every time. Basically, he was ecstatic about riding in my mother's van. He has a ton of family members with minivans - me, my mother, my father, my MIL - yet, the only van he gets overly excited about is my mom's "blue bird". So, it was an extra special day as far as he was concerned, because he rarely gets to ride in her van.

So, this week it was back to me bringing him. It went horrible. He went in ok, and it looked like it would be a great session. He ran straight over tothe OT steps like he does every session...he looked out the window to check on the "fans" (part of the building's air conditioning system) and then we were off to the little speech room. Same routine as every other week we are there.

We walked in and something set him off. He went to sit in the chair but noticed the toys on the shelves were different than he thought they should be. I didn't notice any big changes, but he mentioned a bus was missing. Then he was convinced that Ms. J. had stolen one of the toys from the "duster's office". I explained that he meant the dentist office. I don't think Ms. J. was ever able to convince him that she didn't take it and it was her own.

Anyway, he was grouchy the rest of the time. Ms. J. always starts out by reading a book or two. The first book she read was one they have done a minimum of 4 times now, and he knows what to do. It is "Elmo's Guessing Game". The first page was about Elmo needing to go into the snow and wanting to know what he needed to do so. On the second page Josh was given about 5-6 choices of objects to choose from - I think there was a plant, snow boots, and a few other options. Josh chose the plant and then a few other things that he knew were not the right answer. Another page asked what Elmo needed to walk across the street safely. The right answer was an adult or mommy, and he chose a cactus plant. He has never gotten these wrong before, so it was painfully obvious he was just giving wrong answers on purpose.

It was interesting though that when she was reading an animal alphabet book, he totally showed he knew his sounds. I was shocked. We have worked on this, but he has never been one to show that he has actually learned something without a LOT of probing. She started out with telling him that A was for aardvark. Being in the grouchy mood he had suddenly gotten into, he told her "No it isn't. A is for apple!" I had to laugh, because up until now I had no idea he actually knew that. Later on he also stated that F was for flower and J is for Jacob. He refused to say J was for Joshua...go figure.

So, as we were leaving I asked Ms. J. if she knew what set him off and she said no. I have no idea either. When we left I got in the van and cried. It is so frustrating having a really good week when I am not there. I feel like it reflects on me. He has had good weeks with me there, but it seems to be a growing problem that his mood becomes grouchy when we go to speech. My mother thinks we need a break from therapy for a little while. I hate to do that though with us being so close to being caught up. Plus, if we take too long of a break we will have trouble getting back into the same therapist. I haven't decided what we will do yet. I think I will talk to Ms. J. about it next week and see what she thinks.

Speaking of Joshua, My latest layout was of him:


Credits: Shabby Princess Kit - Sweet Serenity

Jacob's Eye Appointment

Well, Jacob had his appointment with the opthamologist today. We were told it would likely be a 2 1/2 hour appointment, but thankfully it was only about an hour. Whew!

His eyes are fine. We were referred because back in January he started this really hard blinking thing. I took him to the ped, where we saw a ped that was not our usual one. She checked him real quick and figured it was likely allergies, and told me if it wasn't better by the end of that week we would bring him back in. When I did, she took him off of the drops and gave us the referral to be sure it was nothing, and explained that for some reason kids (particularly boys) will develop a benign tic that they outgrow.

So, today we went in and during the initial conversation about why we were sent there, I brought up the fact that we were given a prescription for drops and handed the box over. Turns out that many peds prescribe these drops without knowing that they have to build up in the system and will not work immediately like so many (our ped included) seem to think they will. They dilated his eyes and did a check. He is fine and she thinks it is just allergies that are messing with him.

She did mention he appears to be farsighted, but said that is very common with kids his age. Apparently we are all born with some mechanism in our eyes that causes many people to be farsighted, and every day the mechanism fades a little bit. By the time most of us are 40 we have the need for reading glasses. She said there is no need for glasses right now, and as far as the future we have to just wait and see how it changes as he grows. It likely wouldn't be an issue until the teen years at the earliest.

We go back in a month. Until then, we are back to using the drops twice a day to see if there is any relief.

When we were leaving, Jacob announced to me he would like to be an eye doctor. LOL Guess we will see. :)

Another layout for you:


Patterned and plain papers and elements by DebF - My Candy kit
RicRac by Daniella Peuss - from DIVA Kit
Font used: Jester and Kayleigh

Baby Einstein - So disappointing

Anyone else have the latest DVD? You know, the Meet the Orchestra - First Instruments one.

What a disappointment. :( I am soooo not impressed. IMO, it is the worst of the series, and I usually love Baby Einstein. I was really looking forward to it, having been a music teacher.

I think it stinks that she used a lot of synthesized instruments as opposed to real sound clips. There are so many ways she could have done musical examples in a better way. I mean, for Pete's sake, she sold out to Disney, so she should have had access to the Young People's Orchestra they put together every year, and it would have been prefectly fine...and she probably wouldn't have lost a penny to do so.

I also was a little upset that she replaced commonly seen and heard instruments with others that are not found in orchestras...A prime example can be seen in the woodwind section (my section! LOL). She took out the oboe and replaced it with the recorder. Umm, yeah. I can't recall the last time I saw a recorder in an orchestra, let alone the last time I saw it outside of an elementary school classroom. But, I guess they tried redeeming themselves by sticking the oboe in the bonus features section under the Discovery Cards...right along with the accordian, harmonica, and steel drum.

I say stick to "Peter and the Wolf" to teach kids the instruments if you must use a video. ;)

I made two more layouts:



Credits: Patterned background papers and elements by Mrs. Schmuck ~ Sweet Chloe set
Fonts: Kaleigh and ?



Credits: Papers and Elements - Midsummer Swelter by Rina
Fonts - I am horrible about remembering the fonts! I'll get better. :)

School update time

Well, Jacob and I have pretty much finished our study of Egypt. It's funny how we see Heiroglyphs on TV, games, in stores and in books all over the place now. I don't necessarily notice them until he points them out to me. We are still tentatively planning a field trip to a museum to fully wrap up the topic. I think he will really enjoy that, as will the other kids.

We are now moving on to the food groupings and food pyramid. We've talked about this in the past, but I want something concrete to show that we did cover it. So, we'll spend a couple of days making a chart and some other projects on that. After that is done we will be trying to make an Easter Lapbook or notebook. I'd like to do a lapbook, but we'll see how much we have at the end and the best way of putting it all together.

Joshua just completed his most recent socialization classes. He was sick for two out of the six due to being sick, which isn't great. However, in the four classes he did attend, he got so much from them. He is so good at remembering the steps he has learned in there and applying them. He is doing much better at initiating play with his siblings and adults. He still has to be reminded to actually play once he asks someone to join him, but he will get there soon, I am sure. He also has improved with letting them know when he is done, but the eye contact during this is still a big thing needing work. There is such a difference in him.

Oh! Another thing that Josh did - we had a playdoh day last Friday. The kids have been wanting to do this for a while and I was feeling rotten and thought that would be a good idea. Why, I don't know...we'll just say I was a little loopy from the Tylenol Severe Allergy medicine I was taking. LOL Anyway, we took out ALL of the playdoh items we had - 13 containers of misc colors of playdoh, all of our playdoh molds and cutters, and Josh's Crayola Dough Car Factory set. Joshua wanted to make a purple car, and naturally that was the only color we did not have. So, I told him we would have to mix some of the colors together to get purple for him to use. We took out the red and blue and I told him he would have to squish them together lots and lots to get it to turn purple. I demonstrated what he would need to do and handed it to him to finish. I fully expected the normal crocodile tears and heartwrenching cries when he touched it, but he didn't do it this time! Instead, he took it right out of my hands and began squishing it together and asking if it looked purple enough yet. I couldn't believe it! Woohoo! It was good to see improvements in this area as well. :)

Blah

Well, I went to the doctor on Monday. I figured 14 weeks of on and off sickness was more than enough. I am sick of almost coughing up a lung every night and getting no relief. Plus, this weekend had me feeling like death warmed over. So, I went in and saw the PA of my new primary care doctor. He was not too happy about me having waited so long to come in, but oh well. They did a peak flow meter and then did the pulse ox monitor on me. The second one worried me a little at first because it registered as me only getting 90% oxygen. So the nurse played with the cord a minute, making sure it was actually plugged in all of the way and it steadily went up to 100%. Whew!

It was so odd. The PA took very little history. There were no forms to fill out about medical history, family history, specific diseases, etc. Every doctor I have ever been to in the past has had papers to fill out on those types of things - geez, even the ER asks you specific questions about things in your medical history. No specific questions were asked really...just if my mom and dad had any major medical issues and if I had any medications I was currently taking. He asked about any surgeries and I went through the medical issues I had with each of my pregnancies on my own. I volunteered about my past history with my thyroid. Being sick though, I totally did not think about telling him about my tonsillectomy as a kid or the ulcer I had at 12 years old. I am assuming he could tell that the tonsills were gone when he looked at my throat, but who knows how well his quick glance was?

He looked at my ears, throat, nose, and then listened briefly to my chest. He said he'd get me some meds and be right back. He came back with samples of Biaxin XL and told me get some Mucinex DM OTC. He also commented that I "had this cough long enough to warrant a chest x-ray". Then he told me to be sure to make an appointment with my GYN since I am overdue for the yearly check and make another appointment to get established with my regular doctor. As we were leaving, he asked if there was a history of asthma in my family, and I told him yes, my brother has it pretty severe and my mother has it as well. So, he says if this doesn't help then we may need to talk about getting me an inhaler. Yippee.

So, what is wrong with me? I have no earthly idea. He never gave me a diagnosis. Nice, huh? I have felt so washed out since going in though. In some ways I feel worse than before I went and saw him. My cough is not near as bad, but I now am having stomach issues, I'm guessing from the antibiotic. I also am plain worn out I feel wimpy, as my aunt would say. I couldn't even take Josh to therapy today, so my mother had to do it. That's a first, so that just goes to show how crappy I feel.

In the meantime, I have taken up digital scrapbooking. What fun! Here is my first layout:


Credits: Patterned background papers and elements by Cheryl Whitesel ~ Spring RAK

Guess what this is

This is post number 100! I can't believe I have typed that many posts, yet at the same time wonder what post number I would be at if I had not taken so many long breaks lately. LOL

I have tried thinking about something nifty to post here, but didn't really succeed in doing so. Instead, I thought I would share some new pics of Elena. I tried getting some of the other kids, but none of them were in a photo mood. Elena is a ham when the camera is out though. :)

Another funny Josh story

Joshua is such a funny kid. I think what makes it even funnier is that he hasn't a clue how funny some of the things he says come out.

At the end of speech today, his therapist wanted to quickly get him to try something. She's been working each week to get him to name items in a category in one minute, but he just seems to not understand what she means.

So, today's topic was food - his greatest motivator according to the psych. LOL This should have been a cinch for Josh, but he just stood there. After several times of rephrasing the question, he named Cheerios and pretzels. The rest of the conversation:

Therapist - "What do you like to eat for breakfast?"
Joshua - "Cereal".
Therapist - "How about for lunch?"
Joshua - "Sandwich".
Therapist - "What about dinner? What do you eat then?"
Joshua, with a serious frown - "Yucky stuff". LOL

(laughter from both the therapist and me)

Therapist - "Well, what is something that Mommy makes that you like to eat?"
Joshua - "TV Dinners".

I had no idea my cooking was that bad! ROFL

Funny conversation

This is one of many conversations the boys had during the trip home yesterday:

Jacob: "When I grow up I want to visit Egypt."
Me: "That would be cool."
Josh: "I don't want to grow up!"
Jacob: "Egypt has deserts, so I think it would be really cool to see them!"
Joshua: "I just want to go to Target."


Joshua is so easy to please. LOL

I'm a slacker

Yes, I know. I have slacked once again. It's been a heck of a couple of weeks. I have a major dentist phobia thanks to a jerk pediatric dentist I had as a child. I won't go into everything that happened, but I will say it was enough to scare me enough to have NO desire to return and have someone poke around in my mouth. So, it has been 14 or 15 years since I have been in a dentist office. Before the past couple of years, I never even had a cavity, so there was no big deal...or so it seemed.

Two weeks ago, I had to bite the bullet and call a few people to have a dentist recommended to me. My back right molar had an obvious cavity for a while now, but now there was an additional little hole on the top of the tooth. It wasn't hurting at all, but it was annoying anytime my tongue would accidentally hit that area. I was shaking when I called to make the appointment, but I got it set for last Monday.

I had a full set of x-rays taken. I felt like an idiot. I cried during the x-rays because all of the horrifying memories came back to me and I was worried I was going to be fussed at big time for lack of care of my teeth (my pediatric dentist used to yell at me each time I would come in as well as pull a tooth or two each visit with little numbing involved). I honestly had convinced myself that I would go in and be told all of my teeth need to be removed. I brush my teeth, honest! Twice a day in fact. However, apparently those routine check-ups are a must for me and I didn't do that.

Well, the news was not that bad, but it wasn't great either. I have 8 cavities...well, 9 if you count the one wisdom tooth that popped through while I was pregnant with Cassidy. The one I was worried about and that forced me to make the appointment was the worst of them all. The majority are tiny. He also said that he was unable to tell from the x-ray whether or not the root was effected, and that he could tell more once he got in there and worked on it. He also recommended I see an oral surgeon and have the top left and bottom right wisdom teeth removed. So, the appointment was set for today to fix two cavities on the bottom right side.

I have been scared out of my mind seeing as all experiences with my first dentist were painful. This dentist seemed nice and I had heard he was very patient. All I had to do was raise my hand and he would stop then and there no matter what. Having never had a cavity filled before, I had no real idea what to expect.

I got in there and had to have 2 sets of shots to numb me. The first set was ok, the second set was a little uncomfortable, but not horrible. After I was all numb, the decay was removed. That back molar does have the decay very close to the nerve and when he hit the nerve, OH MY GOODNESS I about jumped out of the chair. It was very sharp pain that radiated through my jaw. He did it two more times, and then stopped and filled the two teeth - one with a composite and the other with a temp filling.

When we were done, he told me if I want to save the tooth I will need a root canal and if I'm not worried about it then it will need to be extracted. He did not give any pros or cons for either scenario, so I have no idea what I will do. He said we will talk about it once we get the rest of the cavities taken care of.

Jacob is currently studying Ancient Egypt. We are reading "Mummies in the Morning" from the Magic Treehouse series. He is really loving it! We discussed pyramids, reviewed a little about what we learned about King Tut, talked about mummies, and went over some vocabulary with various exercises. My favorite part so far was taking a virtual tour of Kufu's pyramid. Turns out it is the same pyramid my father visited many years ago when he was in the navy. Here's a link:
Explore a pyramid

Another thing Jacob is really excited about is the hieroglyphs generator we found. He translated his name and we printed it out. Here's the link we used:
Hieroglyph Generator

I am trying to arrange a time for us to visit a museum with an exhibit on Ancient Egypt.

Joshua has been doing pretty well with socialization classes. We finally got someone from our insurance company to answer the phone and agree to look into doing a single case agreement with our psychologist. They decided it won't be a problem so they are drawing up the contract. I am so happy to hear it!

We took a day trip to see some relatives on Silas' side of the family, Sally and Mike. We had a nice time despite my being under the weather. Jacob had fun playing Legos with their 13 yo son. Joshua took a few minutes to adjust and was fine soon after. He loved playing with their daughter, Melissa. Elena was the same way. Cassie took the longest to adjust, but by the end of our time there, she was fine and seemed to be enjoying herself. The funniest thing though was when Sally said Josh seemed to be the most social out of the bunch. I laughed and told her how ironic it was that she would say that seeing as he is the one that is autistic. LOL So I guess those socialization classes are working better than I even realized they were!

Contest

For anyone who likes Coke products,this contest is for you! No purchase is necessary at all. Just go to Coca-Cola Olympics Contest and register. After registering, click on "Enter code". On the bottom of the page is a picture of a box of Coke...click that and request your courtesy code. You can request up to 3 codes per day.

You will be assigned a random Olympic event for each code you enter. Each time the US scores any medal (gold, silver OR bronze), you win! Both Silas and I have won 5 2-liter bottles each already. I believe the contest ends March 15th or so...plenty of time to get yourself some free Coke and enter to win a trip to the Beijing Olympics in 2008. I think that would be well worth conquering my fear of flying. :)

Vehicular surprise

About three months ago or so I had gotten all the kids into the van and was on my way to therapy with Josh. I put it in reverse to back out of the driveway and it refused to move...it was as if the emergency brake was on. I tried popping the emergency brake, which I rarely use (and definitely don't use at the house), but nothing happened. I tried turning the van off and back on thinking maybe I just didn't have the key completely turned or something. It wouldn't move. So, after going through all of the options I could think of, dummy me decided to apply a little gas to see if it would go. It went, but it sounded like something fell out of the bottom of the van when I did it. So, I call Silas and he has no idea what it could be. I pulled up and down the drive a few times to be sure it would indeed brake, and it did. So, after talking a little while longer to Silas, I decided to try driving it around the block. When I did this, I heard a noise from the back that sounded like I had a flat tire, but there was no bounce that typically goes along with that flat tire. After only 200 feet or so, the noise stopped. I had my wonderful husband drive it several times before I would get back behind the wheel, and naturally it worked beautifully and did not seem to have a single issue. It's been driving fine with no noise until recently.

Well, for the past couple of weeks I have been saying we needed to get the van brakes looked at because they feel funny to me and they are starting to sound like a bus when I stop. The stupid thing NEVER does this for Silas when he is driving though...only for me.

Silas took the van in today thinking that the front and back brakes would need standard repair. Before he even got home, I got a call from the repair place saying that it was a lot worse. The rear left wheel cylinder is busted, and there is a good possibility that the brake fluid has air in it. I asked what that meant exactly, and Silas said if there is too much air in the brakes, they basically will not work at all.

So basically I have been driving my kids around in a vehicle around whose brakes could have gone out at any minute. God has definitely been watching over us.

Shopping - my frugal habits

I have been having way too much fun lately. I love a good deal! I live in the land of no regular doubles. We have one fairly new store that doubles 3 days a week, and I have yet to make it over there. They bought out a chain that was known for overpricing everything, so I guess knowing what it used to be has kept me away thus far. I am going to make it a point to go in one of them before February ends.

Anyway, I mentioned in my last post that Cassie and I went shopping this week. I'm a big spender. Spent a total of $1.30. LOL However, for that $1.30 I came home with 2 huge Herbal Essence Conditioners, 2 full size bottles of Herbal Essence Shampoos, and a full sized bottle of Finesse Shampoo. There is a ton of stuff on clearance at CVS right now, and when combined with coupons, it is a bargain!

Then last night my mother and I went shopping. We hit one of the CVS stores and spent about 1 1/2-2 hours in there. BUT, here is what I got - 10 boxes of hair coloring (Herbal Essence, L'Oreal, Garnier, etc), a bottle of Shout stain remover, and a full sized bottle of L'oreal kid's shampoo. Grand total after tax - $1.78!

So, after that, we hit Target. We had a blast there too. My biggest expenses there were two Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus dolls that I had been eyeing for a while for the girls. Even Elena loves Barbie dolls (without accessories, of course), so couldn't pass them up for half price! Using coupons, I also got a trial sized bottle of Tide for 1/2 price, a box of Herbal Essence hair color (like I needed more) for .24, trial sized Edge shaving gel for free, and 2 protein bars for .67. After a few other misc items, my total came up to about $20.

After that we hit another CVS. This one didn't turn out as well for me, but I still did pretty good. The friendly cashier decided to try and help me out by giving me back coupons because it would only use .80 of the $3.00 coupon, so she thought it would be better for me to come back and get it free. The way she worded things confused me - I wanted her to use the coupon because it would make it free as opposed to .80. If I had made two seperate trips it would have been free, so what is the difference if she took it now or later? {shrug} Oh well, 'tis done now. She jipped me $5 off my purchase by handing me back coupons I wanted to use because she thought she was "helping". I came out of there with 4 boxes of various hair color, 2 huge bottles of VO5 Nourishing Oasis conditioner, 2 Dove Styling Mousse, 1 Suave bodywash, 1 Dove shampoo, and 2 L'Oreal Kids shampoos. My total before coupons and clearance savings was $34.43 - my total paid was $16.75. Not as great a deal, but not horrid either.

So, we are set on shampoo and conditioner for a while. And if anyone needs hair color, let me know. ;)

Sick, sick, sick

Well,once again I have been a slacker. I was really sick before Christmas with some osrt of allergy/sinus thing. I lost my voice and it took me three weeks to get back to normalcy. So, here I am feeling great, and Silas comes home from work with something. He got over it, but in the meantime I have managed to catch it and have been hoarse once again for the past week. No fun for someone who likes to talk. LOL I miss my voice...well, not so much the voice, but the knowledge that my voicebox is going to definitely work when I try to speak.

Jacob has had an off and on cough. Aside from that and his extremely touchy and grouchy attitude, you wouldn't necessarily know that he was ill. Joshua was coughing a lot last night, but he woke up this morning exclaiming, "I feel better, Mommy!", so hopefully that is as bad as it gets for him. Elena has had a VERY runny nose for the past two days, but that's it for her. Cassie, poor dear, has been the worst of them all. She was an angel on Wednesday for my mom, so I asked her if she would like to go with me when I went shopping later that evening (which I will tell you about in my next entry). She was very excited and was a big helper, holding my coupons for me and putting things into the cart. We got home and she wanted to go to bed. We got her ready and she zonked out immediately, but an hour later she woke up with the croup.

All of my kids except for Elena have had the croup at some point. I usually don't get uptight about it. I usually go in the bathroom with them and run the shower with the hottest water I can and steam up the room for a while as I read to them. This didn't work for Cassie this time. So I wrapped her in a blanket and went outside in the chilly air with her. Didn't work. Silas was holding her while I looked to see if there was anything in the medicine cabinet to help her a little bit. While doing that, I got a bit nervous. Every single time she would breathe, both in and out, it sounded horrible. I have never had any of the other kids sound like this. So I grabbed our nebulizer and gave her a breathing treatment, which only upset her more, which led to screaming from her, which led to worse crying and worse coughing, etc. You get the picture. I had Silas put on a movie for her and then go up to the store to grab some Sprite and called my mom to see if she knew of anything else I could do for her. While on the phone, Cassie settled down enough to where her breathing became normal again. Whew! So, for two nights I slept on one couch, and Cassie was on the other. She's fine now, but I am still trying to recoop from the lack of sleep.

Elena pottied!

Woohoo! I was so excited! I was running her bath water this morning and had just taken off her pull-up when she pointed at her leg. She had a little trickle going down where she had wet herself a little bit just as I was going to put her on the chair. I put her on there anyway so she'd make the connection. We have the Royal Potty that plays music when they actually do anything, but the kids all think it is neat to stick their hands down in the seat to hear it. Anyway, it kept playing music over and over. I was confused as to why it wouldn't stop, because I had never heard it make music that many times in a row. Well, lo and behold, little stinker actually used the potty! Boy, did I ever cheer for her! Hopefully this is the start of a trend!

One reason I was MIA for so long

I totally forgot to tell you one of the reasons I was MIA for so long. I became a Qwyzzle addict. One of my board buddies, Stef, introduced me to this brain strainer. LOL I finished in about two weeks. Yay me! Here is the link:

Qwyzzle

Enjoy..but be forewarned...some of these are HARD!

Back to class

Josh's socialization classes have started again, and this time is going to be really cool! I have said it many times before, and I will say it again...our psych is awesome! We were leaving speech Wednesday and I was buckling Joshua into his carseat, when lo and behold, the Ms. G. parked next to us and came over to chat. She told me this time would be a little different in socialization class because it would be a bigger group and the kids were all a little older. She thought Joshua would handle it well though and it would be a nice challenge for him.

So we went back that afternoon for the class. There were 3 other children there and it appears to be a diverse bunch of kids with a variety of different needs. From what I understood while talking to the other moms, Joshua is the youngest out of the group by almost a year (in the other groups he was the oldest by a couple of months).

When they finished group and the kids come out, Ms. G. brought out our little check-out forms and as always started to pass them out to us. She passed me though, and told me she wanted to talk to me for a minute. I was thinking, "Oh no, what did he do?!?!" LOL

She wanted to forewarn me that Joshua is the youngest in the group and the group is much more verbal than the other groups he has been with. She said it is a little harder for him so she just wanted me to beware that he might show some resistance about coming the next couple of weeks because of it. However, she truly feels he can handle the challenge and is more than capable of doing everything she will be asking of him. She said whereas he has always been at the top, he's now on the bottom and has to work harder than the rest,. So it should be interesting to see how he handles the next few weeks.

While she was there, I mentioned that she is not a provider for our insurance so we were paying out of pocket, and I was wondering if there was a way to get her added. She said she'd look into seeing what could be done. I didn't even pull out of the parking lot and she called me on my cell phone to let me know that she talked to the woman who handles the insurance for their group and she thinks I can request a single case agreement for her to be covered for Joshua. She gave me her direct number again as well as the direct number for the woman she spoke to and told me if I need her to call them herself, she is more than happy to do so.

Even if it takes up the majority of our tax return, I really think it will be worth it for her to be the one providing the care. She is so good with Josh and genuinely cares how much he improves. I can't imagine trying to get into a new office and seeing another psych whose name I can not even pronounce, simply because the insurance will cover the cost. He has made such great improvements under her care. Why switch to something when there is a system that is actually working? As long as we can afford to do it, we will continue to have Joshua see her. Hopefully, the insurance company will agree to cover her services for Joshua, because that would only sweeten the deal at this point. :)

Olympics

We have been studying the Olympics this week. The kids all participated in the craft activities. I have been so bad about taking pictures lately. I really need to be better about it. Each of the kids made their own flag to represent their "country". We made gold and silver medals, which was their favorite activity so far, and we also made the Olympic rings and discussed why those colors were chosen.

Jacob and I took a lot of time this morning on the internet looking up the different sports that are involved in the games. There was a great link that we both enjoyed:
Olympics site for kids

If you click on Slug, there is a great description of each of the games - the rules, equipment necessary, a list of Americans participating, and the country that is favored to win. Jacob decided after reading the descriptions that he would really like to do snowboarding. Kind of hard to do here seeing as we haven't had snow since the 80's, and even then it was nothing to really support that type of sport. I assured him we could watch though. ;)

Opening ceremonies are tonight. I can't wait to see their reactions!

New business

Hi everyone! It's been a while, and I apologize. Life has been busy, as always. :)

As many of you know, for several months I have been trying to find something I could do from home to help with the costs of Josh's therapy while still homeschooling the boys. I stumbled upon Usborne Books during our schooling. I loved the books so much that I have decided to become an independant consultant.

All of the books have illustrations that will catch the attention of kids of any age. Many of the series feature a dual level of reading where the top of the page will have a simple line of text for the younger children who want to turn the pages, and more complete and longer text at the bottom for you to read to the child. For the older kids, the information is broken into chunks, and they retain the information easier.

One of Jacob and Joshua's favorite books is "Puzzle Train". The book has never been read the same way twice. In addition to telling a story, there are several items that the reader can search for throughout the pages, as well as questions and mind-benders to answer on each page.

There are over 1200 books available covering a tremendous amount of topics and age ranges, with the majority costing under $10. You can view them all at my website: My Usborne Bookstore You can see sample pages of many of the books. While you are there, be sure to enter the free drawing to try to win $50 in free books with no cost to enter! You can enter each month. Who knows? You may be the next winner!

If anyone is interested in hosting an e-party where you can earn free books, let me know and I will get the details to you. You can earn double the book allowance during my first 8 weeks. Also, until March 30, I am authorized to sell the complete base kit for only $99.50. Ask me for details if you are interested. All consultants get a lifetime 30% discount.

I am not sure if the shopping cart will allow shipping outside of the US, except in the case of APO boxes. If you live outside of the US and want to place an order at any time, email me your order and I can have it shipped to me and then ship it to you for actual cost. Payment appears to be only by Visa, Discover, Mastercard, or debit card. If you would like to pay by check, email me to place your order instead of going through the shopping cart. :) Most orders take only a week to get to you if you order through the website.

Ok, sales pitch over. :)

Updates

We got the results of the boys' bloodwork finally. Joshua's Insulin-like Growth Factor is a bit high, and Jacob's is low. I have no idea what this means exactly, but the ped is sending us to an endocronologist for the two of them. We are still waiting for the results on the bone age x-ray. Supposedly the Children's Hospital has no record of our having been there. Yeah, I am so sure that will be the case when the bill gets sent. Needless to say, I will not be paying for something that I will never see the results for, and I may let the insurance company know as well that they supposedly lost the x-ray. We'll see what happens. I for one am very interested to see what the results were and how it relates to the low IGF.

School is going fine. We didn't do anything today. Jacob had to go to the ped's office today because for the past 5 days he has been blinking in an odd way...like really long and hard blinks. If we ask him if they hurt, are itchy, are dry, etc he always says no. So today, since it seems to be never-ending, we went to get him checked. The ped had him go through a vision exam (he has 20/25) and then she examined his eyes and asked him several questions. In the end, she thinks it is allergy related and she gave us a prescription for some drops.

So I got to thinking about what in the world could have suddenly set him off. When Silas came home one day early last week, he brought me my early Valentine's gift - some beautiful yellow tulips. That is the only difference that I have thoguht about, so we are thinking that may be the key. We are going to find a new location for the flowers and see if that helps with the drops.

So that is all to report for now. :)

First dental visit

I posted a little over a month ago about having concerns about Elena's top front teeth. She has had some yellowish colored spots on them and I had the pediatrician look at them to see what she thought it was. Her thought was that it was either the start of decay or damage to the enamel. So, I made an appointment with my old pediatric dentist, Dr. K. While I was at it, I went ahead and asked to schedule an appointment for Joshua, explaining my concerns and wondering if they were willing to see an autistic child and an infant. Usually they do not see kids until they are 3 years old, but after explaining that Dr. K. was my old dentist and the bad experiences I had prior to going to see him, the woman I was talking to agreed to talk to him and he agreed to try seeing them both. I figured, if they can handle an autistic child and a one-year old, they'd be able to handle Jacob with no problems, and we'd make an appointment for him later. ;)

Well, I prepared Joshua as best I possibly could this weekend. I made little picture cards that went through each step of the appointment that I knew they would be doing today (counting teeth, sitting and laying in the chair, open mouth and say "AH!", etc) and a couple they thought they may try (like x-rays and "polishing" the teeth. Then last night I got out a little dental mirror I bought and some other things and had him lay on my bed with his head on a pillow on my lap. I had our bright top light directly over him and shining on his face, so he would know to expect it. He did great, so I was feeling a little better about how things may go.

So, we get to the dentist office today and Joshua tells me he doesn't want to go and see the duster. LOL I corrected him, and said he would probably like it. We walked in and he found the playroom and made himself at home. Elena also enjoyed this part of the experience. LOL After a while we were called back to the examination room. The hygenist talked to us for a bit and Joshua got into the chair. He was fine until she decided to try and lay it back, and it totally freaked him out. He told her he wanted it to sit up and so she fixed it and he immediately thanked her. That's one thing Joshua definitely has going for him - wonderful manners!

Anyway, eventually Dr. K. came in. Dr. K. is not a tiny man...he is a big guy, but a big teddy bear as my mother likes to say. He has always been relatively quiet when he speaks too, so he took Josh by surprise when he suddenly saw him in the doorway. He started fussing a bit and becoming difficult. Dr. K. had me pick Josh up while he layed the chair back, and then I put Josh back on it. Then he lifted the chair, which Josh again disliked. They also turned on the bright lights and when they did, Dr. K. covered Josh's eyes, which was a tremendous help!

They got Josh's teeth checked and there is NO DECAY!!! Woohoo! I was soooo relieved! He did have a spot on one tooth that looked to me like a little hole, so I mentioned it. He has an enamel defect on that tooth, and there is nothing to do right now. He said he won't attempt a cleaning right now on Josh and that he would likely have to be pout under ansthesia to do so, which he does not recommend, so we will try that again next year I suppose.

Next was Elena. He had Silas hold her on his lap facing him, then lay her back so that her head was on Dr. K's lap. He still had to have someone hold her head still for him because she was fighting him so badly. He saw no decay or enamel defects. I showed him where I was seeing the problems and he told me that it was discoloration of the enamel and that was all. Whew! So no decay! Am I ever happy and relieved!

Elena does, however, have a flap of skin that goes from the lip to the palate and will likely need to be surgically removed at some point or her teeth will not properly grow together as they should. My mother was told something similar about my outh by my quack dentist, but mine was not severe, and I have had no trouble whatsoever...I barely have a gap at all between my teeth now. SO I guess time will tell...maybe it is something that will change in time? Anyone have experience with this?

He recommended that we only give water in the sippy cup and that anything else only be given during meals. This is typically all we do anyway, but I didn't tell him that. Mainly, my kids drink water, and maybe one day a week they will get a can of Sprite each. And at night they have been having milk while Jacob drinks his shake supplement. So, it seems like we are pretty much doing everything right. :)

Dr. K. did tell me that he is not an expert on autistic kids, but he knows it can be difficult to deal with them. He said to not worry about the toothpaste if he won't accept it (another of my concerns) and just worry about cleaning it with water if that is all he will take. He also said Josh has been blessed with nice spacing between his teeth, so that helps tremendously because the food is not getting trapped in between.

So, all in all, I couldn't have been happier with the way things went today. :)

Knights and Castles

Our lessons right now are on knights and castles. Jacob is currently reading The Knight At Dawn from the Magic Treehouse series. He is really enjoying the series and it has been a lot of fun hearing him reading them.

My mother listened to him read yesterday while I was with Josh in therapy, and she asked him some questions. One of the things the book mentioned was that they ate peacocks, and mom got the feeling he didn't quite get what a peacock was exactly. So today, I asked him if he knew and to describe it. He started out telling me it was a bird, had a beak, a long neck, and he was really convincing that he knew what it was...at least until he told me they were pink. LOL So, I jumped on the internet to find some pics of peacocks and then he remembered seeing them at the zoo. Silly boy.

I found a really neat site to help with visuals of a castle and its different parts. Here is the link: Kids' Castle It allowed Jacob the chance to dress a knight, learn about squires, pages, tournaments, the moat, etc. all with visuals that appeal to him. Here is a screenshot from the Knight in Armor activity that he did:

Before Jacob dressed him:


After Jacob dressed him:


Right now he is building a castle out of Lego blocks. I'll take pics and post them when he is finished. :)

He is such a little boy. Today when he was reading, there was a section where Jack was describing what the people he was seeing were wearing. The boys serving food were "wearing dresses". You can tell he really was paying attention to what he was reading, because he stopped and looked at me with this adorable puzzled look and said "The boys were wearing dresses?" and he burst out with laughter that I thought would never end. It was so funny. He'd get further down the page and then he'd start laughing again and would say "haha The boys were wearing dresses". LOL Luckily once he turned the page there was an illustration that showed what Jack was talking about, and it settled the laughter down a little bit so we could finish the lesson.

The Autism Spectrum Quotient

Yep, I'm a chatterbox today. :P

I saw this on a blog I recently discovered, Matchbox Kid. It is a 50 question quiz found on the Newsweek site. I thought it would be interesting to take it and see what it said about me. Here's the link for anyone interested: The Autism Spectrum Quotient

Here is the scoring scale:
0-10: low
11-22: average (most women score about 15, and most men score around 17)
22-31: above average
32-50: very high (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism score about 35
50: maximum


I scored a 16. Interesting.

Cassidy's funny of the day

I thought you guys would get a kick out of Cassie's latest. She loves wearing dresses, so when I was getting her ready to go today, I let her pick out what she wanted to wear. She grabbed a pink dress that has flowers painted on the edge of it. So, she puts it on and starts holding the sides of it out, and she runs over to Elena and says "I look soooo beautiful!" She cracks me up. Well, a little later she comes up to me and holds out her bare foot and says "And where are my beautiful shoes?" I told her she was funny and she did look very nice today and she could bring me her shoes and we'd put them on. While I'm putting them on, she said something, and I replied "Yes, Princess Cassidy" and she got real upset and told me she is NOT Princess Cassidy, she is Princess Cin-der-ell-a. LOL Yes ma'am! To top it off though, she stands up and tells me very seriously "I need to find a prince." I lost it! Two years old and already looking for her Prince Charming. ROFL

Second half of the speech re-eval

We went in for the second half of Josh's speech re-eval. Let me tell you, everything that should have thrown him into a total tizzy happened. The therapist was running 20 minutes behind to begin with. When we went back to the room, someone else was using our usual room so we had to change to a differnet one. I looked at our therapist and said "You mean we have to switch to THIS room on an eval day?" She wasn't too happy about it either. It was much larger, the blinds were open and causing a bad glare, there was a mirror, a microwave, a fridge, a fan - all HUGE distractions for him. And then to top it off there was this annoying little humming in the background the entire time. I'm not autistic and it was bothering me, so you can imaginewhat it did to Josh. Believe it or not, he did awesome!

The last time he was tested (in July) he only made it to question 43. We had to stop for the day at question 56 because we ran out of time, so already that is showing he has made wonderful progress. She actually has to continue the eval until he gets 5 consecutive questions wrong, and so far it hasn't happened. She thinks, looking ahead, that it won't be too much further before he does have to stop completely this time. I'm so proud of him!

He is having trouble with past tense words still, mainly those that actually change the word completely. For instance he does fine with past tense words such as smiling being changed to smiled but changing "the child is drawing a picture" to "The child drew a picture" is still not clicking for him. He does say "drawed" instead though. I asked about that part and the therapist said around 5 years is when they start to chage it and they give points on the test if they use any form of past tense, correct or not.

So, in the end, we are still not through. :lol She said that she feels he has age appropriate language skills now and that a lot of his problem stems from being easily distracted now. So, I'm not sure what this means for speech therapy at this point. We may get released after she scores the test next week, or it may be that she will have to keep him in a little longer because of the auditory skills being a little below the average still. She said the clinic's goal is to get each child to score an 80 or above on their raw score and within 6 months of their actual age before releasing them. I just don't know whether that means total, each section, or what, if that makes any sense whatsoever.

I have to say though, he cracks me up. They have had a major lack of boyish stickers lately, so he kept picking the biggest sticker he could and it was always a giant pink and blue sticker that said "Tuff Girl" on it. LOL Today though, they finally had a ton of choices for him - Tonka trucks, smiley faces, The Incredibles, Pooh...guess what stinker chose? Barbie! :rofl2

What a day!

(except that should be a patch on the eye instead of a toothache. ROFL)

Well, we got up bright and early and left home at the same time Silas left for work. The kids were really good about not complaining about the lack of breakfast, which was a nice surpise. We picked up my mom, who was wonderful and came with us to watch the girls during the labs, and headed to where my insurance company told us to go. By the way, this was NOT a pediatric lab nor a pediatric imaging center, but I went with it seeing as it would be covered by insurance. Given this little tidbit, you can imagine how well this was going to go.

We were getting out of the van at the lab...all of the kids were ready to go inside, I decided to be brave and leave my diaper bag in the car, and I grabbed my purse and put it on my shoulder. I was ready! Not even 5 seconds after closing the van door, my purse strap breaks and flies up full force and the end (which is metal) strikes my eye. I have not felt so much pain! I couldn't get my eye to open and it was watering something fierce. My mother kept telling me to go and lean on the van, which I could not understand how the heck that would help. LOL After a couple of minutes, I was able to open it. I am guessing that my eye actually did close before being struck, however my mother informed me that it was bright red, so I am sure that everyone in the lab thought I came in with a massive case of pink eye. LOL It is pretty much back to normal coloring now and other than a little bit of sweelling, you probably couldn't tell I had such a freak accident this morning. It isn't really too bad as far as pain goes. Every now and then it will sting a little, but I am hoping after a good night's sleep it will be better.

I specifically asked that they take the boys in seperately so as Jacob would not hear Josh scream and go into panic mode. He was already nervous about the needle as it was. I was assured that would not be a problem, and then we proceeded to wait a little longer. Eventually they called me in with Joshua. It was cute...when we got to the door, the guy says "Hi, my name is Thomas". Joshua started crying and said "No! You're not Thomas!" He thought the guy was talking about everyone's favorite tank engine of course. LOL We then went in to the room where I was given instructions on how they wanted me to hold him. I think they were expecting a real struggle because they had three people in there ready to step in at any point, but he did fine. He simply screamed about getting stuck. So not too bad.

While Joshua was getting stuck, one of the three people that were standing guard, for lack of a better description, decided to sneak on out and grab Jacob, telling my mother that I had said I wanted Jacob back with me. I was a little ticked to find out she plain out lied to my mother like that, but at that point it was too late. So, Jacob was at the door while Joshua was screaming bloody murder about the needle. Grrr. Anyway, the tears started flowing with the alcohol swab. Poor kid was so worked up over this and his little heart was pounding in his little chest. But, we made it through and the worst was over.

We then left to get the kids some breakfast, which they were extremely happy about. I dropped my mom and the 3 younger kids off at her house and took off for Jacob's x-ray. Remember, I called the insurance company last Friday to find out where to bring him for this. They told me where to go and it was just down the hall in the same building as the lab, so no biggie.

We get there, wait for someone to finish flirting with the receptionist, and then proceed to hand over the orders. She looks confused and takes it to her supervisor who then asks how old Jacob is, and then explains they don't do x-rays on children under 18 years of age. Great! So we go back to the van and I pull out my cell phone where I proceed to call Humana and find out where I can go now. I talk to a guy that obviously has no clue what he is doing. He named every hospital in town EXCEPT for the children's hospital. I asked him to look that specific one up. He spelled it in 2 totally off ways, even after I spelled it to him. I was frustrated and I told him I could not believe that the only children's hospital in the entire area was not in our network. I finally got off the phone and headed to the hospital across the street, but before I got there I called Silas and asked him to jump on the internet and see if he could find out anything. Lo and behold, the hospital is not listed on the website, but the larger hospital that it is part of is...so I asked him to make a phone call while I looked for a parking place in the overfilled garage. Turns out the children's hospital DOES take the insurance, go figure.

By this point, I had already found a place to park and I decided to just go ahead and stay at the hospital I was at since I was going to have to pay for parking. After a long goose chase we finally found their imaging center. I signed in and after a few minutes I found out it was an hour minimum wait for people with an appointment. I grabbed Jacob and told him we were leaving.

We headed over to the children's hospital and I verified once more that they do in fact take Humana HMO. They said yes and I told them that Humana apparently doesn't seem to realize that. The woman was shocked and said that all of the hospital's empoyees have the same insurance, so Humana is nuts. Again, go figure.

The x-ray went well. He only had to get one and it was a breeze after the bloodwork. LOL We hoepfully will get the results tomorrow, but hopefully we will have a definite idea of what is going on by the end of the week.

Needless to say, Joshua has not done very well with the change in routine today. We have had a lot of meltdowns. I am hoping this is not going to affect his performance tomorrow during his speech re-evaluation.

Whew!

Back to school!

Well, we are back to school. Jacob did his journal entry and we moved on to math. I thought I would just do some review of the addition and subtraction that he had a good grasp on before Christmas. We had major crocodile tears. I can not figure out why he has such a mental block when it comes to math. After struggling to get through it for the day (an hour for 4 short worksheets, I kid you not), we moved on to social studies. We love social studies around here, so that went smoothly. We ended with his reading two chapters of the next Magic Treehouse book and his summing it up for me afterwards.

Joshua's school day mainly revolved around beginning reading. I decided to try the same method I used with Jacob, but I will likely focus on one set of words for a few days as opposed to a new set each day like I did with Jacob. Today we started with the word at. I told him what it was and had him look at it and repeat it. Below that I wrote at again and had him watch as I added the letter b in front of it. I asked him if he remembered what sound the b made. He didn't, so I made the sound myself and had him repeat it. I then explained to him that we could take the "b" sound and add it to the "at" and make a word. We put it together and he got so excited. It was really cute to watch. We then did cat, hat, mat, sat, that (which takes some work since he does not properly say the "th" sound yet), and fat. Yes, I left some off, like pat, but we will get to them eventually. ;)

Tommorow will be a crazy day. We have to get up insanely early and get the boys' bloodwork done. One of the many tests being run requires them to fast, so the earlier the better. Once that is done, we'll go get some breakfast and then wait around for a couple of hours to get Jacob's wrist x-ray done. This will give the doctor an idea of his bone age and maybe give some other insight to why he has stopped growing. I'm not worried about the x-ray, but the bloodwork should be LOADS of fun with my two sons. Wish us luck!

Re-evaluations

Happy New Year everyone!

We started Josh's speech re-evaluation today. :) Today was the first half and it tested his auditory skills. His raw score was a little higher than the first time around, but it somehow managed to make the average the same. I didn't quite understand the whole thing about how the scoring works, but I am guessing that his age factors in there somewhere. Anyway, Joshua was a year behind in July. He is 5 yrs, 2 mths, and is testing at 4 yrs, 7 mths...so he is only about 7-8 months behind. From what the therapist said, they are considered on track so long as they are within 6 months of their age...so not too far from that goal! Woohoo! Next week will be testing expressive language skills, which he was a year and a half behind in back when he was tested in July. So we shall see how that turns out.

We are still waiting for the blood work orders for the boys. Our ped has had some crazy hours lately. Since she will be there tonight and tomorrow night, I will have to call and find out what is going on. It is 4 days shy of a month of waiting for the orders. We also did not have our referral faxed to the therapy office today, so that should be loads of fun to get straightened out.

Merry Christmas!

I just had to pop on here today to wish all of my family, friends, and blog buddies a very Merry Christmas!!!



blinnkie from:

Make your own snowflake

I have had so much fun doing this. Jacob even made a couple today and did a great job. :)

http://www.popularfront.com/snowdays/

I warn you though...it is addicting!

Well, progress has definitely been made

Joshua was officially released from OT yesterday, though I am a bit confused as to why. We weren't there for two weeks, and then Mindy cancelled last week due to being ill. So, three weeks of being out of therapy - you can imagine the shock I was in when she told me she was going to release him because he is so much better than he was when he started.

I'm not real sure what to do now. I personally am not convinced that he is ready to be out of OT. He still has a ton to work on. Mindy assured me I have been doing a great job and that he has come a long way. I have a good grasp on the sensory diet, the need for a schedule, and am homeschooling him. She said also that the things she would be working on are all things that I am working on at home during school, so there is no point in coming in. Can you sense the dazed and confused look I must have had on my face the entire time?

Next was speech and it went pretty well. The schedule is helping Josh a lot. He is much more focussed, though he does have a moment or two each week that he seems to go off task. We are currently working on directional words - he is having a little trouble still with over, between, through and behind. I think if we continue working on it as much as we have, he will get it in the next week. He's a smart kid.

In the afternoon we went to socialization class. The other little boy, L, was out for a family emergency, so it was just Josh and Ms. G. They played a board game, and a few other things, had snack, and then she came out to get me so she could go over the session and how Josh did. He did well. The match between kids wasn't as good of one as in the past in terms of verbal exchange because L isn't as verbal as Josh is these days. However, they both have strong areas of interest that the other does not share. Josh's being cars and L's being puzzles. This forced both of them to do an activity someone else enjoyed and pay attention when it was the other person's turn.

Our next step is for Josh to work on continuing a conversation. He has gotten very good at going up to strangers and saying "Hi. What's your name?" He's so stinking cute that he always gets an answer from adults and children. Most of the time now, he will tell them his name as well, either by answering them when they ask or by simply offering the name. The problem is that this is where it usually ends. He either gets really goofy or he walks off. So, now he needs to realize that there is an exchange that needs to happen after this.

She asked if I had any questions or concerns about anything, so I took the opportunity to let he know about the morning's events. She was as shocked as I am that Josh was released from OT already. She tols me that Josh has made tons of improvements socially, but he still has a lot of work to do. She wanted to know if there was any sort of evaluation or if we got any sort of results given to us saying he is at such and such level. When I told her that Mindy simply went into her office to check something and then came back and again said she thought he could be released, she was again surprised. I should have been given something, but then again, I was never given a copy of our goals in the first place. Anyway, Ms. G agrees with me completely that Josh needs more OT. She said his muscle tone is still weak and that is some of what the OT is supposed to work on, so she doesn't understand it any better than I do. There is more than sensory issues at stake here, and that is what confuses me the most. She said she would go ahead and take this time as a break and then call them up to tell them I want him back in. I don't know what I will do. I think I will give it a couple of months, see where Josh is myself, and then re-evaluate the situation. The new insurance we will have starting in January will actually give us 40 total speech and OT visits, so it is a matter of weighing out what we can afford against what he needs.

Ms. G. asked me at the end if I am still going to continue homeschooling him. She said that if I had any doubts at all about whether or not I am doing right, she totally feels I am giving him more this way than any school in the area could offer. I told her I always question and have doubts, but I am very glad that she said it. It is so nice to have her support in this decision as well as someone to go to if I ever have any concerns about Joshua's care and our plan of action with him.

3 Things...

I was tagged by Sarah at The Sellers Homeschool Blog. This should be fun!

3 names you answer to:

1. Melissa
2. Mooooommmmmmmyyyyyyyyyy
3. MaMa

3 parts of your heritage:
1. Italian
2. Cajun
3. German - a little bit!

3 things that scare me:
1. Anything bad happening to my family, especially my children
2. Spiders
3. Dentists

3 of your everyday essentials:
1. Diet Cherry Coke
2. Hug from the kids
3. Music

3 things you are wearing right now:
1. green T-shirt
2. black pants
3. white socks

3 of your favorite songs:
1. In My Daughter's Eyes - Martina McBride
2. Breathe - Faith Hill
3. Held - Natalie Grant

3 things you want in a relationship (other than real love):
1. Understanding
2. Honesty
3. Patience

2 truths and 1 lie (in any order):
1. Have a bachelor's degree in Music Education
2. Have played handbells in Disney World
3. I love doing the dishes

3 things about the opposite sex that appeal to you:
1. Eyes
2. Smile
3. Confidence

3 of your favorite hobbies:
1. Scrapbooking
2. Sewing
3. Soapmaking

3 places you want to go:
1. DisneyWorld (been many times, but I LOVE that place!)
2. Disneyland in CA (sense a theme?)
3. New York (to see a Broadway show!)

3 things you want to do before you die:
1. See a real Broadway play
2. Live life to the fullest
3. Muster up the courage to get myself onto a plane. (And maybe even fly somewhere!)

3 ways that you are sterotypically a male/female:
1. I love shopping
2. I do not like to have my hair short
3. Enjoy crafts

3 people you would like to take this survey:
1. Silas (Strawberry Skies)
2. Lyndsay (C'est La Vie)
3. David (GracieLand)

Doctors, Doctors, Doctors

A few of you knew I was going to be going to the ped today. Here's what happened...

Jacob- We went for him to have a growth check. I don't know if you remember my telling you way back in May, but the ped was having us supplement his diet with Carnation GoodStart Shakes in hopes that he would gain weight. He has been steadily dropping from the 90th% on the growth charts in both height and weight, to now being in the 25th% for weight and the 2-3% for height now. :( So we now are going to be having his thyroid tested, an x-ray to determine his bone age, and some other tests, including testing for Celiac Disease. I personally feel this may be what we are looking at, because he has a lot of symptoms. Time will tell. Regardless, he will be seeing an endocronologist. It could very well be thyroid given we have a strong family history of problems, including myself. She said she feels it is definitely something familial going on and that she may be jumping the gun a bit, but would rather catch it now than later.

Funny story about his check-up...Dr. V asked Jacob how school was going and if he liked it. He said yes. Then she asked if he likes his teacher and he said yes, so then she asked what her name is and he replied "Mommy". She forgot I homeschool, so she asked him again, thinking he misunderstood the question, and he told her again. So she rephrased the question. This time he said, "Her name is Melissa". LOL She looked at me a little strangely and I reminded her I homeschool him. She started laughing and said she finally understood why he was so confused about her questions. LOL

Joshua - He did so well! Not a single tear during the check-up, and the ped was excited to see how social he is now compared to how he was last year. I made a picture schedule so he would know exactly what to expect during the check-up. It could not have gone more perfectly! He had to get three shots - one in each leg and one in the arm. It was funny, because he thought they were tickling him when they were doing the ones in his leg, so he laughed the entire time - no tears at all! The one in the arm did hurt though (the MMR), so he did scream....plus he saw it coming. LOL He is having his thyroid tested as well, because he too has dropped a little more than 2 curves on the growth chart. Ugh. So, the children's clinic should set up a room with our name, seeing as we are there literally all day once a week for therapy and socialization classes...and now an endo. :P

Elena - She is now 27 pounds and leveling off in her growth. Thank goodness, because my back can't take much more. LOL We are going to be taking her to a dentist. She has two small spots on her two top front teeth, and the ped thinks there is either some damage to the enamel or the start of cavities. I have no idea what it is since we have never seen anything like it with the other kids.

So, apparently no break for me in the near future as far as appointments go. I am sooo tired! I have been thinking that my own thyroid is in need of being tested, so after our new insurance kicks in, I will likely be meeting my new primary physician (I actually know him personally already, just not as my doctor) and then get a referral to an endo myself. The fun never ends. :)

Update on all the happenings

Well, the website is as updated with pictures as I have time to do for now. Maybe during the kids' Christmas break we can add some more. :)

Silas' car - we finally heard from the insurance company today. Well, more like Silas finally managed to track someone down and find out what the estimates were. Supposedly the car was worth $3400, and though we don't know how much they estimated the damages to be, they said they exceeded that cost by a good bit, so they are going to total the thing. Scary to think Silas was going only 20MPH or so and it caused this much damage. Can you imagine what would have happened had Silas been going the speed limit of 40MPH on that road? He actually is saying that he doesn't think he will get another Saturn right now. I had one myself a few years back and I hate them, but that is a story for another day. ;) Once Silas uploads the pictures from his phone, I will post them so you can see just how bad his 20MPH hit was.

Silas' new job - he starts tomorrow. We knew he was going to have some training soon after starting. It was supposed to be a week long trip a few hours away, but it has now truned into a 2 week trip with Silas driving every day back and forth. Not a bad trip - an hour to an hour and a half one way, but still...that's a lot of driving. He'll be tired and we won't be doing much as far as finding a replacement car anytime soon!

Therapy - due to all of the craziness this week, my lack of a vehicle, and several other factors, we cancelled therapy and group socialization classes. We'll resume next week. I have to admit, I have kind of enjoyed the two week break. But it is time to get back into our routine.

School - We finished our thankful tree. I have pictures that I need to post. I enjoyed it and I think the kids did as well. :) I also decided to take part of our living room wall and turn it into a timeline. I have so much trouble with figuring out when things happened in relation to other things, so it will be a good visual for me if nothing else. I'll post pictures of it as well once I get the latest batch of photos uploaded. We also began our Christmas unit. We are studying "Christmas Around the World". Today we started our Christmas countdown (24 days 'til Christmas!) and we talked about the traditions in America. We talked about what we as a family do, why we celebrate Christmas, the reason we hang stockings, and then talked about Alaska and some of their traditions. Afterwards the kids made wreaths out of their handprints. Joshua and Cassidy had little patience for the activity, so we didn't get to make as many hands for theirs. All Josh wanted to do was fan everyone with them, and Cassie wanted to glue everything to her handprints. And then of course, Elena wanted to eat the glue. Never a dull moment!

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Photos:

Our Completed Thankful Tree:


Our Wall Timeline: (no events added to it yet!)


Our Christmas Countdown:


Oh, and I forgot to take pics of the hand wreaths. Need to do that later. :)

Now I remember

....why I took such a long break from our webpage. One little quote mark was missing out of my code on Elena's page and it totally screwed up the entire thing. I sat there for 20 minutes trying to figure out why all of a sudden the thing was going wacky on me. I finally had to get Silas to look at it and after another 10 minutes or so, he finally spotted my missing quotes. Lovely. Lesson learned. Elena's page is somewhat updated now. I didn't bother with the thumbnails that link to the larger pictures as I have done on the older kids pages previously. It's a pain in the tush to do and I am running out of space on the free site. So I think may change the others as well now.

Our family webpage

Wow! I had not realized that it had been so long since I updated our family webpage. Silas happened to go looking at it the other night and when I glanced over and saw that the pictures on the front page were from last October, I was actually upset with myself for letting it slip like it has. What a slacker I have been! So, I have started getting it updated today. The front page now has some new and updated pictures (from the last month or two tops). I will get the names repaired soon, but for now it will do (they look icky right now!). :) I also need a link to this blog added.

Next on my list is Elena's page. Poor baby, the last pictures of her posted there were from when she was only about 2 months old. How awful am I? So, her page is first on my "to update" list.

After that will be Cassidy, Joshua, and Jacob's pages. And if I find any photos of Jacob's art, that page could use a major update as well.

Anyway, for anyone who is interested, slowly but surely the page will have some new photos up in the coming weeks, and hopefully I will have it more or less done by the time 2006 arrives so that all I have to do is add photos occasionally.

Thanksgiving weekend

Well, our Thanksgiving holiday started with a "bang". Silas was on his way to Walmart to grab a few things we needed on his way home Wednesday. Long story short, somehow he didn't see the car in front of him stopped due to some glare hitting the brake lights just right and he slammed into the vehicle...this was all directly in front of a Highway Patrol station.

The car was towed and other than knowing it is now about a mile down the road waiting for someone to inspect and estimate the damage, we know nothing. I personally think they may total the car, but I guess time will tell. It is going to really stink having only one vehicle for a while, but hopefully it won't be too bad.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving day, was nice. I'm pretty tired. All went well and we even played Scene It - Disney version. That was a lot of fun. 14 people in my little house - it still amazes me. LOL

And finally today, Black Friday. It has become a tradition the past few years that my mother, MIL, and I all head out to the Black Friday sales. We always start with JoAnn's. LOL Unbelievably, I found nothing that really jumped out at me. No material was sitting there saying "buy me" even with the fact that by combining coupons and sales we could have gottne Christmas fabrics at 90% off. How nutty am I? I did manage to spend a whopping $3.44 total there though. I bought some items for a Christmas card I am making and then bought 5 pieces of Disney Princess scrapbook paper. Cassidy is extremely into the princess stage right now, so I plan on cutting the princesses out of the paper and making them into paper dolls for her.

We went to tons of stores, but the $3.44 is all I spent. I was proud of myself. Of course, I didn't really think I would spend even that much considering that I didn't see any really outstanding deals this year.

While I was gone the boys got up earlier than Silas. Joshua was playing with a table cloth and Jacob got mad about it so he stepped on it. Joshua in turn pulled and Jacob decided to be cute and let go. When he did, Joshua fell into our table and he now has a black eye. Poor baby.

And just think - we're only halfway through the weekend!

Falling into place

Slowly all of the pieces are starting to come together in regards to Silas' new job. He will start on December 2nd. The info we were given stating the premium for the health insurance was incorrect, so it is looking like we have a good chance of having all of us covered after all. Whew! And we also will be able to keep Medicaid for Joshua, thank goodness!

Other than that we are preparing for Thanksgiving. We rearranged the living room in a way that makes it appear to have more room than it actually has. That's always nice! We are expecting 15 people including ourselves, so we have to figure some way of squeezing everyone in. Our next house will have more room for doing the family entertaining, that's for sure. I certainly have learned what we need to look for once we are finally able to be in a position to move in the future.

I am once again trying to get all of this homeschooling stuff organized. I can not believe how much we have accumulated lately. We have a two drawer file cabinet for the paperwork (past, present, and future) and it is quite a bit fuller than I anticipated. I guess that is a good thing, right?

Ok, enough rambling from me. I need to get back to organizing and cleaning.

Mommy knows best

This is the lesson that we learned yesterday. :)

I mentioned how much trouble we have been having with the OT and speech therpaies lately. It's really been bad and I leave feeling as if we just need to stop wasting the time, money, and energy by continuing.

OT was about typical yesterday. I'm not real sure what Mindy was thinking yesterday during the second half when she took Josh into a small room for less distractions, and yet there was a disco ball turning in the corner. Umm, yeah, less distraction for sure. LOL But we made it through and Josh demonstrated his tracing skills for her with much hesitation. At the end we talked for a while. She thinks he is doing pretty well, but is stubborn and said that she knows it must get frustrating sometimes dealing with him. Yep, some days more than others, and some days he does great. But from what I can tell all kids are like that, right?

Speech went much better. I reminded Jessica that we were going to try the weighted vest and she brought him to get it. From there Josh led us to the ST room and she finally managed to get his attention to show him the picture schedule that she had made for him. It had 6 pictures - chair, book, questions, snack, play, and sticker - all attached nicely to a file folder. Other than one little part where she wanted him to use a marker to circle the answers and he refused very angrily, it went great! And the only reason that was so horrible is because he just spent the last half of OT doing the markers and you can't do that much of the same activity that close together. She seemed happy that it actually did work and she is planning to use it with him from now on in hopes that it will continue to help.

Of course, socialization class went horrible to make up for the good therapy. LOL I talked to the psych afterwards, and she told me if I ever want her to walk over and talk to the therapists she would be happy to do so. I love how much she cares and is always going the extra mile for Josh. :) She totally backed me on his needing the schedule. Joshua needs to know what to expect, and it isn't exactly easy for me to prepare him when I haven't a clue what to expect myself each week!

So, we have next week off from everything. It feels like Christmas vacation is coming since we have a three day school week. Geez, I can't believe how fast this school year is flying!

Jacob is doing so well with his reading and I am so proud of him. We are a little behind in math but have been concentrating on it a lot the past two weeks to try and catch up. Our thankful tree is going well. We also have a poem we read each day about Thanksgiving where they can change some of the words each day, and all of the kids think that is fun.

Cassidy is on and off potty training. I'm not pushing her, but on days that she wants to skip diapers I try and encourage her as much as possible.

Elena is running lately...and talking up a storm. We have no idea what she is saying the majority of the time now, but there are some definite things that we have deciphered. Here are some of the things she is saying now:

Jacob - "Jay-jaw"
Joshua - "jaw-jaw" - soooo close to Jacob..you have to really look at who she is talking to at the time
Peek-a-boo - "pee-boo"
Bye-Bye
Cookie - something similar LOL
Daddy - she has never said dada - she has always said daddy...so odd!
Mama
cup
Hey there!
Thank you

...along with a host of other things that I'm not thinking of right now. She tries saying the blessing with the other kids at mealtime, which is too sweet! She also gives us five or ten when she does something good. Oh! And can this child dance! The slightest hint of music and those hips of hers start going from side to side. She cracks me up! Sometimes they go so far from side to side that she knocks herself over. It always makes me smile. :)

New job for Silas

Silas had an interview yesterday and was offered the job on the spot. Great news for him, as he will be getting a great opportunity and advance quite a bit in his field. This will give him lots of experience to hopefully one day move on to bigger things. In the meantime things will be tighter around here than they already are, which is not something we were counting on with a higher paying job. The insurance plan they offer is an HMO and the current employees are extremely happy with compared to what they had last year. However, it stinks for those of us with a special needs child. Because it is an HMO, we will lose Medicaid for Joshua, so we are back to square one as far as getting his therapies covered unless I can reasearch all of the options again with new coverage and find some sort of program that can help with those costs. This insurance will cover only 60 visits combined of speech and OT...we will meet that by July. I could go on and on about the pros and cons to this offer, but I will spare you. :)

Regardless, Silas is taking the job. We are trusting that God is leading us and that we are making the right decision. He hasn't let us down so far, and we are trusting that He won't start now.

One of those weeks - Yeeeeehaw

The week started with my mother calling on Sunday night to tell me that the family dog, Flower, had passed on. She loved the kids and would watch them as they played. If one of them fell, she would always get up and check to be sure they were ok. She was just a beautiful and loving dog, and she is sorely missed already.

Wednesday was therapy overload day. We started with OT. Joshua told me in the waiting area that he was wanting to do the spinning circle. I mentioned it to Mindy and that I was unsure what he was talking about. After a few minutes she was able to get his attention long enough to ask him if he felt he needed to spin and in true Joshua fashion he answered yes. Now, Joshua is not a spinner by nature. It just isn't one of the things he craves or even cares for really. But, I kept my mouth shut because she is the professional.

So, we head over to a different area of the large therapy area, and she has him lay on the scooter board. She wanted him to hold a plastic stretchy rope while she pulled him around the room in circles. Joshua had no interest in it. He was already higly distracted (hence why he said yes to her questioning his need for spinning), and this seemed to make it even worse.

So, after trying to do this for a good 5 minutes, Mindy finally gets out a giant therapy ball and has him lay on his tummy on top of it. She has him do this directly in front of a mirror. While he is lying on the ball he was to take a marker, take off the lid, then draw a picture on the mirror. If it were Jacob or Cassie, they would have been extremely happy to write on something new. Joshua hesitantly scribbled a bit, but he refused to cooperate with her. After scribbling about 3 things, he looked at her and said he was done. She made him get back on the ball and sit up on top of it and mentioned . I asked if this was one of those days where he would benefit from using a weighted vest and she nodded yes, but did not get it.

Anyway, his feet were nowhere near the floor when he was sitting on top of the giant ball, so she was able to roll it back and forth to test his ability to stay balanced. After several minutes of this she had him bounce up and down, and then he was allowed to choose a toy to play with. Mindy mentioned his body awareness has improved a lot and she was happy to see progress in this area.

Next was speech. Joshua does not cooperate for Jessica 3 out of 5 sessions. I don't know why this is. However, I have noticed that the past two weeks, she let him choose a large truck and he was willing to cooperate and do his "work" because of it. This week she skipped the extra step and went straight to the room, and he was far from willing to do anything. Eventually she asked me if I have thought about giving him fish oil supplements in order to help increase his concentration levels. She is supposed to give me more info next week on this. I asked her about the weighted vest and she said she thought it would probably work well for him but she would need to use it at the beginning of the session and not try it halfway through. {sigh} I also mentioned that he is in socialization classes and that the psych has him for 45 minutes plus and never has a problem with him because he knows what to expect when he goes to her. I mentioned that she uses the color coding chart and it seems to work well at home, so maybe that is all he'd need there too. She said we could try it.

Sometimes I really think I am either talking to myself or they think I am in denial or something about Joshua. I'm not. I know what seems to be working for him though, and they aren't using it. The psych uses cars and trucks to help teach Joshua what she wants to teach...I do the same at home...AND IT WORKS!!! It stinks that the "pros", people who went through training and supposedly deal with many children "just like Josh", don't seem to get what Josh needs. And it is frustrating and disappointing to deal with every week.

Socialization class the same day went extremely well. Mrs. G. had nothing but good things to say, so I was happy. :) And guess what? She had them for 45 minutes. Interesting that the same child on the same day could do "great", isn't it? grrr

Needless to say, since we don't have socialization class the week of Thanksgiving, I decided to cancel his other therapy appointments that week as well. I need a break and I think he does too.

Today, Friday, is Veteran's Day. Silas was off and so I decided to use the opportunity to take a little field trip. I was originally going to drive out to the beach and have the kids pick up shells for a project this week, but it was chilly compared to earlier this week, so I tried coming up with something new. Lucky for me, about a month ago our local news mentioned a website that has local events for kids listed. I bookmarked it and have often refered to it. So, in hopes of finding something to do, I headed to the site and found out there was a free barrel racing event in town all weekend. So that is where we went.

We missed the horse that held the day's fastest time. I was a little disappointed, but it was ok. There were tractors that were used between each set of horses and Joshua was extremely thrilled. He could have cared less about the horses. We just so happened to sit right by the parking area for them as well. :)

In the middle of everything, they called over the loud speaker that any child under the age of 10 that wanted to be a part of the corn run could enter the arena. Josh and Jacob both got very excited. Turns out Josh thought he was going to get a ride on the tractor. LOL Jacob had no clue what to expect. We handed them over the rail to one of the cowboys, and I left to find where to pick them up when they were done. I missed the entire thing, but Silas saw it. They were to run from one end of the arena, pick up a toy, and then run back. Jacob started out running and I guess he didn't hear the instructions so he stopped in the middle of the arena, and eventually figured out what was going on and finished the task. joshua never made it into the arena from the sounds of it, but they were nice and gave him a prize too. LOL He was just happy to walk out there and kick up dirt.

We watched until the end of the morning session was over. The boys said they wanted to go back to the evening set, so I took them and Cassie while Silas stayed home with the baby. One of the guys running the tractors remembered us from the morning and was talking to us when he'd park near us. He got a kick out of talking to Josh and had several conversations with him. Joshua even asked him what his name is. He replied, "My name is Vince. What's your name?". Joshua never gave his name, but he continued his conversation about how cool his tractor is. Silly boy.

Jacob enjoyed the horses. Vince and I were talking about the horses to him and we finally got to see someone beat the morning's fastest time, so that was really cool. Cassie was in awe of the horses and never took her eyes off of them while they were making their runs. The kids want to go back tomorrow...guess we will see what happens. :)

First day with the Thankful tree and Halloween recap

Well, today was our first day with our thankful tree. I sat down and thoroughly described what it means to be thankful for something. Afterwards, the kids each chose a leaf. Jacob wrote that he was thankful for his rabbit. Cassidy told me she was thankful for mommy and daddy. (awwww) And dear little Joshua, always silly, thought for a minute and said he was thankful for chocolate. LOL All three are very excited about this little project. We also have a Thanksgiving day countdown poem that they will be reciting each day. Each day they will get to change the countdown, and then they will choose a new food to stick in the poem.

Halloween went well. We went over to my mom and dad's house for "trick-or-treat" and so dad could take some photos. We then headed over to Mrs. Howard's house for her to also see the kids. After that, we drove over to my grandfather's apartment so that he and my mom could see them in costume as well. Gramps had eye surgery last week so he can't be around crowds yet. With the time change this weekend it was enough for the kids, especially the girls, so we headed home.

My sewing for Cassie's costume didn't work out, so we had to improvise. So, she was a Hawaiian hula girl - of course, she had to still be called a princess, so we told her she was a Hawaiian princess. Eventually she decided she was a Hawaiian Cinderella princess. LOL

Here are some pictures of the kids in costume: