Everyday Adventures

Da Moves

2012-05-19T19:44:00.000-04:00

We kept seeing this song on tv...

...and Bitty kept singing it to himself.

Then one day he got curious:

Bitty: Does Elmo got da moves?

me: Yeah

Bitty: Does that mean Elmo can dance?

me: Yeah

Bitty: What is da moves?

me: It means you can dance.

(he stops to ponder that)

Bitty: I don't got da moves.

me: Me either :)

Angry Birds

2012-05-12T19:37:00.000-04:00

Bitty asked me to help him make a slingshot.

Turns out this is what he had in mind:

Yep, we made a slingshot out of old pantyhose, lol. I set up the pigs at the bottom of the stairs for him, and Bitty had the birds lined up behind the slingshot (just like on the game).

He's really into Angry Birds these days... he asks me almost every day, "Do you wike Angry Birds? I wike Angry Birds. Do you wike da bwoo bird? Is da bwoo bird cute?" (note: the correct answer is yes, the blue bird IS cute!)

He has even expressed some interest in the plot line of the game, which I thought was pretty cool:

"Why are da birds angry?"

"Because the pigs stole their eggs."

"Why did da pigs stoled da eggs?"

"Because they like eggs."

"Do angry birds attack pigs?"

"Yep"

"Who do angry pigs attack?"

"That's a good question... birds?"

He recently made this flipnote which I thought was pretty creative (although obviously I'm quite biased!)

On IEP's, speech, and girls

2012-05-06T20:17:00.000-04:00

So last month we had the IEP meetings for Cuddlebug and Bearhug to set up their transition-to-middle-school IEPs. The ASD resource teacher from the middle school was there, which was great because we were able to get a lot of our questions answered as to how things work in middle school, both in general and specific to the autism program. I am feeling a little better about the whole thing now that we have *some* idea of what to expect.

This week there is a field trip for the 5th graders to visit the middle school, and also an informational meeting for parents.

While they will have an open house in the fall, the resource teacher said she is happy to set up a separate time for her students to come when it will be quiet so they can take their time to get familiar with where everything is without the huge crowd. That is AWESOME, and we will definitely be taking her up on that!

One of their electives will be a social skills class, which also includes spending some time tutoring kindergartners at the elementary school which is connected to the middle school. I think that will be a great experience for them (and who knows, may even help them develop a little more patience for their little brother... a mom can hope, right?). The teacher said that both her students and the kindergartners really enjoy it, and it's a great learning experience all around.

And... (drumroll please)... Cuddlebug and Bearhug have now officially "graduated" from speech therapy. :) There are still some articulation issues but it's either things that they physically can't help or they know how to make the right sounds in a therapy environment and it's just a matter of remembering to do it in conversational speech which is something we can work on at home. When I told the boys about that they were pretty happy, poor Cuddlebug seemed really relieved. He seemed to like it more when he was younger but not so much anymore... I felt bad when he told me, "a lot of other kids finished speech a lot sooner than me and 'Bearhug.'" He's never said anything like that before so I didn't realize he was noticing (although I guess I shouldn't be surprised, he notices everything). I just told him it's different for everyone depending on what they're working on, and that's ok. I also told him how proud I am of both of them because I know how hard they have worked in speech as well as at school.

His current resource teacher told us they've been talking to the 5th graders about middle school, and letting them share what they are nervous about and excited about regarding middle school.

On both of their lists (both boys and both nervous and excited about) was "having a girlfriend."

Oh my.

Which reminds me of a recent conversation we had in the car.

Cuddlebug: "We're starting to be interested in girls."

me: ('wha?!?!' on the inside, cool as a cucumber on the outside or at least I think so) "Really?"

Bearhug: "Yeah, or at least the girls are starting to be interested in us."

(Now that I already knew, but I didn't realize that THEY knew it yet)

me: "How do you know?"

Bearhug: "A girl gave me a love letter."

me: (still cool on the outside, crying incoherently about how my baby isn't old enough for this stuff yet on the inside) "A love letter? What did it say?"

Bearhug: (totally nonchalant about the whole thing of course) "It said, 'I love you.'"

me: "Wow... what did you say?"

Bearhug: "I didn't respond."

me: (ok, now I'm starting to feel sorry for the poor girl) "umm... you know she had to be pretty brave to give you that. You don't have to say it back, but you should say *something*"

Bearhug: "Oh, I did say something."

(pause to see if he was going to continue but he didn't)

me: "What did you say?"

Bearhug: "I said, 'Aren't we a little young for that?'"

That's my boy ;).

Spring Break

2012-05-06T19:22:00.000-04:00

This year we stayed home for spring break, and my parents came to visit. We had a ton of fun going somewhere different each day. For the most part, we went to places that were familiar to the boys but we did try out one new place which turned out to be a lot of fun.

We spent a day at the park. We let the boys bring their scooters to ride on the trails, and we also brought bread to feed to the ducks.

Bearhug's typical "camera face" lol

He surprised me by actually smiling for a picture :)

Cuddlebug

Bitty feeding the ducks

I love Bearhug's expression in this one... Cuddlebug and Bitty are into feeding the ducks but Bearhug looks so bored. He managed to find his own fun sooner after, building a dam in the little stream that leads to the lake.

What a face!!

My mom and I

I never get tired of all the green - it's beautiful!

Hanging out at the house later that day. I gave Bitty my old camera a while back because he loves to take pictures, he was having me clear off his memory card so he could take some more.

We heard about a local trampoline playground so we went to check it out. Can I just say - PERFECT sensory activity!! Bitty complained that he didn't want to go (because it was new) and usually it takes him anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to relax and get acclimated when we go somewhere new, so I was afraid it would be time to leave before he even got started, but once he saw the trampolines it was only a few minutes before he decided to join in the fun :).

After that we went to the park (a different one this time).

Bitty loves the swings... (I love his smile in these pictures)

...but he was willing to share :)

It was great to see all three boys playing together. Cuddlebug and Bearhug even took turns pushing their little brother on the swing.

Grandma and Grandpa had a fun time too :)

Love their smiles! The tire swing is perfect for twins, no?

And one day we took a little drive into the mountains to see the waterfalls. It was weird to have to wear coats and pants, but it was cold and rainy that day. And foggy! But the fog cleared up while we were there.

Flipnotes

2012-04-28T18:10:00.000-04:00

I didn't really plan to take a blogging hiatus, it just kind of happened...

I didn't think it had been THAT long, but I came back and blogger has totally changed... ack!

I have some stuff to post about but in the meantime thought I'd share some of the boys' flipnotes :).

Bitty got his own Nintendo DSi for his birthday so he's been eagerly working on his animation techniques, mostly by copying his brothers which drives them crazy (they accused him of "copyright infringement," lol). I keep telling them he will start to do more of his own original stuff once he gets the hang of it (and he has been).

Here's one that makes me smile every time I see it, it's just sooo cute :). This is Bitty's character "Hatdude" dancing. For the record, Hatdude is not a stick figure. According to Bitty, he's a "triangle figure," which makes sense because his arms and legs are triangles, not sticks :). Bitty's username on the flipnote site is "Roblox" so that last part is his signature. (make sure the sound is on, it's great with the music) :).

UPDATE: So Bitty decided to delete his flipnote and he reposted another one but I managed to download the original before he deleted it, so here it is :).

Bearhug has two original series that he created, one is a couple of spiders named S and X. That's him doing the sound effects / music :).

The other is about two characters named Wacko and Weirdo :).

Cuddlebug also has a series called Dino and Allen Dino (although he told me recently that Allen Dino was originally supposed to be Alien Dino but he spelled it wrong and it stuck.

This one features Dino and his friends, and a song about broken glass (don't ask, I have no idea where it came from but I wish it didn't get stuck in my head so easily).

And another one of Cuddlebug's, with stick men. That's him doing the sound effects (and a little help from Bearhug too, lol).

Pinewood Derby bound

2012-02-12T18:58:00.000-05:00

It's almost that time of year again.

A couple of weeks ago, we picked up some supplies for this year's Pinewood Derby cars.

Yesterday, we headed to Home Depot to cut out our car designs.

Bearhug actually got into it and let the guy show him how to use the sanding tool.

Bitty supervised (with M&M's).

Cuddlebug wasn't as hands-on, but he did do some of the sanding and showed me his car when he finished.

Bitty decided he wanted in on the action (and he had a car too, even though he's not old enough for Cub Scouts yet we always buy him a block to make his own car along with his brothers). I wasn't about to let him try the power-sanding tools but he was content with the sandpaper, especially when he saw Bearhug using it.

IEP season is off to a rough start

2012-02-12T17:16:00.002-05:00

Last Friday we had Bitty's IEP meeting. Seems like we just had one (oh wait, we did), although that was just an IEP review to update his placement to one that would be more effective for him. We didn't update any of his goals at the time.

So this was his regular IEP to update goals for the upcoming year.

I have always had mixed feelings about IEP meetings... on the one hand, it tends to be a bit of a reality check on where my kids are developmentally, relative to their peers. Since I don't really have that much experience with children other than my own, it can be easy sometimes to get into the "this is our normal" groove and not really think about it that much until there it is, all spelled out.

The upside though, is that the IEP meeting also generally serves as an opportunity to see just how much progress they have made over the last year. For the most part my boys have always mastered at least most of the their goals by the time the IEP year has passed, and while we might carry over a few that they are still working on, the rest are either replaced with new ones or stretched / expanded to the next level.

Until now.

We reviewed the measurements of how Bitty is doing on his current goals, and my heart sank a bit when I saw he was still struggling with most of them. I mean, I know he's had a challenging year but I guess I wasn't quite mentally prepared for that.

Then we started going through his goals for this year's IEP. I actually felt tears welling up (and I don't cry that easily) when I realized we'd been through several and the only change we'd made so far was to lower his reading level in order to (hopefully) help with his reading comprehension. He is hyperlexic (pretty much taught himself to read at an early age and reads beyond his grade level) but still struggles to answer even the most basic questions about what he's read (who, what, where, why, when), even when given the opportunity to look in the book for the answers. He has a visual chart for the "W" questions that shows what kind of question is being asked, and that helps a little but it still takes a lot of prompting.

So that's how it went. For the most part, his goals for 2nd grade will be the same as they were for 1st grade. The notable exception being his handwriting - he still has issues with pencil grip and hand strength but you really wouldn't know it to see his handwriting, it's quite good. We just need to keep working on it so that as he starts having to write more, his hand won't get tired too fast.

The main reason for his difficulty on the rest of his goals still comes back to the language delays, which impacts pretty much everything. His speech / articulation has improved considerably, and his memory is pretty phenomenal so he can recite entire episodes of his favorite shows. He has a pretty good handle on the typical day-to-day interactions (through much practice, and still with a fair amount of effort). But anything new or out of the routine that requires language (receptive or expressive) is such a challenge for him. And educational learning, by definition, tends to be a lot of new information (with some review of course).

It's really hard to see him struggle so much, but I'm so proud of him because no matter how hard it is, he keeps trying and with a positive attitude. Everyone who works with him comments on what a joy he is to be around (seriously they do, that's not just me being biased!) :).

Next up (later this spring) will be the IEP's for Cuddlebug and Bearhug. The ones that will transition them to middle school (ack!). I'm open to suggestions if there are things you think we should consider or make sure to include.

December adventures (better late than never)

2012-01-29T18:29:00.000-05:00

The last month of 2011 was a blur, but here's my best effort to remember the highlights (probably not in order, but close enough).

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Little Bitty got into a fight with a wall and lost. Ok, really he was running one direction and looking in another direction (as he often does, despite continual reminders not to run in the house at all), and cut his head when he ran right into a corner on the wall. So we spent one chilly Friday night at the urgent care clinic and Bitty had to get two staples in his head (they couldn't use the glue since the cut was in his hair). It was a little traumatic, but he calmed down pretty quick once it was over.

When Bitty and I got home from the doctor that night, Cuddlebug took one look at Bitty's head and said, "ewww, can't you make him wear a hat?" Bearhug asked me how long he'd have to have the staples in, and when I told him two weeks he groaned and said, "aww man! now I have to be nice to him for two whole weeks!" LOL, brotherly love :).

For the most part, Bitty handled it well over the two weeks he had the staples in, although at one point he got tired of feeling them there when he touched his head and asked me where the staple remover was... I made sure it was somewhere he couldn't find it, just in case.

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Cuddlebug and Bearhug discovered Chuck Norris jokes. You've probably heard some of them:

Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.
All men are created equal, except Chuck Norris.
When Chuck Norris cuts onions, the onions cry.
The GPS asks Chuck Norris for directions.
The boogeyman checks his closet and under his bed for Chuck Norris every night.

You get the idea :). I love that the boys find these so funny, and even downloaded an app full of these jokes so I could tell the boys. We've had a lot of fun trying to come up with new ones to make them laugh too :).

On Christmas Eve when I was trying to get them to go to sleep, I told them Santa can't deliver anything until they are asleep. They told me "Santa doesn't deliver presents, Chuck Norris does!" Well, Chuck Norris can't deliver anything until they are asleep either! ;)

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The last few years Bearhug and Cuddlebug have made a tradition of bringing their blankets and pillows downstairs to have a "sleepover" by the Christmas tree, but this year we had to talk them out of it because we got them a computer and a desk that we needed to bring in and set up for them and we didn't want to risk them waking up and seeing it. We had it at our neighbor's house (he doesn't have kids and offered to let us store presents there so they wouldn't find them) and would have to walk right by them if they were in front of the tree. So we made them a deal, if they would agree to sleep in their bedroom, we'd agree to get up as soon as they woke us up in the morning, without the usual stalling ;).

They agreed. And we were prepared to wake up at the crack of dawn.

So we were surprised when Christmas morning came and Bitty was the only one up (he's always the first one up). We slept in a little, and then finally decided to get up and take a shower, figuring CB and BH would be up any minute. But as it turned out, we had plenty of time and were hanging out downstairs waiting when they finally came downstairs. Lucky for us, Bitty was content to go about his usual vacation morning routine (he likes to play games on the computer before his brothers wake up when he can play without being bothered) and he didn't make a fuss about opening the presents or trying to wake his brothers up (if he had, we would have let him wake them up... after all I don't think they would have minded). I guess that's what happens when you stay up almost all night waiting for Santa (er, Chuck Norris).

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It was a Lego Christmas at our house. In fact there was one particular train that Bitty asked for (at the last minute of course) that we had to jump through flaming hoops to actually get (long story) but we did manage to pull it off just in time. :)

The Lego instruction books are great - no words, just pictures that show step by step what goes on next. Bitty was able to follow them pretty well by himself, although all of us (including Cuddlebug and Bearhug) were more than willing to help :). It was like a Lego party, with everyone building together. Very fun :).

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We made cookies :)

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Bearhug and Cuddlebug made a time machine for school. It was part of a group project on persuasive writing where they wrote and filmed a commercial to sell an item (they chose to sell a time machine).

School / IEP update for Bitty

2012-01-08T20:06:00.000-05:00

A while back I posted about some of the difficulties Bitty has been having in school.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, we had a meeting with the school to review his IEP and discuss changes to help better meet his needs. We learned that he was basically requiring almost constant one-on-one support from the resource teacher / parapros in his class which isn't really what they are set up to do. The challenge comes down to communication - if the subject is straightforward and doesn't require much verbal explanation he does great. Spelling, for example. He is a spelling kung fu master :). On the other hand, any subjects or new topics that require verbal explanation are quite difficult, not because he can't understand the subject matter, but because he struggles with language. He's a fast learner and that has helped him to keep up as well as he has, but the whole situation was really stressing him out because he recognized that most of his classmates did not share his struggle to understand what was being said, or what was being asked when the teacher would ask questions.

His teachers suggested he might do better in a smaller class setting, at least for the core subjects, and we agreed to put him in a self-contained ASD class for part of the day (almost half the day when you add up the hours) for math, reading, and writing. For the rest of the subjects he is still in his regular ed class with resource support. It's a much smaller class where all the kids have similar issues and the teachers have the flexibility to tailor to the kids' pace and individual needs much more than in the larger classroom. They also do activities like morning yoga since the physical activity helps the kids focus for learning (honestly, I think all kids would probably benefit from something like that, not just kids on the spectrum). We'll reassess later this year when we update his IEP for next year.

He started in his new class after the Thanksgiving break and so far it is really working out well. His anxiety level is considerably less, he no longer cries about having to go to school and he is doing well academically. He's back to getting all 1's on his daily reports (they have a scale from 1-4 for how he does at staying on task and following instructions with minimal reminders, etc.). It's been hard to see him struggle so much, and although I wish it wasn't so hard for him I'm grateful he's getting the support he needs and relieved that he's back to feeling positive about school.

Little Bitty and Talkin' Santa

2011-12-26T11:54:00.000-05:00

Dh found a talking Santa app for his phone, basically it repeats back whatever you say and Bitty LOVES it. I love his laugh, and the way he pronounces "talkin'" :).

End of November: Getting ready for Christmas

2011-12-26T11:46:00.000-05:00

Found this in my drafts from 11/27, apparently I left it unposted until I could upload the pictures to go with it, and then forgot about it. Can't believe it's been a month since I posted!

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Sometimes it's nice to get a break from the routine, even if we do pay a price for it (it's always such an ordeal to get back into the routine once it's been disrupted, especially for Bitty).

The boys had the whole week this past week off from school, so I took some time off from work too. We already had Thursday and Friday off, so I took an extra day and a half so I could spend some time with the boys.

We mostly spent the time getting ready for the holidays, both Thanksgiving and Christmas. We had a few days of really nice weather (for November anyway) so dh put up all the lights outside and picked up a few new decorations for the yard. He gets something new every year, and I'm starting to see how people can end up with their yard and house literally FULL of decorations... somehow I have a feeling that will be us at some point if he keeps this up :).

Tuesday night we planned to pick up our tree, but it started pouring rain, so we waited until Wednesday. We opted to skip the tree farm this year and keep it simple, so we went to Lowe's.

Bitty actually helped us pick out a tree:

Meanwhile, Bearhug and Cuddlebug were wired and couldn't stand still long enough. They ran circles around the tree section...

...and played with the big carts while we looked for the perfect Christmas tree.

Like father, like son... both wearing jackets with their shorts (it wasn't all that cold in the sun, but a little chilly in the shade)

They actually stood still for this one... is it just me, or are they getting big way to fast?!

We found some new Christmas CD's on sale so when we got home with the tree we put those on and blasted Christmas music while Bitty and I decorated the tree. Dh was outside putting the finishing touches on the yard, with the door open so he could hear the music (it was chilly but not too cold to leave the door wide open). Bearhug and Cuddlebug helped him a bit but then returned to their computer games (having "suffered" an afternoon at the stores rather than playing, lol).

It was wonderful having my family all at home, even if two were busy with their games, listening to the same Christmas music from my childhood, appreciating all the adorable handmade ornaments the boys have made over the years as we unpacked them. Bitty even let me sing along, which is R-A-R-E. If you'd ever heard me sing, you'd know why none of the boys ever let me sing out loud (haha), but Bitty is particularly vocal about not wanting to hear anyone sing so I was pleasantly surprised when he didn't start screeching for me to stop. Maybe the CD was loud enough to drown me out :). Maybe he was too busy thinking about the Christmas train that was waiting in its box... I told him we'd set it up as soon as the tree was done.

I was busy trying to put hooks on the ornaments fast enough to keep up with Bitty, and I had to laugh when I looked up to see this (despite the ladder which he has no qualms about climbing up on):

It got to be bedtime, so I finished the ornaments after he went to bed (spreading them out just a bit, lol). We also set up the much-awaited Christmas train so it was ready and waiting when he woke up the next morning.

Of course the first sound we heard the next morning was the little train's engine as it circled the tree. :)

He did express his disapproval of dh's ornaments though, which we put on after he was already in bed.

But dh and I are quite the nerds when it comes to Star Trek, so the ornaments are staying whether Bitty approves or not, and he (thankfully) decided to let it go :). (that second one is a Borg cube that says something along the lines of "Enjoy your holiday, resistance is futile" LOL)

Bearhug loves them, I joked about having almost the entire Federation battling it out on our tree and he got this huge grin and started in with the sound effects :).

And of course no tree of ours would be complete without Longhorn Santa :)

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I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, I miss everyone and am hoping to catch up soon!

Sweetness

2011-11-19T22:56:00.000-05:00

Little Bitty actually sleeps in his own bed these days (that was a several-years-long process) but he likes for me to stay with him until he falls asleep. On the rare days that I try to just tuck him in and not climb in next to him, he reminds me, "you wan' to sweep wif me." He's just too cute, and I know I'm going to miss this time when he's older (I already do with Cuddlebug and Bearhug) so I just go with it :).

Anyway, so tonight I was laying there next to him, waiting for him to go to sleep when he reached over and put his little arm around me, patted me on the back and said, "I wuv you."

Heart MELT!!!!

It is SOOO rare for him to say that out of the blue like that, every now and then he says it back when I tell him (which of course I tell him all the time, his response is usually a smile).

I hugged him and told him, "you are SO sweet!"

To which he responded, "I DO wook sweet!"

I couldn't help but laugh because it was so cute the way he said it (reminded me of when Bearhug used to respond to my telling him he was cute by saying, "I AM cute!" lol).

Not sure how to interpret my laugh, he asked me, "aww you jus' kidding?" (he asks that because we joke a lot at our house and he knows that laughter is a cue that someone is kidding).

"No, I'm not kidding. You ARE sweet."

He smiled and rolled over, snuggling in his blankies.

He's sleeping now, I definitely wanted to write this down right away because it's one of those happy moments that I want to always remember in detail :).

Backyard photo session

2011-11-19T22:41:00.000-05:00

We took the boys to have their pictures done (we haven't done that in two years, because it is such an ordeal).

Despite talking with the photographer ahead of time to give them a heads up about the boys' issues and the fact that it generally takes some extra time and patience to get some decent pictures of them, it didn't go so well.

She tried, but made it kind of a chore and the boys ended up having an "off" day and weren't being particularly cooperative.

I decided to try taking some myself instead. I have friends who do their own photo sessions with their kids around town and was inspired by their pictures. I knew we probably couldn't anything so elaborate as actually go somewhere to take pictures, but we have some pretty trees out behind our house so I figured that would work with minimal time and effort (not that I mind spending the time, but I'm trying to work with the boys' attention span which is especially short for stuff like pictures).

Cuddlebug and Bearhug really don't do well with "posing" for pictures, they are constantly in motion. I typically use the "continuous shooting" mode on my camera to take several shots in a row as they are doing their thing, and hope that one of them turns out with decent focus, nice expressions and looking in the general direction of the camera (you might be surprised how often they are looking at the sky or everywhere BUT the camera!).

Narrowed down from the MANY that I actually took, here are a few of my favorites :).

Bearhug

Cuddlebug

...and some of the sillier ones, lol :). I love the pure joy in their faces, and that they have so much fun together.

In exchange for their cooperation, I agreed to take a picture of Rex too :).

Bearhug and Cuddlebug weren't up for doing pictures together with Bitty, so I did his separately. He refused to wear his white shirt (I got them all matching shirts for pictures and thought the white looked good with the colorful trees in the background) so I let him wear what he had on rather than push my luck. It was at least a nice shirt that he'd worn to school, and not one of his Thomas shirts with the chewed up neckline...

He is a little more mellow (at least when he's by himself) so I didn't need to shoot rapid-fire to get these. I did try to say funny things to get a more natural smile (his "cheese" grin is cute but intense, lol).

I have a lot to learn about photography (both taking pictures and editing them), but these guys are my motivation to keep trying :). I really like the fall colors, but the evergreen trees nearby made a nice background too, I'm thinking I might try to get some pictures of all three of them by those trees to send out for Christmas :).

1 in 8 babies is born to soon...

2011-11-17T07:58:00.001-05:00

Today is Prematurity Awareness Day.

To learn more, visit the March of Dimes.

Click here to read our NICU story (Cuddlebug and Bearhug were born 6 1/2 weeks early due to severe pre-eclampsia).

Here's a repost of my earlier prematurity awareness post (slightly edited):

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Did you know that 1 in 8 babies is born prematurely in the U.S.? In approximately 40% of cases, the cause of premature labor is unknown, and it can happen to anyone. I have shared our story before about Cuddlebug and Bearhug's premature birth, but I think it's worth examining what a difference it makes when a baby is able to be born full term. In contrast with his brothers being born 6 1/2 weeks early, Little Bitty was born 1 1/2 weeks late. Being pregnant with him a full 8 weeks longer felt like FOREVER in comparison, lol, but of course it was well worth every minute because I knew he was where he needed to be (and unlike the situation with CB and BH, it was safe for him to remain in the womb).

What a difference those 8 weeks made! Here is a comparison of their footprints:

I scanned them all together so they would be proportionally accurate. Every time I look at these I'm just amazed at how tiny Cuddlebug's foot was compared with Little Bitty's. The size disparity between Cuddlebug and Bearhug was due to TTTS.

In addition to their sizes, here are some other differences we experienced between our twins' premature birth and the full-term delivery of our youngest. I only have my own experience to draw from, so this may not be applicable to everyone, but I'm sharing it to highlight some of the benefits of full-term delivery and why prematurity awareness is so important.

1. Being able to hold your baby right away. We had to wait 8 days before we could hold Bearhug for the first time, and 2 days before we could hold Cuddlebug. I was able to hold Little Bitty within the first few minutes after he was born. It was an amazing experience!

2. Being able to bring your baby home with you. Cuddlebug and Bearhug spent 22 days in the NICU before we were able to bring them home. Some premature babies stay much longer, depending on how early they are born and their health. Some preemies have medical challenges ranging from mild to severe, while others just need a little extra time to grow.

3. Getting a little more sleep at night. Like most newborns, Little Bitty woke up to eat about every 3 hours when he first came home. Because of their small size, Bearhug and Cuddlebug couldn't hold enough food in their stomachs to last 3 hours and needed to eat about every 1 1/2 hours. Add to that the fact that the effort they had to put into eating often wore them out before they were full, and sometimes we didn't even make a whole hour before they needed to eat again. That's a recipe for exhaustion for mom and dad (although well worth it of course!).

4. Less susceptible to illness. Cuddlebug and Bearhug needed 6 months of RSV shots as a precaution since they'd had respiratory distress early on. We had to be very careful about taking them out and having visitors. We were cautious with Little Bitty also, but the risk level for full-term babies is generally not as high.

The March of Dimes has more on why getting at least 39 weeks is best for babies if at all possible. Did you know the March of Dimes is responsible for leading the call to develop Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU)? They also funded the research that led to the use of surfactant to treat respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). They have had many other successes as well, but for those two reasons especially, I will be eternally grateful to them!

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Sibling stuff and autism

2011-11-15T08:18:00.000-05:00

Things have been a little rough these last few months on the sibling front. Cuddlebug and Bearhug are quick to get frustrated with Little Bitty, and for his part, Bitty has a tendency to "egg on" their frustration at times.

Some of their frustration is legitimate. They don't understand why he often doesn't seem to listen to any of us and just goes about doing whatever he wants. He often has little regard for consequences as he doesn't always make the connection to his behavior. They don't understand why he ignores them when they try to teach him things, or why he asks them the same questions over and over (and over).

Some of it is just typical sibling stuff - like most little brothers he wants to be like them and do the things that they do. At the same time, many of his interests are "immature" from their perspective and they love giving him a hard time about liking Mickey Mouse or Olivia (not that he cares).

Although his pretend play skills were a long time in coming, he has developed quite a knack for incorporating pretend into his daily life, even if most of it is scripted. For example, when he needs something he'll say, "Eveebuddy say, 'Oh TOOO-DLES!' Oh TOOO-DLES! We nee' some MOUSKETOOLS!!" Just like on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (one of his latest favorites).

Meanwhile Bearhug, and especially Cuddlebug, are not particularly fond of pretending in general, with few exceptions. One of which is their dinosaur pillow-pets, they have created an entire mythology / history around where their dinosaurs come from and actually the two pillow pets often represent a whole collection of dinosaurs (but of course we can only ever see one of them at a time) :). They are constantly harping on Bitty that Mickey Mouse isn't real, there's no such thing as Mouseketools, etc.

If Bitty happens to say something that isn't 100% technically accurate, they will correct him to no end, which he readily ignores and that only makes them more ornery. They get upset with me if I don't continually correct him. I try to remind them that he is only 6... that he likes to pretend and that he doesn't understand as much as they do.

And let's face it, the frustration isn't all undeserved. Bitty tends to get physical with them (he can be a bit of a bully, and has no regard for the fact that they're twice his size), and he screeches loudly anytime they do anything he doesn't like (or if he even THINKS they're going to do something he doesn't like). Sometimes when they are actually trying to help him with something he just screams at them.

We've talked about the fact that he has autism, just like we've talked with them about their autism. One time when I reminded them of that and said something along the lines of "kind of like both of you" and they got indignant with me, "NOT like US!!" I tried to explain that it affects everyone a little differently and that he is more affected by it than they are but they were skeptical.

I didn't bring it up again, mostly I just remind them when they complain about how he's not doing this or that, that we're working on it and that it takes time. They love to point out that they were doing XYZ (fill in the blank) when they were his age, at which point I acknowledge that yes, they were further along at his age in some ways, but that everyone learns in their own time.

Fast forward to more recently... and I overheard this conversation in the back of the car:

Cuddlebug: "'Bitty' has WAAAYYY more autism than us!"
Bearhug: "yeah, but everyone has a little bit of autism."
Cuddlebug: "yeah, we told 'P' that she has autism too because everyone has a little bit of autism but she didn't believe us."

LOL. I asked where they heard that and they said Ms. D. told them. I told them she's right, everyone does have "a little bit of autism" in some ways, but that not everyone knows that, so people may not always believe them if they try to tell them that. I didn't discourage them from talking about it with other kids though, I want them to feel comfortable and open about doing that so they can advocate for themselves as they get older.

Anyway, I've been struggling with how to handle this. I want Cuddlebug and Bearhug to feel comfortable expressing their frustration rather than keeping it all inside. I don't discourage them from expressing their frustration (to a point) because I worry that may only lead to resentment. At the same time it hurts to see them so hard on him and him so indifferent. I want them to all be close, but I know I can't force it and need to let them develop their relationship in their own way.

Dh had another talk with them the other day and it seems to have maybe clicked this time. Leave it to him to find a way to explain the same thing I've been trying to tell them in a way that apparently makes more sense :). He told them that because of Bitty's developmental delays (pretty sure he didn't use that exact term) that Bitty's behavior and understanding of a lot of things is more like a 4-yr-old. So he's "like a 4-yr-old in a 6-yr-old body." THAT made sense to them, and they repeated it back to me when I got home (dh had already given me a heads up about their conversation).

While I'm not sure I love the idea of them going around telling people their little brother is a 4-yr-old in a 6-yr-old body, and I'm not sure how Bitty feels about that (or if he understands it, because I'm sure he's heard it now that his brothers have repeated it several times) the concept does seem to be helping in terms of his brothers being more patient and understanding toward him.

We'll see how it goes.

I'd love to hear any ideas you may have. How have you explained autism to your children from a sibling perspective, especially if you have kids who fall into different "areas" of the spectrum?

Snippets

2011-11-13T23:08:00.001-05:00

Just a few brief updates from the past few weeks, mostly from FB / Twitter, to keep them all in one place:

11/13/11
when we took the boys to the store last weekend CB & BH were complaining LOUDLY about all the Christmas decorations being out and wanting to know why there weren't big Thanksgiving displays. Cuddlebug just shook his head and told me, "I guess Thanksgiving just isn't what it used to be" LOL

11/10/11
21 yrs ago tonight I went on a 1st date with my secret crush... pretty sure it's not a secret anymore :)
that would be dh, in case it wasn't obvious ;)

11/6/11
I'd like to thank the shampoo company for featuring the word "body" in big letters on the bottle... Bitty noticed tonight at bathtime and before I could stop him was using it to wash his body. I tried to show him it's for HAIR not body but oddly enough, the word "hair" is nowhere to be found on the bottle, not even the fine print. References to volume, style, shine, and of course BODY, but not one mention of "hair." Good luck convincing him that's what it's for... he probably questions whether Mom can read at this point... (sigh)
...
grateful for pretend play skills - had to remind myself of that as Bitty was engrossed in re-enacting Garfield and Looney Tunes today at church... not the appropriate time or place, especially since he kept loudly announcing his intention to live in a trash can (Garfield episode with an alley cat) but the desire and ability to engage in pretend at all was a long time coming! :)

11/5/11
told Bitty he should wear pants today b/c it's getting chilly out, he didn't believe me so I said it's November, that means it's winter, and big brothers were quick to correct me, the first day of winter is in December. sigh. technically they are right of course.
...
thankful for dh, he is the best! ♥

11/4/11
today I am thankful for teachers who "get" autism and go out of their way to help our boys

11/3/11
I am thankful for my family, they are my life! I am thankful for the Savior and His atonement. thankful that I am mostly resisting the leftover Halloween candy so far (I said MOSTLY, lol)

10/29/11
Costumes are done, boys are happy, it was SO worth the effort to see them so excited! Now it's naptime for me :)

10/23/11
Just got to cuddle with Cuddlebug on the couch for a few min, so glad he's not too old for that... happy tears :)

10/22/11
overheard a little boy ask Bitty his name at the park today. It took him a second but he actually answered him with no prompting from me (yay!)... and with his real name (double yay!). of course a second later he changed his mind and told the boy his name was Mickey (latest fav character is Mickey Mouse, lol).

10/21/11
we saw a family of 4 deer this morning :)
...
Bearhug: "I think the moral of the story 'Don't Cry Wolf' is don't live in a place near where there are wolves..." hehe
...
proud of Bitty, he's been struggling at school lately but he had a good day today

10/20/11
battle of the pants going better this year... battle of the coats? not so much :/
...
only a little over a week to finish sewing Bearhug's Halloween costume... ack! hopefully will get a lot done this weekend.

10/8/11
asked Bearhug to come upstairs... instead Cuddlebug appeared, told me BH was busy killing zombies (game) so he came instead. lol

9/25/11
Helping Bitty make booklets on PowerPoint... he loves it :)

9/24/11
Bearhug: "I read that 'Zombie survival guide' and now my heart is beating very rapidly!" I love the way he phrases things :). Guess he found it on the bookshelf and read a little bit of it. I assured him zombies aren't real and he asked, "how do YOU know?!"

(he and Cuddlebug have since read more of the book and Cuddlebug informed me, "It's saving our lives!" I guess they'll be ready in the event of a zombie apocalypse...)

9/16/11
dh said ppl keep asking him if he's on twitter so they can follow him. his response "I don't get twitter...follow me where?" ROFL

Honor

2011-11-12T23:53:00.000-05:00

I realize I'm a day late for Veterans Day, but every day is a good day to honor those who serve, or have served, in our military.

I saw this video a while back and have been looking for it, finally found it on YouTube and wanted to share it here.

I'm proud to be the daughter of a veteran, as well as the daughter-in-law of a veteran. I'm thankful for their examples of courage and sacrifice, as well as the examples of other family members, to share with my sons.

To all those who have or are serving, and to their families, THANK YOU for all you do. Thank you for making freedom possible. Please know that you are remembered and appreciated.

The scene where the girl is running to hug her dad as he returns home chokes me up every time... Dad, I hope you see this and know that I love you!

Language barrier & school struggles

2011-11-06T19:17:00.004-05:00

We had teacher conferences last month. All in all, it went well, especially for Cuddlebug and Bearhug. They are working really hard and doing great - all A's and B's (mostly A's!) :) and they are thriving in their accelerated classes.

Bitty is also working really hard but he is struggling more with school this year than he has in the past. I'm grateful that his teachers "get" autism and understand the source of his difficulty is language related and not cognitive or attention related.

His teacher shared her concern that he is really struggling with anything that requires verbal explanations or verbal interaction. It's something we've been aware of for long time (obviously), but in 1st grade there is more of a need for language skills to be able to keep up with the class. His teachers have all noted that he is very bright and catches on quickly with anything that is not language-intensive.

The best analogy I can think of is someone who is going to school in a foreign country, and they aren't exactly fluent in the native language... they have the added challenge of trying to keep up with conversations and translate instructions so they can understand what is expected.

That's pretty much where Bitty is at. The good news is, he is not being disruptive or having behavior issues when he runs into difficulty following what the class is doing. The not-so-good news is, he is basically zoning out when that happens. They're working with him to raise his hand and ask questions when he doesn't understand something, but often he just tunes out and ends up either not responding, repeating back the question, or saying "I don't know" when asked a question (the "I don't know is fairly new, he's been working on that as a more appropriate response than repeating back the question since last year).

He comes home with a daily communication sheet with the day broken out into the various activities and subjects that they work on every day and feedback on how he did during each. There's a 4-point scale, with 1 meaning he was able to work independently or with minimal reminders and 4 meaning he need LOTS of reminders to follow instructions and stay on task. He started out getting mostly 1's and 2's but as the school year progressed we started to see more and more 3's, and then 4's.

His teachers often write in the comments that his behavior is fine, it's just a matter of not seeming to understand what is expected or not being able to appropriately respond to questions (eg. answer questions about a book they read during reading time). He tends to do better earlier in the day (but not always) so I think to some extent it just takes a lot of effort and his capacity to put forth that level of effort starts to wear thin as the day goes on. But beyond that I have come to believe that there are situations where he truly does not understand what is being taught due to the language barrier.

He has started asking us on a regular basis what words mean. It's great that he can do that now but I am sometimes surprised by the words he asks about, having assumed he already knew them. And I find it difficult sometimes to explain what one word means without having to define it with another word he doesn't understand. When you think about it, in order to understand the dictionary you have to be starting from a basic understanding of the language.

Anyway, so dh and I discussed and decided that since we know that both his regular ed and resource teacher are well aware of the issue and are working with him on it, we'd see how he did over the next few weeks and if things didn't improve we'd approach them to see if we may need to consider adjusting his level of support.

Well, we didn't end up needing to suggest that, his resource teacher called me last week to say that she and his speech teacher wanted to schedule an IEP review to consider increasing his services at school to better meet his needs.

This is why I love our school - we've been fortunate that most of the teachers we've worked with over the years so far understand autism and they are proactive about meeting students' needs. (it's also a big part of why I'm nervous about the transition to middle school next year - a whole new environment, but keeping our fingers crossed).

We're scheduled to meet next Monday, I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, we're working with him at home also and trying to use visuals and hands-on learning as much as possible. That's nothing new as all of our kids learn better that way, but we're kind of in new territory with Bitty as his delays are more pronounced. Suggestions welcome.

Quotes & silly conversations of the week

2011-11-05T01:02:00.001-04:00

Little Bitty: "Dude, iss cold ou'side!"
me: "Did you just call me dude?"
Bitty: "yeah"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cuddlebug (complaining about having to go to bed): "but I'm not even tired!"
dh: "when you're an adult, you can stay up as late as you want... are you an adult?"
Cuddlebug (slouching with a grin): "I'm not even 11 yet!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bearhug (hearing Cuddlebug calling him from the other room): "I'm busy! Mom, tell 'Cuddlebug' I'm busy."
me: "Why don't you tell him?"
Bearhug: "because I'm busy..."
I game him a look
Bearhug: "...I AM!"
(busy playing video games, lol)

So I went to tell Cuddlebug that Bearhug was busy.
Cuddlebug (also playing video games): "Tell him I made a great fort and the creepers can't get me!"
me: "Bearhug, Cuddlebug made a cool fort."
Bearhug: "tell him I made a magna-coil!"

Sigh... really?! so I told him and then managed to disappear before I could be asked to play carrier pigeon again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We were saying bedtime prayers and it was Cuddlebug's turn to pray. After he finished, Bearhug asked if he could say one too, so of course we said yes.

Bearhug: "P.S. we hope me and Cuddlebug's fears go away. Amen."

(their 5th grade class did a language unit on the Greek origin of words, with a whole list of phobias as the vocabulary list and they have since "diagnosed" themselves with many of the phobias they learned about...).

dh: "P.S.?"

Bearhug: "yeah, Cuddlebug forgot that part."

dh: "P.S... Personal Secret"

I laughed, thinking he was making a joke, and then realized he was serious.

me: "Personal Secret?" hehe
dh: "yeah." (in his "what else would it be?" tone)
me: "that's not what P.S. means."
dh: "what does it mean then?"
me: "Post Script"
dh: "hehe Post Script, why would anyone say that?"
me: "because it goes after the end of a letter. Post. Script."

Bearhug: "then what does P.P.S. mean?"
me: "post-post-script."
Bearhug: "P.P.P.S.?"
yeah, you can see where that one's going... finally got him to stop and go to bed ;)

dh: "Nooo... it's a secret that people stick in at the end."
me: "hehe... it's not a secret anymore if they put it in a letter."
dh: "If that's what it means, why wouldn't they just go back and put it in the letter?"
me: "it's from when people didn't have word processing, if they forgot something they had to put a P.S. at the end and add it."
dh: "if that's true, then why do people still use it? that doesn't make sense! see, it's Personal Secret!"

LOL, I suppose there's some logic to that. Kind of reminds me of when he thought "liar liar pants on fire" was supposed to be "liar liar pacifier" (because you'd put a pacifier in their mouth to make them stop lying, of course). seriously he cracks me up!

To be fair I'm sure he has some of these on me, but conveniently I can't think of any at the moment. When and if he decides to write his own blog he can share and have a giggle at my silliness too :).

$1 and a dinosaur is ALL it will take to help a family in need!

2011-11-04T08:34:00.000-04:00

I first saw this on Danette's S-O-S blog (not me, another Danette, lol) and felt compelled to do what I could to help. Circling back now to spread the word!

Visit OUR Journey Thru Autism for the details, here's an excerpt:

Kim Laing of of Dauphin County, PA has been a die hard autism advocate over the years. She has supported families with IEP development and through child study team meetings. She created Hoops Basketball, so kids with autism in her community would have an opportunity to play a sport while developing social skills. This is a woman who has selflessly given of herself over the years to support the autism community of which she is a part of.

Her 13 year old son has Autism.

Sadly, on October 12th, Kim and her family lost their home to a fire. Her husband, 2 sons and dog, Mikey made it out safely. Henson, their beloved cat, unfortunately did not survive. All personal belongings have been destroyed. They are currently residing in temporary housing.

Read the rest of their story and find out how you can help!

Creepy creepers and other spookiness

2011-11-01T23:24:00.024-04:00

Every year dh gives me a hard time about waiting "until the last minute" to start making costumes. But every year, at least one of the boys changes their mind at the last minute, and that's why I wait. This year was no different.

When I asked back in September what they wanted to dress up as, Bearhug and Cuddlebug didn't want to dress up at all. Although Bearhug told me if anyone asked, he'd just tell them "I'm an alien pretending to be a human." lol

Bitty wanted to be Kirby. Then he changed it to Jigglypuff (a pokemon).

Somewhere in mid-October, Cuddlebug and Bearhug rec'd an invitation to a Halloween party hosted by their friend who lives in our cul-de-sac. The invitation specifically said costumes required so we tried to help the boys come up with ideas. Bearhug finally decided to be a black cat. Cuddlebug still didn't want a costume and said "I'll be a robber pretending to be a regular guy." Such creative non-costume ideas, haha. He eventually settled on being a "Rex-tamer" (Rex being his pillow-pet dinosaur) which basically involved putting a leash on Rex and taking him to the party.

As soon as Bitty heard that Bearhug was going to be a cat, he wanted to be a cat too. I reminded him he still had a cat costume from last year when he dressed up as Pilchard, and asked if he wanted to be Pilchard again. He said yes (which is awesome considering the effort that went into that costume!) Turns out it actually fits him better this year :).

And then about a week before Halloween, Cuddlebug decided he wanted to be a creeper.

What's a creeper, you ask? They're from a video game (of course), they walk like zombies, look kind of like swamp creatures, and blow stuff up. The boys discovered them while playing Roblox (they're really into Roblox at the moment).

I already had the pattern for Bearhug's cat costume so I used the same one for Cuddlebug's creeper costume, with some modifications :).

These were taken Saturday before the party (I had literally just finished the creeper costume when it was time to go). Cuddlebug wanted Rex in the pictures (with his "costume" of a red ribbon leash), but he left him at home rather than taking him to the party. :)

I'm not much on masks and wanted to put the creeper face on the costume chest, but Cuddlebug (who isn't much on pretend) was ADAMANT that the creeper face had to be on his face... so I made him a flap with the face that he could easily lift up out of the way.

These were taken on Halloween:

Had to get at least one picture with Cuddlebug's handsome face, sans creeper face :).

Bearhug and Cuddlebug took off running, they told me they did NOT want to trick-or-treat with Bitty so they were made a point of getting ahead of us.

Bitty tried to keep up, but I talked him into staying with me :). This was his second time trick-or-treating, and we made it to about half the neighborhood this time before he decided he was done. Which was great, because we ended up with WAY too much candy as it was.

Bitty was so cute, I kept trying to remind him to say "thank you" at each house by saying "what do you say?" and he'd say "trick or treat!" again, lol.

He also kept asking people "Do you hab M&M's? Do you hab pink Starburst?" and after the first guy offered the bowl so he could pick what he wanted, he kind of expected that at every house. We're still working on Halloween "etiquette" but all in all he did great and had a fun time :).

The boys were really wired yesterday though so it was nice to have a more "back to normal" day today :).

We're on SPD Blogger Network!

2011-10-31T17:30:00.000-04:00

My recent post on bathtime battles is up on the SPD Blogger Network if you want to check it out.

As for me, I've gone "dark" the last couple of weeks for my annual dusting off of the sewing machine to make costumes for the boys. There's always at least one of them who waits until the last minute to decide what they want to be. On the flip side, this year one decided to wear last year's costume (and it still fits!) so there were only two costumes to make.

Thanks to my recent work schedule, it required some middle-of-the-night parties (if, by parties, you mean sewing like crazy amid bundles of fleece and flannel and lots of pins) but the costumes are DONE and IMHO they turned out good :).

Of course, my opinion really doesn't matter, but the people whose opinions DO matter, think they turned out good too :D. hehe

Pictures coming soon.

Bathtime battles

2011-10-16T23:33:00.002-04:00

Little Bitty has a love-hate relationship with bathtime. Usually somewhere in the realm of "strongly dislike."

Any mention of the dreaded bath and he's likely to screech "I not get WWWEEETTTT!!" and take off running. We'll be in for a wrestling match to get him into the tub and keep him there long enough to accomplish some semblance of cleaning. Somehow it seems like we end up soaked even more than him (I say "we" because he's getting bigger and when he goes ballistic dh and I have to tag team - one to try to keep him from climbing out of the tub while the other tries to wash him).

We've been through the battles of him not wanting to get wet at all, and got to a point where he could tolerate it. Sort of. Even a few drops of accidental water on his clothes and he starts stripping, but when it's on his terms, he actually enjoys the water. He loves to fill up the sink with water and play in it, and he loves to play in the swimming pool.

But bathtime? Not so much. At least not the actual *bathing* part. Because despite all the hysterics of trying to avoid getting IN the tub in the first place, once he's actually bathed and can get OUT, he suddenly decides he wants to stay in to play or "swim" and it takes just as much effort to get him out as it did to get him in. Sigh.

In our attempts to avoid the battles on the front end, we tried all kinds of things - bath toys, bubbles, even the occasional bribe (gasp!). What? I know we're not the only people who've tried to offer Thomas gummies in exchange for a wrestle-free bath. Not that it worked :/. For his part, he actually tried to climb into bed claiming "I tired!" rather than resign himself to a bath.

And then dh came up with one of his famous ideas. He gets full credit for this one because it never would have occurred to me.

Calgon.

I don't know if it's the scent, or the way it makes the water feel extra soft and smooth, or what, but suddenly Bitty actually likes taking a bath. In true dh-fashion, once we found that Bitty liked the Calgon, dh came home with pretty much every "flavor" they have. So now when it's bathtime we just ask him which Calgon he wants to use this time, he chooses one and helps us pour it into the water, and proceeds to climb into the tub, happy as a clam.

"Calgon take me away." lol (yes, Bitty actually read that on the container, guess they haven't changed their slogan over the years).

Dh also got Bitty a loofah in his favorite color (red!) to wash his body with. He likes the feel of it and is happy to scrub away. He still doesn't like having his hair washed, but thankfully he doesn't have much hair so I can do that in well under a minute. Short enough to say "oops I didn't mean to wash your hair, let me rinse that for you..." and be done with his face toweled dry again before he can get too worked up over it.

We've been down this road before so I'm not expecting that the bath battles are necessarily over for good, but am enjoying the reprieve while it lasts :).

Mic-er-scoff Office Pow-point

2011-10-14T23:23:00.002-04:00

Cuddlebug and Bearhug have been using MS Powerpoint at school, so they were excited to discover that we have the same program at home.

Cuddlebug was especially eager to try out all of the "Microsoft Office features" on the computer :) and proceeded to put a shortcut to every. single. one. of them on his desktop. In Powerpoint, they made slideshows using clipart found in the clipart gallery that comes with the program.

And of course, Bitty follows his big brothers around watching them, and loves to do whatever they're doing.

So he started playing around with "Mic-er-scoff Office Pow-point" too. He pulls in pictures, either from the clipart or from his own photos that we've uploaded from "his" camera (I let him use my old one since he likes to take pictures). More often than not he makes his slideshows with either 7 or 17 pages (his favorite numbers). He loves to print them out to make booklets or just cut out the pictures (great fine motor practice!).

Thought I'd share some samples of their work here. I changed the boys' names on the Butterfly one but otherwise left it all as they had it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cuddlebug and Bearhug:

This one is only two slides, but keep clicking - they added animations :)

Butterflys

More PowerPoint presentations from Danette

This one reminds me of the comics they like to draw, lol.

Dinosaur

More PowerPoint presentations from Danette

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bitty did these ones (with a little help from Mom but the ideas and most of the work were all his):

A collection of pictures he took of several of the Mii's from the "Check Mii Out Channel" (Kevin Henkes is apparently a children's author, Bitty put his name on several of his booklets and I had no idea who it was so I looked him up). As you can see, he mostly likes the Miis with the pictures where their faces should be (creeps me out *shivers*)

Mii's

More PowerPoint presentations from Danette

One of many "Shape" books - the object is to identify the shapes in each pictures

Shapes

More PowerPoint presentations from Danette

More shapes - he added his own words in this one (typed it all himself too).

FYI - on slide 6, "GAW" stands for "Game and Watch"

Shapes (with words)

More PowerPoint presentations from Danette

He figured out you can make the pictures move... this is where I had to help him a little but I basically just did what he told me (he was *very* particular about how he wanted each picture to move). As you can see he especially liked making them spin :).

You may recognize Kirby and the clown from Baby Newton on the cover :).

Just FYI - when it says "the end" it's actually not, he decided to keep going after he put those in.

Shapes (with motion)

More PowerPoint presentations from Danette

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes I have to do some work at home and lately he's taken a keen interest when he sees me working in PPT.

"Are you using Pow-Point?"
"yes"
"Do you wike Mic-er-scoff Pow-point?"
"Love it."
"Are you putting pichers in you Pow-point?"
"No, no pictures in this one, baby."
"Can you go to slideshow?"
"Not yet, I'm still working on it."
... he pauses to look at the graphs I'm updating.
"Iss dat a picher?"
"It's a graph."
"Are you gonna make it spin???"
(I admit I had to laugh at the prospect of sending my boss a presentation with spinning graphs, lol)
"Umm... no, I'm not going to make it spin."
"Do you want to make you graph spin?!" (he's persistent)
I was eager to finish so I could spend some time with him doing something other than discussing the possible rotation of graphs, so I managed to change the subject.

I suppose next time I'm going to have to make the graphs spin and show him in slideshow mode so he can check it out ;).

National Sensory Awareness Month

2011-10-08T23:57:00.002-04:00

October is National Sensory Awareness Month!

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) is a neurological disorder in which the brain and the senses (all 8 of them!) don't work together as they should. Some examples of this include frequent sensory overload (when the brain is unable to filter out irrelevant sensory input), motor difficulties (when the brain isn't able to coordinate the muscles to respond appropriately to stimuli), and difficulty interpreting sensory input (when the brain doesn't recognize the body's signals, such as hunger).

Individuals with SPD may be under-responsive or over-responsive to sensory input. Some may be sensory avoiders, overly sensitive to certain textures or sounds. This can have major implications for daily living, as they may find only certain types of clothing or food tolerable, and may find some places too overwhelming to be comfortable there. Some may be sensory seekers, crashing into everything, climbing or hanging upside down all the time. Sometimes it depends on the situation, and it's possible to have both sensory-seeking and sensory-avoiding responses depending on the type of sensory input.

Most of the examples I gave are part of our experience with our boys - all three of them have SPD along with autism. It's quite common for people on the autism spectrum to also have sensory issues, although it's possible to have one without the other and there are many people with SPD who are not on the autism spectrum. Sometimes SPD symptoms may be misinterpreted as ADHD, for example when a sensory-seeker is in constant motion, running and crashing, in an attempt to get the sensory input they need, or has difficulty staying on task because they frequently need to be up and moving around.

One of the most helpful books I've read on the topic is "The Out-of-Sync Child" by Carol Kranowitz. I read it soon after our twins were dx'd and it really helped me to get a better idea of what they were going through, which in turn helped me to be more patient with some of their more challenging behavior.

If you're looking for (or want to share with others) some insight into what it's like to have SPD, I highly recommend this article. An excerpt from it quotes Stanley Greenspan:

"Imagine driving a car that isn't working well. When you step on the gas the car sometimes lurches forward and sometimes doesn't respond. When you blow the horn it sounds blaring. The brakes sometimes slow the car, but not always. The blinkers work occasionally, the steering is erratic, and the speedometer is inaccurate. You are engaged in a constant struggle to keep the car on the road, and it is difficult to concentrate on anything else."

I've included some links below, feel free to share additional resources in the comments.

Helpful articles:
What is SPD?
How does it feel? - a short but very insightful look at what it's like for those who have SPD
SPD Signs and Symptoms
SPD Red flags

Resources:
Sensory Processing Disorder
SPD Foundation
The SPD Blogger Network

Hiking trip

2011-10-06T23:41:00.004-04:00

We took the boys on a hike, which involved some fun trails, some pretty waterfalls, and a lot of stairs going up the mountain.

Bitty: "What iss hike-een?"
me: "Walking in the woods."
Bitty: "Are we walk-een in the woods?" (I can't figure out how to type the way he pronounces "walk" but it is so. darn. cute!
me: "Yep, we sure are."

These two practically ran up the mountain, but were nice enough to stop and wait for the rest of us here and there. In this one, Bearhug is showing me the waterfall, in case I was too busy huffing and puffing my way up the stairs to have noticed :).

Meanwhile Bitty wanted "uppers" most of the way, thankfully dh handled that although at one point he got tired of carrying and told Bitty "I'll carry you but you have to catch me first!" And Bitty took off after him, yelling "CAAHH--RRY!!!" lol

Leaving proof (I wish I had three arms!)

We continued on to the top. Of course Bearhug and Cuddlebug beat us by a mile but they were waiting at the top to give us a high five and congratulate us for making it (I think I heard them congratulating pretty much everyone else that made it too while they were waiting, lol).

They weren't even the slightest bit winded or tired. I sooo wish I had just a fraction of their energy! I took some "victory" pictures of them at the top of the waterfall :).

The view was beautiful, worth the climb.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The park where we went hiking is close to the pumpkin farm, so we had planned to visit the pumpkin farm again for a while before heading home. Unfortunately, the hike was too much overstimulation and Bitty wasn't up for anything else that day. We tried since we had told the boys we'd go, but we only lasted about a minute at the pumpkin farm before Bitty started kicking pumpkins and yelling angrily at them (something along the lines of "I don' WANNA SEE A PUH-KIN!!!") :(. We showed him the sign that says "no stepping on, kicking, sitting on the pumpkins" etc. and he yelled "I don' WANNA WEAD DA SIGN!!!" so we knew it was time to go and try again another day.

We did manage to pick up a couple of pumpkin pies before we left (because it's a long drive and we were already there) only because I offered to give Bitty "uppers" (carry him). Thankfully Cuddlebug and Bearhug were ok with leaving early, and we did make it out before Bitty reached full meltdown mode. Once we got into the car Bitty started to settle down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This post has been submitted for this month's S-O-S Best of the Best Blog Carnival. The topic is "share a moment from your family life, whether it’s funny, loving, or just special." Our hiking trip gave us some much-needed family relaxing time and it was a fun activity for the boys. Even though we did end up having to cut the planned activities short and spend the rest of the day decompressing we made some good memories that day :).

Conversations with Bitty

2011-10-02T18:26:00.002-04:00

Bitty asked me one evening as I took him upstairs to tuck him in for bed, "does me hab schoo tomowwow?"

I couldn't help but smile, his wording is too cute but it is also an indicator of just how far he's come with his speech and communication skills. You may notice that he didn't say, "do YOU hab schoo tomowwow?"

After a LOT of time and effort, he uses the pronoun "you" correctly most of the time now, meaning referring to the person he's speaking to and not to himself.

It didn't occur to me that there would be a "next step" of differentiating between I and me (is the English language complicated or what?!) until we started hearing sentences like the one I started this post with:

"Does me hab schoo tomowwow?"
"Iss me sick?" (he had to stay home from school a couple of days this week as he was running a fever, he's feeling better now).

Other times (usually at the beginning of a sentence now that I think of it) he does great:

"I don' WIKE DAT!" (we hear that one a lot, sigh)
"I not hungry"

However he decides to word things, I remain infinitely grateful that he is (mostly) willing and able to communicate with us. It means the world to have some insight into what he's thinking (even though sometimes he still leaves us guessing).

He often likes to ask questions that we think he already knows the answer to. Maybe he likes the reassurance of hearing the answers again, maybe he's just making conversation.

For example, he drives his brothers crazy asking things like "do you wike Pokemon?", "wha'ss you fay-brit cuh-wer? Iss wed you fay-brit cuh-wer?" or "do you wike Kirby-right-back-at-YA?" (a cartoon that apparently went off the air years ago but still lives on YouTube).

If he deems the answer "unacceptable" he can be very persistent (ie. when Cuddlebug tried to tell him he doesn't have a favorite color). That can lead to some funny conversations, like Cuddlebug making up random names for colors that don't exist because he refuses to just pick a color and Bitty refuses to stop asking until he gets a satisfactory answer.

Bitty still tends to ignore us at times, and it can take a LOT of effort and repetition to get any kind of response when we are trying to ask him something or initiate a conversation with him. Or (gasp!) trying to get him to do something.

But other times he will actually seek us out and I am loving these little interactions:

Bitty, to me: "Iss Kirby a pink ball?" (grinning)
me: "Yes, Kirby is a big pink ball."
Bitty: "Does Mom wike Kirby?"
me: "Of course I love Kirby, he's one of my favorite characters!"
Bitty smiles in response.
me: "Do YOU like Kirby?"
Bitty smiles even bigger, nodding his head emphatically with a huge grin. Priceless :)

RIP Flake :(

2011-10-02T18:17:00.001-04:00

Thursday night we found little Flake had passed away.

He was fine when I fed the fish that morning. By dinnertime, he was gone. :(

That's Flake at the bottom

I know it sounds silly, but there was something endearing about Flake. Dh and I joked that if ever a fish's name was a perfect fit, it was "Flake" lol. Bearhug named him after his "favorite food" but he was kind of a nutty fish, so the name fit from that perspective too. He may have had some health issues, at one point he hardly swam at all but he hung in there and mostly recovered. He began to swim again although he swam a little erratically, as if he couldn't quite control where his fins took him.

He seemed happy though, playing with the other fish and hiding out when he wanted some quiet time. He was the smallest fish in the tank and it became a bit of a game to "find Flake" whenever it was time to feed the fish, to make sure he came out from his hiding place and got something to eat before the food was gone.

The boys handled the news as well as could be expected... I don't think Bitty really understands what happened, but Cuddlebug and Bearhug were sad about the loss and will miss little Flake. May he enjoy his swimming adventures in the oceans of heaven.

Pumpkin Patch #2

2011-09-28T22:57:00.001-04:00

This past weekend we went to visit the pumpkin patch again, this time the one that we've been to before.

The boys loved pulling / pushing the wagons :).

Bitty had an easier time with the wagon than he had with the wheelbarrow the prior weekend.

Showing me his little bitty pumpkin :).

Cuddlebug and Bearhug making me laugh with their silly faces :).

♥ ♥ ♥

We went on a hayride...

...which the boys loved!

Except for all that, umm, hay... (that was Cuddlebug's comment, lol) He cleared away the hay around his feet :).

They had fun playing with the hay though.

There was a stop along the way to feed the catfish in the pond :).

I love this one... makes me fall in love with dh all over again. (sigh)

Redirect... FAIL

2011-09-27T01:12:00.002-04:00

We were at church Sunday and Bitty was wired, running up and down the halls with the occasional screech. He's been really having a hard time at church lately, but that's another post.

I took him for a walk and he was finally starting to settle down but I sensed he was on edge and would soon take off running again so I tried to distract him with the paintings on the wall.

"Who is that a picture of?" "What are they doing in the picture?" etc.

He wasn't really interested but as we passed the bulletin board I tried again.

"What does that say?"

He shouted, "I KNOW DA SCWIPTURES ARE TRUE!!!"

So much for trying to distract him *quietly* (sigh).

"Ssshhhhh... not so loud, angel."

He looked at me and pointed to the exclamation point at the end of the phrase on the board as he patiently explained, "Dat means WOUD or excited."

Oh... the exclamation point means loud or excited... of course (smiling now and stifling a laugh). He's learned all about punctuation at school.

"How about if we try an excited whisper?"

He did his best excited "whisper" which was not really a whisper but wasn't an ear-piercing yell either.

"I know da scwiptures are TRUE!"

...

Note to self: next time you try to distract Bitty with reading something, make sure there are no exclamation marks in sight.

!!

Pumpkin Patch

2011-09-26T21:20:00.000-04:00

We took the boys out for an early-fall trip to the pumpkin patch. The one we usually go to wasn't open yet, so we tried a new one. Turns out this one sells fresh-baked pumpkin pie too... YUM!!! :) These were taken on Saturday 9/17.

All three boys together... Bitty doing his "puppy dog" face :)

Bearhug helping Bitty with the wheelbarrow. It was big and rather unwieldy for someone of Bitty's size to maneuver.

Helping Dad push the wheelbarrow :)

Bitty and his puppy face again, lol. Just like the Baby Einstein Neighborhood Animals puppy :).

Cuddlebug and Bearhug exploring

Getting better with the wheelbarrow... all by himself!

Bearhug blending in with the pumpkins :)

Checking out the pumpkins...

...so many to choose from!

Still working that wheelbarrow... not sure if he was frustrated or just concentrating.

Bearhug and Cuddlebug were pretty excited about their tiny ~~pumpkin~~ squash (they pointed out MANY times that the sign said that one was a squash, not a pumpkin, lol)

That's actually not a yawn, that's Bitty doing his "Kirby inhaling everything" impression.

We had a great time, and everyone was excited to go back the next weekend :).

(Almost) two months down...

2011-09-25T17:10:00.001-04:00

So we are well into the school year, and it is almost time for teacher conferences (already!) and I am just now posting an update. Ack! My blog is also a journal for me so I'll try to catch up with the highlights. Apologies in advance if any of this is repeat, I didn't see it already posted but can't remember and may have missed it.

So far things are going pretty well. Cuddlebug and Bearhug are enjoying 5th grade and are excited to have the same teacher that Cuddlebug had in 3rd grade. She's really energetic and does a great job at keeping them engaged. They have the same resource teacher and parapros as last year, which I'm glad because they are all awesome with the boys and the continuity is good for them too. Their resource teacher is working very hard (starting last year actually) at helping to prepare them for the transition to middle school.

Although they complain of being bored sometimes, other times they are definitely feeling challenged (and sometimes I think it is not so much boredom as it is the transition to having less free time than they did during the summer). The pace seems to be faster in 5th grade. So far they are handling it well, which is good because I have a feeling it is only going to be more so as they go into middle school next year. They are each in one accelerated class - Bearhug is in accelerated math (same as last year) and Cuddlebug is in accelerated science. They've been studying and working hard, and I'm really proud of them.

Bitty is doing well in 1st grade. He has the same teacher that Cuddlebug had in 2nd grade, she is really nice and has a firm but calm, patient approach which is a great fit for Bitty. He has a new resource teacher this year and we are really happy with her. She does a great job sending daily feedback home so we know how he's doing and where he may be struggling. He had a rough time this past week as they were doing some standardized testing for part of the day on M-W and I think it threw off his routine. He seemed to be doing a little bit better by Friday, so hopefully this coming week will be better. His teacher did say he wasn't being disruptive, which is good, just that he was really having a hard time staying on task and seemed confused about what he should be doing.

The weather is finally starting to cool off a bit and we are loving the chance to spend time outside without feeling like we're going to melt, lol. We got excited about fall and have already made two pumpkin farm trips - last weekend and this weekend. I know it's early, but it was really fun and we'll go back as it gets closer to Halloween to get a bigger pumpkin for carving. :) In the meantime we got some hay and fall decorations to go with the pumpkins on the front porch, the leaves are starting to change colors, and it is definitely looking like FALL around here :). At the moment the house is quiet (shock!), if it stays that way for a little while I may be able to get some pictures up shortly...

Expanding wardrobe - "Pokemon" shirts

2011-09-25T16:34:00.003-04:00

When Bitty started kindergarten, we had a goal to get him to wear something other than just his Thomas shirts. After all, with two older brothers he had a decent collection of nice clothes that he wouldn't wear.

We made a "rule" of wearing horse shirts (polo, for whatever reason he likes the horse but wouldn't wear any of his other brand shirts) to school and saving the worn out Thomas shirts for home. And it worked :).

By the end of the school year, he had developed a fascination with his favorite color - pink, at the time - and wanted to wear his pink polo shirt every day. Due to laundry conflicts, we convinced him that red was "kinda like" pink and he had several red shirts so almost every day of the week he wore either pink or red (with the occasional green when pink or red were unavailable).

Over the summer, his favorite color changed to red. We made a new "wardrobe" goal for 1st grade - to expand the possibilities of "acceptable" clothing to include colors other than red, pink, or green.

Whenever he wore pink, he called himself "Kirby". Then he decided that his pink shirt was Jigglypuff , and his red shirt became his Kirby shirt (Kirby wears red shoes, and I'm guessing he wanted his favorite color shirt to be named for his favorite character).

And that gave me an idea - because as is so often the case, "our" ideas really come from just following his lead :).

Bitty is increasingly into Pokemon these days (autism hasn't prevented him from wanting to do whatever it is his big brothers are doing, lol), so I figured if the pink shirt could be Jigglypuff, then maybe I could get him to wear his yellow shirt by calling it Pichu.

It worked :). That opened up all kinds of possibilities... after all, there are hundreds of different Pokemon, with characters of all colors, so if we could expand the Pokemon color-coded shirt thing, we could get him to wear pretty much anything in his closet.

So now we have:

(I know, a couple of those aren't Pokemon but they are among his favorite video game characters).

When it's time to get dressed in the morning, I just ask him which character he wants to "be" that day and he chooses the corresponding shirt color. Or some days I might suggest a character. It's great from a pretend play perspective, and I love seeing him wearing more of his clothes. I also love that sweet little smile when I ask him "are you (fill in the blank) today?" and he proudly nods.

In memory... Kristen Fiedel

2011-09-11T19:11:00.000-04:00

Click here to read more about Project 2,996. The goal is to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11 by remembering them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kristen Fiedel, age 27, worked in the finance department at Marsh & McLennan, on the 98th floor of WTC Tower One. She'd been there for less than a year; prior to that, she she worked at New York Life Insurance while pursuing a degree at Berkeley College.

She was a single mother to then 3-year-old Lindsay, and was very close with her family. She lived just two blocks from her parents, and she and her daughter spent a lot of time with them.

On weekends, she and her mother and her daughter were "inseparable" and had a great time going to the mall, parks, or concerts together. They especially loved shopping together for toys and clothes for her little girl.

She is remembered as a kind and loving person. My thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends today.

We will never forget.

We remember

2011-09-11T17:20:00.000-04:00

Ten years ago...

I was almost to work when I heard about the first crash on the radio in my car. I called dh to tell him to turn on the news (he was at home with our then 3-mo-old boys). At the office, we were getting updates on the internet, and I will forever be haunted by the images of people who were trapped in the upper floors jumping. After the second plane hit the WTC (and other planes were still missing at that point) they closed our building. I think most of downtown Dallas shut down, it seemed eerily quiet. I couldn't wait to get home to my family. I spent the day holding my boys and watching the news, numb with shock.

The other day we were watching footage from 9/11 on TV. We have explained to Cuddlebug and Bearhug what happened that day (as best we can, who can truly explain such horror?). Bearhug said quietly, "I wish the terrorists didn't do that."

I was already in tears but his simple statement really choked me up.

Me too, angel. :'(

I will never, ever forget.

May God bless those who lost their lives that day and their families. May God bless the military, firefighters, and police, and their families, who sacrifice every day to keep us safe. May God bless America.

Remembering Joseph Maffeo

2011-09-11T07:05:00.000-04:00

Cross-posting from my other blog... click here to read more about Project 2,996. The goal is to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11 by remembering them.

~~~~~~~~

Joseph Maffeo, age 30, was a firefighter with Brooklyn’s Ladder 101. The day before 9/11, he chose to work a 24-hour overtime shift. He was still on duty when the call came in regarding the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center. He was one of 343 firefighters who lost their lives that day in the line of duty.

But this is not about Joseph Maffeo’s death, it’s about his life.

Known as “Joey Pockets” because he sewed so many pockets onto his gear to make room for gadgets, Joseph was a resourceful handyman who always seemed to have just what he needed for a job or project.

Growing up, he had two close friends – T.J. Beinert and Bobby Melloy – who spent so much time together that they became known as “the Three Musketeers.” As teenagers, his friend Bobby got an old Cadillac and the three of them sawed off the top to make it into a convertible.

Joseph met his wife Linda while she was working as a bank teller. He sold his share of a fishing boat he owned with his friends to buy an engagement ring.

Recalling the day he asked her out, Linda said, "I never gave my number out to customers, but he had the gentlest eyes I had ever seen."

He and his wife have a son named Christopher Joseph, who was just 1 year old at the time. He loved his family and is remembered as a devoted husband and father. He spent countless hours playing blocks with his son and was known to leave fresh daisies in his wife’s car.

Joseph stayed busy – he worked a second job building houses with his brother-in-law and was studying to become a lieutenant in the Fire Department.

Joseph’s legacy of kindness and giving of himself lives on through the Joseph Maffeo Foundation, a charitable organization started by his family to help their community.

My thoughts and prayers are with Joseph's family and friends today. We will never forget.

To read more remembrances of the lives of those America lost on 9/11, please visit Project 2,996.

Remembering Debora Maldonado

2011-09-11T06:57:00.000-04:00

Reposting from last year... click here to read more about Project 2,996. The goal is to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11 by remembering them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meet Debora (Debbie) Maldonado. Nicknamed “Mouse” by her husband, Otelio, for her short stature, she was anything but timid. She is remembered as feisty and warm-hearted, a shopoholic who loved a bargain, a devoted wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend.

Debbie, age 47, was born in Panama. Her family moved to the United States when she was about 5 years old. She earned an Associate of Science degree from CUNY Brooklyn College. She worked as an executive secretary at Marsh & McLennan for over 21 years, and before that worked at American Brands. Her office was in the north tower of the World Trade Center, although she was actually packed and scheduled to move back to MMC's midtown office sometime the week after 9/11.

Debbie called her sister, “Miss Miriam,” every day before lunch and visited her mother every Sunday. She and her husband were high school sweethearts, together since she was 14 years old. She struggled with infertility for 16 years before becoming pregnant with their daughter, Krystal. Two years later, their son Chris was born.

She was a woman who embraced life. Her sister recalls a conversation they had in August 2001 while Debbie and her children visited her in Miami. "You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow." When her sister asked, "What are you talking about?" Debbie responded, "I’m going to enjoy my life now."

My thoughts and prayers are with Debbie's loved ones today. We will never forget.

Remembering Grandma Marian

2011-09-11T06:55:00.001-04:00

Reposting from last year... a tribute to my Grandma Marian who passed away on September 11, 1992 after a long battle with cancer / leukemia. She was just 14 days shy of her 70th birthday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grandma Marian was a beautiful person - a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother. She and my mom taught me how to play Solitaire, and whenever we visited we'd pull out three decks of cards and play Triple Solitaire (it's way more fun than playing by yourself). She was one of the most selfless people I know, always thinking of others. She loved life and never let anything slow her down.

Meet Grandma Marian:

I took this as we waited with her at the airport, she was flying back home after visiting with us. I love her smile here, full of sparkle and spunk.

Grandma Marian and my mom

Aside from playing games, the three of us had fun shopping together, but mostly just hanging around chatting together.

Three generations - my mom, my grandma, and me

Grandma Marian and me, back in the day

Grandma Marian left this world the year before I was married, so my husband never got to meet her. Neither did my brother's wife. Nevertheless, I believe she was there in spirit to witness both of our weddings and the births of her great-grandchildren. I like to think she spent time hanging out with them in heaven before they were born. :)

Grandma - we love and miss you, and I know we'll see you again someday.

Nature's playground

2011-09-04T19:15:00.001-04:00

Dh discovered a new park that has access to the river in a shallow spot that allows for walking and playing in the river and the nearby mud.

LOTS of fun for sensory seekers. :)

Dh took this one when he first took the boys to the park.

We all went to the park together on another day. I didn't have my camera so I took all of these with my phone.

Feeding the geese

Digging in the mud :)

Drawing in the sand (that's a picture of Kirby, lol)

4th of July trip

2011-09-03T08:02:00.000-04:00

We took a short road trip over the 4th of July weekend to visit family at dh's aunt and uncle's ranch.

Little Bitty wanted to help feed the horses :). He fed them pieces of apples.

Then he put himself to work carrying hay and following Aunt J.

True to Bitty-form though, he didn't follow Aunt J.'s lead in gently giving the hay to the horses, but rather tossed it high into the air and over the fence.

Dude... I think the horse is sticking his tongue out at me! LOL

Cuddlebug, deep in thought

The boys had a great time in the pile of sawdust (quite the sensory activity!)...

... mostly seeing how far they could dig down

they also tried to do "sawdust angels" :)

Swimming at the hotel pool:

Bearhug (gotta love that expression!)

Mr. Bitty (love the swim goggles) :)

Cuddlebug...

...trying out his underwater moves :)

Something's fishy

2011-09-03T07:16:00.000-04:00

I'm not entirely sure how this happened.

I think it started when Bitty wanted to get a mouse like our neighbors have. We said no to the mouse, but somehow ended up offering to get some fish instead. (Redirect! oops, maybe took that a little too far this time, lol).

So the family has expanded a bit. We intended to get three fish but ended up with four, then six.

Sadly, one of the fish didn't make it very long, so we went to get another one and ended up with three more, making eight.

That's about all our aquarium can hold, so we're done now :).

I have to say I'm a little surprised at how attached we've become to our little finned friends, they're fun to watch. We have to get onto them every now and then about their loud late-night parties, but other than that it's all good ;).

Webcam silliness

2011-08-21T19:11:00.001-04:00

In the spirit of "leaving proof" (thanks for the inspiration Julie!) :)

Family-friendly video site

2011-08-21T18:57:00.000-04:00

The boys are banned from YouTube again.

There is just too much on there that they don't need to see, and we found out that some of the supposedly "for kids" videos they were watching had some inappropriate language. I know they will eventually be exposed to that stuff, but we can do our best to at least make sure it isn't in our home. To their credit, Cuddlebug and Bearhug told us that some of the videos they found had bad language in them.

They were pretty bummed about not being able to watch some of their favorites. We tried looking for their favorite videos on some family-friendly sites like GodTube, but they tend to like some fairly obscure videos and we couldn't find them there. I came up with the idea of making them a blog site that links to videos that are ok to watch. We sat down together to go through their favorite videos and added them to their website. Cuddlebug came up with the name, Epic Randomness Videos.

Lots of Pokemon and Kirby stuff there, including some old video game commercials (they are really into old-school video games). I've been adding new ones here and there. The other thing I like about this site is that it makes it where they can watch the videos without being exposed to the comments (even good videos can have some wildly inappropriate-for-kids comments).

The one loophole I noticed was that when a video stopped playing, it brought up "related videos" which left it open for them to watch not-screened videos, but I have since figured out how to turn that off. Hehe ;) (Update: there was much despair over the loss of this feature as it's convenient for them to watch several videos from one window. Since it usually brings up videos by the same user, and generally the users I've posted seem ok, I've agreed to turn it back on for now, but with the warning that I will turn it off again if it becomes an issue).

If you have children with similar interests, you may want to check it out.

If you're interested in setting up something similar that is tailored to your child's interests, here's where I found the template (for Blogger):

http://www.zoomtemplate.com/2010/08/bloggertube-v3.html

Be sure to check out the setup instructions here.

Hope this is helpful!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thought I'd also share one of my favorite videos from the site, Bearhug and Cuddlebug found this one and liked it because it has Kirby in it (Bitty loves it too, being the Kirby fan that he is). They have no idea who Weird Al is or that this was actually a spoof of the classic Michael Jackson song but it brought back memories for me... at the risk of "dating" myself, I remember when this song (and "Beat it") first came out!

First day of school

2011-08-08T07:56:00.003-04:00

Cuddlebug and Bearhug are 5th graders now... Bitty is in 1st grade.

When did they get so big?!

Memorial Day weekend - swimming!

2011-07-24T20:47:00.000-04:00

We visited my SIL for Memorial Day weekend, and they have a pool so that is pretty much where the boys wanted to spend all their time. They LOVE the water, and as Barbara has noted, pool time is therapeutic. After repeated field testing of this hypothesis, my boys concur :).

Look at those smiles!!

Last year, Bitty didn't venture past the steps at the edge of the pool. This year, he got brave and did more exploring :).

He even let dh give him a ride, swimming all around the pool!

Cuddlebug and Bearhug practiced their swimming skills - they continue to improve! If you can't tell them apart, Bearhug is wearing blue swim trunks, Cuddlebug red.

They also had fun playing with the huge inner-tube :).

Little Bitty had a smaller floatie. At first, he wasn't interested because it was a turtle, but after much discussion I was able to convince him it was actually a green duck (ducks, after all, are one of his favorite animals!). :)

Looking forward to next time!

Autism and Empathy blog

2011-07-21T02:00:00.003-04:00

Rachel recently started a new blog devoted to the topic of Autism and Empathy, with the purpose to "undo the myths about autism and empathy that have stigmatized autistic people for so long." (quoting from her blog description)

I think it's a fantastic idea and am happy to have one of my earlier posts shared there, "Lullaby by Bearhug: Goodnight Baby" about a sweet "brotherly love" moment :).

Go check it out!

Spring break

2011-07-17T20:48:00.000-04:00

From April... we did our annual road trip to visit the grandparents :).

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Cuddlebug and Bitty took turns pulling each other in the wheelbarrow...

Bitty got quite a workout

More "heavy work," Bitty had fun loading and unloading the wagon with firewood.

At the park... traffic jam on the slide :)

Bitty asked me to take this picture, he loved the "triangles."

When you don't have water balloons on hand, you have to improvise... (yep, that's a plastic shopping bag filled with water. pretty sure it would qualify as a "redneck water balloon" haha)

Jump!

I love his expression in this one, he loves to jump in the water :)

Taken at the zoo... Cuddlebug stretching to give Bearhug "rabbit ears" LOL

Bearhug wasted no time returning the "favor" :)

Why walk when Grandma will give you a ride?

Highlight of the zoo - feeding the ducks and catfish...

...and themselves :) (hey, we have to make sure it tastes good, right?)

He looks so calm here, you'd never know that just a few minutes earlier he was in stubborn / bossy mode insisting that we not stop at the park and then when we did, trying to get a guy nearby to stop flying his kite. Luckily it was windy and we were far enough that that the guy couldn't hear him yelling, "you DONE fwying dat kite?! You aww-done! No more kite, aww-done wif dat KITE!" (not sure why he didn't like the kite). Finally he decided to swing and he loves that so it helped him relax :).

A little sprinkler fun in the driveway

And bowling... Bitty insisted on filling the entire area with bowling balls, even though we obviously didn't need that many.

Yes, that's tape on Cuddlebug's brand-new glasses, they broke while we were out of town and couldn't be repaired so we had to improvise until we got home and could get them replaced.

Bearhug made some great shots!

It was a fun and busy week! We spent a lot of time just hanging out playing in the yard, and otherwise went to mostly places that are already familiar to the boys. The bowling place was new, but was pretty much empty so that helped :). They had a laser-tag game there too that I played with Bearhug and Cuddlebug (they totally beat me, of course). It was lots of fun, and great family time :).

The flowers are thirsty

2011-07-17T14:20:00.000-04:00

Palkia strikes again

2011-07-17T07:22:00.000-04:00

In today's news... traffic came to a halt this afternoon when a sudden Pokemon battle in the middle of the Island of Sodor made a local bridge impassable.

The citizens of Sodor were frightened but no one was harmed in the incident, other than Pikachu being a bit dazed. He was airlifted to the nearest Pokemon Center and is doing fine.

The city remains under an electrical-storm watch as Palkia is still in the area, on the lookout for more formidable foes.

Kirby

2011-07-16T04:48:00.000-04:00

A while back I posted about how Bitty gave himself the nickname "Spunk."

Well, soon after that, he decided his new nickname would be "Kirby."

As in, this guy:

From this game:

What could be better for a guy who loved pink and video games?

So for months his nickname has been Kirby. Until just recently.

He woke me up one Saturday morning, waving his pink pinewood derby car in front of my face.

"I don' WANT da pink one, I wan'da RED one. Pink iss not my fay-brit cuh-wer. My fay-brit cuh-wer iss RREEEDDD!!!!!"

And on and on. I rolled over and told him to go ask Cuddlebug if he could play with his (red) car.

This was about the same time he started reading Olivia.

"Oh-wivia's fay-brit cuh-wer iss RED!"

He tried to get me to start calling him "Olivia" instead of "Kirby."

Dude.

That's where I draw. the. line.

I refused. He eventually gave up and let me call him by his real name for once.

The other day he called himself Kirby again.

I'm loving this continually expanding pretend play thing he's got going on, I really am. But some days I can't keep up! ;)