Another Piece of the Puzzle

Best Blog Award

Trish — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:47:31 +0000

Well, I by no means think I am deserving of this award, but I am thankful to Leah at Just Me for letting me know I am appreciated. If you haven’t met Leah, she is a pastor’s wife and mom to 4 girls, one of whom has special needs. She has also embarked on a spiritual journey that she is blogging about at 90 Days of Solitude.

I’ve been somewhat on again/off again with blogging in recent months, but every time I question whether I should continue, I realize how much it means to me to have this little place of my own and to connect with so many wonderful people. So I am working on not feeling guilty for posting irregularly or for not having time to visit other blogs and comment. I just try to enjoy the time I do get to spend online.

I have, however, spent a little bit of time working on my blog admin lately, and one of the things I did was to close the comments on posts older than 90 days. I hope it doesn’t turn people off, but it has really cut down the amount of spam considerably. Anyone who wants to contact me directly with any question or comment can still easily do so through my contact form.

I’ve also been playing around with the new version of my blog theme (Thesis 1.6) and was very happy to see the ability to assign colors right from the options page. With the nested navigational options, I was able to include my main categories at the top along with the pages I wanted but not have it look too cluttered or overwhelming. I can easily change the background image whenever I want and modify the text/link colors to match.

A couple of other things I did were to add a widgetized fat footer (thanks to this super-easy tutorial from Thesis Theme Tools) and to put my blogroll back in the sidebar. The blogroll only shows the most recently updated blogs, but you can still see the entire list via the Blogroll link in the footer.

Oh, and one last thing. Through a post on Howtomakemyblog.com, I found a plugin that allows you to add your Twitter ID in your comments on my blog. You just enter your Twitter username (no html or @) in the box below the comments box before you submit your comment, and a link to your Twitter profile will appear below your name. You only have to enter your Twitter ID one time and then it will save it just like it saves your name, etc.

Let me know what you think about any or all of the changes. I’d love any feedback or other ideas you have.

And then go visit some blogs that truly deserve a Best Blog Award —

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The Hokey Pokey

Trish — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:00:27 +0000

I finally downloaded the pictures from last week, and I didn’t really get any good ones from Trick or Treat. But I took a bunch of shots at the Halloween party at school and thought these turned out pretty well.

For Halloween at my son’s school, the students and teachers dress up in their costumes and go on a parade through the neighborhood. After walking about six blocks, they make their way back to the school playground and dance to some fun songs before going inside to their class parties. These were taken during The Hokey Pokey.

Check out more great pics at Special Exposure Wednesday and Wordless Wednesday.

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The Brain Dump

Trish — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:39:22 +0000

Nothing in my brain is really connected right now, so this post may not make much sense. But I wanted to at least keep people up to date with the main stuff.

First of all, I’m so irritated with myself that I haven’t downloaded the pictures from Trick or Treat or the school Halloween party. Michael ended up going as a bottle of mustard, which was so cute, especially since yellow is his favorite color.

I also keep forgetting to take the camera with me to swim class, but he has made so much progress in the few weeks since he started. He is willing to try everything in the water and actually like floating on his back in the T-position the best (which freaked him out at the beginning). He is putting his face in and doing scoops and “diving for rings” in the 2 foot area. The only thing he is scared to try is jumping in the pool. The instructor has told him that he has to do it next week, and that he will help him. I am talking to him about it every day to encourage him about how good he will feel once he has done it.

Today was a whirlwind. There was no school today, so Bob took off work to stay home with Michael. I went into work early, and then we all met at the psychologist’s office to share the new school behavior plan with her and talk about how things are going in the playgroup and at home. Then I went back to work until it was time to go to school for the Parent-Teacher conference.

I had a great meeting with his teacher and case manager (the learning support teacher). His academics are great, and they are seeing a decrease in the yelling and an increase in him recognizing when he needs a break. We have what I think is a great behavior plan that is starting tomorrow, and we will also have a new TSS starting tomorrow.

When I got home from the conference, the BSC and the new TSS were at the house. It was great to meet her, and we are all very optimistic about how this will work out. Now we are getting ready to go out to a new support group meeting for Asperger’s/PDD-NOS/HFA. I’m not sure what it will be like, but I thought it was worth checking out.

So a very busy day – but I feel good about everything. I don’t really have a to do list put together right now, so I need to go through my pile of stuff and sort out what’s left to take care of. That’s my plan for tomorrow after work, and that’s about as far ahead as I can think right now!

This post was written for Steady Mom’s 30-Minute Blog Challenge. To see some actual to do lists by people who are really getting things done, check out Crazy Adventures in Parenting’s To-Do Tuesday.

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To-Do Tuesday (My Post for Anti-Procrastination Wednesday)

Trish — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:39:50 +0000

For anyone who may not have seen this before, To-Do Tuesday was started by Lisa @ Crazy Adventures in Parenting for the purpose of attacking our to-do lists each week, blogging about our lists and what we’ve got going on, and sharing it with each other to help keep each other accountable.

The last week has been up and down in terms of productivity. I have made some progress on my goal towards obsessing less over things and just getting them done. I got a favorable response on the first part of a project I turned in at work and am giving myself time limits to do each subsequent part (so I am forced to make “good enough” decisions instead of agonizing so much over every little word).

I also stayed away from all but one piece of the Halloween candy (I’m not counting the bowl of candy corn from my stamp party in that, of course!) And I talked the very nice man at the auto shop into squeezing me in for an inspection tomorrow, with a loaner which they don’t normally do for that. It’s my own fault because I could have gotten this taken care of at any time in the last two months, but I just kept forgetting about it and now it’s down to the wire.

In my quest to get back to some sort of daily routine, I decided to check out a resource I had used at various times in the past – FlyLady. Apparently, she has recently switched to BigTent for her email distribution, and the daily reminders are now all together in one email. There are still a lot of testimonials and other emails, but overall I find it to be better than before. I am VERY slowly adding things into my routine, but I do feel like I am starting to get a handle on my days more now.

So this week, instead of publishing a random to do list, I am going to post what I have in my routines so far.

Morning Routine: (There will eventually be more stuff here, but nothing else is consistent yet.)

Make the bed.
Swish and swipe the bathroom after my shower.
Breakfast, meds for me and supps for Michael.
Double check weekly class newsletter for the day’s special and other notes. (Tomorrow is hat day – not exactly sure how that relates to drug awareness week, but I guess they are running out of ideas.)
Make sure TV is off by 8:30 and Michael is at school by 8:45 so he is not stressed out about getting all his morning stuff done before the bell rings. (Today we even did a 5 minute Room Rescue in the living room before we left, and he willingly helped out.)

After Work Routine: (I usually get home around 1:30)

Eat lunch and relax for 15 minutes.
Clean cat box if didn’t get to it in the morning.
Check out the FlyLady daily focus, zone mission and holiday cruising mission. (I’m not doing these every day yet, but eventually I will be.)
Think about what’s for dinner. (I have been terrible about menu planning; it always feels like such a chore to me. But you’ve got to eat something!)
Leave at 3:30 to pick Michael up from school.

After school is pretty standard stuff, some combination of snack, homework, making dinner, eating dinner, doing the dishes, bathtime, bedtime, blogging, maybe a little reading or TV, trying to make myself go to bed at a decent hour (the last one is the hardest one for me!)

With that said, I’ll publish this post and hit the sack. Hope everybody has a good Thursday tomorrow.

For more To-Do Tuesday, visit Crazy Adventures in Parenting.

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Two Kinds of Scary

Trish — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:10:11 +0000

SCARY BINGO

The first scary thing is a fun thing. Tonight I finished the bingo cards for the school party this Friday. They are a mix of handmade and computer-generated, and each kid will get a bag of candy corn to use for markers. The homeroom parent had done a similar game last year at the Valentine’s party and the kids loved it, so I just adapted it to Halloween. She said they played until every kid had his or her entire card filled up!

Each card has the squares in a slightly different order, and they will get the SCARY space and their own names as freebies before we start drawing cards.

A BIG SCARE FOR BOB

The second scary thing actually happened yesterday when Bob and Michael were out running errands, and luckily I didn’t know anything about it until they were both home safe and sound.

They had gone into the mall near our house and needed to go up to the second floor. Bob didn’t realize that Michael, who had been right behind him, didn’t get on the escalator, so as soon as he got to the top, he came back down to get him. But Michael took off before Bob got down there and then Bob couldn’t find him. It was several minutes before he was paged by security to come get Michael upstairs.

After talking to both of them, it turns out that Bob didn’t know Michael is afraid to step onto an escalator without holding someone’s hand and thought Michael would get on by himself when prompted. Of course, he also thought Michael would wait at the bottom for him to come back down.

Michael, on the other hand, had the idea that if Bob would wait at the top of the escalator, Michael could go up on the elevator and meet him there. So that’s what he did, but then of course Bob wasn’t there because he had come back down and was searching the first floor of the mall for Michael. When Michael couldn’t find Bob, he went into one of the stores nearby to look for him and then approached a “policeman” (mall security guard) for help.

I talked to Michael for what seems like the 100th time about how he has to stay with Mommy or Daddy at all times when we are out somewhere, and also that he can’t just go do an idea he thinks about, but has to talk to us about it first. I did tell him he did the right thing in going to the security officer for help.

This was definitely a big reminder to me that, no matter how well things are going, we need to keep ourselves within an arm’s reach of him at all times when we are out in public. I am just so incredibly thankful that this ended as it did.

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Ramblings About a Pretty Good Day

Trish — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:38:14 +0000

Other than going to church last night, we totally crashed yesterday. So I was happy that I had a pretty productive day today – I am on track to finishing 4 loads of laundry, and I have the bingo cards for Friday’s school party over halfway done. I think they are going to be cute; I’ll post a picture of one once they are done.

I am actually looking forward to the party now that the homeroom parent helped me with what we should do. Plus, we are going in early to help the kids get their costumes on for the school parade. I love that I was scheduled for the first party of the year, so I didn’t have to worry about any duplicating anything that had been done before! (Okay, I know I am overanalyzing again, but at least I put myself out there knowing that it would be stressful but would make Michael happy.)

Bob took Michael out while he ran errands this afternoon, and they not only returned my books to the library for me, but they also picked up Michael’s Halloween costume! He had wanted to be Spiderman, but came home with a completely different costume instead that’s not even a superhero. I’m leave you in suspense on that one for a couple of days as well.

All this productivity is not to say that I didn’t goof off today. A couple of days ago, I heard about the Fancast website on 5 Minutes for Mom. They have full length episodes of various TV shows available online, so I just had to check it out.)

To my surprise, I was able to find The Next Iron Chef and catch up on the episodes I have missed due to The Amazing Race going late because of football. It figures, the only two shows I make a point to watch are scheduled back to back. So now I am all caught up on that , and it looks like both shows are on schedule for tonight. (I know, this is just so NOT important in the grand scheme of life.)

Well, I’m off to put the last load in the dryer. Hope everyone has a great night!

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Why I Love Clicking the Next Button

Trish — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:22:20 +0000

It’s 1:01 pm on Saturday, and I am starting a new blog post. It’s part of the Mom’s 30-Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom, so I am giving myself 30 minutes to write this post and publish it. I will have to go in on Tuesday to link up to the challenge, but that’s it.

So, what to talk about? Well, I wanted to tell you about my amazing new discovery (new to me, anyway) that has gotten me back into the fun of blog hopping and commenting while still keeping up with my favorite blogs. It’s the Next bookmark in Google Reader.

I found it by clicking on the Settings link and then going into the Goodies section. All I had to do was drag it to my toolbar and then I can click it at any time to go to the next unread blog post in my Google Reader. I can leave a comment, click around, do whatever I want, and then just click the Next button again when I want to read another post. I love it, and it has gotten me totally turned back on to commenting again!

You may have seen this before, but I thought it was cute. This is the page I saw when I clicked Next after all the posts had been read:

And when I clicked on the “End of the Internet” link, this is what I got:

So, if you saw a comment from me today, please know I have been reading your blog all along but just gotten out of the habit of clicking through to leave a comment. Shameful of me, really, because the interaction and community is such a critical part of why we all do this.

I also wanted to share a couple of the things I read today that really caught my attention:

How To Give Yourself to Whatever the Moment Brings, and Forget Stress at Zen Habits
The Sparkle Effect at Adventures in Autism (this one made me cry in a good way, and not just because the story takes place right next to my hometown).

So, that’s it for me right now. It’s 1:21 pm, and I am getting ready to hit the publish button. And just in time really, because me son is calling me to come and see what he is working on.

*****Visit the 30-Minute Blog Challenge to read more posts or find out how to join in.*****

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Looking at the Big Picture

Trish — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:00:46 +0000

On every personality test that’s out there, I come up solidly in the thinker/detail-oriented/analytical/fact-finding quadrant. This has its good points, but can also have a down side.

One of the things I have to remember is that not everyone is as focused on the little details all being correct and that I need to think before I speak when responding to people, especially at work. I have to frequently remind myself to step back and look at the big picture – is this specific thing that is bothering me really important in the grand scheme of things? And isn’t the way I address the situation just as important as getting it fixed?

Another difficulty that comes up quite a lot for me is an inability to make a decision and be happy with it. Part of being an analytical person is feeling that there must be one right decision and if you have all the pertinent facts, it will be an obvious one. That can lead me to continuing to gather data well past the point where I should be choosing my path and moving forward.

Because this issue has begun to interfere with my life in various ways, including one of my new responsibilities at work, I have decided to focus on this area for a while and see if I can make a change. I am starting a list of the things I do that are outside my comfort zone in this area so that I can see my progress.

First on the list would be writing this post in less than 10 minutes and publishing it without any extra work (notice I didn’t go find out the names of the different personality test and what their specific tags are for my personality type).

My next item is to go hand in the first part of my SEO project without checking over the results one more time (trust me, I have already analyzed it to death and your guess is as good as mine as to whether my final choices will work out the way I want).

Anyone out there like me? Or is everyone else a big picture person already?

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To-Do Tuesday, This Time With An Actual To Do List Included

Trish — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:00:15 +0000

Sorry for yet another week of absence from this blog – outside of a fun trip on Saturday, my time has been focused almost entirely on the behavior plan we are getting ready to start at school with Michael. I think we finally have something good and am very hopeful that it will work as expected. The teacher has been so frustrated and I really wish the team last year had started the process in February when I originally asked them to instead of waiting until mid-May when I demanded it, but at least we have one now.

I was also pretty stressed out because I agreed to go to Michael’s Halloween party at school before I realized that meant I had to actually PLAN it! I thought I was just supposed to show up and do as I was told. Thankfully, the homeroom parent did a lot of the kindergarten parties last year and helped me out with some great ideas. Now I just need to prep for one of the games and I will be all set.

Once that weight was off my mind, it was much easier to plow through the backlog of phone calls and paperwork that has been piling up on my desk. So now I have a list I can actually fit on one page again!

Stuff That Has to Get Done:

Buy new Halloween costume for Michael (hand-me-down one he wanted to wear isn’t big enough to wear over regular clothes)

Buy Halloween candy

Don’t eat the Halloween candy!

Make bingo cards for school party

Do Family Turkey Project together

Gather information for meeting with Special Needs planner

Make copies for MA reapplication and mail in the packet

Get car inspected

Things I’ve Been Procrastinating About:

Send out Michael’s school pictures to family

Go through vacation photos and send prints to family back in Illinois

Start planning for Christmas gifts

Figure out what I’m doing for Christmas cards

Find the books J recommended on talking about autism with Michael

For more To-Do Tuesday, visit Crazy Adventures in Parenting.

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To-Do Tuesday with Biomed Update

Trish — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:06:00 +0000

Well, I didn’t get much checked off my list this last week – too many other things kept popping up that needed to be done. After going round and round with the DAN! doctor’s office, I have decided to get copies of all the test results we haven’t met to review yet and then cancel the follow-up appointment. It is just not worth the hassles I am dealing with every single time I need insurance paperwork done properly or even to talk to someone at the office. The office manager has been very helpful, but even she can’t make up for the other frustrations I have experienced.

Now I am trying to figure out what route we are going to go. I do have Michael taking a small amount of Essential Fatty Acids as well as Melatonin at bedtime and Liquid Zeolite, which we are trying out with a few other local parents. We are going to be tracking the zeolite on a weekly basis, so I can’t add the other supplements I was holding until the organic acid test was sent in (which is now on hold anyway!).

We have a behavior plan meeting Thursday morning with the school – very excited about that – and our wraparound agency is working on getting a new TSS b/c the current one is just not up to par with what we need.

With everything going on, I think reorganizing my to do list into more of a schedule would make sense and help me to feel less like I am trying to do too many things at once. Hopefully, this will move me closer to a routine like the one that was working so well last summer.

This is where the To-Do List normally goes, but I just still haven’t really figured out how to organize my schedule. So I guess this is really just a Biomed Update!

The behavior plan meeting went well. I’ll post more about that soon. Right now, we’re super excited about going to see They Might Be Giants on Saturday for a kids’ show – although it is supposed to be yucky and rainy. My sister-in-law and her family are planning to come. Two of their girls haven’t been feeling well, so we are hoping they will be better by the weekend.

For more To-Do Tuesday, visit Crazy Adventures in Parenting.

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Dr. Oz on Autism, Brain Inflammation and Dietary Intervention

Trish — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:46:01 +0000

We’re in the mainstream now, baby! I just saw this clip on Age of Autism and felt like I was in the twilight zone (in a good way).

Listen to this short clip where Dr. Oz discusses inflammation of the brain as contributing to autism and how simple dietary changes can help.

Here’s a link to the Dr. Oz on Autism video if you can’t see it here.

For more information on treating children with autism through dietary changes and other biomedical interventions, visit www.autism.com.

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Only 11 Weeks ‘Til Christmas???

Trish — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:36:12 +0000

Okay, how scary is this? SimpleMom.net is doing a series on 12 Weeks to a Peaceful Christmas, and, not only has it already started, but today’s post was on Week 11!

Does it count that I already have 34 Christmas cards ready since I didn’t get them all sent out last year??

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