This Past Week

We have had a lot of fun since the last post. The greatest motivation for that is because of how antsy I've been feeling--I'm getting a little burned out on everything lately, so I throw that much more effort into having good days with the kids at home. On a particularly bad day, Gabriel, Emerald, and I spent nearly an hour crafting a play-dough family (*pictured above), though Emerald was quite adamant that play-dough Benjamin looked more like a turtle.

New things with baby Benjamin: he smiles, he giggles, he chuckles, he coos. He can hold up his head really great, hardly wobbly at all, and now is rolling over :) He can only do it a few times, trying to get from place to place or get closer to me when he is nearby, but the ease with which he picked it up is so awesome to me :)

Last Saturday, Glo took Emerald to have breakfast with Santa. Emerald wore her brand new pajamas, and her necklace and bracelet with jingle-y bells. While she was gone, Gaby and I made chocolate chip waffles and hot cocoa for breakfast and watched Toy Story 2, then he helped me bathe Benji before Gabe took an extra long bath himself.

When Emerald got home, she was super excited about the pink piggie the balloon man had made for her. It was very cute, until she undid the legs, making it a pig face on a long balloon sword which she used to whomp and wallop her brothers, or else to poke it into our faces. It got pretty annoying and I threatened to pop it more than once, lol. It made me remember when I was growing up and mom and dad would always threaten to let our balloons loose out the window of the car because my siblings and I kept playing with them. I can't remember that they ever actually followed through with the threat, but I can imagine now how annoyed they must have been!

Besides the balloon, Emerald had a chicken biscuit, she told me, and saw Santa Claus and a snowman. She colored some pictures too; she seemed to have a very nice time. Gaby enjoyed his time at home with momma, but he was quite jealous of Emerald.

One of the most time consuming of all our activities was taking down all the fall decorations, cleaning the house, and then bringing in all of the Christmas decorations in from the garage and putting them up. We put on Christmas music and movies, and hung ornaments--this year, we opted to go for the "shatterproof ornament" balls instead of the treasured ornaments that Gabriel would have much an easier time destroying for good. As it is, he doesn't like the change in the house and keeps trying to take everything down, but for all I know, he is just part of the camp that thinks that Christmas decorations shouldn't be put up till after Thanksgiving, lol.

Emerald of course was the most helpful. She really loved singing and hanging everything up. She helped me cut pictures out of a toys-r-us catalog to make a collage letter to send to Santa Claus. Then I drew Christmas trees for all of us and we decorated them--I had gotten these crayons that you wear on the tips of your fingers and Gabriel thinks that is just the neatest thing ever because they are easier for him to hold. He doesn't even try to eat them! Emerald liked cutting shapes out of construction paper and gluing them on her Christmas tree as ornaments and lights.

If you're noticing that jail in the corner there, I assure you--it is not a baby containment area. Well, not in the punishment sense of the word at least. Both of the kids like having a place where they are contained and "alone", so I used this little gate to make their corner. Only one is allowed in at a time, it is full of balloons. They both enjoy just sitting back there and playing quietly until they are ready to rejoin the family.

On occasion, we have lovely fall days that are ideal for outside time. I wish that we could spend the whole day just playing in the backyard--picnic lunches, scavenger hunts, finger painting, swinging, basketball, races....unfortunately, Emerald usually relaxes just enough right after we are outside that within five minutes, without fail every single time we have gone outside, she tries to hide and have an accident. She really is making progress, which is encouraging, but this is a point of struggle for her, even if she sits on the potty or goes right before we go outside. It would be fine except that when she does that, I have to drag her back inside to go potty (which she never does) and the boys have to come back in even though neither of them want to. They sob and fight me and get angry, which makes me hurt for them--they didn't do anything wrong; nobody did. They aren't being punished. But Gabriel has trouble seeing it that way.

But inside has lots of things to do. Like I said, we have lots of crafts--one of my favorite things to do is to give play-dough to each of us so that we can all make something different; then Emerald and I make up a story up using all the different elements that everyone contributed. Gabriel is usually not very interested, but he likes feeling the play-dough. Up there, I made a kitty/dog that has a horn, lol. Emerald told me very plainly that it was absurd, took the horn off, and made the story about a dog.

Going through the kids' memory trunk, I stumbled across a bear sleeper pajamas for a little baby. I had bought it for Gabriel as his take-home outfit from the hospital because Emerald wore a long-sleeved pink striped onesie with a teddy bear on the front when she came home from the hospital, so I wanted them to have that to share. Of course, I completely forgot about that when Ben came home from the hospital as a Benji-bunny, but believe it or not, those fuzzy-wuzzy jammies were too hot for Gabe to wear when he came home in February. He ended up wearing a yellow and white striped onesie.

Anyways, it was crazy cute, so I dressed Ben up as a teddy bear. Then a thought occurred to me:

Emerald had missed her Halloween party at school. I had been meaning to do something to make up for it, but it had slipped my mind. So I pulled out Emerald's Rosetta costume from last year that was in the trunk too and we threw a party!

Gabriel resisted all attempts to dress up--he just wanted to be himself, I guess. Emerald hammed it up though--wand and costume, make up, headband, tons of jewelry....we got out the candy left over from trick-or-treating and ate some before dinner (the madness!). Then we blew up some balloons for our party, blew bubbles, and watched Halloween shows on Netflix. After they were done with their candy, they came into the kitchen and helped me cook while we listened to a documentary on American colleges. Okay, so I am a kind of boring :)

One last thing, I swear--then I'll shut up!

Tammy lent me some books about ASD, and we have been reading them together. The one I am on right now is "10 Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew" by Ellen Notbohm. Soon, I plan on finishing it and writing a bit about it so that Michael can get my impressions and so I can remember the highlights for future reference; as of now, I read it aloud to them although none of them can understand a word of it, but hearing it helps me remember and they like the sound of my voice. So hopefully you can look forward to that soon!!

Sounds like my chicken and rice is ready to come out of the oven--goodbye for tonight!

--Andie!--