Benjamin and Emerald

Last post was all about what Gabriel is doing at school and how he is handling everything; today is all about what we are doing here back at home!

Outwardly, Emerald is giving us very little indication that she is upset Gabe is going to school and she is not. We explained that he was going to "boy school" and that we were going to look for a school for her; she accepted that explanation with no fuss and doesn't seem bothered in the slightest that she isn't getting to go.

But she is having more accidents.

After Benjamin was born, Emerald regressed and stopped using the potty meaning that Michael and I had to essentially retrain her. It was tough with a lot of frustrations all around but we finally got back to her using the potty consistently.

Since about a week before Gabe started school, Emerald has been going into the bathroom and peeing on herself. It isn't that she isn't getting in time or is struggling with removing her clothes--we started putting her back in pants with no buttons or zippers and that made no quantifiable difference in number of accidents. She just pees on herself, removes her wet clothing, and comes and finds Michael or me to help change her.

Besides that, we are still having trouble with her hiding in the pantry or in her room to "make her tummy feel better". As far as we can tell, that means that she needs to pass gas and doesn't want to do so in open company; as it is, she only hides like that when she does need to go, the rest of the time she will just let one rip, consequences be damned.

We are starting her on some cranberry juice and we are taking her to the doctor to make sure it is not a physical issue, but I think she is just having more trouble with Gabriel being gone than she is letting on, which is resulting in the increased accidents.

Other than that, everything is great!

My workload has lessened considerably sending one child away for half the day. Gabe requires so much attention and monitoring that I was scarcely able to do anything else. It was rare for me to be able to answer a phone call during the day because Gaby would start sobbing and screaming until I hung up and held him (don't even ask me what THAT was all about). Now I am able to handle business over the phone about student loans and bills, medicaid, or comparing prices before we buy tires...things I was completely unable to do before. The sound of the dishwasher bothers Gabe, so I had to be careful to only run it when he was sleeping, and Benjamin crying drove him to distraction.

I miss my Gabriel very much, but the pressure and stress has decreased knowing that he is somewhere safe where he can learn and do all his therapies so I can focus on Emerald and Benjamin.

Benjamin is just about crawling. He can sit infinitely in crawl position or get up on his hands and tippie-toes, but once he is there he doesn't know what to do next. Using a combination of rolling, launching, and army crawling he is able to get from place to place fairly efficiently if not a little clumsily.

He has been super mega fussy--he doesn't want to be held, he doesn't want to be set down...he pretty much just wants to eat all day long, chew on his vibrating and singing cow toy, and drool. Sounds like teething, but no fever or any indication that a tooth is coming in. He absolutely loves eating though. Every baby food we try him on he absolutely loves, and he has taken to trying everything anyone else is eating as well. His favorites so far have been macaroni and cheese, brownies, sweet potatoes, and bananas. The only thing he has eaten so far that he has genuinely not liked has been baby food carrots; when he ate the steamed carrots we had for dinner he loved it, so I can't entirely blame him for not liking the yickier baby food version.

Everyone seems happy with our new arrangement--we get up earlier in the morning to see Gabe off to school which means we are able to make the most of our day. Maybe soon we will start attempting to walk to the library for story time or to the park, as the weather is getting nicer and nicer. The wind has been wretched, but the days have been warmer and sunnier.

I think that is all for me rambling for now!

--andie--

Gabriel Starts School

As I mentioned in the earlier post, when Gabriel turned three he was accepted into PPCD.

PPCD stands for Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities. Its intention is to pick up where ECI--Early Childhood Intervention--leaves off at the age of 3 to try and get children with significant developmental delays caught up.

Having been diagnosed as having Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD--I have discovered that there are a ton of acronyms relating to this condition!), Gabriel meets the criteria, and their hope by accepting him is that he can get used to the structured school environment and the stresses that come along with public school like crowded hallways, many other children, lots of uncontrollable noise, bright lights, vibrant colors...in short, overstimulating environments. If he can get used to learning despite everything else going on in his head, then by first grade he may be able to attend "normal" classes with his peers.

The way they are doing this is by something they call "inclusion", where his class has activities such as PE and field trips with one to three other typical pre-school classes. The neurotypical children model what behavior is expected and gives Gabriel a taste of what a class with them would be like.

At the ARD (Admission, Review, and Dismissal) meeting earlier this month, we went over Gabriel's IEP (Individualized Education Plan). Warned you about the acronyms, didn't I? The IEP tells me what the teacher is hoping to get accomplished with Gabe by the end of the school year, the things they are going to be working on with him. Since everyone in his class range from age 3 to 5 with a variety of developmental or mental delays, they cannot all have the same goals, which is why it is individualized.

Gabriel's goals for this semester are:

*Staying in a designated spot and stay on task for increasing amounts of time

*Expressing his wants/needs using signs, pictures, or verbal exchange

*Completing cognitive/academic tasks such as matching, following one step commands, pointing to objects, and sorting

*Matching, pointing, and/or naming the colors red, blue, green, and yellow

*Counting objects using one-to-one correspondence from 1-10

*Matching, pointing, and/or naming the shapes circle, rectangle, square, and triangle

*Completing daily routine jobs like putting his backpack away, signing in at the beginning of the day, cleaning up after activities, etc

*Indicating the need to use the bathroom or that he needs to be changed

*Brushing his teeth

*Participating in parallel or cooperative play with peers in increasing amounts of time

*Interacting cooperatively in a group setting

*Cutting paper with scissors

*Tracing a vertical line, a horizontal line, a plus sign, and a circle

*Performing daily sensory activities using hands, mouth, and/or ears

Now, admittedly a lot of those are going to sound bizarre, or like it is not for the school to be teaching. Here's the thing you have to remember when thinking that: Gabriel is a very sensory-oriented child.

All children with autism are--it is one of the defining characteristics. They process sensory input in a way that greatly differs from the way that most people do, and it causes many daily activities to be unpleasant at best or painful at worst.

I am specifically referring in this case to the potty training and teeth brushing. My brother Jarrod can attest how awful brushing your teeth can be, as he cannot stand the sound it makes in his ears. It is much the same way with Gabriel. As these are two activities that are frequently problematic with special needs kids, PPCD works on them in conjunction with what the parents are doing at home so that the child can adapt to the sensation instead of avoiding it all together.

Other activities like tracing shapes and cutting with scissors are to help with hypotonia--where the fine muscle tone of the hands tend to be too weak to accomplish detailed movements such as grasping a pencil and pushing hard enough to leave a mark or squeezing scissors with enough force to cut through paper. By working these muscles, they improve his fine motor skills.

The others are fairly self-explanatory in that they are things that Gabriel is expected to be able to do because of his age but is unable to accomplish currently, such as peer-interaction, focus, and cognitive tasks such as color and shape recognition and sorting.

Gabriel is lucky in that he is quite intelligent. Of course, I cannot say this definitively as he is at this time unable to perform an IQ test due to a lack of communicative skills. When he is six, we are hoping that he has progressed to the point that he is able to complete this test--we would be testing for mental retardation, which no one is seeing indicators of at this time but has to be performed as MR and ASD sometimes go hand-in-hand. At the age of six, he will be reevaluated on his developmental level, to see if he is still testing as Autistic, and at that time we will likely test him for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) which he is certainly showing signs of but as with MR can be associated with ASD.

Yeah. Anyways.

The reason I bring all that up is that because he does appear so intelligent to me, to the experts, to anyone that spends time with him...because he is so smart, I expect he will thrive in this program.

I am not going to lie: it is going to be hard. It is hard on me, sending him when he is so very young and feels like my baby, and I still don't trust anyone to watch him as well as I can. But it is going to be even harder on him.

Don't get me wrong, he is going to have a ton of fun. He is going to have OT and Speech Therapy there, he's going to make friends, he's going to have people that understand him and like him just the way he is...

But they are going to push him to do things that make him uncomfortable, that are hard for him. It is going to be difficult. But it is going to be good for him. I have to admit that despite my apprehensions and my hesitancy, I know that it is the very best possible thing that we can do for him.

Blah blah blah, that was a lot of talk about the program, but you are probably more interested in Gabe and how he did.

He started on Wednesday; Michael and I dropped him off for his first day, which ended up being good since we then had to fill out a ton of enrollment paperwork. I don't understand how I had met with these people for the evaluation and the ARD and still had not been informed of enrollment or given the papers or anything. Of course, they likely assumed that I would have known about these things.

His class has eight other boys; no little girls. In the classroom, there is the teacher and two aides at all times with them, and then they also have the speech therapist, the occupational therapist and her assistant, and the physical therapist that come in. They go to classes like art and PE as well, and there are extra adults in there at that time. Basically, Gabe will never go unattended, which I am a big fan of. They serve breakfast, lunch, and snack in the classroom and they understand his limited dietary interest so the food they provide is more often than not things that he will enjoy. The campus is lovely--it really looks like a good school, in a good neighborhood, not too big, and everyone that works there have been wonderful. The playground is new and beautiful.

The first day was hard. They send home notes with the doctor's smiley-face guide to indicate how well he did. The first day was mostly frowns, accompanied by phrases such as "cried all morning", "wouldn't wear shoes", "didn't want to eat, wouldn't sleep". When he came home in the afternoon, he was so tired he barely made it up to the front door on his own steam. He wouldn't make eye contact,wouldn't hug me or let me hug him, wasn't making any babbling noises...

After about an hour on the swing, he started grunting and put his hand on my knee in acknowledgement that I was there.

The second day was much better. Gabriel woke up with less struggle or fight, and when he came home there were mostly positive notes and happy smiley faces. He still didn't nap and isn't eating much, but he is happier to be there and starting to bond with his teacher.

Friday morning, he was so excited to get to school that he woke up extra early--two hours early, to be precise. At four in the morning, he was bouncing on the couch and cackling, getting into the fridge, and generally wreaking havoc. He had a great day, even progressing to taking a half hour nap.

He is adapting. He is liking the routine, liking school.

We told Emerald that Gabe was going to "boy" school. It has caused a little stress; she is jealous. She has been having some tinkle accidents at home which we haven't had to worry about since basically November (maybe?). But she is appreciating the increased attention she is able to get at home. I am working on getting her ready for Kindergarten (though she will start preschool next semester, not kindergarten). Working on counting, reading, sorting, reasoning/problem solving--that sort of thing.

We have fun, too. We play board games like Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land. I paint her nails and she paints mine, we read a library of books, watch girly movies and shows, dance, cook and clean and play with Benjamin, go outside....it is a thousand times less pressure without Gabe here, even though we all miss him. He requires so much extra attention and monitoring, not to mention the therapies...it was draining trying to give all the kids what they needed, little less that extra mile of "fun".

Mommy being less stressed is having a positive effect on the house, I believe. When I am stressed, everyone is stressed. When I am not...it is a lot of pressure on me to be relaxed and cheerful when I don't particularly feel like it, so it is really nice to genuinely not feel as much pressure pushing down on me. It has also had a positive influence on my productivity as well.

Okay, so I have talked more than anyone is interested in reading, so I should quit stalling and go get to packing. We are going to Abilene Sunday for Gabriel's birthday--we are taking him to Veggie Tales Live!

Hope y'all have a great week!

--Andie--

Gabriel's 3rd Birthday Party

Our Gaby-Baby is three!!

Admittedly, we have been rounding up for a while. It is easier, and despite his delays he seems much older than just three. For one thing, he's huge--about 32-34 lbs, though you couldn't tell by looking at him as he is thin and surprisingly muscular (surprising if you don't know about his activity level, lol).

Last year for his second birthday, we went with a Toy Story theme (his first birthday was baby Sesame Street) with all lime greens and blue. This year I was having difficulty because it is hard to know what Gabe likes and doesn't like, but one thing has been a constant--Veggie Tales.

Of course, Veggie Tales is harder to pull off than you would think. They have tons of party supplies, ranging from party favors to scented stickers to colorful Bob and Larry lights, but the stores in town have limited supplies. We could order them online, but I don't trust quality unless I can hold it and check it out myself.

As it turns out, Beth was amazingly helpful--she located all the best party supplies in town, took me to get them one morning, and even then handmade all the decorations for the cake! If it hadn't been for her, Gabe wouldn't have had much of a birthday, as I was so preoccupied with enrolling Gabe in the Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities (PPCD) all last week.

Speaking of: Gabriel is now enrolled, despite my great apprehension, and starts Wednesday. That is why I have been so lax with keeping up with the blog of late; I do a ridiculous amount of paperwork.

Anyways, that is me getting off topic.

I wanted to do something nice for Gabriel's class at church because he is really bonding with everyone there, starting to make friends which I want to encourage. You would not believe the stress that caused! You would think it would be pretty straight forward and simple: I have sent treats to Emerald's school for her birthday before; usually cupcakes and Capri Sun pouches and leave it at that.

Well, last week we met with the nutritionist to discuss Gabriel before he graduated ECI, and she explained why Gabe's diet is so restricted--he likes dry foods usually high in sodium because they are more exciting to his under-stimulated taste reflexes, and in the colors white, brown, or beige. It was something that I had not considered before: that colors on food can be overstimulating to kids on the spectrum.

So! With all that in mind (knowing makes everything more complicated), I go to the store and pick out chocolate doughnut holes with rainbow sprinkles, Toy Story fruit snacks, and Capri Suns. Awesome.

Only, it's not. I remember: all of these kids are going to be in their nice church clothes, so their parents probably won't be thrilled if I give them something super messy, and these look sticky and are colorful all over...no one will touch them!

We leave for church early so I can go back by the store and deliberate, calling my mom and wandering around stressed as all get out. Pressed for time, I grab a pack of chocolate thumbprint cookies, dissatisfied. I personally dislike thumbprint cookies, and I worry I'll look lazy. Of course, I didn't need to worry as the whole little "party" was a big hit with everyone; I didn't even end up taking cookies home.

Between church and the party, Miss Kristin comes over for a visit before she heads back out of town, and we try to lay down and nap. Everyone is exhausted, particularly Gabriel who had to be woken up that morning for church, much to his displeasure. But no one but Benjamin got sleep, a cause of great concern for me. I feared significant behavioral problems at the party.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried--we kept it short and sweet for Gabe's benefit, and with only one sensory break he did really well. Emerald had a little accident unfortunately, but she didn't mind as she got to then wear her dress-up clothes and be Snow White.

We had a pretty good turn out: Sarah and Grannymom were unable to attend because they were both under the weather, but we still had a good crowd.

Beth and David Peacock came bearing the little decorative Bob and Larry's, as well as a gift certificate to the Jump N Jungle, scented Veggie Tales stickers, and "Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" finger puppets.

Glo and Pawpaw and Uncle Patrick of course were there, as it was at their house. They got Gabe some new clothes and the heavy-duty hiking sandals that Gabriel is so fond of (he hates having hot feet or enclosed shoes, and these are the perfect compromise). They also got Emerald a Kindergarten workbook, which she is currently obsessed with.

Uncle Steve, Aunt Melisa, and cousins Sydney and Macy were able to come which was cool--they are so often busy that we don't get to see them much. They gave Gabriel a shape sorter and a neat gyroball that you fill with liquid it never spills (it looks really cool; Mike and I are dying to try it out).

Michael, Emerald, Benjamin and I got him a new pack of megablocks as he had defecated on his original set to the extent we deemed them more suited for the dumpster than cleaning, and several "Cars" cardboard books. He has never been great about sitting down and listening to stories with other people, but he loves looking at books by himself.

Also in attendance were DadDad and Michaela; Gigi and Papa were not able to come as they live six hours away, but they sent him a new puppy backpack and an adorable red tricycle with a trunk...Gabe loves it.

After presents, we took a short break and then moved straight into cake. Rhonda and I had discussed it and came to the conclusion that the less we did, the better. While Emerald is getting to the point where she wants her birthday party to last for hours, Gabe has a short attention span and dislikes crowds of people, loud noises, bright colors, or people paying too much attention to him. He is learning how to cope, but in manageable doses.

Keeping that in mind, I opted out of snacks or an actual meal, deciding to keep it to cake and drinks. Even still, I wanted a good variety, so I got a medium-sized carrot cake (it is Veggie Tales themed, after all) as well as four red velvet cupcakes and four chocolate curl cupcakes; we still had the rainbow sprinkled chocolate doughnut holes that we did not use for his Bible school class so we put those out, and Rhonda set up a bowl full of mixed nuts which are Gabriel's current favorite food. Rhonda also brewed sweet and unsweet tea, and I brought root beer, sprite, and orange soda.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, even rushed as the party was. When we got home, everyone was exhausted from such a busy day.

All in all, I am quite pleased with how well everything went, and Gabe seemed to enjoy it :) I am counting it as a win. Now I don't have to plan another kid's birthday party until Benjamin's first in September!

--Andie--