Weekend Report

The weekend has been busy.

Miss M is definitely more regulated than ever before and has a noticeable bounce back feature that used to be non-existent. She got upset about taking a bath Saturday, didn't want to wash the hair, ya know. She started the banshee scream and I thought well here we go, 8 weeks later and we are finally going to get the wham-o. I cleared the area and a few minutes later Dad went in and made the announcement that when she was calm Mom would come in and help her with her hair. It took a few minutes but she calmed down and I went in and asked, "Are you ready for Mom to help you with your hair?" She nodded yes and we moved forward. She immediately wanted to say sorry for her behavior and I commented on how quickly she had come back into control of her behavior and that was good.

Mr. is quite simply a kid on the autism spectrum who is struggling right now with all the change we experience during this time of the year. On one hand he likes the break from school and being at home more, he is really affectionate and gives Mom hugs and cuddles regularly and tells me how much he loves me and sticks his nose in my hair and says, "I like smelling you, you smell like Mommy." Precious right?

On the other hand the break from school is breaking from routine and that is difficult for those on the Autism Spectrum, so we are struggling right now. As his CBA put it we are back to square one with Mr. C. Our main focus is to get him to use calming techniques and anytime he is upset and does not assault someone or destroy property this is a positive outcome.

Saturday we went to the local zoo. Miss M had some disappointment when we did not go where she thought we should go first, the playground. It was interesting that she started to have a tantrum, she stomped her foot and crossed her arms and just as quick turned it off and moved forward with the group. I did notice that she became passive aggressive with some really minor stuff after that. She asked to put her shoes on and go play at the animal care station with Big Sis. I put her shoes on for her and she went over there for exactly 30 seconds and then came back and jumped in the indoor sand pit with her shoes on. It is really obvious that everyone has to take their shoes off even the babies understand to take their shoes off and she has been there a hundred times so she definitely knows that there are no shoes in the sand pit. I directed her to kick the sand off her shoes and come on out because there are no shoes allowed in the sand pit and we were getting ready to leave (so it did not warrant taking shoes off and starting all over). She did that big smirky smile as she knocked the sand off her shoes and then turned around and jumped right back in the sand pit. I said, "Nice jump, come take a sit down with Mom for a few minutes." To which the smirk turned to ticked off face. There were several other accidental on purpose things but all in all no biggy.

Here are some pics from the day and the new header pic is from the day also and the updated side photos of the kids. I really love the old header pic but I thought this one was good also.

I love how they are in sync step for step.

Winter Florida Style

The Sand Pit

The Play Area at the Zoo closed so we improvised.

How's Winter Break Going?

The Lummox (aka Daisy the dog) uprooted a whole tree!

Lummox and Lil Bro

So far drugs and cookies are my friends.  *

Laundry is seriously backed up because I have taken to wearing my son's dinosaur socks.

Apparently the children have taken to foraging on their own.

The dogs are begging and the house is a wreck.

 

I found a pasifier for my pet.

She has a favorite chew bone that is hollow so I put peanut butter in side of it and she takes it in her kennel and gets all the peanut butter out and goes to sleep.  Yes!

*Note:  This is a joke, just what I thought of when I saw my twins hanging out on the couch.

How Long Is Winter Break?

Well Winter Break 2009 is off with a bang! Mr. C has been on a slippery slop lately and yesterday he flat out crashed and burned. He had A 3 HOUR TANTRUM. I had to call his Dad to come home from work because I could not handle him physically. He becomes so strong during these episodes. I am battered and bruised and my finger may be cracked or something. It seems messed up at the joint.

He damaged his closet door so badly that it has to be replaced. For whatever reason it became a kicking board at one point.

I contacted his psychiatrist and he has altered his ADHD med dose. His attention and focus have not been good in the last week or more and he has had a few minor struggles in school as well. From what his teacher shared they seemed focus and attention related.

After 3 hours of tantruming once he finally came back down to earth I was drained. I had a good cry that exhausted overwhelmed kind of cry. Apparently this made an impression on Mr. C. We had a detailed discussion again about how violence is not acceptable and how his actions are called "assault". He made a sincere effort today to do nice things for Mom. He had better control over his frustration level, I don't know if that is the med dose change or what. This med has an immediate effect, not accumulated like other types of meds.

I kind of got back to basics with him too. We stuck with a more rigid schedule today. Not only did his behavior choices determine if he had earned Wii/Computer time but I made a sign in sheet. He could choose 15 minutes of time every hour or 30 minutes of time every 2 hours. He stuck with 30 minutes every 2 hours. I directed him to engage in lots of positive brain activities, always with a few choices to pick from. He likes to destroy things, knock things over and what not especially the more agitated or frustrated he is. Knocking down block towers with cars is acceptable; destroying your room is not. So one of the first activities he choose was building with blocks and knocking them down.

He also did a lot of drawing today and asked to play with the leggos. He never got into the play-doh today but that will probably be of interest tomorrow. Although he had a lot of difficulty choosing what he wanted to do and getting started once I got him started in the play he took off from there on his own. Lil Bro joined him often and they did well together.

My girls did FABULOUS yesterday while Mom dealt with a 3 hour tantrum. Nan has been home sick with Shingles, horrible virus just AWFUL! Poor poor Nanster not even the Snuggie has saved her this time.

She is on meds for the virus and the nerve pain. The up side to this was she was feeling a little more human yesterday and was an extra pair of adult eyes to monitor the other Loo-Loos while I dealt with Mr.

Because they had done so well yesterday, Miss M never piggy backed on brothers bad behavior and Big Sis was helpful overall, so they got a day out with Dad. They headed out with him to a job he had to do and from there they had lunch and went to see the new Princess cartoon. He also took them on a hike.

Miss M was dealing with lots of emotional triggers today but she bounced back quickly each time.

At this point Winter Break seems Longgggggggggggggg!

Thanks to my Sister-In-Law for this funny!

The afternoon

Mr. C did better today. He is working toward a pack of Mario Brother cards that cost about 3 bucks. My great debater wanted to negotiate getting them this evening instead of tomorrow after school, no can do Buddy and if you keep on with the complaining I will no that you are not serious about earning them. Lord that ridged and literal thinking of the Asperger's mind can be just as challenging as the RAD stuff. Add to that the brain changes associated with the mild CP and also the ADHD and whoopee are we ready for the weekend?!

Miss M and I did her homework this evening as usual.  She did one comprehension paper totally on her own. It was a 3 sentence informative paragraph about a person, a box of a certain color and a certain day of the week. Boom boom boom no problem went right through that one. The next comprehension paper was the same format but was regarding playing at a park and 2 other key bits of info that I don't remember at the moment. A question asked, "What did they play?" they played ball but Miss M put park, which was where they played. I asked her, "they played park?" She immediately knew that was wrong and erased it but she was less confident and confused now. The next question was "where did they play?" She looked at the paper and looked at me and was lost. I redirected her back to where the answer was in the paragraph and with that one on one help she did just fine with me just helping her look in the right spot she found the answer.  In the classroom it is impossible for her to get that kind of stand by help.

We also finished writing the sentences for her spelling words. She tries to put together a sentence for the word and I write the sentence down and then she copies down the sentence. The process of thinking of a sentence and then writing that sentence is too much she gets confused and the words get all jumbled.  Forming the sentence is difficult for her too.  Some words she knew right away a sentence for them but others it was kind of like the play ball at the park thing, the concepts are close and she seems to get confused and then she realizes she is confused and just kind of stops. 

We did a practice test of her spelling words but for whatever reason this time I just had her spell them to me verbally. She got all twelve right! I noticed that if I made eye contact with her (which she readily does at this point in time) it seemed to distract her, as if her brain switched from focusing on the words to focusing on me. Unable to do both at the same time maybe? So I would say the word while looking at her and then casually look away from her, I have become really good at seeming distracted. She stumbled and had to think hard but she got them all right. Last week she got a 55 on the test.

In addition to the teacher being confused as to why this kid struggles to copy down the correct answer off the over head on to her own paper I am wondering if this is related to dysgraphia maybe? She has always had writing difficulty and continues to confuse b, d, and p. They are all the same shape they just point in different directions. She is better at it now but she seems to guess which letter of those three would go in the particular word at hand.  

On to the Winter Humor: