Yesterday was our nephew’s fourth birthday party.
As you get to four years old, you start discussing ‘real’ birthday parties – perhaps something different than what we do for the kids (a BBQ or over-glorified playdate), and this year, our nephew Z had a party at a movie theater. Continue reading
It’s easy to express, when you’re an adult, that you’re having a bad day.
The Monster, on the other hand, hasn’t quite gotten to that level. While we can infer what’s going on, that he’s having an awful day, we can’t tell what’s wrong or try to talk through what we can do to fix it. Continue reading
Since the bus issue was resolved with the new route, we’ve really had few problems – the first day hiccups aside, and also disregarding bad weather, of course.
One of the things that happens when you go the route I go, though, is that you get a letter from the CEO of Schools afterwards. Continue reading
Today was the meeting with the IEP team to go over the triennial evaluations done on the Monster.
As I’d mentioned on Twitter, I was dreading today’s meeting. We’ve known about it for a month or so, and to be honest, we’re fairly sure also of where the evaluations are going to lead in terms of what the plans are for the future (or at least how it should guide his IEP goals for the next few years).
The problem is the evaluations themselves. Continue reading
Yes, this is a second visit to the aquarium, but… I didn’t look at it as a review, that time, so it’s time that I did that.
Last night was Pathfinders for Autism‘s night at the National Aquarium. We attended the event last year when the Monster was 4 1/2 and R 1 in a semi-ragged fashion, so this year we figured the trip would be more representative of a visit with young children and one on the Spectrum. Continue reading
There’s not been a lot of progress on the toileting front, to be honest, since the last time I wrote about it. We’ve been working at trying to get the Monster more “prepared” to go by himself… but every time we think we have progress, we take a few giant steps backwards from the feel of it. Continue reading
So we’ve been hit by another winter storm, suddenly stretching what was supposed to be a three day weekend into five.
Now, yesterday was not a day to go outside… which meant that the Monster, therefore, wanted to go outside. In the course of the storm, we were deluged with requests from him to ‘go to the playground’, which can either mean going actually to the playground (around the corner) or being allowed to play in the backyard. Continue reading
Next week is a meeting with the IEP chair (or, rather, her surrogate, as she should be off on maternity leave) to discuss the Monster’s triennial assessments.
So far, we’ve only gotten the educational assessment, but I’m not terribly surprised. As long as I have time to read them before the meeting and formulate some responses, I’ll be satisfied. Continue reading
So as I mentioned earlier this week, R went in for his two-year evaluations as part of the studies that he’s in.
We’ve had him evaluated by Infants and Toddlers before, due to concerns about where he’s felt “laggy” to us on his skills… and we were generally assuaged that he’s fine, though that we could certainly work harder with him on some things. In the time since then, he’s developed into quite the regular chatterbox and relatively normal child. Continue reading
I’ve probably mentioned a few times that R is enrolled in a couple of studies for siblings of children on the spectrum. Framing this weekend are the two-year appointments for these studies, where the wife’s having to take him into the lab for him to be evaluated… but that also means loads and loads of paperwork, where we’re answering questions ad nauseum about his development.
It also makes me think about those times where our children are particularly normal or not. Continue reading