The school year ends next week. At the moment, the last day is supposedly Wednesday, but the pre-K “moving up” ceremony is Monday, so we’re not entirely sure that the Monster actually has school after that.
It’s been an interesting year, that’s for certain. He’s been doing fine and keeping pace with his pre-academics, as they refer to the course load at his grade level, even if he’s not necessarily gaining much ground on the other skills that he’s delayed in. Continue reading
With a child who is on the Spectrum, I spend a lot of time worrying about his health and developmental needs. Between juggling his therapy appointments, gymnastics in lieu of physical therapy that the city will no longer grant, and getting him to and from school, there’s a lot of things on that list.
The one thing that doesn’t appear on that list – and probably should, for obvious reasons – is my own health needs. Continue reading
I wrote last week about the fact that the Monster’s diet is getting more and more restrictive of late (see Dwindling Options). On Saturday, I took him to the doctor for his annual checkup.
(Fortunately, he didn’t have to get any shots, was generally cooperative and only resisted when the nurse wanted him to do a hearing test… but we’re not worried really about his hearing, so.) Continue reading
I’ve written before about how the Monster’s a picky eater, I know. And, for the longest time, this has been a larger concern for my wife than it’s been for me.
By and large, I don’t care what he eats, as long as he does get his nutrition so he can be healthy and happy. This is also with the fact that he does take a supplemental multi-vitamin with breakfast, so we’re sure that he’s at least getting the minimums when it comes to vitamins and minerals… but that doesn’t speak perhaps to the caloric count. Continue reading
I know that normal parents deal with this all the time, but we’re dealing with a whole different wrinkle to the problem.
R has started to imitate the Monster. Continue reading
Well, aside from what happened after the party was over…
The Monster’s party has been a work in progress for probably about two weeks as we worked to clean our house and get things organized food-wise. Normally, we have a small turnout of folks who already know what a disaster our place can be, but this was a party with a larger audience – all told, it was about three dozen people, with at least another dozen invited who couldn’t come. Continue reading
I’ll write more about the party itself tomorrow. But for now, an amusing vignette from when it was winding down.
We had hoped that Memorial Day weekend would, as the ‘unofficial start to summer’ entail a warm day for the party outside. Now, it wasn’t freezing by any stretch of the imagination, but it was really not so ‘summer-like’. Continue reading
One of our biggest frustrations with the Monster is how he’s something of a broken record.
He does certainly have a good library of words to pull from when he wants to talk, but he’s not quite yet mastered getting it through anything other than his rote phrases. For the longest time, it was a litany of “Can I have X, please”. Continue reading
As I’ve been mentioning, the Monster’s birthday party is this weekend.
For the longest time, we’ve had barbecues for his birthday – the weather’s usually nice at the right time in May, and we’ve really not themed too much since he’s not had something that he himself asks for. Continue reading
The Monster’s birthday party is Sunday.
The Monster has some concept of what a “birthday party” is, insofar as it obviously involves birthday cake. Aside from that, I’m not quite sure he’s aware of what it entails. Continue reading