Monday, March 24, 2008

I can't believe I left out some very important info from that last post. First of all...I now have NO MORE KIDS IN DIAPERS!!! Thats right...Tyler is now finally potty trained!!! We have gone a whole week with no diapers and no accidents even nap time and bedtime!!! It is soo nice to not have to worry about changing diapers anymore.

Also, I have started to homeschool both kiddoes. Tyler gets it 3 days a week and Jacob gets it every day. I am really enjoying it and they are actually learning and having a lot of fun. It is so nice to see that they learned something that I taught them. I think its awesome and I love how I feel when im teaching them. Its great that we get to incorporate our LDS teachings into our school work.

Now...there has been this bill going around here called Stevens Law. And what it is, is it makes it so that behavior therapy (ABA) and Hab therapies would be covered by private insurances. Also stuff like Physical, Occupational, Speech, and Music therapys would all be covered. Well on Friday the Gov. passed it!! YAY we are all so excited! So what does this mean for us? Well come Jacob's 6th bday we may be losing all of our services through the state because he isnt as severe as most kids are in Autism that he may not meet the requirements they have for 6 year olds. But he is only this good because of the therapies he has been in. So if he doesnt get them he Will go back to his old self. I saw it this past week. He didnt have therapy almost all week and by Wednesday you could really tell he was gone without therapy. He had NO eye contact, he was just really out of it and not in tune with the world. And im scared that if he loses his services he will go back to what he was before therapy. Well because this law passed it means that we will still be able to get all therapy's even after hes 6 through our private insurance. I am so excited and I can not wait until I get that notice saying we will be able to get it on our insurance now!!
I hope everyone had a good Easter. I know we definitely did! This week was my week to teach the lesson in our sunbeam class so it was really fun trying to figure out a good way to teach our little kids about why we celebrate Easter. It was a nice review on the life of Jesus and it was really good for me. I started out the lesson having the lady I teach with take the kids in the classroom for prayer and stuff and I went outside and hid some eggs out there. So when I got back in the room they all asked me where I went. I told them I had to go get something from my car. And when I was outside I saw the Easter Bunny and he had eggs for the kids and he wanted me to tell the kids to go out and find what he left for them. So they got all excited and wanted to go out and find the eggs. So we did that then came in and I explained that it was fun finding eggs and getting jelly beans and having the Easter bunny but that isn't the real meaning of Easter...then I went into the lesson. It actually went really well and it lasted until parents came! Its amazing...that never happens. Usually I have 20 min left haha.

Friday night Sharon and I got together and had so much fun...like always!! We played a few games...which I won all of...but one...hahaha. Sorry Sharon!! I'm just the game master...I cant control that =) and we made THE BEST cookie thing...EVER!! It was so good and we couldn't stop eating it! But it was sooo rich and made us sooo sick. But very yummy. It was a peanut butter cookie that we put in a cake pan and then covered it with chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and marshmallows. Then put it in the oven for about 5 min and let it all melt and the marshmallows got a little brown...and it was perfect!!

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

I know I haven't posted a blog in a while. Nothing real fun going on to blog about...haha. I hate always writing about negative things but that just seems to keep popping up in my life!

First I want to start off with a very positive thing. Today is my niece Madysons birthday!! Happy birthday Maddy we love you very much. You are such a great little girl and you are growing up to be such a great girl! My kids just adore you and love their cousin maddy. Jacob gets so excited every time he sees you and Tyler loves to hug you and talks about maddy all the time. We are so happy to have you here all the time with your mommy and daddy. But we sure do miss you at church and on the weekends!

Here is a picture I have of maddy. Not a very recent one, sorry maddy haha.







Ok with that being said now I can talk about the other stuff.

In Jacob's therapy they have been changing his schedule A LOT. And well, if you know or have a kid with autism, you know that schedule changes are not good. They don't adapt easy to a schedule change and its just not a good thing. So hes been having a lot of behavior problems, at therapy, and at home. So last Wednesday his teacher tells me that she wants me to meet with her and then one of the head guys at this therapy center. I am scared to death because I think hes gonna get kicked out of school or therapy or something. She told me that we have to discuss his behavior so I knew he was gone. The next day I go for our meeting and they started out by talking about positive things about him, which was GREAT. It made me feel like they weren't there just to tell me all the bad things about my son. So then we go to start talking about his behaviors. I guess at therapy (and at home) hes been running into walls, kids, adults, throwing toys, not having control of his body and hitting himself on things. So after hearing this I had mentioned to them that maybe it could be sensory problems? They totally agreed with me and said that it definitely could be that. Now I have written before about Jacob and his sensory issues that we were getting him diagnosed with a sensory disorder. It never got done so we never addressed that. But since all of these new behaviors are going on we definitely are going to address it. He just got a new occupational therapist and so when they get to know each other more we are going to have her make him up a sensory diet. Its not a diet that you eat but its activities that you do to give them more sensory since he is seeking it the most. Examples would be, deep pressure, playing wtih play doh, jumping, swinging, spinning around, playing with shaving cream or sand, brushing...and more. So we will see what they come up with for him. We are going to have to do it every 45 min so that's going to be a challenge but I am pretty sure its going to work. On Sunday, during Sac Meeting, Jacob was sitting on my lap and I started giving him pressure and next thing I know he was fast asleep...haha. It calmed him down so much that it put him right to sleep.

Oh, in other Jacob news...remember how I posted about him hurting his toe? Well a few days ago they called and told us that his toe was broken...haha. that's nice, a week and a half later they finally get around to calling us to tell us that its broken. He is walking fine on it and it doesn't hurt at all. A few days after he did it, he was walking on it with no problem. That's just how much he doesn't feel a lot of pain. isn't that crazy?