A new schedule

So I feel like I'm a bit behind, but I think that's because a lot of stuff has changed over the last few weeks:). Nathan is toddling all over the place, the little cutie - oh how I love that first month when they are learning how to walk! Those unsteady little steps with their hands in the air - cute as can be! His favorite thing to do is go play in the basement. He is always standing by our basement door, banging and yelling, wanting to go down. He still doesn't know to turn around and back down stairs when he's at the top, so I can't give him free reign of the house yet. I keep showing him so I'm hoping that he will catch on soon. He has discovered pressing the pause button on the washer, so that made my laundry day interesting yesterday. We have started reading him books before bed and it's really cute, he points at things and looks up at us and grins . . . so nice to see him be so interactive:). He hasn't needed much sleep lately which is unfortunate for us (as much as we love his little voice, hearing it at 6:15am is not such a treat!), but he is also cutting his third molar in two weeks so that might have something to do with his sleep not being stellar. Hoping to be done with molars soon so we can have a little break before the eye teeth start! Last teether, I can make it!:)

Adam's home program started last week Wednesday! His aide's name is Samantha and he is starting to warm up to her! It took a few days, I wasn't allowed to leave the room for the first few days, but he is now comfortable alone in a room with her while I'm somewhere else for a while so that's good. The other day, I was in the shower when she came, and Adam didn't like that so much. He went into Brian's office and looked right at him and asked, "Where's Mommy?" and did not break eye contact until Brian told him the answer. Those kinds of moments are surreal for us, as he doesn't ask us questions! It might be hard for parents of typical kids to imagine what it's like to have a kid that talks a lot but doesn't really communicate, but this is a great example of something that we never see - a question asked of us! So happy to see that he is expanding his communication to the point of asking questions, even if it's only when he's stressed (for now). He has been asking me for things properly the last few days, too! I was sharing on the previous post (or the one before) about how he would say "Please Dad" but never "Please Mom", well the last few days, he's been saying it:). I love to report on the things he's doing well, because goodness knows, we still have a lot of struggles, too! The kids have been going outside the last few days because the weather has been beautiful, and trying to get Adam to come inside . . . it's a tough one. Today was better, so I'm hoping we don't have a repeat of the meltdowns of yesterday afternoon:(. Focusing on the positives:).

Lynsey has been crying a lot lately, causing us a lot of frustration. We feel like she can do better, and needs to learn to react a bit better. I made her an "Anger Wheel of Choice" last week, which is basically a poster board with a number of acceptable alternatives to crying and whining when she gets upset about something (I took pictures of her doing some of these things, like punching a pillow or lying down in her bed to put on the board and made a spinner in the middle, too). She really enjoyed doing it, and while the novelty is wearing off a bit, it has helped us through some crises! Hoping it continues to work for us, because I am ready to lose my mind with the crying. She is such a great little girl, helping me so much with both of her brothers, taking on a ton of responsibility that we often don't even ask of her! She will get through this phase, we just need to help her through it.

Some of you might be wondering how I feel about someone coming into my house 4 mornings a week and being in our space, and I have to tell you the preliminary results are in - it's been great! I actually thrive on a little bit of structure to my life - someone coming over almost every morning at 9 means I have a reason to keep the house in decent shape, and we have even instituted a nightly "clean the playroom" ritual before teeth-brushing! I have wanted to do that for so long but just never bothered, and the kids are great about it! Lynsey actually likes to do it, and nobody really messed up the playroom yesterday so we skipped it, and she was asking me about it! I like that I now squeeze in my work out before she comes so I can shower and be ready when she's there, giving me more time to just sit and play with the kids. She was here for the Easter party I had with my mom's group friends, and it was so nice to have someone helping Adam through some of his stress with all the people, and not letting him just avoid everyone to cope. He was around during the egg hunt, although didn't really try to find the eggs so much. At least he was present! We would like nothing more than for him to start joining in on some of these fun activities. The other kids love Samantha, too - she even brought stuff for dying Easter eggs yesterday! Adam wasn't interested, but Lynsey loved it haha! So far, it's been a great thing, so I'm hoping that it will continue that way:).

Nathan is finally walking AND we're getting Home Program for Adam!

Well, at the ripe old age of 12.5 months, Nathan is finally walking well:). For the last few weeks, he had basically stopped walking. Any time we let go of his hands, he just dropped down to his knees and crawled. It was this way up until today - suddenly, he was walking! Like everywhere! He still likes to grab onto things for support, but he's turning himself, toddling all over the place:). I kind of thought it would be this way, that he would suddenly decide to do it (since he's known how for a few months already!).

We took Nathan's soother away a week ago. He did pretty well with it, I think he's forgotten about it already. I do feel a bit bad for him because he's been cutting the top two molars over this last week - one is almost all the way through, one is about half I would say. He's doing really well considering. Naps are terrible, but how different is this from before? He has been getting up really early though (I blame the soother being taken away, because the other two kids did the same thing for the first while after losing their soother). Thank goodness for springing ahead or we would suddenly be 6am risers!

Another big thing that happened last week! I got a call from the LEAD Foundation. I had called them only the week before to get Adam on the waiting list for Specialized Services (basically a Home Program where an Aide comes into our house to help us out, and we get home speech and occupational therapy as well). I was under the impression that this would start in the summer at the very earliest, likely only in September. Well, on Wednesday I got a call that a spot had "somehow" opened up in the Northwest in the mornings and that Adam was the next one up for it! This is completely a God thing and I give Him all the credit for this, because this really should not have happened. We were on the list for a week! Sooo thankful! They are starting this Wednesday, and we are going to try four mornings a week to start. If I find that it's just too much, we will scale down to three, but we want to try and get him as much help as possible. Every now and again, it sounds like he's answering a question, so we are hopeful that with some extra help, maybe he will become conversational soon! So I will let you all know how that goes:).

Lynsey got her first report card last Wednesday. Her teacher, who has been out for over a month, wrote it. It was actually better than I expected based on our last parent/teacher interviews. She was mostly in "meets expectations", with 6 or 7 "exceeds expectations" and only a few areas where she "needed help" meeting the expectations. They were "how to be in a community" and "taking responsibility". Both areas that she actually does very well in at home, so I'm not sure what she's doing at school?? I'm taking it with a grain of salt based on our previous interactions with the teacher and taking the good away from it:). I talked to the substitute that has been teaching Lynsey while her teacher was away, and she had lots good to say about Lynsey! She said she does tend to zone out sometimes, but she thought the reason was because she was really bright and needed to be challenged more. She said that when she upped the challenges for her, she responded much better! Maybe her regular teacher should take a page from the substitute's book and she would be less frustrated with her:). All in all, we think she's doing great in school and should be just fine.

No one under 1 in this house anymore:)

I hate to be a complainer, but can I just say that every time blogger attempts to make some improvements to their photo uploader, they cause me more grief! How hard can it be with the technology that is available to make a good photo uploader! I have tried to upload my pictures in chronological order, but the wonderful collage they put together has them a bit jumbled unfortunately. Sorry - my rant of the day, over now:).

Our baby boy celebrated his first birthday last week! What an occasion for celebration! I hate to make this about me, but the fact that I survived this last year is something worth noting:). He absolutely loved his cupcake and cried when it was all gone, poor baby:). He is blossoming into a fun, curious, social little toddler. In the last few weeks, we have seen a big increase in his babbling, pointing, showing us things. . . he has even started bringing us books! We remember Lynsey doing these kinds of things, but Adam never really did. I hate to analyze everything Nathan does, but naturally we are hyper-aware of all the things he should be doing to see if he might be falling into the category of possibly having Autism as well. At this point, we feel like he is typically developing, but only time will tell for sure. He's crying less and just a lot more fun these days, which is so nice. He was pretty high maintenance for a while there! I did see one point of one of his molars poked through the other day. Yes - 1/16th of his molars down, 15/16ths to go! Okay a bit depressing when I put it that way. But it's a start! I have also been working on helping him go down stairs, and today, he went down several stairs on his own! Soon I won't have to have a heart attack every time he makes a move towards the stairwell:).

Lynsey has been so responsible lately! This morning, I was being lazy in bed and I heard her get Nathan out of his crib (yes, she drags him up and over the crib railing and it doesn't seem to bother him). She brought him downstairs and apparently fed him his breakfast. She also made toast for Adam (although later I found out she was so busy getting breakfast for her brothers that she forgot to eat herself:). She is just jumping right into that Momma role lol!). She has been offering to help clean up, and she is getting really good at remembering to put her backpack and winter clothes away when she gets home from school. I'm really proud of the way she is, really quite on her own, taking initiative on a lot of these things. Another perk to having an independent, capable child! They put their mind to it, and they can be a huge help! We love that little girl:).

Adam has been fighting me to get on the bus the last few days - very weird! Never happened before - he has always been nothing but thrilled to get on the bus before. Apparently once the bus goes, he's fine, and he was fine at preschool yesterday, too. I have to remember that every child has good and bad days. The problem is when Adam has a bad day, it is quite bad. I want to mention that the "Open pwease Kywa" was NOT a one time thing, and he does it regularly for his preschool teachers, and now for Brian as well. He will not do it for me. I have been trying to enforce that he needs to use my name and ask me in his "happy voice" if he wants something, but it just seems to agitate him more. He does do it for Brian after a bit of prodding, but he still has never done it for me. I think part of the reason he's had a rough few days is because I am trying to get him to do this, and he does NOT want to for some reason! I am stuck between just letting up on it and continuing to push it, because he has shown that clearly he has the ability to properly request things from other people. It is hard, because as much as you have to "pick your battles" (and with Adam, they really are big battles!) I feel like letting him off on this one is sending him the message that he doesn't need to respect me the same way he respects his teachers and his dad. I don't know . . . I'm so tired of the screaming and just want to give him his granola bar already! I've said it once, I will say it again - parenting (especially parenting an Autistic child) is not for the faint of heart! But we'll figure it out:). This morning was already a lot stressful than yesterday (up until he got on the bus anyway).