Sunday

Anthony with Mike's mom, and with our niece Hillary. They had a nice visit. He has had a good week, so far. Today at school he had "Jump Bunch", which is, from what I can gather, all kinds of sporting stuff. His therapist said he independently kicked three soccer goals! He still has a few times every day where he gets upset, but I have to say they are getting to be fewer and farther (further? Farther, I think) between. I am hoping that the weather is good this weekend so we can take them to the apple orchard. They have these hay bales that you can play in and I think Anthony would really like them.

Cute picture

Poor Anthony

Poor, forgotten Anthony. He is in school all day and then we are all crazy when he is home, through bedtime, and I never get any pictures. I took these yesterday. He had a kind of a rough morning and then had a good, but calm (?) day at school. He also had a little rash on his side that's all gone now. Who knows what goes on. This mornng, he is at his public school so he'll be home for a long day. I hope he does okay, usually he's not wild about being home.

He is doing okay. He cried a lot last night and we both went up, he was *extremely* sad. It's so hard and confusing, because on the one hand, of course you feel sorry for him. But on the other hand, holy loud!, and I'm afraid he's going to wake up the girls. Veronica fell yesterday and bit her tongue and I was hoping she'd sleep all night and not need any more Tylenol. Also, he will be crying his heart out one second and then laughing uproariously the next second, so you kind of feel like you are getting played. You're not getting played, he really doesn't have the ability to do that, but it FEELS like it. Anyways, then he calmed down and eventually he went to sleep. He has been on a pretty regular sleep schedule here lately, it's much bettter than it was this time last year. I don't want to say too much about it.

So things are just the same as ever, Mike went out of town and came home, we should all be home now through the end of the year. Thank GOD.

Some video for Amy

I was telling Amy the other day about these videos I have of Anthony watching Signing Time.  Here's one, where he clearly says "brush teeth" after Rachel does.  And here's another one, of him doing a Wiggles dance.  Here's the last one, of him doing the "all done dance" from a Signing Time DVD. 

Zoo

Watching the walrus.

It was a beautiful day.

Sweet!

We had a great week with Anthony.
We have been trying putting his vest on him early in the morning to see if he can be a little cheerier and it's been going okay.
He has been *whispers* sleeping well and everything!

Of course we had a great time at the zoo this week, it was his first full week back at school where he had his public school morning too, and it's all going well. I met his new speech therapist and she seems to be just fine. So hopefully all will continue along and things will keep looking up.

How could they not? Look at him! Has there ever been a sweeter boy?

More zoo

I have been meaning to post these forever. I am always waiting for some peace and quiet around here so I could type a nice post, but as it seems like that will never happen, I'm going to go ahead and post these.

Penguin

At the zoo, the other day.

Walrus!

What an afternoon we just had. Here's where I was telling Anthony, "it's all right, it's okay, it's fine, Mommy is right here, and Amy is here, it's fine, it's fine, it's FINE!". We went to see the walrus at the zoo and it was UNBELIEVABLE. It went very well, he is such a good boy. Amy has a friend who works there and we went up on top of where the walruses are at first. It's a grate, like, and you walk across it and can look through it and see and hear them. Anthony was a teensy bit wiggy at first but he just relaxed right into it. His fingers stayed in his ears the WHOLE time, practically, but he really did enjoy it. THEN we went downstairs while Mandy, Amy's friend, fed the walrus and had him do all these tricks, including dancing, shaking her head no, saluting, putting her fin (?) over her heart, and more dancing and shaking. It was an unbelievable experience and although Anthony was whacked out at first, I cannot believe how quickly he relaxed and enjoyed it. It was an incredibly experience. I'll post most pictures later but I just wanted to record how it felt, right now, to have such a brave and beautiful person for a son.

Good News/Bad News

The good news is, Anthony was so, so good at the store today.  He was good when we all went and he mostly rode in the cart, and he was good later when he went with Mike and walked around the store, holding his hand. 

The bad news is that he has been miserable a lot this weekend. 

The good news is that Anthony has found a thing that he really likes.  He really likes to play in dirt and with rocks, just like a typical boy, right?

The bad news is that he likes to drip the dirt and rocks right near his eye and sometimes he gets the dirt in his eyes and that gets him really upset. 

The good news is that today is Labor Day, a holiday that we all take time off of work and appreciate our lives. 

The bad news is that Anthony's therapists have to get holidays too and he HATED being here today. All day, he was like, 'what the hell?  Why am I still here?'

The good news is that Maria and Veronica love Anthony so, so much.  I feel like they are built in friends for him.  Maria wants to be with him all the time.  '

The bad news is sometimes Anthony really wants to be alone. 

I try not to judge our lives, I try not to judge Anthony's life, but sometimes, after a long weekend, it's hard not to.  On to this week, Anthony will have occupational therapy twice and speech therapy twice and hopefully, HOPEFULLY, things will start looking up and we can see less and less of these soul sucking tantrums. 

Saturday

We went to a new park yesterday, it was really beautiful. We all had a good time and although Anthony was a little tempted by all the dirt! and gravel!, he did really well. As you can see, there was a lake, and he didn't go near it. At one point, we stopped to talk to a friend of mine, who was there with her husband and kids. Anthony sat on this hill that headed toward the beach and he kept scoot scoot scooting down, as if we wouldn't notice. Anthony was awake yesteday morning at 5:00, screaming and howling, SO mad, but he went back to sleep until almost 9:00! Maria could NEVER wait that long to go get donuts and bagels and coffee (and juice!), so they had already left and once Anthony got up, we wanted to get him going somewhere before he had a chance to get mad and we opted for the park. I'm so glad we went, it was really fun.

First Day

Ooh I love this picture. Doesn't Maria look dreamy, there in the back? It would be an excellent album cover, they both look very emo.

Anthony has had his first day at his public school. I spent a LOT of time on the phone with various jackasses about where he was going to go and who would take care of him, and I think we got it all straightened out. I'll tell you, though - there are a bunch of rotten people in public education, in my opinion. They do not give a HANG about the child or whether or not they are left behind.

I was talking to some friends this week about schools, public versus private, etc., and I said how we wanted our kids to go to Catholic school, but probably not Anthony, not for a while anyway. I said how it doesn't reallys seem too CHRISTIAN to me, that Anthony can't go to private Catholic school because he has autism, but there it is. He can't. Private schools are under no obligation to provide an education to kids with special needs. Kids with special needs have to go to public school, where they are legally bound to educate them. Although it doesn't really seem to me that our public school wants to educate Anthony. I mean, they DO, they kept telling me, if I would just ENROLL HIM FULL TIME, he could go to the autism classroom, but because I CHOSE to homeschool him (which is what they think of the ABA therapy school he goes to), all they could do was provide him a place at his border school.

I got there to pick him up on Thursday and his speech therapist told me it was her last day. It was also Anthony's FIRST day with her. Oy.

BUT - I will say this - I think his occupational therapist is wonderful. And I think that his speech therapist will be fine. And I think that his inclusion teacher will be fine. Once we got all the contingency plan into place, I think Mike and I are finally happy with it. Here's what his OT told me, via email, after his first day:


I think Anthony's first day went pretty well considering it was a whole new routine for him.
I kept him in the OT room for a few minutes and tried some of the standard activities from last year-sitting on the platform swing; standing on the inflated disc; sitting and bouncing on a ball. I tried to do some joint compression with him and some heavy touch pressure by rolling a large ball over his legs while he was laying down.
After a few minutes we walked down and he met the kindergarten teacher. I let him walk around in the class for a few minutes. He seemed pretty interested in everything. Then we walked to the speech office and he met Ms. Mindy and we stayed in her room for a couple minutes. We went back to the OT room and did a little more swinging and bouncing. I walked with him to Mrs. J's class and he sat at a table without any problem. The other children were very nice and helpful; giving him a coloring page, and a flilp book of the different colors. I helped him color his worksheet, he required hand-over-hand assist but he was helping to hold the crayon.
He finished coloring and we went over to the book bin where the children get books to look at while they sit on the carpeting. A boy from Anthony's preschool class came up and greeted Anthony. He wanted Anthony to sit next to him on the rug. It was time to sit down and Anthony sat down next to his friend and with the other kids.

So that's sweet, right? It made me cry, as I was reading it to Mike, about the other kids being nice and about his friend from preschool. His name is Sean and he's a year older than Anthony. I have high hopes, as usual.