New Blog!

I have a new blog site! Come and see.....

http://web.mac.com/aburgess2

Monkey business

Nothing will challenge a marriage more than home improvement. Not even Autism can produce as many fights, as "what counter top surface should we choose?". My kitchen (which we are remodeling) is almost done. Three fights, and 2 compromises later we have new appliances, now my husband and I are back again to figure out the counters!!!

The problem is I am cheap, and he is well, OVER THE TOP EXPENSIVE! His theory (and he says this often) is "if your going to be a monkey, be a gorilla." I always retort, that "I would rather be a chimp, they are a lot smarter". So my dear husband and I have one more round to go. If anyone has any wonderful counter top stories, I would be glad to hear them.

By the way, I am for tile, it is fairly inexpensive, and we can install it ourselves (see cheap above).

Unconventional

Yeah, I am not really sure what is going on in this picture, but it fits our week. We have started mixing it up a bit. Doing the most odd things to get Cotton use to variation. We unloaded books from the dishwasher, made animals make the wrong noise, and walked backwards to the mailbox.

Cotton does not understand that this is suppose to be silly. He thinks I have lost my mind. It is pretty entertaining for me at least to be working on a new objective. Mr. Chief loooves this stuff, he is jumping in with both feet.

On a good note, I took Cotton for all of his initial evals. for OT, PT, and ST. They all commented on how well behaved he was, and willing to participate, I was a proud mama. They are also very interested in RDI, and "said" they were committed to keeping things consistent. We won't start full force until next month, but for the moment, I am pleased.

Unconditional

I have been homeschooling for a few weeks now, and I am quickly discovering (at this point at least) that this homeschooling program has much more to do with MY education, than that of my children. It has brought to light many of my weakness', and I am seeing my kids grow, as I do. One of the main philosophies is unconditional love, at first I thought, "got that one down ( I almost skipped the chapter)". But, to my surprise this is by far one of my biggest challenges. In their terms unconditional love is accepting a person as they are right now. Seeing through the "behavior", and loving the reasons for the behavior. And, most importantly not wanting your child to be any different than they are right now. That is not to say, they will not grow and change of course, but this full acceptance thing really stuck in my gut. I am not very good at this. Ever since I learned of the "A" word, I have been waiting for Cotton to change. To talk, or be like all the other kids. This attitude has been a disservice to both of us. I have been trying to approach things differently, not trying to make him do things, rather to enjoy the process. This has not made much since to me until now. Even now, I am only beginning to grasp the concept. I was watching him stack his blocks,(a stim mostly) over, and over again the same blocks, the same order... usually this would annoy me. But this time I tried to see, how much Cotton loves order, and how much like me this trait is, I feel like I saw him more clearly than I have in a long time. The mood at the house is light and lazy, we are really enjoying our "free" summer. Cotton continues to use more signs daily, with out prompting for real communication. I am taking my time though. Absorbing what I have to learn and letting it soak in before I can say I am a successful homeschooler, this is a process I can see, I have a lot to learn.