Sorry guess I am a little hard to find these days I have mac, and for some reason blogger will not let me create a link..... so here is the adress....
http://web.mac.com/aburgess2/iWeb/Cottontales hopefully this will get you somewhere?!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
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).
Thursday, July 12, 2007
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.
Friday, July 6, 2007
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.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
I have mentioned before, that Cotton loves to swim. Today was no different than most. He starts the day insisting that he wears his swim trunks, which is fine, clothes are optional at my house right now (at least for the kids). We spend half the day getting muddy, and the other half getting wet, and I am not a huge fan of laundry. Today, however it was storming so swimming wasn't really an option. Cotton pulls me to the door, looks up and nods. I say "no I'm sorry honey, it is raining." All of a sudden Cotton pulls his little hand up to his chest, and signs "please"! I have NEVER prompted him to sign this ever (which, now that I think of it I should have), but this was totally his own. This broke my heart, I said, "I am so sorry we can't"... THEN he signed "swim, please!!!!" Again I have only showed him the sign for 'swim' once, and it was months ago!!! I was so excited I filled the bathtub and let him swim in his trunks- not quite as fun but they had a good time taking a bath in the middle of the day.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Initiation
We are knee deep in boxes here. But surprisingly I have found ample RDI moments. It has been such a treat having both kids home, I feel like I am finally getting the hang of it. I can seize an opportunity for RDI anytime of the day. Our big goal right now is to get Cotton to initiate, or even re-initiate. I am not sure he even knows he can start an action. So that is where we are with RDI.
Things have calmed down so much since moving in, we have been spending hours at the pool, and I have started homeschooling. I decided on Oak Meadow curriculum. It has the whole Waldorf feel, but it has much more structure, I NEED STRUCTURE!! The services down here stink. In the fall they offer a dev. delay preschool, that is only 2 hours long! They really have nothing durring the summer, so as soon as I get my referals, I will start interviewing OT's, PT's, and ST's! (they do not have teachers for the visually impaired, so I will have to shop a little further from home.)
I have to laugh because, I always sort of forget that Cotton is visually impaired. It just seems like the least of his worries. I actually had to call the Dr.(that issued my referals) back and say, umm... I forgot to mention he is visually impaired. He does really well with his vision. He seems very capable of seeing up close, he can see numbers and letters written in big print. He recognizes pictures on 2x2 cards. I can really only tell at a distance. If I ask him to bring me his pants, 5 ft. away, he cannot see them, and when we are in a group he will go up to people and pull them down to his level to see if they are me?!
Sometimes, it is hard to tell what is vision and what is Autism. For example he glides his hand across the wall as he walks around. He also tilts his head up to see out of his "null point" ( the point at which his vision is most clear). I went round and round with an aide once who was convinced that this was a visual stim, that needed to be stopped. His ped. opthamologist assured me and her, that this was necessary to maximize his vision.
So far Cotton is responding to my effeorts to encourage initiation. I am hoping this will filter down into other areas as well. He has been asking me to read to him this week. Usually he just walks around with the book in his hand, or reads it himself. This week he has physically put a book in my hand, and looked at me smiled, and nodded yes. Horay for small victories.
Things have calmed down so much since moving in, we have been spending hours at the pool, and I have started homeschooling. I decided on Oak Meadow curriculum. It has the whole Waldorf feel, but it has much more structure, I NEED STRUCTURE!! The services down here stink. In the fall they offer a dev. delay preschool, that is only 2 hours long! They really have nothing durring the summer, so as soon as I get my referals, I will start interviewing OT's, PT's, and ST's! (they do not have teachers for the visually impaired, so I will have to shop a little further from home.)
I have to laugh because, I always sort of forget that Cotton is visually impaired. It just seems like the least of his worries. I actually had to call the Dr.(that issued my referals) back and say, umm... I forgot to mention he is visually impaired. He does really well with his vision. He seems very capable of seeing up close, he can see numbers and letters written in big print. He recognizes pictures on 2x2 cards. I can really only tell at a distance. If I ask him to bring me his pants, 5 ft. away, he cannot see them, and when we are in a group he will go up to people and pull them down to his level to see if they are me?!
Sometimes, it is hard to tell what is vision and what is Autism. For example he glides his hand across the wall as he walks around. He also tilts his head up to see out of his "null point" ( the point at which his vision is most clear). I went round and round with an aide once who was convinced that this was a visual stim, that needed to be stopped. His ped. opthamologist assured me and her, that this was necessary to maximize his vision.
So far Cotton is responding to my effeorts to encourage initiation. I am hoping this will filter down into other areas as well. He has been asking me to read to him this week. Usually he just walks around with the book in his hand, or reads it himself. This week he has physically put a book in my hand, and looked at me smiled, and nodded yes. Horay for small victories.
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