gearing up

The new school year is upon us. I start meetings on Monday. My classroom will take another little bit to be ready for kids on Thursday, which is the first day.

We finally got a diagnosis of Aspergers for Owen. I'm relieved that that part of the process is done. Now we can move on to figuring out the best way to get him what he needs at school. Thankfully, he is high-functioning.

It's been a while...

Let's see here. What all has happened since my last post...in December....We don't have an official diagnosis beyond Sensory Integration Dysfunction and have been getting OT to help with that since March or so. We love the OT place and the OT. The specialist we've been seeing is hesitant to diagnose Owen just yet. We go in next month and hopefully, due to things that have happened in the past couple of months, get a definate diagnosis.

Owen is doing quite well otherwise. He is reading up a storm (which is so cool to watch and listen to), and has become fascinated by the states. He can identify all 50, on and off of the map, and knows the capital of each. One of his favorite things to do while we are driving around is to call out the state plates he sees. My favorite mispronounciation is "Hokaloma". He has recently started a collection of postcards from the different states where family and friends either live or visit. He loves getting the mail. My mom started it and it has really taken on a life of its own.

In May, Owen and I were in a car accident. We were stopped at a red light, as was the lady behind us. She was rear-ended and pushed into our car. We escaped serious injury, but I have been receiving PT for whiplash since the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.

I will be changing teaching positions this fall. I am sad to leave the school where I have been for the past 8 years, but a change was needed. Owen will continue to be at that school.

I have also taken up running and am trying to get to the point where I can actually run in a 5K. I had signed up for one before the car accident and had to walk it instead of run it due to my injury. I have another one coming up in the middle of August and am hoping to be able to run in that one.

Partial Diagnosis

Yesterday Owen had the Vineland Assessment. Basically they interviewed me while Owen was being observed through a one-way mirror (I was also in the room while he was being observed.) Initial findings after the interview are that he definately has sensory processing issues (which I could have told you), and that he seems to be functioning at below a three-year-old level for socialization. The social worker who admisinstered the assessment thinks that Asperger's is definately likely, especially given his low socialization skills. She'll call me either today or tomorrow to let me know how the assessment yesterday ended up scored. I am spending part of today calling around to places that do OT to see who can get Owen in for an eval to start helping him learn to cope with the sensory issues.

Next steps

Tomorrow we have the Vineland Assessment. It's two hours of somehting. I really don't have a clue what to expect. It is, however, a step toward possibly getting services for Owen at school, if he qualifies. We also have to make this appointment if we want to keep our PedPsych appointment in a month. I programmed tomorrow's appointment into my cell with an alarm an hour before. We should be in good shape. I'll post tomorrow and let you all know what went on. I don't anticipate having any answers until we go to see the specialist next month.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for this year? I have so many things to be thankful for:

I am thankful for a healthy family this year (Thanksgiving last year was spent in the waiting room at the hospital while Jeff's dad had emergency brain surgery.)

I am thankful for the wonderful school where I teach and Owen is a student.

I am thankful that we are pull-up free all day long.

I am thankful for my family, both immediate and extended.

I am thankful for my friends.

I am thankful right now that Owen was able to be quiet and calm from 4:30-7:30 this morning so we could get a little more sleep. (He fell asleep at 5 last night, so waking up at 4 this morning was not a surprise -that's 11 hours of sleep.)

progress

I am happy to report that we have an appointment scheduled for Wednesday, January 20 at 10:00 a.m. to see the specialist. Hopefully, this will give us answers.

I'm also looking forward to having a little bit of time off. Mom and Jim (aka Dude) are coming up for Thanksgiving. They get here Thurs. afternoon and leave very early Tues. morning. I'm going to be glad to have them here as this week starts tree season.

Confereneces and steps forward

It's a new year in Owen's life, so that means a new color for my posts.

Conferences were a couple of weeks ago and my conference with Mrs. Savage (O's teacher) was very enlightening. Over the last three years I had noticed things about Owen that made me kinda sit up and go, "Hmmm." I wasn't sure if what I was seeing was normal (or within normal) or if there was something else there. Things like his ability to very quickly master puzzles, the sensory issues he seems to have, his mastery of number recognition (100) and counting ability (120+) six months ago, his inability to be still, how he verbally obsesses on certain subjects (My touch my piggie's belly, for example). Mrs. Savage mentioned to me that due to his very low fine motor skills (mentioned also by his day care teacher last year) and the verbal obsession thing, in addition to other things, she was suspicious that he may be high functioning Aspergers. Remember that I said that I had noticed things? This thought had occured to me before she said anything. I had no basis for comparison, though, so I decided to let it go until he got into a formal school setting. Other people I know agree that this is a definite possibility.

One of the benefits to Owen's birthday being in the middle of October is that conferences also fall at the middle of October. He turned 4 four days after the conference, and our annual check-up with the doctor was 11 days after the conference. In that time, I put together a list of things which lead me to be concerned about Asperger's. The list ended up being 2 pages long. The pediatrician (who is fresh out of her residency - his appointment was the first time we met her) agreed that it was worth digging into a bit more so she gave us a referral to a specialist. As it stands now, I have received and distributed a stack of surveys to each of five different people (two family friends, Mrs. Savage, the PE teacher at school, and Owen's day care teacher from last year) plus filled out my own stack. The parent surveys (done my the family friends and me) are in to the specialist as I hand-delivered them on Tuesday. I have the PE teacher's survey to hand deliver this week and Mrs. Savage put hers in the mail the day I got it to her. I am just hoping that his day care teacher from last year has hers finished and in the mail. I guess it can take up to two weeks for the office to get the mail once it's been delivered to the hospital due to the routing and filtering.

I talked with the intake nurse for this same doctor's office (the specialist) yesterday for 20-30 minutes and she sorta got a feel for Owen and my concerns regarding him. She also suggested that we do a speech eval since people have some difficulty understanding Owen at times due to mumbling.

When I dropped off the parent surveys this week, we at least got some sort of an appointment set up for him. Because he does not have and IEP (Individualized Education Plan) and is not receiving any services at this point, we have an appointment for an assessment to be done on December 21. This appointment will take 2 hours. Hopefully the appointment with the specialist won't be too long after that, though it could take anywhere between 6 and 8 weeks after they get all of the paperwork (surveys) in for us to get an appointment...they'll call us once everything is in to schedule the actual appointment with the doctor.

I knew this day would come

i got my first phone call asking me to come to the nurse to help take care of my baby today. he fell up the stairs (yes, up) and gave himself a pretty good bloody nose. his teacher called me at 3:15 (school is out at 3:30, i teach until 3:25) telling me to come down to the nurse. i sent my middle school student who works in my room after middle school lets out at 2:45 while she waits for her little brother to get done with school at 3:30 to go ask one of the paras from across the hall to come in to watch my class so i could go be a mom. as soon as the para was in the room, i headed down stairs to the nurse's office. once we got him cleaned up, into a fresh shirt, and calmed down, he came up to my room for the last 10 minutes or so of the day. his teacher sent up his backpack with another student. all went well in my room. i got back in time to dismiss the class i had.

tonight i went to the Y with family (sisters in law, brother in law, and nephews) and rode the bike. i got there a little early and told myself that i would ride until they were done. when michelle finished her ride, i was sitting at 52 minutes and some seconds. i decided i would go to 55 minutes. over 8 miles! woo hoo!!!! i know i'll be paying for it tomorrow in terms of not being able to move the lower half of my body without being in fairly significant pain, but it's all good. owen was asleep when i got home. he had an eventful day so i'm not too terribly surprised.

the funniest thing owen said to me today was in the lunchroom: "mommy, go back to your classroom!" i guess it's his school now, i just work there.

on another note, my little boy will be 4 in two weeks. i'm am amazed that it's that close!

coming in to his own

for those of you not following the progress on facebook, owen has made major steps this week at school in regards to me and music. he had music on monday, but was asleep in his classroom so missed it. wednesday, he came in and did a fairly decent job of doing what i asked. when it was time to leave, he went with his class and there were no tears. on friday, i saw him in the lunchroom as i was picking up older kids to come up to my room for recorders. he was putting his tray away (the one day a week he gets hot lunch) and came over to say hi to me. i told him to give me a kiss and then go back to his table. he did just that. no arguing, no tears. it was such an amazing thing to see. two weeks ago, he would have wanted to come to me and stay. probably would have wanted to a week ago! oh, and on thursday we had an assembly. he saw me and waved and stayed with his class. :-D

i am so incredibly proud of my little boy (typed "baby" and then replaced it with "little"...)

my lunch time is with owen's teacher. yesterday she told me that he had received a botany lesson on the turtle puzzle (each part of the turtle is a different piece in the puzzle.) they have a classroom pet turtle, named flash. o's teacher was telling me at lunch yesterday that owen was doing the puzzle and as he was doing it, he was holding up a piece, telling flash, "look flash! this is your ________". cracks me up!

this is owen on school

this is what my little boy is doing at the moment. it's 6:00 p.m. and he's out. we're waiting for daddy to come home so we can have dinner. it was an ok day today. a couple of fits b/c he didn't want to be away from mommy. his class had music time today. he's used to having lots of freedom in my room because prior to today, it's been just him and me in there. class time was a challenge, but it's that hurdle i knew we would have to cross. now that i now what we have to deal with for the music class dynamic, i can start maybe figuring it out. one more day this week, then a three day weekend. we'll need that!

First day of school

This one is from after school. It was a great day!

Owen, Mommy and Daddy before school started today.

Owen and Mommy

Owen and Daddy

Today marks a new chapter in Owen's life. He started preschool today at my school. This is real school, and he goes 9-3:30. His teacher tells me he was wonderful. He was cooperative, well-behaved, listened well, and had a wonderful day. He didn't sleep at quiet time, but that's just fine by me. He looked at books instead. Tomorrow is day two of what I am calling "The Great Experiment". Tomorrow means I get Owen for the first time in music class. We'll see how that goes.

Seeing the doctor 3 times in a week

this past tuesday, as we were getting ready to pack up the car to go to the washington coast for a few days with friends, owen tipped over in a chair in our living room and cracked open his head. we rushed to the ED where he was the recipient of a staple in his head. the trip continued as planned. today, when we woke up, i though his left ear felt wet. sure enough, there has been fluid draining (flowing may be a better term) from the poor kid's ear so off to the doctor we went (once we got home from the coast, that is - luckily we were planning on coming home today anyway). it's an ear infection. we're on antibiotics for the next 10 days. this coming tuesday we go back to the pediatrician to have her take out the staple. now, i was hoping to have the chance to say good-bye to her before she moves to another office that is too far for us to trek to (the current office is a matter of blocks from school, very convenient). having a staple removed was certainly not what i had in mind.

the trip to the coast was a blast. three moms, three times as many kids ranging in age from 2 - 15. we made s'mores, some of them camped in the yard (owen and i stayed in the warm bed in the house), did some geocaching, went to the goonies house (yes, that one!), and generally had a great time. one of my favorite mom moments was once the kids were all in bed, the three of us climbed into the hot tub and talked for several hours.

i was so proud of owen the other day. we were driving home (on the trip, not home to our house) and he told me he had to go potty. i told him to hang on, we'd be back to the house soon. he was doing the potty dance the best he could in his car seat - and was pretty desperate for the bathroom, too. he was nearly crying. i was almost expecting that he'd not make it. he surprised me and was able to wait until we got back the house! i was so proud of him!!!!!!

Done!!!! And I mean completely done!

my suspicion was correct a month ago. we are totally done with pull-ups. the week before we went to denver for my mom's wedding, owen was dry every night. it was perfect timing, actually, because he ended up with a horribly itchy rash on his bum just in time to get out of pull-ups. he's had one accident in the last month.

we're having a blast this summer. zoo outings, swimming in the back yard, playing with friends, bowling (holy cow does owen love that!), trips to the library, geocaching (we call it treasure hunting so the boys get into it - just like pirates!) my favorite part has been watching his growth in learning. we are reading books together now, not just mommy reading to owen. i'm so amazingly proud of him.

i can't believe that school starts for owen in just over a month. real school. he has a backpack (cars...what else!?) and we still need to finish up his list, though we're waiting until target has the rest of his supplies on sale.

woo hoo!!!!

owen is done with daycare. his last day was yesterday. we bought his teacher a cup from starbucks that you can create your own insert for and he colored the insert. she loved it. he will start at my school in the fall. i can't believe he's that big already!

today we went to our local children's museum with our friends. our library system has free passes to the children's museum that we can check out. it was nice. owen and brendan ran themselves ragged. hopefully o will sleep early and well tonight.

hopefully i'm not jinxing anything by saying this, but owen has been either dry or mostly dry most nights for the last week or so. can it be that we are just about finally done with potty training? yay!!!!

Bowling

owen bowled for the first time today. he had a fun time. he figured it out pretty quickly. i have a couple of pictures and a video, which will be uploaded this weekend. the bumper was his friend. i'd be lying if i said i didn't use the bumpers to my advantage. we used our kids bowl free coupons for the first time today. loved it! best thing i decided to do in a while!

Zoo trip and other bits of excitement

yesterday we met some friends at the zoo. we totally timed it right both for the weather and the crowds. mckinley and kian are students of mine at school and their mom kim and i have become friends over the years. we took the opportunity to say good-bye to beethoven the beluga whale before he moves to texas to have companionship and become part of a breeding program. he's leaving early next month. they're putting california sea lions in that enclosure...joy...after we left the zoo, we took the kids to cold stone. it was a very fun day

this morning, we were sittintg on the couch reading the paper when a very bold squirrel decided to take a tour. max's hunting instincts kicked in, but luckily the squirrel managed to escape through the back door fully intact. the squirrel went through the living room, into the dining room, and into our bedroom. finally, he escaped to the kitchen (as i was on the phone with my mom asking how to get a squirrel out of the house). i herded him onto the back porch where i closed us in and opened the back door. he escaped to the back yard. i bet he's telling his buddies, "dudes, whatever you do, *don't* go in there. there's a monster!"

We're in trouble!

but it's the good kind. owen counted to 100 with minimal help the other night. all i had to do was give him the terms for the 10s starting with 70. he did the rest. i sat there in amazement watching and listening to him. he can also recognize numbers well into the 50s or 60s.

last week i did two things i've been counting down to: paid my last full-month's tuition to daycare and paid off o's last month of preschool for next year. now the waiting game begins to find out what class he'll be in in the fall. i hope i don't have to wait until fall to find out! i'm also really curious if he's going to be in class with his buddy brendan. time will tell.

i got to daycare this evening to pick him up and he runs to me, stopping at the end of the counter to grab the presents he made for me and said, "mommy! i have presents for you, mommy! here you go!" he was totally unprompted and it was so sweet. i was a little teary-eyed. what a marvelous child.

i think he's going through a growth spurt right now. he's getting up what seems to be every-other night and whining and ending up in bed with us. at least his rotation made it so that i got a full night's sleep on tuesday, which was good seeing as i had a 7:00 a.m. meeting on wednesday and it was imperative that i get up with my alarm on wednesday.

as for food, he's getting so good at trying new things. this week it was stroganoff for dinner one night. he's also eaten (and loved) shrimp scampi as well as pineapple chicken from the local vietnamese restaurant (including the rice). we need to get him some of those kids chopsticks that are attached at the top since he was trying to use mine.

call him georgie

as in georgie porgie...yesterday we were at amanda's house for a gathering to remember bretta, a friend of jeff's from high school who was murdered by her step-father a few weeks ago. owen was running around and playing with the other kids while the adults were talking. he was coming inside and pulling out random women to to push him on the swing. just took thier hand and dragged them out. later in the evening, he fell the foot and a half off of the steps and landed on his rear. i picked him up and held him for a little bit. then, he reached for audrianna (amanda's daughter) and wanted to get a hug from her. when he hugged her, she started bawling. amanda and i just started howling with laughter. where's the video camera when you need one? if only we could rewind time and bring it with us to the door to catch that...

swimming lessons yesterday went so well. he's a total fish. he let the teacher hold him while he floated on his back. he did chicken-airplane-soldier with her, too. it took him most of last session to get to do this. yay! when i picked up his report card from last session, it said he should move up to super pike. we'll do that next time (i registered him for another session of pike).

a breath of fresh air

owen was his normal, helpful, cooperative little boy today. yay! he woke up in a different mood this morning. i missed my little boy the last two days.

as for the bath tablets, i think what happened is that the drain cover got knocked off and the tablets dissolved and the color just went down the drain. owen's hands were the normal color today. that's all i can think of.

owen requested a new food today as we were packing for the zoo: string cheese. yahoo!!!! he gobbled it down.

Is Super Nanny coming?

today i totally feel like i could be one of those moms on the super nanny shows who have kids who are totally out of control. owen has been driving me nuts today. he's spent the entire day basically being the gingerbread boy...you know: run, run, as fast as you can. you can't catch me, i'm OWEN. before i had the chance to put the lid back on his meds for his ear infection, he grabbed the bottle and started drinking right from it...after i gave him his proper does. he's been totally defiant today. i still don't know where the two colored tablets that we put in the bathtub went. instead of helping put his laundry away, which he usually does very willingly, he was playing around in the hamper and in the wicker basket. he was also climbing on his bed, jumping in the clean clothes i was attempting to fold. he refused to sit on the potty so i closed him in the bathroom and took care of the garbage can outside. by the time i came back in, he had pooped and was ready to get in his jammies. now he's in his room for the night.

oh, yesterday was jeff's birthday and he was playing around with the tablecloth on the table before dinner. i asked him multiple times to *not* pull on it. well, silly me, i put my wine glass on the table cloth and went into the kitchen to take care of some things. he pulled the tablecloth off of the table...red wine and all.

this is why i am not a stay-at-home mom. he does so much better when he goes to school during the day.