Better?

Well, we had a good weekend and most of the sickness is out of the house. We went up north for the trees. We had a good time and beautiful weather, but the colors were just past peak.

Here's a few pictures:
















We also had two dogs show up at our house last night. I think that they might be purebred Jack Russells. We're looking for their owner. They're pretty cute, but the puppy keeps going after Copper, our 90+ lb German Shepard/Great Pyrenees mix. That's not going to work for too long. Here they are:



(We are calling the puppy "Sparkles" and the big one is Jack. Chase helped name them. I think that Sparkles is one of the dogs in Barbie and the Diamond Castle...)

(Jodie, you probably can't tell, but all those images are from the Jing embed code...)

Cory, too!

So after going on about Chase so much yesterday, I thought I should mention my wonderful, adorable neuro-typical daughter. Corinne turned two at the end of February and proceeded to enter the terrible twos. Wow, does she have an attitude. Ok, she actually also has an ear infection, but that's not the only reason for the attitude.

She's really into the Disney Princesses right now. Cinderella and Tinkerbell are her favorite. She even sings the "Tinkerbell song". I got some of it on my phone last night after her bath.

Look at me! All Political and Stuff!

So, I actually testified at a Health Policy Hearing of the Michigan House of Representatives. Crazy!

They are looking at 4 bills that will mandate that insurance companies cover treatments for Autism. (Right now, 99.9% of them actually state that anything with a diagnosis of Autism is explicitly not covered.) Read my post from April 27 for more information about this.

If you are in Michigan and interested in helping us pass these mandates into law, please contact your senators and representatives. The Autism Insurance in Michigan blog has information about how to help.

Chase Update
He is doing soooooo great! He knows all of the Christmas songs and all of his letters. He also has this Little Leaps game thing that plays games with a controller and a DVD. He keeps wanting to play it in German. He's able to turn it to German by himself, and he even follows the directions. Maybe languages are his super-power. Maybe he really was speaking Chinese before he started speaking English? We used to joke about that all the time.

Corinne Update
Our little peanut is putting words together in almost sentences. Like, "No momma pop! My pop!" and, "No momma cookie! My cookie!" It's amazing how different she is than Chase was. I realize now just how far behind his speech really was.

Christmas
I'm about 99% done shopping (mostly online) and about 1% done wrapping. I'm going to have to work on that soon. My favorite things that the kids are getting are guinea pigs and this thing:
Hopefully, I don't regret the guinea pigs...

Also, TechSmith put out our Christmas Card. There's an online version and photo album that you should check out.

Updates from the Bad Blogger

Wow, you'd think I could find five minutes to write something once and awhile... Actually, if I could just take five minutes, it wouldn't be an issue, but you know how I like to talk...

Chase
Chase started preschool. He goes to daycare in the morning, and then the bus picks him up and drives him across the street (seriously) to his school. He's at school from 12:30 to 3:00 and then the 1 1/2 hour bus ride home. Funny how we live about 10 miles from school and it takes THAT long.
He LOVES school. He's in a class with six other autistic spectrum kids of varying abilities. I don't know all of the kids, but I do think that Chase is one of, if not the most verbal kids. It's vary structured and they do all kinds of things: speech therapy, occupational therapy, gym class, music therapy, and swimming.
He also loves the bus. To put it mildly, I freaked out when they said he'd have such a long bus ride. More like I was a weeping annoying parent. But, he has really surprised me and LOVES his bus ride. His bus driver, Sandy, is great, and since he's in a booster seat and buckled in, he's not wandering around on the bus. Whew!
He's also using the potty almost all the time, except he'll only stand. So that means only #1, no #2 or "poot" as he calls it.

Corinne
Or as we call her "Jaws".
She started biting two days ago. Because my major coping mechanism is to laugh, I'm not helping much. I'm hoping we work through it quickly. She's also throwing HUGE fits and hitting me, Chase, anybody who doesn't let her do exactly what she wants. Well, at home at least. She doesn't do this stuff at daycare, so I guess that's good. She just tells them "NO!" It's amazing the difference having a child that won't watch movies and talks so much. She's as much of a handful as Chase ever was, but in a totally different way. But she's so darn cute.

Lessons
This whole "autism adventure" with Chase has taught me more life lessons and compassion than I had learned in the first 26 years of my life. I can't believe the wonderful "differently-abled" kids, loving families, and caring teachers I have met. I feel ashamed that I ever made a shortbus joke, or complained that I couldn't find a close parking spot because there are too many "handicrapped" spots. Chase is doing really, really good and is really breaking out of most, if not all, of his autistic behaviors. But, I can tell you that if it turned out he was 100% "normal", I'm glad that we have been through what we have because it's taught me a valuable lesson and opened Chase up to people he might never have interacted with.

I hope that you will all encourage your children to get to know some differently-abled kids. Although it might be hard for your children to understand why someone is different, I promise you that you, your child, the disabled child, and that child's family will forever be changed for the better, and the world will be just a little better place because of it. :o)

All Kinds of Fun

Ok, that might not sound sucky, but not having enough time to get all kinds of fun new stuff onto my blog is sucky.

Now, since last time, we've been to Cedar Point, a Very Special Arts Festival, the Zoo, and had our last day of Chase's class for the school year.

Cedar Point
It went really well. It's funny how Chase was terrified of some things that Ethan would go on, and Ethan was terrified of things that Chase loved! Odd how that works.
The boys were troopers! They made it through both days at Cedar Point, an indoor waterpark, two nights in the hotel, and the trip there and home (thank you Grandma for the DVD player for the car!)

We were all tired, but I think that we're going to try to do it again next year!
Here's some pictures. I finally broke down and went for the slideshow...

Torrent Very Special Arts Festival and the Zoo
We stopped over at Chase's school for a really neat little art festival that they do every year. They have several different stops along the way to make crafts to take home. The kids made buttons, necklaces, glitter cards, and also had their faces (or hand) painted and ate snow cones.

Craig and I took the kids to the Binder Park Zoo on Memorial Day. I guess that I took more video than I did pictures, so there's only a couple. The best thing about this zoo is feeding the giraffes!

Here's some pictures of Chase and Cory, and their friends, Daisy and Evie at the art festival and a few of our zoo trip.

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Time for a change

So anyway, I'm back. at work on a Wednesday, how novel! Since we don't have speech therapy anymore, I'm going to try to come in on Wednesdays now.
I changed the name of my blog because, unlike my original intention to monitor Chase's progress, I find that I'm tracking my progress. Mostly I feel like I complain about stuff, or maybe I just feel more compelled to write when I'm crabby about something. Hmmm...

Chase
Chase is doing good. More and more like a "neuro-typical" kid every day. Listening to a couple parents yesterday, I noticed more things that Chase isn't sensitive to. For example, the other parents were talking about how their kids can't deal with crowds. One child gets physically ill when he's been around a big group of people. Another clings to her mom, pulling her hair and screaming.

Of course that made me wonder if Chase might actually have issues with crowds but that maybe I don't realize it. I think that he's ok. He gets a little hyper some times, but he doesn't freak out like these other kids. I'm having a hard time lately of judging which things that he does are "autistic" and which things are "two-year old".

I think nothing of taking Chase to Cedar Point. These other parents look at me like that is nuts. Chase has been there 3 times. When he was 11 months old and 15 months old, he LOVED it. He went on all the kiddie rides. At 23 months, he was scared of a couple of the rides, but still had fun. Am I dumb for thinking that he'll have a good time when we go in two weeks? My friend Susanne and her 3 year old are coming with us. I hope it all goes well. Sleeping in the hotel is what I'm most concerned with, but I think that sharing a bed with me, he'll be ok.

Cory
Cory is so snotty. She throws some of THE biggest temper tantrums, throwing herself on the floor and screaming like she's hurt. And that's if you take away a piece of paper that she's trying to eat. A toy is much worse. Maybe she'll grow out of it quick? Please let her grow out of it quick. I'm realizing how nice it is that Chase likes to ride in the car and likes to watch movies. She has no interest in either or both together. Grr. She's cute, but a pain in the butt in the car.

Happy Place

So, when we're feeling stressed, we're supposed to imagine our happy places, right? Instead, I thought that I'd show you some happy pictures of my babies.

• Cory got a haircut! No more piggy tails! The new hairdo makes her patented "snotty look" look even snottier. (see the first picture below!)

• Our friends Eric and Carrie visited for dinner and to show off their new Saturn Outlook on Wednesday. Eric is Cory's godfather and a cop, which isn't so much a coincidence.

• We went to Kid's N Stuff, a hands on "museum" for kids in Albion yesterday. It was great. We met up with another kid from our Torrent group and her dad and sister. It was fun, and I actually ended up buying a year pass.

Where does the time go?

Well, again I totally suck at keeping this updated.

Sucky things
Cory has picked up hitting when she doesn't get what she wants. Nice.
Even nicer? Chase has started hitting, too. He hits a lot harder than Cory. We're working on curbing this, but it's just so darn funny when Cory does it...

Exciting things

• Chase is using "Daddy" consistently. Craig's happy about that.
• Funny Kids
• Thomas the Tank Engine
• Greenfield Village
• Book Club

Just for Jodie!

Here are the pictures that I promised earlier in the week. Thanks for reminding me Jodie!

These are from Cory's party last weekend. Is she cute or what?





That's Aunt Sarah, Cory's godmother, in the last pictures. Maybe next time I'll try to make one of those slide show things that Jodie's used on her blog.

Any ideas for what I should do with her hair? Those pigtails are just the hair on the top of her head. It's a lot shorter in the back and the sides. I'm not sure what we could even do with it. Pixie cut?

Crazy Weekend

First, I should mention that we're testing Chase's success with the GFCF diet. He's been off of the diet this last week, but continues to take his supplements. He is doing extremely well in my opinion. I have not seen anything that looks like a negative reaction. We'll give it a month and see what we think. We're not telling the therapists to see if they notice anything.

We had Cory's birthday party this weekend. I'll hopefully get some picture up soon. Chase was very good, although he and Ethan really enjoyed running up and down the hall of the hotel. There was a mix up with the room we had reserved, and issues with the cake, ice cream, and me forgetting a bunch of stuff.

Chase went swimming twice and loved it. He really figured out the swimmies/waterwings. I'm excited to go to swim therapy and see how he does there. He didn't want to get out of the pool at all. He was very interactive while we were in there. He even said a new word - steps.

Non-Chase Issues
Then our propane ran out, but we had no idea. We now know that propane seeping into your house smells like a poopy diaper. We're getting more brought out today. Fun. I miss being connected to natural gas.

Next, Cory hit her face on the coffee table, and Chase wasn't even near her. Nope, she did this one on her own. She's got a fat lip and cut that thing that holds your upper gums to your lip. She's ok, but looks like she got in a bar fight.

Then, this morning, I had just pulled out of the driveway and could see a bump in the road. I always assume it's Mica (our cat) but usually, it's a squirrel or rabbit. This was a cat, but it was so dark, I couldn't tell if it was Mica. I didn't see a collar, but I had to be sure. I went back to the house and picked up a flashlight and snow shovel. I confirmed that it wasn't Mica and moved the poor black kitty off the road. That really got to me. Poor thing.

My Issues
Top of all this with me just being general crabby all weekend. I need to figure out how to keep from snapping at Craig about little stuff. Does any other mother out there get sick of feeling like you have to handle everything and make every decision? Ever feel like you can't handle making one more decision? Or, feel like you have to explain everything in painful detail to get your husband to understand what he needs to do to help you out? I always feel like, "Um, how come you don't just know this? I do!" That's my rant for the day. I've been a little on edge lately, and Craig gets the brunt of it. Sorry honey.