Wow

Hello strangers!

Things are going well at the Johnson House. Chase returned to school without any major meltdowns. Things are really going well now, but it took from September until December for us to have a "normal" week without any (major) meltdowns at school or on the bus. I hope it keeps up for the rest of the year.

They are working on reconfiguring the schools in our district, so Chase may have to go to a different school next year. I've already started worrying about what that might mean.

And then, I read this post from Jess Wilson's blog (her daughter has autism.)

Wow. That's all I have to say.

Read it yourself and see if you can guess where I was an instant teary mess. Emotional, happy, and hopeful tears.

Happy Holidays!

Between Christmas festivities, work, cleaning the house, wrapping presents, and cooking, I've been pretty busy. And, of course, there's more of it the next couple weeks.

I thought I should wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year now, before I forget.

One fun thing that we've been up to at work is making a video about "Lowercase i Day". It's a spoof on goofy holidays and everyone's favorite office-based tv show. Anyway, here's the explanation, and here's the video:



Happy Holidays!

Trying

Most of the time I say that I "try" but really, how hard do I try?

I try to keep my house in line, try to cook dinner every night, try to eat dinner together at the table every night, try to get up the first time the alarm goes off, try to be awesome at work, try to write in this blog, try to spend quality time with the kids and Craig, try to get the kids to bed on time, and try to do all kinds of things that working parents are supposed to do. But it's hard, and I find myself overwhelmed and frustrated because I can't do all of it all of the time. It can be quite "trying".

And then I thought, this must be how Chase feels.

We're always telling him what to do, when to do it, the "right" way to do it, not to do it, what to say, and all other kinds of things. A lot of the things we're telling him to do are not always in line with the way his mind works. But HE TRIES. That little boy tries hard to fit in with our lives and the norms of school and society. He tries to make friends. He tries to not melt down at school. He tries to write all of his letters when we ask, even though he breaks into tears if the first H he draws looks more like a 4. And he tries to be gentle, which is very hard for a kid that craves and needs heavy touch.

When I noticed that his preschool aide wrote a long entry in his daily journal yesterday, I was at first concerned because it was gym day. Gym day always gets a little crazy. Chase always want's to be first in line, whether walking, running, or waiting. And, also he has a new found interest in Karate. (Thank you Po.)

The kids went to different stations in the gym to do different activities. One of the kids in Chase's group is an adorable little girl with leg braces. She's a fragile little thing and I'm sure there's a consensus concern that he might hurt her by bumping into her to hard, hitting her with a ball, etc.

Chase's aide wrote in his journal that he was very gentle and kind to this little girl. He was actually watching out for her. He was telling other kids to be careful. She said she could visibly see him trying to stop his urges to push or bump into things and kids.

Funny thing is, without having read this entry yet, I was asking him how gym class was. He told me "You kick balls, you run, run kick more balls, and you be careful. I like it." When I asked him who he played with, he told me this little girl's name and then told me about her "super shoes" which I guessing are the leg braces. "His legs didn't bleed or get broke or have a 'dandaid'. He just has super shoes. You have to be gentle," he said as he signed "gentle". (We have a little trouble with He and She right now, if you noticed.)

I told him that I was proud that he was being careful, he smiled and said that this little girl is his best friend. He has three best friends these days, all girls.

He's trying to be gentle and sensitive because he's understanding (at least a little) that his actions affect other people. Even if it's the opposite of every urge he has.

Talk about trying. Wow. Maybe we all need to try just a little harder. If he can do it, we should be able to.

Pumpkins and Monkey Poop

Ok, that's really two different topics, but it does sound funny together, eh?

Pumpkins
So, we bought the kids some ginormous pumpkins at Sam's. Only $5! Awesome, right? WRONG.
These pumpkins have some sort of titanium exoskeleton that killed:

• two little pumpkin saws (the ones that come with the pattern kits)


• one of the slightly larger safety pumpkin carving knives


• an electric knife (like the kind you carve turkeys with.

And that was only to cut off the top of one! I finally made it through with one tiny pumpkin saw #3, proceeded with the very basic of jack o'lantern faces, and left the second pumpkin whole.

Lesson learned: Next year we paint the pumpkins.

Monkey Poop
Chase LOVES the Speed Racer movie. I wasn't sure that he'd like it, so I got it with Netflix. We've had it for like 3 weeks now. I'm going to sneak it back in the mail tomorrow.
Anyway, there's a chimp in the movie, who when in a tough spot, throws poop in the bad guy's face.

Chase finds this HILARIOUS. He'll be sitting in the car and suddenly be laughing. I'll say, "What's so funny?" "Mom, monkey throws poop!" More laughing.

Anyway, Chase is Speed racer for Halloween, so we here this joke A LOT. It's actually pretty funny. Here's a few pictures of his school party. You might notice it's a "homemade" costume. It does have a white collar that goes with it, but Chase decided he doesn't want to wear it. Chase has never been willing to put on a costume. The "Jedi episode of Halloween 2006" was a doozy and taught me to give up until he's older. I've also learned that it's not a good idea to spray Chase's hair black, even if he insists. We'll call bath-time last night the "Hair washing from Hell incident of Halloween 2008".

















Also, here's a few other pictures from a corn maze that we went to back in early September.









And, here's some of Craig's projects: "our" beer (mostly Craig makes it and I drink it) and FRED (who is done, except for another coat of paint next spring.)





Happy Halloween!

Sick

And I don't mean "sweet" or "cool".

I'm kind of glad that I don't feel better because then I'd have to ponder whether or not to be happy I got sick after everyone else.

Even with my stuffy nose and accompanying headache, we brought the kids to a "tailgate" party at my work for the MSU/U of M game. Since it was cold, wet, and muddy, we stayed inside most of the time. Chase and Cory made it for a few hours, thanks to cookies, pop from the free pop machines, and playdoh. Luckily, the people that work in the marketing building like to keep creative things, including playdoh, out in the meeting areas.

The only major issue we had was Chase's breakdown when his hotdog bun broke. Just to bring you up to speed, if he's eating a hotdog and the bun splits, he gets very upset and refuses to eat any more of the remaining hotdog, even if we put it on another bun. And, since he's into these whining breakdowns, he's very noisy, agitated, and teary when this happens. It's interesting how much louder it sounds when you're with ten of your coworkers, instead of at home.

With some slight of hand that would make Penn and Teller proud, we were able to replace the hotdog bun with Cory's without either kid noticing. Throw in a no bake cookie, and we were set.

Another funny thing, last night Craig was trying to watch Cold Case. Chase was playing with his new favorite Speed Race car, racing it around the table in the dining room. Chase kept coming out and turning on the basball game. He was listening to it from the dining room. It was really interesting. He's never shown an interest in baseball on tv before.

Autism Moms Unite!

I wanted to share something with you all. I know that some of you also have Autism in your lives. Some of you don't, but someday will have to help your kids understand our kids.

Anyway, there is a very good blog by an Autism mom called Diary of a Mom. The woman, Jess Wilson, and her blog are listed as Resources on the Autism Speaks website.

I've checked it out periodically, but this post made me really want to share it.

I hope you all take a look at it sometime. I wish I had enough time to think and write like she does. Maybe too many years of writing about computers and procedures have broken my creative side.

Daycare Woes

Well, over the past year and a half, I've been very happy with our daycare. Chase is a handful some days, but the teachers have been very understanding and given him the extra attention he needs to survive in a daycare situation.

Until now, that is.

For some background, Chase (and Cory) go to a very nice daycare each morning. Chase leaves around noon to go to his "real" preschool class.

At daycare, he's in the 4-5 year old preschool/daycare class. There are about 20 kids and two teachers. It seems to me that one of the teachers does not want to "deal" with him.

Yes, he takes some negotiating on certain things. But, once he's comfortable, he does pretty well.

At his "real" preschool, which is afternoons at the Elementary School for our district, he is doing good. The class is about the same size, but there are three teachers.

So, yesterday, we had his Teacher Consultant (who helps his teachers to meet his special needs) observe the daycare.

Her feelings were like ours: The teacher was not going to put any extra effort in to help Chase. She was actually excluding him to a certain level, and even though we offered ideas to make things easier for him, it was going "in one ear and out the other."

So, we took him (and Cory) out of the daycare. My angel of a Mom is going to watch the kids until we can figure something else out.

We've been at that daycare quite a while, and I'm sad to have to do this, but we don't really have a choice. They never said that they could handle special needs kids, but so far, the teachers have cared enough to put in a little bit of effort.

There's actually other autistic kids at that daycare, but these kids are less functional than Chase, keep to themselves, and do not interact with the teachers or the other children. So, these kids are "easy" compared to Chase, who wants friends and to interact but doesn't really understand social norms and rules.

It makes me scared to think about future school classes and how those will go. sigh.

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...)

Yikes.

So, today was the first day I was in the office this week. Chase has been sick. Viral something on Tuesday and 12 hours later, he also had an ear infection.

The kids did great at the birthday party, except for leaving... I was the only one with issues. I get so worried when both kids are not in my sight. There were several times when I didn't have either in my sight. It's a safe place, but I'm a worrier. Anyway, I survived.

So, Craig's home tonight, so hopefully things will get back to normal.

All my STC grad friends: We're hiring another writer, so anyone interested in working for an awesome company in Okemos, MI, let me know and I can let you know how to apply.

Have a good weekend!

We've got a birthday party, book club, and Craig's leaving for a conference in Texas.

I'm excited for Chase's first "friend" birthday party. It's at one of those big inflatable places. He's pumped for it. Of course, I'm wondering if he's going to fit in with all the other kids. I sure hope so.

Oh, funny enough, Chase LOVES the song Real Gone by Sheryl Crow from the movie Cars. He's been trying to sing it in the car lately. It's pretty fun to see him doing that kind of thing. It's his first song that doesn't involve numbers, monkeys, the alphabet, baby bumblebees, or Dora the "Explora".

I'm back...

After MUCH prodding, I'm back. While it seems I have time to check out other people's blogs, I can't seem to take the time to write anything myself. So, here I am.

Since it's been so long, here's a list of random stuff:

• Craig finished Fred. It's a great barn/shed/garage-like building. He did a great job. I'm so glad my husband's so handy!


• We had a nice, but busy summer. Lots of random stuff. I can't believe it's over!


• Chase is now in a "regular" preschool class. He still has an aid in the class, but he's doing pretty good. It was a bit rough at first, but things seem to be settling down. He's super smart and so high-functioning that most people see him as being "just difficult". He's not flexible in a lot of situations, and they seem to forget that he's autistic.


• Cory is something else. She's got a LOT of personality and attitude, but super polite. EVERYTHING is "please" and "thank you" although, we're hearing "gracias" more than thank you. (Thanks, I mean gracias, Dora.)


• My mom's car was shot at by a potato gun on her why to the mall after picking up Cory from daycare yesterday. A high speed potato hit her window and exploded. It sounds funny, but if her window would have been open, it would have hit her in the head. What's wrong with people. Oh, and this was in town on a residential street. WTF?


• We got a new cat this summer. His name is Jing (yes Jodie, like The Jing Project. It's just so awesome, and I'm a nerd.) He looks a LOT like Mica, so sometimes it's a little weird, but Jing is much, much nicer than Mica ever was.

That's all I can think of for now. Really, I'll try to post more.

Mango

April asked why Jodie calls me that.

Jodie! Help me remember exactly what happened!

Honestly, I can't remember the exact circumstances. I know that it had to do with the "Mango" character from SNL.

I just can't recall how it started. Maybe I tried to do his voice or something. I can't imagine that I was that funny, but after the initial use, which Jodie thought was funny, it just stuck. I would sign "Mango" on my emails to Jodie.

Jodie! Fill us in with what you remember!

WICKED.
We're going to see Wicked tonight. I saw it last summer with some of my girlfriends. I really liked it, so tonight Craig, my sisters, my friend Susanne, and her sister Erin, are all coming with me. And we're going to Ukai, a Japanese Steakhouse, for dinner first. I'm excited!

(Anyone sick of hearing from me yet? This is like a record of sequential days with posts...)

Almost done

Well, I'm almost done with my help files. I have two more little topics to finish up, some edit comments, and fixing the templates.

Oh, and then make all the HTML tutorials for the Learning Center...

Ok, maybe "almost" isn't the correct word...

WebWorks (well, kind of...)

Only one more help file to finish, plus fix some formatting in the help compiler.

I have to say, one of the few things I liked about Unicrap was the tools team. We had no responsibility for how the documents were produced. If Ihad a problem, I'd go talk to Jane.

There've always been issues with Word, but now, I have to design, implement, and support the document and help styles. It gets to be such a pain in the butt.

Using WebWorks to produce, you don't just have to take extra time to fix last minute edit things in the source files, you also have to fix last minute style issues, broken references, and number spacing. Not to mention you have to figure out why it's suddenly broken, when it worked 20 minutes earlier.

I also have to say, for being a company that makes a product to create help files, they have the suckiest help. Always a joy.

Oh well. I guess this is where the "technical" part of my degree comes in.

John Denver

So, if you're reading this, you probably know me decently well. (If not, what could I possibly say that you'd be interested in?)

Anyway, as I mentioned, I'm super busy at work. I work in a cube next to a large open meeting area. To concentrate, I listen to my iTunes.

I found that I was having issues concentrating, even with my music, so I turned to the old standby: John Denver.

I have 6.5 hours of JD music in my iTunes. I've been listening to it non-stop for almost 3 weeks. I can totally get into a zone when I'm listening to JD.

I think that because almost every memory of my childhood has John Denver music as the soundtrack, my brain actually functions better when I'm listening.
Yep, I'm weird, but I'm wondering how weird? Don't other people have some music that they feel this way about?

I assume that they do...

I hope they do...

Still Alive

I'm still here, at least in body. I've been super busy since the beginning of May with work.

My product is releasing in early fall, so my final file dates are now coming, so, I'm trying to get everything done.

I just got a new Vista laptop for work and this handy little Blogger Buddy desktop gadget. So, it is possible you may hear from me more often...

We'll see. :o)

And, I'm Off

I'm heading to the STC conference in Philadelphia. I'm leaving tonight and will be gone a whole week. Am I worried about leaving Craig and the kids for that long? I often feel it would be nice to get away by myself for awhile, but now I'm worried about how much I'll miss them. It didn't seem like that big of a deal until I started packing.

Thank God for video and picture messaging.

We're on a deadline with Fred. We have to have it done by the 20th to get the rest of the insurance money. Craig'll need to work on it while I'm gone. Luckily, my mom will help out and Craig's mom will come over a few times. This way Craig can keep working on Fred.

I can't believe that I'm actually presenting! It's a "cool" presentation, that is, if you get excited when someone uses Keynote on a Mac instead of PowerPoint on a Windows machine.

Fred Update
Craig is powering through this project, and although we have a deadline, I'm confident he'll have it all done. My dad's been helping Craig out some, but my carpenter pro hubby's been doing been really doing a great job. They've been at it less than 2 weeks and you can see the results below.

I'm Alive.

I'm just so busy! Grrrr.

In a nutshell:

• I went to Michigan Tech as part of the STC dept advisory board. It was a lot of fun, and I went by myself so I had a little break from the kids.
• We're working on building a garage/barn/shed-thing to replace the well house that had a tree land on it last August. (Yeah, nine months ago. We're really on top of things!) I've decided to call the new building Fred, since it's not really a shed, barn, or garage.
  
• I'm also at nearing the end of a product release, and I'm super busy documenting Morae, our usability/user research software. If you don't know about it, it's way better than the old Unicrap usability lab and costs a lot less than the pompous fool manager guy put into that lab.
• I took Chase to Cedar Point with our friend Susanne and her son Ethan. Ethan's just 9 months older than Chase, so the boys really have a good time together. We did an evening and then a whole day at the park, followed by a couple hours at the indoor waterpark.
  

Here's pictures of the CP trip, Cory, and the Fred building.

Shining

So, I'm not a huge fan of the Rolling Stones. That I ended up last night at a sneak peak of their IMAX Martin Scorsese directed movie, is odd.

I "won" them from the local TV station. I use the term "won" loosely. I think that they didn't have that many people trying to win, so they gave them to everyone who entered. Anyway, Craig and I both went to see it last night. Aunt Sarah babysat the kids at her apartment, which is a first. The kids loved visiting.

It was good, but not being a huge Stones fan, I didn't know some of the songs and couldn't have watched 2 hours of only concert footage. Lucky for me, "Marty" threw in some old clips of the band from the past 40 years.

Things that I liked in the film:

• Scorsese freaking out because he couldn't get Mick to give him a final set list. The last second before the band came out, a producer runs in with it.
• Keith singing. At least twice, he totally messed up the words.
• Keith talks and acts just like Jack Sparrow. I knew that Johnny Depp modeled the character after him, but it's hard not to laugh watching Keith.
• Keith wearing what I can only call a brooch on his coat. It was the Pirates of the Caribbean logo. (Also had a ring like it on.)
• The camera shots and editing were amazing.
• The video and sound were amazing. You really felt like you were there.

Things that I'm going to have nightmares about:

• They are WAY too old for a 4 story closeup. Some of their wrinkles could swallow a small child.
• Men with legs that skinny are freaky.
  
• Mick and Keith's arms.
• They are all WAY too touchy feely for old men.
  
• Mick's sweaty, sweaty, sweaty armpits. (Come on, really, you haven't figured out yet that a red silky shirt doesn't hide sweat well?)

It was nice to get out, but now I wish I would have seen the U2 IMAX movie when it was out. If you're a Stones fan, I'd say go see it.

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.