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...)

Labeling

So, having watched Autism: The Musical, I've been thinking that I haven't talked about how Chase is doing lately, when it was the original reason I started this Blog.

Chase has "high-functioning" autism. Right now his diagnosis is PDD-NOS, Pervasive Development Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified. Nice and descriptive, huh? But, the more he can communicate, I'm thinking that it is more like Asperger's. He really doesn't "get" the finer points of social interaction. Like how hard is too hard to hug, when it's appropriate to hug, kiss, etc. He also can seem aggressive because he doesn't understand this stuff.

I think that he's learning to function. I don't think he'll ever "get it" like neuro-typical children, but I think that he can learn how you're supposed to act and how you're not, but I think it'll be a struggle for him. He has to remember how interactions are supposed to work, because it doesn't come naturally to him.

Watching Autism: The Musical, I see children that do similar things to what Chase does, but they are older. I start wondering what they were like at 3. I think that I always think that they must have been "worse" than Chase, if they're now functioning like him. So, he'll be way better by the time he's their age? Right? That's logical, isn't it?

I just wish it will work out that way, but who knows? This whole autism rollercoaster is crazy. When you first find out, you suddenly "lose" the child you thought you had. Everything you have thought about his future is dead, or is it? While it's not a death sentence, everything in your world is different. My first thought when we got the diagnosis? "We're never going to be able to take him to Disney World or Cedar Point." Seriously. You see all the information about autism and apply all of it to your child, whether it really fits or not. At the same time, he's no different than he was yesterday. And, how much of it is his age, and how much is the autism? (BTW, we've been to Cedar Point and Disney World, both with wonderful results for everyone.)

I wish that everyone would watch that movie and see what kids, parents, and families go through. Maybe instead of people saying that he's overly aggressive, they'd understand that he can't help it and that all he's doing is trying to fit in and learn proper limits. Maybe people wouldn't stare at him standing at a table in a restaurant instead of sitting.

It's hard not to get protective. It's hard not to compare him to the other children with autism. It's hard not to resent other children who start stuff with him and then tattle on Chase when he reacts to them (Thank God for classroom video cameras.) It breaks my heart to see him try so hard to fit in and mix with the other children, and to have one of them say, "Why do you talk funny?" He understands that he's different, or at least he's treated differently. But he tries. How does a 3 year old know to try so hard?

No matter what the outcome of this whole thing, if there really ever is an "outcome", I'm glad that we've gone through it. I'm much more compassionate than I ever thought I could be. All of us have met so many strong and loving children, parents, and teachers.

And, I have a sweet, loving, smart, strong, brave boy who has taught me more than anyone I've ever known. I am truly blessed.

I Guess We're Famous Now...

Well, in Jackson at least.

They did a story about Autism in the Citizen Patriot yesterday and used Chase as the "face" to go with the story. I thought the article turned out really good. You can read it here. There's a gallery of pictures from the story here.

It was interesting to meet with the reporter and photographer. They were shocked that Chase was so "normal". Even though I had told them he is very high functioning, they weren't expecting a kid that wanted to show them his toys and guinea pigs.

People not affected just don't get it sometimes. Chase is a poster child for early intervention, but it took a huge toll on our family to give him the help that he needed. All the time off of work added to the tremendous emotional roller coaster. I never thought I'd be able to adjust to living with autism.

A year ago, Chase didn't say Mommy or Daddy. He didn't say "I love you." He couldn't say "I want..." It took us two months of speech therapy to get him to say "I", sign the word "want", and then point or grab what he wanted. But, that whole time, he would hug about anyone. How could he be autistic and hug anyone? Autistic kids don't do that right?

Thinking back now, I can't believe that he's come so far in a year. Compared to other kids his age, he seems "normal" at first, but if you know and you watch closely, you can see that he struggles to communicate with the other children and wants very much to be accepted. He's doing better and better every day.

It's weird to think that he's only about 2-4 months ahead of Cory (who just turned two) in expressive communication, when he's advanced in other areas. He is a smart kid. He can write his name pretty well, he knows his alphabet, he can spell some words like stop, go, Chase, mom, dad, nana, he can count to 30, he can read letters, and he's a mean Jedi with his light saber.

Wow. We are so fortunate that we didn't lose him. And, honestly, we're a closer and more compassionate family for having gone through it.

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.

GM, Bowling, and The Family Guy Star Wars

So, GM workers are walking out. Like Michigan needs more crap. The thing that gets to me so much about the UAW is they have, what seem to me, such outrageous demands. It's hard for me to want to back workers that:

1. Get a pension
2. Feel entitled to next to free health care (and complain about $1.24 copays)
   
3. Can make $70 - $100,000 a year without a college degree
4. Refuse to do anything that might be slightly out of their job description
5. Work a minute that they don't get paid for
6. Have a clause in their contracts that the health care IS NOT guaranteed for life and MAY change and yet still are willing to fight it while creating huge issues for Michigan and the US auto market in general
7. There's more, but I don't want to take too much time

Anyway, that's the way I see it. This all may have worked 30 years ago, but now the world is different. Deal with it.

Ok. Now onto the good things.
I took Chase bowling. He loved it! They had this slide thing for the little kids to roll the ball down. Chase and his friend Ethan were pretty excited about it.


The Family Guy's Star Wars episode. Wow. This just rocked. If you didn't see it, there are plenty of clips on YouTube. Here's the trailer for it:

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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Microsoft Word

Ever since I got out of college, I have used Word to create documentation.

First at Unisys where, for as much as it sucked to work there, the templates/tools that we used to create our documents weren't too bad. (For those of you who work/worked there, I'm talking about BEFORE CMS)

Next at WorkForce where we used Word with Doc-to-Help, or as we fondly called it "Doc-to-Hell". I seriously spent six months of the eleven I worked there just trying to renumber my documents.

Now, at TechSmith we use Word and Acrobat to make our PDFs. I guess that this version of Word has a sense of humor. It likes to catch me off guard when it decides to die and not to give me any warning or message that it's crashed. It's just gone. But, not all the time, sometimes I do get errors. I mean, I'm used of Word crashing, but when it doesn't give me a message, I don't always realize it's gone for awhile. Oh, it only does this when I switch over to another window, so I might not notice it for 5-20 minutes. Nice.

Mothers' Day
We had a nice weekend. We got our "white-trash" pool filled with water, which cost about as much as the pool, but less than a new well pump. We went to my Grandma's on Mothers' Day. Chase again found the booster seat and snapped it on. He did tell my mom this time that he was a turtle. Smart, huh? He's doing so good with his speech that he's able to tell us what he's thinking a little bit. At least now we know that he's pretending to be a turtle, not just goofy.

Everyone in the extended family thinks that I don't do good enough about watching Cory. She runs. She falls. She walks. She falls. (I have the same problem.) Anyway, I can't make her stop running/walking fast. I've never heard so much gasping as I did yesterday. I know that they totally think that I should do something about it, but then they can't give me any ideas about how to stop her. Sigh.

More about Chase
He's doing so good lately, that I want to say that he's not autistic. Again, I wish there was a blood test that could tell us for sure. He's repeating so much, using 4-word sentences, and initiates interaction with everybody. He doesn't talk as much around strangers as he does at home, but isn't that how most 2-3 year olds are?

Fun Times
We're going to Cedar Point on Thursday! I'm so excited! It's going to be me, Susanne, and Ethan (3), and Chase. We're staying for two nights. We got this package for supercheap that gives you 2 evening tickets, 2 full day tickets, 2 nights at the hotel, breakfast, and a parking pass. We also can go to the indoor waterpark for supercheap. I hope that Chase handles the whole thing good. I think he will. He's been there before and like Ethan. Chase is really brave about trying new stuff right now. We'll see how it goes.

... Nightmares tonight (For me!)

So, if you know me very well, you know that I'm scared to death of flying and airplanes in general.
Here's what I found in the living room:
When I asked Chase what happened, he said, "Nane, tuntle, stuck. Oh no!"
(For those that don't speak Chasese that's, "Plane, tunnel, stuck. Oh no!")

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.

So, I'm pissed.

OK, so our insurance has decided not to cover Chase's speech therapy any more. And, it was only a mistake that it was covered.

The reasoning is that being a pervasive disorder, the insurance company does not feel that autism is treatable. I pretty much had the nurse who reviewed and denied the request in tears. I said, "So, you're telling me that the insurance company believes that my son is a lost cause and that treatment is useless?" It's insulting and ridiculous.

So what about someone that has HIV? Are they going to start telling those people that they're really just a lost cause and don't deserve treatment because they're not ever going to get rid of it? Cancer? People would freak out and rally to have that covered, but not this. Why? Without help and serious intervention, we are losing our children. Why doesn't anyone seem to care about that?

This therapy has been a huge factor in Chase's progression with speaking. Before we started, he didn't say Momma or Daddy. Now he uses both. If we had been denied the coverage in the beginning, I would have accepted it more easily. It is in our plan wording that speech is just covered for stroke, head injury, and congenital anomalies. The reason that it was approved was that the person compared our diagnosis to the Medicaid covered diagnoses.

I have a serious problem with the fact that the State of Michigan dictates that for Medicaid, speech therapy is covered for diagnoses such as language delays, but Physicians Health Plan does not offer any plans that do not specifically exclude all Autism Spectrum Disorders. So, even if my company wanted their insurance to cover ASDs, they could not purchase a policy that covers it.

This is why the Speaker of the State House of Representatives in Pennsylvania has introduced a bill that will force health insurance providers to cover ASD therapies up to $3000 a month.

http://www.autismspeaks.org/press/pennsylvania_autism_bill.php

http://www.repobrien.com/?sectionid=75&sectiontree=75&itemid=417

I've written some emails to my local rep to try to get him to introduce some bill in Michigan. Of course I haven't got a message back yet. I'm going to try calling today.

Anyway, if anyone has any connections to your state government, please think about trying to help. If someone high up in our State government had a personal connection to an Autistic child, I guarantee that they would introduce a bill. It's such BS how government works. Personal agendas, not anything to do with the good of the children they represent.

OK, the rant is over... for now. I'm still pissed.

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

5 Days to go & Easter recap

Have you seen the commercial for TurboTax where the girl freaks out when a guy asks her what time it is? I'm starting to feel that way. I used to have my taxes done by the second week in February. It's amazingly easy to make excuses of why not to finish them: "I'll wait until the kids are in bed. Well now that they're in bed, I'm sooooo tired. I'll do it Saturday. Oh, the kids didn't take a nap at the same time. Maybe tomorrow..."

I just hope that we don't owe money.

Chase
We had a good Easter. We colored Easter eggs on Saturday. Chase really got into it, and his hands are still red to prove it. I forgot my camera today, so I'll have some pictures up tomorrow. He cracked all of them while he was coloring them, but he had fun.

I hid the eggs yesterday morning and he actually got that he was supposed to find them. They were pretty obvious, but it was fun none-the-less. He did enjoy the baskets, dumping everything out of Cory's and placing all of the plastic grass on his head. He ran around just enough to spread the fun plastic green stuff in every room on the first floor of our house. Of course, this was about the same time that Cory discovered the wonders of Peeps. So she had sticky blue hands that easily collected the little plastic shreds. Well thought out, Mom.

We then went to my Grandma's house in Toledo. The kids were pretty good. Everyone can't get enough of Cory, and Chase was loving everybody and jellybeans. He probably ate about 200, according to my mom. He was finding them everywhere. We'd put them up, but he'd find some in another place. Oh well. He worked the sugar out running around with a booster seat strapped to his midsection. Pictures tomorrow!

He was a little hyper, but he played with the other kids, listened to me some of the time, watched out for the littler ones, and gave everybody big hugs and kisses. I would say that he just acted like a sugar-crazed two year old, which he was, with a few speech issues. Nothing that was too "autistic-y".

Now for my rant
The one thing that really got to me was one of my aunts. She has something about her that anything that Chase does, she feels that she has to point out that it's "weird". When he was running around with the booster, he thought he was funny. He was being goofy on purpose. But, she had to point out that it was "weird" to anyone that could hear. She did this before at my mom's house. When Chase wanted her to unzip her sweatshirt, because he thought it was a jacket and saw it as a sign that she was going to leave, she said, "Whoa! That's weird!"

Um, you think that's weird, but the fact that you're a chain-smoking drunk with a gambling problem is normal?

I'm not saying that I'm the nicest person in the world, but saying things like that around a child who can understand you and other children that can understand you makes me so mad. Her grandkids really like to play with Chase. They think he's fine, so why point out to them that he's different and being different makes him weird?

Of course I said none of this to her. It's easier to ignore her than talk to her. I'm madder now than I was yesterday. I hadn't thought about her grandkids taking this all in. I guess that I can only relate her stupidness to her feelings of inadequacy when comparing herself to my mom and her son to me. She's never liked us very much. I don't think that I'm going to be able to let it go next time. I don't want to start anything big with her, but I'm not going to allow her to keep up this negativity around Chase.

Anyway, that's my rant.

As promised...

So, how did the week go?

I totally feel like it’s Monday. Being out of the office for three days make Fridays feel like Mondays. But then free lunch comes, today it was pizza and ice cream day (YUMMY!) and I remember it’s Friday.

Chase
Chase was pretty good this week, although he’s having some issues with pushing and hitting this week. We haven’t has our group therapy for two weeks because of an inservice and spring break. I can’t tell you how excited I am that we’re going back next week.

I started letting him into speech therapy without me in the room. They have a two way mirror so I can watch what’s going on. It’s really interesting to watch. He really likes Robyn so he’s pretty good in there with her. Being on the outside of what’s going on, it’s much easier to see how much he doesn’t make eye contact and doesn’t initiate contact. On the other hand, he did ask to go through the cards and even said what a lot of them were without any prompting. The biggest thing was that he sat in a chair and stayed focused the whole time.

I also released how I talk too much when I’m working with him. I need to give him more opportunities to initiate and ask for things, instead of me asking him what he wants. At home he does initiate more than at therapy, but I still have to work on it.

Me
Have any of you lost track of old friends over the years and want to find them again?

There’s a few people that I’ve found (thank you Google and MySpace) and tried to start talking to again. I think that a lot of my interest in finding people is that now at 28, I’m more like the person I was before I graduated from high school and early on in college. In my later college years, I had many of my priorities really messed up. I guess now that I have my old children, I’m more sensitive to some of the stupid things I did and bad decisions I made. The worst was allowing myself to loose contact with some very close friends.

Now that there’s Google and MySpace, I’ve been able to find people that I’ve randomly thought about and looked for, but now I’m not sure what’s worse: not finding them, or finding them and having them not answer.

It’s funny, several years ago, I would have been the one that wouldn’t have wanted to make the effort to answer if some one tried to contact me.

Amazing how our priorities and outlooks change, isn’t it?

I love people!

I've never been a real "people-lover". I've sometimes enjoyed picking on people (not to their faces, of course), gossiping, being sarcastic, and not always giving people the benefit of niceness. But, today, I am amazed at the number of people that are not like, well, me.

I sent an email out to my company about Chase. April is Autism awareness month, so I thought that I should let the company know about the walk. People have responded in such a nice way. Some have donated and some have sent very nice, encouraging emails to me. THANK YOU! Wow! I guess I'm going to have to start thinking better of people in general! ;o)

On a related note, I should mention that I work for THE best company ever. TechSmith Corporation is the most employee-friendly company ever, and they are smart enough to hire very good people. It's those great people that have been so supportive of me and make the company an awesome company to work for. I am so privileged to work here and be in the company of such great people.

To anyone that I used to work with at Unisys, read this as "TechSmith is pretty much the polar opposite of what we were used to."

I'll hopefully have an update about this week later today.

April is Autism Awareness Month

What Kind of World Do You Want?
I just found out about a new way to help raise money for Autism Speaks, and all you have to do is watch a video.

Here's the description from AutismSpeaks.org:


Click the image above or go to http://whatkindofworlddoyouwant.com/videos/view/id/213154 to view the video and send some money to Autism Speaks. The video made me cry, I'd be interested to know if you do the same.

As if you needed an excuse to take the kids to Toys 'R' Us?
Right now you can donate money to Autism Speaks at Toys "R" Us. We did this yesterday. You can just add a little bit of money onto your order. You can also donate online at http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2474404
There's also some links to various information, including a list of toys that they recommend for autistic children.

Finally...
We also finally got our camera back. Craig had left it at the cabin in January. So now I that I don't have to count on my sister or mom to send us pictures, maybe I'll get more pictures up, more often.

Update
Over the weekend, Chase did pretty good. He's been pushing Cory a little more often, but we're working on that. He started saying "Pink", although it sounds more like "Tink". He also got on his little Harley Powerwheels yesterday and LOVED it! I did take a picture with my new phone, but now I have to figure out how to get the picture somewhere besides on my phone... I might need to figure out my phone number first...

Hello Friday, again!

I wasn't going to write anything, but, since I have three readers, I'll have to do a quick line or two, or seven... or ten...

We've all had a pretty good week. Life's starting to settle down, and we're getting used of the routine of therapies. It doesn't seem quite as hard to deal with any more.

Greenfield Village went great. We left our house at 9am and didn't get home until about 7pm. That included an hour trip to the McD's play room in Chelsea. Chase finally isn't scared of climbing up in it, so that's fun. He did get stuck once, but his daddy climbed up to save him.

Funny enough, Cory was the one that got to be a handful. Chase really had a great time, even if we did get yelled at a few times for running...

Here's some pics, note the crazy large wagon that's twice the length of a double stroller... But, they seem to like it...