So, yeah...didn't really plan to take six months or so off from
blogging, but it appears that I have.
Anyway, while I was off contemplating my own navel, blogger decided to remove the ability for me to publish my drivel to this site, so it seems
like a good time to pack up and move. From here on out, I'll be publishing on a different platform @ goingsara.com.
Friday, January 08, 2010
extreme kitchen makeover
I just posted about Isaac's refurbished play kitchen over on my much-neglected craft blog. It's kinda awesome.
Happy 2010! Later, 2009. Don't let the door smack ya on your ass on the way out, stupid year.
In many ways, there's not much to show for 2009. I pulled inward a lot, especially after Isaac's diagnosis. Getting services for him and getting my head around the autism was a much larger effort than it seemed at the time; it's not surprising that I didn't have much energy left over.
The best thing to come out of the year is that Dennis and I are on very strong footing as a couple; I think this was the year we really learned how to take care of each other. We solidified into a family, instead of two adults staring at a small human trying to figure out what it wants. The statistics on marriages with kids on the spectrum are pretty effing grim, so I'm relieved that we're actually in a better place now than we were last year, even with all the additional anxiety and stress.
And of course, Isaac is just awesome. He really is. School is going very well for him and we're seeing great progress. He has more words and makes eye contact and plays with friends a bit more and today I got a very natural, "hi, mama!" when he and Dennis came home from the park. His favorite game right now is pretend sneezing - all I have to do is start saying, "RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAA..." and he will fill in, "CHOOOO!" and then we do it back and forth for a ridiculously long time. This is pure comedy gold. Trust me.
And here is Isaac in footie pajamas playing the piano, if you accept a loose definition of the word playing:
He seems to have inherited Dennis' enthusiasm for all things musical, and will often sing along with whatever we're listening to in the car. We're trying out a dance class this week, too.
A few months ago, I bought a membership at the local children's museum, and it was a great decision. Isaac loves to go there, and having unlimited admissions takes the pressure off of any given trip. We can spend the whole time in one area or leave after half an hour, it's all up to Isaac. His favorite part is the huge water play area, which is why I always have to bring a complete change of clothing, down to shoes and socks. The smock is no match for him. Here's one of my favorite recent photos, in which Isaac experiments with fluid dynamics:
One of the good things about living in silicon valley is that there are so many ASD kids here that the school districts have programs in place for them starting at age 3 when they age out of Early Intervention services. So Isaac is now in a small (six kids!) preschool class just for kids on his part of the spectrum, with extra speech therapy a couple times per week. The class time is twice as long as his Early Intervention class was, so we ramped him up with partial days the first week, but now he's going for five hours a day and really likes it. He's happy and excited to get there every morning.
The evaluation the school district did at the beginning of October was the first eval where he's been fully tested for cognitive ability, and he scored just fine and age-appropriate in that area. I knew his little brain was whirring, but it was nice to see it in black and white. He has made a lot of progress in language and socialization in the last six months, but of course those delays are still the most significant. The report also called him cute, so that's official.
I didn't have the energy to do anything awesome for Isaac for Halloween this year; he was quite happy to run around in his skeleton jammies from Gymboree, and he was a damn cute little skeleton. That's good enough for this year.
The hardest thing for me right now is that I am so focused on all the great progress Isaac is making that I get kind of blindsided when I'm around neurotypical kids and see what the rest of the two- or three-year-olds are up to. And then I feel deluded and pathetic for being so pleased with how well he's doing, when there is still so much ground to cover. I'm still trying to find the right balance of optimism and concern I guess.
He's being super-affectionate lately; he has a move where he sort of wraps his arms around your head and squeezes you close to him. He's also trying to figure out how to give kisses, but for now it's kind of awkward and slimy (and sweet, of course, but mostly awkward and slimy).
Isaac's birthday party was last Sunday, and I'm finally getting around to recapping!
The theme of the party was Plan 3 From Outer Space, obviously a riff on a certain b-movie.
I did some space decorating on the back patio. The wind did a number on the fringe on the roof.
The lattice is covered with CDs.
I also taught myself the fine art of spray-paint spacescapes. I am now qualified to paint the sides of rusted-out vans. I thought the results were reasonably decent, though. The first project is a sunshade over Isaac's sandbox/rock quarry. The sun really beats down on it in the afternoon, so I painted an old blackout vinyl shade and attached it under the canopy.
The banner is another old roller shade. It didn't take the paint as well as the other one did.
Isaac loves numbers, so I made a countdown banner using scrapbook paper.
What we really want to see is THE CAKE, right? Leigh suggested a UFO cake. This is what she came up with:
It's a silver spaceship full of little green tentacled aliens, beaming me and Dennis up.
I have never been gum paste before! There are windows to see what the aliens are up to - namely, all of Isaac's favorite activities!
Playing with trains: Splashing in a wading pool: Eating pretzels: Climbing:
In between the windows were infinity mirrors. The whole thing took multiple 9-volt batteries to power all the LED lights. There was also a powered turntable to spin the saucer. (more details on the cake are here!)
The party itself was fun; we had a bounce house on the front lawn. Isaac loved it.
I can't believe he's three. Today was his birthday and we declared it Isaac-Palooza: Everything Isaac Loves Day. Which isn't all that different from his usual weekend routine, of course. We went to the farmer's market and saw the big clock strike 11 and watched Mighty Machines and went to the park. So far, Isaac really likes being three!
There is so much going on inside Isaac's little blond head. A few recent highlights:
He loves to clap and say YAY! given even the slightest excuse. Dennis was watching some of the press coverage of Sen. Kennedy's death last week, and they showed a clip of one of his speeches, and when the audience burst into applause, so did Isaac.
Also, the number after 10 is YAY. I suspect this is because he has a very cute embroidered counting picture above his changing table, and after almost every diaper, we stop to count 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 and then clap and say YAY! Sometimes he climbs up there himself (grrrrr...) and counts and claps. He knows what order the numbers go in, and can identify them. We've been playing with his number train floor puzzle which goes to 20, and trying to introduce the next set of numbers after YAY. YAYleven, YAYelve...
He has been trying out other words (bubble, pop, doggie) but none of them have stuck the way YAY has.
He played with a friend this weekend! Nathan (3.5) came over and they did their usual "I am playing with these trucks, you are playing with those trucks don't touch my truck!" parallel play, which is pretty age-appropriate, but then they started playing a chasing game around the house and were interacting with each other! Nathan would chase Isaac out of his room into the living room, and then Isaac would push Nathan back toward his room (which is Isaac for, "I'd like you to go over there now, please,") and chase him in there. They were giggling and out of breath and kept it up for a very long time. It was freaking awesome.
He only has about six weeks left of his current program, because once he turns three he's officially the school district's problem and will need to transition to their program. He has a bunch of evaluations scheduled and we have meetings coming up and I'm mostly trying not to be a giant ball of anxiety about it, and I'm researching private programs even though I can't imagine how we'd pay for it. It's a constant ball in the pit of my stomach. I'm not good at uncertainty. Dunno if you've noticed that about me.
My parents are on their way out here right now, and I'm taking next week off from work to hang out with them and maybe try to relax a bit. What I really need is some creative time. I've been knitting, but I really need to do an insane project for the house or dust off the sewing machine or something, because I'm feeling - what's the word they use for Isaac when he's off-kilter? Unregulated. I am unregulated, and the best cure for that usually involves fabric or paint or glitter or all three.
We have the beggingest cats who ever begged. To review, our feline companions are Bea, who showed up at our door at about the time we brought Isaac home from the hospital and announced that we needed a little black kitten with a fluffy tail; and Gracie, she of the deformed feet and soft soft blonde fur. They look at us accusingly and perform their Yowlathon for Empty Bowl Syndrome (we can stamp out EBS in our time! Yes, technically that is food in our bowls, but we would like an upgrade.), and we fill in their ultimate selling points - "I was homeless!" "I have funny paws!"
I feel like right now "My kid has autism!" is my "I have funny paws!" Not that I'm using it as an excuse, except maybe for why I've put about 20 of the 45 pounds I lost last year back on. I'm doing a study on Pie Therapy for the treatment of OFMKHA (Oh Fuck My Kid Has Autism) Syndrome. Early results are promising, including a serious benefit for suppliers of Fat Jeans. No, it's more just this basic weird new fact of my life that I find myself constantly trying to get my head around.
That's all coming off a lot more self-centered than I mean it to; I know this isn't about me and my pie-lust, but I'm starting to try to process what this means for me and for Dennis as well as for Isaac. Hopefully, this is healthy. I haven't really crashed the way I did after Isaac was born; I've cried a bunch at totally random times, but overall we're handling this, at least for the moment.
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Thanks for all the nice comments, everyone. They are much appreciated.
One nice side-effect of having in-home therapy is that my house looks reasonably good at least two days a week. I did a massive anxiety-clean before the first visit, since they were videotaping us (eep!) and I didn't want anyone viewing the tape to be distracted by the dust-buffalo (they're way beyond bunnies at this point) stampeding under the train table. Since then, I've been doing a compulsive straightening on therapy days.
Over the weekend, Isaac started playing a "put mama and daddy to bed" game - this isn't too surprising given that we've had some (ahem) struggles around bedtime lately, probably related to the giant upheaval in his daily schedule now that he's in school every day and having additional therapy most days.
Anyway, he herded us into his room and pushed us on his bed (currently a twin mattress on the floor, after a total refusal to accept the adorable toddler bed) and then closed the door. Since we were playing the Isaac role, we wouldn't stay in bed, cried at the door, wandered out, etc. He was giggling with delight as he rounded us up and sent us back to bed, and said "night-night!" as he pushed Dennis' head back on the pillow. That's the first night-night we've ever gotten, and he was also saying "Daddy!" so if we want to use a very loose definition, he was using a two-word combo. Yeah, it might not hold up in court, but we thought it was very exciting. It was also the first time we've seen him role-play like that; he seems to be inching toward symbolic thought lately.
Last night, I put on a Mighty Machines video for him while I got his room ready to start the bedtime routine, and when I said it was time to get ready for bed, he gave me a crafty smile and did a perfect three-point gaze (tv, me, back to tv) and got pretty close to the sign for "more" - the little monkey was asking for more video! Of course I praised him all over the place and let him watch one of the short episodes. Hey, if watching stock footage of Canadian dumptrucks motivates him to communicate, I'm not going to argue.
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I didn't have the energy to do anything awesome for Isaac for Halloween this year; he was quite happy to run around in his skeleton jammies from Gymboree, and he was a damn cute little skeleton. That's good enough for this year.
Thanks for all the nice comments, everyone. They are much appreciated.