Lots Of Fun Times To Catch Up On!

So the past couple weeks we've been doing lots of fun things!  Let's see where to begin...well last Monday Devin had speech and physical therapy, which is slow going but we do feel that his receptive language is improving, he's also getting better at identifying himself from mom, dad and Elizabeth, and he's even starting to follow simple one step commands! Tuesday he had OT and feeding therapy at the DDI Vantage Clinic, for OT we worked on movement, his therapist also told me she'd had a very good conversation with Dr. Peck his Psychologist and they had come up with a "Devin plan" to help us make life easier dealing with a very young boy with ASD.  He's been put on a sensory diet, and we have a lot of work to do around the our place to make it more Autism friendly.(Oh how I wish we could buy a house!) In feeding therapy we discussed blending up "our food" and finding a reusable pouch and let him eat that way, as we're getting absolutely nowhere as far as eating goes.  That evening was one of our friends son's 2nd birthday party, and boy was it fun!!  Elizabeth got to dress up like a cowgirl, so naturally she called herself Jessie!  She made a cowboy friend within seconds of arriving and they had fun together all night!  Devin didn't appreciate the cowboy hat quite as much, but he still managed to have a good time as well!  Luckily the dinner they provided was hotdogs cooked over the fire! So both our kids were set!  They even had pony rides!!  Elizabeth was in heaven!  We even got Devin to sit on the pony, which he actually thought was pretty neat!  It was a very fun party!

Then last Thursday the kids and I went over to a neighbor's and the kids played with her two girls and the slip and slide they set up.  My kids just LOVE playing in water!

Saturday we met up with my parents in Bountiful for Summer Fest, Elizabeth had fun at the kids crafts KUED booth making all kinds of international crafts!  She and Devin had fun playing around the park after lunch, Elizabeth and my dad enjoyed watching some international dancers as well!  My mom bought Elizabeth a "bird whistle", that sounds like a bird chirping when you fill it with water and blow into it....she figured it out super fast, in fact she's better at it than I am!  It was a very fun way to spend the morning!  After that we went up to my parents house and put the kids down for nap/quiet time and my mom and I went to the Utah Idaho (school) Supply store, where she ever so graciously helped out by getting me some things for the upcoming school year...they have so many amazing resources there!  We ran a couple more errands then went back to their house so that Tony my dad and Elizabeth could do a couple things they needed to.  Eric and Jen joined us for dinner, we finally got to have Jen's birthday dinner and cake and ice cream!

Sunday we had our neighbors over for dinner and to watch the Olympics Closing Ceremony.  Just before the kids bedtime the sprinklers came on and since our kids absolutely LOVE the sprinklers we thought what the heck....go run in the sprinklers...and they took full advantage of the opportunity!

This Monday my great friend Kim was a lifesaver and came and watched Devin while I took Elizabeth to get the ultrasound of her kidneys, Elizabeth did really well with it considering how scared she was of getting "pokies", once she realized the worst of it was simply she had to be still she relaxed....though the staying still part wasn't easily accomplished and we had to remind her often!  The results came back good, very little damage to her either of her kidneys, but the doctor who reviewed the results said he highly suspects that she does have reflux of the urethra, so when we go for her follow up appointment next week I'm sure I'll be making more appointment to have that and other things tested.  The down side is all the other tests do indeed require "pokies" so it's not going to be as easy.  Tuesday Devin had OT and feeding therapy...it was funny cause Dani (his OT) was telling me that working with Devin can be very difficult with how sensitive his Autistic tendencies make him.  I told her that sometimes I feel like, dealing with Devin is like dealing with a bomb....one wrong guess and he explodes!!  She loved that analogy, as it really is so true.  Devin has very little communication skills so figuring out what he wants can be extremely frustrating(even for his OT)and to make it worse if you offer(guess)something he didn't mean he wanted he gets SO upset, and after only a couple wrong guesses he's full on melting down.   There's so much frustration all around...though I do feel we're all making progress, I'm getting better at reading him and he's  starting to kind of gesture/point to some things, a couple times he's even taken our hand and led us to the general location of what he wants!  So yay for progress!  She also checked out all our hard work...you see one of the things we needed to do for Devin is pack away A LOT of toys, and de-clutter his living spaces, so we now have more toys in totes and boxes stored away than we have out, as just the sight of all the toys and choices between them was over stimulating to him.  We put the toys that we wanted to put in their room in a large cardboard box which I emptied and left downstairs while I arranged the toys in their room.  When I came down Devin was sitting inside the box with his blankie...and that is how the box became his "calm down" space!  It's not permanent but it works while we come up with something that will be his permanent space(so it will have to be able to move with us).  We're not totally done with the re-organizing there are a couple projects for tony to build, one will be a bench with storage in it, and the other is a new storage unit for all our school and art and crafts stuff....I'm pretty excited about them!  There are quite of few other things they'd like to have done for Devin but some of them we probably won't really be able to do until we have a house and he has his own room, but we're doing all we can for him with what we have, and we can tell already it's really helping him, and that makes us very happy!  Devin now has 3 signs!  More, all done(which still means anything else he wants it to as well) and he's just learned please!  He rubs his whole front and sometimes neck but the concept is there so YAY!  He can almost say "go" but it still doesn't come out right most of the time.  He can say "yay"(which they don't count as a speech word) but it's still dang cute to hear him say!  They're baby steps, but I love it!
That night we had Landen and Emily over for a sleep over cause Wednesday we went to the zoo for an end of summer vacation fun thing, and it was fun!  I put Devin's sunglasses on plugged his headphones into an MP3 player loaded with kids songs to play for him, put his hat on gave him blankie and he fell asleep for the first about half and was totally content for the rest of it! (this was a suggestion his psychologist and OT came up with to make going out in public easier, we did it during Summer Fest as well and it worked like a charm both times!) It works because the music playing blocks out auditory stimulation that he has a hard time processing in abundance, and the sunglasses lessen the visual stimulation which he also has a hard time processing.  And his blankie has become his security thing.  Emily and Elizabeth went on the carousel almost first thing cause Elizabeth wouldn't stop asking about it so we all knew we'd never get to enjoy anything til she'd gone.  Then we looked at animals as we worked out way to Rocky Shores which Landen and Emily hadn't yet seen, I think they really liked it!  It was during our picnic lunch I noticed that Elizabeth was really really red faced and when I felt her she was burning up!  So we decided after lunch to just go see the giraffes, ride the train then head home before Elizabeth over heated to much and we had to add an ER visit to our agenda!  Landen, Emily and Elizabeth rode the train while I let Devin out of the stroller to play with the "water ball" thing, then the other kids came off the train ride joined us for a bit then we called it a fun morning!

Wednesday night, thanks to Jen's sister having an extra ticket and my wonderful brother thinking of me and my love of plays(especially this one!) I got to go see WICKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And it was absolutely positively AMAZING!!!!!  I have the sound track memorized(and have for years)and have even read the book, which was an....interesting read, luckily the play was really nothing like it, it was so funny, the plot was very good and the ending was perfect!  I had a surreal feeling the whole night....I just couldn't believe I was actually seeing Wicked!  I wanted to see it oh soooo badly but there was just no way we could ever manage to afford even one ticket(not that I would have gone by myself) so I had just come to terms that I was going to have to wait for it to become a movie, and see it that way.  So when Jen called me up on Sunday and told me her sister had an extra ticket and if I'd like to go...I almost couldn't breathe!  I totally expected to wake up from a dream....but thankfully it was no dream, but that night did have a dream like feel to it!  It was incredible!!!
Last night a couple in our ward who homeschools three of their five children(the other two aren't school age) had a homeschool seminar type thing, that I went to, and I'm so glad I did because it strongly reaffirmed the decision we've made to homeschool Elizabeth and possibly even Devin.  They made so many great points, and I came home with lots of new resources!   I know homeschooling seems daunting and maybe even weird to some people and I know it isn't right for everyone, but after a lot of contemplating, researching, praying and pretty much doing it for the last year, I know it is what is right for our family and for Elizabeth.  I just can't stand for her to be lost in a system...to wonder if she's really learning to her full potential, I don't want her only getting 1/20th of a teachers attention and focus.  I hate the idea of wondering how much she's learning and actually knows, and this way I don't have to.  I don't have to wonder if her learning style is the same as this years teachers teaching styles, I know how she learns...I know she's learning about what she wants to, so her love of learning develops instead of being stifled by a mass produced taught one way curriculum for the "average" student.  Elizabeth truly loves learning and I hope and pray to keep it that way throughout her life!
And that catches you up with the Johnston's!  Phew!!