Graduation

All the friends at graduation, but missing Sydney and Tony.

Ellie!! and Ginger and Dash

Opening a present

Today was the big day.  Kate was so excited this morning.  She woke up and said, "OK.  Get up and go make breakfast so we can get ready to go to graduation!"  I hated to tell her that graduation was after lunch at 2pm.  We managed to fill the morning and then went to Brain Balance.  Ginger and the kids joined us which was so fun.  Kate has already used her markers and construction paper!  Thanks guys! 

Everyone was in the room and clapped as Kate walked in.  She just looked around and then noticed Derek with a camera.  After a minute of talking about it, Kate and Tammy worked it out so that we could take some pictures, but not a video :) Then she was given a scrapbook with notes from all the staff, her picture they took of her first day, and all of the "brains" she was awarded throughout the program.

She told what she liked and didn't like about the program which was kind of funny.  She had such a captive audience and she couldn't think of what to say!

Then she sat there with everyone and got her picture taken.  That in itself is a miracle!  Lucky for me she was willing to do it.  I was not going to let this event go by without a picture!!

Final Assessments Done!!

Yay for Kate!  She is finished with both the cognitive and sensory-motor assessments.  She finished each one quicker than before.  In fact, I was out shopping when she was done today!!

We said goodbye to Sydney today which was hard.  Kate said it best when she said "Really, I couldn't have done it without you."  She looked forward to being with Sydney each session which really helped her to want to go to Brain Balance.  Sydney really matched her well and I feel so lucky that Kate was able to work with such a loving and positive coach.

So, Kate's part of Brain Balance is over!!  She has graduation tomorrow, but today we went to the car wash to celebrate!!  Whoot!

Last week

Phew, one week left.  Kate has a session on Monday and her last session on Wednesday.  She will do the cognitive assessment on Tuesday and the sensory-motor on Thursday.  The final report and home programming meeting will be on Friday.  Then a little graduation!!

Kate was not pleased that we will continue with exercises when we get home.  She thought graduating meant we are totally done.  Hopefully some (if not all!!) of the primitives are gone so we don't have so many exercises to do.   But she hasn't really been cooperative the last few weeks to do exercises.  We are both kind of burnt out on them.  She is really ready to go home.

We are both such a mixed bag of emotions too.  She is really going to miss our neighbors, Elizabeth (the mom) and Gabriel (the 2 year old).  And her other friends that she has met.  So she is happy to go home, but sad to leave these friends.  And I am happy to be with Matt, and go for walks in the woods, and sleep in my own bed again.  But I am sad to leave the people, and Costco, and the fun places to play. 

So, I am trying to make this last week a fun one, but we got a rough start today.  I am realizing more and more that we both like to be out of the house.  So, we went on a drive and looked at houses that I will buy one day soon when I am rich.  But the day still ended with yelling.  Oh well, she is asleep now and hopefully, tomorrow will go smoothly!!

Fun Weekend

Kate and I were soooo lucky to have our friend Terra come to stay with us.  She came Friday afternoon and left Sunday morning.  We played and went swimming and read.  And when Kate went to bed, Terra and I actually got to talk :)  And we stayed up way too late.  It was super fun.  She did the exercises with us which made them fun to do, instead of the usual daily drudgery.  It is so awesome to be around Terra. She brings such a fun energy and reminds me of a fun time of life when we lived in Logan.  I love having her as a friend.  She loves Kate, no matter what, and she listens to and understands the joys and challenges of parenting.  Terra notices all the little changes in Kate and supports her in the areas where she still has some growing to do.  How did I get so lucky 15 years ago??

 

Swimming video

Kate is exploring all areas of the pool now.  Tonight, she was in deep water and took in some water with her snorkel.  She started treading water (where did she learn that??) and yelled "help!".  It was pretty cool, she knew what to do.  I told her that she had to learn to get to the side if she was in trouble and not depend on me if she wanted to go in the deep end.  So, after that, when she needed to, she swam over to the side. Yay!

Little fishy

Today, Kate put on her new face mask and snorkel and started swimming!!  She got the hang of the snorkel pretty quick and soon after started swimming back and forth from one side to the other.  She was floating too, another thing she has never done.  It was amazing to see!!  She loved putting her face in and seeing the bottom of the pool.  She would come up and report what she saw with great enthusiasm.  One time she said "Just in one day, I'm a PROFESSIONAL!"

She got quite a lot of mouthfuls of water from going under too deep, but she would come up, cough a bit, empty the snorkel and try it again.  She never asked for help once she had the mask on.  It was really cool to watch.  There was another girl in the pool and Kate would chase the girl and the girl would drop pool toys in front of Kate while she was swimming.  They even had a race a couple of times.

Well, I've been trying to get her to put her head underwater for years!  And all of a sudden, today was the day.  She swam around for about an hour and a half and I just couldn't bring myself to stop her.  She was having so much fun that I let her swim until she was done.  She was pretty tired when we got back to the apartment but it was so worth it!  I hope she will let me take a video next time, hehe, we'll see.

Meeting new friends

We went to the trampoline place last night and Kate jumped by herself this time while I relaxed.  She meet several kids that she played with.  She is really enjoying the dodge ball arena.  She throws the balls at people and gets balls for them to throw.  She let a kid know that he could hit her with a ball, but just not very hard.  He was so nice and would run by her and tag her softly with the ball.  She would run over to me and, laughing, tell me that she got hit in the "weirdest" places.  Once on the hand and once on the butt.  Then she would run back and keep throwing, jumping and rolling around on the tramps.  They never did play a "game" of dodge ball, but were just playing around.  She even challenged one of the boys to a thumb war!

Hot

It is so hot here that I actually felt like I burned my bottom today when getting into the car.  We have white leather seats and they were soooo hot.  I had to put a cloth grocery bag on Kate's seat so she could sit in it.  We were driving and Kate said "I'm sorry, Mommy.  I have to fart and I don't want to fart on your bag!"  I laughed so hard. 

Winding down

Both Kate and I are having lots of mixed emotions these days.  A lot of our friends here are going back to school so the people who we have been hanging out with 3 days a week are not going to be here, or are going to BB at different times.  As Kate said today "It sucks."  I said goodbye to two friends today that have shared our time slot for quite a while.  We chat every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and catch up on the new news of what our children are doing, what are some meal ideas, and such.  So, it was hard today, knowing that the only way I will see them again is on Facebook.  Blah.  Kate was pretty sad that this would be the last day of seeing one of the moms.  She never saw the kids because they were always in programming, but she would chat with the mom all the time.  The cool thing is that she is actually sad about not seeing these people again. Yay!! She is making lots of friends(young and older) and will miss them.

On Stage

Here is Kate, her first time on stage, helping the magician with the rope trick.  He tied several pieces of rope together and she is holding one end of the rope while the magician is about to tie it to the rope in the other girl's hand.  There were about 30 people in the audience and lots of others walking by.  She is braver than me that's for sure!!

Start

When I started to ask the question, "What is right about this (autism, stimming, certain "negative"experiences) that I am not getting?" it was really cool what showed up.

We went to the fair last night to go to a magic show.  We were sitting in the magic show and the magician was asking questions and Kate was yelling out her answers with all the other kids.  He asked for some volunteers and she raised her hand.  She got picked to go up on stage to do a rope trick.  She did everything he asked and made funny comments that the magician played with.  When she came back to her seat she was bubbling with excitement.  "How did he do that??"  "I just can't believe this!"  and so many other comments and questions.  She went up to him after and asked how he did the rope trick and he showed her!!  It was so cool.  He really encouraged her to look into doing magic tricks at home and gave us his card so we can email him and he will give us some links to check out. 

After the show, we were looking around at some booths and I noticed Kate shifting from one foot to the other.  I asked if she had to go to the bathroom and she said no, as she kept shifting.  So I asked a question.  Not in an annoyed way, but in a curious, nonjudgmental way. 

Me- "Why are you moving from one foot to the other?"

Kate- "Because it helps me think" was her simple reply.

Me-  "Thank you.  That is a great awareness."

What is right about the way our kids move their bodies that we are not getting?

This and that

Oh my, I haven't written things down for a long time.  After today, Kate has 9 more sessions.  So that is 3 weeks from today.  Gosh I don't really know what to write.  Kate is in the shower right now with her swim mask on "so I can let the water run down my face!"  So I have time to write, but where to start??

I guess I will tell about going to our friend's house yesterday.  I ran bars on 2 of the kids and the mom.  It was such a gift to me, I learned so much.  Kate played with the kids the whole time.  She even did her primitives with the older boy.  Before this she hasn't let anyone else do her exercises with her, it always has to be me.  She didn't want him to tell me that she did them, but eventually she told me about it.  When she was hungry, she got out her own lunch out of our cooler and ate it.  I was in the next room, but she just helped herself.  Later she played outside with the younger boy while I chatted with the mom.  She didn't want to leave, she was having so much fun.  She is already talking about how hard it will be "never to see them again".  She said she likes Brain Balance because she met these friends, but she doesn't like Brain Balance because of the exercises and she doesn't get to do her repetitive things.

We are getting sick of eating the same things day after day.  I have not been very creative in the kitchen.  I make the quickest meals possible, which is a big change for me.  I used to spend quite a while making a meal.  So, we were thinking of some meals that we would like to have and I was writing them down.  I asked what she would like and she said "ummm, cookies and fries."  Me too, really :)

One of Kate's favorite coaches, Allen, had his last day today.  We just found out today and I thought she was going to take it really hard.  He talked with her for a few minutes and she seemed ok with everything and was especially intrigued that he will be working at a jail for his internship.  She almost started crying when he was about to shut the door and then calmed down.  We'll see how Friday goes when he isn't there.