Soon?

Maybe I should have mentioned in my last post that "coming soon" was a relative term. :) Where oh where did the past month GO?

Even now as I sit down to type, the baby (8 months old now!) is starting to fuss. Figures.

Ok, 20 minute break to feed baby and put him down for a nap. Now where was I?

Right. Catching up... Will I ever be caught up? Maybe when my kids are all in school full-time? That will be in about 5 years.

********************

The above was written a couple of weeks ago already. Seriously, the Summer is flying by so fast I can't believe it. Between a bored 8-year-old, a tantruming 4-year-old, a strong-willed, potty-training 2 & 1/2 year old, and a newly-crawling 8-month-old, life is chaotic to say the least.

What have we been up to? Here it is in a nutshell. Yes, the condensed version is all I seem to find time for lately. Sorry.

Seth has been job-hunting. He was a contractor at a company that no longer renews contracts beyond 2 years, so as of June 30th, he has joined the Unemployed. No fun there. He spends hours searching for jobs, tweaking his resume and writing cover letters. He has had several phone interviews, but so far no face-to-face interviews. So he is busy searching and doing all that. It takes a lot of computer time! (Therefore, since that takes priority, most of my computer time lately has been from my phone, and I don't do well with typing on that little iPhone keyboard, so this is a treat to use the laptop uninterrupted for a bit!)

Ethan is bored. He is always asking if I will play a game with him, or if he can play on my iPod, or if we can go to the beach / park / library / restaurant , etc. We have been going to the beach quite a bit. I need to get him in swimming lessons. He loves the water and wants to learn to swim. He also loves science and wants to do science projects around the house. He is always asking if we have vinegar so he can make a volcano, or blow up a balloon, or make crystals, etc. He is reading about space and wants to look at the moon through his telescope. He is interested in cooking and wants to help me bake (which I haven't done much of due to all the warm, humid days!) Yesterday he told me he thinks he'd like to be a chef when he grows up. Although this may come from watching Ratatoullie a lot lately!

Kibby misses school. She always asks to "go to school and see Ms. Julie" (her teacher this past year). She also wants to go to church several times a week. She was evaluated at the Clinic again, this time by a psychologist. (She was referred back in January but it just took this long to get her in! 6 months!) Anyway, the Clinic did some testing and decided not to redo the ADOS test for Autism that the school district had already done over the Winter because after reviewing the report saw no reason to re-test. That meant only 2 hours at the appointment instead of four! Yay! The recommendation was that Kibby stay in Special Ed preschool with the speech therapy included, but to consider adding Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy as well. From what I understand this is a pretty intense one-on-one therapy, recommended for 20-25 hours (or sometimes up to 40 hours) a week with a qualified therapist. They work on developing adaptive behaviors while decreasing target behaviors by breaking goals and tasks down into smaller tasks for the child, and rewarding each small success, thereby increasing the likelihood of the child repeating the desired behavior. (Does that make sense?)
So we are looking into that for her. There are waiting lists and insurance hurdles, so it's been a process already. We are also looking into getting her a caseworker to help us navigate all of this, and to get the most help for her right now when she is young.

Ruby is 2 and a half, and is our drama queen, silly entertainer, and definitely a strong-willed child! She loves to watch movies, play outside, go to the park, to church, and to go swimming at the beach. She always asks for her "swimming soup". I love that so much I don't want to correct her! Is that bad? :) She is currently learning to use the potty, and isn't too thrilled so far. She will hold it in and beg for a diaper. Um, yeah. It's a work in progress, but I thought it might be easier to train her now before Ean starts walking!

Which brings me to Ean! He started crawling a couple weeks ago, and is getting to be speedy already! My gut is telling me he will not walk at 9 months like all of his siblings, and I have to say that makes me happy a little. :) I am NOT ready for that yet! Even though it's exciting to see them reach new milestones and it might have been cool to say "all my kids walked at 9 months" - I now know that they already are growing too fast and won't mind my baby slowing down a bit! He is starting to try to pull himself up on furniture already, though, and we have found him pushed up onto his hands and feet (instead of hands and knees) when crawling, which I find amusing. I should point out that he doesn't actually move then. He stays that way until he remembers how to get back down on his knees or topples over. :)
He likes to "dance" when he hears music, too. When he is crawling and hears music, he kind of bops up and down a little. It's hard to describe exactly, but so cute.

Whew! The laundry is calling once again, as Ean just overflowed his diaper in the baby swing. (Yeah, he still likes the swing! Unreal, but the weight limit is 25 lbs, and he doesn't try to climb out of it, so we've let him enjoy it as long as he wants to so far.)

Until next time! Forgive me for not proofreading - if there are typos I hope you'll all understand! I still have photos to post, so the next one will probably be mostly cuteness and less words. :) Hope you're all enjoying your Summer!

Coming Soon...

Yesterday I had to go to a mandatory training for work. Seth took the morning off, and my parents were visiting, so it worked out perfectly for childcare so I could go. The topic was Autism. Some of the people my company supports have some type of ASD so it was meant to educate the employees on the subject.
To be honest, I didn't learn much that I could use at work. What I did take away from it was a lot more personal, since Kibby was diagnosed with Autism in February by the school district. (She goes in later this month for more extensive developmental testing through the clinic here, so we will soon have their input as well.)
I will post more about what I learned in a future post. (Soon!)
Also coming up, look for a birthday post! Yes, Ethan turned 8 over the weekend! :)
Until then,

Answers

Well, we finally have some answers about our Kibby. After months of tests and evaluations and screenings, of waiting lists and wondering. It has taken a long time, but we think she will be able to get some help now, and for that we are glad. It will be worth the wait.

We met Thursday with the team from the school district that has been doing her most recent evaluations. They tested her for several things: academic and cognitive abilities, vision, communication, and autism. In the midst of this, Kibby also saw a nurse practitioner from the department of developmental & behavioral pediatrics here in town. (She had been on a wait list since the end of August!) She also saw a social worker at the clinic to determine what type of an evaluation she would need by them, and an audiologist to test her hearing.

What had prompted all of this testing was her history of delayed speech, strange use of language when she did begin to speak, and other developmental... oddities, for lack of a better word. This led us to get her tested for some type of developmental disorder, and we began this process last Fall, after an attempt at doing an Early Childhood check-in was a flop. They weren't able to screen her. I have written some about these things in previous posts, but it has been a while since I've updated on this because I didn't have anything concrete to share. I didn't have any diagnosis or test results to report, just my gut feeling, and I've already shared that.

Well, now I have something to report. And research. It's name?

Autism.

It wasn't the crushing blow it could have been, only because I already suspected it. Not to say that it was nothing to see it on paper next to Kibby's name. It wasn't. However, I am optimistic that the help Kibby will be able to get will enable her succeed far beyond what I can do alone at home. (Not that I am ever alone... with 4 kids, it's rare to ever be truly alone in the house!) I am still processing how I feel about all of this, and all that goes along with this diagnosis. I'm also doing some research. I was a bit surprised at Kibby's scores on the autism test... we all pretty much expected her to test on the higher-functioning end, and she didn't. This doesn't mean she is low-functioning necessarily, either. She did score "far below average" in a few categories. She is a bit of a puzzle, and we're trying to figure it all out yet. He scores could be skewed a bit due to her problem with auditory processing, or could be completely accurate. The team once was fairly certain it wasn't autism, but after testing her and seeing her results, feel that they got accurate information and the results are correct. She will be re-evaluated at the end of Kindergarten to see if she still qualifies for services.

Kibby also qualifies for services for a language disorder. Which sounds pretty general, to me, but I'm not sure how you could narrow that down for her, either. He use of language is unique and odd, sometimes embarrassing, or even downright funny.

We have one more meeting to go before Kibby will start preschool. We will be prioritizing goals for Kibby and meeting with the teachers and observing her classroom. She will go four mornings per week, following the regular school year. For me, right now, the hardest part about her attending school is her transportation. I have to admit it kind of freaks me out to put my 4-year-old child on a bus or van with a stranger, for a nearly 20-minute ride (each way, not including other stops the bus may make) for four days a week. What about car seats? Do they have them? I have so many questions and things to figure out. We do have the option to drive her ourselves, of course, but I'm not sure how that would work with Ethan's bus schedule. I know I shouldn't worry about it, especially when I don't know the details yet. Deep breath, Susan... deeeep breath...

There. That's better.

I'll post another update when I have her appointment set up and I know when she'll be starting school! Whoa, it feels strange to type that. Ethan never went to preschool, so I'm not used to this. I always thought I'd have her at home until she was five and a half! *sniff*

***Update - I have her meeting set up for March 1st, and Kibby will begin school on March 2nd! I'm not sure I'm ready for this! I'm excited for her and nervous all at the same time. ***