Monday, January 27, 2014

A Factual, Interesting Blog

You may have noticed that along with writing/"blogging" about our day, I also try to keep track of information, events, dates, milestones, etc. in here. This entry is backwards from my usual entries. Less blog, more facts. So it may look under construction - but it's not. It's tons of "information". It's good stuff!! There's just so much going on with Judah lately - his sudden growth & development is unreal! I'm trying to get it all down so we can see even more clearly what is happening. Dave is doing an incredible job of chronicling this information as well. Thank you Dave!!!

Not much of a event-filled day. The boys had the day off from school. We were home all day, but man we were busy!!
Yesterday I brought a Sophia t-shirt home for Willow. As soon as she saw it she had to wear it. She wore it through the night over her pajamas and all day today.
Sebastian is loving corn tortillas with cheese & turkey - still need to give him more new foods.

The kids played inside a lot today. It was chilly outdoors! Sebastian stuffed the big football tents with pillows & blankets. He got inside and rolled off the couch numerous times & later put it on the floor to use as a hideout. Judah played with him a lot, rolling off the couch. Willow enjoyed the hideout.

I've been giving Bastian small jobs around the house - he's learning to do new things.

Tomorrow is Judah's IFSP meeting. We'll be working on that tonight.

Today I spoke with a lady from WESD after the woman I met yesterday told me about her. Man I wish we would have found her sooner!! She gave me information on classes WESD holds, childcare for the classes, the chain of command, resource for support groups & autism groups in Salem & will contact the resource for me. She told me there is a Resource Room we can use to get books at the Salem Hopsital Rehab. She seems very passionate about helping parents in this world - even though it is not her job. She advised me to get what my child needs, go up the chain of command and also mentioned filing a complaint. The classes meet once a week for one hour. I think they go for 6 weeks?? They have had these as long as we have been a part of WESD apparently. She said if I give her specific questions she can likely answer them. Very helpful lady, was so glad I called. Unfortunately I had Willow literally screaming in my ear & the two boys going crazy in the background so it wasn't the most productive or professional of conversation, but I still walked away with a lot of info for helping Judah and feeling like we could very potentially gain more help from WESD with the classes.


JUDAH

Scott left for work this morning saying, "Bye Sebastian!".. Sebash said bye.. Scott was almost out the door and then he said, "Bye Judah!" Judah was looking in the opposite direction & said "Bye!!" He did not respond when Scott said goodbye to Sebastian but instead looked like he was waiting for Scott to say "bye" to him.

I followed Judah back to his room. He pointed to the floor and said, "Waaa!", showing me the puddle of water. I gave him a towel in the kitchen and said, "Let's go clean the water!". He went directly to his room & cleaned it very well! While he wiped the floor he said, "Clean up clean..", probably singing the clean-up song.

He said "type" while he typed with me.
He is saying, "All right!" a lot.

I gave him a choice between a blue or orange shirt to wear. The orange was Cars. He said, "Blue!" and seemed pleased when I handed him the blue shirt. I left the room. He came up to me soon after and had taken his pajama shirt off & was handing me his blue shirt. I began to put it over his head, he immediately started trying to do it on his own. Getting it over his head on his own hasn't happened yet.

I asked him to let Pixie in from across the room. I only asked once & did no gesturing or any other type of communication. He walked over to the patio door, opened it up & let Pixie in, closing the door as soon as Pixie was in the house.

He picked up the dustpan when I started to sweep up a bunch of popcorn and held it down for me to sweep into. He carefully put it into the trashcan, missing only a few times - he concentrated harder after that. Used dustpan well the entire time, then used his hand as broom.

He said "McQueen", "yeah", "that one" & "arrow" when he was picking out a video on the computer with Sebastian. All very appropriately. He said "steep" when we were watching Wubbzy & MANY other words.

He was in underwear most of the day. He had one accident on the couch. After that he showed me a diaper in the bathroom. I showed him underwear and said it. He repeated it back to me with the best pronunciation of this word to date.
I spent an hour with him in the bathroom, trying to keep him on or near the potty. He needed to poop but either couldn't do it or didn't want to. I finally just put him in underwear. He played with Sebastian, rolling off of the couch in a tent full of pillows and blankets. I took him to the bathroom often, but still no luck with the bowel movements.
Dry diaper thru the night last night.
 
He was trying to say letters in his Wubbzy book. He said Widget.

He saw me getting his toothbrush ready. He moved the stool to the sink and stood on it, waiting for me to hand him his toothbrush. We still do hand-over-hand and then he does some on his own. He cleans his front teeth well but doesn't do others.

Sebastian showed me a funny dance that they do at school. It reminded me of "Walk Like an Egyptian" (Bangles). Judah stood next to him, imitating the dance & smiling.

He is laughing a lot & smiling. He was very enthusiastic, talkative and ready to take on the world today!

He was repeating Sebastian's bedtime story as Sebastian told it. He told me words that correlated with what was about to happen in the Wubbzy video we were watching. He had so much new communication when we all laid down for 15 minutes - I can't even remember all of it! He said "sticky" then "eeewww" - he knows what it means.

Judah took usual meds - L-carnitine 0.2 mL, 1/2 tsp fish oil, 1 probiotic, 2000 iu vitamin d & reflux med. He took Miralax once. He tried to have a bowel movement on the toilet many times today, no luck, seemed pretty painful for him.

Below is an email from the woman I met yesterday who has a daughter at WESD (only 2 yrs old so not in their school, just doing home visits). I highlighted the parts that I think we need to look into.

About the whole gluten/casein free diet - I know several moms with autism kids who have started doing that. I met a woman who has a 9 year old son and you would never guess he is autistic. He talks and acts just like a normal 9 year old. She told me that it was because they were able to pinpoint all of his allergies and cure them! I know you are thinking how can they cure them? That's exactly how I was reacting. Well, she told me to go online and google NAET and allergy treatments. She sees a doctor up in Portland. He is actually a chiropractor who also specializes in the NAET treatments. He can cure a person's allergy in 3-4 visits. I could not believe what she was telling me until she pointed out that her son was non-verbal, was not progressing with any milestones, he had meltdowns, etc... Once they figured out that he is allergic to 18 of 32 of the most common allergies, she realized that it was negatively affecting his sensory system and putting it into overdrive. She is from CA and had a doctor down there that started doing the NAET treatments on him but when she moved to Keizer, she found the closest doctor was in Portland. I have done a little research on it and I plan to do more. I am going to be scheduling an appointment for Holly to get allergy tested next month. Read up on it though, it's very interesting info. Makes a lot of sense.
 
Also, when I was talking about the Qigong (pronounced chee-gong) massage. . .the Doctor who wrote a book about it is Dr. Louisa Silva. Her office is out south. Her book is great! I would definitely recommend checking it out or at the very least just google Qigong massage and you will see all the benefits to it.
 
Hopefully some of this info will be useful for you. I feel like I am just beginning a long road of discovering new techniques to help Holly. I am very hopeful that we will get approved for her to get social security benefits because I will use them to do NAET treatments as well as schedule a meeting with Dr. Silva to ask her questions about the Qigong massage and have her help me to make sure I am doing it correctly. I also want to get Holly into occupational therapy and speech therapy. There's a place in town that specializes in kid's with autism through horse therapy. I would love to take Holly this spring. It's $40 a session but you can apply for scholarships to help with the cost too. Plus there is also music therapy. Holly LOVES listening to music so I think that would be a plus!!! Anything and everything I can do to help her, I will do it!!
 
She also recommended Autism support groups on Facebook - I have joined many but always forget to try & keep up with them!
 

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