lewis video archive

Lewis' autism brings with it some serious OCD tendencies. He gets obsessed with a book or a song and then after a week moves onto something else. His most recent obsession is with the Wii. I've been forced to use the Wii Fit because the weather has been so awful lately. I've resigned myself to indoor exercise. Anyway, Lewis loves it and pretends to do it all the time. Only, he isn't doing the exercises he is spinning the "hula hoops" (usually coins), or jumping around like the punching bag in the boxing segment. He sings the songs and makes the noises, just like the Wii. Today he has cried twice when we told him he couldn't "watch" the Wii. We made him pick a video instead. I know, we're awful parents, right?

We've got videos of some of his other obsessions of the past few weeks. He's still loving Sandra Boynton. He got into Oh My, Oh My, Oh Dinosaur! for a while. This one is long. He has it memorized. He's doing great with his 's' sounds in this one. Since this book entered our lives he has only wanted to wear his dinosaur p.j.'s.



He moved on to Blue Hat, Green Hat for a while too.



He's also loving the piano. He plays several songs like, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Mary Had a Little Lamb." He also plays something that sounds like the sad music on Lost. Here's his own version of "Row, Row."



Other stuff he's learning is how to put on socks. He struggles with dressing skills in general. Socks are going better. This was one of the first days.



It has been a lot of work lately to keep up with his program. He's matching typed words to pictures like hat, boat, duck, dog, pig, hat etc. Many of them he gets right the first try. He's doing simple mazes, writing letters, cutting lines, and labeling actions in pictures. It's very time consuming for me to organize, laminate etc. Socially he seems to be making little progress. Hopefully he will start to become more interested in the other children he is around so much. We still absolutely adore him and we are so proud of the many strengths he has.

owen update

It's hard to believe Owen is already 20 months old! In just 4 months he'll turn 2! It's crazy. He has been a busy bee lately. He zips around the house with reckless abandon, which leads to some ugly bumps and bruises sometimes (and blurry pictures). He's trying to climb on whatever he can. So far his biggest success has been our new IKEA chair. He will manage to hoist himself and a favorite toy up there and then sit for a bit to play.


He continues to be obsessed with letters, but now has added numbers to the list. He is walking around counting up to ten, with some numbers sounding much clearer than others. He also loves going up and down our step stool. As long as he has something to hold onto he does pretty well, and almost leaps off.



He has also started saying "no" and "yeah." "No" is said so often that it is driving Justin insane. He likes to go to things he imagines are not for him and touch them saying, "No!" I have to remind Justin that Lewis only started saying 'no' a few months ago, so we have to be glad that Owen seems to have this one down.

playing together.....sort of

We have had to stay inside a lot with the snow and coldness. The boys generally don't play much together. They fight over toys and Lewis especially has to have things a certain way. However, occasionally if Owen backs off a bit, the two can play in the same vicinity, or listen to a book together, or that kind of thing. The above picture shows the boys interacting a bit while playing with their trains.

They have both loved running back and forth through our living room/dining room area too. Here's a clip of that.

Owen at Fountain Square Park

Owen loves to be outside, even if it is freezing. He loves the freedom to walk around and explore and hates to be forced to go a particular direction. This day we actually slowed down to sit with the people with the book in the park. He seemed especially cute in these pictures.

backing up

Wow, I have been a lazy blogger! There has been so much going on.....big, heavy stuff, and it seems that my time on the computer has been devoted to keeping up with Lewis' therapy. He has been learning a lot, but kind of spacey lately. We had three changes recently. First, Lewis started requesting crackers and cookies with gluten, and we let him have some. It has been a year since we put him on the GF/CF diet and we wanted to check to see if there was any effect. We also stopped giving him methyl B12 injections about the same time. Mostly we wanted to save money (about $50/month), but we also wanted to see if there was any change without them. Besides, who loves giving their child a shot every few days? The last change is that Lewis has dropped his nap most days. He still seems to be pretty tired at times, but mostly does okay as long as he goes to bed a bit earlier. We think this may change when it warms up and he is out running around more.

All of this to say that recently after a therapy session, I turned on a Thomas video (at Lewis' request) and gave him some fries to munch on (also at his request) while I got myself some dinner in the kitchen. When I came back out a bit later I found this scene:

He hadn't finished his fries and had not even begun the rest of dinner, which generally follows the video at the kitchen table. When I woke him up and got him to the table he looked like this:

Poor kid. He had a rough day, but we got through it somehow. We have started him back on B-12 and have kept the gluten to a minimum.

snow, snow and more snow

These are old snow pictures from a couple of weeks ago, but it's not looking a whole lot different out the window right now. The first storm was so anticipated that they called off school when there was nothing on the ground until late Friday afternoon. The boys each had a lollipop and watched the snow begin to fall.


Saturday morning there was 6-7 inches outside. Lewis had therapy and got to play in the snow some then. We took the boys out after lunch to walk around. Owen is still loving the alphabet and notices every letter in sight. He also sees himself sometimes in the store windows.


Lewis also loves walking in the snow.


We took the boys into Spencer's and they both wanted to help out behind the counter. It struck me as funny to see them both back there at once. Not sure what to do with our snow day, but I'm sure we'll think of something.