It's no secret that Lewis is not the most coordinated child. However, since it has been nice out, Justin put the tricycle together that the boys got for Christmas (it is multi-functional so we could push Owen on it too if set up slightly different). Beth came over for some bonding time with Lewis and he wanted to try it out so she helped him ride around some. He actually seems like he's getting somewhere with pedaling. Steering is another story. It's like he has no idea his arms can do something while his legs are moving.
All of this to say.....we are sure he'll get it. He can go for a few feet by himself if he doesn't run off the road. And he seems to really like it too, which helps a lot!
This morning I dropped off a grant application for help with Lewis' therapy etc. It has taken several months for me to get it together! It is a relief to have it done and to just wait to see if the committee has favor on us. To celebrate, Owen and I went to the park. He is a crazy man! He loved the slide and the wobbly walkway. You can tell how fast he is going in these pictures.
He also discovered the purple flowers growing in our yard.
Lewis' class took a field trip yesterday to Bowling Green High School where some students had set up an Easter egg hunt (and I got to join them!). They had made these cute "baskets" out of milk cartons for the kids to collect their eggs in. Lewis did not have a super-competitive spirit when the teacher said "go!" He was very slow and methodical in putting the eggs in his container, and at the end had about eight eggs to show for it (not too bad!). I joked with his aide that he has yet to grasp the concept of greed.
Anyway, after the eggs were snatched up, many of Lewis' classmates lined up to meet the Easter bunny.Obviously a girl, the bunny was very friendly and tried to get the kids to give hugs etc. Lewis was totally freaked out by this bunny. It was an incredible mixture of fear and awe. He was terrified, but couldn't walk away. The bunny gave him an egg which he liked. Then she asked for a high five. That went well. Finally, I asked Lewis if we could take a picture, all three of us together. From then on he seemed okay with the bunny and followed her around for a good part of the time.
Since Lewis was diagnosed about a year and a half ago, my sister Beth has been hoping to get to move from the Chicago area to Bowling Green to help with his therapy. This weekend our dream is becoming a reality! It has been a long process. She put her condo on the market in September and was under contract in January. She came in February to look at apartments. She is choosing to live on the square, across the way from our own Spencer's Coffeehouse where Justin is spending most of his time these days.Here are some views of the empty apartment.
The boys certainly like the view from the windows.
It is a nice, wide-open space. After a whirlwind trip up to Evanston last week, we delivered her belongings with the help of friends so she could stay and close on her condo on Wednesday. She is coming tomorrow officially to take up residence downtown. Currently, her apartment looks like this: The landlord put down new flooring in the bathroom, and Lewis was very interested in the shower. This is a lot of pictures. I might have to do a separate post about the trip itself. It was interesting! The hard part for us is done. Now Aunt Beth gets to re-learn life in Kentucky. She hasn't lived here in a LONG time. And she gets to unpack all of that stuff!
Last week, I got to take Lewis to the library to get some books and videos. While I was checking out the kids' section, Lewis found a book about Mohammad Ali. The book had a picture of him on the cover in his standard boxing uniform: shorts and gloves, no shirt. Lewis started whimpering and said, "Put shirt on!" This happened over and over, followed by, "Put pants on!" It was rather humorous, but I felt bad for him not understanding why there might be someone who willingly had no shirt on, and why it might be okay. It's great that he noticed something different, all on his own.
He's also been going to the potty standing up. He needs help with that still. He tried on his own while I was getting Owen down for his nap and it was quite a mess. We were proud of his effort!
Owen, on the other hand, is spouting off his ABC's, numbers and colors like crazy. He's a little sponge, soaking up all kinds of information. Here's a video of a recent performance.
It's been getting warmer, and we've been outside playing a lot. The boys have been spending some time on the stump and it's an easy place to take pictures where they won't try to run away.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Unlike the last post, Owen is generally a happy child, but passionate. He fights for what he wants and at 19 months old, often this involves some whining. We are so happy with his progress though, including learning recently to blow a flute and various whistles. This clip is of him blowing the flute and then whining hoping to get the book Lewis is playing with.
He's also learned his sounds from the Leapfrog Letter Factory video. Here he is doing the sounds while I sing.
We took a lot of video during bathtime the other night. Lewis is learning about various adjectives and I'm constantly asking him if he is handsome or ugly, sweet or mean etc. Here's one of our conversations.
And finally, Lewis has composed his own song about taking showers. I sing the correct version when he refuses and then he sings a new version where the nouns are all replaced with "big burp." Such a creative child we have.
Finally a couple of pictures. We don't do group bath time at our house because we think someone would get hurt. When the boys got these Thomas bath toys at Christmas, it was yet another good reason to keep baths for one boy at a time. That way they both get to play with all of the trains and there's no fighting! Here's Owen with the trains.
Just after my last post, on January 15, I had an IEP meeting at school to discuss some of Lewis' goals, especially regarding speech etc. I have to say that I'm so impressed with his school, the teachers and therapists and their love for Lewis. We knew they'd fall in love with him as we all have, but they really do care and are doing a great job. While I was gone, our good friend, Mandy Guss (I like to call her Mandarin) watched the boys. She is part of "Team Lewis" and did an ABA session with him just before my meeting so it was very convenient for her to stay a bit extra. She has an iPod Touch and both boys love it. It's like an iPhone that's not a phone. It has a ton of cool apps and the boys have taken to fighting over it if left to their own devices. I left in a hurry, and returned to find this:
Mandy was very carefully and gently rubbing Owen's feet and he had totally melted as a result. It was just so precious, I had to post these pics. Mandy has joined staff and is raising support to go overseas to Sweden long-term with Campus Crusade. For the moment, she is an essential part of our lives, providing therapy, friendship, at times childcare and we really appreciate her (and the rest of our team!). She's really flexible so we see her often.
I'm going to have to get her to show me her secret on this one.
This morning I dropped off a grant application for help with Lewis' therapy etc. It has taken several months for me to get it together! It is a relief to have it done and to just wait to see if the committee has favor on us. To celebrate, Owen and I went to the park. He is a crazy man! He loved the slide and the wobbly walkway. You can tell how fast he is going in these pictures.
He also discovered the purple flowers growing in our yard.
