Recommendations....

First, this one. Brought to you today by the number one. And made of win.

1.


Okay, so I only had one. I actually have more... but Maggie just found her brother's halloween candy.......

Slacker.

Fo'sho.

We've been a mixture of really boring and really busy lately... so just when I think I have some down time to write, there's nothing going on...

Should probably update...

After the last post, Sam was x-rayed the next morning and the nickel was still in the same spot so they put him under general anaesthesia and got it out with a little scope. (Guess how many times I had to spell check anaesthesia?) :p
He came home and crashed that afternoon but was back up and at 'em pretty quick! Glad that's over. Now I'm paranoid about any little thing on the floor, since Maggie is crawling like crazy.

Maggie is crawling like crazy. Almost walking... pulling up to stand against the furniture and all that. It won't be long before she's walking.

We are dealing with some other things with Sammit right now. Not just a little unpleasant. Hopefully this will pass quickly...

Halloween was good. For some reason, this year I just wanted to get it over with. I really stunk STUNK stunk at taking pictures so I don't even have any pictures of our awesome costumes! DUH!!! That was dumb. I'll have to see if I can abscond some from some friends.

But here's a few that I did get:

The culprit

Exhausted after a night in the hospital

Ike's soccer team (He's a natural goalie!)


We went to two Trunk or Treats this year. At the first one we all dressed up as the Ghostbusters characters. N and the boys were the Ghostbusters, Mags was Slimer in a frilly green thing I made, and I was Dana/Zuul in the orange dress with the crazy hair... I'm totally bummed that I didn't get a picture of us... Boo. At the second one, N couldn't go with so I just let the kids wear whatever they wanted... D was a cowboy, Ike was a vampire, and Sammy was a "Sammy". (He wore a silly hat of Ike's and whenever anyone asked what he was, he'd reply, "Yeah, I'm Sammy." :) My little girl was a derby girl, complete with bruises! :) I have to live vicariously.



I went on Ike's first field trip with him to the pumpkin patch. Guess which kid is mine. :)



And I won tickets for SeaWorld's Howl-O-Scream on the radio. :) N couldn't go with us (He's been busy lately, can you tell?) So I took the four kids by myself. It was really fun and we had a good time.




I can't believe it's already November. This year has flown by and it's hard to believe my sweet little girl will be one a month from today! Here's a few more pics from her photo session! She's my angel.

It's two a.m.

And I'm blogging?

Can't sleep. My three year old is currently in the hospital awaiting surgery in the morning.... because the little dink swallowed a flippin' coin!!

*sigh*

I just got home from spending 6 hours in the E.R. with him, and my hubby just came and took over. I had to come home since Mags is still nursing.

I took Big D out to sell popcorn in the neighborhood, and while I was gone he had gotten into the coin jar and swallowed one. And started vomiting, and gagging, and crying.

So I took him to the BAMC. (Brooke Army Med Center)

Yay.

Poor little man is super stressed out though. The X-ray experience was not a good one. I think the one dude bruised his arm. The coin ( a quarter?) is stuck in the esophagus... right next to the "air part", so it could get lodged in there. They were about to send him up to the Pediatric ICU when I left, to be observed over night, till he has surgery in the morning.

*sigh* again.

I need to go to bed.

My poor little dude. :(

Hot and Spicy Hydrangeas with Popcorn in the Fridge While I Play Soccer with My Girl.

Let's see....

My OCD tendencies are telling me the easiest way to do this is in list form, so...

1. The fridge broke. Thankfully it was an easy fix and we only had to go one full day with all our food in the cooler.

2. I made a cake. :) I won't go into the details of this one, except that who knew hydrangeas wilted so quickly!?! :P

3. The hubs and I stayed up late one night and made salsa and boogied to some Depeche Mode. We should do that more often. :) This was a huge batch! We still have two big jars in the fridge.

4. The big D has been selling popcorn for cub scouts. I really don't like fundraisers, but this one is relatively easy, and last year he made a lot of moola towards camp and stuff. So it's all good! :)

5. The two bigs started soccer this last week. I am not haapy about the way it has been organized. The school sent out letters of interest two weeks ago. We sent it back saying we were. We got a note last wednesday saying there were games already scheduled for last Saturday. Sheesh! Thankfully, a few parents stepped up to coach, but it still SO unorganized! And the games are all way across town. Sigh. Gotta love private school/charter school sports. That said, my Ike Ike got put in as goalie (for our little 4 person kindergarten team) and was a natural!!!! It was so funny!!! And totally worth it! That boy can goalie! LOL!!! I took some video... I'll try to post later.
6. Magsie got her pictures taken. First professional ones... cause I'm a slacker momma. These are some previews the photographer (who is awesome!) sent! :D YAY!!!!






Love!!!!

Tow-Mater... and other things.

Continued from the previous post. :)

Of course, we could always be characters from Disney's Cars...

Daddy already thinks his little girl has Mater teeth. :)

Although, this guy could also be a contender.

LOL!!

These two fellows were recently found around the house and I thought I'd share. The spider was in the garage. We also had one, of same size, upstairs in the linen closet. Ran right across my foot. *shiver* I love hurricane season. :P



Yay! Snakes! :)

Boys will be boys. :)


And I got a flat tire last week while taking the boys to school. Apparently, in true Halloween fashion, it was a bone. Yes. A bone. Ew. And the kind people at Walmart taped it to my keys so I could keep it as a souvenir. Or so that I could see for myself. There was no need. I already believed them. :P

Momma knows best.

If only Texas actually had fall. I guess I'll just have to settle for 75 degrees in the morning. I hope it lasts! :)

So, here it is. The end of September. The time of year when I start thinking about... yep. Halloween.

HALLOWEEEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Primarily, how I will decorate my house, and how I will dress up my kids. Too bad they don't always agree. :-/

I have the BEST idea for this year, though.

We've thought about things like... The Hitchhiker's Guide characters... or Dr. Who... but we are geeks. And not many others are. So... we don't think very many people would get it. One year I went as Bellatrix and Nathan went as Dr. Who. Most people got who I was, but no one got him. Figures.

There was, however, no mistaking us last year... :)

Heh heh heh....

So. This year... I think we should go as

*drum roll*

Ghostbusters!!!

The four boys can be the ghostbusters, I can be either Janine Melnitz (the secretary) or Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) , and Mags would be Slimer!!!! LOL!!!! No fairies around here!!!!

So whatcha think???

Should we be these ones:

or these ones???

Heehee!!!!! Now if only I could convince them that they don't need to be Iron Man and Mario. :-P

An explanation.

Sammer had an appointment at the therapist this morning. It went well, and was also very eye opening. I'm surprised by how much I am learning, and I am so glad we didn't wait to find help for him or wait to have him tested.

I am writing this post because lately I've felt frustrated at the typical reactions I get to his behavior. And, yes, maybe I am attempting to justify certain things, but I... I don't know. Every time he does something, and people around us cringe or give us funny looks, I just wanna go into this long diatribe about how he is being treated for this and that, and he's working through his "issues" blah blah blah blah. But I guess I feel like, if people knew him, and knew how to react to him, maybe ... I don't know.

So I'm blogging ... not to excuse behavior, but just to tell you why he does it. (I will be sharing this, you can bet.)

Sam's sensory integration issues revolve, primarily, around his proprioceptive responses and his tactile ... dysfunction. For example...

Today at his therapy there was another child there at the same time. This little boy is probably about 10, and is often there the same time as us. Cute kid. Sam likes him. This boy was sitting on one of the swings and Sam tried to get past him to the tunnel. This boy was swinging pretty hard and Sam, misjudging how to get by, was promptly thwacked in the stomach by this wooden swing, complete with 10 year old boy, and sent flying about 4 feet. He laid, on his back, there for a minute. Everyone in the room, waiting for his response, held their breath. Sam said, "Whoa." And stood up and went over to the tunnel. That was it. If it had been any of my other kids, or any child without proprioceptive problems, there would have been wailing and screaming. Sam didn't register how hard he'd been hit. He doesn't register when he gets hurt, and he says "oww" for things like... being brushed with a very soft hairbrush down his arm. His emotions and reactions don't always match what is happening to/around him. This is part of why he craves "deep pressure".

I asked the therapist about whether or not this was related to his constant need to be headbutting, pushing, running into, "hitting" (I put that in parenthesis because his intent is not mean), or jumping. Part of the reason he is in therapy is to stop this behavior. If there is another small child around, and Sammy goes up to that child, gets right in their face, smiles, babbles, and then bonks their forehead, it's not because he's trying to be mean. It's his way of connecting and I KNOW this sounds like I am justifying his behavior, but I know he is not a bully. He likes other children, he just doesn't know how to connect with them. We are working on that. Good thing we are doing it now and not when he's 14. I'd hate to see him thunk the girl he likes on the head... what feels like a shove to us, to Sam, may be like a gentle tap.

At first glance, Sam would seem hyposensitive... his need to be jumping, slamming, etc. and yet he is extremely hypersensitive to certain textures, movements, and sounds. Some of this may be inner ear related... he hates to be upside down. It throws him off completely.

Another part of Sam's problem is his auditory perception. If you ask Sam a question, his usual response is, "yeah". Not because he means yes, but because he knows an answer is expected of him, but doesn't necessarily know what you are looking for. If Sam is in an enclosed space, his closet, the ball pit or bean pit at therapy, the blanket box in our living room, his language is SO different. He answers you with "sentences" and his vocabulary improves vastly. We are planning on getting him some noise cancelling headphones for places like church or where there's loud noise/crowds.

Sensory integration (processing) disorder is all about "finding your place in space". When Sam goes to a playground, he doesn't jump right on the playset, he will circle it and try to figure out how it works, where it goes, where he is in relation to its pieces. Once he does, though, look out! When we are at therapy and he is participating in activities that over stimulate him, or are un-structured, he will look for things that organize him. Help him to regroup... placing the colored tabs into the slots, doing a shape sorter, things like that. His therapist said that it shows how well he follows his own cues, his ability to understand when it's too much and to go and find something more structured to help him regroup.

Our school district, after one meeting with him, wants to test him for ADHD. I explained my frustration about this to Sam's therapist, and she said that she, also, hates labelling children, but that those labels often lead to more assistance for that child. So be it then. I'll let them test him, but I already told them I won't medicate him. I have my own reasons, maybe for another post. :) Sam's therapist agrees with this, and is an advocate for altering diet, detoxing, and, obviously, therapy.

Imagine how hard it would be if you couldn't process when you were being hurt, if the sounds in a room stimulated you to the point that you couldn't speak, if being around a group of people confused and stressed you out so much that you felt the need to crawl inside of a tunnel (literally).

We are doing our best.

Our weekend.

This three day weekend has been SO nice!!! We kept our calendars clear and have just hung out at home.

Daddy helping his Ike learn to ride his bike! He's almost got it!!!





Made pie. And turnovers. So yummy. Hubby ate two of the turnovers last night! :D Apple pie has got nothing on my plum pie! :D





My pretty girl!
Sammy getting his "Deep Pressure". Found this little trampoline at a yard sale. He is on it ALL the time!! :)
My Big Dude catching bugs.
Bike riding with Daddy! (funny toes!)

Gentlemen Broncos

Okay. I have to say... because my Big D is watching it AGAIN... I can NOT recommend this movie. It is dumb, and gross, and disturbing, and juvenile. And we love it. It. is. hilarious. You really shouldn't waste your time. But we love it. There are lines in there that slay me every stinking time I see it. Sam Rockwell is brilliant. I've been a fan of his for a long time, but everything that comes out of his mouth in this movie is... yeah. "You know how weird that'd be, a bunch of gorgeous yeast lords with my face, running around, making dang fools of themselves?"

ANd the Jermaine Clement (of Flight of the Conchords) character... oh my heck. "He rides Paris-France on the brick roads in London, looking for mysterious things. He rides Jacque for pleasure."

That said, you really shouldn't waste your time.

It is hilarious.

Title Song. You gotta love the 60s. I find Zager and Evans oddly attractive...

Ex-Terminator!

So, I've been severely lacking in my update. Whatev.

Been busy.

My days are pretty much insane. Up by 6. Leave the house by 7:20...any later and we get stuck behind a train. Although this week was free breakfast week at Chick-Fil-A, so we actually had to leave by 7 so the kid could get breakfast. Anyhow. Kids get to school by 7:50. I get home about 8:15. Shower. Get Sammit to therapy. There for two hours. COme home. Give Mags a quick nap and go back to get the boys at 2:40. Get home. Make dinner, do whatever we have going on that night (Cub Scouts, etc). CRAZY!!

But in the midst of all that, I think we got rid of the mice.

Last Saturday we got three. It was awful. They thought I was teasing them with the wood traps, so I left out the glue ones. HORRIBLE. But it worked. Three mice caught on Saturday and another one by Monday. Haven't seen any more. It's been a week. I put out poison and I know one of the little bags was bit into . I am hoping that was the mouse that was caught on Monday, cause it was already dead on the glue when I got to it. The others were... not. Ugh.

Sickening...

and also a little sad.

So that's that.

I am sure there's more that happened... oh yeah! Duh! The hubby got his orders and will be promoted to Capt soon. :) We are just waiting on the Fed orders (You have to have both State and Fed). And he starts the MSW program at Fort Sam in the next two weeks. Hallelujah for NO student loans, and getting PAID to go to school! *sigh of relief*

:)

I'll update with pictures again, soon...

Of Mice and Little Men

I hate rodents. I do not like them. Actually... that's not entirely true. Our first pet as a married couple was a wild hamster (yes, I did say wild... we found it in our basement apartment and no one claimed him) named, wait for it... Fuzzy. We had him for about a year and then he lost all his hair and died. We buried him in a Cheerios box. Sad. :(

Then the hubby's sister thought he needed to be replaced and gave us a gerbil. Not nearly as nice as a hamster. Speckles. I don't remember what happened to him. :)

My mom had wanted a mouse forever and my brother got her one... while she was living with us... so I guess it was our mouse too. I don't remember it's name. A little white mouse. He was nice enough. I don't remember what happened to him either.

Wednesday night, Big D was getting some milk out of the fridge and exclaimed, "Whoa! Something just ran under the fridge. I saw a tail."

Oh crap.

The night before I had heard scritching in the kitchen, behind the oven. I assumed it was a cricket as we currently have those in abundance in San Antonio (shiver). But now... Nope. I knew it was a mouse. We got Daddy downstairs, barricaded the floor between the kitchen and living room, and opened the front door ready to chase whatever it was out... like that would solve the problem. We moved the fridge and there was no mouse. Nothing. But there was mouse poop. ICK! ick ick ick...

So I went out to HEB to grab some traps. A friend said glue traps worked best and I stood in the aisle for five minutes staring at all the traps and trying to decide what was most humane, but would solve the problem. In the end, I got some basic wood traps and a box of glue traps. Glue traps just sounded horrible, but I figured we'd try it. I set them out when we got home while Big D watched and acted out 'Death of a mouse':

"I'm a little mouse. I'm walking. I'm walking. Oh, look! Peanut butter! *SNAP* Uhhhhggggg..."

Hilarious AND sad. :)

Within ten minutes I heard frantic scritching again and went to investigate. Sure enough. Stuck to the glue trap was a little grey field mouse. I felt so bad! Now what!!?? How do we kill it?!! It's suffering!!!!

Nathan was upset that I had even gotten the glue traps, as he wanted live trips, pacifist that he is. Big softy. So we took the trap outside and a pair of heavy duty gloves and some vegetable oil and the little mouse was free. We set him loose in the field across the street.

Big D said, "Now he can get eaten by a snake."

Thank you, son.

I thought we were done. Then I went in the garage yesterday. Scritching. Dammit!

So I put out the last of the glue traps and wooden traps. This morning, the glue traps were empty and the peanut butter had been eaten off the wood traps.

IT. IS. ON.

I am currently waiting for maintenance to come fill the hole the little devils dug behind my oven.

Me = not happy.

In other news... Sammit is doing well with therapy. Maggers has her two top teeth breaking through and won't let me put her down. Big D and Ike started school this week. Big D loves it, of course. Third grade was my favorite too. Ike, however, is having a hard time adjusting. :( We'll get there. Kindergarten is full of adjustments. They are in a charter school and it's brand new so it's still under a lot of construction. And the pickup line takes 40 minutes to get through. NOT COOL. Still working that out. I usually walk up and get them. Takes too long otherwise. The school is going to be good for Big D. The jury is still out on Ike Ike. :)




First Day of School!! (Boxes on the floor is the bazillion school supplies we had to buy. All the movies on the floor is because we emptied out the armoire so Sammers could have a "quiet place" to go when life gets to be too much. :) It's hard being 3.)


UPDATE:
I literally just stood with the pest control guy, in my garage, and watched as a mouse came out, sat down, and ate the peanut butter I just put on two of the traps. The pest guy went to get his camera. INSANE. There's some big glue traps out there right now. Nathan won't be inhumane, looks like I'm about to become a killer.

Slammer

My sweet boy. We finally got a diagnosis last week. Some of you may know, he was undergoing some tests for his... behavior. Our pediatrician referred us to a Developmental Behavior Pediatrician in May and we have, over the last 3 months, had Sammit tested for Autism and other disorders. Well, we went in last week for the final say. I have never thougt that he was fully autistic, but I thought there was a chance he might be high functioning or somehow on the (very broad) spectrum. Turns out that he is 2 points under the cut off for the autism spectrum, but exhibits a lot of the same behaviors. Primarily, our DB said that he has speech and fine motor delay, which can lead to dyslexia and dysgraphia (an inability to write). This made total sense to me and was an "A-HA!" moment when we were in there... the dyslexia part and dysgraphia part, we already knew he was delayed. Those make a lot of sense to me. Anyhow, AND he has sensory processing issues, which is often mis-diagnosed as, or can turn into if left untreated, ADHD. She said that he has a good attention span and doesn't exhibit an hyperactivity, so she won't even test for that again until he's 6.
I had never heard of sensory processing disorders before I went in for one of his Autism screenings and she asked me a few questions and mentioned it. Afterwards, I came home and did a little research and it totally makes sense to me. You can read more about it here: http://www.sinetwork.org/about-sensory-processing-disorder.html

Anyhow, after all this, she recommends 2 hours per week of speech therapy and 2 hours per week of occupational therapy to work on things like his need for "deep pressure" and his fine motor skills.

We began meeting with the therapists this week. The OT is awesome. I love her! Her program will be so good for SamBam. The room they treat him in is full of air mattresses, big bouncy balls, swings, a ball pit, tunnels... all sorts of things to help Samu find his "place in space". Today, they let him "crash" which means he spent the better part of an hour diving off a table onto an air mattress. Then they "squished him". He laid down on the mattress and the OT rolled a giant ball over him while laying on it! He LOVED it!! He had some alone time in the tunnels and also had speech therapy (which I shall hereafter call ST) in the ball pit. This is going to be really good for him. The OT said that she thinks a lot of his problem may be inner ear related ... since he has speech issues and doesn't like being upside down, etc. Basically, my little man is hyposensitive, which means that he craves touch, and they will help him learn how much is too much and how much is just enough. (I think we could all use a little OT actually!) She also said we should get a small jogging trampoline for his "deep touch" needs (I think he would jump on my bed all day if we let him), and also create a small space (in a closet or wherever) that is just for him to go and sit in. This made total sense to me, since he's already claimed the inside of the armoire in the living room. :)

He also saw an ST today and she said that he is doing really well, they just want to see more. He is also being tested through the school district for that, so we may just let the school district foot the bill for that one. I do not want to take him out of OT for anything though.

I'll give you a sensory processing for instance... yesterday, after Sammers first OT appointment, we went to Inflatable Wonder Hell... I mean Wonderland. After about an hour and a half Sumo was starting to wear down so we took a break for lunch, then we came back and he climbed into a tunnel and barricaded both ends from the outside world. He was sitting inside playing with a car. Whenever another child came by, he would start to screech at them to make them go away. I went and sat by him and told him that he needed to stop or he was going to get a time out. An older lady came over to me and told me that my child had "anger issues" and was "just so violent". I told her that yes, he had issues, and we were working through them, but that he was NOT violent! She said, "Well, I work with special kids. It's amazing how violent they can be." Shook her head at me and walked away. Ok. Anyone who knows Sam, knows that he is NOT violent. He is a chronically happy child, who doesn't know how to channel his energy. He is NOT violent. Grrrr... But I digress. The point is that Sammah had enough and it was time to leave. He had to shut himself in his tunnel once the over-stimulation had set in. Another example would be his inability to match his moods with his emotions. We were at the splashpad and some other big kids were chasing him with a water gun and he was screaming, but he was smiling. I told them to KNOCK IT OFF and they said, "but he likes it! He's smiling!" BAH!! Exactly.

Or when we went to see Toy Story 3 and he sat on the floor (bleck!!) crouched behind the seat in front of him peeking over to see it. He wanted to watch, but the theater was a bit much.

So that's that. I'll post updates as we go along. :)