Gage goes to school Monday-Thursday and mornings are a time he usually is willing and wanting to learn a little, so I decided to start doing a little state work each three-day weekend.

Exploring the States:Michigan, the Great Lakes State. We started by reading through the book and then I chose some  5-10 minute activities over the three days.  My goal is really just two activities  for each of the three days and then two books, this one and one more picture book.

Here’s what we did

(he really didn’t want to get his picture taken)

1.  Traced the state map, marked the capital and the cities where his grandma and grandpa live.  Write Michigan.

2. Colored the state map, state bird (robin) and state flower (apple blossom).

3. Our friend Carley paints the bottom of his foot.PerfectAdd some paint and and and eye and you’ve got a robin!  (inspired by this pin)

4. Since we’ve been to Michigan many times to visit Jason’s family we started our very own Michigan photo album and listed the five Michigan cities has visited so far. We’ll have to get him to Lansing, where Jason and I were living when we got married.

 

5. We spent some time looking at pictures of our trip to the Woolsey Memorial Airport, named after Gage’s great-greeat grandfather, Clinton Woolsey.  I came across this recent blog post about the airport and Clinton. It’s an interesting read and it does not surprise me that my two guys have that risk-taking blood running through their veins.  If you want to read it you can here.  My profile picture is in front of the cabin that Clinton or his father Byron (can’t remember) built in Northport.

5. No books on Clinton Woolsey, but since he did have Charles Lindbergh in one of his flight classes and according to Time magazine he was at Clinton’s funeral, we read this book and were able to really see the airplanes and pilots of the 1920’s.  Gage liked the photographs.

Charles Lindbergh by Lucille Davis.

---

 

Keep sending me ideas for your state – especially book ideas!

Our Ohio activities. Pennsylvania activities.  West Virginia activites.

My dreams for the baby growing in my belly were the same as any other woman who has had the opportunity to create life.  I wanted happiness, success (in whatever form), friends, health, love.  Having an autistic child in our family did add a touch of worry.  I saw from a state away the toll it took on my cousin and her family and I wanted no part of it.  Fast forward a bit to a colicky baby who ends up in the ER on a ventilator before he’s four months old and then to an 18 month old who would bang his head on our tile floor repeatedly and so hard that I would call the doctor in fear.  Diagnosed with PDD-NOS (no longer an official DSM diagnosis but just means he tested on the mild side of the autism spectrum) at 2 years old, I was thrown from an already stressful place to one with more unknowns and burden than I’d ever known.  I cried every day, I read books and blogs, and saw doctors with a boy who could not sit still for even 10 seconds.  I was lost.

Jason and I had Gage late.  I turned 39 a week before he joined us and none of our friends had kids.  Okay, not true, we had two friends with kids and one had just moved back to France and the other we didn’t see more than every few months.  I had friends stop by in the first year, and Gage’s constant need for attention (not unlike many one year olds) limited my real-time with them. As I took Gage out to more public places we made some mom and baby friends and that was nice.  But Gage did need constant supervision and redirection.  I liken this more to an ADHD thing than to autism (not formally diagnosed, but that’s just a formality).

Fast forward two years and here I am still blogging even though I do not have time for it.  My day consists of getting him to school and two therapies, even on weekends.  I also need to find the right therapies (if any), therapists and schools and a way I can schedule them all.  After two years of the traditional therapies (ABA, OT, Speech, Social Groups, Swimming) I have dipped into the biomedical field more which means more extensive research than I ever thought this girl who hates science would ever see again.  Here I am at 1 am just finishing a 4o minute online conversation about the new supplement his DAN Doctor wants him to try.  I turned to a group of fantastic women who have tried everything and are willing to share their successes and failures.  Over 9,000 women in a closed group fighting for their kids.  I am still learning and reading and stressing and worrying.  For the first time we’ve found a probiotic that Gage can tolerate and the past few weeks he has been a happier, chattier guy.  That’s what makes it worth it.

I’ve had to go doctor searching in a way that parents with typical kids never will.  I have had to withstand questions on parenting choices and try not to alienate anyone who can help Gage.  I’ve been/am consumed.  It’s no surprise that a study showed that 80% of couples with special needs kids divorce.  To be honest, I consider date nights, even if it is just dinner and/or a movie, as therapy for Gage even though he’s home with the grandparents. He needs Jason and I to be united and loving and that is just as important to his  well-being as playing with his friends in social group.  But I am also the one who has to schedule and plan for these date nights/therapies.  I pay the bills (mostly on time), I clean (as little as possible, but still), I cook and do the grocery shopping for a dairy-free, gluten-free, mostly soy and GMO free kid. I basically keep this place running when Jason is at work earning the money for all of these doctors and therapies.  And all of this is on top of dealing with whatever crazy thing autism brings into our life that day, sometimes smiles, occasionally aggressive tantrums.

I’m not friendless, but I have little time for the friends I have.  And the ones that I had before, while still loved and appreciated, are so far removed from what’s going on.  My real life tribe consists of the moms I meet who are doing the same things with their kids as I am.  We get each other.  We get the daily struggles and stress, but we also understand that our time is not our own so often we sit with each other during therapy and send the occasional text or email until we see each other the next week.  I love these moms but they are just as depleted as I am.

All of this to illustrate why the book blogging community can still bring me to tears.  I know my mind, that now runs in 100 different directions at once, isn’t fully available to blog.  I keep doing it because it’s something I can do on my own time (ie the middle of the night) and I genuinely love the women that I have met over the past seven years.  The quality isn’t the same but the affection and friendship I feel for all of you who take the time to comment or email is so much more.  Last week, in the span of two days, I received THREE packages for Gage.  A Lola book from Kathy, two Texas books from Kay, and four atlas books and a gazillion stickers from Jill.  The support from you warms this mama’s heart and brings a happy tear to her eye.  Thank you for letting me share Gage with you and make up silly quizzes and write a little about the books that I still manage to read.  You are all a part of my tribe too and I appreciate each and every one of you who takes the time to stop by and say hi.  Thanks for bringing bookish friendship into my busy world 🙂

 

Gage goes to school Monday-Thursday and mornings are a time he usually is willing and wanting to learn a little, so I decided to start doing a little state work each three-day weekend.

Exploring the States:Pennsylvania, the Keystone State. I decided to use this series I found at the library.  We start by reading through the book and then I chose some things to do 5-10 minute activities over the three days.  My goal is really just two activities  for each of the three days and then two books, this one and one more picture book.

Here’s what we did

1. Trace the state map, marked the capital,painted it, and wrote Pennsylvania. He hates to write and this week’s long state name made his unhappy and stubborn.

2. Colored and painted the very intricate state map.

3. Used glitter glue to color the state flower, mountain laurel.

4. The book featured the Crayola Experience and factory in Easton so we did a Crayola project.

Took the paper off broken crayons (took longer than I thought it would), mixed the colors in different muffin cups, put in the oven at 300 for about 10 minutes, pull them out one by one and drop the flimsy one all over the floor, put in the freezer, pull them out and you got some very cool looking crayon pellets.  Inspired by this pin.

Our Pennsylvania Punxsutawney Phil activities (because he was featured in the book).

5.We read a book about Groundhog Day, made a craft and did a few papers matching objects with their shadows.  He was very happy to have his picture taken 😉

6.(learning how to use the side of the chalk from dad)Tape his feet to the paper and attach a pipe cleaner to the back to help him stand and ta-da! It’s Punxsutawney Phil and his shadow.  This pin was the inspiration.

7. Watched a video of Phil (he wasn’t all that impressed)

---

Keep sending me ideas for your state – especially book ideas!

Our Ohio activities.

 

Gage received his first train postcard addressed especially to him and it traveled all the way from California.  We’d like to thank our blogger friends Wendy and Mouse who took the time to mail it.  You guys rock! I told him it came from California and when Jason came home later Gage told him it cam from Africa, ha! And in a similar vein if any of you would like to bring a smile like this to my son’s face and add to his train postcard collection we would greatly appreciate it 🙂 Good luck finding a train postcard!

What do you do with a hyper 4-year-old who was off school for 6 days?  This!

You roll some paper down the longest part of your hardwood floor and go crazy!  Each part of ‘my project’ as Gage like’s to call it, took only 5-10 minutes.  We did paints, tracing, tape, coloring, patterns, stickers and whatever else tickled our fancy at the moment.  After the looong weekend I rolled it up and put it away and since then he asks every day to get it back out to work on it some more.  It was a win win and all it required was rolling out a red carpet of white paper.

A few tips if you want to try this at home.  Clean you floor thoroughly beforehand and then be prepared to just close your eyes to whatever you might find down there over the course of the next few days.  You will spend more time on the hard floor than you’d like so be prepared.  And, of course, make the kid do most of the work 🙂

 

It’s hard to find museums that are hands on enough to keep Gage occupied.  I’m always on the lookout so if you know of one let me know!  After Christma we went to Michigan to see Jason’s family we visited the city where Jason was born which just happens to be home to the Henry Ford Museum, the perfect place for little boys.  Not only are there cars and planes and trains in all of their massive glory but there was also an area where kids could make their own vehicles and race them against each other.  The highlight of the museum and where Gage spent the most time was the model train area.  He was in heaven.  They have a village outside and maybe we’ll try that on our next warm weather trip.

This museum gets an A+ from us because it kept Gage entertained for hours.  Has anyone else been there?

 

One with his grandpa and the model trains…

and my favorite with Gage and his dad and grandpa

Last week we took Gage to the Jump Yard, a huge warehouse filled with giant inflatables for kids, a snack bar, video games and rooms for birthday parties.  Here are a few pics to show how much fun Gage had.

See, he even made a friend to run around with.

These pictures are a little misleading because they are all focused on Gage.  If I’d panned out a bit you would have seen hundreds of people, kids and adults, milling around.  It only got more crowded the longer we were there.  We made Gage sit down for juice and after three sips he was ready to go.  Jason got up and headed to the big room with him and when I looked up a minute later Jason was looking around for Gage.  I started looking around, not panicked because how far could he have gotten?  Through a sea of people I catch a glimpse of him going up the stairs and I take off in that direction, only a little nervous because there was slide way in back that I knew he was headed to.  It took me too long to get throught the bottleneck at the stairs and by the time I got to the top and turned the corner he was nowhere in sight.  I hightailed it to the back slide/obstacle course and couldn’t find him.  Most of these inflatables are so big you can’t actually see the whole thing so it took me a minute to realize he wasn’t there.  Being such a big place there are lots of doors that go to back rooms and he could have gone in any of them but I assumed that he was playing somewhere.  I made a circle of the upstairs, completely panicked by now and Jason was at the entrance downstairs.  This was not my best be-calm-in-the-moment-of-crisis moment.  There were so many people.  I even told a passing worker that I lost a kid and she just smiled and kept walking.

I headed to the back again to regroup and Gage is walking right towards me calm as can be.  Luckily we were in the area they have set aside for football games for dads and there was a chair and a quiet spot where I could sit him down and tell him he was in trouble.  Deep breath.  Gage was unconcerned and was mad that he had to sit down instead of running off to play.  This is the first time he’s been out of sight when there were that many people and it did not endear me to The Jump Yard.  Gage, of course, would like to go back every weekend.

That smile and this were the two good things about  this excursion.He hasn’t fallen asleep in the car for over a year!

Four year olds are fast and sneaky and ours outsmarted both of us.  We’re in trouble.

October 19, 2010201120122013

2014!

As I suspected it might be, Gage’s first big birthday party was a lovely chaotic few hours.  I am so thankful that Gage has friends who want to celebrate with him.  We had 14 kids between 3-5 and they were great. I planned the party myself and I learned a lot for next time, lol.  Here’s what we did.

We put up our bounce house in the family room and Gage welcomed the kids by taking them there first thing.  It got crazy so I put Jason in charge 😉  Lesson learned-need lots of alternative activities close by for the kids who are waiting.

Robert the Rogue (he came sans pirate gear) made awesome balloon animals for all the kids.  Lesson learned-definitely worth the money since I really considered this the big part of their take home favors.

Then the kids headed down to the basement to decorate their own little pumpkins.  Lesson learned-needed someone helping the kids the whole time, more supervision.

Still in the basement we turned out the lights and turned on the disco ball and music. I didn’t really get any good pics of this but Gage will tell you that this was his favorite part of the party.  There was a box of noisemakers for them to choose from and keep but I don’t think I made that clear.  Lesson learned-if you don’t want a lot of extra noisemakers in your house make sure that you pass them out to the kids with instructions to take them home!

 

Headed back upstairs and Robert the Rogue did a short magic show.  Gage missed some of this by having a mini-meltdown in the kitchen but he made a pretty quick recovery.  Lesson learned-Robert earned his money.

Cake time! Everything we served was gluten free-dairy free. This cake was made by a vegan bakery and we served almond ice cream.  Gage ate neither deciding instead to eat as many grapes and pretzels that he could get his hands on.  Lesson learned-So many things I wish I could have done better here, but my biggest problem was not taking a deep breath and actually making sure all of the food and drinks got to all of the kids.  Parents started chatting and lots of food got left on the island.

 

It was time for his friends to go and I couldn’t get a smile from Gage in any of these pics, not even with his best bud Lily.  Lesson learned-Gage likes parties and friends and we should have more of both in our house!

It was a great day and I think a good time was had by the kids.  All 14 of them and their parents 😉   As for me, the last guest who came by for Gage’s birthday left at 10 pm.  Needless to say I was happily exhausted.

Can you believe my guy is 4?!?!  If you want Gage to take up a few more minutes of your time you can read all about his entry into the world here.

I’d been thinking about doing a post like this for a while and then I saw Trish’s and was spurred into action. I hadn’t planned on using so many photos but I loved her post so much that I was clicking my iPhone all day.  Hers was a day in the life of a mom and maybe I’ll do that too, but this is a day in the life of Gage.  It was last Monday. Gage has no typical day, each day brings different sessions or therapy or play time, so Monday was as good a day as any.

2 am-“Daddy!”  Mom comes in a stays til 2:40 when she sneaks back into her own bed.

7:05 am- Daddy got me out of bed, took me to the potty, helped brush my teeth.  Mom gave me breakfast (almond milk, cereal, strawberries) and let me watch a video from the library. It was Mr. Rogers.

7:41 am- Mom and I leave for school. I like to count school buses on the way. 12 today.

7:54 am School! See the cute girl in the cubby next to mine?  Snack was raisins, pretzels and juice that mom sent.

10:30 am Mom picks me up.  Mom hears how I “really like” Lila and how she didn’t appreciate my chopping her head with my hands.  Hey, I thought she’d like it!

10:47 am- We’re home and I get to play.

11 am-My friend Betsy comes to play and teach me stuff.

11:50 am- Mom brings lunch and visits for 5 minutes

12:35 pm-Betsy takes me outside.

12:42 pm-We come inside because I hate the sound of that lawnmower next door.

1:05 pm-Betsy leaves. (Session with Betsy was a little rough.  I tend to bite or hit after we’ve gone to BW-3.  They say their fries are gluten free but they are not.)

1:15 pm- Mom makes me try a nap. I try really hard.

1:40 pm- Light on!  Play time.

1:55 pm-Hit mom. Timeout.  I blame in on BW-3 and gluten. At least that what mom says.

2:10 Leave for Occupational Therapy

2:15- Arrive at OT and play with kids in the waiting room.He was nice but I like Max when I come on Wednesdays better.

2:30- Session with Myshl.

3:20 -Session over. I did a good job.

3:35- Arrive at the park for a snack.I wish Mom would quit taking pictures.

3:45- Nature walk/Scavenger hunt to the Community Center. I had to collect 6 blades of grass, 3 rocks, 2 flowers. 5 leaves.

4- Community Center/Kid Zone

4:30- Leave Kid Zone (There were no other kids today.  I like it when there are other kids to play with.)

4:40- Get back to car.

4:55- Back home for some snacks (crackers) and trains.

5:30- Sesame Street and fun.  It’s the pogo stick episode so we practice jumping and rolling 🙂

5:50- Daddy’s home early!!

6:25- Dinner

6:40-Timeout for spilling Mom’s drink all over the table.  No playground tonight 😦

6:50- Done with dinner. Crying fit over not being able to go to playground.

7- iPad and Daddy time.

7:45- Cookies and almond milk and books!  Tonight I chose Cat Heaven, Huff and Puff, and We Work at the Hospital.  We also read my Children’s Bible.

8- Brush teeth and change for bed.

8:06- Lights out

8:16- Asleep