Gage is back in school and thriving!  He operates very well on a set schedule and the fact that he has the same teachers has been a gift.  When I picked him up after the first day his teachers told me what a great day he’d had, but he was in tears in the car.  He missed his old friends.  Last year our school district did a nice thing and let us start Gage in the public program at 2 instead of 3, so as the rest of his older classmates moved to different classes he will stay in the 3 class again and these will be the kids he goes through school with to graduation.  Now he just needs to make new friends.

The speech therapist tested his speech on Tuesday and he is in the above average range for his age group.  It lets me know that all things are possible 🙂

This summer was a rough one for many reasons and some of that frustration came out in last week’s post.  I almost didn’t post it, but sometimes it feels good to show the gritty side of motherhood and I think there is value in that.  I can happily say that school is back in session and that makes a happy Gage.  And a happy Gage makes a happy mama.

I had breakfast with a mom whose daughter has had group sessions with Gage every Saturday morning for over a year.  We lead lives on opposite ends of town and have different daily struggles (she has 4 daughters!) but once every month or so we try to schedule a meet up while they are in group to vent, question, learn and feel a kinship to someone who knows what in the hell we are going through.  Having her to talk to is a gift and I always feel like my steps are lighter and my fighter mama mode is fully charged after we’ve gotten together and I hope I provide the same for her.

Our kids are a puzzle and sometime we try the same strategies and sometimes we don’t.  Going gluten-free didn’t help her daughter at all while it helps Gage immeasurably (I ALWAYS know when he has had contact with gluten). We sort of tried the B12 shots at the beginning of the year and she is planning to start them soon. We both are having success finally potty training our kids and have the same stress over where to send our kids to school, how to run our home programs, and how best to utilize our time and money.  This morning she mentioned something that people who don’t have kids on the spectrum don’t realize.  We are in constant survival coping mode.  She has to do things for her youngest daughter that she never even considered with the other three.  It is exhausting mentally and physically.  It’s only when we get together and talk that we can laugh a little and acknowledge that it is a struggle.  Sometimes it’s overwhelming and we are both ready to send them to school on Monday (yay!).

She listened as  I told her that we had taken Gage to the Cleveland Clinic yesterday to test for Cystic Fibrosis. Without going into all the details as to why we tested it was exciting that after I got Gage home from group and checked my email I saw that the test came back negative! How fulfilling it was to be able to send her a message that I have one less thing to worry about today.  It was a sweat test, non-invasive and took about an hour.  Here’s Gage with his Daddy during the test watching Looney Tunes.  The specialist told us to expect him to cry but this is not Gage’s first scary test so I knew he’d be fine.  This kid is a trooper and even if sometimes it is a struggle I wouldn’t change a thing about him.

When an ER doctor writes your 3-year-old an antibiotics prescription for two infections, it should me mandatory to also write the attending parent a prescription for a vacation or if that’s too much he might throw in a bottle of wine with the bill.  Gage has been on antibiotics this week  and started camp again on Thursday.  That’s a week and a half of yuckiness and fever.  I  filled my own wine prescription but really think I need to up it a notch to a day at the spa!  After some early trouble we have found a method of getting him to take his medicine.  Yesterday it took Jason and hour and a half and this morning it took me about 20 minutes.   This is the first day he’s actually starting eating meals again, YAY!  I know he lost over a pound the first week he was sick, so the boy needs to eat.

I am happy and relieved that he is feeling better. He was able to go to his friend’s birthday party yesterday and have some fun. Stay healthy everyone.  Maybe I’ll see you at the spa 🙂

Do you remember last week’s proud and a little boastful post about how well Gage was doing at camp?  When I posted it I wondered if it was going to come back to bite me and it did.  Gage missed all this past week at camp because he has been sick!  All week.  He’s still a snotty mess today.  Two trips to the doctor and lots of sleepless nights for mom.  It’s been a long week.  And I blame it all on that post last week!

I only had a few sad and pathetic pics for the weeks so I asked Gage to pose for me an hour ago and HE DID!  This has never happened.  A few pics from his photo shoot 🙂

Here’s hoping for a healthy Monday!

This week Gage started summer camp and he his having a lot of fun, as you might be able to tell from the binoculars he made during jungle week.  They spend an hour each day outside in the kiddie pools or on the playground, what’s not to like about that?  In this Thrilling Three class they also eat lunch there, so for the first time I am having to come up with gluten-free, dairy-free, AND Kosher lunches (this is a Jewish preschool).  He pretty much had the same thing every day this week so I need to come up with a few more ideas today.

I don’t think I ever wrote about Gage’s school experiences this past year, but I’ll try to sum it up for you.  He entered our city’s integrated preschool (4 days) in the fall and then I sent him to this Jewish preschool one day a week.  After a few months his behavior was bad at the Jewish school and the director asked us to take a break during December and to come back in January.  I never sent him back.  Gage’s behaviors maybe were rough, but not anything we were seeing anywhere else.  I think some teachers who aren’t familiar with kids on the spectrum tend to place the blame there and leave it at that.  It was a shame.  But, we wanted to send him back to spend the summer with his old friends (and it’s less than 5 minutes from our house) and I talked to the director about it and she told me that I would have to send a shadow with him.  We decided to pay for the camp and the aides, with the understanding that maybe we could cut the aides time down after a few weeks if he was doing well.

On Friday she pulled me aside when I dropped him off to tell me that we have done an amazing job with him and that her daughter (one of his teachers) said with or without the aide he was one of the best kids in the class.  She told me how she found it hard to believe he even had a diagnosis.   Did this make me feel good?  Yes, of course it did.  I am sure that he will have bad days just like any other kid, but he made it through the week without his aides having to do anything.  Well, our Friday aide helped them change diapers – so glad we can pay for an extra pair of hands (sarcasm).

So, yes I am happy and it’s nice to know that he is doing as well as I thought he would in the first place.  And I’m hoping that he has another great week so that I can confidently tell the director, “I told you so!”

My baby is growing up.  It’s funny because I wanted to put a sad face after that sentence and that surprises me.  I spend a lot of time struggling with bad behvior and teaching him things he may or may not want to learn while trying to fit fun activities in between all of the school and various groups or therapies he has scheduled.  Sometimes I forget to take a deep breath and soak it all in.  I love this age.   Gage is 3 1/2 and just finished his first year at the integrated preschool  at our public school.  He had great teachers, made some friends, learned new skills and he loved it.  It was sad for me to know that he would miss his teachers this summer.

He’s grown up so much this year and I am so proud of him.  Lots of kids his age have spent the last year playing and spending time with mom, dad or grandma, and Gage has had to carve out more time for learning. Some of that is just my fear of him falling behind, but a lot of it is because everything I read about kids on the spectrum tells me that it’s what he needs to be doing to thrive.  But there are days when I know he doesn’t spend enough time just hanging out with mom so I am looking forward to more time with my kid this summer.  Sort of.  Soon he starts a six week camp at his old school, but I’m pretty sure that it’s three hours of mostly pool, playground, and fun time.  Oh, the life of a busy three year old!

Here are a few pics from his last day of school.  

We use the library a lot, so every once in a while, I’ll share with you what has Gage loving the library.

Cuyahoga County is the second most used library system in the country.  That means they really know how to get people to check things out (probably because that’s how they get state funding).  I went to the  online catalog and typed in toys and then puzzles and found four pages of puzzles I could check out for Gage.  He loves puzzles and we already have too many so when another mom suggested the library I was excited to try it.  I placed 12 on hold and 11 of them came into my branch for me a few days later.  Let me show you what it looks like when it arrives.

Each puzzle includes a book that goes with it.  I liked this number puzzle even though it is easy because it forced Gage to know that two separate digits make up a big number, important for someone who memorizes things visually.

Let me show you the 46 piece one he’s done a few times already.

He always has to put in Alaska and Hawaii first before he can do any of the others and he likes to know what the states are called (at least the first 20 or so, after that he just wants to get it done :))

Our library also has a big binder listing all of the toys available for checkout.  PERFECT for parents and grandparents 🙂  Don’t forget to ask your librarians about all the resources for kids.  I bet they’d love to tell you!