A POST SIX MONTHS IN THE MAKING...

I know it's been awhile since I've posted- but I'm back with some amazing news to share. So I hope this makes up for slacking a bit here.

See, my little bug has a more severe case of autism than my little butterfly does. He will be four years old in the beginning of February, and he is still considered "non-verbal". He uses speech, but usually only when he's repeating someone. That is why his video is so amazing.

He's leading the charge!!!

Nikolas counting from one to ten (and throwing an adorable twelve in there at the end).

I titled this post "Six Months in the Making" because we've been working on letters and numbers for the better part of the last six months. For the longest time, he would only repeat the numbers after I, or his teachers, said it. Well, last night, while singing our "number song", he started taking the lead. Thankfully, I had my phone handy and managed to capture the whole glorious experience on video!

I'm not sure if words can express just how proud/happy/excited/thrilled I was/am to share this today!

That face makes my heart smile!

Stay tuned: the next few posts will include another Arts & Crafts post, an updated Graphics Share (since Autism Awareness Month/Day is coming soon), an edible science experiment post and, as usual, updates on the trials, rewards, tribulations and thrills of living life the autism way! 

As always, thanks for reading!

A Quick Update

Hello everyone! I want to apologize for the long gaps between posts. Life catches up to you sometimes no matter how ‘organized’ you think you are. With school, therapy and all these ‘No School’ days, things just get very hectic. 

Anyway, I just wanted to post and give those wondering a quick update on life in the “Wackadoodle” house hold. 

As some of you know, the little Butterfly is officially spreading her wings this fall and is now registered for KINDERGARTEN. We were told when she was two, and first started therapy, that there was a chance she wouldn’t be able to mainstream, but guess what, like most of her goals, she’s reached them and surpassed them! 

When we went for registration, she was the most excited I’ve ever seen her and so proud to stand on the steps of her future “big school” as she calls it. 

She will be a part of the special needs class, which includes your average number of students, but with more teachers and more aides to assist the kids. She’ll still ride the smaller bus, as we’re not really comfortable with her riding the ‘big kid bus’, that consists of kids from kindergarten to 8th grade. She’ll still have a one on one aide in class since she’s still quite the escape artist and still likes to sneak away and into other classrooms. 

Outside of school, we continue to struggle with sleep issues and the newest thing we’re trying to counteract is her behavior. She’s a headstrong little girl, but sometimes that gets in the way of following directions. 

Little Bug has been making small steps forward and will soon be officially evaluated by the Kirsch Center for an official autism diagnosis. This will help us narrow down what therapies will best benefit him and, with an official diagnosis, he’ll qualify for therapies that he can’t get right now. 

In other news, he’s learning sign language (as are we) which is a very slow process. His attention span isn’t really set for learning signs, but he’s picked up on the signs for ‘more’, ‘food’ and ‘drink’. You wouldn’t believe how much those three little signs have helped. 

Unfortunately, we’re noticing more and more that he’s much more behind than Bella was at this stage in the game. He has still said no real words, although he’s babbling much more than he used to. He has the same sleep issues and food issues that she did, but unlike Bella, he’s a very solitary child. When Bella would feel overwhelmed, she wanted reassurance in the form of a hug, or being held. Nikolas on the other hand, prefers to be alone, in this room with his music box. To an outside party, it would look as though he’s being neglected, or ignored, but sometimes, children with autism just need to be ‘away’. Alone. In the quiet, comfort of their own space. Niko’s room is set up with minimal items. His bed, a few toys and most importantly, his music box. He responds so well to music, that even his teachers and therapists have mentioned that music therapy seems a fantastic option for him when he begins therapy full time. 

As always, we take things a day at a time. Having two kids on the autism spectrum isn't exactly a walk in the park, bu you do what you have to for your kids. I'm so proud of the progress that Bella has made and I have high hopes for Nikolas as he continues his therapy. 

It’s Nice To Be Back…

Hello! After a very long, and lengthy, battle, I FINALLY have full control of my blog back. I’ll explain that in a future post. For now, I just wanted to say that I appreciate those that have continued to read, share, follow and comment.

There are lots of things to discuss, but for now, I’ll be updating the blog and getting everything back to the way I like it.

Stay tuned…

Progress Report

Well, we had Bella’s second six month progress report meeting and I am proud to say, she is doing great! Everyone is quite proud of the advancements she’s made, especially when you consider that less than five months ago we were told that there was a very high possibility that she’d never use words on her own or be able to communicate with us.

To put it in perspective; three months ago, before she began her applied therapies, Bella didn’t use any words on her own. The ones that she did use were usually being repeated. Today, Bella has a vocabulary of about 12 words that she uses on her own and in context.

Her communication towards us, and others have improved so much that there are days when I am literally smiling ear to ear listening to her. Having the ability to ‘tell’ us what she wants has lessened the frequency of meltdowns and has lowered the level of frustration for not just her, but for us too. She still uses signs, but now she can also say ‘thank you’, ‘please’, ‘you’re welcome’, ‘juice’, ‘more’, ‘food’, change’, ‘all done’, ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’. She can also identify her sister and brothers (almost) by name and point them out when we ask her who it is.

She’s responding to one to two word directions, like ‘get shoes’ or ‘brush teeth’ and we’re even making some leeway on potty training.

Another thing we’ve noticed that is Bella loves music and responds to it greatly. She’s been caught, on more than one occasion, walking around the house, singing! One of her favorites, right now, is “Old McDonald Has a Farm”. She loves making all the different animal sounds. She also knows all the words to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and she can sing the “ABC” song, although I’m not sure if she knows that it’s the alphabet or just a song.


She loves to dance at home, so they thought that she might like to do it at school too, but they only offer Zumba. The loud music and screaming kids isn’t something that she can deal with well with her auditory sensitivity. Instead of Zumba, she spends extra time in the sensory room and seems to be really benefit from that.

Bella has made so much progress in physical therapy that they are going to drop her down to just one class per week. That actually works out well, giving her some open time during the week for another speech class or another music therapy session.

Although Bella still has the overall development of an 18 month old, the progress that she’s making will most likely bump her up to the 24 month old level.

Another thing that has amazed us all is the fact that, even though autistic children are unable to empathize or really identify emotions in others, Bella has been able to learn what an appropriate reaction is to certain emotions. So if one of her classmates is crying, Bella will go over to them and pat them on the back. When she hears her baby brother crying, she’ll try to give him a stuffed animal. She may not know what it means when someone cries, but she understands that trying to make them stop is the right thing to do. I guess it’s just a longer way to learn how to respond when someone is showing a certain emotion and while it may seem to come naturally to most people, all things like that are learned somehow. I guess Bella just has to learn it another way.

As with all progress, there is always some regression or, in our case, a standstill. Bella still tries to run from the classroom, and when we take our walks or let her walk on her own at the store, she still tries to run. I think that running will be an issue that we’ll have to deal with forever, not just because it’s a common issue among autistic individuals, but because it seems to be something that Bella loves to do. Hey, maybe she’ll be a future track star? You never know. Her inability to sense danger or realize that something could hurt her is something that we’re always working on.

All in all, I am very proud of her and so thankful for the hard work her therapist and teachers put in. I am also very grateful that they found a wonderful one-on-one aide to work with our daughter. Bella seems to love going to school and she’s very comfortable around her teachers. And of course, they couldn’t say enough wonderful things about how sweet she is. They all love her to pieces.

We were told that we’re doing a great job with her at home, which, of course, is always nice to hear.

End of the Year Progress Report

It’s been a little while since my last post. The holidays this time of year have a way of letting time get away from you. After we finished up with Halloween, it seemed it was time to prepare for Thanksgiving. After recovering from Thanksgiving, it was already time to get set for Christmas.

With the end of the year quickly approaching, it marks a huge transition for Bella. Since she’ll be turning three in February, she’ll begin attending classes for the 3-5 program right after the holiday break. This will be a huge change, not only for her, but for us as well. While we are very excited for her to begin this new chapter in her life, we are also a little apprehensive as to how she’ll adjust to such a huge change in her schedule and routine. She’ll be going from two half days a week to five full days. She’ll be getting five days of speech as well as an increase in her physical and occupational therapies. She’s made such progress with her current schedule that she can only go to improve when she begins to attend more days per week.

Unfortunately, Bella tends to regress when on extended breaks from her routine. With the two week break coming up, we’re worried that it may take her a little longer than normal to adjust to going back to school and being in a brand new classroom, with new teachers and new classmates.

While, like always, Bella continues to improve, it’s slow going on most fronts. Bella still doesn't use many words on her own and still mimics and repeats a lot of what she says. She has, however, excelled at counting and can now count to fifty, mostly on her own. She’s mastered zipping her own coat, brushing her teeth (on her own) and, after getting her new shoes with Velcro straps, can put on her own shoes! We've managed to work with her occupational therapist in getting her to stop running so much, so outside ventures have been much safer and a lot more fun.

We've also managed to implement a way for her to communicate her needs and wants with us. It used to be that she would just cry (out of frustration) as we continued to guess what she wanted, getting it wrong, most of the time. Now, she’ll grab our hand and lead us right to what she wants. It’s limited the amount of frustration we all feel and in turn has reduced the amount of meltdowns we've experienced.

We’re very happy with her overall improvement but still struggle with a couple of issues that none of her therapies seem to be able to help. Sleeping and eating are two issues that just never seem to improve. The medication she was put on for her sleep issues seems to have no effect anymore and she’s gone from being, what we’d call a picky eater, to downright refusing to eat anything that isn't the consistency of baby food. Unfortunately, a growing, almost three year old, can not live on yogurt and mashed potatoes. She’s on a strict daily regimen of vitamins and supplements to keep her healthy until we can figure all that out. As for the sleeping problem; well, we’re still working on that.

Overall, we’re very happy with the progress that Bella has made this year. As the new year starts, and so begins her new program, we have high hopes that even more progress will be made. Slow moving or not, progress is progress. Working closely with her teachers and therapist, we hope to integrate what she’s doing at school, to what we’re doing at home.

Bella is growing up fast and she’s turning into a truly beautiful, loving child. With so many people around who love and care for her, I have no concerns that she’s getting the best help and care that she can be getting right now.

She impresses us more and more everyday.