New School!

Taylor has officially started school with the Arizona Virtual Academy and I am loving it! At first I was a little apprehensive as the enrollment process was pretty tedious and his instructional materials did not arrive until the 2nd week of school. But now I am totally sold! His materials came in two big boxes and now that we are up and rolling with the lessons I can really see that 1) this is no joke; and 2) I get to watch him learn first hand- which is by far the coolest! But don't get me wrong- I would NEVER home school and once we get things figured out Taylor will be back in a public school. He seems to be having the most fun with his History lessons. We just finished up learning about Australia.

Cool Things About Australia According to Taylor:
1. Kookaburras
2. Coral Reef
3. Sydney

He made himself a passport and he makes a new "suitcase" for each continent we visit, in that suitcase he keeps all of his work about that continent and each night he has been really eager to show Daddy just what he has done. Math is just so/so. It is easy enough for him, but I can't seem to keep him focused on it. Language Arts has been iffy too, as he does not like reading "girly" stories. He also has Music, PE, Social Studies, and Phonics lessons as well as online lessons with his teacher and we'll start therapies via webcam for OT and Speech. The art projects have been fun, I am sure he is partly feeding off my own interests in what he is doing. But for the most part, this is going really well. Initially we were told it would be about 2 hours a day, but we are easily doing about 4-5 hours a day and still have some catch up work to do. Taylor was allowed to skip some lessons to get him to about the 1/2 way point in the school year, but other lessons I did not want him to skip so the extra work is coming from those areas.

Pulling him out of Santa Cruz was hard, and not a decision we took lightly. He seemed fine with it, but when we went to say goodbye to his teacher, he started crying and my mommy heart broke. I know I'll always feel some guilt over this decision and I hope it makes sense to him someday. I was trying to think of my first memories and I guess I have quite a few of Kindergarten. Of course my super genius Taylor can probably go further back and I hope he looks back thinking we had fun and that Mom and Dad always did what we felt was best for him.

Today we finished up learning about Australia by playing Great Barrier Reef Memory and then for fun we watched Finding Nemo. I remember when he was a little baby and would watch Nemo every morning from his saucer. Today he was so excited and called out each animal he now recognized. Somehow it's possible to fall even more in love with this little boy each day.

The Pee Adventures of Princess Jazz and Big Brother

My kids love to pee, apparently it's pretty cool. I am convinced my daughter prefers potties in stores to our bathroom at home because sure enough whenever we leave the house or are on the road she starts doing the potty dance (restricted movement version because she is after all, in her car seat). "I have to go potty" is by far her favorite phrase. I am sure if I gave her the choice of a bag of M&M's or stopping in a Circle K bathroom she'd choose the latter. Taylor can at least try to hold it, sometimes successfully, but lately with our longer times in the car he has had a few accidents. One occured on Queen Creek road somewhere near the horse ranches by Cooper. Every time he passes that spot he reminds me that is where he peed. At the time he was pretty embarrassed about it but with the giddiness in his voice when he retells the tale I think he actually thinks it was funny. Yesterday Jasmine peed for the upteenth time in the car on another trip home, and today despite the fact that she peed before we left the house, she had to pee while I was filling out the paperwork at Taylor's optometrist, and then had another potty break while Taylor was having his exam, she managed to pee herself at the park less than an hour later. Although I did not have a change of clothes with me (I should know better by now), I did have a water bottle so I could at least wash the pee off of the play set. Brooks and I just threatened her with diapers so hopefully that'll learn her to hold it.

Real Moms and Music Therapy

Taylor finally started music therapy two weeks ago at the Baio Clinic. I had tried for what seemed like forever to find music therapy for him; I thought it would be perfect since he loves music and hopefully could learn positive ways to express his thoughts and such while having fun and interacting with the other kids. I still can't get him to really tell me what he thinks about it, but I love it! The first session was a bad day for me, I did something old ladyish to my back and could barely move. Brooks came home early and drove us there, he stayed in the car with our sleeping princess and I went into the office with Taylor. Thankfully they had a great selection of celebrity gossip mags, but as entertaining as the articles were, the people watching in the waiting room was even better. I have to disclose that I was wearing grey sweats, my orange Phoenix Suns shirt and the pair of shoes Brooks handed me, which happened to be bright pink flip flops with a big flower over the toe. I had no makeup on and of course my hair was in a ponytail. The room was crowded with other moms and kids; the lady across from me had a stomach roll to rival mine, the other mom on my right had shoes that matched about as well as mine did and the mom across from me was rocking a pair of mom jeans and a tshirt. Obviously there wasn't a nanny in the room, certainly no one was wearing makeup and even the lone dad looked like he needed to catch up on some serious sleep. This was my kind of room!

I am sure all of us ASD parents have heard that we need to take care of ourselves or time some extra "me" time, but let's be honest. That hardly happens even when you have a typical child. If I am not laden with guilt if I take some extra time to (God forbid) do my hair then surely some crisis happens when I am trying to get ready or I spend all my time getting the kids ready and don't have any left for myself if we want to get anywhere on time; Brooks is lucky if I shave on a daily basis. So while it sounds like I am criticizing the other parents, really I love them! Thank goodness this room was filled with reality!

So how is music therapy going? His therapist says he is doing well,and I can hear them banging away on the drums or the therapist on the guitar when I am sitting in the waiting room so it sounds like he is having fun. He still won't tell me anything, when I ask he replies "I don't know." But if it's up to me, it's fantastic.