Finally, some pictures

Hey, I like pictures :-).  They make a post a lot more fun!  I've got some odds and ends ones.  After a busy few days I thought I would catch up with pictures. 

 Jedidiah was quite pleased with himself that he earned his reward for passing a long awaited milestone.  Potty training.  Yes, he's much older than most children who are potty trained at the tender age of 2 or 3.  I've shared here before that I was quite sure we would not be among the group of parents with an apraxic child who doesn't potty train until the age of 6.  Yes, six.  This is a very common thing among children with apraxia.  No one knows particularly why.  Sensory issues?  Miss wiring?  Not sure.  I'm happy that he beat the age six dealy, but not by much!  Not to mention he still has to tackle nights.  But, hey, I'm just glad he is day trained!  We had a much coveted reward waiting for him when he tackled the day time potty challenge.  Pet Shops.  Yes, the small, cooky looking animal thingies that are a craze?  Definitely not on my list of 'keepers'.  But hey, desperate times, call for desperate measures :-). 

He thinks the mailman gave them to him!  Ha, ha!  He was very excited to open up this box.

He takes them everywhere!  I try to limit where he can bring them, more for fear of him losing them, and a meltdown ensuing.

While the boys were on Plymouth Rock with the new Pet Shops, I was making a list, or lists as was the case.  Getting ready for our Boot Camp 2012.  Things are falling into place.  And lest anyone thinks this may be a bad thing, I can assure you I have a lot of FUN planned.  We have a hard time staying on target when we try to do some child training.  So I thought by adding some fun, good family time, and some fancy 'team' shirts, we would be on our way to a splendid Boot Camp.  I am looking forward to this challenge.  It won't be easy, but I think we will come out the victors, with some well behaved children, a renewed love for each other, and some fond memories to boot.

This is the pile of composted dirt we had dropped of the other day.  Not as impressive as I thought it would be.  It will still come in handy, we were just expecting there to be more of it!  Thankfully we found a free source of composted mulch.  We have plans to use the mulch pretty much all over our land.  No, really.  We considered renting a dump truck for the stuff.  No, I'm not joking.  Most certainly not after our fiasco tonight.  Currently, as I write this, Jeremiah's pick up truck is stuck.  Really, really stuck, right in our back yard.  It's under belly is in the mud!!  It's not going anywhere any time soon, especially when it's supposed to rain tomorrow.  We are seeing if we can get a hold of a chain to pull it out with our van.  Fun times people, fun times.

Speaking of fun times, we all had fun at a recent birthday party we went to over the weekend.  I still have not gotten Flannery's official birthday picture up (her birthday was on the 20th of this month)!!  But this wasn't Flannery's b-day party, her's is this coming weekend.  The party we attended was for a friend, who turned 5.  It was held at a local park.  This was good and bad.  Good, lots of room to run around, bad because there was lots of room to run around :-)  Trying to keep track of the boys was very hard to do.  Jed was obsessed about running around this fence.  Jonah...
 

 ...he was obsessed with finding all the balloons he could get a hold of.  Aubrey?

He was obsessed about trying to climb the stone stairs.  Stone.  Baby.  Not a good combination.

At one point as I was grabbing the baby away from said stone stairs I caught Jed chasing his balloon.  He was just running out of sight when I called out to him.  I really try not to think about what could have happened, but that can be hard to do.  After I called him back, we went together to get his balloon.  Had he ran after it himself he would have gone all the way out by the road.  And I can assure you he would not have found his way back!  Scary.  This is why these types of events stress me out big time.  It only takes a moment for a child to get lost, in a big, big park.  Thankfully all ended well.  We had fun, Jed got his balloon back, and I'm still sane....sort of.

Saoirse peeking out of one of the old buildings on the park's premises.

We seem to have a new problem here at my house.  A problem between Flannery and I.  You see Flannery has fallen in love....with bokeh.  Oh, yes!  Don't know what bokeh is?  It's the blurriness you get in the background, or sometimes foreground in photos.  Like the picture above, you can see the flowers, but the background is a blur of color.  I have to practically wrestle my camera away from Flannery to get a turn with it!  And this has gotten worse, *after* we just bought her her own camera!  When I brought up the fact that she has a camera of her own now, she responded with...yeah, but it doesn't do photography.  Ha, ha!  She's talking about the bokeh people!  Too funny.  But I will say that she's getting pretty darn good at this photography thing.
  

For the record, I love bokeh too :-)  I also like this picture I was able to capture as we were leaving the park...ya know, after I wrestled my camera away.  I like it in color and b&w.

A beautiful sight!  Our front herbal garden is complete.  Well, except for the actual herbs.  That will be the easy part!  See all that dark goodness on top?  That would be the free composted tree mulch.  Black gold!

A Flannery picture.  We went out in the back yard to start on the corner garden area.  It's filled with weeds, vines, brambles and such.  Flannery decided to take pictures.  That wasn't helping to get the weeds up.  But after all the work we did I was hoping she did have a picture of "before".  Unfortunately this is the only before picture she took of the area.  Trust me, it's a lot worse in real life.  This looks tame to what we had to deal with.  I may have to bring my camera out the next time we work on the area.  It was kind of discouraging to work, work, work and stand back to see that we didn't get too far!!  Some before pictures may help boost the moral of our crew :-)

Another Flannery picture.  Warning, bokeh not only in the background, but the foreground as well.  She loves when that happens.  I only have about 1500 pictures of her trying to get the best angle and bokeh from a shot.  And NO I am NOT kidding.  My memory card can only hold about 500 pictures at a time (I lost my bigger mem. card), and I've had to delete the card multiple time in the last two weeks.  Multiple times.  I have enough goat pictures to last me a life time!!  But hey, that's how we learn...by doing :-)

Because when you keep practicing, and keep 'doing', you end up with something cool like the above picture.  This is a picture that Flannery took today.  Maybe not amazing (although I think so), but for a ten year old?  Hello!  I was taking a picture of my sister making bunny ears over my brother's head at ten years old.  Wait...I don't think I used a camera till I was in my teens.  Keep up the good work Flannery!  (yes, she reads my blog :-))

The other day I received an email to become 'friends' with someone on youtube. (Not sure if that is what they call it, friends, maybe that's just Facebook.)  I quickly took a look to see who it was, sure that it was like any other I got, spam in nature.  I was wrong.  It was by a sixteen year old girl who has apraxia.  I visited her site.  She had this poem, that she got off of the Apraxia Kids facebook page, which you can read below.  I cried.  Not every point is true for Jed, but most is.  I am so grateful of the strides that Jed has made.  Like I've said in the past he is at a two year old level in speech.  Basically we can pretty much understand him, but anyone outside our family can not (except for some words here and there).  We went to the park yesterday after going to the doctors to get Moira's cast off.  (She's cast free!!!!  Yeah!!!!)  As we were walking up to the play set I heard a little boy say, "Hi, Jedidiah!"  So far I haven't come across anyone else in real life with Jed's same name, so I was supposing that he was speaking to our Jed.  And he was.  I'm not sure if Jed heard him or not, but he didn't respond.  So I told Jed to say, "Hi", and he did.  He ran off to play, by himself.  Later in the day I had to go pick up our produce box and Jedidiah was with me.  Usually it's a fast in and out.  The family has one or more of their older children help you load up your box, so it takes just a minute before you take off again.  This time there were two other families there at the same time that I knew.  So I got out to chat.  Jed asked to get out.  He saw the kids playing, but he asked, "Where are the toys?"  I realized this morning that Jedidiah rarely interacts with the other children.  He's more interested in the toys.  It's not that he's never played with other children.  He will play pretend, or games with his siblings.  But I am thinking it has to do with his inability to communicate with children outside our family that holds him back from playing with them.  It just makes me realize that he still has a ways to go. 

This 16 yo girl wrote something very interesting.  She said that although she knew from a young age that she had a speech problem, it was only because of being told by her parents or speech therapist.  She said, that for her, she hears herself talking normally!  I realized that this is the same case for me when I mumble.  I seriously hear myself say the words clearly.  Others have gotten impatient with me for not repeating myself, without being asked, as they assume that I know I am mumbling.  But I don't know!  Otherwise I would have repeated myself immediately.  Maybe that is true for Jed?  Some day we may know.

Here is the poem:



http://apps.facebook.com/causes/posts/1739?m=90525af8&ref=mf

~I Am the Child

I am the child who cannot talk. You often pity me, I see it in your eyes. You wonder how much I am aware of. I see that as well. I am aware of much....whether you are happy or sad or fearful, patient or impatient, full of love and desire, or if you are just doing your duty by me. I marvel at your frustration, knowing mine to be far greater, for I cannot express myself or my needs as you do.

You cannot conceive my isolation, so complete it is at times. I do not gift you with clever conversation, cute remarks to be laughed over and repeated. I do not give you answers to your everyday questions, responses over my well being, sharing my needs, or comments about the world about me. I do not give you rewards as defined by the world's standards...great strides in development that you can credit yourself; I do not give you understanding as you know it.

What I give you is so much more valuable... I give you instead opportunities. Opportunities to discover the depth of your character, not mine; the depth of your love, your commitment, your patience, your abilities; the opportunity to explore your spirit more deeply than you imagined possible. I drive you further than you would ever go on your own, working harder, seeking answers to your many questions with no answers. I am the child who cannot talk. ~

Jed's IEP meeting

Today Jedidiah had his annual IEP(individual educational program) meeting with his speech therapist.  Basically we talked about what his goals were that we set out to accomplish on last years IEP, where he is now, and what his new goals would be.  The good news is that he met almost all of his goals!  Yeah!  She showed me the test that she gave to him a week or so ago.  She explained that he basically made mistakes in every single word on the test.  However, they were very consistent mistakes.  So he is definitely showing that he is coming out of the apraxia, because the very nature of apraxia is that one minute they can say a sound and the next minute they can't.  But he is making the same mistakes with each set of sounds in the different words.  That is a good thing.  There has been some great progress made.  But she did make sure to add that although he has come a long way, he still has a long ways to go.  I will look forward to the day I don't have to hear that.  It seems like he's worked so hard, and has truly made big strides, BUT he still has soooo long to go.  Ugh.  Don't get me wrong I am very, very grateful at the huge strides he has made.  It just seems like the 'end' is so far off! 

Alrighty, so then we moved on to his new goals that we are setting for the rest of the school year.  It wasn't a long list like last time, so I am assuming these things may just be harder for children to grasp.  Not sure.  We had basically gone over some of these things in the past few weeks just because the therapist tells me what she plans on working on with him next.  But then we got to the fact that, although this IEP is good for a year, Jed will age out of the program come this July.  Which means we will need to transfer his paper work to the school system, as in an actual school.  Now before I proceed to tell you what she told me and how I felt about it, I want to make it clear that I understand that this could be a touchy topic.  My intent is not to cause a 'stir', nor start a debate about the very nature of public services.  So please feel free to agree or disagree, but this is not intended to be a debate :-)

Ok, so the therapist tells me that come May we will have a meeting (like the one we had last year when Jed aged out of the toddler program to transfer into the preschool program that he is in now) with the local school's therapist and necessary personnel.  Not a problem.  But she told me that since he was going to be homeschooled that they were going to have to file it under different paper work, something called a "personal placement yada yada yada".  Ok, following her so far.  But because Jed will not be enrolled in the school, the school will not be getting any funding for him.  Hmmmm, not sounding too good.  Which means that he will basically get the bare minimum services (it will be up to the director what that will entail).  The therapist's thought would be that could mean that Jed may only get one or two days of speech.......per MONTH.  Per month?  Seriously?  Right now, as far as his level of apraxia has been determined, he really needs three times a WEEK.  That is a serious short coming!  I was not in the least bit amused to say the least!

Now, here is where the debate comes in as I know some people have some hefty views on public programming.  At this point I see it this way:  Although I don't agree with all of it (taxing for public schools, and services), I am PAYING for it.  Ok, not really me, but Jeremiah.  I did at one time though :-)  So our money is going to this funding, but because we don't plan on enrolling Jed into the school he will get crumbs.  Hmmmmm, yeah the system is definitely messed up!  I suppose that is all I will say about that! 

This means that we will have to resort to private speech, which at this point and time our insurance only allows 30 visits per year.  That basically will work out to be one time a week between the school and private therapy.  I suppose it will just be a matter of prayer.  I suppose I should just pray that he won't even need speech come the end of the school year.....that would take care of the matter now wouldn't it :-)

In other news, everyone seems to be on the mend.  This weekend will be the last soccer game of the fall.  We'll have a nice break until the spring season starts.  I'm looking forward to a break at this point.  Not that I do any of the work!  Seriously I don't!  So I'm not really sure why I am looking forward to the break.  I suppose that will mean one less thing that takes up our time.  With the baby coming I know I will be feeling the crunch, and having soccer out of the way will make it a little more easier to deal with.

Our week

So we finished our first week of homeschool. Yes, I know it is only Thursday, and no we are not running on a four day school schedule.  It's just that I have an appointment with my midwife tomorrow and the girls have their last summer book club meeting which means that our school day will not happen.  Fear not, I thought ahead and we got everything done in the four days so that we didn't have to fall behind in our first week of school.  So far things have still been going smoothly.  We most certainly did not follow the schedule one day but we still followed the flow of the day and got everything in, just got it done much later in the day.  No biggie.  The younger girls are still wiggly during reading time.  Our reading time is not long at all, they are just out of practice in sitting still.  I can tell they found our Shakespeare reading interesting, but they tried not to let it show :-)  I happen to be in the same room with the older girls while I was reading Shakespeare to the younger girls and the older ones wanted to know right away what I was reading.  They stopped what they were doing to listen!  Too funny.  It was one of Shakespeare's comedies.  They thought it was quite outlandish, all the drama! We are still waiting for the girls math DVD's to come in.  Thankfully we usually just skim the first dozen or more chapters as they are review. 

Jeremiah had one of his wisdom teeth pulled today.  Not a pleasant experience to be sure.  He was in pretty rough shape an hour or so afterwards.  Four Advil did nothing to relieve the pain, swelling and discomfort.  And on top of that there was a lot of bleeding. A lot.  Not profuse, but constant.  So hours later with still no relief from the pain I decided to try two homeopathic remedies.  The first I gave was arnica for swelling, bruising and pain. Minutes later he was asleep.  Now that is not anything odd as he was already drowsy and headed for snooze land. But he did sleep soundly for a couple of hours.  One of the things that intrigues me about taking a remedy during an acute event is that the person will fall in a deep sleep when given the correct remedy. Now clearly this sleeping could have been coincidence.  However when he woke up I gave him the second remedy, hypericum.  That is supposed to help with deep puncture wounds.  Well fifteen minutes later the eight hours of non stop bleeding came to an end.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Homeopathy really does work that fast.  (There was still some bleeding, but very, very noticeably reduced.)  Not only that but when I told him to take his next round of remedies he said he didn't need it.  He wasn't in any pain or discomfort!  That is pretty amazing. We'll see how he fairs later tonight. 

Jed's speech therapist called and we have days and times for his speech for the school  year.  The good news is that they are all at the same time!  Phew!  The bad news is that is in the middle of the day.  Oh well.  I have to say I am not looking forward to three days a week being out mid day.  But it's for the best and we will make it work.  I am excited to see what his therapist thinks of Jed's progress. If you remember I was a bit nervous for the long break and wondered how he would fair. I really didn't want to see any regression. Not only was there no regression but Jed has made improvements!  He can now say some sentences!  Things like:  "I want more ice cream."  "Mom, I play computer, please?"  This is pretty huge seeing as how when we left off of therapy our goal was to work on him putting two words together!  Don't get me wrong, he still talks a lot using single words.  But with some prompting he is putting two or more words together on a daily basis.  And all of his sentences are from Jed alone, no prompting. 

There is more I would love to write, but I am getting sleepy.  We have a long day tomorrow so I need to get to bed so I can be ready for it.

No photos! and Dynavox is here!

See, the first day, and I mess up!  I kept forgetting I was supposed to be taking pictures of my food until after we were done eating and it was put away!  I will try again tomorrow. 

Jedidiah's Dynavox made it here by 6:30 PM.  Nothing like waiting all day!  We had just sat down to eat when I heard the truck pull up.  Jed had asked me at least twice today about his computer being here :-)  Finally it made it.  And boy I was not prepared for how large the box was going to be!  I mean the device isn't that big, just how much room does it need.  I opened the box to find a lot more than just the device.  It also came with a keyboard and mouse, some card thingie to put in the side, a carrying case, and a whole lot of books.  You have to love a "Quick Start Guide" that has to be at least 100 pages long!!!!  Quick?!?!  There were way too many hands wanting to touch, feel, and press.  So I put it back in the box and we went back to our dinner.  Once everyone seemed to be occupied I brought it back out.  Only Jonah hung around.  He was quite enamoured with this little computer.  When I finally finished the set up and called Jed over to try the demos out mister Jonah couldn't keep his hands off!  That led to a lot of crying.  So I put it away.  It looks like Jeremiah and I will spend our evenings (after the boys go to bed) reading the manual, and watching the instructional DVD's.  I was pretty sure that the machine came with boardmaker, or similar, but now I'm not too sure.  We were assured that there were tons of icons to choose from, but when Jeremiah was tinkering with it he couldn't find them. 

Now the boys are in bed, and I think I will take a few minutes to look over some of the tutorials. 

Tomorrow *should* be Jed's last day as Borg-Boy!!!  I am hesitant to tell him that it is his last day with his tube though. 

Aside from all of that I have a few blogs I would like to share coming up soon.  Just some neat sites with some neat ideas.  But too tired to do so right now!  Good night all!

Prayer request

I've brought this up a few times in the past but now is the time to be praying for it.  Jed's GI appointment is this coming Wednesday (9AM).  This is the BIG one!  This will *hopefully* be Jed's tube free day.  I am going to give a call to our family PhD to make sure they sent our GI doc Jed's records from his well visit which document that Jed has been tube free since Feb.  I am hoping that they will accept that.  Jed has to be eating on his own for six months before they will take out the tube, which he has been.  The only problem is that GI hasn't seen Jed for a whole year!  I hope they are going to accept our word for it.  The prayers are needed for several reasons.  One, the appointment is early.  Getting there without traffic takes 45 to 55 minutes.  But it may take much longer on Wed. morning.  Second, because this appointment was made a year ago I couldn't remember the exact date, so it is too late notice for Jeremiah to get off of work to come with us.  That means six antsy children in the doctors office.  And may I note that we usually have longer waits which makes it harder to keep everyone quiet.  Third, for everything to go fine with the actual removal.  From the decision that it will be taken out, to the actual life without the tube in the immediate days that follow.  The actual removal will not be a big deal, because it is nothing more than what we would be doing if we were changing out Jed's tube.  So for Jed it will be easier in the sense that he will only be having half of the 'normal' ordeal that he is accustomed to (it being taken out, but a new one not being put in).  However once they take out his tube they just cover it up with some gauze pads, which we will need to change multiple times a day.  Well, hopefully only that first or second day as I am hoping that his hole will close up quickly.  Yes, Jed will be walking around with a hole in his abdomen that goes from his stomach to the outside world with just a piece of gauze covering it!  That's just a bit freaky for Jeremiah and I to think about, but supposedly it's supposed to be able to close up within an hour or two.  I asked what happens if it doesn't.  Basically they said they have only had two people in the past ten years that theirs didn't close up and needed to come in to get a stitch or two put in.  I asked what's going to happen when he eats.  Well, that's where having to change the dressing multiple times a day comes in. Because if it does take a few days to close up then when he eats he will indeed leak out his food from the hole!  Pleasant thought to be sure.  So do pray that Jed will not be the third person needing stitches :-)  And fourthly, this is obviously something we have looked forward to for a very long time.  It is almost too much to think about that it's finally coming to an end (in a good way!).  But I am a bit nervous.....the what if's.  I guess worse case scenario would be he would have to have surgery again to put another tube back in.  I know it is crazy to be even letting my thoughts go there, but they do go there, and so I need some prayer to calm this mommy's heart of mine.  We have always said that we will throw a big party once his tube is out, and we don't plan to go back on our word!!!  So family and friends, near and far will be invited to celebrate this event at a time yet to be decided.  There will be LOTS of food to be sure!!!  And no, it will not be all GAPS food!!! ha, ha!!!  Sorry but this is just tooooooooo big to not have one major cake to celebrate.  We'll just pick up on our regularly scheduled diet the following day :-) 

And as a total side note, but related to food.....I have been eating eggs daily this past week and realized that I had not had any stomach pain!!!! I have to take some apple cider in some juice to make sure not to get really sick to my stomach, but I haven't done so all week. That is totally amazing.  I am sure it has to due with all the probiotic foods we are eating/drinking.  And on the subject of food and Jed, there will be a time in the next handful of months or at least within a year that we will be doing the GAPS intro diet.  I am pretty convinced that we *will* see improvements with Jed (and the rest of us).  But that means only eating certain foods.  And I do worry that it will freak out Jed and make him not want to eat again.  Now that being said, one of the many reasons we are taking this diet very slowly (I'm known for just jumping in with both feet) is because of Jed.  We are getting him used to the foods we will be eating in real life once the diet is over.  Then we will work our way backwards, slowly taking out certain foods (grains first, milk next, etc.) until we reach the intro diet.  So far things have gone very well.  We overcame a couple of biggies, concentrated juices, white bread, frozen chicken nuggets.  For juice we make him fresh juice, or as a compromise we use bottled lemon juice and honey.  Again, taking things slowly.  I made up my first batch (in a long while) of water kefir and flavored it with fresh squeezed orange juice and some vanilla.  He loves it!  Plus he's drank some milk as well, just a little.  As far as bread and chicken, well I just offer him other foods.  He's not too pleased, but he gets over it.  Plus so far he has been eating all of the other foods I've made.  It's hard for me because I just want to dive in and get it all over with, but I know that would be detrimental.  By going slow we will still be doing our bodies good.  They might not be totally healing, but at least we can keep some symptoms at bay (like my egg 'allergy').  That way when we dive in deeper we keep any toxin die off to a minimum. 

Ok, enough about food.  Just one more thing.  A praise.  We got a call today from UPS to let us know that Jed's Dynavox will arrive *tomorrow*!!!!  Wooo HOooo!!  I am sooooooo excited.  Of course I am sure it will come when Jeremiah is at work, and I won't know how to even turn it on.  I am hoping it comes with an instructional DVD.  This machine has SO MANY capabilities!!  It's amazing and all overwhelming.  You get to choose the layout of the screen, what icons will be displayed, making up folders for larger topics and then putting in the content on what you want in that folder.  For example you can have a folder for "food" and inside it you put which foods you want available for him to choose from.  But there are also these other options for a whole screen shot of a scene.  A scene of the inside of a vehicle for example.  I pick that one because that was the one we were shown in the demonstration.  So Jed can click on something in the vehicle to talk about, or even click on the window to talk about what he sees outside the window.  It's really amazing, and I am most certain that I am making no sense what so ever!  Once we have it programmed for him I'll have to take a video to show you what I mean.  But it;s coming, it's coming, it's coming tomorrow!!!!!  No, I'm not excited at all :-)

WE GOT IT!!!!!

Today, today, today......as some of you know things seem to just not be going right around here.  It's a lot of little things, but those little things add up. It just seems that every time I turn around something is not right, or broken, or hurt, or failed, or......you get the idea.  So today I was getting ready to exercise, had just put on the video when the phone rang.  Caller ID said it was from Dynavox.  Oh boy, I thought, more bad news.  We had just submitted the correct paper work a few weeks ago for one of Dynavox's doctors to represent us in our appeal of BCBS's denial of our request to get an augmentative communication device.  I was very hesitant to pick up the phone.  And it certainly didn't seem to be going well when the gentleman started by saying how BCBS had denied our last claim, and how they put in the appeal.......and then, and THEN he said it, "But we just got a letter in today from BCBS saying that they are now going to APPROVE a device."  My response?  I cried!  Yeah, right there on the phone.  I'm sure the poor guy didn't know what to do about that.  We needed to make arrangements to handle our co-pay/max out of pocket stuff before they could send in the request for the device.  I had Jeremiah call to discuss those matters.  I figured we might still be looking at weeks before even thinking about seeing Jed's new device.  I was very pleasantly surprised when Jeremiah told me this evening that we are supposed to have it in 3 to 4 days!!!!!! 

This all seems almost surreal!  Finally, after almost seven months of paper work, waiting, more papers, more waiting, having to have our doctor sign things, more waiting, lather/rinse/repeat!  And now, just like that it should be here on our door step in a matter of a few days.  I am so excited for Jedidiah!  There will most certainly be a learning process to figure out how this will work in our lives.  His private speech therapist will probably be showing us the ropes and helping Jed learn how to appropriately use the device.  But our frustrating van rides may be a thing of the past soon enough!!!  I can't wait.  I really hope this will open up a 'new' world for Jed.  He really has been communicating so much better this last month.  But that is only when you compare how he was communicating a few months ago with himself.  If you were to compare him to even some two year olds....yeah, he has a lot of work to do.  But it has been great to see him making grounds, even without speech therapy these past seven weeks. 

Well I just had to share our very good news.  I was just bursting at the seems today to tell the whole world :-) 

Finally, an updated video of Jed's speech

Don't have a lot of time to write, but I wanted to get this video up of Jed 'reading' a book with me.

Dynovox...

So I opened our BCBS mail today to find out that they did indeed deny our request for the Dynavox.  It was expected.  So I made a couple of phone calls, because I didn't remember where we were to go from here.  The Dynavox rep told me that his company got the news last week and they already put in a request for a review to the "people higher up" in BCBS.  We are supposed to hear back from them next week.  Mr. Rep said that they have built some relationships with the higher up people, so we may get our "yes" from them and be able to proceed to getting the device.  If not, then we have to file a formal appeal.  Although they have had good success from their appeals, it just means more waiting.  And waiting is hard when Jed will not continue talking to me, once he's got my attention by calling out 'ma', until I look directly at him.  That includes while we are traveling, while I'm in the middle of tending to something in the oven, etc.  He does that because he knows that I can understand him better when I am looking at him, seeing any additional signs he makes to go along with his words.  The thing is he won't stop calling my name until I look at him, even if I am driving the van!  I try to explain, every single time, that when mommy is driving I can't look back at him or we could crash.  Doesn't matter.  I'm hoping that the Dynavox will help in those (and many, many other) situations.

I have some big posts coming up, but we've been in the middle of year end testing here, so they have been on the back burner.  Lots of changes planned to take place.  Once the testing is out of the way (we have two girls that need to take one more part tomorrow morning, yes on a Saturday...we're so cruel that way :-)) and I make some headway in getting my house back in order, I will write.  Until then have a great weekend, and if you think of it, say a quick prayer that Jed's Dynavox comes through.

Some pictures

OK, just getting around to those pictures.  Some have been edited, others not.  Things have been a wee bit unorganized here.....and so I really need to be digging in and getting a lot of work done.  Not that I haven;t been getting things done, but sometimes when I do things that are not on my normal-every-day tasks, well things start to get messy over here.  I;m hoping to catch up soon, as I would like to spend some of our "free time" on other things than cleaning.  Our free time came when Jed's speech therapist told me she had decided to take Thursday off.  As it was Wednesday of this week and Monday of next week are teacher work days and early release from the schools.  So we have an unexpected week of no speech!  Which by the way is going amazingly well.  The other day the girls were asking Jed to say some words.  I MUST get a video to document his progress, but first I have to recharge the batteries for the camera. Today, while looking at a book, Jed was able to say these same words all by himself, with NO prompting!  (A lot of times you have to say the word first, and then he will copy- or try to copy- you.)  So he said, 'puppy', titty-tat (kitty cat), 'pig', 'off', and came close to 'flower'.  Ok. on to half ofour weekend of pictures, I'll have to get the rest up another time.

Saoirse at soccer.  They only have one more game for the season. 

Here is the colored version of "The Legs".  Farther down you'll see how the head shot didn't cut it!

 

This was way too funny.  There is a little boy right behind Jonah who was trying to say hi to him.  However, Jonah had just gotten that Gatorade in his hands and he was afraid that this little boy was going to steel his goods.  Normally Jonah is all bubbly and waving at people, very social.  But here he is all suspicious and freaked out!  Way too funny!

Flannery waiting on the side line for her turn to go on the field.



Saoirse looking through the 'gear' thingie, in the fountain.



There was a whole lot of running going on around the fountain.  I was wincing a lot!  The bricks around the fountain are put into a 'gear' format (if you were looking at it from the sky), so there were a lot of corners....you know to bust a lip open on or something. Thankfully that didn't happen.



The boys dipping their toes.  Jonah had no fear of the water...he wanted to jump right in.  It was only about twelve inches deep, but still, I had my hands full trying to keep him out of the water.



Trying to get a decent picture of the girls.  Flannery was in a silly mood the whole time and each and every single time I tried taking a picture with her in it she kept making goofy faces.  I admit that after a while of that it grew thin on me!  Like I said, little boys running here and there, and I don't have the time to keep retaking photos!  Ugh!

She's not looking goofy here because she didn't realize the camera was on her!  That was the secret.

Saoirse dipping her toes.  We had to go grocery shopping afterward and the bottom half of her dress was all wet :-)  There was a lot of splashing going on!

I like this one of Moira and will eventually crop it, but no time right now.



What a great shot of the men in my life :-)  One way to get the boys to sit still was to feed them!  Which is why Jed has an odd expression on his face....he was chewing :-)



A close up of my photogenic child.



At the very end as we were getting ready to leave, Isabella stood still long enough to get her picture taken, willfully that is :-)

All righty, off to do some school, outside time, then cleaning.  Pop some potatoes in to bake for dinner and then pick up Saoirse from soccer (Jeremiah's taking her and Flannery to practice this evening).  Hopefully if all goes well we will be ordering some garden seeds and milking supplies this evening. How exciting!!!  Jeremiah made the base of the milking stand, now all he has to do is make the holding bars (not sure what to call them). We should be having milk by next week sometime!!  How cool is that?

DynaVox

We had our meeting yesterday with the DynaVox rep. It went really well! At first Jed was having a hard time transitioning. Usually when we arrive at speech therapy his therapist is waiting for him. That means we go right from the door into the therapy room. Yesterday we needed to get a few duckies settled first, so Jed was able to play with the toys they have in the waiting room. He was so excited to do so! But he was equally not excited to have to go to the therapy room. Ha! Not to mention when we got in the room he was faced with two strangers. Jed's regular therapist was sick. So that just added to the transition problem. But the rep was great, he engaged Jed in a fun little game on the DynaVox. There was a cartoon of a house on fire on the left hand of the screen and a fire truck on the right hand. There were three buttons, one to make the fire truck move, one to make the siren sound, and another to play the game again. Jed caught on quickly, like in three seconds :-)



I have to say I am a bit surprised at how large the device is. Jed will not be able to carry it around with him. But is seems that there are drawbacks to all of the devices we have seen. That being said, the pros outweigh the cons. Currently we have a Go Talk 20. He has quickly outgrown that device. Not to mention that he couldn't exchange the pages, and there are only five pages available at one time. If you need another page you need to record over one of the pages that are programed into the device. Not to mention we do not have Boardmaker to make up our own pages, and we would have to rely on bringing a list to the speech therapist to make up for us. Not exactly convenient. To put this into reality let us suppose that we are all sitting around the table for dinner. This is the time we all talk about our day, what is on our agenda for tomorrow and the like. We might have a dinner page in the Go Talk for Jed at that time. That would help him with food choices, and general dinner needs. But suppose we went to the park that day and he wanted to talk about it. We would need a park page. Or maybe we had gone to the library and then to the park afterwards....we would need a library page as well. Again he can't switch the pages himself. Talk about frustrating. With the DynaVox, anything he wants to say will be at his fingertips!

At first he will have very limited buttons available as he learns the ins and outs of the system. Then we add more (and we can do this at anytime) as he gains mastery of the level he is at. The machine comes with Boardmaker symbols (or the like) and has the word/s below the picture. The great thing is that we can change the word to one that we normally use. While we were trying the device one of the words was "yeah"--meaning yes. But we want him to say 'yes' as that is a word we are working on with him in his speech. The rep changed it right then and there in a matter of seconds so that the button now says 'yes'. The great thing about the machine is that Jedidiah kept trying to say the words after he pushed the buttons!! This is exactly what I was hoping would happen. For some reason he is sometimes hesitant about trying to say a word if we ask him to. He is getting better about it, but we still have to ask him. No one was telling him to say the words on the screen, yet he was doing just that all on his own. We were there for a full hour and Jed was engaged with the device that whole time! The speech therapist was amazed at his attention span. She was also amazed at his ability to find the symbols we asked him to and his fine motor skills at selecting the appropriate button.

We are very, very excited about this device!! Our only trouble now will be trying to get insurance to pay for it. It's one heck of an expensive device...well over $7,000!! We were told that we should expect for insurance to deny us at first. The reason being that the device has computer/Internet capabilities. Insurance won't pay for computers. UGH! Never mind we have no intention or interest in making it one. So we will have to appeal their decision. We are hoping it will not get to that. Generally they will let it through at that point, but the rep said there have been some cases that they've taken to court. The good news is that DynaVox has won all of those cases. The bad news is that it takes a LOT of time. As it is if everything goes well we are looking at a three month wait for the device. This is going to be a long wait, especially knowing how beneficial this device is going to be.

Off to try and get some work done. Believe it or not some of us are sick!!! I really wish that was a joke. I know it takes a diet change months before it makes huge differences in your body. It has already made noticeable changes as it is, but I think it will be a while before our immune systems get back on track.

what a day

Saturdays are busy days here. This one happened to be the girls’ last soccer game for the season (they start back up in the spring). I wanted to get out to Saoirse's game, but hers is at 9 AM. I had to find winter clothing for the boys as we had been very blessed with warm weather all fall, until yesterday, so I had to come later, and I missed her last game....bad mommy :-) It warmed up remarkably fast and we were shedding clothing by the hour. I was totally surprised that we were still being bombarded by yellow jackets! OK, not bombarded, but if you had food, you had better been willing to share! I stayed until the last ten minutes of Isa and Moira's game. It is evident that we need to really work out this winter. I just started this week, getting up a tiny bit earlier to work out. We plan on getting a small exercise trampoline for all of us to use. I first read about its ability to help the brain.....make pathways maybe...I can't remember exactly. But I was reading about Jed's apraxia and the article talked about making progress due to the trampoline. So as I was looking for a trampoline I found out about its exercise potential. I was a bit skeptical at first. I decided to bring it up to our chiropractor to see what she knew about it. She told me that trampolines are WONDERFUL for our bodies (unless of course you fall off of one and break something!). We went to a new Walmart yesterday and decided to see if they had any. The did, but it didn’t have a stabilizing bar. While there I decided to look at the aerobic videos. I found one by Leslie Sansone (I love her walking videos) that had five workouts on it. The longest one is only 30 minutes and a couple of them are only 20. I thought that it would be perfect for me since I don’t seem to have time to work out, and perfect for Isa and Moira since they don’t have the stamina nor the patience for something longer. As we were browsing, we saw a step bench (for step aerobics), and that reminded me that I have one of those! Ha, ha! I am thinking it will make an appearance soon. I am hoping with a wide selection to chose from we will have us moving all winter long.

We have been ‘borrowing’ our friend’s male goat. We decided to breed our two goats this winter. That way we will have our own supply of fresh milk come spring. Ohhhh, I can hardly wait! Coming home from soccer yesterday I was greeted with this male goat tied up to one of our backyard tress….that’s not where we left him! Apparently he jumped our fence and decided to ‘hang out’ with our neighbors goats….who are all female. And let me tell you….that taste you may get from store bought goats milk….it comes from the males! Seriously, that smell, is the smell of a male. We had read that if you don’t want that smell/taste, then you need to keep any males away from your females. I thought that was silly. That was because I was ignorant! I only just patted two small pat-pats on the top of this male goats head. After washing my hands in hot water and plenty of soap, multiple times, they still smelled like male goat! YUCK! That smell just sticks to you! So now I can totally see why it can affect the milk supply. Hopefully we will have little goat babies come spring :-)

I thought I would leave you all with the links to the two ACC devices we have been looking into. This one is called XPress, by Dynavox. The other is Proloquo2Go, used on the IPod Touch or IPhone. I need to get going. We need to get boys ready for church. Have a blessed Sunday!

A this and that post

I have a few really cute pictures to share....but they are on the front computer! Right now the girls are watching a movie on that computer (pizza and movie night!) so I can't get to them right now. I'll try to edit this post later to put them up.

Jed's speech therapist called to cancel the afternoon appointment. We will make it up next week. I was able to talk to her about my concerns of getting Jed an ACC devise that will meet his needs. I was pleased to hear that she does not agree with the new (to be) speech therapist's view. She said because of the severity of Jed's apraxia she foresees him being in speech therapy for the next five (or more!) years. She felt that it was very important that he have a way to communicate effectively in the meantime. It has been really neat to see the next 'level' Jed has taken with his signs and communication. He has known the signs for help, want, my turn and things of that nature, but has never used them on his own. Well just yesterday and again today he has used those...totally on his own, with no prompting. As a matter of fact we were wondering what he was signing as he has never signed those things unless we have prompted him. So imagine our surprise this evening when Jeremiah put a movie on and Jed was trying to tell us something, with 'words' and with sign. He made it clear he was unhappy about something. We figured out that he was signing, "don't like" for the movie!!! He didn't want to watch the movie Jeremiah had on the computer! This is amazing!!!!!! Jed has only used signs to label things. He seems like a new child to me as he is just now communicating not liking something, or trying to tell me this afternoon that it was "his turn" on the computer. He likes to get on Word and type in letters. So he signed, 'my turn' and signed some letters! Can you tell I am excited?!

I have other exciting news....well for me anyways. My sister has a new calling plan!! That means I don't have to wait till after nine p.m. or the weekends anymore!!! I remember one rough day, Jeremiah had come home to me being a puddle. After talking for a while he said, I think you need to call your sister. And I had to tell him I couldn't...she didn't have any minutes left (boo hoo). So when the phone rang this afternoon and her number came up I thought that perhaps something was wrong. Thankfully not so! She was just calling to tell me I can now call her any time :-) I truly pray that my girls will have such wonderful relationships with each other like my sister and I share.

I got our new spelling program, All About Spelling, in the other day. I haven't used it yet as I am 'setting it up'. They recommend that each student, or every two students have their own letter tiles. I didn't want to fork over the money for that, so I have been spending time making my own. I am really excited about this program as it will serve as our spelling and phonics program. I will continue to use Phonics Pathways as our learning to read program, but I think that the spelling will help with the reading. I was really disappointed in my lack of ability to use Spell to Write and Read. It was just too much for me. However I really liked their premise and ideas, just too much for my brain to process. Anyone who has the program or seen it will know what I mean. I mean they have seminars to better learn how to use the program! I was a little worried about that when I first heard about the seminars. But the person who told me about it said that it wasn't something you needed, just a bonus. Another person, who was in the field of languages, told me it was the best program out there. So I got it. And like I said, I really like the ideas. I really, really wanted this program to work. I have been holding onto it in hopes that somehow I can make it work. Maybe it's just the season I am in, but it has been sitting there, staring at me making me feel guilty! Ha! So when I read about All About Spelling, I was intrigued as they use some of the same ideas. But they lay everything out for you! I know that working with the letter tiles are really going to help some of my girls with their reading and spelling. I am hoping to start the program come Monday. By then I should be done....at least close enough to start...with the prep work.

The girls have their last soccer game of the season tomorrow. I am hoping they will all make it to their games. It seems we have a small tummy thing going on. Nothing that has stopped the household from running as normal, but they clearly are not feeling great. Moira is on the up and up, Isabella hasn't had it...yet, and Flannery just started. I am assuming Jed has it as well as he 'lost' his afternoon feeding. But this evening he has been fine.

Well the baby is asleep (he went to bed REALLY early), dinner is done, the kids are still watching their movie and I need to do more cutting (the letter tiles). After the kids go to bed Jeremiah is going to teach me how to edit movies.

Two new videos up

I have two new videos up, both of Jed talking. They are not the original ones I had in mind of putting up, but the other ones need to be edited and I didn't get to them last night. So these will have to do for now. If you want to take a look you can visit my youtube channel. I have a link to my channel on the left side bar under 'my favorites', titled, "Southern Peaches Channel".

We just had a short meeting with his future speech therapist. He didn't want to leave as she has a lot of neat toys :-) She thought we should stick with the very low tech talking board for now instead of trying to get something more adaptable. That was a bit of a bummer. Her thought was that our goal is to get him to communicate with speech. And of course that is our goal....just what do we do in the mean time? The board is useful in very specific situations. However if he was playing with blocks and using his board to communicate and then wanted something to eat you have to switch out sheets for him to use the board for the new situation. His current SLP thinks it is a great idea to get him a more advanced device. So, we'll see what happens. We need an SLP to work with us in getting a device for him. As per the rules of insurance. As anyone who has been looking into AAC devices knows, they aren't CHEAP!!!! We are talking some 7 to 8 THOUSAND dollars for one! I just found out of a cheaper alternative that uses and IPod Touch or IPhone. The plus for that is that is is small and very portable. However it involves some needed fine motor skills that I am not sure Jed has. There are ways to help with that, but even if we get this device we are still talking at least 5 to 6 hundred dollars. A far cry from the first option, but all of that will come from our pocket. We shall see. Jed's private SLP (the one who is on board with getting him a device) will be here in a couple of hours, and I'll talk more about it with her.

I will still try to work on those other videos later. I am actually excited about working on them because I get to learn how to edit videos, something I have wanted to do for a little while now.

Jed's Apraxia

I am trying to get some videos uploaded about Jed's apraxia. I also did a house tour....finally. But yet again something happened and the video didn't upload to the computer properly. Unfortunately with the other videos I was trying to do I erased it off the camera. That means I need to do another one! I'm not sure when that will be coming. Poor little babe has a fever and was up a lot last night. He may have an ear infection, but not sure at this point.

Anyways, I have been doing a lot of research on apraxia lately. Jedidiah has not been doing well in speech. He had actually "lost" words that he used to say. From my reading I found that is common with apraxia. I've been trying to make a lot of books/games for Jed to encourage him to speak. I went on YouTube to look up apraxia to see how other kids talk. We haven't met anyone in person with it so it is hard to gauge how good/bad Jed has apraxia. His speech therapist told us he was bad. After all on the testing she did all of Jed's scores were at the 2 percentile or less! But still, those were just numbers and without some idea of what that meant in the real world it was hard to process. Well we came away from those videos a bit dismayed. Jed really is bad! So I started reading as much as I could to see what I can be doing here at home (besides what I was already doing). I have read that there has been some good success with fish oil supplements with children who have apraxia. We had been giving him some in the past and we didn't see any changes. However on one site that I was reading they said that some kids need only 1ml per day but other kids may need 10mls per day! So I increased the amount we had been giving him. I'm not sure if its coincidence, or the fish oils, but last night Jed had a speech explosion! I need to get a video of him talking so that we will have a reference to compare to over the coming months. But last night he said three new 'words'. He said, "yes", "down" and "moo". Now each of them was not said properly, but they were close. Besides the word "up" Jed doesn't put any consonant endings on his words. But he said the /s/ sound in "yes" last night! For "moo" it sounded more like maaaaaaa. But he has only ever said "mmmmmmm" for the sound of a cow, so this is an improvement. And for the word "down" he said it more like "don". But Jed hasn't even been trying to say words for the past couple of months so this was very exciting!

Hopefully I'll get him to talk on video today. I am hoping to redo the house tour as well. Each video takes forever and a day to upload to YouTube though, so it may be a day or two before I get them on my blog. I am also hoping to update my tags to make things easier to keep track of. I want to start a tag for apraxia, and a tag for homeschooling resources. I've come across some neat sites that I have been getting a lot of ideas from that I want to pass along to everyone. Now that I have my house done I need to work on my next task, which is getting us organized with routines/schedules. It would be so nice if, when you saw a system you liked, you could just implement it and it would work! Ha! But as you will see in my house tour I point out a long the way what is working for us, and what I've learned after trying to make it work, what doesn't work for us and how I need (or think I need) to change it. It is definitely a process in work.

Until the next time, have a wonderful day.