Butts.

(yes, yes, i owe you all pictures....*sigh*)

Last night we had dinner with one of W's friends from Canada, and apparently at some point in time Ria walked behind him for a bit. When we got back home Ria grinned up at him and said....."I saw your butt, " with some apparent glee....

Nug names

I've been meaning to mention the latest spate of nug naming. (Nugs are anything snuggly ... blankets, pillows, stuffed animals.)

Ria's naming conventions have been evolving.

At first, it was the traditional: a duck called "Baby Ducky", a doll called "Dolly", etc.

Then came food names. The other doll got called "Tortilla", and there's a dog called "Banana."

Then came (just one) animal named after a book/song/whatever. That's the girl monkey named "Larry", after a monkey in a They Might Be Giants kids song.

Now, however, she has hit her stride. The old 2-humped polkadot camel has been recently named "Zoozakdoodle." And now we have a (blue) duck named...."Geckowamba". I understand the "wamba" part, as we had been on a Chumbawamba kick in the car for a while. Its the "Gecko" bit I just don't understand.

Iain's matching blue duck is named "Erfrrg". (I'm sure he'd have spelled it with no vowels at all if he'd thought of it.) His dolphin is no longer "Dolphinus", but now instead "Iga", as Dolphinus is his last name. "Penguinus" is now "Icu Penguinus", although the original Icu has been given to Ria and is now named Iculina, as Iain got a new penguin named Icu while we were in NZ. His stingray is "Ray Guy", and the small dolphin is.... "Dolphin Bag". I don't get the "Bag" part, but who am I to question. I'm pretty sure Ray Guy and Ducky are still married (last night there was some mention of Ray Guy being someone's dad ... I was informed that sperm was involved), however I think they got married after Proposition 8 passed, so the marriage isn't legal (they're both boys). Personally, I think they should get officially married next time we're in Toronto.

Underwater!

OOh!
I forgot to post about this!

Swim lessons were a MASSIVE success this summer
- 1st Ria put her head underwater and became addicted to "bobs" (such that I was no longer allowed to touch her during her swim lessons, as she was busy bobbing).
- Then, spurred on by his sister's success, IAIN PUT HIS HEAD UNDERWATER on day # 9 of swim lessons! and by the end (day #16) he was opening his eyes underwater, and finding things on the bottom of the pool, and floating!

WOAH! MAJOR!!

Spring 2010

Here's a few fun pictures from May and June.

1st, a cool picture of Ria that Iain took:


Iain and his "dolphin clock"....I think he made it in Kindergarten.

Iain with crazy hair for Crazy Hair Day, the last week of school:

Ria flying a kite.

Good news and bad news....

Oh, lately it all seems so good news/bad news....

The good news is the NZ family is fine, the bad news is the aftershocks are still going and are ridiculously large.

The good news is that Ria got an Occupational Therapy evaluation so quickly after I finished the paperwork, the bad news is that I now have another appointment each week, but the good news is that they think OT will help, so i get another appointment each week ;-)

The fabulous news is that at Ria's eye appt today she was actually able to see the 3D in the testing!! She didn't see the 3D 6 months ago. Opthomologist said that her 3D vision was meeting her goal for age 5, so we're a year ahead! The bifocal portion of her prescription is going to be reduced in strength for the next set of glasses.

More fabulous news....I get to have time in the house alone tomorrow! Other than one power-house-cleaning session one weekend, I haven't had time alone in the house since August 5th. WHEE!!!

...and, Iain is 7 tomorrow ;-)

That sounds like more good news than bad, doesn't it? Life must be good!

If just the aftershocks in NZ would cut it out, then we should be doing great.

April 2010 - Auckland NZ

Back to old pictures!!

In April, after leaving our fabulous cousins (and Aunt and Uncle and Grandpa) in Christchurch, we stopped for a week in Auckland, just the 4 of us. This was kind of an exciting trip for William and I, as it was the 1st time we've really done a "just us" vacation with the kids. What with our extended families being scattered far and wide, vacations are usually family visits (which are lovely in their own right), but it was nice to finally try out being just us on a trip.

Auckland ended up being colder than we anticipated, but we survived! The biggest thing we learned was that, with a 3.5 year old along, dinner had to happen back at our little apartment/hotel. Ria was just unable to eat dinner out after a day of running around. That and we needed to pick just one "sight" to visit, plus a park, and that was what we could manage in a day. By day #3 we'd figured that out, so the last 1/2 of the visit went very smoothly.

Here's Daddy drawing for Ria, while Iain just waits for his food:

Climbing a nifty tree that even Ria could climb on her own!

Fountains are fun, no matter how cold it is!

Funny hair!


Boy + box + grassy hill == FUN!

Penguins

Warm enought to build in the sand ;-)

Iain was playing tug-of-war while Ria enjoyed a sheep shearing show.

Ria in a Tuatara egg:

A composite of Ria and Iain on a lovely Tuatara!

Summer, a day late

WHAT?!

1st day of school today for Iain today (2nd grade). After a summer where the top temperature was 75 F (24 C), today it was 94 F (34.5).

I'm not complaining about the cool summer, it was LOVELY! Although it admittedly didn't feel very summerish....it just seemed rude to immediately heat up to a full roast on the 1st day that we couldn't stick them in the wading pool all day long.

It should be warm for another 2 days, then cool again.

Horses

I was just putting Ria to bed, and I asked her what she dreams about. We'd been reading "Wynkin, Blynkin and Nod."

Ria: I going down a mountain.
Mona: How are you going down the mountain?
[Some confusion as we work on how one answers a "how" question.]
Ria: I riding a horse.
Mona: You're riding a horse down a mountain?
Ria: I riding three white horse!

Then we sang a song about a little girl named Ria who dreams about riding down a mountain on three white horses. ;-)

A few months ago, one of her teachers asked all of the children in her class what they dreamed of, and Ria hadn't answered the question.....now we know ;-).

April 2010 - Visit to Canterbury NZ, and COUSINS!

In April we finally took our mini-brood to go visit our COUSINS! in NZ. Duncan and Toby (and their parents Julia and Will, of course, but Iain and Ria aren't too fussed about parents ;-) have been here many times as they pass through from/to Canada or England or some world tour or another, but we still hadn't visited them, so off we went!

Week 1 was cousins....week 2 was just us 4 in Auckland. Auckland will be another post

Here's a few pictures of the visit.

William with 4 kids:
4 kids making funny faces:

The inseparable boys....there's about 87 cute pictures of these guys together, I just picked 2 at random(ish):



Ria having a music break....what fabulous posture!

Auntie Julia and Ria snuggling! The boys mostly ignored Ria, so she focused on kitty Libby and on Julia as the highlights of her visit.


The whole gang. Will, Julia, Grandpa John, William, Mona, Toby, Iain, Ria, and Duncan.

And here is the world premier of the Harvie/Rucklidge boys band called "Spider Eyes". They are a cover/air band....doing "We Will Rock You" by Queen.

And here's a mini-clip with Spider Eyes and their back up girl dancer (Ria), doing "I'm Going to Lose Control" from the soundrack of "Over the Hedge". Note her signature move during the chorus ;-)

More words

This will be a potty/poo related post. If you don't want to read it, just stop!

I'll sneak in this wordy post just before putting in some pictures....that way people who don't want to read about my daughter's digestive tract might not even notice the wordy post just under the new pictures ;-)

Ugh.

Sometimes I just feel sorry for Ria. I know most of her trials and tribulations are temporary and will be done and over with before she starts Kindergarten (except the bifocals and possibly the orthotics), but the list of cr*p she has to deal with is just rather long....
-Bifocals for crossed eyes
-gross motor delay/ balance issues
-physical therapy for the gross motor delay
-expressive speech delay
-2 speech therapy sessions a week for that delay
-orthotics due to complications from the gross motor delay
-2 ear surguries so far
-ear plugs anytime water gets near her head, unless chlorinated, due to ear tubes
-tricky constipation
-people (including her parents, sometimes) underestimating her thinking skills because of her non-stellar speaking skills.
-recurring bouts of nasty eczema on her hands
-detergent sensitivities, resulting in eczema all over her body if we don't avoid SLS, etc.

The current poop related joy is as such:

The potty training has just stalled out. She kept getting poop smears (the GI doctor calls them "sharts" ;-) in her undies, never seeming to make the step to figuring out when to go poo. Then we had 5 perfect poo days (even taking herself to the toilet!) after a bout of antibiotic related diarrhea! We thought she'd finally figured it out after 5 months....then it all went to hell and she's been in pull-up diapers since late May.

So last week we went to a GI doctor to find a new approach to her constipation since the never-ending Miralax since 10 months old doesn't seem to cut it for potty training. She thinks that the issue is that we never did a "clean out" for her colon, and that our Miralax dosage is too low. The concept is that bad constipation left chunks of nasty dried out poo in her colon. The walls of the colon by those dessicated poo bits gets unhappy. You need to not just flush out the dried nasty poo bits, but also keep the poo grotesquely gushy for a long-ish period of time so that the colon walls can heal up....otherwise dried poo will re-accumulate at those unhappy wall sections of the colon. This would explain the "5 perfect poo days" after the diarrhea....the chunks went away, and for 5 days she was free flowing, and then they started to build back up.

The issue is that having chunks stuck on the colon wall gives your body mixed signals as to whether or not you need to poo....hence the never finishing the potty training.

So....
This weekend we are doing a magnesium citrate bowel clean out, and on Monday we start a new Miralax regimen at almost 2x the dose we've been using, and we'll be doing that for at least 4-6 weeks. We also had the "joy" of doing a blood draw for some tests, so we'll have some blood test results in a few weeks to rule out any nasty causes for the constipation.

With any luck, the cleared out and healed bowel, together with regular potty sits after finishing main meals will get her bowel all nicely trained and regular.

*sigh*. But she's still a happy cute bubbly little girl despite it all!

Quickie speech update: the dyad speech therapy session is working in spades! Her speech is growing in leaps and bounds. One strange result of the improvement is that, now that she is speaking more and markedly better, her speech problems are more obvious. Before you could have just imagined that she had chosen to not speak, but that she could if she wanted to. Now, as you hear her labored speech, you can truly see how much work she has to put in to make her words. I've been feeling funky about the decision coming up next year on whether to put her in Kindergarten on time (2011 fall), or put it off a year. Now that it is easier to hear her speech abilities I feel like I will be able to make an intelligent decision next year about her Kindergarten readiness. My goal, off hand, is that she have 4-6 months of *easy speaking* under her belt before starting Kindergarten. This means easy speaking in all situations, not just at home with us. It feels good to have a reasonably measurable metric by which I can make my decision.

So....that's our girl ;-)....our lovely, happy, snuggly, sweet little girl.

Updates

Hello World....

I've got two, count them, **2** vacations to post a few pictures from, but I'm on the wrong computer for that, so instead I will do a wordy little update on how the kids are doing. Pictures next time, I promise!!!

Iain has been doing wonderfully. It is almost unbelievable to me how much difference a year of OT and social skills group has done for him. Intensely social situations without structure are the big bad thing for kids with Aspergers, and he's been doing camp this week with 30 or 40 kids in his group, from 9am-4pm, and he has been having FUN! OK, 3 of the 5 days had a minor upset....but he recovered from each of them quickly with a small camp counselor intervention.

One year ago, he never could have survived this camp. I'd have had to pick him up early the 1st day and not bring him back. This year, he's not only made it through camp, he's ENJOYING IT!!! I am so impressed by how he has internalized his therapy and uses it on a daily basis. We are so lucky that his Aspergers is mild. He seems to just need to have concepts brought to him and practiced in therapy, and he can use them. We don't need to practice and train at home very much. He's kicking butt!

Ria: you keep hearing about Ria! We're still happy we did the 2nd ear surgery ;-). Since then we have upped her speech therapy to 2x per week, the 2nd session being a "dyad" where she and another little girl with similar issues are literally taught step by step how to play together with words. Ria's speech issues seem to be complicated with a strong anxiety about using words in a stressful situation. Any stress derails her words: hunger, thirst, more than one person interacting with her.... you get the idea. The speech therapists have seen that dyads seem to help kids with her sort of issues. In addition, we've restarted the physical therapy, and have started "gymnastics" classes to help her balance/coordination development. She just didn't seem to be able to finish up her gross motor development without a little extra help.

She's been doing the 2nd speech therapy for almost 2 months now, and we are starting to see an upsurge in her speech skills. She is TRYING so much harder to verbalize, and she has dramatically increased her level of "commentary". Even when she is obviously having a hard time figuring out what words to put together (lots of "ums" and "uhs"), she still pushes through and tries to get her thoughts out in words! The trip last week to NH seems to have been a key impetus...she really seemed to start talking more last week, and this week when we're back, her speech therapists and her preschool teachers have really noticed the upswing in speech! (Its been hand in hand with a backwards step in potty training, but we will happily accept that for speech gains!)

Life is good ;-)

HUGS to all!

The Baby says "WAAAAH!"

Hee hee:

So, when Ria was going to bed tonight, she was busy being a baby.....which means happily saying "Waaah! Waaah!" while snuggling into bed. Odd, but it makes her happy.

When I was putting Iain to bed, I went in to pull Ria's glasses off (she falls asleep reading her books, so this is standard practice). When I took them off, it woke her up a bit......she opened her eyes and sleepily said "Waaah! Waaah!"

heh.....just too darn cute!

Ear Tubes II and Adenoids

We're baaaaaack!

Today was another chapter in the seemingly never-ending story of Ria's Ears. The final exciting one, though, most likely.

Here's a few weeks shortened into one paragraph: One of Ria's ear tubes fell out in January (as expected), but the other was holding on still. The left ear drum (without tube) was slightly retracted, but no fluid this time. The lack of fluid resulted in a perfect hearing test. This left us in the "grey zone" for deciding whether or not to have a 2nd set of tubes placed. Her persistent crankiness and apparent ear discomfort (we'd gone to the pediatrician for suspected ear infections twice since January, but the ears were clean, just in pain) led us to decide to go ahead for a 2nd set of tubes. We were feeling somewhat "American", in that we weren't sure if we were swatting a fly with a nuclear missile, if you know what I mean....but we were going for the surgery anyways.

So, this morning at 7:30am, Ria had the 2nd set of tubes placed (the right one was removed and a new one placed). Whenever they place a 2nd set of tubes, especially with someone with a history of snoring since birth, they check the adenoids to see if they are blocking the eustacian tubes. Ria's adenoids were definately too big, so they were lasered out this morning as well. That gave us a feeling of "we sure did the right thing!"...if we hadn't gone in for the 2nd set of tubes, she'd never have "grown into" her eustation tubes, and the pain would have continued, and a some point we'd have had to go in again anyways. Now we know the root cause of all the problems, and its been fixed!

Luckily, the technology of adenoidectomies has changed a lot in 20 years. 20 years ago they were cut out with a knife and your nose got packed with gauze....and removing that gauze was "fun". Nowadays they just laser them out, and the cuts are immediately cauterized. No packing, just a bit of pain.

Our baby is doing great, if a bit touchy and desirous of Tylenol ;-). ...And the ear saga is over. In 8 months or so the tubes will grow out, and with the adenoids out her ear drums should be just fine without them!

Happy parents. Happy happy happy happy happy parents.

Happy February!!

Hello!

Before I write an update on how we're doing, some photos ;-)

It doesn't seem to matter what I say. Kids seem to think that they belong in the drier...


We made our gingerbread house this year in January, and ate it 2 days later.

And here's what life really looks like in our house....2 kids running around in their underwear, hanging out by the heat vent. Iain is in addition modelling his Christmas hat...my 2nd knit hat that is actually pretty good (William got the 1st good one, and I have the one that isn't particulary well-knit).


So, updates!

Iain is doing GREAT! He has just "graduated" from Occupational Therapy. He now is functioning in the "average range" for all of the tested areas. Several items are on the low end of average, but still far from where he was last spring. This is very noticeable in how well he is functioning in school this year. 1st grade is going fabulously. He's only had 3-4 bad days in the whole year so far. Many kudos go to his fabulous teacher, of course. We're planning to re-try swimming lessons this summer, and he's feeling pretty confident that he will be able to get his head under water this year. His social skills group is a long-term therapy, so we'll be doing that through all of next school year as well.

Ria....

She is just a different little girl than she was before those ear tubes. Last spring when she was 2.5 years old, she functioned in many ways like a 1.5 year old.....and in gross motor skills she was even lower down. She ran in a crooked line, at walking speed, and fell down every 20 or so steps. If she was walking across the room carrying something, I would run ahead of her and clear the floor of all obstacles, pieces of paper, books, so that she wouldn't slip and fall. At preschool, if another child wanted what she had, she would just hand it over silently and back away. If there was a crowd of children, she would back away to the outside, and she'd never get a turn at the activity in question unless an adult encouraged her to take a turn, she was so overwhelmed by the motion of the other kids and unable to follow the words flying around abover her head. Don't get me wrong, she was a happy little thing, especially when in her known-space at home and with family, but she just couldn't function in the preschool setting very well.

Now...not only do i not have to clear the floor in front of her path, she has graduated to wearing tights/stockings with her dresses around the house....and she DOESN"T SLIP AND FALL DOWN! At preschool she still usually plays on her own, but she no longer pulls to the back, she participates in circle times, and takes her turn in activities rather than always letting the other kids go 1st. She even initiates play verbally with one child at a time, sometimes. ...and she usually lets us know what she wants with WORDS, often with full sentances even....she even uses verbs! We're still working with her speech....she doesn't initiate speech well, and she doesn't answer questions usually without prompting, but the end is in sight.

The potty training has been......slow. The poos have been rather tricky. Still working on it, but in undies every day, and sometimes at night. some days we finish with the same pair of undies, others involve many changes, but progress is being made. *phew* I wish the progress were faster, but as least its progress! we haven't stalled out.

That's pretty much life for us!

Happy Christmas!

For Christmas we had Grandpa John visiting. Here we are at our Julbord (Christmas Eve dinner). As usual, Iain snarfed up the sill (pickled herring) with great abandon. That boy can EAT!


We open about 1/2 our gifts on Christmas Eve, so here's the kids opening gifts at night: Ria loving her hat, her jammies, and her farm.

...and Iain helping set up the farm

Daddy and Ria posing for Grandpa John

Iain in motion trying to figure out his Meccano Erector set. Its a bit beyond his abilities, but he loves it ;-).

Another Daddy and Ria shot.

You can't quite see him, but Iain is the dude in the penguin jammies playing with his remote control ATV.

Finally, Grandpa John and the kids watch to see if Santa will make it down the course they made for him (computer game).

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! God Jul och Gott Nytt Ar!

Potty Time!

On 23 December, Ria and I carried out all her "day diaper" paraphernalia to leave them for the "diaper fairies".

In the morning, Ria found that Fairy Amiya (the left one, looks a little like her friend Amiya) and Fairy Ria had stayed behind to help her put her poos in the toilet. (Mommy had spent quite a bit of time the previous night making flower fairies while Daddy wrapped all the gifts.)

Results?
Well, she's kind of potty trained.... With reminders, her pee is 100% contained. Her poo....well.... we're working on it. It's kinda-sorta working. Mostly. ;-). Another week or 2 will no doubt get things more consistent on that end. So to speak.

Tomorrow we send her to school with undies. Wheee!

Early December 2009

Early in December we got to see Aunti Julia as she passed through for a conference.

Kids playing happily together building with the Quattros. (Isin't it great how on blogs you can make it look like your kids never fight!)

And finally, a video: Here's Iain helping Ria spin on the "Dizzy Disc" (those who tend toward dizziness might not want to watch). They're saying "I'm a-watching a movie, I'm a watching a movie, I'm a watching a movie...OW OW OW". The "OW"s are supposed to occur while whapping your head on your forehead. Can you guess which kid came up with that one? ;-)

Halloween and November 2009 pictures

So, I'm giving up on post-dating ;-) Here's some pictures from Halloween and November last year.

Our friends Chris and Wonder-Woman Sarah went trick or treating with William the Convict, Ria the Bumblebee and Iain the Dinosaur. Yep, Iain has finally given up on his Tomtebobarnen costume that he used for the last 4 years.

Early November found William in Toronto for the sorrowful event of Irene's funeral. Nonetheless it was joyful to have the 4 siblings together with John.

Ria looking cute in her hat.

One day Iain had a day off school, but Ria didn't, so he and I had a lovely hike.

Kids making faces for the camera always makes a good shot:

As does any image of the intrepid explorers, off to investigate the wilds of our house.