1st day of school, and last day of braces!

OK, they didn't happen at the same time.....

On Monday the kids had their 1st day of school:  Iain in 5th grade, Ria in 1st.  Have a good look at those braces on Iain, because today they came off!  (Yes, he wore his shoes to school, just not for the picture.)

zoom in!

Now, no braces for Iain, and fabulous new glasses for Ria!  (Admittedly, as Iain mentions, Ria's chanelling her inner nerd in this photo, but all members of our family ARE nerds, so that's OK.  Every leaf on every tree is "crispy clear!")   Everyone, BLINK!

Summer photos, soon!

Summer!!!

I'm baaaack!!

Another chaotic and fabulous school year is over.  I will finally bless you with photos ;-)

Here's Iain with Ms. Prentice, his fabulous 4th grade teacher:

And Ria with her teacher (on the left) Mrs. Milos, and her aide Mrs. Gloria on Kindergarten graduation day:

And, being Ria, she has 2 more teachers, but I only caught one of the others with her, Ms. Lucy, her school OT (peeling oranges to improve hand strength and dexterity here):

The last month of school is always psychotically chaotic, but we somehow survived.  

Ria informed her teacher that she would no longer be going to the same school -- she was going to go to one that is (a) quieter and (b) has less work.  Her teacher agreed that that would be a lovely school (especially if it were in the tropics!), but that, unfortunately, all schools have noisy kids and work.  Then Ria grudgingly agreed to come to the same school next year.  Later, Ria threatened to essentially boycott her graduation ceremony, until she found out that she was going to 1st grade whether or not she participated in the party (she's concerned about the noise and work level of 1st grade), then she gave in and in the end had fun at the celebration.    She's a funny kid, that one!

Iain persists in this odd feature of "getting more mature."  I'm not quite sure what to do with it!  He is taking ownership of the areas he needs to work on, and doesn't freak out when we point them out to him.  Odd.  I had a coworker way back when who said that ages 8-10 were his favorite, and I really can't fault him in that evaluation.

Ria is now taller than Iain by 1/2", and outmasses him by 10# (he's given up being annoyed by this, as it is clear that all people consider her to be freakishly tall...thus it really says nothing about his height).  They also have completely different body shapes. He is slender, and she's built like a brick.  This picture is terrible, with slouching and perspective making her look shorter, but you can really see how differently they are built in this one.  At least, ***I*** can ;-).

We went to Santa Cruz boardwalk for William's birthday....here's Iain and I going up on the ferris wheel:

...and William and Tiger Girl as viewed from above:

OK, off to bed.  I feel more honorable now, as at least there's a few pictures here for once!

Ahhhh..... The end of one era

Yo!

(Bad Mom! No pictures!.... sorry...)

Today was quite a milestone. Today Ria graduated from individual speech therapy.

[Deep Breath]

All our excitement with her started 4 years ago when she was 2.5 years old, and Iain asked "When will she talk like the other kids?" Or some similar heart rending question. That, plus not being able to run without going in zigzags and falling down every 5th step or so, and we started our journey on the Discovery of Ria. Step 1 was the initial evaluation with the speech therapists....that was even before the 1st visit with the ENT and the ear surgery. Admittedly, the actual speech therapy sessions didn't start until after the 1st set of tubes/grommets and the start of PT, but the speech evaluation came first. When we started she pretty much only had nouns. She didn't understand verbs. She had no concept what was meant by the "W questions". Jen guided us in teaching her all of that.

Its been 4 years now. At this point her functional speech skills are working. Her remaining speech problems are in pragmatic speech.... How to have a conversation. How to negotiate to play a game. How to interact with others. These are all "social speech" skills, and she's getting social skills classes both at school and privately. So we've finished with that which came first.

I know that Ria will eventually just function in the world as a slightly odd duck (quack!), and noone will even realize what she went through to get there. It's just the bit where we have to get through the development process to get her there. Rather, SHE needs to get through the process....she does the hard work, after all. We only think that we're the ones who have it hard.

One of Ria's catch phrases is: "Life is hard....but good." Today she said to me that she wished she could say "Life is fun, and good." We commiserated about how everything has ups and downs.

It felt like there should have been more fanfare.... a brass band, fireworks, a national holiday. It passed quietly, however.

Another one down. A few more to go.
I'm going to miss Jen, though.

Sleep well, all!

Our Trail

I was just walking home from dropping Ria at school (go me! I WALKED!). Normally if we self-propel to school, we bike with her on the trail-a-bike, so I zoom home and don't see much of the other human trail users, but walking you get to see them all.

It was great. There's the moms coming home from dropping kids off, the young families with infants in the stroller, the high tech guys with their spandex shorts and funny biking shirts, the guys from the auto shop in their blue overalls with a bike helmet strapped over their baseball caps, just 1 spandex and silly shirt clad woman, and (my favorite) the lady biking in her dress and high heels. My mom used to bike to work in her work dress, but I don't know that she wore high heels while biking....maybe she did.

What a great town!

Balls flying around

Oops!

We had some excitement a few weeks ago that I forgot to update people on!....It turns out good, I promise ;-)

A few weeks ago Ria made this odd comment at bedtime..."Dad, why does it look like there are balls flying at me?"

Parent thought process:
(1)  Hmm, odd visual artifact/experience.
(2)  Ria has progressive myopia, very near sighted, I can tell her prescription is getting worse lately as she's moving closer to the TV.
(3)  Very near sighted folks are at greater risk for retinal detachments.....which shows up as odd visual artifacts.
(4)  EEEEEEEK!!!
(5)  Let's make an ophthalmologist appointment tomorrow.....EEEEK!!!!

At the ophthalmologist office we find out that her eyes are healthy as can be.  The thing that is changing is.....
SHE IS DEVELOPING 3D VISION!!!!!

Whee!!!

Background - Ria has been wearing bifocals since she turned 3 specifically because she tends towards going crosseyed (accomodative esotropia).  Basically, the images from the 2 eyes are not perfectly overlapping, so she sees slightly double all the time, and when she really wants to focus well (while reading, usually), one eye will turn WAAAY in so that she will see only 1 set of words in front of her, making it easier to read.  In her situation, the bifocals trick her eyes into getting a reasonable overlap of the images from her eyes so she doesn't feel a need to go crosseyed so much.  The hope was, of course, that eventually her brain would figure out these overlapping (or near overlapping) images and fuse them into one 3D image.  Very often what happens instead is that the brain just learns to ignore the input from one eye and pay attention only to the other so that it doesn't experience the double vision (this is what William does, one eye is his "near things" eye, one is his "far things" eye, and the 2 never work together).

There are two 3D tests.  For both the kid puts on 3D glasses and looks at a hologram.
1st test:  If you have no 3D you see a picture of wierd blobs.  If you have weak 3D you see one image, if you have stronger 3D you see a different image.
2nd test:  There is an array of 9 sets of dots that you have to decide which one is popping out at you.  Sets 1-3 are "gimmes", since you can see which dot is different even without the glasses.  Set 4 requires only very weak 3D vision....onwards up to set 9 that requires a strong 3D vision to discern which is popping out.

In previous visits, Ria could get to #4 on the 2nd test (very very weak 3D), and on the 1st test she could tell something was kind of coming out of the page, but couldn't ever name it -- the image wasn't strong enough to be able to label.

In this visit, first she stared at the picture for a while.  She could tell something was there.  The office tech (this part of the visit is without the actual ophthalmologist) encouraged her to just "stare harder", and then she could label the 1st level image.  The office tech encouraged her more "stare right here, really hard", and she was able to label the 2nd level image!  Then they went to the dots....it took a lot of hard concentration, but she got to.....*****7*****!!!!!

So...we're guessing this new 3D vision isn't constant, its kind of going in and out little bits all day long.  And the "balls flying at my face" is some visual artifact caused by the 3D going in and out.  This also explains why she suddenly started getting carsick for the 1st time this past summer.

We went from absolutely terrified about Ria's eyes to utterly thrilled in less than 24 hours.....what a rollercoaster life is, eh?

Life being happy ;-)

Looked at the blog today, and realized that I'd never posted some really cool pics of the kids that my mom took when she was here back in October.

This one is a nifty one of Iain at a climbing structure at Gilroy Gardens...I brightened it up a bit so you can see his face better.  

Here's a nice one of Iain at his walkathon, caught off guard:

And one with the both of them, again at Gilroy Gardens.  Yep, she's a weed.  Sometimes I think she'll be 7 feet tall when she's done!

Ria's aide started in the classroom in late February, and the change has been tremendous.  Ria is able to finish all her "independent" work at her desk, and her anxiety has dropped dramatically (as she no longer needs to fear the desk work) making her more participatory through the whole school day.  Her aide is also helping Ria at recess (we have a social goal in the IEP) to develop games that she can play with the other kids, so she is no longer mostly by herself on the playground - in fact, there is always a crowd with her!

Iain has been doing programming in Khan Academy online, and is having a lot of fun with it.  He even gave a talk to his class one Friday afternoon to show them how to do/learn programming in it (they use Khan Academy in the classroom), and ran a little lunch time programming session with interested kids to help them get started.  hee hee!  It is so fun to watch him start to develop away from "little kid" ;-).

Life is good -- and the sun is out!!  Happy days!

Multiple Valentines of Joy!

Here's a little Valentine for you!

If you can't quite read it, the poem is:

     I'm giving you a Valentine;
     Don't put it on the shelf.
     It's one that you can hold and love;
     I'm giving you myself!

She wore it just about all day ;-).

On the morning of Valentine's Day, we had our 3rd IEP meeting for Ria, the big annual one, the one where we discuss how to meet her "intensive classroom needs."  The one where we discuss if she is able to function in the classroom without the support of a classroom aide.  (I think I failed to blog about IEP #2, which was just in December, where the district assigned Ria OT support.)

You will recall that last year's big IEP was rather disappointing, with us barely able to convince the district that they even needed to keep her on the radar.  We were put in a "wait and see" mode, where we felt we had to let her struggle in the classroom for the level of her needs to become fully apparent.

Well -- our team THIS year, now that we are actually in a class in the district, and now that the district has hired a trained "inclusion specialist" who really knows what she is doing, is AWESOME!  Ria's inclusion specialist meticulously documented how Ria's performance in the classroom was deteriorating and what was needed.  In the end, we didn't have to fight at all.  The district offered us a full time classroom assistant for Ria to support her needs!  Yep, a full time aide, handed to us on a platter!  WHEEE!  The aide will be a "group" aide, as her needs aren't so bad that it has to be 1:1, but that is fine with us, we agree fully with that.

And if that wasn't enough of a Valentine from the district, we had an email on Friday saying that they have already hired her aide (they get a week grace period), and the aide will be starting on the Monday that we get back to school after break!!

I don't think I can properly describe how wonderful I feel.  After the meeting, literally, the birds seems to sing more sweetly, the sky was bluer, and my mere existence on this earth felt more gentle and soft.

As our inclusion specialist says, the first step will be to undo the damage of the last 1/2 school year where she has been working without the support she needs.

I'm walking on sunshine....our little ray of light will get what she needs!

Late Night Blatherings

William and I just finished watching a sweet movie called "Beginners"....got me in a thoughtful mood ;-)

Iain just came home from an overnight field trip to Fort Ross, which was (I think) the main southernmost Russian outpost in the early 1800's in California.

Iain left the house before Ria was awake on  Thursday morning.  On Thursday before we left for school, Ria wanted to check on Iain in his room.....then this morning (Friday) when she woke up she went straight to Iain's room to check on him, but he wasn't there.  She was sad he was gone, but OK with it.

Tonight, after a special (gluten-free) pizza and movie night, as Ria went up to bed, Iain called to her (quietly) "I love you", and Ria said "I love you" back.  It was so sweet.....Iain NEVER says "I love you" to Ria, he shows it, but doesn't say it anymore (those silly teen hormones are starting up!  Its such a cute little baby moustache!), so it was so clear that he had missed her too.

I like that my kids miss eachother.  Not all siblings like eachother, so its lovely that they do.

Gluten Free:  We're doing some "Biomedical" work with Ria -- many autistic kids have, shall we say, odd biochemistry.  The research is still working on it, its not quite figured out yet.  Her gut has clear markers as being inflamed, so we're trying to "heal" her gut, make it happy.  Inflamed guts don't absorb nutrients well, etc., etc.  Gluten and Casein irritate inflamed guts, so we're taking her temporarily (6-12 months) off gluten and casein to help her heal up.  The goal is to reduce sound sensitivities and, hopefully, get her off the Miralax she's been on since 10 months old.

Cold.

I had to buy an ice scraper for my car.

Yep.  We've had the car for almost 9 years, and this is the first time I've needed an ice scraper.  Admittedly, pre-elementary-school-children I wasn't usually up so early, but still....

I wish I could show you....

I wish I could show you how cute the kids are right now.  Ria is working on a Highlights Top Secret kit that she got from a classmate, and Iain is helping her.  They are very cute.  But I don't get to show you because, as usual, they are clad in nothing but their underwear.