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The end result was that the RunAThon was a big success, yeah! Tyler did 3.5 laps in the 10 minuts they were given. I will say though that I was a bit worried about him at the beginning. First of all it was a really cold day, secondly, the music outside was so loud it was hurting my ears so I can't imagine how it felt when our ASD kids had to stand right next to the speakers. Believe me they weren't handling it well. Then the kids were moved over to a lawn area for pictures, Ty had his picture taken with his Gen ed class. Again he was not so thrilled. I htink mostly he was just really confused about what was going on and as we know uncertainty is entirely upsetting to Ty. So then his aide had two kids she was watching over and they started walking to the starting point, Tyler seriously unhappy, kept running forward and trying to pull her hand down and gritting his teeth at her. He looked stressed and therefore I was stressed. I wanted to run to him and help him but wasn't sure of proper procedure and didn't want to make things worse. Finaly at the starting line I couldn't take it, he was not happy and neither was I. Steve and I intervened... and luckily to the pleasure of not only Tyler but his Aide, who now only had 1 ASD kid to try to get running. Once Steve and I jumped in and talked to Ty about what was going on he seemed better and then we ran with him (although we werne't dressed appropriately) and he was happy as could be. I am so happy we joined in the fun and supported him.
In general it's sorta tough. I HATE seeing Tyler upset knowing I may be able to make a situation better for him. On the same hand, I know that it's probably good for him to learn how to deal with uncomofrtable situations and to have to do something he doesn't paticular care for, I mean we all have to do things we don't like probably on a daily basis and we just have to deal with it. But watching your kid go through it is hard. I'm glad I'm not in the classroom every day so i don't have to see it all. Even when we were coming back into the classroom to get him settled so we could go back to work, we saw another kid being walked down the hallway with an aide on each side of him and they were sort of lifting him up and although his feet were moving, it was clear not much of his weight were on his feet as they were sort of pulling him back to the class. And although not hurting him and they were talking very calmly, I still struggled with it. Maybe cause I know who he was and care about him and his family but also because I would hate to see Tyler being pulled down the hallway like that. Again i don't know the situation or what was happening and I have full faith in the parapro's, it's just hard to see.
Tyler's getting into a bad habit of wanting to take everything to bed with him and literally piles it on his bed. The other day we found his night stand drawer on the bed, another day his rocking chair, a laundry basket. Basically anything in his view he wants to take to bed with him and then anything in his room he wants to have on his bed. Last night when it was time for Bed he grabbed his ipad (actually Carson's IPAD), the dynavox, two packs of diaper wipes and the bottle of hand sanitizer. I laughted my way up the stairs.
Ty and Carson apparently have the same IPAD and the same case (thanks CAROL!!!) and Tyler would up with Carson's yesterday and we are hoping Carson has his, LOL. Tyler loved Carson's IPAD. If we could have gotten it away from Ty we would have written down some of the apps. I'm definetly going ot need to talk to his mom. Steve is attending APP night at the ACC on Wednesday so maybe he'll run into her there and be able ot write down some of Carson's apps that Ty loved so much.
Oh and right now we have a new Dynavox which is much lighter and more modern than Ty's current version which broke. The speech therapist is going to try to make it so Tyler can use hte new version permanently :)Let's hope.
As you may know, Tyler is in gen ed 1 hour a week. I've attached a picture of Tyler in his gen ed class. This was the first time that he want to a station all on his own (no support of an aide) and participated in the activity for 10 - 15 minutes without support or prompting :) Awesome. Tyler's teacher is great as she email/texts me pictures/notes all the time about Ty's progress. There's another picture of him working on his fine motor skills. In this one, he's matching the number of pictures to the actual number. He was so proud of himself she said. When I asked if he got them right, she said "of course!" :) Yeah Ty.
On the home front, we want to try to tackle the potty training again. We feel we've tried everything out there and Tyler just lacks interest. Over the holidays we will be home more with Ty and hope to make some progress and hopefully one day be a completely diaper free home.
We have Tyler's parent teacher conference in a couple of weeks and are really looking forward to the feedback as it seems the news has been pretty good so far.
Ben's conference also went well. He came into preschool knowing what he should know and seems to be getting along quite well with the other kids, etc. The only issue he has (wait for it as it may shock you), is that he talks too much! LOL. Really???, our Ben, he's just so shy. hee hee. So they are working on appropriate times to talk and appropriate times to be quiet. Ben also has a girlfriend, Rachel. I'm attaching a picture her mom sent me today of the two of them at an orchard. Ben is so cute when it comes to Rachel.
Batmobile is done and we took Tyler for a test ride to make sure he was ok riding in it. Took him a minute to get in but then he was fine. he also loves the bat we hung up at the top of the "bat cave" he keeps wanting to play with it. Ben on the other hand says we don't have enough decorations and we need more. He's hard to impress.. I told him to get a job and he can go buy more decorations, ha!
