8.06.2007
Blog facelift coming soon...
I have entries running through my head all the time, I just don't have the discipline to write. But now that I've finished the new Harry Potter I have more free time on my hands. Look for a new and improved site soon....
7.23.2007
7.02.2007
$3700!
We're here in Piermont and happy happy happy! Funny- we're living about the same distance from the Hudson River as we did in the city, but it feels completely different. More details to come.
PS: Our apartment in NYC rented to a new family for $3700 a month.
PS: Our apartment in NYC rented to a new family for $3700 a month.
5.11.2007
Is this a hint?
I think NYC is telling us to leave. At this point, I think its yelling at us.
The CPSE offices (Center for Preschool Education- they are the people who approve services for Charlie for preschool) have had Charlie's evaluations since March 28th. We have finally learned that he won't be having his transition meeting until July.
Lesson #1: Send things certified mail. This way, when a CPSE office tells you they don't have your paperwork you can say, "Well, a person in your office signed for it and this is her name..." Then call the CPSE office in South Orangetown. You don't get put on hold, you get the name of the person you need to talk to, they leave a message for you, and the person calls you back. And he talks to you for 30 minutes and you're not even a resident.
Next week we find out if Emi made it into the Gifted and Talented program. If she didn't, then we wait to find out if she makes it into one of our schools of choice through the second round of the general education lottery.
Lesson #2: If you don't want your child to go to the neighborhood school, move. Especially if you are paying outrageous rent and are stressed out about money all the time.
Our downstairs neighbors can't stand the pitter-pat of Charlie and Emi's feet. So we lay down carpet remnants all over the apartment. Kind of an eyesore, but the neighbors are happy.
Lesson #3: Check out www.flor.com If we resign our lease, we will be their #1 customers!
The CPSE offices (Center for Preschool Education- they are the people who approve services for Charlie for preschool) have had Charlie's evaluations since March 28th. We have finally learned that he won't be having his transition meeting until July.
Lesson #1: Send things certified mail. This way, when a CPSE office tells you they don't have your paperwork you can say, "Well, a person in your office signed for it and this is her name..." Then call the CPSE office in South Orangetown. You don't get put on hold, you get the name of the person you need to talk to, they leave a message for you, and the person calls you back. And he talks to you for 30 minutes and you're not even a resident.
Next week we find out if Emi made it into the Gifted and Talented program. If she didn't, then we wait to find out if she makes it into one of our schools of choice through the second round of the general education lottery.
Lesson #2: If you don't want your child to go to the neighborhood school, move. Especially if you are paying outrageous rent and are stressed out about money all the time.
Our downstairs neighbors can't stand the pitter-pat of Charlie and Emi's feet. So we lay down carpet remnants all over the apartment. Kind of an eyesore, but the neighbors are happy.
Lesson #3: Check out www.flor.com If we resign our lease, we will be their #1 customers!
4.28.2007
Sensory gym and sleep
Its 2:22am and Charlie is up. Again. I finally got him to stop doing laps in the hallway. Now he sits in his bed, in the dark, flipping pages of board books I placed next to him. Occasionally, I hear him singing. There are no discernible words, but I can tell which song it is by the hand claps. He's doing B-I-N-G-O now.
I am so tired.
Charlie, without fail, decides he only needs 5 hours of sleep a night during the busy stretches. Maybe that's not an accident, that during more chaotic periods of family life he just cannot sleep more than that. But as the laws of parenting would have it, the times when we need sleep the most, we don't get it.
Charlie now attends a sensory gym twice a week. Imagine the best possible scenario for a room with padded walls. Some of the equipment looks a bit archaic and frankly, quite frightening, and yet it is the most stimulating/soothing (depending on your sensory thing) experience. There's the steamroller- padded dowels that look like an old fashioned clothes wringer, that one can roll over, or roll though, compressed between the dowels. I imagine Charlie sliding out looking like Flat Stanley. He loves it. He loves being pressed. He loves lying on the floor while someone takes a yoga ball and rolls it one top of him while pressing down with all of their weight. Then there's the bag of balls- a swing, really, filled with little plastic balls, that you sit in. And the bench swing with three chains so you can swing in a circle. Since Charlie just started, he doesn't have a routine yet. He zips from one station to the next, with his therapist trying to keep up with him.
The sensory gym is like a hidden gem, or, if one is feeling dower about their situation of parenting an autistic child, its a prescriptive, pubic health version of the large ultra-trendy urban indoor play spaces with child hair salons and mommy and me yoga. Charlie's gym is located in an office building near Columbus Circle, one of those relics with windows stained permanently from car exhaust on the outside and cigarette smoke on the inside. After signing in at the nondescript lobby, and taking the elevator to the nondescript 5th floor, we enter the nondescript waiting room. Linoleum floor tiles, and loads of chairs, but not a single thing a sensory-seeking or avoiding child would respond to. But behind the nondescript door... Charlie pounds on it when we show up. He rattles the door knob. He starts to do his little grunts and vocalizations. Until someone opens the door. He barrels his way in, so incredibly happy. That's how the therapist who works with him at the sensory gym describe him when they re-emerge in the waiting room 30 minutes later. "He is such a happy little boy!" she says. He really is. We are lucky. In the mix of everything, we have a very happy son. Now if he'd only sleep.....
I am so tired.
Charlie, without fail, decides he only needs 5 hours of sleep a night during the busy stretches. Maybe that's not an accident, that during more chaotic periods of family life he just cannot sleep more than that. But as the laws of parenting would have it, the times when we need sleep the most, we don't get it.
Charlie now attends a sensory gym twice a week. Imagine the best possible scenario for a room with padded walls. Some of the equipment looks a bit archaic and frankly, quite frightening, and yet it is the most stimulating/soothing (depending on your sensory thing) experience. There's the steamroller- padded dowels that look like an old fashioned clothes wringer, that one can roll over, or roll though, compressed between the dowels. I imagine Charlie sliding out looking like Flat Stanley. He loves it. He loves being pressed. He loves lying on the floor while someone takes a yoga ball and rolls it one top of him while pressing down with all of their weight. Then there's the bag of balls- a swing, really, filled with little plastic balls, that you sit in. And the bench swing with three chains so you can swing in a circle. Since Charlie just started, he doesn't have a routine yet. He zips from one station to the next, with his therapist trying to keep up with him.
The sensory gym is like a hidden gem, or, if one is feeling dower about their situation of parenting an autistic child, its a prescriptive, pubic health version of the large ultra-trendy urban indoor play spaces with child hair salons and mommy and me yoga. Charlie's gym is located in an office building near Columbus Circle, one of those relics with windows stained permanently from car exhaust on the outside and cigarette smoke on the inside. After signing in at the nondescript lobby, and taking the elevator to the nondescript 5th floor, we enter the nondescript waiting room. Linoleum floor tiles, and loads of chairs, but not a single thing a sensory-seeking or avoiding child would respond to. But behind the nondescript door... Charlie pounds on it when we show up. He rattles the door knob. He starts to do his little grunts and vocalizations. Until someone opens the door. He barrels his way in, so incredibly happy. That's how the therapist who works with him at the sensory gym describe him when they re-emerge in the waiting room 30 minutes later. "He is such a happy little boy!" she says. He really is. We are lucky. In the mix of everything, we have a very happy son. Now if he'd only sleep.....
4.08.2007
Emi-ism Archive
I'm replacing Emi-isms with "Exchanges with Emi". So here's the Emi-ism archive:
Emi-ism #61: "Mommy, I don't know how to be nice. I want to be nice, but my body is not controlling myself."
Emi-ism #59: "Charlie and I are twins because you know why? When I smile, he smiles."
Emi-ism #56: "I have super powers, you know. But I never use them because they're really, really secret."
Emi-ism #55: "I had a beautiful dream about nails. That our nails were as long as monsters. And there was this magic water that made our nails long and a fairy had it and she said, 'No more short nails until tomorrow.'"
Emi-ism # 48: "Crying reminds me of the drawing I made that I erased before I got to show it to you."
Emi-ism #47: You can be the fairy happy mother. I'll be the fairy love mother."
"I'm just into sugar, mommy. That's who I am. And I like it."
Emi-ism #37:
"(Bike) pedals are like see-saws for my feet!"
Emi-ism #23:
"An umbrella is like a trampoline for raindrops."
3.13.2007
Schools
Not Emi- Charlie. I've been visiting schools for Charlie for the fall. He's aging out of Early Intervention in August. His services get handed over to the Board of Education- but not before another round of evaluations and meetings. And then there's the school visits, open houses, school-specific observations of Charlie, applications, etc. These schools, which serve kids on the spectrum and with PDD-NOS (that's Charlie), are paid for by the Department of Education. If we went private, the tuition would be about $45k.
We're halfway through the evaluations. He charmed the pants off of the evaluators last week. His sense of humor is amazing. He communicates so much with his eyebrows! His attention span is impressive. He also showed them that while it appears that he can't stop moving around, he can also sit down with you for an extended period of time and do whatever you throw at him. The shapes puzzle? Not a problem. Want me to scribble? Give me that pen! Read a book with you? OK- but read quickly 'cuz I'm a fast page flipper! Stack blocks? How many you got?
I was reading over his September IFSP reports (progress notes from his last EI meeting with the city people) and his progress since then has been amazing. He couldn't stand up or sit down without assistance back then. I can hardly remember that. He also couldn't stack blocks very well. Or say the words he does now spontaneously. Back then, it was only "banana" and "bath". Now he says "More!" and "Again!"
By the way- Matt got Charlie to start saying "please" this weekend. I've been trying for months. Now Charlie says it whenever he's prompted by anyone. THANK YOU MATT!
By May 1st, we should know where both kids are heading to school in the fall. SHOULD. Might not. Keep your fingers crossed...
We're halfway through the evaluations. He charmed the pants off of the evaluators last week. His sense of humor is amazing. He communicates so much with his eyebrows! His attention span is impressive. He also showed them that while it appears that he can't stop moving around, he can also sit down with you for an extended period of time and do whatever you throw at him. The shapes puzzle? Not a problem. Want me to scribble? Give me that pen! Read a book with you? OK- but read quickly 'cuz I'm a fast page flipper! Stack blocks? How many you got?
I was reading over his September IFSP reports (progress notes from his last EI meeting with the city people) and his progress since then has been amazing. He couldn't stand up or sit down without assistance back then. I can hardly remember that. He also couldn't stack blocks very well. Or say the words he does now spontaneously. Back then, it was only "banana" and "bath". Now he says "More!" and "Again!"
By the way- Matt got Charlie to start saying "please" this weekend. I've been trying for months. Now Charlie says it whenever he's prompted by anyone. THANK YOU MATT!
By May 1st, we should know where both kids are heading to school in the fall. SHOULD. Might not. Keep your fingers crossed...
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