My Baby is Three!

It's amazing how quickly three years have gone. It seems like just yesterday Kyle and I made the decision to start the adoption process and now here we are parents of a 3 year old! The past 3 years have held more joy than I ever could have imagined my entire life containing. I feel so blessed to be chosen by God and by Hannah's birthparents to parent this amazing little girl. What a wild ride it's been! I can only imagine what the next 3 years have in store for us. I'm too tired to post much tonight, but for now enjoy these carefully chosen photos of my beautiful little girl.

The Tie-Dye Project

Last May a kindergartner named Alex Barton was voted out of his classroom based on a suggestion from his teacher because his Asperger's Syndrome made him a nuisance in the classroom and landed him in the principal's office often. His mother Melissa started the Tie-Dye project to help connect kids across the world with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Hannah received a T-Shirt from Nigel from Oregon last week and was thrilled. She wants to meet him and play with him! The way the tie-dye project works is after you receive your shirt, you make 5 more shirts and mail them out to other kids (or adults, since adults need love too) on the spectrum. Hannah has 4 t-shirts left to give out. If you or your child would like a shirt please leave me a comment on the blog with your email address and I'll contact you to get your mailing address and t-shirt size. Hannah is really excited about making shirts for other people so please don't be shy about asking for one since I'm worried we don't know enough others on the spectrum who don't already have a shirt to fulfil the 5 shirt requirement.

First House Guest

We had our first house guest here in Rhode Island this past week. My dad came to visit on Sunday and stayed until Friday. Hannah was so happy to see her Grandpa and it was nice to see a familiar face. We did lots of sight seeing and got to see a lot of neat things. Hannah loved the Mystic Aquarium which she consistently refers to as the "accordion" :) It's a smallish aquarium and we went mid week before the local schools were out for the summer so it was a much nicer experience for Hannah than it potentially could have been if it was crowded. She did quite a bit of running around and dragging us from exhibit to exhibit. We also finally checked out some of the local beaches. We've been to the beach here by our house loads, but we decided to travel to the big beaches along the coast instead of just the bay. Hannah had a blast running up and down the beach and loved the excitement of fighting to stay upright as the waves crashed against our legs. She wore herself out so badly that day that she fell asleep in her car seat on the way home with goldfish crackers in her mouth and still chewing!

Lately Hannah has been doing a fantastic job socially. She's been engaging with other kids her own age, initiating play, and responding appropriately when approached by another child. It's just been so fantastic to watch her blossom these past few weeks. She has been doing such a fantastic job in fact that I had begun to consider the possibility that she was just a late bloomer socially. Maybe the doctors had gotten it wrong when they diagnosed her with asperger's. Maybe all those people who insisted time and time again that she was just quirky and shy were right. All this fell just on the heels of our first meeting with the local school system where they pretty much told us that they didn't feel Hannah would qualify for any services because she tested too well on their academic tests and she was considered too high functioning. BUT THEN yesterday happened and I was painfully reminded exactly why the doctors have it right. Yesterday we went to our city park beach. The weather was beautiful and Hannah was pumped to be out in the sand and water. As luck would have it, there happened to be 3 other 3 year old girls near us on the beach who wanted to play with Hannah. One little girl repeatedly tried to engage Hannah with no success. The poor little girl was so confused and I think possibly a little hurt. Several times I tried to prompt/coax Hannah into playing with the girl or at least playing beside her, but Hannah could pretty much care less about the other girl. Occasionally I'd prompt Hannah to share something she was doing with the little girl and Hannah would obediently do so, but it was much more like talking at the girl with no concern over whether or not she was listening or even looking at what Hannah was showing her. There were several times when the little girl was talking to Hannah and Hannah would just start telling the other girl about something completely unrelated to what the girl had been trying to talk to her about. The thing was though that Hannah was blissfully happy. She wasn't missing this girl's companionship at all. She was perfectly happy doing her own thing. Still my heart broke. She had been doing so well socially that this felt like a huge kick in the teeth. I've been thinking about it a lot today and I've been trying to figure out why it made me so sad since Hannah was obviously enjoying her time at the beach. Was I sad for Hannah because she was missing out on a potential friendship (or at the very least playmate for the afternoon) or was I sad for myself that Hannah marches the beat of a different drum and I'm constantly having to explain that to other parents when they see their children being ignored, brushed aside, or viewed as fearful dangers by Hannah? Maybe I'm sad for a combination of both reasons. Who knows.

Hannah has been doing some amazing (to me anyway) things lately that I had no idea that she was even close to doing. Academically she had seemed to have hit a plateau and hadn't had much interest in reading or writing and I hadn't pushed it. Then, just this last week she sounded out the word "ballet" and spontaneously wrote the numbers 1-4. I know she actually sounded out ballet and didn't just recognize it from another book because she pronounced the "t" at the end. As for the numbers, it's been probably 6 months or more since we've even attempted to write any numbers and then all of a sudden she wrote perfectly recognizable attempts of all four! Then tonight she did something that was a bit odd, but slightly amazing as well. She had some fruit on her plate and one piece was significantly larger than the other. She pointed at the smaller of the two and said "muhroona" small and then pointed to the bigger piece and stated "burawnka" big. It was like she was presenting a vocabulary lesson for a foreign language to Kyle and I only this language was one of her own creation. She's always making up nonsense words, but she's never before paired them with any meaning, at least not that she's ever told us.

PS. By looking at that last picture can you totally tell that autism lives at our house?!? :)

You Did What?!?

It's been that kind of week here in the Spontak house. Hannah started the week off right by deciding to "improve" on her new haircut. On Monday while I was using the bathroom she got the scissors out of the junk drawer (not safety scissors I might add, but big, heavy duty work scissors!) and proceeded to cut close to 4 inches off of both sides of her hair while leaving the back untouched. In some areas the hair she left remaining was only about an inch long! Thankfully her hair was in a half ponytail so when her hair is down the longer hair covers the much shorter hair underneath and her handiwork is mostly unnoticeable. She announced the deed to me by coming into the bathroom and stating, "my hair feels shorter." I then noticed the tell tale hair pieces that indicate that someone has just had a hair cut all over her shoulders. I was furious. I'm mostly over it now, but every time I put her hair into a half ponytail I see those butchered locks underneath and I get a little grumpy.

Tuesday and Thursday Hannah had really rough days behavior wise. There was a lot of screaming and refusing to take her time-outs. Needless to say she didn't have a lot of credits left at the end of each day for bedtime privileges.

This morning Hannah came into our room to announce that she had had an accident. She then proceeded to explain to a very groggy Kyle that she had used toilet water (with unflushed pee in it to boot) and toilet paper to wash her legs off from her accident and had also washed her chewy toy off in the toilet and flushed her wet underwear down the toilet! OH MY GOSH! What on earth was that girl thinking?!? I absolutely cannot imagine what possessed her to do that since she has access to a sink, soap, and wash cloth. She also knows where dirty clothes go and knows that nothing besides pee, poop, and toilet paper (courtesy of the bus incident) is EVER flushed down the toilet. UGH! I just had to laugh at this one. I was so tired and just flabbergasted at the whole situation that it was all I could do to keep it together until we got her squared away back in her room. The rest of the day continued to be a struggle as Hannah was defiant all morning and proceeded to run away from us in public places twice in the span of an hour while we were out when she was told to stay close because she was being disobedient. This running away is getting to be a big problem. She's been doing it quite a bit lately, but usually it is just with me. Today she pulled it on Kyle. I'm not sure how to stop it short of keeping her in a stroller or on a leash all the time, but if we do that then she won't ever learn not to run away because she doesn't even have the option to do it so she won't need to control her urges to do so. Any ideas on how to impress upon an almost 3 year old how dangerous it is to run away in public places, parking lots, and streets would be welcome as well as some strategies that have helped you personally to deal with the behavior if you have experience with this issue.

Night potty training continues to go well. She's been dry about every other night this past week which I think is pretty good and most accidents occur in the early morning so we haven't had any more of the multiple accidents in a night incidents like we had the first night. I'm still debating on whether or not we should be waking her up when we are ready to go to bed so that she can go to the bathroom one more time. I'm sure this would help her make it through the night almost every night, but she does make it through the night about half the time without waking her up and she is SO HARD to get to go back to sleep that I can't decide if the lack of sleep it causes her is worth the benefit of her not having as many accidents.

PS. The pictures are from our visit with Hannah's birthmother, Tiffany, and her brother and sister, Chase and Kayla, over Memorial Day weekend when we were back in Indiana. Also, there's one of Hannah with her best friend Evelyn taken during that same trip back home.

Girly Girl

Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I am NOT a girly girl. I've always been a bit of a tom boy, more into horses and books than dressing up, wearing make-up, or pretending to be a princess. In spite of all that, somehow Hannah has managed to catch Disney Princess and ballerina fever. She pines over nail polish, tutus, tiaras, high heels, and princess dresses. I don't know how it happened! I've tried for a few months to hold back the tide of girliness threatening to overwhelm our home, but it's no use. When Hannah started performing ballet moves in the living room and informed me she wanted a ballerina birthday party for her 3rd birthday I just gave up. It's pointless to fight it and obviously it brings her great joy. The huge smile on her face as she twirls around the room and the excitement in her voice as she asks to be read a princess story is proof enough. How can I deny her? Yesterday she picked out the cake she wants for her birthday. If you've been following my blog for awhile you know that I've made Hannah's other two cakes (as well as one for my friend's little girl), but these have all been fairly simple and only required basic stars and a shaped cake pan. The cake Hannah's picked will put my decorating skills to the test. It's a ballerina teddy bear and it's a 3-D cake with a lace tutu and everything! There's not a single star on the cake (really the only tip I'm any good at using!) so this should be interesting. Hannah and I went and bought the cake pan (as well as some other goodies for the party which I'll elaborate on later) today so that I can do a practice run with plenty of time for a change of plans if it become apparent that this cake is out of my league! I'll keep you posted on how it turns out, although if it's bad don't expect to see a picture! Besides the cake supplies we also picked up some ballerina (and princess) dress up items and party props to use at the big event. We came home with 2 tutus, a princess dress, 2 tiaras, 3 pairs of princess shoes and a pair of ballet slippers, a purse (a princess has to shop!), and a whole slew of ballerina wands. We also picked up a few foam soldier swords (think the Nutcracker) for the boys who resist wands and tutus! The funny thing is that so far most of the kids Hannah's age she's met that might be on the guest list for this party are boys! I'm not sure what they will think of a ballerina party (maybe at 2 1/2 and 3 you don't care?), but that's what we're doing. Anyone with any ideas for making the ballerina party more boy friendly feel free to leave me a comment. After lunch Hannah pulled out her new tutu, wand, and tiara and twirled and whirled around the living room to George Winston's tribute to Vince Guaraldi's Peanut's music which was the closest I could come to ballet music (Linus and Lucy is the name of the CD in case you are interested). She looked so happy and even graced us with a bit of real interpretive dance by sitting down on the floor and putting her head in her lap as a sad piece of music ended. It really made me smile to see her so happy even if it was in a tutu and waving a princess wand.

Besides princess mania, Hannah's also been really into drawing lately. She's finally started to draw things that have purposeful strokes and sometimes they are even fairly recognizable. She went from no interest at all in drawing people to overnight drawing the classic portrait of a head with arms and legs sprouting from it! I was actually pretty impressed since my people drawing skills aren't much beyond that (think stick figures!). Her coloring is getting much more precise and she focuses on a page for much longer. I've no clue where she should actually be developmentally in the drawing and coloring areas at her age so she may be way behind for all I know, but if that's the case don't burst my bubble of parental pride just yet. :)

Another skill that has also made a huge leap as she inches closer to the big 3 is throwing and catching a ball. Her gross motor skills are improving by leaps and bounds so now she can actually make adjustments as the ball is coming towards her and catch it much of the time as long as it's not a wild throw. Her balancing and climbing is getting quite good and she can finally alternate feet on the steps now without being prompted and does this about 50% of the time she goes up and down them. Her running is still quite odd and she falls down a lot when she runs, but it doesn't seem to bother her too much unless she skins her knees (although that's been fairly often lately since it's been warm enough for shorts). Trike riding is still an obstacle. For awhile I thought she had finally cracked the code, but alas I fear I was premature. Pedalling that darn tricycle has been the source of many tantrums lately and now she doesn't even want to try anymore.

Oh, I almost forgot! Hannah's cystic fibrosis test came back normal!!!!! Praise Jesus! The testing was fairly straight forward although Hannah screamed for 5 minutes straight as I held her while the electric current (mild I might add, like the kind they use in physical therapy) activated the sweating medicine. The tech told her it would feel tingly like when your arm goes to sleep and it was then that I knew we were in trouble. For some reason, the sensation of pins and needles for Hannah is experienced as intense pain. She shrieks and cries every single time until it goes away. You would think someone was cutting off one of her limbs. Imagine the look on her face when she realized that after the tech finished doing it to one arm that he was going to do it on her other arm!?! The poor little thing was very brave though. She bit her lip, sat on my lap, cried for 2 minutes and then silently sobbed for the other 3.

Night potty training is going pretty well. We've had a few dry naps as well as 2 dry nights in a row in our first week of trying. Unfortunately on a few of the nights she's had only one accident it's been at 5am and she has not gone back to sleep on those days. That's made for some really cranky days since she also has not napped. I'm cautiously optimistic that she'll be able to figure this out and be able to wake herself up when she needs to pee eventually (like before she's in kindergarten) even if that does mean that we have a lot of really early mornings.

Moved In

We are finally all moved into our new house. We have been for about a month now, but we've been so busy trying to get things clean and into a livable state as well as traveling back to Indiana for a wedding that I haven't had time to post. The move went about as smoothly as I could have hoped. Hannah really likes her new room and enjoys spending time in there. Since we have no other space for her toys, they are all in her room which means that she doesn't always have a nice orderly space, but that's ok with me (mostly). Hannah probably has the coolest room in the house. The paint color and wainscoting are adorable and we've turned her closet into a little clubhouse since it's so big. One thing that I don't like about the new house is that it's impossible to keep clean. Between frequent walks down to the beach (what a shame huh?) and a driveway that is essentially completely sand, it is next to impossible to keep sand out of the house. There's no entryway, porch, or mudroom to easily remove your shoes before you enter the main living space and because all the floors on the main level are either tile or wood the sand always ends up kicked all over the house and stuck to the bottom of your feet even if the shoes stay right by the door. I would welcome any tips on sand control from those of you that have lived on a coast near sand for longer than I have because if I don't do something to contain this sand soon I just might go crazy. Other than that, the only part that has been hard to get used to is the fact that the house is smaller than what we moved from so we have too much stuff. We downsized quite a bit before we moved, but apparently not enough. We ended up having to even get rid of our mattress foundation and the guest bed mattress and box spring because the stairs are too tight to get them up to the bedrooms! We don't have a king bed either. We were only trying to get a queen up there, but these New England houses have narrow and oddly shaped and placed staircases.

Besides moving, a lot of stuff has been happening here at the Spontak house. Hannah started a social skills group through our early intervention agency and she has been doing fantastic with it. I've seen so much improvement in her socially that it's amazing. She's still pretty overwhelmed by all the activity and kids, but at least she will speak when spoken to by an adult there (she wouldn't really do that at preschool in Indiana unless the words were pried out of her) even if she won't willingly speak to or interact with the other kids. If directed to she will interact a bit with the other children although she tends to prefer the quietest and most low-key kids in the group. That's fine with me. A relationship is a relationship and we all have types of people who we tend to gravitate towards anyway.

Last weekend Hannah was the flower girl in my friend's wedding. It was a rough trip and we witnessed some pretty bad behavior (of the disobedience/brattiness type) as well as some sensory and social overload with the accompanying meltdowns, but there were also some brilliant moments in which we were able to see just how far Hannah has progressed since we moved and she started her therapies here in Rhode Island. The first was that she was totally ok with the little boy who was supposed to be the ring bearer at the wedding and they even walked down the aisle together. They didn't hold hands (Hannah would have none of that), but they walked down near each other and even played with each other during the rehearsal and reception which is a huge deal since Hannah had never met him before the rehearsal. Hannah even initiated physical contact and expressed an interest in continuing to interact (even if it was in a somewhat inappropriate manner!) with him during the reception by chasing after him when he grew tired of dancing with her and grabbing him around the waist to prevent him from leaving! The second half of our trip we spent at our friend's house and Hannah got to see her good friend Evelyn. We watched in amazement as Hannah and Evelyn played and interacted appropriately and independently for up to a half hour at a time. Hannah was even tolerant of some physical affection and over exuberance on the part of Evelyn. This was usually never allowed before we left, but Hannah was quite tolerant for her and I was impressed. Now, it wasn't all roses and butterflies between the two of them. Hannah had some of her most spectacular meltdowns there and was on a hair trigger for the better part of the second day we spent with them, but it used to always be like that before we left if we tried to coax Hannah to interact with Evelyn or if Evelyn was insistent on hugging or touching Hannah. Poor Evelyn was in a constant state of bewilderment about why Hannah didn't appreciate her affections. This visit was a definite step forward. We also got to visit with Hannah's birthmother and siblings while we were in Indiana. Hannah played with Kayla and Chase and even let them both pick her up and rough house with her a little bit which was surprising although they are both near the age that Hannah normally likes to hang out with since they just turned 6. Hannah, in a bizarre twist, was shy with Tiffany instead of the twins this visit and we really had to coax her into letting Tiffany hold her for a picture. She was pretty chatty with her on the phone a few days before the visit though which was pretty fun to hear.

This weekend we began the messy task of attempting to night potty train Hannah. She's been completely day trained for about a year, but night dryness is not something we have experienced often. I decided to just take the leap of faith and give it a try anyway. We talked it up for about a week before hand and then we double made the bed (two complete sets of sheets and waterproof mattress pads layered on top of each other), put her in big girl undies instead of just in case underwear AKA pull ups, and prepared ourselves for the onslaught of extra laundry. The first night she made it a few hours and then had an accident that woke her up. She was extremely upset by it and it took quite awhile to talk her down and get her back to sleep. About 5 minutes or less from Kyle leaving her room she had another small accident! I wasn't ready to give up and put her back in a pull up already on our first night because I was out of waterproof mattress pads so I just changed her clothes and then put a folded up towel over the wet spot since the bed wasn't that wet. This time she made it until 4am until she had her next accident. At that point I had washed the first set of sheets and pad so I was able to remake the bed and try to send her back to sleep, but she was pretty much up for the day. Last night she did much better. She made it through the whole night and didn't have an accident until 6am, but then it was a BIG one. There was TONS of pee. She did have a dry nap yesterday which was encouraging. Overall I don't think she's done too badly for her first few days. We'll see how things continue.

Today Hannah got her first major haircut. She's had her hair trimmed to remove split ends and cut to even it out several times since she was a baby, but this was the first time she really had it cut to alter the length. We took her to a place that only does kids cuts. They had toys in the waiting area and the chairs all had their own TVs to watch DVDs on and everything was sized for kids. She had a great experience and even let them wash her hair in the lay back sink. We didn't attempt the blow dry and it was probably a good idea since she's been growing more and more sensitive to sounds lately (more on that later). They took 6 inches off her hair! It looks really cute, but it was hard to see it go. Her hair was so beautiful, but she has been increasingly resistant to having it brushed and placed into ponytails and if you leave it down it gets even more ratty and is constantly in her mouth so it was something that needed to be done. Still it pained me to do it. She was quite excited about getting it done though and I think she mostly enjoyed the experience. The stylist even put glitter gel in her hair and she got to pick out a prize for being good just like at the dentist.

Now, back to her sound issues. Before moving to our new house Hannah was really only bothered by extremely loud noises such as hand dryers, garbage disposals, and the flushing of public toilets. However, since we've moved she is constantly putting her fingers in her ears and shouting too loud about all sorts of things, some of which I don't think are all that loud. Included on her hit list now are the vacuum, dishwasher, loud mufflered cars, motorcycles, lawn mowers, babies crying, people laughing loudly, radios playing in vehicles passing by, dogs barking, the sound of the wind when the van windows are down, and many, many other things.

One change that's been happening that I am very disappointed about is that Hannah has pretty much given up her nap. Occasionally if she is really tired she might fall asleep in her car seat if it happens to be early afternoon, but basically she's done. The frustrating part is that her body really still NEEDS that nap. By about 4pm she is seriously cranky and behaving poorly if she hasn't slept and this cutting out of nap hasn't corresponded with an increase in hours slept at nighttime. She still goes to bed and wakes up at the same time. UGH! On a positive note, there are many nights when she is so exhausted by bedtime that she falls asleep before we are done singing her her song so there isn't a bedtime battle that night which is nice.

A few weeks ago Hannah had a nasty rash over a good chunk of her body along with a fever so I ended up taking her to the doctor. We didn't get to see the doctor who I hope will be her new pediatrician, but we saw another doctor in that practice. Since her medical records still had not arrived from Indiana for some reason, I had to fill the doctor in on Hannah's medical history. He, like the urgent care doctor in April, was concerned about Hannah's frequent bouts of pneumonia and spoke with me about some possible causes for the chronic problem. He said the most likely culprit is asthma, but that Hannah is too young to be adequately tested for it. I agree with him that that is most likely culprit given her health history on Tiffany's side (her birthmother). The other too common causes of recurrent pneumonia he mentioned were lung abnormalities and cystic fibrosis. He thinks her lungs are probably structurally ok since someone would have surely noticed a problem on one of her many chest x-rays if there was something visibly wrong. So, he's sending her for a test to rule out cystic fibrosis. The test is called a sweat test and we are going to take care of it next week. Apparently it's fairly simple although it does take close to 2 hours to perform and only select hospitals can do it, but it still freaks me out that we even have to test for the possibility of cystic fibrosis. For Pete's sake, cystic fibrosis is fatal! Talk about a sure fire way to scare a mother to death even suggesting that the disease is a possibility in her child! As far as the rash and the fever was concerned, she ended up having some sort of allergic reaction, but we couldn't figure out what she was reacting to. Eventually the rash went away, first with the help of Benedryl which I quickly discontinued the use of after it turned Hannah into a raving lunatic instead of a drowsy child like the pharmacist warned, and then on it's own after several days of nagging Hannah not to scratch. So far it hasn't returned and I am grateful for that because trying to keep an almost 3 year old from scratching is like trying to convince a fish not to swim! It's definitely not an easy task, dare I say an impossible one.

Nurtured Heart Update and other Random Stories

We are now a month into the Nurtured Heart Approach and fully implemented as far as all the steps go. It has been very interesting for me to see the changes that occurred in Hannah even after beginning the very first step. For those who don't know, the Nurtured Heart Approach is all about giving a ton of energy for every little success and no energy what so ever when negative behaviors are happening. The first several steps are all about what they call Time-Ins. Time-Ins are all the positive attention you give to your kid whenever things are going right. This is basically all the time that a rule is not being broken. The thought is that kids learn that breaking the rules gets a bigger payoff (more of our energy even if it is negative energy) than following the rules. When we started recognizing Hannah for just random moments throughout the day in which she was not breaking any particular rules she really started to perk up and actively tried to do things that would get more of our attention. We implemented all of the Time-In steps for several weeks and then moved on and introduced the final two steps, the credit system and consequences, together a week ago. The gist behind the credit system is that the child earns credits for not breaking the rules and for displaying certain positive behaviors you value as well as by doing certain chores and responsibilities. Credits are not taken away for breaking the rules, instead only partial credit is earned for any given rule where that rule was broken during the day. Each day starts over with a clean slate as far as earning potential goes. Those earned credits are then used to purchase basically everything in the child's life that is not food, clothing, or shelter. For Hannah she has to buy TV time, playtime, outings, bedtime books, etc. That has taken a bit of getting used to for me, but it seems really motivating for Hannah. She loves her credit review time at the end of each day and she's really getting into counting out her money each time she goes to purchase a privilege. The consequence step is simply a time-out. They call it a reset. A reset is the consequence for any broken rule (except for in very serious cases, but I'm hoping my 2 1/2 year old won't venture into those waters) and lasts only a brief period of time as long as the child is quiet and calm during it. At first Hannah was quite hostile during her resets and they lasted a long time. Other times she refused to take them and was charged credits for the privilege of being helped to complete her reset. For the first 4 days or so of starting the credit system and the consequences, Hannah had no credits left at the end of the day for any bedtime privileges because of being charged for her resets and this affected her deeply. Then one day it finally clicked in her mind that the reset would be over faster and she wouldn't lose any of her credits if she just walked over and took her reset. Once she began doing that we found that the reset really did serve as a reset to her behavior. After only a few seconds of reset we were able to release her from the consequence and the problem behavior was over and she was back in a positive frame of mind instead of spiraling out of control which is what usually happened with any other form of discipline. The change in her behavior really has been amazing. Though today was a rough day, it was nowhere near what it could have been if we were using any of the old methods we have previously tried to manage Hannah's behavior. I am pleasantly surprised with the results even though I was quite the skeptic while reading the book. I was pretty desperate for something different though so I was willing to try just about anything that I didn't think could actually do my daughter any harm. If you've tried everything and just don't seem to be getting anywhere and you are frustrated and your child is frustrated then I highly recommend checking out the Nurtured Heart Approach and possibly giving it a whirl. I was pretty skeptic, but it seems to be working amazingly well for Hannah.

Now for a few Hannah stories. Last week Kyle was out of the country traveling for work and Hannah was really out of whack because of it the first day he was gone. We were only 3 days into the credit system and consequences of Nurtured Heart and I was still getting used to the new way of dealing with problem behaviors and having a hard time resisting giving lectures or more severe consequences for what I considered worse infractions. At one point we were playing with Hannah's pattern cards and she had to go to the bathroom. She wanted to take one of the counters/pattern blocks, a yellow school bus, into the bathroom with her, but we have always had a pretty strict No Toys in the Bathroom rule. When I told her that she could not take the school bus with her she glared at me, grabbed the bus and bolted to the bathroom. I was after her like a rocket, but I was sitting on the floor and it takes me a bit to get up and she had a head start so she beat me there easily. Just as I was rounding the corner to the bathroom I saw her (imagine a slow motion movie scene here) chuck the bus into the toilet and flush before I could stop her! I was so angry I wanted to scream! However, Nurtured Heart says absolutely no negative energy to negative behaviors and the same consequence calmly given for any infraction. So, instead of lecturing, picking her up and plopping her butt in time-out, or even showing with body language that I was angry or acknowledging what action she had done that was wrong, I had to calmly and neutrally say, "You broke a rule. Time-out," and then never mention the infraction again after the consequence had been served. It was so hard for me to let that go because I get very anal about keeping all the pieces of a toy together and there are very rarely lost pieces of anything in our house. When Hannah was younger I used to count all the pieces of every single toy as I cleaned up each night and if a count didn't come up right I knew immediately what piece was missing and would not stop searching until I found the missing piece. So, for Hannah to purposely lose a piece of one of her toys, it felt like she had thought to herself, "what could I do that would make Mommy pay the most for not letting me have what I want?" and then putting her plan into action. Isn't that insane of me to think? What's worse is the fact that I was more angry about the fact that that stupid yellow school bus would forever be missing from the set and that every time we tried to do a pattern that required the yellow bus we would not be able to complete it and I would be continually reminded of the incident than I was angry that she had disobeyed me, ran away from me, and flushed something she knew did not belong in the toilet down the toilet. All of the things that she did wrong in that incident and I was more concerned about the stupid bus! What kind of horrible Mommy does that make me? I managed to keep my cool though. I showed no emotion (at least I think I didn't) and I calmly informed her that she had broken a rule and to go to time out. As one final stab in my back, instead of fighting the time-out like she had been doing, Hannah blithely turned on her heel and practically skipped off to time-out like it was no big deal! Are you kidding me?!?! It was like she was conspiring to drive me crazy while Kyle was away and I had no respite. She completed her first time-out/reset sans resistance for an action that I desperately wanted to punish her for. I wanted a reason to charge her heavily for her time-out, to make her pay for the mental anguish she had caused me by flushing that bus, but if I was to follow the plan I couldn't. How childish and insane is that of me to want to make my 2 year old pay for losing one of her own toys? Surely the fact that she would no longer have the toy should have been enough. It wasn't though. I wanted restitution as crazy as that sounds. During her reset, I took a reset as well and God showed me how immature I was being and helped me see some of the changes I needed to make as a parent to parent Hannah in a more Biblical manner. He also taught me about forgiveness with this incident. Hannah paid her consequence by doing her reset and I was not to bring it up again. She was completely forgiven. Just as Jesus paid our consequence for our sins by dieing on the cross and we are completely forgiven. God will never bring it up again. As parents we are to strive to love our children as Christ loves us and that means parenting biblically. God definitely uses the Nurtured Heart Approach as he parents us and I think that as I take a closer look at how God treats me then I can see just why the Nurtured Heart approach is working so successfully with Hannah. We screw up, we ask for forgiveness, forgiveness is granted unquestionably as long as we mean it (AKA we comply with our consequence), or we make bad decisions and God withdraws his peace from us (removes His energy), obedience brings us blessings beyond anything we could imagine that we might want (lots of credits earned for good behaviors and not breaking the rules), lather rinse and repeat as often as we screw up or obey-each day is a clean slate with endless potential for obedience and success. Yes, God is truly Transforming the Difficult Child by using the Nurtured Heart Approach on me.

The weather here has been absolutely glorious. Friday it was in the 70s, Saturday the high 70s and 80s and today it was actually in the 90s! Consequently we've been shaking off our cabin fever and getting outside. Friday Hannah and I went out exploring to find a new park. Rhode Island is odd in that most parks don't seem to have playgrounds. They seem to value large open green space more than play equipment. That's all well and good. I like nice green space, but when you've got a 2 1/2 year old with SPD that desperately needs a swing it can get annoying! We found a beautiful park with an interesting playground situated along the water's edge. The playground was packed since everyone wanted to enjoy the beautiful weather. The weather was such a change from what we had been experiencing that the news crews were out in force interviewing people about what they planned to do with their weekend. AND guess who they chose to interview at the park?!? Hannah and I earned our 10 seconds of fame by being featured on the evening news! Here's the link if you want to be jealous of our new found celebrity status! http://www.abc6.com/news/43647882.html Just click play to watch the video. Unfortunately you'll have to watch a commercial before you get to the actual video. I'm the one in the pink fleece jacket and Hannah's the kid in the flowered sun hat on the swings. Saturday we went exploring again, this time with Kyle in tow since he was home from England and found an awesome park and beach. We walked up and down the shore picking up shells and tossing them back into the ocean. It was awesome. I've never seen so many shells in all my life. It was actually more of a challenge to find a spot on the beach to walk that you weren't stepping on shells than it was to find a shell. I think I had as much of a blast digging through the shells as Hannah did. I can't wait until the water temperature catches up with the air temperature so that we can go wading or swimming as well!

As we prepare to close on our new house on Wednesday (YEAH!) and have our things delivered on Friday, we've been trying to prep Hannah the best we can about what will be happening. While I'm so excited to be getting out of the apartment and into our house finally, I dread the transition of moving AGAIN and having to start from square one with Hannah again. At least this time some things will remain constant. We can go to the same parks, she'll have the same therapists, we can eat at the same restaurants, attend the same church etc. Still, it will be another big change and there will be lots of chaos as things are being unpacked and organized and there will be little time and attention to give to Hannah as we direct the movers and unpack the essentials. I'm bracing for another rough several months (just as things have begun to settle down a bit). I worry about the stress this will put on my little girl so soon after the stress of our initial move. Once again, I know the end result will be positive for Hannah because she will have more space to move around, can run and jump and crash into things at will, her swing set will be in the back yard and we can set up her sensory play room again, but we have to survive all the rough stuff before we can reap the benefits of the move. Please pray for us if you will that we will be able to equip Hannah with the tools she needs to cope with the very big changes ahead of her and that we will not just realise intellectually that we need to be patient with her, but that we will be able to put that patience into practice.

Here's my autism blogger of the day, ghkcole writes at Rooster Calls about her life as a mother, teacher, and wife. She's the mother of two children, Rooster and Peaches, who currently attend the same school that she teaches at. She shares the struggles she has as a full time working mother juggling the demands of caring for her two children, fitting in all of the therapies that Rooster attends, meeting his needs when he's having a rough day while still completing the requirements of her job, and giving Peaches a chance to be a regular little girl outside of the shadow of Rooster's autism. Her posts are always honest, thought provoking, and easily relatable to. I highly recommend stopping by and reading a few. If you only have time for one post, this particular one highlights the struggles that so many families with special needs children go through just to make things work and get through a single day.

I Have a Question

Lately Hannah's been saying, "Mommy, I have a question. . . . " and then proceeding to either ask me something or tell me something that is on her mind. Sometimes she uses it as a stalling technique to delay doing something she doesn't want to do, but other times it's just her lead in to tell me what is rolling around inside her little head. The cute part is that before each new question or thought that she wants to tell me she repeats, "Mommy, I have a question. . . " Tonight before bed she asked about an unusual sound we heard coming from the apartment next door, decided it might be either a dog or a wolf, asked where wolves live and when they live there, asked if wolves lived in apartments, if they just lived in forests at night, why they also lived there in the daytime, told me wolves were like dogs, but they were scary, that wolves howled and woke up bunnies (have no idea where the waking up bunnies part came from), and finally declared that wolves were cute and that it was most definitely a cute wolf next door that would wake up a bunny and her when she tried to sleep. All this transpired just in the space of brushing her teeth and washing her face and of course before each new segment came the words, "Mommy, I have a question. . . " She even pauses for dramatic effect which cracks me up.

Yesterday at church Hannah had a fantastic day. She sat quietly and read her Bible or colored during the whole first part of the service before they released the children for children's church and then walked by herself with the class over to the other building where their classrooms are. After church there was a whole congregation lunch and hymn sing. Kyle told Hannah to find one of her friends to sit by. She immediately said, "I want to sit next to Jasmine." I was blown away. She actually chose a child to sit next to and then when we walked over there she really did want to sit right next to her. All throughout the meal she chatted with Jasmine and colored with her and shared her books with her. At one point Jasmine turned to me and said, "Can Hannah come to my house and play?" Hannah just got asked on a play date by another child!!!! It wasn't orchestrated by me or Jasmine's grandma, JASMINE asked if Hannah could come play and then several minutes later she asked Hannah, "Hannah, will you come to my Ariel birthday party?" (Jasmine will be 5 next month) and Hannah answered, "Sure!" I was almost in tears. During the hymn sing, Jasmine asked to sit next to us and she and Hannah read her Bible and Hannah's church social story together and Hannah kept scooting over closer and closer to Jasmine and then she started giving her hugs! She must have given her 15 hugs! Then she said, "I love you Jasmine." and kissed her on the arm. Jasmine just smiled and they both giggled. Then Hannah, sensing acceptance pushed it a bit too far and kept on hugging and touching Jasmine over and over and finally Jasmine had had enough and moved to sit next to her grandma instead of Hannah. She must not have held it against Hannah too much though because when it was time to leave she waved at Hannah and said she'd see her next week. I was so happy for my little girl. I think she has a genuine friend. We'll definitely have to continue working on boundaries and appropriate touching, but it was a big thing for her to even want to touch or show affection for someone other than family and an even bigger deal for her to do it unprompted. We worked for almost 2 years to get her to hug her best friend from Indiana either prompted or unprompted so for her to just decide to hug (repeatedly) a girl she has only known a month and only seen on Sundays was a HUGE deal.

Today Hannah had both speech and OT. At speech this morning the SLP gave her a standardized language test that they need to pass along to the public school system once she transfers out of early intervention at 3 years old in July. Hannah did a fantastic job and scored well above age level on the test. It was funny because Tracy, her SLP, was giving the test without even looking at the testing booklet until she reached a certain part and then she said, "In all my years working here I've never made it past this part. I'm going to have to read the book now!" She intended to test Hannah until she hit the ceiling of the test (basically maxed out as far as what she knew), but Hannah grew antsy and needed a break before that since she'd been testing for almost an hour straight and we were also out of time for her session so Tracy just ended the test there. When she stopped Hannah was at 4 years 7 months. Tracy said that she guessed (in her professional opinion) that Hannah would have maxed out at 5 or 5 1/2 years old! She's only 2 1/2! That really blew my mind. I knew Hannah was ahead of other kids her age verbally and even had an inkling that she was way ahead of other kids, but I had no idea that she was light years ahead of the curve. Three years ahead in language skills is quite a bit ahead I would say. The interesting thing is that although verbally Hannah has such a firm grasp on language, she has very little ability to decode (or even notice) nonverbal communication (this doesn't count sign language though, she's quite good at sign). Another thing Tracy discovered that she said is very typical of people with Asperger's is that she interprets language very literally. Idioms, metaphors, sarcasm are things that she will probably have trouble with down the road. She already displays a below average grasp of idioms. For example, Hannah coughed a really nasty sounding cough (remnants of the pneumonia) and Tracy said, "Do you have a frog in your throat?" Hannah looked at her like she was an idiot and said, "No, I have a cough in my throat." She was dead serious. Tracy explained to me that while at Hannah's age she wouldn't be expected necessarily to know exactly what "a frog in your throat" meant, she should understand that Tracy did not mean did she literally have a frog in her throat. We've noticed Hannah's literal interpretation of language for a long time, but never thought too much about it. I always just figured that it was developmentally appropriate for her age and left it at that. Apparently not in all the cases.

At OT Hannah got to try out several of the swings they had in their OT room. Kyle and I had planned to buy Hannah one of the therapy swings once we got settled into our new house and had even picked out one we thought would be good for Hannah. It turns out that they had that exact swing, along with several others and they let Hannah take them all for a test drive while they did a few informal tests on Hannah to get a sense for where her sensory needs lie. Hannah swung or spun on one of 3 swings (mostly she gravitated towards 2 of them) for 50 minutes straight without ever wanting to stop! They asked me if she can ever get too much swinging or spinning input and I told them that I had never managed to give her enough that she wanted to stop. I always wear out well before she does! I had told them before that she was pretty much insatiable and I don't think they believed me. Now they are definitely believers! For one of the tests they did, the OT spun Hannah very rapidly for several minutes and then stopped her suddenly and studied her eyes. I don't remember all the technical words she used to explain it to me, but basically in a normal person your eyes would continue to shift back and forth for a little while after you stopped until your body caught up with the fact that you had stopped spinning. If your eyes either don't shift back and forth at all or shift for too long then it is a sign that there is something off with your vestibular system. Apparently Hannah's eye shifting was very delayed and minimal. The OT said this explains why Hannah craves that kind of input and can tolerate all that spinning and swinging without getting nauseous or dizzy. When we were leaving the OT's assistant said good-bye to Hannah and asked her if she could see her again next week. Hannah shook her head and said, "No, I just want to see Stacy." Stacy is the head OT. The assistant, Katie, made a sad face and said, "Aww Hannah, that's too bad I really wanted to see you again because you are very intriguing." That made me smile because I thought it was a very good way to describe my little girl. It seems like all medical professionals, therapy providers, and educators find Hannah intriguing in some way or the other and I definitely find her intriguing! She intrigues me every single day!

Yesterday we finished fully implementing the Nurtured Heart Approach to discipline with Hannah. The consequences part of the approach has been rough for Hannah. The past two nights she has managed to spend all of her credits that she had saved up for bedtime privileges (books and song) on refusing to go to or stay in time out and having to be escorted there or helped to stay in the chair. I do think her empty bag of pennies each night has been effective and quite the eye opener for her. She has known each night why there were no books or song and I haven't had to be the bad guy by taking away privileges. She simply hasn't had any credits left at the end of the day to buy any bedtime privileges. It's too soon to say exactly how this is going to work for Hannah, but I have a hunch that it's going to work quite well. I'll keep you all informed on how it goes.

On a positive note, we've had several nights in a row where Hannah has stayed in bed once we left the room. There have been no incidents of intentional wetting, pooping, or throwing up in over a week and screaming has slowed down a bit too. Again, it's too soon to say if this is a definite trend or not. She tends to cycle through rough and easier(I can't say easy, but at least easier) patches of bedtime behavior, but maybe just maybe we are starting to get a handle on this and maybe the surgery actually had the physical effect we were hoping it would have.

Now, for my autism blogger of the day, JoyMama who writes Elvis Sightings. She writes about her two daughters and their life. Her youngest daughter, Joy has autism and is mostly nonverbal although she communicates quite effectively with picture cards and a switch with prerecorded choices programmed in. Her posts are always eloquent and sometimes even heart wrenching. Please check her out. Today I also have another favorite autism blogger to give a shout out to because her most recent post today made me bawl like a big ole baby. I honestly don't know how anyone can read it and keep dry eyes. So, please also head on over and check out Rhema's Hope who writes at Autism in a Word. I can promise you that you won't be disappointed.