Month: September 2013

Copyright © 2013 Stephen Hawley, all rights reserved.

Last week, Alice handed me this bit of  work she did in school. “Is for you, daddy!”  She was proud.  I gave her some positive feedback.  Alice, over the past few years, has developed some interesting techniques to avoid doing math at school.  We had to get a behaviorist in to verify that this was a set of maladaptive behaviors and not cognitive issues.

 The instructions require her to color seven stars, but there are only 6 on the page.  Yes, I suppose that you could color three stars blue then color 4 stars green by coloring over one blue star.  I just have a problem that Prentiss-Hall let this slip by.  It is trivially incorrect and it went right past the teacher too.

So what do you do when you get this?  I put a note in the wiki that we use for communication.  Total response from the school: none.  This is minor, so probably the best is to move on and not make a tempest in a teapot about it.

Copyright © 2013 Stephen Hawley, all rights reserved.

We’re getting set to move, as I mentioned earlier.  This involves a lot of preparation and shedding of no-longer-needed things (de-crapification).  It also means trying to get the things needed to have a new house as livable as possible as soon as possible.  Evie wants to make sure that everything has a place so that everything can go in a place.  We have an estimated week+ of tasks to do after closing, including putting an epoxy coat on the garage floor, wiring speakers in the basement, putting in cabinet organizers, blinds, appropriate child locks and so on.  Evie and I are both idling, waiting for the bank to get its paperwork together so that we can go through the closing and start this work.

In the meantime, I’ve been taking the kids to the house on school days and walking to the bus stop.  I’ve also been  biking to work from there a couple days a week.  It’s a pleasant and significantly less dangerous ride.

Still everyone is affected.  Evie has been having trouble sleeping.  Stuart had been edgy (but we are working with a behavior chart and that seems to help).  Alice has been cheerful, but I heard her wake up and say something or maybe she was talking in her sleep.  I’ve had colorful dreams the past week, including tonight which is why I’m awake at MY GOD!  IT’S ALMOST 3:00AM!  Yup, I was granted a particularly emotional dream which woke me up a mere hour and a half after I went to sleep and I’ve been reading since then.

I just finished Zoe’s Tale, by John Scalzi and am not ready to start another book just yet.

Everyone here is just a little anxious about moving.  These days, I’m becoming intensely aware of the fact that we’re hemorrhaging money getting ready.  It shouldn’t be a surprise since I knew it would happen, but the magnitude of it grates against my Yankee stinginess.

Maybe that’s why I’m getting the dreams.

I’d rather sleep.

One thing that not uncommon with kids with Down syndrome is  less sensation around their mouths and less awareness of food sticking around their mouths.  It’s taking years for Alice to get it that she needs to use a napkin routinely while she’s eating.  It doesn’t help that Alice loves food and eats with gusto.  So how do you approach school lunch where there might not be anyone willing to discretely sign ‘napkin’ to her to cue her to wipe her mouth?  Simple.  Change how you slice up her sandwich.

That’s a sandwich on Udi’s gluten free white bread cut into smaller triangles.  Alice likes to hold the bread at the crust side and will eat from the point and end up taking less of the sandwich on her face.