In Search of Myself

Sheri!

My sister Sheri and her darlin' Robert came up from Atlanta for Father's Day again this year.  I'll post more about our visit once I have more pictures (Sheri and my mom took the most), but here is a picture that I took of Sheri, and then my friend Bree needed a picture to work with for a certain digital kit.  So she made this page, although I did the journaling.  :o)  (click on the image to view larger to read journaling.)

Saturday Birthday

Saturday we went to a birthday party for Lou's cousin Lauren.  They live just the next town over from us, so it was a short drive.  Lauren turned 18 in June, but she's already been in college for a year.  It was at Uncle Roger and Aunt Julie's new house, which is very pretty -- Jake really likes it.  He liked the high ceilings in the living room and wanted to know why there were two fans.  SO FUNNY!  There was a fountain outside attached to the back of the house, and Jake thought that was just the coolest thing ever.  He also loved the food -- chips and cupcakes!  What more could a 3 year old ask for?!  Here are some of my favorite pics from the night (remember to click on any of them to view them larger.)

We sat with Nannie and Pa.  This would have been a perfect picture, had it not been for the balloons flying between their heads!  And here's Jake with the toys we brought -- a doggie wrapped up in a baby blanket, a Tonka tractor, a Fisher Price dump truck, and a Cars tractor that tips over!

Lauren the birthday girl, and Aunt Julie.

Jake all excited about cake.  And daddy trying to corral him until it was ready.

Julie and her sister Laurie are cutting the cake -- you can see Jake waiting impatiently behind them.  In the second picture he was like "Come on, Aunt Laurie!  Give me my cake!"  (And he would have said that, if he would ever talk to anyone.  ha ha.)  He ended up not even liking the cake, because it was like a pina colada flavor with pineapples.  It looked good, though.  Smelled good, too.  (I didn't have cake.)

SO stinkin' cute!  Jake and Daddy-o watchin' TV in Julie's living room (on our favorite chair!)

Really, I'm a writer.

heh.  From time to time, I get up the motivation to actually WRITE something, and I'm lucky to have a store/website that thinks I write decently, and are willing to post what I write.  And I even get a little somethin' for doing it!  WOO HOO!

Anyway, this is about scrapbooking, but you might enjoy reading it anyway.  ha ha.

Digital Alphas -- Going digi means never running out of E's -- at A Cherry On Top.

For heaven's sake, leave a comment at the end of the article.  I always feel like a dork when no one comments on my stuff.  LOL.  (Wait, but only comment if you are going to be NICE, yo.)

Ha ha ha.

One of the funniest things I've seen in a LONG time:

blog entry.

(if you scrapbook, you'll fall out of your chair laughing.  If you don't, you'll probably still think it's funny.)

The whole story

I've had several people ask me for more details about Jake's diagnosis of Sensory Integration Deficit (also called Sensory Processing Dysfunction), so I decided to put it ALL here in one entry to direct people to.  :o)  You don't have to read it if you're not totally curious about it -- and if you are a regular reader you probably know most of this stuff about Jake anyway.  It's all good, yo.

More after "the jump."

Melanie

ok, this is my 3rd post about our Indiana trip, which was 3 weeks ago.  (Sometimes it takes me a while, but I get there.)  Those of you who were reading last year (or was it the year before that?), Melanie had kidney problems and was not doing well . . . but now she's doing GREAT.  She's such a sweet kid -- it was so touching to watch her play with her nieces and nephews.  She's so amazing with kids, and just loves them so much (she's the 8th of 10 kids, so she DOES have 2 younger siblings, but she's just one of those people who naturally are great with kids.)  I'm trying to think of how old she is . . . she was like 3 in 1994, so that would make her like 15 or 16?  Ok, now I feel old.

Be you.

I started this layout last week, but finished it today . . . my journaling ended up being very influenced by the result of last week's doctor's appointments.  I'm still trying to learn more about Sensory issues and figure out how we're going to work through it . . . it's weighing pretty heavily on my mind, obviously.  I already got my 4 books from Amazon, so I've started on the first one.  Jake is still Jake.  He's still a goofy, silly, sweet little boy.  It will be ok.

Bob the Builder.

Last week Jake was in the floor playing with his Bob toys, and this is what I heard him say (very enthusiastically):

"Bob the Builder, by Hit Entertainment.  The fun is in getting it done."

Dude, when they start reciting the promos and voice-overs?  Maybe they've seen the video one too many times.

Sensory Integration Deficit

I've been worried about Jake for a while -- his quirks, his randomness, some issues that taken by themselves aren't so bad, but looking at everything all together . . . just raises red flags. I'm a fan of not freaking out at every little thing, waiting to see if behaviors will improve, not feeling the need to have the perfect, most advanced child ever. But it finally got to the point where I realized I needed outside consultation.

So yesterday we met with a speech therapist who also does autism screenings. Well, I got good news -- Jake is not autistic.

BUT. He does have a lot of the behavioral symptoms of autism -- the therapist said she could tell within a few moments of meeting him that he ISN'T autistic. He scored a .5 on the STAT test, and 2 or above means likely autism. She did say that she agreed that he has major social and sensory issues, and it's those things that we need to treat, rather than his speech. When it gets down to it, his speech isn't THAT bad, it's just limited by his refusal to talk to people and his tendency to retreat into his own world instead of paying attention and trying to communicate clearly.

So today we met with an Occupational Therapist (in the same office) for an evaluation. She says Jake definitely has a sensory integration deficit. She and the speech therapist (well, she does other things aside from that, she runs the whole practice) are going to get together and talk with me soon about what kinds of treatments we want to pursue. Since my insurance is covering next to nothing, they're going to do their best to give me as many resources as they can so I can work with Jake at home. But I will be taking him to some therapies. She told me she wants me to start with reading "The Out-Of-Sync Child." I found 3 more books at Amazon about sensory disorders, too, so I guess I will be doing a lot of reading in the weeks to come!  here's the list of what I'm getting for this first go-round.

- Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight : What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World
- Sensational Kids : Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder
- The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder, Revised Edition
- The Out-of-Sync Child has fun   

So that's what's on my mind these days and what's keeping me busy. On Monday we're going to have Jake's arm x-rayed to see how it's doing, and to get a new cast put on (hopefully a smaller, less heavy one.)

It's been a very interesting week, to say the least.

Good and bad.

if you are a boy or you don't like reading about "women's issues," then don't click the link to continue reading.  And if you do, you can't complain about what I talk about, 'cause damn, I warned you.