It's Been a Short Minute

Yeah, haven't blogged in a while.  Life has thrown us unexpected challenges and opportunities and I've just been really busy.  I have been meaning to step back in and document a few things, but it just never happened.  So here I go.

Iz:  Continues to be a sassy 5 year old.  Loves princesses and dress up.  Currently learning how to read and write.  She's doing awesome at both of those.  Her report cards have been pretty stellar grade-wise.  She's shown great improvement on her behavioral marks this past 6 week period.  She very rarely gets the dreaded 'writing in the folder' anymore (it was a weekly or twice weekly occurrence at the beginning of the year.)  Watching your child learn to read has got to be a top parenting moment of all time.  It's so much fun.  Oh, Izzy is a freaking Lego master!  She LOVES legos and can do pretty much anything put in front of her.  One of Brian's secretaries accidentally ordered two of these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sets so she gave one to Izzy.  Izzy knocked it out in less than an hour!  I love Legos, but do not love that they don't have many geared towards girls.  I know, I know, girls can play with any of the Lego sets, but most (not all) 5 year old girls are drawn towards pink, purple and sparkles.  With a side of princess.  Grandma and Grandpa gave Izzy a lot of the princess Lego sets and she finished all of them over the break.  She's in the process of redoing them.  Izzy is also in the beginning stages of coding, much to Brian's delight.  There is an awesome website for elementary school coders www.anhourofcode.org  Check it out!

One of the biggest most notable achievements would have to be that Izzy has perfect attendance so far. Let me say that again PERFECT ATTENDANCE!  For a 5 year old with life-threatening allergies and severe asthma to have perfect attendance is almost unheard of.  I credit this with having an amazing allergist.  I am so glad we switched from the big, shiny, fancy, I-won't-come-see-you-in-the-hospital-even-though-you-were-at-my-office-yesterday-and-now-you're-in-the-PICU doctor at the Children's Hospital, to the no frills, crappy linoleum floor doctor down South.  She is a little gem.  She also trained at the best allergy hospital in the country.  So there's that.

We haven't had many play dates because life has been busy and hectic.  More on that later.  Izzy does Girl Scouts, dance and is currently doing soccer training in the off-season.  It sounds ridiculous, but she's doing it with her team and it's really just and excuse to get out and run around with her friends.  Maybe she's learning how to kick the ball harder too?  Who knows.  All I know is that she loves it.

Logan:  Logan is making progress.  We decided to increase his ABA therapy to 3-4 times/week.  It is very very VERY draining on everyone.  Usually there are tears.  Sometimes by Logan and sometimes by me.  At first I was lukewarm on ABA, but as we are setting more goals, the more I see how beneficial it is.  I am very excited about his newest set of goals.  They are things that Brian and I just can't articulate well and when we see the goals written out and defined we both go 'aha!!!!  THIS is what he can't do and needs to practice and learn.'  Logan continues to surprise most people when they learn his is on the spectrum, but the older he gets, the more I see the need for therapy.  He is doing less hand flapping, but more open mouth clenched hand stims and rolled hands when excited.  I'm sure that needed to be hyphenated somehow, but I don't have the brain power left to do it.  Logan's school progress reports show that he has strings of good days and then strings of bad days.  This is in line with what we see at home.  Luckily over the Christmas holidays he had overall mostly good days.  It did help that his biggest calming environment was watching Grandpa's trains in the train room and he had almost unlimited access to that.  Academically Logan is right on track.  His coloring has shown great improvement.  At the start of the year his pictures would be just a few lines scribbled.  He now makes an attempt to stay in the lines and is working hard on writing his name.  Currently the plan is for him to start in a regular Kindergarten class next year.  He does have hours set aside for an aide every day, but they are minimal.  I have a feeling the hours will need to be adjusted as the year progresses (if not in the first week.)  It is very hard to picture him in a Kinder class with 20 students and 1 teacher when currently he is in a class with 5 teachers and 16 students.  Our lead ABA therapist also has a child on the spectrum so we are learning from him what we need to fight for in Logan's ARD's and his IEP.  

We pulled Logan out of martial arts last week.  He was very disruptive at the last class he attended.  He had a few really good classes, but then a few bad classes.  I was going to give it one last shot and see how it went last Monday, but when I asked him to get ready he told me he didn't want to go and honestly, I wasn't in any shape to fight him on it.  It was also very hard on me to watch him at martial arts with typically developing kiddos.  I had a constant internal 'come ON Logan' in my head.  It took all I had not to get up, go over to him, and physically show him how to do it.  Fortunately Logan's preschool teacher is a Jiujitsu instructor and started a special needs class on Saturdays.  I cannot wait for Logan to start.  His teacher had shoulder surgery over the break, so Jiujitsu is on hold until February.

Brian:  Continues to work between 60-80 hour a week.  Rock star Dad when he's home.  He's also Mr. Fixit and can fix almost anything (with the help of Google sometimes).

Allyson:  Working part-time since early November.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to put my skills to work (and get paid!) while being able to take off of work while my kids are out of school.  This is a temporary assignment, but I truly appreciate the opportunity to be sequencing DNA again and the opportunity to learn about the newest technologies.  Trying desperately to juggle work, housework, shuttling to soccer, dance, etc, working out, but mostly ABA therapy.  ABA sucks the damn life out of me.

Detoxing since the holidays.  I drank way too much wine in that 2 week time.  Can't wait for post-marathon beers though.  I've been dreaming of how good that will taste.  Oh yeah, running the Houston marathon next weekend.  Should be super awesome with my completely half-assed training cycle.  Although I did manage to get 3 twenty mile runs in.  Sometimes (often) those long runs were my only runs for the week.  Still getting up at 4:35am to make my spin classes though!  That keeps me sane.

Hudson:  Has stopped pissing on our bed!!!!

Overall:  Christmas was pretty awesome.  I loved that we got to spend time with my brother, sister in-law and nephews from China, my sister from Florida, my Grandma from Montana and my brother in-law and sister in-law from California.  Making memories in my parents' new home was fun.  Not enough Pinochle playing!  We will have to make up for that in Montana this summer.  We went to Moody Gardens and saw the aquarium and the cool iceland exhibit, the Children's Museum in Houston, Santa's Wonderland in College Station, and the Children's Museum in The Woodlands. So much fun!!!!  We really appreciate Gramma and Grampa taking us on all of these awesome adventures!

Brian and I are really going to attempt to make date night a priority.  The odds are stacked against us to make our marriage work.  I mean, deceased child, child on the spectrum, child with life threatening illness?  All of those dramatically increase the divorce rate.  We know this.  Our lead ABA therapist has insisted that we go out as a couple.  He even told us his girlfriend (who works with kids on the spectrum) has offered her babysitting services.  We are going to try and have a date night once a month.  We can do that, right?!

Four cold grandkids.

Yoda.  I mean, Ethan.

Iceland exhibit

Moody Gardens

Whoa!  Logan is excited.

Obligatory Texas flag picture.

My cutie patootie nephew.

GGB apparently liked the show!

Jenn.  Again.  Christ.

Cookie making assembly line.

Super excited about his Zombie Survival kit.

We are not normal.

Chinese fashions.

Jenn just can't take a damn picture.  Typical youngest child.

Thanks Jenn.

And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse

Logan:  Happy F***king New Year.

And I married him.