Hannah's high school graduation family trip

Hannah graduated from high school and we thought it would be wonderful to take a family vacation together to celebrate her accomplishment.

She loved the idea of going to Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound which is a few hours south of us. 

We spent the night and played for two FULL days there in the waterpark.  At Great Wolf they do an amazing job assuring that every single age group has something fun to do.  Each of the six of us had a blast!!

Hannah and Nate rode the Howling Tornado (with a 60 foot drop) four times!  Liam rode 5 of the 6 slides along with me, I was so impressed with my 5 year old danger seeker.  Alberta Falls is a fast single or two person slide and he really liked it.  My favorite was the River Run which me, Hannah, Nate and Liam loved to go on together, it was fast with lots of lights and rock music.  Colin, Nate and Liam went on the river run together too.  Colin and Tommy loved the outdoors water park.

What a fun way to celebrate big sista's high school graduation.  She will start at Western Washington University in the fall and we are so proud of her.

Kindergarten preparations

I'll admit, five years ago I had no idea what inclusion meant.  I knew there were special needs kids alongside my "typical" older children in classrooms, but never really understood how important inclusion was.  Within the last five years my heart has grown so huge for children with development delays and I appreciate inclusion and efforts toward it.

Now that we are finishing our third year in early intervention preschool we needed to think about what kindergarten will look like for Tommy.  So, I have been reading and studying inclusion in education in all of my spare time.  I really submerged myself in the Infant/Early Childhood Conference classes both these past year and tried to broaden how I thought Tommy would access his education.  

Today Colin and I visited the Life Skills K-6 room at the school that the twins will attend in September.  Yes our transfer is official!  We are not attending our home school, but another in district, where the boys have been for their preschool years. 

Liam will be in a general education kindergarten this fall, his skills are ready to join his typical aged peers.  Tommy will have a Life Skills teacher for kindergarten.  That was hard to write.  Hard to say.  In some ways I felt when Colin and I agreed that it would be the best choice for him, we were somehow selling out.  I felt like we should push Tommy to excel and to demand that he be placed in kindergarten general ed class.  But then we quickly realized, the life skills program would support Tommy the best.  And that he was not ready to be in a mainstream classroom all day.  I will share with you that I am now totally comfortable with our decision.  And actually am really excited!

I will totally admit I was really anxious about the visit and worried a bit too much that I wasn't going to like the program, the environment, the teacher, the paras, oh the list goes on.Within minutes of meeting Tommy's special education teacher, I could tell his passion was with kids and that he would listen to our  needs and wants for Tommy's education.  Granted we do a type of "homeschooling" with the twins on pre-K skills, we really want a strong kindergarten program to lead his education and interests. 

Tommy will be in the special education room for 980 minutes per week, the general education kindergarten room for 670 minutes, and he will receive 45 minutes of speech and language therapy plus 30 minutes of occupational therapy.  When I think of the data regarding when children with Ds "peak" in their education, it's around 12-13 years old, so I really want to make his time at school and at home in these early years rich with experiences for education so I can pack it all in his adorable head!

Very excited that the time he is in the Life Skills room he will be receiving "Discreet trial training", more specifically the "Styer/Fitzgerald" method for functional reading skills, manipulatives for math, shapes, colors and some day soon sight vocabulary.  Discreet trial training is exactly what I had read was appropriate for encouraging kids who have processing and rehearsal difficulties. 

Disappointing that he will not be able to receive sign language support, nor will he be able to receive a 1-on-1 para aide.  For a non verbal child those two things coupled together are really difficult.  Rather he will be paired with another child and have a paraeducator to share, and I can see how Tommy would benefit from that if his paired student had typical speech and language.

I believe the room will have 16 total kids in the fall, about half in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.  One teacher and probably 3 or 4 paraeducators.  So that would be approximately a 2 students to 1 teacher ratio.

The daily routine starts around 9:30 and spends alot of the beginning time on social skills, how to introduce yourself and talk to someone else, how to make a friend.  There is one child in the room currently who is about 8 years old with Ds, so of course I was more attentive to how he was being taught and shadowed him thru his rotations of learning.  The time spent of functional reading using the Styers/Fitzgerald seemed really productive for this student, he was given positive reinforcement and it was "errorless" so the teacher prompts the child for the right answer, which for today was phonics based on a sight/flashcard of the letter. 

The rotations went from around 10-11 with changes every 17 mins between stations.  Different stations worked on different skills and all seemed very child and education centered.  I was happy to see that a few of the stations were in rooms off of the hallway and had very few distractions once you were within the room, which is great for Tommy to pay attention and learn. 

At about 11 all the kids, in this morning group there were eight but only 6 present today, come together for circle time on the calendar.  This section of the morning also stressed phonics and number concepts and was done in a sweet way giving the child a sense of community also with his friends. 

At 11:30 they go to lunch with their age appropriate peers which is terrific and hopefully Tommy is well received in his kindergarten room to make some friends for lunchtime. 

The afternoon is focused on Tommy being inside his general education kindergarten room for music, pe, computer time (which he loves right now) and recess.  Of course the paraeducator would be there to support him.  We have requested that Tommy and Liam be in two separate kindergarten classrooms, and since there are three classrooms we believe that should work.  It's important for them both to have their individual friends, access learning in their own ways and experiences to their own interests. 

I'll be sending the special education teacher an interest inventory and the current two page document on Tommy's sensory seeking activities.  So that the teacher can even better tailor the education and rewards to things that Tommy adores.  So, for now we have the perfect plan for Tommy and Liam's kindergarten learning.  A plan that will require alot of hard work on our part at home and a lot of hard work on some very dedicated teachers in their school. 

I'll soon post our summer "homeschooling" ideas and goals if anyone is interested in pre-K ideas.

Dynamic duo does dentist

The most amazing things happen with our dentist.

We have been seeing her for exactly five years.... but this was the best visit.

Other than Liam having a cavity on one of his back molar crevices....

Tommy actually did a "high five and knuckles" to our hygentist when she had on surgical gloves.  Oh yeah.  For all those out there with kids that have experienced WAY too many medical appointments and fear surgical gloves like wasps.... she made it fun and relaxed and his warm little eyes wanted to high five her so bad he just up and did it. 

I explained how important that moment was to her.

She smiled and calmly said "I know".  And she does.  See she is with kids with special needs at our dental office.

In a nice big, full of light, fairly sound proof room.  Yep.  For the last eight or so visits (every six months since the twins were six months) this hygentist has helped us.  Make normal more normal for Tommy now that we have more "normal" types of medical visits.  What a gem she is.  With alot of assistance we actually got Tommy to sit in the dental chair for the first time too!  Don't ask how we usually do his dental exam, you don't want to know, ha ha. 

And our dentist is amazing too.  Her niece has Down syndrome on the other side of the nation, so Tommy's huge smile reminds her of someone she loves very much and doesn't see as often. 

Such a great dental visit. 

Two fun days at the Whatcom Museum

I really enjoyed our first day at theWhatcom Museum with just my two teens and scouting out the art plus the children's area.

I have a 'thing' about not taking Tommy anywhere that I haven't been first. 

Have you seen how fast he moves? 

So I was so excited to see that the Children's museum has only two exits, and one of them has an alarm on it (emergency exit).  Ha ha.

So the second day, Nate and the twins and I expolored the children's part to the museum.  Oh. my. What fun!

The pictures are a little blurry because I haven't perfected the indoor setting on my mobile fun.

Life is good.

Flower pot recycling

Recycling flower pots!

I started with a multipurpose sealer and painted the entire surface of the flower pot.  After washing them and convincing the earwigs and bugs to vacate.

Then I used a acrylic paint, because that's what my junk drawer had... a partially filled bottle of "Metallic Christmas Green".  And since Liam was helping me, I thought that was perfect.... it's his favorite color so we went BIG.  Big GREEN.

I only painted the outside of the container, after all .... they are hanging.  And if you can see the inside of the containers while they are hanging... well... you probably can't fit in my house :)

The last step might not be necessary but we sprayd "Gloss Spray varnish" because I thought they would look nice shiny.  Heck, everything looks better with spray high gloss shiny. 

Enjoy the sunshine!  And if you can recycle something.... use metallic Christmas green, ha ha

And the last is..... Liam

Liam is almost five and a half years old now.  He remains an amazingly sweet, gentle, and kind boy.

He is just finishing his Pre-K program at early intervention preschool.  His team of teachers is so wonderful and the weekly speech instruction there is helping him.

He goes to Connections Speech and Language every other week and has lots of fun playing games with his SLP there.

He really enjoyed his Awana program this year it was every Wednesday.  And children's church on the weekend.

He LOVES being outdoors and especially riding for miles on his bike.  With us of course, but he loves his bike!

He is getting taller this year and really likes wearing baseball hats.  He loves when the older kids are with us, just this past weekend with all six of us home he said, "I want it to be like this forever!".  Very sweet.

Liam and Tommy are both playing TOPS soccer, here is Liam (farthest right) waiting for some action with the big soccer ball.

Liam really enjoys heading to our nearby beach.  Some weeks we are there at least one day a week and he often wants more than that!

Liam loves a 'ride' on daddy's shoulders down to our nearby lake.  Which is great after dinner exercise for us.  Liam continues to be our littlest guy, but his heart is huge and is such a sweet kid.

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Tommy's update

I haven't done so well with getting all four kids updates out in four days, but so goes planning! 

Tommy is almost 5 1/2 years old, he is LOVING his third year of early intervention preschool and is just the most animated person in our family.

He plays TOPS soccer on Wednesday evenings at our local sportsplex and although the task of kicking the ball is fairly lost on him, he enjoys scurrying around smiling and checking out his friends, the astro turf and giggling.

Although Tommy is non verbal and has limited sign language, he gets his point across and is up to three sign combinations.  In addition to his SLP time at preschool, he goes once every other week to a local Speech center to learn more.

Tommy had two procedures done this year which is far less than previous years.  The procedures were both to check his ears.  One was to verify that he didn't need ear tubes and the second procedure was a sedated BAER hearing test which he passed with flying colors.

During the procedures, our local pediatrician had asked Seattle Children's to draw Tommy's annual bloodwork and again this year his platelet count has fallen.  Since he has Down syndrome and Polysaccaride Antibody Deficiency syndrome, we are concerned he has Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome or something else (which I really can't bring myself to even say until our pediatrician mentions it more than she has already, trust me, the L word is on her radar).  So in 4 months we are having a complete bloodwork done again and assure that the L word isn't happening and make sure those platelets that he has are still large and haven't shrunk like Wiskott-Aldrich.  I'm not sure what the comorbidity with Hirschsprung's disease is with all this immunity issues, but there you have our little medical miracle in a paragraph!

We simply LOVE loving Tommy and he is just such a precious kid to us, we are so lucky!  Just like all of our kids.