In So Many Words

So, Michael and I have made it to State College, and I am eagerly awaiting the start of the National Autism Conference tomorrow morning.

We were supposed to drive an hour the other direction for a family reunion before coming up here, but Michael was so upset about getting here late at night and then having to go to the conference first thing Monday morning that I decided to bring him up early enough to play with his cousins today. They have been happily ensconced on the Wii for the last hour, although from what I can hear at the moment, he is not too happy about losing a MarioKart race to his cousin Jake.

I am so thankful for the hospitality of my brother- and sister-in-law, who happen to live less than 10 minutes from the conference center, and that the fee for a PA family member is only $25 for the week. Quite a bargain for the amount of information provided, even when you take into account missing a week of work!

The conference kicks off with a session on Autism, Politics, and Law by Lorri Unumb. She is a lawyer and parent of a child with autism who has been heavily involved in advocating for healthcare coverage for autism therapy. I am also attending a parent advocacy session with her later that day, so I am hoping that she provides some useful information for me.

I am especially looking forward to a couple of sessions later in the week – one on Motor Planning and another on Adapted Physical Education. These are areas that I haven’t heard much about and could definitely use some guidance in.

At previous conferences, I have tended to focus my time more on communication, social skills, sensory issues, and educational strategies, but this year I am going in a bit of a different direction. In addition to the parent advocacy session on Monday, I am also going to a legal issues session on Wednesday and a Thursday session on evaluating autism treatments and distinguishing science from pseudoscience.

I am hoping to have lots of great stuff to report here as well as to help me in moving forward as an advocate for my son as well as for other families I encounter along the way.

Yesterday we had our second family reunion of the summer – for my MIL’s mother’s side of their family. Unlike the other reunion, which has been going for decades, this one was started just a few years ago, and the organization of it has been passed around to various people.

This year we hadn’t heard anything and just assumed there wasn’t going to be a reunion, until my MIL’s cousin happened to mention it to her on the phone a couple of weeks ago. Luckily it is local for us. So my in-laws and we were the only ones from our clan to attend, and two entire branches of the four involved weren’t represented at all, leaving us to wonder if any of them even knew about it either.

Michael with Gram and Grandpa

This is the type of situation where I would typically jump in to fill the void and try to create some organization, but I have been successful so far in stopping myself from saying anything. I have just taken a break from the non-profit board I am part of and cannot allow myself to add anything to my to plate right now. My plan is to simply follow up next spring on the plans so we aren’t caught at the last minute again.

Michael really didn’t want to go and in fact had a big meltdown about it that ended up being a diatribe about how fast summer goes and how little fun we have had and why we have to go to school and work anyway, so we employed the previously successful portable DVD player maneuver and headed on out.

It was a very small gathering, so we were able to cut short the time at the park and head over to my MIL’s cousin’s house for a time before going to church. It didn’t hurt that they had water balloons and a launcher either!

Filling

Launching

Tossing

Breaking!

The family reunion yesterday turned out to be quite an adventure.  Michael had a bit of an upset stomach and threw up on the way there – most likely due to a combination of taking his vitamin on a smaller-than-usual breakfast and then driving around in the heat. 

So when we got there, he sat and played with his toys while the cousins played in the pool and on the swinging thing.  By the time we started eating lunch, he was starting to feel better, but then the thunderstorms started coming.
 

It rained so hard the tent and umbrella some of the family were using were both knocked over!

Once the thunder and lightning had moved farther away and the rain had lessened a bit, a few hardy souls got in the pool.  Michael had a chance to get in for a few minutes and swim with Uncle Andrew, who encouraged him to put his head underwater and blow bubbles and even got him to try to swim a little bit. 

He never did get to play on the other thing, but he handled the disappointment very well.  It helped that we each won a jar of candy in the traditional guessing game, I think partly because so many people had left by the time they were handing them out.

All in all, a good day.

We are heading out today to Lancaster for an annual family reunion. This is on Bob’s mom’s dad’s side of the family; there is also one for his mom’s mom’s side of the family that was started a few years ago. The one we are going to today has been happening for at least 30 years, if not more.

An interesting thing about Bob’s family is that both of his parents were only children, so Bob and his brother and sister don’t have any first cousins. Their “cousins” are his mom’s cousins’ kids.

Anyway, this is a very low key event. Whoever can make it comes and brings lunch for their family. We meet at a home just across from Sight and Sound that has a pool with pool house which they rent out for events like this.

We all eat and visit and swim and the kids can also mess around on the tennis court and on this crazy metal contraption with several handles that you run around and then lift your feet and swing around while holding on to the handles. The kids love it, but I find it hard to believe no one has needed stitches yet from the metal handles flying around if someone lets go suddenly.

Last fall I took Michael to swim classes. He did much better than I thought he would do, although he was still too scared to jump in the water. I tried to get him to take the next class, but he said he had learned enough to swim with his cousins at the family reunion, so that was enough.

The older three won’t be there this year, but the younger three will as well as lots of extended family to play with.

While things have improved a lot for our little family, with my mood being fairly stable and happy and Michael maturing enough to be mostly under control, we are now faced with my mother-in-law’s decline. She has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s (I won’t go into that whole story right now) and it is a very sad thing for everyone.

She no longer likes to travel places overnight because it causes too much anxiety, but hopefully with this being a day trip and very laid back, she will enjoy herself and give everyone there a chance to see her again. She turned 75 this past Tuesday and I am taking a Peach Pie Filling Cake to share, so I hope she likes it! (I got this recipe from a friend and made a bunch of them last Christmas for gifts. This is the first it sounded good to me since I made so many of them in December!)

Hope everyone has a blessed Sunday!

Thankfully, I have a good report to follow up on my post about the DAN! doctor insurance woes. I did get a call back from the office manager on Friday and the paperwork is being re-submitted to the insurance company. I can’t really share all the details here, but I will say that I have learned over the last couple of weeks of issues with various areas of my son’s care that there is almost always more to the story and a lot of the time it isn’t really about you personally.

I also realized that my niece’s birthday is actually today, not yesterday as I originally wrote. She is interested in many wonderful things that have never graced our toy bins, such as Barbie’s Pegasus, Polly Pocket, and Strawberry Shortcake. So it should be fun shopping for her, as a nice change from Legos and Thomas trains and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (not that those things aren’t awesome, as my son would say).

It’s so amazing to see how much she’s grown – she’s almost as tall as her five and a half year old twin sisters!

Happy Birthday, Sophie!

Quite a post title, huh? So I get ready to come back and post again after a month off and find that the subscriber count on both of the blogs has gone up by about 100! I mean, I’ve seen Feedburner fluctuate before, but it usually goes down and makes you wonder what you may have done to offend 50 people all at once.

I did a little digging, and the best I can figure out is that Feedburner is now counting all the lovely people who subscribe to my FriendFeed. For a minute I thought I was more interesting when I wasn’t posting anything.

Well, June has been quite the month. Thanks to everyone who commented while I was away (I was online here and there but not as much as usual by any means). Here’s the shortened version of what I’ve been up to the last few weeks:

• Started working mornings instead of afternoons. Although I’m not a big fan of getting up early, it is really nice to be done with work at 1:00 and move on to the rest of my day. (Especially since I’ll have two hours before my son gets home from camp for the next three weeks!)
• Found a new therapist and talked to my doctor about the medication I have been taking for depression. I am going to be trying out a new combination of meds in an effort to find the balance between complete lethargy and a total state of panic.
• Started major house decluttering, involving much moving around of furniture and getting rid of things. I have discovered Freecycle, and it is awesome! If you ever want to feel really popular, post something great on Freecycle and watch the emails pour in. I am also going to try Craigslist for a few items that may actually be worth something and see how that goes.
• Took my son to a new DAN! doctor. I really liked him and we are doing some testing to see where we are at with everything. I’m waiting for them to resubmit the insurance paperwork with the correct (non-mental health) codes to make sure we will be able to afford to go back, but am hopeful that we can at least get a good picture of his nutritional/gut status and see what supplements and/or treatments he is in need of at this point.
• Switched to paper for my calendar/to do list organizing. Although I liked the electronic/online things I was using, it wasn’t very convenient for sharing with my husband where we were at and what needed to be done. So I got a little weekly planner and a couple of mechanical pencils and am back to writing out a new to do list whenever the old one gets too messy.
• Spent a day with my husband’s family when my nephew had a soccer tournament in the area. His team won, despite playing much of the time in pouring rain!

Here’s Michael with all his cousins at Red Robin:

And with the “young cousins” and Uncle Andrew on our cuddle chair (reclining chair and a half):

Not very exciting stuff, I know! Anyway, I’d love to hear from all of you how you are doing this summer. I got a little carried away cleaning out my Google Reader and may have deleted too many feeds, so please leave me a comment so I can make sure I am still subscribed to you.

Well, we have hopefully paid our last fine to Blockbuster.  Bob had rented several movies when I was sick, a couple to keep Michael occupied and a couple for us, and we just kept not getting to them.  So, he took them all back now and we signed up for Netflix.  It was a lot of fun picking out films for our queue; everyone had different lists, of course, so we will just be taking turns! 

The coolest thing about it, which I didn’t know before today, is that some of the movies can be played instantly on your computer.  I just finished watching Becoming Jane, and, while Bob would probably be dissatisfied with the quality of the movie experience, I really enjoyed it.  I guess I have lower technical standards than he does.

My mom just got a computer and is now online, which is great because I am so much better at keeping up with people via email than by phone.  And I am a thousand times better at emailing pictures than getting them printed out to be mailed; I already sent her pictures of Michael and me on our new couch.  (Alright, alright, I’ll post one here in case any of you care what our new couch looks like or how incredibly tall my almost-seven-year-old son has gotten.)

Now that we have graduated from our futon (a very nice one, but still) to real living room furniture, we are hoping to complete the decorating in this room with some sort of window treatment and some better lighting.  We both have a hard time making decisions about things like this, which is why it has taken us so long to even get a new couch.

Well, I’m off to accomplish a couple of things before they get home from running errands.  Plus there’s another episode of the Amazing Race tonight – woohoo!