SOOC Saturday: All three!

All three boys together :)





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Adam (movie)

Came across this preview for a new movie called "Adam" about a man with Asperger's Syndrome (on the autism spectrum). Looks interesting, I'll probably rent this when it comes out on video...








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A smidgen of progress?

Just a quick update on the potty-training front. As I've mentioned before, Bitty does great with #1 in the potty, and to date he has utterly refused to even try #2. For that, he adamantly insists on having a pull-up. I can't really complain, because cleaning up a messy pull-up is sooo much easier than cleaning up messy underwear and I would LOVE it if we could go straight from pull-ups to potty and just skip the whole underwear messification. (I know, TMI and made-up words in the same paragraph...).

Anyway, so today after the success of Operation Oreo in getting a very resistant Bitty to walk - willingly, and without screaming - into the school building after he initially started crying just from pulling into the parking lot, it occurred to me to see if the same incentive plan would jump-start our poop-in-da-pawee initiative.

So when Bitty came to me asking for a pull-up, I made my usual offer of "let's go sit on the potty instead!" and he answered with his usual, "no sit ah da pawee."

But I had the Oreo "card" in my back pocket this time.

The possibility of earning a cookie was enough to get him to sit on the potty, but when it came time to actually doing his business, he just wouldn't stay there. He kept getting up and dancing around, I kept convincing him to sit on the potty again, and he would, but then he'd jump up again.

After much frustration, he finally said, "No here!"

Proud of him for at least trying for the first time, even though in the end he just wasn't comfortable enough with the idea to actually go through with it yet, I finally offered him a pull-up.

I told him it was his choice, and that I was proud of him for getting this far, but that opting for the pull-up would mean not earning the cookie.

I felt kind of mean doing that, especially when he took that important first step of actually sitting on the potty when he had to go #2. But I had already told him the cookie was for actually going in the potty, not just sitting there and I was afraid that offering him a cookie for not actually following through would just undermine my credibility and our efforts in the future, and might even result in him expecting a cookie for doing #1 in the potty when he is already doing that just fine.

He must have understood, because he did not ask me for a cookie after using his pull-up, and he didn't seem upset about it.

I have no idea if this is the start of something, or if it will be months before he makes his next attempt, but either way I'm encouraged and we'll just keep trying!






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Summer, we hardly knew ye...

Wow, this summer seems to have flown by, it's hard to believe that it's coming to an end. School starts next week!

Today was school registration / open house for all three boys. Turns out Bitty's new teacher was also one of Bearhug's teachers when he was in Pre-K :), and one of her parapros worked with Cuddlebug's class when he was there. I know they and the other parapro who we met today will do great with Bitty! We found out that at least a couple of the boys from his class last year will be in his class this year, so it will be good for him to have some familiar faces in class.

Bitty has really been freaking out about school starting. Every time we mention it, he gets upset, and last night when we tried to prep him for the fact that we'd be meeting his teacher today he went ballistic and had a meltdown for about an hour. He always does fine once he's there though. We had to bribe him with an Oreo to get him in the door, but once he started to see familiar people (he's been going there for over a year so pretty much everyone knows him) and places (his classroom is in the same hallway as his class last year), he started to relax and even seemed excited about being back.

That being said, I know we're in for a rough couple of weeks (at least) while he re-adjusts to the new schedule, especially in the morning. We'll be stocking up on Oreos and Pop-tarts to help ;).

We visited Cuddlebug & Bearhug's school also and met their new teachers. They too seem very nice and I think they are each a good fit for the boys. We had to laugh because we noticed that each of their desks (they are in separate classes) are right next to the teacher's desks, LOL. Coincidence? Perhaps... you decide ;). They have the same resource teacher that they've had since 1st grade, and she is awesome!

Bearhug has been getting increasingly anxious as the first day of school approaches (it starts next week), but this happens every year both at the beginning and end of the school year so we're working through it as best we can. Cuddlebug seems pretty calm about the start of school, I think he is more looking forward to it. They both found out that some of the children they know from prior years will be in their classes this year, so that familiarity helps.

We also found out that they'll both be doing some gifted pull-out this year, so it will be exciting to see what kind of activities they'll be doing with that. Third grade will bring a lot of new challenges and it's going to be a lot of work but I know they'll do great!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This school year, we're planning to enroll Bearhug and Cuddlebug in Cub Scouts. The scouts had and end-of-summer pool party and invited the new, incoming scouts to come also, so we went to that earlier this week. The boys had a great time - they absolutely love to go swimming! Especially Bearhug, he has always been my little "fish." They don't know how to swim yet, so they stayed in the shallow end, but Bearhug had fun jumping in and I think they might be getting ready for dh to teach them to swim. He's tried before (he has experience teaching swimming, including teaching swimming to children with special needs, from his college days) but so far the boys have been very resistant so we've just been waiting until they are ready. We don't get to go swimming that often so we haven't had that many opportunities to practice anyway.

Unfortunately dh wasn't at the pool party, he stayed home with Bitty (because he had a sunburn from doing yardwork the other day), and I didn't bring a swimsuit to get in the water. Not that I'd be a good swim teacher, I can swim but I basically taught myself so my technique is pretty much whatever it takes to keep from sinking, not really good swimming skills (lol).

Here are some pictures (Cuddlebug in red, Bearhug in blue):












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An oops and an update

I thought I was doing so good this weekend - I wrote several posts and scheduled them out for the week, and I even got on again Monday night to add another post. And then last night I realized I forgot all about Mondays in Motion. Oops.

Oh well, so I guess I'll have to try to post a video next Monday instead. I actually have a new one of Bitty practicing his new spoon-eating skills :). He has really struggled with that, first because he had a hard time gripping the spoon at the right angle to actually scoop food onto it. Forks are so much easier because you can just poke the food and for the most part it stays on regardless of what angle you hold it at (within reason, of course). Then, when after much effort he got to where he could scoop a little bit of food onto his spoon, he'd twist the spoon on the way to his mouth so that it was upside down - and empty (thanks a lot, gravity!) - by the time it got there. Needless to say it was frustrating for him, and messy!

He hasn't had a whole lot of opportunities to practice since spoons are largely for mushy foods that he won't eat anyway. But he does like "dinosaur soup" and "letter soup" (Chef Boyardee), so that's usually what we practice with.

Anyway, so he is starting to get the hang of it. He was successfully getting the letter-pasta into his mouth and amazingly enough, made practically no mess on his face, hair, clothes, table or chair. And I caught it on video!






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Bitty's trains

I love his pudgy little fingers :)


He likes setting his trains up like this, with one precariously about to "fall." In this case, it's Oliver.



He kept telling me, "da terr-taybuh iss wet" (the turntable is wet). Turns out he was re-enacting this scene from the video, "Oliver Owns Up:"



I'm not sure where the "wet" turntable came in, maybe he was saying the turntable well since that's where Oliver crashed? Anyway, I think his version of the scene looks pretty accurate, no? :)

I got a close-up of Oliver, which he wanted to see (on the camera's screen).


He really liked that, so he wanted me to take pictures of some of his other trains :).











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SEW & WW: Cuddlebug & Bearhug

Just some random pictures I took of Bearhug and Cuddlebug playing:



Oops, busted. Bearhug looks annoyed that I'm taking pictures of them.



It's not unusual for the boys to still be in motion while playing their games... not sure I could play in these positions but it works for them.





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Try This Tuesday: Happy or sad?

We've been trying to work with Bitty lately on recognizing emotions / facial expressions, using his Thomas trains. The good thing about this is that he loves Thomas so it's easy to get his attention using the trains. I'll hold up a train and ask, "Is James happy or sad?" When he wants to play, he'll bring me a train and ask "Iss Jayss happy o' sah?" At first I thought he was asking me the question, but have since figured out that he not only repeats what I say, but will often say what he wants me to say, in hopes that I'll repeat him. (example: when he asks me "you wah yo' cup?" what he really means is I'm supposed to ask him if he wants his cup, lol.).

He doesn't always get the "right" answer, and I haven't been able to figure out yet if he really doesn't know them yet, or if he's doing it because he thinks it's funny to answer "wrong." (He does that with other things, but when I know that he knows the answer, then I know he's just being silly).

The not-so-great thing about using his trains for this is that most of them are smiling so we don't have as broad a range of emotions there as I would like. In brainstorming ideas to work on a wider range of facial expressions, I remembered the emotions chart that Julie made a while back for her son. I think I'm going to make something similar using Thomas character faces.

Another tool I came across recently for teaching how to recognize emotions through facial expressions is a game created by Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect) for the Thomas the Tank Engine website that asks players to choose which engine's face is happy, sad, scared, etc. You can find the game online here (it's a free, web-based game). My only issue with the game is that the instructions are not read aloud so unless the child playing the game can read, they won't be able to play independently, but they can play with an adult helping / reading instructions to them.

I tried playing it with Bitty but he doesn't like being read to and likes to play at his own pace in his own way, so he quickly bored of me trying to help him read the instructions... I'll have to work on teaching him to recognize the words happy, sad, angry, etc. so he can play on his own. He's not really reading yet but he does recognize some words, mostly the names of Thomas characters (of course!). He is more interested in them than in his own name.

What other ideas have worked for you in teaching your children how to recognize facial expressions?


Related: Thomas & Friends have their own video channel on YouTube, here's one about identifying happy or sad engines :).




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Magic Marker Monday: Digital creations

I know, Monday's almost over, but I still wanted to share these. The boys figured out that in the game "Super Smash Bros Brawl" you can pause the game and zoom / rotate the scene to take still shots. They had a lot of fun with that, and these are some of the "pictures" they took of their game in progress.

They like to both play as Pikachu, and Cuddlebug "decorates" his Pikachu character with a hat much like the one he wears :).


Sometimes they like to battle, but more often they like to race. The game lets them set up their own "stage," so they set it up and then race around it until the timer runs out.



It's almost like a re-enactment of how they play together at home, especially this one, where it looks like the Pikachu's are rolling around laughing :).


When they're not racing their Pikachu's, they're having them swim in the ocean.





Sometimes they branch out to other characters, like this Bulbasaur (or "Blubbasaur" as Cuddlebug says it).


Looks like Bulbasaur didn't win that battle...


Mr. Game & Watch is another favorite:









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A lazy summer day

Strangely enough, we're already starting to notice the weather cooling off a little bit, although it's really way too early for that (typically doesn't start cooling off until mid-to-late September).

But that's not a complaint, it's a pleasant surprise. So we've been taking advantage of the cooler weather to spend a little time outside.

Here's Cuddlebug trying out his golf swing (using the plastic swiss-cheese practice balls that dh has).


Little Bitty took a short break from playing trains to give me a sweet smile :)


Cuddlebug joined him for some train adventures:


Just for fun, I took a picture of one of the swiss-cheese balls and dh suggested I try taking one of an actual golf ball so I did:







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