In November of 2017, our family took a long-planned trip to Disneyland. That trip, and the extensive work we did to help Tony prepare for it, is mostly a topic of a future post. I suspected (translation: totally knew it) we could be in for a few challenging moments given his sensory differences. However, I
As we stroll through this second week of discussion about speech therapy for Tony, I want you to keep something very important in mind: Ms. B deserves just as much loving picture wise as every other therapist who works with Tony. This post however, is going to be lighter in pics than some of the
I have discovered that when people with typically verbal family members think about speech therapy, most assume that it exclusively involves the process of teaching appropriate verbal speech. This certainly can be the case, but when an individual isn’t capable of producing vocal sounds or putting them together in ways recognizable to others, the approach
To Ms. B, Tony’s Sweet ST, For Insane Amounts of Patience If someone were to ask me who I think has the hardest job on Tony’s therapy team, there is no doubt it would be Ms. B. Not only is she having to work with Tony on some of the skills he’s least interested in
This year, I finally got everything I wanted underneath our petite living room Christmas tree- not a single gift addressed to me. Somehow a gift for every occasion has become such a culturally ingrained tradition it is almost reflexive. I find that people often don’t understand why my preferred present is a hug or a
Every year since Andy and I married, the evening of our Thanksgiving celebration we would bring out the boxes of artificial tree and holiday ornaments to unpack Christmas. Like many families, we decorated our winter holiday times with traditions that only made a guest appearance one month out of each year. As the severity of
My very good friend Gena (who should seriously be elevated to the level of sainthood for listening to a number of “why I no longer shop at Amazon” rants over the past year) once asked me why I decided to write so many reviews during my time as one of their customers. Nothing about my
I can’t tell you that I have the answers to all of my problems (or yours for that matter), because that would be a lie. But I can tell you what I do to face an ever expanding siege of crises. Seriously sometimes it’s like my problems are breeding faster then cockroaches and I am
Hamlet was confused, but you shouldn’t be. When we were first starting our family’s diagnostic journey for Tony, I had some people express to me that I should not be seeking any sort of diagnosis for him because those labels follow a person for life. And I have been asked by some their opinions about
Bandit. status: curtain climber/house destroyer/wounder of humans/adorable cat/friendly cat We adopted Bandit December 9th, 2017. That was just about 2 months after my other cats (Dickens and Whispie) died. I was very upset after their deaths, and thinking about it still causes me pain. How did we come to adopt bandit? It started on December
