Ob la dee, Ob la da

The weather has turned cool, the days are getting shorter, and all of a sudden it seems like we're entering the holiday season.  Already?  Sheesh!  This post is dedicated to memorializing the little things my kids do nowadays, so I don't forget someday what four was like.

My Skylar, concentrating on drawing a kitty face on a mini-pumpkin.  She takes her artwork very seriously, and produces volumes of it weekly at school and home.  One of her best drawings is posted on the door to her classroom at school right now, showing herself, Paige, and four friends in a row, under the sun.  Once I get it home, I'll post a picture.  She always draws herself with lots of curly hair.

Paige and Skylar posing with the pumpkins they designed and assisted with carving.  To avoid the frozen cheesy smile they both have perfected, I had them look "scared" at each other.   Paige came up with the toothpick kitty ears, and then all four mini-pumpkins had to have them, of course.

They really wanted to hold the carved pumpkins, and these were the lightest/least likely to impale them with sharp points.  Note their same-but-different outfits.  They do this a lot lately - find similar outfits in different patterns so they coordinate.  They love each other dearly.  

Posing with some of our Goodwill Halloween decorations and my birthday bench from Gramma Mary on the front porch.  My first self timer picture with my new camera.  Not too bad.  

Behold, Her Majesties the Cupcake Fairy and Bee Princess.  Outfits are store bought and enhanced with accessories - wings and wands, and a fairy princess hat - handed down by cousins K & A.  We got all spiffed up and went to a Halloween Party with some of our original Birth to Three friends.  I'll spare you the pictures of Jim as Steve Jobs and me as an iPhone.  I did have fun joking that he invented me to please him.

My Paige, peeking up over the bus seat on the shuttle back to the car at the Mt Pisgah Mushroom Festival.  You can just barely see the Cinderalla face painting she requested.  She's holding her sparkly spider ring from Gramma Rotzie.  She's loving gymnastics class (particularly the trampoline and the swing) and has finally passed the 30 pound mark.  She can hold her weight up pretty well on the bars, and was doing very speedy somersaults with no hands last week.

The FM system continues to be a real asset for Skylar in the classroom.  Check out this link to an amazing video demonstrating the benefits of FM, and thanks to Annie Z for sending the link.

We've also started a weekly language class at the U of O, where S is the only hard-of-hearing child in a class of three with various language delays.  But the class offers two graduate students per family plus a program supervisor, speech assessment, activities, and reports, all the while supporting her IFSP goals and coordinating themes and sounds with her speech therapy appointments.  With this and gymnastics our schedule is full, but as someone recently commented, the kids have their whole lives to be over scheduled.  :-)

Rainy Day at Mt Pisgah Mushroom Festival

First Hike to Mt. Pisgah Swing

Another beautiful October Saturday. :-)

Mobile Blogging

Trying posting from my phone. Today we trekked out to Detering Orchards with the Gerblacks for some apple pickin'. Good times!

Lone Pine Farm

What a day on Saturday! Perfect weather, and lots of fun at Lone Pine Farm north of Eugene.  Enjoy!

A New School Year

Excuse my 2 week absence, for much has been happening on the home front! First and foremost, we are in the full swing of things for the new school year. Skylar's school schedule was up in the air, even after the official start of the year, because we had to have our annual meeting with her educational team before deciding on services. The big decision was whether to try a specialized classroom, with other deaf and hard of hearing kids, for part of the week, or stick with Montessori, enhanced with consultation services, speech therapy, and new technology.

Over the course of two 2+ hour team meetings, we settled on the latter. The tradeoffs are significant: DHH classroom is free (state funded), the ratio is about 2:1 (kids:teachers), the room is ideally set up for acoustics and technology (hearing aids, CI's, FM systems, and sound field amplification), total language-focused curriculum, and a wonderful teacher. And, importantly, the other kids share something very significant with Skylar - they are deaf or hard of hearing.

The benefits of Montessori that made us choose to stay there: an established community that Skylar loves and which includes her twin sister; her language progress there over the past 13 months has been impressive; the location and outdoor garden playground are superior; we appreciate and have seen the benefits of the Montessori method in both Skylar and Paige; and, we could switch DHH teachers to the one who actually teaches the DHH class, she would just work with Skylar and her teachers outside the hours her class meets. This last benefit was ultimately the thing that swung me to staying with Montessori.

Since making the switch, it has become obvious that the last 6 months or so have been difficult because we had the wrong match in a DHH teacher. Our new teacher is kicking *ss and making changes in a friendly, diplomatic way that was impossible to get from our old assigned teacher.

Nothing against her - in fact she was exactly what we needed when we first received S's diagnosis. A fierce advocate, a righteous deaf culture CODA (child of deaf adults), she understood the emotional whammy we were dealing with and helped us know it would be okay. Some of the things she taught us in the first few months, in fact, were re-emphasized in the JTC summer program - we just weren't ready to learn them in the beginning.

The new team is excited to do everything possible to help Skylar succeed. Even the previously-unwilling-to-make-special-accommodations Montessori teacher is wearing a boom microphone that transmits her voice directly to Skylar's hearing aids via tiny snap-on receivers. This FM system is the bomb chicken of hard of hearing technology - it elevates spoken instructions above background noise (a bugger of a problem in her classroom) and overcomes distance from the teacher (Skylar's optimum hearing range is 0-6 feet).

The teacher simply wears the headset microphone (there's nothing to it - Vogue!), and attaches the transmitter, which is the size of a flip phone, to her pocket or belt, and mutes it when she isn't speaking to Skylar individually or in a group. The team has even used it in the huge multi-purpose room during music class, and in both settings report immediate improved response from Miss Skylar. She is attentive, razor-sharp, eager to learn, and quite compliant - when she can hear you!! I'm very optimistic about the school year.

In other news, both girls had dentist appointments last week, and did phenomenally well. Paige sat through a full cleaning and fluoride treatment, then doctor check, including air being blown on a suspicious spot - with patience and grace. Her whole body fit on the upper portion of the dental chair when reclined. Hee hee.

Sky sat through four fillings, poor girl - she has extra-deep grooves in her teeth, making nice little holes for the sugar bugs. She did it with no anesthetic - just a little nitrous gas. The dentist was super quick with the drill, and they have a strict no pressure policy - they will not cajole or force a child to lie down or do anything else. She got through it on her second visit following the consultation. Phew!

So, happy fall to everyone. We're off to a great start!