links...

I shared earlier that we bought Trenton an iPad for his speech- but we've discovered the apps are nearly endless for special education. I REALLY want one for my classroom!!! I found this link that indexes many of the sped apps available now, but there are many more. At $.99 each for most apps, we're quickly building a great sized library. http://www.kcdsg.org/files/content/24470331-iPhone-and-iPod-touch-Apps-for-Special-Education.pdf
Many of the apps are also helpful if you have an iphone or an ipod.

Summer daze

This summer is flying by so fast! We are having so much fun, though! We've been sleeping in and then eating 'brunch' and going swimming with my Aunt Shannon and cousin, Reggie, who will be in 4th grade. The kids just love Reggie! Then we take naps and play with the neighbor boys. Madelynn and Tyse are inseparable- if they grow up and date each other, we have so many embarrassing pictures of them!
This week is Vacation Bible School. Trenton has trouble with this kind of activity because it's not nearly as structured as 'regular' school. They sing and dance in the church sanctuary and that is definitely out of the norm for church behavior and he dislikes it. He will usually cover his ears, hide under the pew and cry. I feel so bad this year, in particular, because his school year speech para arranged for her daughter to be his VBS para. (She is wanting to be a special ed teacher, so it is good practice for her). He has 1 on 1 assistance and is still not a fan of VBS. She is a lot of help, though because he is excused from the beginning and end of day commotion and she takes him into the nursery to watch videos. She says he's been doing really well with the rest of the day. I'm not helping this year (he does better if I'm not around, sadly), so I don't know first hand, but I'll take her word for it. This morning, he didn't want to go so bad he ran away from home and ended up in the neighbor's (Gina's) kitchen. I was pretty happy that if he was going to run to a neighbor's house, he chose the one that would send him back home. It happened so fast- I just went inside long enough to grab my cell phone and he was gone. I don't want to keep him out of extra-curricular activities just because he doesn't like the different type of structure, but I feel bad making him do things he dislikes. I'm not sure where that boundary is- I want him to participate in activities outside of school with his friends so that he maintains the friendships with his same age peers, but if he's hiding and covering his ears, his first grade peers won't understand that, either. It's a tough decision and a fine line. I'm sure in 20 years we'll have all the answers, but right now it's tough.
I updated our calendar in the kitchen and realized we only have 3 weeks of summer left- then reality will hit again and we'll have to set an alarm and have a normal bedtime. Chances are pretty good I'll have to cook again, too. We've had quick dinners and BBQ- plus we've eaten out a lot this summer. When reality hits, this wonderful daze we've been in all summer will suddenly come to a halt. I have to say, though, that in a way I'm looking forward to school starting and going back to work. I'll miss Kaydence, but I've had a pretty awesome maternity leave all summer, and I miss my students!

Summer fun!

Where did June go? We have been so busy! Trenton and Madelynn have both been in swimming lessons, dance and gymnastics. I thought my kids were too young for me to be a taxi Mom, but I guess not. Kaydence is such a good baby- she tolerates all the running around so well. She's sleeping on my chest as I'm typing this!
Trenton, in swimming lessons, is an experience, to say the least! His teacher is so good with him, but he is a challenge! Usually we don't allow him out of the vehicle at the pool without his life jacket because of all the trouble he can get into, but during swimming lessons he goes without. His teacher says he's under the water more than he's above it. He has made a lot of progress since last year, though. This year when he dives into the deep end all by himself he can doggy paddle to the side. Not well enough that I'm going to let the life jacket stay in the car, but hey we are making progress! Today he had a pretty impressive feat- he swam the length of the pool by himself! Yeah Trenton! Swim team next year??? Last Friday we spent 4 hours at the pool and by the end of our playtime Kaydence and I were pretty tired. Trenton, however, was not! He was swimming around in the deep end and wouldn't get out. We do the "count to 3" technique and my "3" threat was that I was going in after him. I was fully dressed and bluffing. He called my bluff and shot me with a water gun, stuck his tongue out at me and swam the other way. At that, I was furious and wasn't going to let him win so I dove in the pool to get him. He was totally surprised- his eyes about popped out of his head. Of course, I looked totally ridiculous walking out of the pool soaking wet in my clothes, but I won, so I had a sense of satisfaction. Plus, I really think Trenton had a new respect for his Mom that wasn't too proud to play his games. He laughed at me- thought I looked silly since my wet shorts had a little trouble staying over my butt! He can do things that are just infuriating, but then he does things like tell me I look like Tinkerbell. I gotta love that blind love!

Madelynn has also been busy with swimming. Last year she was afraid to get in the big pool by herself and this year she likes to swim in her pink floatie to the deep end. She passed her swimming lessons with flying colors! She's also taking dance classes from Linda's Dance Academy in town. She loves it, but her Dad has some issues with the "Shake your booty" move. Poor girls, they don't stand a chance- he's so protective of them. Madelynn is every bit a 3 year old- I'm looking forward to her 4th birthday in August! She has incessant whining about pretty much everything. She'll ask a question over and over without taking a breath or allowing me time to answer. Just about when I think she's going to send me to the crazy house she says "I love you so much, Mommy! Thank you for taking me swimming (or wherever we just went)". Makes all the whining much less annoying!

Kaydence is doing great, she's down to getting up 1 time a night most nights. Night before last she laughed for the very first time at about 2:45 a.m. It was the cutest darn thing I ever saw! She's a petite little thing- weighing in at 8 pounds 13 ounces at 6 weeks, but she's adorable.

One more thing... We bought an iPad for Trenton to use this summer. We use the Prologuque2Go app (spelling?) for speech generation. There are so many apps for special education it is unbelievable! So far, he loves it. There is a hurdle with me figuring out how to program it, though. However, it is cheaper than the Dynavox V ($8,000) and will hopefully help Trenton to become more independent and get into less trouble when he's able to communicate more freely. I'll update his progress when he gets some more practice with it.

New Baby

May 18, 2010 at 11:11 a.m. we welcomed Kaydence Margaret Heiman. She was 7 pounds 3 ounces and 19 inches long. She was an easy delivery- everything went smoothly and fast. 5 weeks of bedrest/ light duty prior to delivery so I thought the easy delivery was actually well earned! Trenton is SUPER excited about his new sister! We told the kids her name a long time ago to get Trenton to practice it. He has never called Madelynn by her name. She has been "girl" since the day she was born. We didn't want his sisters to be "Girl 1" and "Girl 2" like Dr. Suess's "Thing 1 and Thing 2", so we practiced and practiced. All he wanted to call the baby was "cow"- which I suppose is a closer approximation to Kaydence's name than "Girl" is to "Madelynn". We'll just have to explain to Kaydence that Trenton loves cows and it's probably a term of endearment instead of a slam about her weight. I'm sure she'll eventually understand. After all, he does sit by her bouncy seat and sing her lullabies (mostly "Skinna-ma-rinky-dinky-dink, I love, you") for extended periods of time. I'm quite impressed by this since he generally has the attention span of a gnat. He is so good with babies that I would not be surprised if he grew up to work in a school or daycare center.
Madelynn is also really excited about the new baby. She is old enough now that she is a helper- that was a great bonus of waiting almost 4 years to have another baby! I'm waiting for the novelty of the new baby to wear off. Right now everything is new and exciting and Kaydence is not old enough yet to steal Madelynn's princesses- so she's still perfect in Madelynn's eyes. Any time Kaydence squeaks, Madelynn puts the pacifier in her mouth and tells me she needs some "milk from your boom". Very cute.
On the second to last day of school I picked Trenton up and while waiting, I had a very nice conversation with another Mom. It's one of those things that really touch your heart as a Mother and make you immensely proud of your kid. As the Mom was telling me this story, tears were welling up in both of our eyes. She said that some kids were picking on her daughter at recess and she was upset. She sat on the side of the playground and was just quietly sitting alone. Trenton evidently realized that this girl was sad about something and he stopped playing and went over, put his arm around her shoulders and just sat there with her. The little girl told her Mom that she could tell Trenton knew she needed a friend right then, so he sat there and did just that. He is such a sweetheart. Sometimes I think the extra chromosome adds something like an additional interpersonal intuition or something. He is so sensitive and caring to other people- all people, it is just amazing. When you first find out that you have a child with DS, you don't know what to think, you go through this grieving period, only to find out that was a waste of time. So what if your son isn't going to be captain of the football team? He will be the sweetest, most genuine kid you will ever meet!

Trenton's big news!

OK, so I think I figured out how to do this on the blog, but you have to have Facebook to see it. Trenton learned to read! We were so excited we couldn't keep it to ourselves. Having a child with special needs, you truly learn to never take anything for granted. We have been working on letter sounds and letter recognition all year- with progress, but of course, not the same pace as his peers. He's also been working on sight words and he can match them with pretty good accuracy, but his apraxia keeps us from understanding him with his speech sound production. In speech, they started using little books to help him and they read this book with him a few times and he figured out how to do read it! He has actually mastered the 1-1 correspondence with the letters. Some of his words are a little hard to understand because of speech, but since I speak his language, I can tell you, he knows what he's doing! Check out this link: http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/?of=644272871 to watch the video. It really makes me cry I'm so darn proud of him every time I watch it!

Boy OH Boy!

I really don't know what % of Trenton's tricks are due to Down Syndrome and his issues with communication and what is just purely because he's a boy. As of this afternoon, I'm officially relieved the baby is a girl. I don't think I could handle 2 boys. This morning, Kent took Madelynn to the farm to help his Dad push snow (and to play with the new tractor, I think. More Boys and their toys!) Madelynn did not like pushing snow in the tractor. It was bumpy so she would fake that she was going to throw up every 2 scoops or so to get out. After about 30 min. Kent called and said she was driving him nuts and I had to come get her. That was at 10:30. We finally got home at 1:00 and I took the kids potty. I had a few things to do before I laid them down for naps so I let them play in their rooms upstairs. When I went up to see what Trenton was doing, he had pooped in his pants and was standing on top of Madelynn's dresser (Which is about shoulder height on me) and clearing it of it's contents. Nevermind the fact that he has hundreds of toys surrounding him- it's much better to just see how many messes he can make for me to clean up. He was in BIG trouble! He sat in timeout for quite a while! I think a lot of this is a boy thing. Madelynn is happy with a box of crayons and computer paper for hours on end! Trenton would not sit with a crayon in his hand voluntarily in a million years! We're not to the hormonal stages yet, but so far, I'm gonna say girls are WAY easier than boys to raise! They are both sleeping now! I'm going to savor the moments.

It's been a while...

OK- I've been promising Natalie for several weeks now that I would update my blog. Here goes! What's new with us lately? Snow, snow and more snow. In between snow storms it is brutally cold. Literally- the weather man says "Life-threatening wind chill". On the upside, Madelynn has been asking almost daily when the baby's coming and I finally told her not until after the snow melts. At this rate, it could be just about right. She stopped asking. Maybe she gave up on the snow ever melting.

Christmas was fun- except for the blizzard, of course. The kids are at a fun age! Trenton has never really been too interested in opening gifts but this year Santa came to our house early and hand-delivered his gifts on Christmas Eve. We were all so excited! Santa was even excited because he got to watch the kids open their gifts and he said that he never gets to enjoy that particular part of his job! Anyway, Trenton never sleeps and tends to wander the house on a normal night. Christmas morning he was up at about 4:00 opening gifts all by himself. At first I was really mad because I wanted to see his face as he walked down the stairs in the morning- my favorite part of Christmas morning- and then I realized we have new reason to celebrate. He totally understood the concept of gift-receiving this year. We learned he also inherited (or learned) his Dad's vegetable induced gag reflex. I tried to feed him cooked cauliflower the other day and he looked at me and said plain as day "No, I puke". And he was right. Gross.

Madelynn is full of hilarious words and phrases. She was so excited to get a Cinderella dress from Santa this year and she didn't take it off for a week. She also got a Snow White doll that if the Cinderella dress had to come off (like for baths) Snow White had to take a bath with her. Since she wore her dress so much (and Santa was frugal) the Cinderella button fell off the front of the dress. She was surprisingly not upset about this when she brought it in to show me. She said "It fell off, Mommy, but it ok because I already called Santa and he'll come fix it soon." He hasn't shown up yet, but she hasn't noticed.

This morning, on yet another snow day, I tried to put in an educational video for them to watch and they were both protesting. I told them to tough it out because it would make them smarter. Madelynn said "I don't need to, Mommy, I already really smart, actually." I told her until she mastered her grammar, we were still going to work on getting smarter.

The baby, I'm convinced, is going to be able to hold her own with her siblings. (Yes, it's another girl!) The other day I was wearing pants that were definitely too snug but I have pretty limited options right now. She kicked me in the same place the whole day at school- which was unusual- she usually only kicks that much in the evenings. I worked late that night and after everyone left I gave in and unbuttoned my pants. She stopped kicking me and I figured out she must have been trying to kick the button because it must have been just as uncomfortable for her as it was for me. I got a laugh from that!

I'm feeling better these days, except for the occasional pinched nerve which makes me waddle like a fat duck. The pregnancy newsletter I get tells me things I should be doing now. At 21 weeks, it says I need to put the nursery together. We have no place in this house to put this kid. We're going to have to get creative, but right now I don't have the energy to worry about it. We'll just wait until the baby arrives and we'll plop her somewhere. Poor, neglected 3rd kid! Supper's ready- better go set the table!