We go shopping!

So Noby started “school” last week.  Overall I thought it was great and I knew Noby was going to benefit from going.  However I also knew it was going to be some work.  He has never really been asked to follow rules.  He’s never been asked to participate in a circle time or sit for an art project.  He had a hard time doing all of these!  I think the hardest was transitioning from activity to activity.  When asked to washed his hands before snack, all he wanted to do was play in the water.  He threw himself on the floor to let everyone know he wasn’t happy.  The same thing happened when he was asked to sit at the table for snack or an art project.  He didn’t want to sit and let everyone know about it.

Also once a week Molly, from Early Intervention, comes to the house.  We’ve been talking about Noby’s difficulty with the group and she first told me to remember it’s only been two weeks (haha) and secondly that Noby has never been asked to do these things before.  She said the more he does them the easier it will get.  Makes perfect sense, I guess someone just needs to remind you!  She told me to work on simple things at home, like having him just wash his hands before meals.  Just washing, not letting him play in the water like I’ve been doing.  Also changing activities as we play, maybe stopping an activity before he’s actually done with it, telling him “Two more minutes till clean up.”

We have been doing these simple things at home and will see how it works next Tuesday at group.  I’ve also been thinking more about what Molly and I talked about.  And I have been trying to come up with more ways of doing things at home that will benefit him at school.  It dawned on me that of course he wouldn’t want to sit at the little table for snack or play dough or art projects because he has never been asked to sit at a little table before.  So today Noby and I ran down to Ikea to try out all the little tables.  He was so cute trying to climb into the chairs.  We picked one and after I put him to bed tonight I put it together!  (Ichiro should be proud!)  I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow! AND how long till I find him standing on top of it! hahaha

Both yesterday and today Noby and I hit the parks! Yesterday with Lizzy and the boys and today just the two of us. All I can say is Noby is ALL boy! He loves to climb and loves to run. He is such a little explorer!

The 19th was my mom’s birthday and although we couldn’t be there to celebrate with her, we thought of her all day!  Mom, we hope you had a great day and we plan to come celebrate with you once everyone is healthy!! Love ya!!

My collage friends can agree that I’m a wonderful procrastinator.  Whenever I had a paper or a test or basically anything that I didn’t want to do, I would find something else that HAD to be done.   It could be getting the new HIGH score on Tetris, baking yummy cookies, cleaning (ok maybe not cleaning) but I could always find something else to do.  Well the past two weeks I have been doing the same thing.  Rather than write this blog I have been coming up with ANYTHING else to do.  I’ve been playing Mario Kart, baking yummy chocolate chip cookie brownies and even cleaning!  Yes! Even Cleaning!  I’ve wrote a few post but not this one.  Not the one about a topic I didn’t want to talk about.  A topic that I’ve been stressing about for the past couple of weeks.

So I guess I will start with what has been keeping me busy these two weeks, well besides the yummiest brownies ever!  My quilt! hee hee I LOVE IT!!  It’s my 2008 2009 Christmas Quilt!  Just a few months early!

The front is made up of 30 12×12 squares.  In each square is a smaller rectangle in a different fabric.  The back is 1 large square with a rectangle out in all the different fabrics from the front.  All fabrics are red and green, only a few of them being actually Xmas material.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

The front.

One of the Xmas fabric, little green Christmas ornaments!

The back. I wish I hadn't put the green fabric on the edge of the inside square. It blends in to the large outer square. But nothing i can do about it now. hahahah So.. Oh well!

Ok, so that’s what I’ve been keeping myself busy with, I hope you like it!!! Both nap time and after Noby went to bed I would go up to my little craft room to hide and think of nothing else but my happy little Xmas quilt!  All so I wouldn’t have to sit down and think about how I would blog about Noby.  This all started with Noby’s 15 month Dr apt.  Dr Sue suggested that Noby should go see the Speech Pathologist, actually she was appalled that Noby didn’t have any spoken words.  And when I told her he could sign about 10 words she almost flat out told me I was doing everything wrong.  Ok, maybe not that bad but she didn’t seem happy.  I told her I was NOT concerned, but she went ahead to put the referral in.  “What would it hurt,” she said.

A couple weeks after his 15 appointment, I’d already forgot about the referral, the speech office called.  We set up the appointment for two weeks ago.  So, I’m sure you can figure out that the appointment didn’t go every well.  I showed up and we headed into her small office at the end of the hall.  She asked me to “tell her about Noby and I”  and I had NO idea what she wanted me to say.  So I started, “Well I just want to say that I’m not that concerned about Noby’s speech right now.” Her response was “OHHH I KNOW, it says it in your file.”   FUCK!

So the appointment was going fine, she explained to me what Noby SHOULD be doing for his age.  He SHOULD be making more eye contact, he SHOULD be pointing and then looking at me, he SHOULD be able to point to different body parts.  All of which I agreed he should be doing.  THEN she says… (at first in the most round about way, but after I didn’t GET it) she flat out says, “Well I see early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder.”  Well that was all I had to hear for the waterworks to start.  I was NOT expecting this AT ALL.  I thought I was going to go in and she was going to say he was a little delayed but she wasn’t worried.  NOT that he shows signs for Autism Spectrum Disorder.   So now I’m balling, Noby is standing near the door, whining that he wants to leave and the “DR” says to me “Are you worried now?”  BITCH!  She referred me to a hearing test and an evaluation to see if Noby is eligible for Early Intervention (EI).  She kept saying that all this needed to be done ASAP because the earlier we start the better for Noby.

Thanks God I have friends in this field, ok one friend!  I called Katie right away and she help calm me down.  I’m not exactly sure how people figure it all out without having a Katie!!!  My head was spinning in thousand directions.

So that day, after I stopped crying, I called to make appointments for the hearing test and EI.  Each told me they would call be back.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and nothing.  I thought we needed this stuff ASAP.  Thursday I started making calls again.  The audiologist said they fit us in the following week and EI told me again that they would call in 5 to 10 days.  UGH it was so frustrating!

Ok so, Wednesday Ichiro and I took Noby to the audiologists office in Kenmore.  I made Ichiro come with me this time, I wish I made him go to the speech pathologist the week before.  This test took no time at all.  Noby and I sat in a small sound proof room while Ichiro and the doctor sat in a room next door, connected by a small window.  As Noby sat on my lap the Dr would play sounds through speakers located on the left and right of us.  Noby’s job was to look at the speaker the sounds was coming from.  He did great for the spoken voice.  He looked in both directions.  Then he seemed to lose interest in her sounds.  The Dr said this was very common for children Noby’s age and that we would retest him in 6 months.  She couldn’t rule out a hearing loss but IF he has something it will just be minor.

This morning, around 9:30, I got a phone call from EI saying that they had a cancellation and wanted to know if they could come evaluate Noby at 11.  If not they had an appointment in 3 weeks!!  I didn’t want to wait 3 more weeks so I jumped on  the opportunity.  I cleaned for the next hour and half to make the house somewhat presentable.  I was hoping they wouldn’t have any reason to check inside the downstairs shower! hahaha I was hiding all the laundry in there!

So the evaluation went well, by the time Noby warmed up to the three strangers in HIS house, it was nap time.  While I filled out the piles and piles of paperwork, the speech pathologist and physical therapist “played” with Noby.  They had a bag of tricks that they used to have him do different tasks.  One time I looked up and they had him putting Cheerios in a small plastic bottle and another time he was stacking blocks.  They worked fast to try to fit in as much as they could.  We pushed him as long as we could and finally they said suggested we let him nap.  Of course he went right down and this gave me the opportunity to talk to the professionals about the evaluation, his hearing test, the original speech pathologist and her mentioning of autism spectrum disorder .   While he scored high in his motor skills, both gross and fine, he was delayed in both cognitive and expressive language.  They recommended him for Early Intervention and plan to give me a call within the next week to set it up.  They were surprised about how the original speech pathologist mentioned autism and said they needed to work with Noby more before they could even suggest getting him valuated for that.  Over all I feel the evaluation went well.  I’m excited to start the EI with Noby, I can’t wait to see if it helps him.

Ok, I know that was a lot, I’ve been holding this all in for two weeks now.  And if you are still reading this at the end, THANKS!!!  I’m sure I would have quit a while ago! hahahah And Sorry, I’m sure there are TONS of mistakes.  Ok… off to finish my quilt!!! 🙂

Just a cute picture, because... well... because he's cute!

Noby and I had a snow day today!!  We didn’t go anywhere and Noby didn’t get out of this pajamas.  Ok, I guess every day COULD be a snow day for us but today it was actually snowing out!!!

Neko was being so weird this morning.  She was sitting in the kitchen sink, not doing anything, just sitting here.  Like ALL morning.  I grabbed the camera and at the exact moment I took the picture she made the funniest look.

What do you hear?

Yup Noby pouring brown rice all over the hallway!! OOPS!! I grabbed the box, then snapped some pictures….

He was very proud of himself! haha

I guess that’s what I get for letting him go in the kitchen cabinets.  Right after Neko went right back to sitting pretty in the sink.

Today I got up bright and early (ok it was still dark out) to head over to the District Court of Cambridge. Here I would serve my first Massachusetts jury duty. Once we all checked in, we watched a very outdated 17-minute video, which explained the ins and outs of the court system. We were now to wait to see if any of the 4 courts needed jurors. At 10 the court officer made an announcement that we could take a break. I didn’t bother going anywhere because I had a pretty good seat to people watch; also because he said we had to be back in 15 minutes. This gave me plenty of time to work on my knitting! It was great, I only got a few strange stares and one lady was like “GOOD IDEA!!” Around noon he announced that numbers 1-30 had to stay and the rest of us could go to lunch, BUT we had to be back in the courtroom at 12:45. Not enough time to run to the mall like I had planned in my head. At quarter to 1 we all got back to the room and the officer announced that all 4 courts had settled their cases today and that we were done for the day!! YEAH!!! Done for the day!! At this point I HEAD TO THE MALL!!!

It was packed and not fun. The only store I wanted to go to was closed for water damage so it was a bummer. I got a couple of things and headed home.

What a great surprise to come home to a HUGE box of Godiva Chocolates. Mmmm check out this fun box. Someone must really love us!!

I was feeling like a good wife so I decided to grill up some steak tips for Ichiro for dinner.. brrrr was it cold out there!!!

What a happy guy!!! Check out his new hair cut!!

As I’m sure you noticed, the Cookingwithbecky blog didn’t last very long. So we are changing the theme of the blog. We are now going to call it…

What’s Cooking with Becky???

Check back often, not only for our dinner ideas, but recent craft projects, home improvements or whatever we are up to these days!!!

Here’s the most recent “completed” knitting project…. Ichiro thinks I’m crazy for doing it in one day!! Nahhhhh!!!