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Late night conversations

My son has issues with anxiety. We can put him to bed at 8, and he is still awake at 9 or 9:30. It is frustrating to say the least. He will try to drag things out.

“One more story.”

“More milk.”

“scared of the dark.”

” scared of something that I saw/happened 2 weeks ago.”

bedtime

Well last night was no exception. First it was more milk. No, you’ve had enough. Then is was one more story. (2 downstairs as his reading homework, and then I read not 2, but 3 more upstairs.) Then has to hug the cat….. smh. Gets a book to read in bed. I leave, go downstairs to watch a show with my hubby. Over the next hour and a half, he was up at least 2 more times to tell us something. He was scared of the dark…. that comes from our room. “Well if you are in your room, then why is this a problem? you shouldn’t see it.”

*sigh Turn on the light then. go to sleep.” Put him back to bed.

watch another show. Almost done of show and hubby is talking to son about going back to bed.

“What is it now?” I ask.

Hubby looks at me. “um. He is upset that he can’t see Jesus and that he died.” You can see that hubby is slightly amused by this. We are both perplexed at where and why these thoughts come up when he is SUPPOSED to be asleep.

I go upstairs to see how to soothe my sobbing son.

“Let’s go back to your room.” I climb the stairs and find him sitting on his bed, sobbing while holding a book. It is the Children’s picture bible, opened to the scene of the Nativity.

“I’m sad that I can’t go see Jesus as a baby because it was so long ago.”

“Oh sweetie. I see. Well, we are all sad that we can’t.”

“and I know that he died. but I don’t think that he is r.. r… rose from the dead.”

“Why do you not think this?”

“cause people don’t do that.”

“Well, Jesus was God. People don’t do this, but Jesus was special because he was also God’s Son.”

“I feel better if I had more milk….”
Yes. I let him have more milk and sent him off to bed. He was soon conked out for the night.

“

Conversations in the car

This morning was like any other morning; my twins woke me up before my alarm went off which is also well before their “gro-clocks” told them that it was time to get out of bed. Twin A (girl) crawls into my bed, complains she is cold, and whispers (that I can’t hear because I have a hearing loss) that she wants to go downstairs and get her IPad. Twin B (boy) is not far behind, basically asking the same thing. I deny them, remind them of the rule of no IPad before school but they can go downstairs and I would be there soon to get them breakfast.

Despite the warnings about departure time, there is still whining and loud protest. Kids still don’t get their shoes on. Harass the cat with hugs.

finally get shoes on and we drive the short distance to school that is made longer with morning commuters and construction. (yes we could walk and get there in shorter time, but autism logistics and my nerves impede this.)
Boy: “I don’t want to go school.”

Me: “I know. You have told me this. But life is full of things that we don’t want to do, but we do them anyways.

I got up this morning. I didn’t want to do that.

I made your lunches. I didn’t want to do that.

I got hugs from you. Ok, I like that part.

but the whining and yelling part of the morning, I don’t like that part.”

I realize that part of this is that there are now 3 weeks left of school. I have asked, and other parents confirm that the whining has increased in recent weeks. Maybe part of it is being 7, so like a normal/typical 7 year old, they whine. And part of it is likely the autism brain that is protesting the demands on them. Both twins balk when demands are placed on them but react in different ways. The girl shuts down and says she isn’t smart, while the boy just gets loud and pouty.

There are a lot of things that my children don’t understand no matter how many times I repeat myself. I still can’t always tell what is them being that age and what is the autism.

Yesterday, our BI told us that when she had taken my son out to a social group that she runs, he had commented about his minecraft progress and stated that when things get hard, he gets his sister to do it. And all the kids in the group, who have now gotten to know both of my kids, said, “Really? L ? are you serious?”

This was an interesting comment because it shows us a different perspective about my kids. We know that our daughter is smart, but her autism impedes how she interacts. Emotionally and socially, she is 1 year or 2 behind her peers. She is more in her head and her head has a lot of rainbows, and fairies, and flamingoes. Definitely flamingoes. So of course, the group of 5-12 year old that she goes out with were surprised by what she can accomplish. She has very good spacial reasoning and builds some cool stuff in minecraft and with lego. Maybe that is her arty brain.

Maybe I need to change the title of this post. …

back to conversations in the car. I am hearing impaired. I have worn aids since I was 4. I rely a lot on lip reading. So my kids still don’t get that mommy can’t hear them from the backseat but she can hear the radio. (Radio is loud, kids mumble). So it is hard to have conversations in the car with my kids (or most people). I worry that my kids will not understand this, ever.

Don’t screw this up

So i’m finally back after a month. It’s been a busy month but mostly with anxious anticipation as we wait to hear what support hours will be assigned to my children for next year. If they went down, we were planning to pull them out of public school and go the route of Directed Learning. This is apparently different from homeschooling, but is a form of home schooling nonetheless.

I was told yesterday that their hours will stay the same as this past year. They barely have 20 hours a week of support at school. This means that regardless of the fact that they have the G designation that there is a slim chance of getting a qualified person to take the position. My children are approved for ABA Support in school, vs an Education Assistant. This means that they would get a person who is specifically trained to work with autism and not just someone who is trained to work with everything. My children need redirction regularly during the day. We joke that my daughter is easily distracted like the dog in UP (Squirrel). And while they are doing better than they were in kindergarden, they still need the support or there are problems. Outbursts, flopping on the floor, hitting, elopement, and the like.

It seems that the behaviors are getting worse this past month. I have mentioned this to other parents and they agree, so maybe it is just the time of year and not just me and something I am/not doing.

So now I have to trudge into the world of advocating for my children. I hate this. I’m not good at it. In general, I am the type of person who is loud and says too much, or I’m timid and say nothing for fear that I will stick my foot in my mouth as the loud one (or inexperienced one) and thus muddle things more, causing more problems for my kids and their school experience. Nonetheless, there have been facebook posts alerting us that although the principals only got the hours given to them on Monday, that there is only 2 more days (Friday) to request more hours.

There is a chain of command for how and who you request stuff with the Surrey school district and I don’t want to screw it up. So I have trudged in….

Egg- stra worth remembering

I was just cleaning the kitchen and there remnants of child proofing measures on it (which are hard to get off) that were left by the previous owners.

We had to secure the fridge as well as my children LOVED to open the refrigerator and look inside. I think that we had to secure it differently after I dicovered that my daughter had taken an egg and cracked on her brother’s train table. I was not impressed. Cleaning an egg off the floor is one thing, cleaning it off the table that has tracks and trains and a painted surface is a whole other story. The thing is that this is just a story to tell her later in her life as we recount the crazy things that my twins have done. egg

A Walk in the Park

Usually I play Pokemon in the park after dropping the kids at school, but I tired of that today. I decided to actually enjoy my time at the park. The smell of fresh cut grass, the remnants of cherry blooms, my favorite magnolias and a surprise visitor.

Summer 2019 plans

Oh my goodness. Trying to make plans for summer. Do I or don’t I?

It has taken me many years to be comfortable enough to take my children to public places, like restaurants. We have just started to take my twins to church again. Last Sunday was the first time in 3 years as my daughter was pretty much non-verbal at the time and would smash her head on the floor because she wanted something but could not make herself understood. This past Sunday, we took them to a new church; one that we had only been to 1x by ourselves, to see if it would be okay.

The children did wonderful and we stayed to have lunch with the only person we knew in this church. She works as an EA at my children’s school and my twins both love her. We met her family; spouse and children. Her children have autism and they are now grown men. It was the first time that I had met an adult with autism. I have hope.

So this summer. There are 9 weeks to fill with something. I am hoping to space out the outings or events if I can. So I have been thinking that I would try to put them in a day camp. I was supposed to attend a Parent info night about inclusion and accessiblity related to attending these camps, but it was cancelled. The phone message said that someone was supposed to call me today. At 3:30, I called the City of Surrey myself. I was put on the phone with Mr. MacDonald, who was SOO helpful. Last year when I called, I must have called the wrong department and didn’t really get much help. So this year , I think I understand it, the registration process. Surrey has the option of 1:1 support for my children at day camp. You need to send them to a full day camp (9 to 3), minimum, with a maximum of 2 weeks per kid. So you register for the support for the week that you want to send them and then you sign up for the camp. Hopefully, the server doesn’t crash. Hopefully my kids don’t protest going when or if I do get them registered.

I’m pretty sure that I know what type of camp I will send my kids to (anything ART related for the girl). When I asked them, the kids were too distracted (normal) to answer my question. So we will see.

Update to Parking Wars

The City actually responded quickly and I had a call the following week. I was told that while it was highly unusual, they would put a “no parking” sign in the location that I suggested for consistency’s sake.

2 days later, there was the sign. Can’t miss it.

So the jackass parked further up past the houses on the curve of the road instead. I don’t think that some people realize about the rules of parking in cul de sacs. (yes, I called and they got a ticket.)

Geneology puzzles

As mentioned in the bio, I do geneology for fun. I have always been interested in my family history as I am a first generation Canadian in my family; my parents having come from Ukraine and Poland during World War 2. So I picked it up again while I was pregnant with my twins. It was summer and I was too big and too hot to move but I still wanted to be productive. So I decided to take a crack at my family and see what I could learn, plus I had married into a large family and still couldn’t sort them all out. (Hubby is is the 2nd of 40 1st cousins, so family reunions are interesting.)

My geneology quest took me to local cemeteries and from there, I wander all over, photographing stones and posting them on various sites like Findagrave, Billiongraves, CanGenWeb (Cemetery project), Canadian Headstones, and now I have gone back to Wikitree and categorize cemetery listings when I can. There are different types of researchers. Some just take the photos and post them. Others, like me, like to do the research on who they are. I am obsessed with connecting the families, and so I virtually wander the continent. For the past 2 days, I have been sorting out a cemetery listing for Mountain View Cemetery on Findagrave.

Mountain View is the only cemetery in Vancouver, British Columbia and encompasses about 10 blocks; starting at 31st avenue and going to 43rd. There are 11 sections of the cemetery.

map

From their website

Vancouver’s only cemetery is located west of Fraser St, between 31st Ave and 43rd Ave. Owned and operated by the City of Vancouver since 1886, Mountain View is made up of 106 acres of land with approximately 92,000 grave sites and 145,000 interred remains.

So I have been sorting out the Buss family who are buried in Horne1 closest to the road near the intersection of 33rd and Fraser. Sometimes you have stones with names that you can’t find records for in vitals. BC is lucky to have online archive database through the Royal BC Museum (royalbcmuseum.bc.ca). Rules for privacy are that no data newer than 20 years is available. So I was trying to figure out why I had no records on G. Weiss who died on November 2, 1902, according to the stone. I decided to do a reverse look up, and searched for people who died on that date and found a “Godlove Wise”. Sadly, there is no link for this record to view the death certificate. But you can sometimes find transcriptions through record searches on FamilySearch.org. FamilySearch is run by the LDS Church who are very focused on documentation of ancestry.

Weiss is German, and is pronouced “Wise”. The name literal is a literal translation from German to English, so the name is supposed to written Gottliebe (with an ‘e’ for female) Weiss. The only way I know it was female was a record on FamilySearch for a newspaper record, that simply says

“Weiss- At Vancouver, on Nov. 2nd, Mrs. G. Weiss.”

Buss8

Parking Wars

I live in a cul de sac that has “No Parking” signs on the right hand side of the road. I live at the bottom of the cul de sac. On the light post in the pic, there is a No Parking sign that indicates not on the right side. Lately, my neighbors and I have became regular users of the city’s bylaw parking enforcement line. We call to report cars that are parked in circled area, thus blocking us. Yes we could pass through but at times, the clearance is like a fingernail’s width on either side, so I would rather not. We have had missed garbage pick up, etc because of jackasses who are either ignorant or lazy. What’s worse is that sometimes it is the neighbor that lives there who does this. Their driveway is full of cars, so rather than parking further up the road where it widens (although it is still illegal/ticketable offence), they park in the circled area. screenshot So today, I decided that I should call & email the city and ask if there they would put a sign there… where the rejected exercise bike is located.. so that it is clear and OBVIOUS that one should not park there, thus incuring the wrath of at least the 4 of us who get stuck at that end.

We will see if anything comes of this request.

#parkingwars

Yesterday, I went to coffee with a new group of moms. It was an effort for me to go, but I knew that I needed to get out and meet other people rather than stay home in my comfy bubble doing geneology and facebook land. This group was new to me from facebook, specifically for cargivers to get out. What I found is that it is mostly other ASD moms like me. I am so glad that I went. So in going, I had to introduce myself to this group, which reminded me of the “journey”.

So back to my “heart warriors”. We went back to the cardiologist for a 6 week followup post surgery for my daughter, and the doctor said, well, since he is here, let’s have a listen to [my son]. When they were done of appointment/tests (which consists of an echocardiogram, ECG and then review with doctor), the doctors were stunned. My son’s numbers were worse than my daughter’s had been at the time of her surgery. They needed to keep him in and do surgery on him first thing in the morning.

I remember sitting in some “quiet room” bawling my eyes out. Luckily, my son only needed an angioplasty and was discharged right from the ICU in less than a week. And he has never needed surgery since.

So we moved from a 3 story, 3 bedroom townhouse to a large house in another town. It wasn’t until my daughter was 3 that we finally decided something might be going on. She was non-verbal and had outbursts where she would smash her head on the floors, walls, etc. I was stressed as it was about having twins. These being my first and only children. I was/do living on the opposite coast from my family and had never been around my nieces while they were growing up, so I had no context for “normal”. In the end, we got our daughter assessed and diagnosed for autism when she was 4 years old. The diagnosis came on the first day of school, so I didn’t send her to pre-school with her brother. We got him diagnosed 7 months later. Because the waitlist had seemed so long, we got him assessed privately and then began the task of getting a home ABA therapy team. We already had a home team for our daughter and so it was easy to just add him to the schedule. But it was like a whole new world, new terminology, new everything to learn.

My once non-verbal daughter is now a chatterbox and very artsy. Her brother is more focused on Roblox at the moment, plants vs. zombies, and of course, his first love, Thomas & Friends.