Today at Preschool, Jonah had a royal feast. He came home wearing this crown and he was so happy to have it on that i had to snap a few pictures of it. He kept standing in front of the mirror checking out his cool head gear. It was pretty cute (and yes, i realize the pics are all pretty much the same--but i wanted to post them all anyway).

Our afternoon at Wheeler Farm

It was 82 degrees today (and i'm sure it will snow tomorrow)! I was so excited to walk in the warm sunshine with the kids at the Wheeler Farm Park...and then my preggo self got too hot. I should have done what Tobin did to cool off. You see, i was snapping pictures of Jonah chasing the ducks and when i turned around to check on Tobin, i saw that he waddled into the little creek. He, of course, thought nothing of it and happily splashed around in the cool water until i made him get out. The tantrums quickly started once i stopped Tobins fun and we headed home. It was a great afternoon. Here's some snaps of the fun.




I think that Jonah thinks his calling in life is to chase ducks



Petting the sheep...Elmo did it too



I LOVE this picture--Tobin giving the tractor the his famous dirty look.

Update on the boys

This is mainly for my M.I.L.; but anyone, feel free to read on.

Well, as many of you may already know, Jake and i have been working with Jonah at home on improving his developmental delays. Jake read a book called Behavioral Intervention for Children with Autism which introduces and teaches parents how to do ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) therapy with your autistic child to improve their autistic behaviors. It helps with speech, communication, reasoning, understanding.... Anyway, we of course are not educated specialists in this type of therapy, but the book has a 100 page program that isnt hard to understand and follow, and its set up for parents to do with their children at home--but it is a strict program. At first, working with Jonah wasnt so bad. He was interested and engaged in the activities we would do with him and would respond fairly well. We saw good improvements and felt confident in what we were doing with him. But now, being in our 4th week, i feel like it is almost torture working with Jonah wit this ABA therapy. Jonah doesnt like it anymore, and it gets us very frustrated each time we work with him. Its almost like he is getting bored with it--or perhaps he doesnt like the rigid way the program works (award them when they respond right, and when they dont respond right, you reinforce that they didnt get it right). We should ideally get in 4-5 hours a day of this therapy, but it just isnt realistic. With a home and another kid to take care of, we are only gettinng about 2 1/2 hours of it in a day (if even that). I have become more lazy with doing this therapy becuase i dread it so much. The problem is this therapy has been scientifically shown to be very effective in improving autistic childrens behaviors and communication, so we want to continue doing it--we do believe that it will work for Jonah if we can just keep him engaged and keep ourselves from getting impatient. What to do?? Well, we were referred to an lady here in Utah who does in home consultations and therpay using this ABA method among many other therapies. She is specilized in Special Education and Autism Intervention and we are certain she will be able to help us become better teachers. She can also come in a few times a week and work with Jonah too. Of course the fee is hefty, but we are going to try and find a way to make it work. We meet with her this Wednesday and we'll be able to get a better idea of what Jonah needs and what we can do to help him. Jonah is also in speeech therapy right now at the U of U and since we are paying for that, we will need to decide whether or not to keep it or drop it. He is doing well in speech therapy, but we arent seeing improvements there as quickly as we thought we would. Of course, it is still too early to tell (he has been doing it for only about 5 or 6 weeks) I guess we will decide after the consultation what we will do. But Jonah in general is happy and he is communicating better. He is still such a pleasant and well behaved kid and we are proud of him for the improvements he has made so far. He will say "I want" instead of "do you want" which is good. But there is still a long way to go. The challenge continues....

Toby--well, is has been almost a month since he has had tubes in his ears. The main thing we have noticed is that he doenst sleep well anymore (he used to be an AWESOME sleeper). The doctors dont understand why this is, but hopefully he will sleep better soon. He wakes up most nights crying and we can usually let him cry himself to sleep, but sometimes need to go in and pat his back so he can get back to sleep. The problem with this is it keeps me awake. My heightened preggo mom senses snap on once i hear the smallest cry from him and it sometimes keeps me up for hours even after he has fallen back asleep. Hopefully this will all stop soon. As for his ear infections, he has had one since the tubes went in. I obviously knew because of the drainiage coming from his ear and i already has the antibiotic drops to help it so that ear infection wasnt a problem. Now, we just need to work on sleeping. I NEED SLEEP!

Big smiles

13 weeks along

I remember when i was 13 weeks along with my first baby, my stomach was flat as a board. Boo hoo. Those days are gone.

Tobin's obsession

Tobin has a new love--stealing fruit from the table and taking nibbles. Occasionally he will eat the whole apple, but usually he just leaves his teeth marks like a little rat. It was cute at first but now it just gets on my nerves. I of course moved the fruit to the kitchen counter where he couldnt reach it. I'm sure he will now find something else to destroy......

Jonah's 4th Birthday Party

Jonah's birthday party this year was great. Since he has been having some social anxiety issues these past couple of months, we decided to keep his party much smaller than the usual crowd to keep him from getting overwhelmed. When people started arriving, Jonah didnt want to come out of his room. I figured it would be another year where we were opening his gifts, but alas he surprised us all by slowly inching out of his room (with a little help from Dad) to say hello to his birthday guests. He quickly got happy and the party began. It was great! I was so excited to see Jonah opening his own presents, and even understanding that he needed to blow out his birthday candles. He put forth an awesome effort. Unfortuantely, he doesnt know how to blow, but he can suck air in. So as he was perched in front of that little candles flame sucking the air in with all his might, the other kids helped blow the candles out. Jonah's favorite book is Dr Seuss' Fox in Socks, so he was pretty excited to see Mr Fox on his birthday cake (yes, i made the cake--can i brag about that? hehe) Jonah loved all of his presents. He was happy to be able to open a present under his new lightning mcqueen towel, stand on his new scooter, and show everyone his little wooden horse. But the "biggest hit" gift of the night had to be Jonahs new goldfish, who's name happens to be Dorothy. Anyone who knows Jonah knows that he loves Elmo's pet fish Dorothy. Thank heavens Uncle Shaggy (Skyler) was cool enough to use this knowledge wisely and purchase an exact look alike Dorothy for Jonah's birthday. And yes, the fish is still alive. Each day Jonah gives Dorothy (well, the fishbowl) a kiss. Pretty darn cute.
Happy Birthday Jonah--In a week (since his real birthday isnt until April 9th)! And thank you everyone for coming and making it a great birthday for our squishy!

...and for those of you who are going to ask me why we celebrated Jonah's bday so early; it was so Aunt Allison, Uncle Scott, and cousins Abe, and Henry could be there. They are sadly moving to Seattle in a couple of days. We will miss them so.

Toby's got the tubes

Thats right--after several ear infections and a bit of a speech delay, we decided to get tubes in Tobin's ears. Well, i guess we didnt decide, the ENT did, but you get the idea. Jake brought Toby to the hospital early Monday morning, and was home 2 hours later. The surgery only took 15 minutes, but was very effective. The doc said there was a ton of gunk packed into Tobys ears. Apparently everything Tobin was hearing was muffled. I dont know how long it has been like that, but each time we ask him to say "mama", he said "baba". Anyway....Jake said that when Tobin got out of surgery he was aunrey as all get out, squirming around and getting upset at everyone. Was this the anesthesia or just our normal little boy? Most likely a bit of both. So, it has been 2 days and Tobin is doing great. In fact, and hour after he got home, he was doing great. I bet he is feeling a lot better since there is no longer heaps of goop clogging his ears. Thank heavens for the tubes.