His Pleasant Place : October 2023

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

SPOOKY HALLOWEEN SKY

Tonight at 5:30, after some heavy snow showers, this unusual and stunning sky appeared! Please note, these photos are facing EAST but it looks like a sunrise or sunset.

Thursday, October 26, 2023

NINE DAYS TO GO!

Our oldest daughter's wedding is in 9 days!

Oh my goodness.

We are so excited and happy

for this special day!

We love you Abigail and Eric!

CONGRATS TO OUR GUYS!

Yesterday was a big day for our two guys.

1. BEN: I had an amazing IEP meeting yesterday for Ben. The reports I got from his teachers and speech therapist is that Ben is a very hard worker and very determined to get the work done! He is very smart and is moving ahead in his reading, writing, and math. He is responsible and quite self-independent. He is also being socially appropriate most times at school. It seems like Ben's use of his speech device has been a great help for him in communicating when he is nervous or can't pronounce the complex words he want to say. That's wonderful to hear! And it seems like people at school really enjoy having Ben around. We are so proud of Ben!!!!

Ben also got discharged from occupational therapy at school after 7 years! His handwriting (not his grip, haha- still painful to watch) has greatly improved and his keyboarding skills (hunt and peck) are continuing to move forward.

2. JONAH: Jonah got discharged from outside physical therapy after 2 years of working on his walking (toes pointed in) and his overall core/leg strength to help with his "slippery" knee caps. Because no amount of therapy will be able to correct his knee caps, we are at the point where he has gotten very strong in his muscles and hopefully with that increased strength plus his knee braces, his knees will be safe.

SPOILER ALERT: it's looking like boys will also be discharging from outside speech therapy soon. This one is going to be very hard for me because, especially Jonah, has been in speech therapy since 3 weeks old- that's 13 years at Rehab Resources! They are like family. Of course, it's a blessing to not need therapy anymore, but it's always hard to end the connections you make with your wonderful therapists. I will be meeting with our outside speech therapist in a few weeks to discuss discharge, but school gave me the green light that they agree the boys are ready to only get speech support thru school at this point.

We celebrated the boys' accomplishments yesterday by- you guessed it- Culvers!-and also a donut for Ben. Of course, right?

Please look at the way Ben grips a pencil. Because Ben did not have any occupational therapy during his 1st six years of living in the orphanage, he never learned the proper way to grip a pencil. The occupational therapist at school worked YEARS (2016 to 2021) to try and correct his grip. Slide-on grippers on his pencils work, but using those 100% of the time on all of his options for writing utensils isn't realistic. What we finally decided as a team is to just let him hold his pencil however he wants. Surprising, oer the years, His handwriting has been become quite legible. Plus the other concern with improper grips like Ben's is it will cause the kiddo to have hand fatigue after writing for long periods of time. However, Ben's writing capacity is probably 2-3 sentences at the most. And any longer writing sessions would probably be something that he would be encouraged to type on a keyboard so fatigue is not really a concern.

It is not a pretty grip to observe, but it gets the job done!

Jonah saying good-bye

to his physical therapist.

Thursday, October 19, 2023

THEY'RE LOSING SOCKS AND I'M LOSING MY COOL

Just need to vent.

When you have two boys who

1. Live in the moment

2. Live to have fun all the time

3. Don't have a concept of time to help you understand a few hours ago

4. Have an active imagination

5. Have a hard time with the concept of telling the truth

It makes losing things very frustrating...

Our boys are usually absolutely NO HELP in trying to find something they lost. They look in the most obscure places- like when looking for a shoe, they lift up one of our table lamps! Not much help.

They also answer yes to every question you ask them in trying to figure out where the missing item must be:

"Is it at school? YES. "Is it in the car?" YES "Is it in Antartica?" YES.

Every once in a great while, the stars align, and one of them will immediately know where something is, and thank goodness, because it's usually in the most unexpected place- like a DVD inside our piano or a placemat in our fireplace vent!

Lately they have been misplacing socks. This is because when Jonah gets undressed he has the horrible habit of just throwing his dirty clothes anywhere but the hamper. I have found shirts hanging from the bathroom cabinet and pjs in the bathtub. I am working very hard to get him to nicely put his things in the hamper, but please note I am not only battling mischeviousness but also some OCD tendencies. For Ben, he frequently gets hot so he will just toss his socks wherever he is when he gets his hot flash- I actually can relate to that...haha.

Now lost socks have been a plague of humanity since the beginning of time or sock-wearing at least. We all have the unexplained of phenomena of a sock that goes in the dryer but doesn't come out- it's the magic trick you never wanted to work. While it's weird and slightly annoying dealing with these MIA socks, it's never been something that made me grit my teeth in frustration.

But the boys' losing socks is a different matter. Because when no-show socks slide right off your feet and you don't have the dexterity to manipulate a crew sock over your heel and up, meaning your mom has to help you put on socks but you offer absolutely no help with your foot/leg to help get that sock on, finding and keeping the easiest socks in the world to get on is very important to us! So losing some of these "miracle" socks really bugs me. Over reaction on my part- probably, but somewhat justified, right?

For those of you in my age group, does my quest for the perfect sock at all bring up Seinfeld's Mr. Pitt and his sock drama? SEE BELOW!

To top it off, we are currently trying to find Ben's glasses. Usually Ben is very careful with his things, beside socks. This isn't quite is MO to lose something so important. I'm suspecting his little brother may have played a role in this...

The problem is when I asked Ben where they were he said his teacher took them (LIE). He also looked in his sock (oh, the irony!) for the glasses (NOT A HELP).

* UPDATE: Ben's glasses were found late yesterday afternoon. They were actually in a very logical and expected place: next to his computer at school that he uses during his gaming club on Wednesdays after school. I guess we overthought the possibilities of where they might be and overlooked the simple- our boys keep us on our toes. Plus, the little brother had nothing to do with the disappearance- I'm sorry we wrongfully suspected him.

“Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.”- Corrie Ten Boom

I guess the boys are trying to teach me a very important life lesson. And it's only socks, and glasses, and shoes, and books, and DVDs, etc- haha.