Feeling blessed.

Some nights, when I'm feeling nostalgic, I find myself perusing old blog posts.

This blog is pretty old. It was created B.A. (before autism). Crazy, right? It's been here through the diagnosis, the 'tough years' (to put it incredibly lightly) and the awesome progress that we have been privileged to see.

A couple of things struck me tonight.

First, it's *amazing* what we forget. Things that seemed SO HUGE back then, the horrible stuff... I don't even remember it now. Without this blog to remind me, it's like it never even happened. This is stuff I thought I'd never make it through, and now it's nothing. That is crazy. Screaming spells. Knocking things off walls and flipping furniture. The Hubs and I were talking about how weird it is that we didn't remember it until I re-read it, or we didn't remember it at all. Supports the whole autism/PTSD theory!

Looking through those old posts, I realized how far JT has come. He is nothing short of phenomenal.

Never talk? Intellectual disability? WRONG. JT is slowly phasing out of his self-contained classroom with the goal being him in a mainstream classroom all day. His teacher has said she sees him not needing special education in a few years.

How nuts is that? Our kid was diagnosed as moderate/severe, and he is in a mainstream classroom or the resource room most of his day. He went to regular summer camp this year and did great. He is taking gymnastics at a gym that has zero experience with special needs kids, but the instructor says he'd love to have JT in his class because he did 'fantastic'.

We are blessed. Lucky. Beyond measure.

JT is a miracle in progress. All it takes is one night browsing old posts to remind me how far he has come, and how bright his future really is.

When things don't go as planned.

This past week, we signed Audrey up for taekwondo. We also agreed on a 2-week trial for JT.

Last week he did decent in class. There were some instances where he had to be redirected, but nothing huge.

Fast forward to today. Things did not even go semi-okay. He wasn't listening at all. Doing random stuff while the instructor attempted to teach.

Finally he started rolling on the floor.

I went and got him and walked him to the back of the room. It was a mortifying 'walk of shame' to the front of the room in front of all the parents sitting in the back watching their 3-5 year olds participate.

This time I didn't cry. I clenched my jaw and took a deep breath. When I got him to the back of the room, I calmly explained he would not be doing karate again, and we discussed what good listening skills.

I'm not stressing about it as much as I once would have. The moment is over. It's done. We won't have to do it again.

I'm just hoping gymnastics tomorrow goes better for Mr. JT. He is so excited about it, he has been begging to go. They have never dealt with special needs kids, though, so I'm a little worried about that. He will have to behave well in order for them to allow him to continue after his trial tomorrow.

So cross your fingers for us, pray, send us positive vibes... We can REALLY use them.

Week 1 of Back to School - SUCCESS

HOORAY!!!

Week 1 of the kids' school is done, and we are settling into our routine. We have martial arts 2 nights (for Audrey, JT is trying for 2 weeks to see if he'll do well in the class), Audrey has gymnastics 1 night, and I have class 2 nights.


In a news flash, grad school is really freaking hard. I LOVE it, and the material is awesome. But it is very difficult.

I start work in the pre-k class next week, and I am SUPER excited. We seriously have the cutest, sweetest kids ever in there. It will be a fun year!

Audrey loves gymnastics. She is really good at it. At her class last week, The Hubs sent me a text that said, "We should have never dropped gymnastics for her. She's good at this." She had a BLAST, too.
She ROCKS at martial arts. The guy doing their new student evaluations asked if she'd been trained somewhere else. She was really THAT good. I was super proud.

JT is a crazy hilarious kid. At their new student eval he preferred to take the craziest approach possible to hit a pad. However, the majority of the time he did listen and try to comply. I think he will do exponentially better in a group class when other kids are all performing the same things. I made the call to put JT in the 3-5 year old class (instead of the 6-8 year old). He acts more like the lower age group, and when I asked insisted he wanted to be in the little kid class. It will help him because he won't feel out of place (believe it or not) and

the instructors will be accustomed to his behavior in the lower age range classes, too. He's not out of control, just immature.

Hopefully it works out, if not, it wasn't mean to be... we'll just find something else JT would like to do. We did find something else Audrey LOVES in the process (you have never seen a kid hit a pad with so much enthusiasm as she did I promise you), and something that will help with her self-confidence for sure.