So what's Alan been up to?

It may seem that I've been overly preoccupied with Joe lately.  In a big part, it has been because I see so much of him every day.  He is not working yet (please God, let that happen soon!) and therefore I think of him a lot.  My last few blogs were about Father's Day (and after all, Joe is the one who first made us parents) and the cats (and Joe was the one who really wanted both Misty and Diesel) and so I really haven't said much about Alan -- although I did arrange a funny collection of his climbing pictures on Facebook!

But Alan has actually been having a very good summer.  His first week was rough.  Despite having our back to school "conversation" that made me so happy, his first week of summer school had some difficult hellish afternoons.

A big part of it was just the different schedule.  He used to get home from school around 4 pm.  We eat early around here so he could have a snack and easily make it to dinner time.  But now he was getting home at 12:30.  Uh oh!  That didn't cut it.  He actually had to eat some healthy stuff or play or something to pass the time.  He spent the first four days sitting less than three feet away from me saying "medicine, medicine, medicine" until I thought I would lose it.

Unfortunately this picture wasn't zoomed.  This is how close he would sit to me -- ALL afternoon!

After Alan figured out the schedule, he has practically been my dream child.  He has been doing amazingly well at school, too.  He is really getting the hang of his school issued iPad with the communication program Go Talk Now.

When he wanted to watch his videos, he used to sit in front of the TV holding the DVD box in his hand and just bellow "downstairs" (when he was upstairs) and "blue ball" (when he was in the basement -- long story!)  Of course he never (or rarely) watched TV on the main floor.  Figures.

After a little work he now goes and gets his talker (what we call the school issued iPad) and proceeds to press the buttons so that he tells us what video he wants to watch -- and NO bellowing.  He is even doing this for the babysitter and when we had company over.  The best was when he tracked down both of us (on different occasions) when we were nowhere near the talker and handed it to us.  Success!!!!

And this is how he gets out of bed in the morning.

For those that do not know, Alan has apraxia (an oral motor planning problem) so that when he wants to say something, that isn't always what comes out of his mouth.  I knew this, but it has been sort of awe-inspiring to see the way the GTN has improved his ability to communicate and really cut down on the screaming.

Some very clear examples are the time he verbally asked for a cherry pop-tart but typed out blueberry on the talker.  I gave him the blueberry and he took it without a fuss.  If he had truly wanted the cherry, this would have been a time to pitch a fit, but he happily accepted the blueberry.

And just this afternoon he asked for The Star of Christmas DVD (a Veggie Tales movie) verbally, but I waited until he had typed in on the talker and what he really wanted to watch was Thomas' Ultimate Christmas.  So here were two very obvious times that would have caused stress in the house if we had listened to what he said but by using the talker, we bypassed the difficulty.

Now we just have to move him into abstract concepts.  OK, that might be a bit down the road.