Awesome IEP

Well we had Evan's IEP on Thursday and I am very happy to say that it went very well. I am thrilled with the school he is going to and all the services that he is going to recieve. Here it is in a nutshell:

PT - 50 minutes 1x a week
OT - 30 mins 1x a week
Speech - 30 mins 1 x a week
Adaptive PE - 30 mins 1x a week
Feeding - up to 15 sessions in the school year

The main thing that I wanted was to get PT provided by the District so I came away very happy, the meeting went really well and I did not feel tense or nervous the whole time and I felt that everyone really had Evan's best interest in mind. My husband was there and he was reluctant to attend at first thinking he was there just because I was forcing him to be, and he left very glad that he went. I told him that he is required to attend these meetings once a year, and I think now he really understands that it is important. He sometimes feels out of the loop because sometimes I forget to tell him things or I tell him and he is not listening. You know a typical husband.

Evan is going to a Headstart preschool which collaborates with the County office of education to provide the program to special education children. So there will be a team of teachers or paraeducators consisting of the Head Start teacher, her assistants, the Special Education teacher and 2-3 para educators. In the class there are 15 typical children and 5 special needs children.

I can't say how excited I am about this program, I think it is going to be great for Evan and I just have a feeling that he will flourish in this program. The program last year certainly left something to be desired and even the program specialist for preschool apologized to me for the unorganization etc but it was pretty much out of her hands because they had such a hard time finding a teacher.

The speech therapist is very well educated in the use of his Dynavox and is going to make that a major goal with Evan, so I am hoping we can replace some of his pointing and grunting with use of the Dynavox. I am actually letting her take it home to do some programming on it and then she will be able to show me some of what she has in mind for Evan and I can carryover what they are doing at school. The special ed teacher made some awesome goals for him and I am just really excited about this new year for him.

Some other things that are going to happen are a psychological exam to see where he is cognitively etc. I am rating him at about 2years level in most areas, so I am curious to see what the professionals say, this is going to happen sometime this year. Also, the inclusion specialist from our local elementary school is going to come and evaluate Evan in the spring to see if he is ready to go to a regular kindergarten with assistance or what other options are available for him. I am not ready for this to be happening but at least I put it off until March or so.

All in all, things went well. We go see the neurologist on September 4th to review the EEG and sleep study that he had, so I will update on that.

Fun at the Skate Park

We took Gabriel to the Skate park with his friend Nicholas, he looks like such a big kid with all his gear on. He thinks he is pretty cool as well. He is going down the ramp on his skateboard which kind of freaks me out and he also wants to go in the swimming pool type ramps and I am just not ready for that yet but I guess I cannot hold him back forever he is going to keep on growing up whether I like it or not.

What a cool kid!

Do you see the ramp that he goes up and down, it is like going back and forth between two driveways.

Here he is coming back up the ramp

Guess what Evan learned to do all by himself?

Yes, this is a picture of my Evan drinking out of a drinking fountain all by himself! Can you believe it? He just went over there all by himself and started drinking. I told my husband about it and he said that he had done it once before when they were at the park, I guess he forgot to tell. Evan was soaked needless to say but he was able to get a drink whenever he wanted which was great for me.

What a big boy, now I just need to teach to use lefty and to make he does not put him mouth on the piece.

10 Years

Yesterday, August 8, 2008 was our 10 year anniversary. It was so fun looking back at our wedding album to see how young and skinny we were then. It is wonderful to see how far we have come. We fought for custody of Cynthia and tried to make sure she was safe. We endured a miscarriage, and the rejoiced with the birth of our son Gabriel in 2001 and our son Evan in 2004, we also made the tough decision not to have anymore children. We survived buying our first house, first car and furniture. We survived selling the house, living with Rudy's parents, moving into our new house, Evan's Cerebral diagnosis and all the new things that came with that. We also had unemployment and a car accident to deal with. Everything with Evan is always going to be going on so that is just a road that will be sometimes more bumpier than others. Dealing with being a one income family is hard at times also. But we have come through all of this stronger than ever. If there is ever advice that I can give to anyone who is in a relationship or looking for one is that it is so important to be friends first, Rudy is one of my best friends, we tell each other everything, I think it helps keep communication open in the relationship.

Not the best pic because I took it while it was still in my scrapbook

Anyway, last night my sister watched the kids and we went to movie. We saw Batman Dark Knight, it was good. A nice neutral movie that we both could enjoy. We talked about making it a monthly event. I hope that we can do it more often for sure.

Even though we have our good moments and bad moments I feel very blessed to have met Rudy and to be married to him. He is a good husband and father and he works really hard for our family. Even though it is hard to imagine what our lives will be like in 40 years, I can see us celebrating 50 years when I am 72 and he is 74. I hope that we have many more healthy, happy years together.

I also got a card and beautiful roses and Rudy even sprinkled a few on the floor in the hallway, he is so cute sometimes, of stuff he thinks to do. It was so thoughtful.

Why I love Scrapbooking

Most of you that know me, know that I love to scrapbook and it is something that I spend time on and take pride in, also it is very relaxing for me. I love to go to the scrapbook store with my friends and spend the whole day there. Most of us have special needs children and we use respite and head up to the scrapbook store by lunchtime, spend the afternoon scrapping, have dinner and then do a few more hours of scrapbooking. Anyway, I was changing out the pages in Gabriel's age 1-2yrs album and his 2-3yr album, and I just thought it was so great that he has these memories of his life that he will be able to look back on. I love showing off my scrapbooks to anyone who will sit and look at them. It will be especially nice when he is older and getting married and having children of his own. Same for Cynthia, although, I do not have as many pics of her beginning years. The only thing is that I do not have all the pics saved on discs because a lot of them were taken before we had a digital camera.



I love that my kids will be able to look at their albums and read about the little things that happened that perhaps they did not remember. Like when Gabriel was in the hospital with pneumonia when he was 2yrs. I love scrapbooking and I think it is such a special thing that I can do for my family. I am hoping that my sister n law will catch the bug with me. And then I hope to pass it on to my daughter and my nieces and perhaps my daugther n' law also. I just imagine looking down from heaven at my family and seeing my descendants looking at the scrapbooks and talking about how I started our family on this tradition.



So my next projects are to get my grandma's pics and write down her stories and then I want to redo my wedding album.



I have the following albums for the kids:

Cynthia - birth to 5 years, 5-10 years, 10-15 years, 15 years to present, school album that has elementary school promotion, junior high promotion, and high school stuff in it, and I will probably use it for college acheivements as well.



Gabriel - 1st year album, 1yr-2yr album, 2yr-3yr album, 3yr-5yr album, 5-6 1/2years, 6 1/2 years to present, school album that will cover up to eighth grade.



Evan- 1st year album, 1yr-2 1/2, 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 and I am going to start another one when I get some refill pages for the new album I just bought.



Then we have a family album that starts from just different parts of our lives before we had Gabriel, then we have albums starting from 2003 that document events in the family month by month, and I use calendar pages for those. Well, I put the month page up on the fridge and then write things in it that happened that month and then I put the pictures that correspond with the events that happened. So we are going on our 5th family album so far. I am trying to fit two years in each album. Doing pretty good with 2008 so far.

I also have a Christmas album, it is where I put all the cards that we get from Christmas, and I love when I can show multiple year of a particular family. I have a few families that I have 5 or 6 years of their pics. I have 2 christmas albums so far. I will have to start a new one for this year.

Ok, well that is my little soapbox about scrapbooking.

August is a busy month!

So here is what we have happening for August, it is sure to be a jam-packed month and it will go by fast:

This week and for the next two weeks I have Sophia for 4 days instead of the usual two.

Friday August 8th- 10 year Anniversary for Rudy and I

Monday August 11th- PT at 9am and my two older nieces will be with us during the day all week, so I will have 5 kids in my care.

Tuesday August 12th- 3pm Follow up at Shriner's

Wednesday August 13th - 9am Evan will get leads for 24hr EEg

Thursday August 14th- get leads from EEG taken off

Friday August 15th - Pay day and Hippotherapy, pick up Cynthia from her Mom's

Monday August 18th- PT at 9am

Tuesday August 19th - Evan has sleep study at 8pm, my mom's group is also that night so I am going to call tomorrow to reschedule the sleep study so I can go to the Mom's group

Wednesday August 20th - Speech Therapy with Karen Gale who will probably now being doing monthly visits to Evan's preschool so I will not get to see her anymore, which will be sad because she has been seeing Evan for feeding and speech since 3-06

Friday August 22nd- Hippo therapy

Monday August 25th- Back to school for Cynthia (she will be a junior) and Gabriel who will be in 2nd grade. Time sure flies

Wednesday August 27th- Evan will have Endoscopy test at Sutter Memorial and then have the Ph Probe inserted. He has to be put under for this which is always nerve racking but we have not had any problems so far and he has been put under a total of 3 times now.

Thursday August 28th- Evan's IEP and we leave for Downieville. Evan is staying with his respite worker, I am looking forward to a break and so is Rudy.

Sunday August 31st- Come home from Downieville

Tuesday September 2nd- Evan starts preschool at Markhoffer Headstart, I am really excited I think this will be a great year for him. I am so amazed that in December I have to register him for Kindergarten, I will register him at Franklin Elementary where Gabe attends but I doubt he will attend there. Have to register him just in case he can attend with an aide or something.

Save the Date for September 6th which will be my commencement ceremony for my Bachelor degree. I am so excited, I want to invite everyone I know to share in this achievement with me.

I am nervous for the tests especially the EEG and sleep study, I am so scared that it is going to show that Evan is having more seizures at night, or that he is having nothing and that his breathing and such is fine also and it is just behavioral, then what will I do. I wil feel like it is all my fault for letting him sleep with me. But really I felt that I have no other choice if we both want to get a decent night sleep. The endoscopy should tell us if he has damaged his espophagous and the Ph Probe will tell us if he is having any refluxing and needs to be on Meds.

A busy month for us and I have a feeling September will be some of the same, then we will be in October and before we know it the year will be over.

Here is a cute pic of the boys in the bath

PT in the Park

So we have the greatest Physical Therapist now through Children's Therapy Center in Woodland. We are funding it through our medical insurance since the school district did not provide it last year and at CCS our therapist went on maternity leave and was supposed to come back in July but I have not heard anything from her yet, plus I was not happy with her and they cut his therapy to one time a month.

So we now have Rika who is awesome, she has so much energy, she just goes and goes with Evan from the time she walks in the door to the time she leaves.


Here is Evan trying to swing on the bars, they are
working on him holding with both hands.



Going down the slide

Trying out the tire swing, he was not
thrilled with this, Evan does not like
spinning, he likes regular swinging but not the
spinning or places where he feels like he will fall or something.

Ahh, the special needs swing at the park, this worked out better,
yet another opportunity for him to use two hands, he was doing pretty
well trying to use lefty.

So we were at the park at 9am and there was nobody else there,
except for the squirrels, there were tons of squirrels and Evan was
very interested in finding them, so Rika showed him how to stick a
branch through the wood to look for the squirrels, it was really cute.

The park we went to is called Miwuk park and it is an accessible playground. Not as great as the Kloss park which has the wheelchair swing and ramps up to the slides and such. But this park is all wood and has steps and platforms that a child in a wheelchair or walker could access parts of the playground. With Evan I get really scared at parks because he is not able to go down the fire pole or climb up the other contraptions that they have. At this park there is not anything like that, it is a fancy park with slides and such but they are accessed by the steps or stairs that would be easy for a child who is crawling, or walking or even for a parent who is carrying a child who is not yet able to do those things. This is a park where Evan would be able to play with other kids and I would not have to be there right behind him the whole time. I really look for parks like this so that I can take him and still be able to tend to Sophia, and a place that Gabriel thinks is cool also, so now I can add Miwuk Park and Kloss park to our list of Evan-friendly parks.

I am also really excited about our therapist Rika, I just cannot say enough about her, she is going to write a report to support my request for the school district to provide PT for Evan. Ideally, they would just pay for her but who knows what will happen. I think she will even attend his IEP which is great.

We have the IEP on August 28th

I've been Tagged

Here's how it works: For each question, look up the answer on Google image search. Then choose your favorite image from the FIRST PAGE OF RESULTS ONLY.

Name- when I type in my name all that comes up are pics of friends kids from their blogs(what's up with that?) This is my friends son who has the same brain malformation as Evan.

Favorite Food - There are so many too list but this is a yummy one

First Job- Camp Sacramento

Nickname- Stace( I chose this pic because Evan loves horses)

Where I was born- San Francisco

Bad Habit- Yelling at the kids





Degree-Business Management





Where I want to go- On a cruise with my hubby






My Favorite Place- At Green Tangerines with my friends






Favorite Color- Red






Favorite Animal- A springer Spaniel (this one reminds of my childhood dog Buster)










What I'm doing right now- I should be sleeping but instead I am blogging



Where I live- Elk Grove





My Past Love-rest, relaxation, time to myself etc.


My favorite object- my new mineral makeup, I think it works great.



My Grandmother's Name- Frances

My Age