Fork you! Revisited, and some cool summer school updates!

In general, I'm not really bugged by a lot of Jaymes more obsessive behaviors. As long as daddy isn't home, it's fine by me that things aren't perfect. The filling bags with toys and lugging them around... I'm fine with it. Filling boxes with stuff and stacking them, no biggie. Filling a trash bag with blankets, whatever floats his boat.

But really, this fork thing is getting ridiculous. He spends all day long taking forks, lining them up on the table, or taking the entire silverware holder and dumping everything into the dog bowl. It's constant, it's incredibly messy, and it's time consuming for me. Every time he does it, I then have to wash all the silverware again, put it all away in each little compartment (spoons, forks, etc). Not to mention taking a single fork away (god forbid you take all of them away) starts a thunderous bellowing of "I WANT FORK" followed by hysterical screaming. Fun fun.

Similarly annoying is the crayon obsession. Every crayon, marker, or pen in the house goes into the dog bowl to be carried around until mommy isn't looking, at which point decoration of the house using said coloring implements will ensue. Shoot me now, he colored on the wall with ink and you know how Jason is about that. It is exhausting to live in the same house as a Jaymes and an OCD neat freak. Seriously.

Whining aside, Jaymes has been doing pretty well. His speech has been at an all time high, his comprehension as well, and his behavior is pretty above average. He's been hyper and wild, but I can live with that if all the other things are good.

Summer school ended Friday, and Jaymes received a GLOWING report from his teacher. Apparently Jaymes made significant progress toward his IEP goals, something the regular school (incidentally the same folks who told me summer school was just daycare pretty much) has been unable to accomplish. According to his summer school teacher...


"Jaymes has progressed toward his IEP goals. He is able to identify his name across settings, as well as read the days of the week. He is expressing his wants and needs using "I want...". Jaymes can expressively identify all of his peers, teachers, and some of the ESY staff using complete sentences and proper pronouns. (Ex. "his name is..."). He is counting with some verbal prompts. it is sometimes difficult to hear him speak because his voice is low. It was a pleasure having Jaymes in class."

May I just say that is was a pleasure having a teacher write these things on a progress report for Jaymes? Thank you, Mrs. Ehrens, you were an excellent teacher and any students of yours will be the better for it. Jaymes has accomplished so much in that one month of summer school. He NEVER say "her name is Sierra, his name is daddy" before. He did it the other day and I was blown away- it was incredible. Jaymes have a great memory for names, and he loves to tell me who people are. I love to contrast in this IEP progress report compared to the last one that said something along the lines of "Jaymes has no functional communication system" blah blah blah BS. I am so so proud of my little man and everything he's accomplished in that one short month of summer school. Good for him, good for his teacher, good for us too.

I've been trying to start tying up loose ends before school starts on the 25th. We need to have another IEP meeting, because I'm still not cool with shutting my kid away in another classroom away from his peers simply because he's different. I've had a hard time trying to request this meeting, as everyone is away. The new prinicipal is on some kind of principal's retreat, the vice principal doesn't start until the 10th... So there's no one to ask! Ok, nothing I can do I guess, and really trying to set it up early was for the school's benefit anyway. I thought the earlier it was done, the less hectic it would be for them, but as long as we have it before the first day of school, all is well. We'll see.

I also left a message with transportation to make sure Jaymes' safety harness was ordered and will be ready for the first day of school. There have been so many mishaps and issues with the bus situation that I really want to be sure everything is set ahead of time. I'm sure it will be, they seem pretty good over there.

Anyway, that's what we've been up to. Using our words, collecting forks, calling to get school stuff ready... Oh and potty training Sierra, who is now a big girl wearing panties!