Sunday, September 30, 2012

Pirates

 
People with Autism have things they fixate on. For Daniel right now it's Pirates. He LOVES all things Pirates.
 But was is really fun and exciting for me as a Mom is that this time last year at the beginning of Kindergarten,  it was like pulling teeth to get him to write/draw anything. 6 months later it was like a light switch went on and he was drawing everything. Then suddenly at the beginning of this year he's gone 3D. He makes everything out of paper. Above is a pirate hat he made, below are his "hook" and his peg leg. He gets frustrated as he can see what he wants in his minds eye and tries so hard to duplicate it. He wants to make the jump to wood but he just doesn't have the strength to handle a saw or a hammer.

 If anyone wants to get him something for Christmas send lots of tape and paper. We go through tons! We have to ration it out. But we don't want to stifle this developmental leap for him. He still won't color anything and pictures are drawn with only one color usually black but hey, we're making progress.

Fishing the Kasilof River

As usual I am way behind in blogging, so to start catching up here's a post.
This summer we went again with our now neighbor Lowell Darrington dip net fishing on the Kasilof river. Let me just say I was not looking forward to it... Last year it rained, we got the trailer stuck in the sand and spent several hours getting it out, we were just starting to figure out all of Daniel's problems and he would just scream and cry the whole time. I was really dragging my feet about going but I am SO glad we did.
We hit 3 beautiful days in a row of glorious sunshine which is rare up here. I stayed in the sun as much as I could trying to take in my yearly dose of Vitamin D for the year. We went not only with Lowell but 2 other neighbor families as well and it was good to get to know them better.
Reagan found this rope on the beach and decided it was her Rapunzel hair. That's one of the neighbor kids behind her. Unfortunately this was the only picture we took while there. They had a blast playing on the beach. When the tide came in one day I took Daniel and Reagan down to play in the water- talk about a mud fight. I should have gotten pictures. They were covered in mud.  Daniel has spent the last year in physical and occupational therapy which made a world of a difference this year. They worked with him on the sensory issues and feeling the sand wasn't an issue this year and he's stronger now so he can handle walking through the sand which took so much out of him last year. It was really good for me to go with him again this year and to be able to see the difference  between the two years and the progress he has made.
We came home with about 15 fish per family which is fine for us as we aren't huge fish eaters and I still have some canned from previous years.
It was a beautiful, wonderful trip with sunny weather, 3 volcano's in the distance, the ocean, sand at our feet. Here's hoping we can replicate it next year!