Look, I see a motor home!

We are on day two of our eastern trek vacation. Currently I'm typing this blog on my laptop in the front seat of our car. Talk about staying connected! Fantastic! Technology is wonderful. I thought I had better get some thoughts "down on paper" before we continue on with the vacation. My memory span seems to be shrinking as my and my age and my waist line grow.

Thursday we left East Lansing by 8:00 am. Not bad considering we had decided we'd leave between 7:30 and 8:00. I've mentioned before the Sneathen's are nothing, if not efficient. We had a stop on the way that was over 45 minutes. That is a very long aside about a prescription and I don't want to bore you with it. We arrived to our destination of Niagara Falls that day by 2:00. The kids did remarkable in the car. As I believe I mentioned, the car ride was making me nervous. Daniel has the unfortunate problem of getting car sick. He seems to be fine if he's just riding. All of our attempts over the years at using DVD players have ended with Daniel either a. moaning and crying from a stomach ache/headache or b. us scrambling to grab a wadded up McDonald's bag from the floor of the car for him to throw up into. Either way they are both unattractive options. With his memory, that sticks with him...forever. He doesn't want to repeat it. Reading and playing Nintendo DS obviously end with the same results since in all instances he is staring at something with the world whizzing past his window.

Last year we bought Daniel an Ipod for his birthday. My thought was that he could listen to "his" music and we could mercifully listen to something ourselves. You see, he also has had a "thing" about the radio. When he is in the car, it must be off. There has been no negotiating this. I have always chalked it up to the fact that it is too random. You don't know what's next, you don't know if annoying Dj's will talk for 15 minutes, or if a "scary" commercial will come on for something that terrifies you. If I tried to leave it on, panic would ensue and he would start escalating. So, we left it off, and drove in silence. Well, not silence, since he is normally chatting or singing or repeating videos. After a while MY sensory system would go into overdrive and the constant noise. Therefore, driving long distances has been avoided. Luckily for Zachary he can happily play his Nintendo DS, read, and/or put the head phones to his Ipod in his ears and can check out of the whole situation.

Before Charlevoix, our vacation last week, I loaded up Todd's Ipod with songs, and bought an adapter for the car so we could listen to Todd's ipod through the stereo system. This worked on the way to Charlevoix and he tolerated this music. After a while he'd ask for it to turn off. It wasn't a real long time that he would leave it on, but it was helpful to break up the monotony of things.

Yesterday, on the way to Niagara, somewhere in Canada, we, for the 927th time this year, suggested that Daniel listen to his Ipod. The thing that was different this time was Daniel said, "I can't listen to my Ipod, I'll get car sick". DOH! All this time he thought he'd get car sick if he listened to music. Why not? He gets car sick when he tries to do anything else! We assured him that when you listen to music you don't get car sick, it's only when you are looking at something with your eyes. He decided to give it a try.
This picture is Daniel and how happy he was after he figured this out!! Can I just say this? OMG! It is unfriggin' believable. He is SOOOOO happy. He is listening to his favorite symphonies. He is LOUDLY (since he has headphones on and doesn't understand that he is yelling!) saying the things that he always does, like, "LOOK, it's a motor home" (literally every single motor home he says this about since looking inside our neighbors this spring, thanks Laura!) Or "here come the bassoons" or "it's the baritone, just like I play". He can identify any instrument by sound in the midst of listening to a symphony. It is quite amazing. The fact that his mind replays the video from Fantasia as he listens is an obvious advantage. It seems like he is seeing the whole video as he listens. He is saying things like, "the dinosaurs are fighting, the dinosaurs are stuck in the mud, one just died" This is him describing what is going on in the video as he listens to the music. He knows the visual at the exact moment in the song. He is in his GLORY. We all are. It has totally changed our driving dynamics. At this very moment, Daniel is listening to his Ipod, Zachary is playing his DS, I'm blogging and Todd is mercifully listening to XM radio, to WHATEVER he wants! It's AMAZING! Who knew all we had to do was lock Daniel in a car for 5 hours to figure all of this out? So once again, it goes to show you that getting our kids out, experiencing life, trying things, as scary as it can be sometimes, is, in my opinion the way to go. I could have paid his therapist big money to try to help us with the music in the car issue, but we didn't need to, we figured it out. We are now wondering if the radio will now be acceptable to have on even if he doesn't have on his Ipod. Maybe he always thought he'd get carsick if he listened to the radio. We haven't had the chance to figure that out yet, even though today's drive is 8 hours, he's had his Ipod on the WHOLE time . . .LOOK mom,I see another MOTOR HOME!

Being Connected

As I was minding my own business on vacation last week and trying not to confuse myself by planning for my next vacation which was to start three days after I get home from this vacation (I know, tough life right?), I obsessively checked my Blackberry for the 1,497Th time. Yes, I have a "crackberry", so aptly nicknamed. Last fall I went into my local Verizon store because my phone contract was up and I'd been getting all sorts of tempting "deals" sent to me. I had 45 minutes one day before I had to pick up Daniel and I dropped into the store to see what they had. I had no intention of upgrading to the Blackberry. Nevertheless, the beauty and actually, practicality of the whole thing sucked me in. The fact that it was pink had NOTHING to do with it. Really. I walked (ran) out of the store in a rush to pick up Daniel on time with a new Blackberry in hand. I am not an impulsive person, so this came as quite a shock to my husband. I tend to research things to DEATH before I buy anything. I wrestle with the price in relation to need, I drive myself crazy. But committing myself to a 2 year contract with data plan, apparently wasn't a problem for me. I had a bit of buyers remorse afterward, but mostly, I love my phone.

On many occasions being able to quickly email people during a meeting has saved a LOT of time. I love the calendar and always having it with me to coordinate and not have to get back to people after checking it at home. It works for me. Add the laptop onto our list of electronics and I now check email more times a day than I'd like to admit. Add in facebook and I am connected all the time to every one I know. Frankly, I like it that way. Oh, I understand the downside of these things. I can't tell you how many times during a meeting that I am thinking, "don't check your Blackberry, don't check your Blackberry, it's rude". I, mostly, don't. It has come in handy keeping in better communication with the school. They know I'm fairly easy to reach.

So when I was in Charlevoix this week and checked my phone/email, the last thing I expected to see on a mid July day was an email from the middle school that Daniel will be attending this fall. His coordinator emailed me and wants to meet this week, with possibly the special ed director, principal, myself and her. I read the email over and over. I couldn't quite wrap my brain around it. My head was in a different place. It was in northern Michigan at carnivals and parades. How am I supposed to think about his academic schedule for the fall? That's what the email was about. His schedule. There are several phrases starting with "we took the recommendation...." "we took a second look....." "based on our meeting.... "In short, they changed the schedule we came up with in our IEP. I have read and reread the email many many many times. I finally emailed her back on my trusty Blackberry from my in-laws vacation home saying I couldn't just go ahead with it. I did need a meeting. I would be home for 3 days before I left again for another vacation. I asked for his teacher from last year to attend. I don't know if she can. I feel like she can give me good input on if this is the right thing for him. We had him in both resource and a co taught math class. They got rid of resource math and put him in a computer's class. He has an academic support and they feel like he can get enough extra support in here for both math and science. This may be excellent. It may not. I know nothing about the computer class. I just have too many questions, so before I leave again, I have to meet with the school. I have to switch into school gear. This is not easy for me to do at the end of July.

Without my Blackberry I may not have gotten the email until way too late to schedule a meeting. So once again. I'm happy I have it. But there is that part of me that wondered if it would have been better to not be so connected. But then I thought again. I still love it. After all, it is pink.

One down...

We are back from Charlevoix the beautiful. This was the week of the Venetian festival. It's a big week for the little town in the north west portion of the state. My children LOVE all of the activities that revolve around this week. I, personally, have a love/hate thing going on right now. I love our time in Charlevoix, I LOVE that the kids love the activities provided during venetian week, I love watching them have fun. I, personally, feel like it is some sort of Ground hogs Day or Groundhogs WEEK. It is always exactly the same. EXACTLY. Which, of course, Daniel LOVES. I mean, it is an autistic kids dream. Thursday we go to Kids Day and the carnival. We did get them to not go to kids day this year. Last year they were too old for it. Frankly the image of the pony guy trying to pull Daniel off the pony going around and around the ring still makes me giggle. I'd bet Daniel outweighed the skinny kid assigned to pull the children down and lift the next one on, while the pony's walk around and around. Daniel coming down the inflatable slide at full speed toward a 3 year old basking in the glory of his run, makes my blood pressure go up. Nope, we are done. Zachary was bored out of his mind last year, and Daniel accepted the fact that he is just too BIG. Hurray.

That meant straight to the carnival on Thursday. You aren't supposed to get your special "kids day" price on the arm band until 2:00. Todd got the brilliant idea to ask at 1:00 if we could just get it then. The carny said yes. Brilliant. We got an hour of moderate lines until the 2:00 deluge of kids standing in the lines of 8 rides. By the way, this equals LONG lines. The excellent thing this year is that Todd and I stood in line with the kids and they went on everything TOGETHER. Having a wonderful time yelling and screaming and enjoying it TOGETHER. This was nice. I did get a ticket to ride "Crazy Dance" with Daniel once. Zachary ran into a friend and he wanted to ride with him. I actually sort of wanted to ride and went with Daniel. Crazy Dance is sort of like a tilt a' whirl, but faster and with really really loud music playing. It was a great ride. I love that sort of thing. We rode together and I thought, had fun. We got off and Daniel said "now you are done, I can go myself". ahhh. Somewhere in there he is almost 13 and definitely doesn't want to ride a ride with his MOM duh. Well, I had fun anyway.

In this Ground hog day scenario Friday includes beach and Friday night fireworks at the same beach. I'll start with the beach. There are basically 3 beaches we go to in the little town of Charlevoix. One is by the public boat launch. Friday started with skies as blue as the lake. Glorious. Zachary and I jumped on our bikes and rode to the furthest beach, put our toes in and chatted. Just the two of us. It was really nice. We rode back to Sneathen base and had lunch. Grandpa got the boat ready and we headed back. But in this time it had clouded up. We were undeterred. We put the boat in, got in the boat. It was getting darker. My head was telling me this was NOT a good idea. My heart wanted to get in the boat ride. It's part of the schedule after all! Within 2 minutes we hit a trench of two wakes and a wall of water came up over the boat like I have never seen. Daniel was sitting in the front with Todd, I was right behind. The water came up over our heads. Note to internet, this summer has been COLD in Michigan the water was COLD. Daniel, while he loves the water most of all, does not like it in this situation. Did I mention, it was cold? The impending storm was making the air temperature drop faster than my hopes for a good ride. Then I was just freezing. I had on a bathing suit and a long sleeve, now soaking wet cover up. Daniel was crying. By the way, Zachary was sitting next to his Grandpa behind the windshield and ducked. He was the only dry person. We calmed Daniel down, but he was still upset that Todd's shirt was soaked. This kind of thing is very very upsetting to Daniel. I think he looks at Todd and sees a soaking wet shirt, he doesn't see himself and kind of forgot about that. But every time he looked at Todd he was SO concerned about his shirt. All weekend he kept asking Todd how his shirt was! This all went from bad to worse. The only ending to this portion of the story is that it started raining on us. HARD. Then everyone was just drowned and we had to wait in line to get to the boat launch. The thing that always makes me laugh looking back on these things is that we are all "oh, it's not a big deal, we are fine" and smiling like fools. When in fact, in my head I'm screaming "I'M FREEZING GET ME OUT OF HERE, I'M MISERABLE". It's amazing how trying to get your kids through an uncomfortable experience you learn to suck it up yourself. That is something I have learned. It is actually very useful for me to be horribly uncomfortable and put on a happy cheerleader face. It's funny because I am SO not a cheerleader. But for Daniel, I can be and will always be. We are teaching him to try to manage these situations and in turn learning to ourselves. It's all good.

That night is fireworks. The first of two fireworks. Daniel LOVES fireworks. The visual stimulation and beauty is glorious to him. We were PREPARED this time. After hanging out in the park at 10:00 it started raining. We all reached down and pulled up our umbrellas. Well almost all. My sister in law Amy and Todd's brother Mark were sitting there. She is still laughing about turning around and seeing up simultaneously put up our GIANT umbrellas. I knew it would rain. Of course it would, that's the way my day was going, so as we were finished playing with the washer toss, the football etc, I'd carry it back to the car so we'd have less to carry in the rain. I also grabbed umbrellas. Sure enough I was right. Be Prepared right??

Saturday was gorgeous. This is parade day. This will sound profoundly unAmerican, but I hate parades. Boring. And this parade is the same parade every single year. Groundhogs day. The only thing that changes is the queen that was just crowned for the Polish festival or the Elk Rapids queen, or the Venetian queen.... you get the picture, float after float of queens. The only parade I have ever enjoyed also involved queens but it was the gay pride parade in Chicago! Daniel loves the queens. He loves the tall guy on stilts, the bagpipers. The predictability of it all. He waves and smiles and yells at them all, all in his glory. The things we do for our children.

The day finishes downtown with a boat parade (yup another parade) on Round Lake. At dark the boats who enter parade through the harbor all decked out in whatever the theme they chose, covered in lights. My favorite this year was the dark boat, unadorned. It was called, "College Fund". I thought it was clever. . . . it ends with, yet again, more fireworks. That ends our ground hog week. We drove home on Sunday in the rain. Daniel was sitting on the couch last night and he said, "I'm really excited about our vacation to Niagara Falls and Massachusetts", just as natural as can be. He isn't anxious, he isn't worried. He's excited. That's what makes these all worth it. I think we may need to go back to get to get some better boat rides in though...

Be Prepared

I have begun preparations for our vacation. The majority of our vacations the past, (many!) years, while wonderful are, predictable. Starting when Daniel was 3 would would make our trek to Northern Michigan. The first year we stayed in a hotel and after that, my in laws started to rent houses. This was very nice in terms of food preparation etc. But for Daniel is started to be difficult because it would take him half of the vacation to get "used" to where we are staying. This is, of course, before I became a pro at preparation. Be Prepared. The motto of the boy scouts and of The Sneathen Family. I have learned, right along with Daniel how to best prepare him for trips.

It's been a while since I've had to do it. Partially because Todd's parents BOUGHT a house in Northern Michigan. This, obviously, helped a huge amount with Daniel. After the first time, he always knew what to expect. Our other vacations have revolved around visiting my aunt in Florida. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, which is beautiful. So each time we've gone there it has been the same house, pool, beach. Convenient. We are very very lucky indeed. There were two Walt Disney World (WDW) vacations thrown in there which needed a great deal of preparation. But basically we have been in a vacation groove. Not a RUT. No way. I would never describe having wonderful accommodations at our feet a rut. It's been wonderful. In a few days we leave for our regular northern trek. It is going to be much shorter than the usual because we have another vacation on the horizon. One that is causing my head to constantly swirl with activity about preparation.

My eastern cousins and the Michigan cousins have talked for years about getting together again. When we were kids it happened with some regularity. Since we are now all adults with our own families that has predictably fallen off. My Aunt and Uncle, last year, celebrated their 50th anniversary. There was talk of a giant celebration. Never happened. Last spring two of my cousins and I flew out for a wedding reception. It was wonderful. I hadn't realized how much I missed that part of my life. This is my mother's side of the family and she has been gone for (gulp) 16 years now. Unbelievable.

I also have become a genealogist part time and have spent countless hours looking into our family history. Facebook, believe it or not has also come into play. I LOVE facebook and spend a LOT of time (yes, too much) on it. It has been a wonderful way to reconnect with these relatives. Which brings me to this trip. I finally decided I wanted to go back and I wanted my kids to KNOW these people. Not only that, I thought it may be a great idea to DRIVE out to see them. I think nostalgia was getting the best of me because I hate driving anywhere. Ever since Daniel was 7 and I (ahem) experienced our first flight with him, I have taken the opinion that we can get on a plane and endure 2 1/2 hours instead of 20 hours driving. Makes sense. He does well on a plane. It is still a lot of work, don't get me wrong, but it is relatively painless. The memories of my childhood and driving to Massachusetts with my cousins got the better of me. I decided that we would all DRIVE together! My cousin and her family are driving too. Just like the old days! Well almost. We aren't all going to be sardined into an air conditionless station wagon together. We will be in separate cars stocked with Nintento DS's and Ipods. Daniel however, gets car sick and watching movies and playing video games doesn't work so well for him. But on the way we are stopping for an overnight. We are spending the night in Niagara Falls.

Daniel has researched Niagara on the internet and I believe this is what he is most looking forward too. The kids LOVES water. He has tried to create his own personal waterfall in our house when he was younger by overflowing the toilet, (on purpose) and continuously flushing it so he could watch the water flow over and over. I discovered it by walking into the kitchen and there was a waterfall coming through our kitchen light to the floor. So the prospect of taking in the REAL waterfalls is very appealing. We are then driving the rest of the way and spending 4 days with our family. I was trying to count last night and very quickly came to 33 people. 33 people. That's a lot of stimuli. They are all strangers to him. They of course know of him, and his challenges. Some even follow this blog regularly. They all seem very receptive and understanding of the challenges ahead of us. We'll be ending our trip with 2 nights at the Cape. Cape Cod. All of these places have SUCH wonderful memories for me. I can't wait. I just hope that I am able to slow down a bit and take it all in myself. I hope I'm not so busy trying to keep Daniel prepared and over stimulated that I can relax some of the time. I hope they come away with the same wonderful memories that I have of this trip and they appreciate the love that will be sent their way. I hope we don't all kill each other in the car. What was I thinking?

I spent hours on Sunday writing Daniels social story. I've printed out maps for each leg of our trip. I've written stories about what to expect, what dates we'll be where. I copied pictures off the internet of the hotels we'll be staying in (all with indoor pools for plan B of bad weather) all with refrigerators and microwaves to handle our food "issues". I've put pictures in of the relatives with everyone's name. I think I'm ready. I just hope everyone is ready for US!

Random things we've been up to this week....

This week is our week before vacation mania starts. We have been spending all the time we can with our friends who are moving away. Our neighbor 8 families who hang out together had a get together on Sunday. I made the cake. Daniel LOVES when I am baking. It has always been something he would readily help with. Even when he was only 3. I'd put him up on a chair and go through the steps of adding ingredients and stirring. He really finds pleasure in it. So do I. It's something we share and I love the conversations we have while in the kitchen together. When I have a cake or cookies in the oven he loves to sit in front of it with the oven light on watching (not touching or being unsafe in any way) and commenting on the magical changes going on inside the oven. It is pretty amazing. I love how he appreciates the little things. He loved this cake because I had to bake 3 cakes and put them together, that with making all of the frosting was a lot of baking, along with more decorating. It was a theme cake for our friends who are moving to Florida. Sailing is something they like to do so the cake has a sailboat and the shark is a joke for Alyse who is scared of sharks. It is in jest that they are going to Florida where there are many many sharks. . .

Daniel was THRILLED with the outcome of the cake and actually didn't even get upset when we cut it. This has been a problem in the past. He didn't want it destroyed, even if he could get cake out of it. That was not the case this time, I'm happy to report.

This week at his therapy, they talked about mistakes. How to act, what to say, (not FREAKING out) when someone makes them or if he makes them. This was so timely. It was about calmly using your words, that it's ok to be disappointed but a lot of the time the mistake can be fixed if you go about it the right way. I really never understand how we can go over something like this millions of times, but Miss Mary talks about it for an hour and it sticks with him. Last night we went to Olga's Kitchen, which I've talked about before. They gave Daniel "spicy" fries, that were seasoned with cayenne and black pepper. I didn't even notice. Daniel started eating and looked up to Todd and said "why did they put cayenne on my fries? I don't like to eat them that way". Just as calm and cool as ever? Normally a mistake in a restaurant is punishable by death in his mind. We have waiters and waitresses all over town that remember us CLEARLY for YEARS after a mistake was made with his food....this time, just calmly said the problem. We praised him all over the place and said we'd get them to fix it. Which they did. He complained a bit that he "had to wait" but it was incredible. I quickly went over the things I remembered from the lesson and compared it to his excellent problem solving. Reinforcing at that moment is so helpful when he can see that he solved his own problem, it was taken care of and he was calm. What progress!

Now we are puppy sitting. That's right, my cousin dropped her puppy off here for two nights. He is a coton de tulear, and adorable. Here's a picture of "Polar" and I together.

The boys were very excited to have him, but as I suspected the "puppiness" in Polar is a bit much for Daniel. When puppies play, they nip. Daniel is not happy with this. Daniel wears giant bunny slippers in the morning, Polar thinks some bunnies have come in to play with him. Polar wants to nip and play with Daniel and Daniel starts jumping around like the cartoon elephant running with a mouse going between his giant feet. I'm yelling, "Daniel stop moving, don't step on the dog!" The puppy has gained several pounds and I think I was told he weighs 5 1/2 pounds now! Good grief! He is basically a white dust mop. Adorable yes. Unpredictable, YES!

Getting a dog is something I've been throwing around. I sort of knew a puppy didn't seem like the best fit for us for all the reasons I've stated. All I want is a trained, small, hypoallergenic, non shedding dog that isn't yippy and is good with kids. I know, that doesn't sound like a dog at all. There are some breeds that are possible, but I would really like to do a rescue and frankly all of the breeds I'm interested in cost a fortune. I can't pay that much for a dog. So in addition to those requirements, cheap is also added on. Impossible? Maybe. But I think we'll keep our eyes open. The pluses, I believe, would be helping teach some flexiblity. Teaching responsibility and caring. Dogs give unconditional love. All things that would be a great benefit to, not only Daniel, but Zachary too. For now. Two days seems like a good start.