Happy Birthday Victoria!

Victoria's 12th birthday was Saturday and it was a wonderful one. Her grandma and husband picked her up around 11 to take her to see The Lorax. Which was so nice, because Matt and I got to clean and decorate for her party. When she got home she opened her grandma's present, and then they left.

After that a couple of friends from church came over. Victoria loves her friends. This was the first time she's had a birthday party with friends and the first time she had friends over.

When we asked her what games she wanted to play on her birthday, she said Sorry. Who are we to say that Sorry is not a party game. So she got play Sorry with her friends. Then she made some vidoes, and got to show them Garfield and Friends on DVD. She had a smile on her face the entire day.

On a typical Saturday, we can usually only get Victoria to spend an hour total outside of her room unless we go somewhere. This includes meals. On her birthday she spent over 9 hours outside of her room. She even stayed out after her friends left.

When she was opening her presents, she kept saying, "this is the best Birthday ever." I don't think anyone in the room didn't have a huge smile on his/her face. It was awesome. She got Garfield cupcakes and vanilla ice cream.

It was one of the best days ever.

Victoria being funny

Without knowing it, I have been passing some silly phrases onto Victoria, and Micah for that matter. I guess I always tell her to show inanimate objects who's boss. So, she came out of her room a couple of days and said, "I tried to show my jacket who was boss, but I lost." I started laughing so hard. Just a little background, she sometimes has difficulties zipping jackets/sweatshirts and she has a peacoat that she has trouble getting the collar to lay down flat. I was so proud of her humor, because usually she just uses movie quotes when she is trying to be funny. I love seeing a little sarcasm come out in her. :)

Then, yesterday I received a package from my mom in the mail. She asked who it was from, and I said, "my mom." She asked what it was, and I said, "probably just some junk." (More background, my parents have been cleaning out there house, so I was guessing it was stuff I had left there in the past.) Her reply, "I thought your mom liked you." (so did I.)

Conversation with Victoria at lunch

Victoria had a dr appt this week, and because she did well at it, we told her she could have McDonald's for lunch on Friday since there was no school. Then at school yesterday, she got an A+ on her test. Micah was going down for a nap, so Matt stayed home with him, and Victoria and I got to go.

About a minute after sitting down, she asked me, "Do you think I will be a good grown up?" I have no idea where she got this question from, and it was very rare, since 99% of the time she just tells us movie quotes. I told her I think she will be a great grown up, and asked her what she thought. She shrugged at the question. So, I went a different route.

Me: What kinds of stuff do grown ups have to do?

V: Cleaning and laundry and stuff.

Me: That's true, what else do they have to do?

V: Well, you have to take of Micah.

Me: That's true, but do all grown ups have kids? I was a grown up a long time before I had Micah. (I know what y'all are thinking, stop laughing.)

V: I don't know.

Me: What makes some one a grown up?

V: I have no idea.

Me: What else do grown ups have to do?

V: Get jobs. :( But I want to be a director.

Me: I know! What do you think it's going to take to be a director.

V: I don't know, a couple years I guess.

The conversation went on. It was a bittersweet conversation, and I'm not sure why. I think it's because I think about her future a lot. What will she be able to do? Where will she live? I try to just think about it, and not worry. I know for a fact that I, personally have very high expectations for her. I know she can do better than she thinks she can, so I am tough and strict with her. And she helped to remind me today why I am the way I am. I want her to be a good grown up.

Glowicki Fam Lately

First things first, Micah is a reader. He knows his name, however he thinks his name is Mikey. So cute. He reads some words in the Foot Book by Dr. Seuss, but his favorite book to read is Baby Bear, Baby Bear. What do you see? by Eric Carle. He says all of the animal names. It is precious and amazing.

Secondly, he eats a banana every morning, but he doesn't like the last bite. So he likes to leave it places for us to find. On our bed when Matt is still in it, behind our chair, and my favorite place Matt's work boot. Matt was rushing to get to work one morning, stuck his foot in is boot and smushed the banana piece. Better than coffee to get your morning going.

Victoria is doing pretty good. We had our appointment with a developmental pediatrician, and it went better than I could have ever dreamed. He spent 2 hours with Matt and I talking. Tomorrow we have our next appt. Soon we will be having a behavior therapist coming to the house to work with her. He is very interested in making a thoroughly thought out assessment of her and her needs. Long story short, we're hopeful and excited.

She has a had a couple of meltdowns lately, but snaps out of them quickly. She has anxiety and does not like it when we are upset with her, which makes it very hard to correct or discipline. I started talking to her about fixing her dirty clothes before putting them in the hamper and she started getting upset. I haven't quit figured out how to talk to her about things like that without upsetting her. "Buck up Victoria," doesn't seem to be working. Just kidding!

We are also trying to get Victoria to understand that we are her parents and not her cook/maid. She will come out of her room, say that she is hungry, and then try to go back to her room. We have no problem making/cooking her food, but we make her hang out with us in the kitchen while we are getting it ready. I am also working on in my head to start teaching her to make things by herself, besides PB&J. I firmly believe that she is capable of more than she thinks she is and more than she is doing. But I am also woken up everyday at things that she is unable to do by/for herself. And I just don't know if she is really unable, which is fine, or if she just needs to be taught and worked with.

Victoria and Micah are loving each other more and more every day. She spends dinner time trying to stump him, by asking him if he can say different words. It's cute. And they hug each other bye, and she even let him kiss her cheek. When she left for school this morning, I said, "say good bye to your sister." He walked up to her, "Huggy, huggy!!!!" Makes a Momma so happy!

I feel mentally tired everyday and always ready to go to sleep and turn off my brain. As I have said before, Micah takes up about 10% of my mental ability and 90% of my physical ability, and Victoria the complete opposite. At least they try to balance each other and me off. :)

I know I said this before, however, thank you everyone who reads this blog and supports our family in different ways.

First Consequence

Okay folks, get ready for a bumpy ride. I have been putting of posting for no good reason, so this could be quite a jumbled post. And just so everyone knows, I do reread my writing, so no editing is done.

Let's start with last night's meltdown. Victoria is a very cold natured person, and when she got here we were keeping our house at about 63. We have started setting it higher. However, Victoria has become accustomed to the heater in her room and has added it to her nightly routine. (hindsight is 20/20). So last night, Matt told her no more heater at night, because by the time we all wake up in the morning, her room is a sauna. She was not okay with that, as soon as Matt left the room, he heard her pacing and having a meltdown. Long story short, she got her heater on. I am the one to wake Victoria in the morning, so when I went to wake her up, her room was a sauna, and Matt said she had a meltdown, and said she couldn't sleep without the heater on. At first, I wanted to talk to her about it before she went to school, but she looked exhausted and I didn't want to send her to school upset and have her not do her work. I am also finding, that before I have a serious talk with her, I need to give myself a couple hours to one, calm down, and two figure out how and what I am going to say.

7 hours later she got home from school and I was ready. Here are the different thoughts that went through my head today:

1. She has never had a consequence at our house, because we are afraid of a meltdown. Yes, she is autistic, but she still needs discipline. We can not be afraid of an 11 year old.

2. I was more upset that she had a meltdown, than the fact that she wanted the heater on.

3. She needs to learn to work through her meltdowns and not overreact. And my guess is that she has been taught this before, we just need to reinforce it. We'll see what happens next time....

Okay, I thought there was more, but whatever. So when she got home I told her we needed to have a talk about what had happened the night before. She immediately got VERY anxious. I told her I wasn't mad and I wasn't going to hurt her, we just need to talk. She said she overreacted and got mad and thought she wouldn't be able to sleep. (I tried to talk about not turning the heater on after 12, but that was a no go for now.)We talked about how it is not okay to over react/hit yourself :( what there are solutions. So her solution now is to calm down, relax, and to talk to Dad or myself. I told her that she was going to receive a consequence for her actions. I had talked to her before about consequences and types of consequences that she could get. I asked her to think of a consequence for herself, but that just made her anxious and mad at herself. So I told her that she would need to spend 15 minutes after dinner on the couch with no computer or TV show that she wanted to watch. I said she could talk or watch something if Micah was. She asked if that was until her bedtime, I said no, and we talked about how long 15 minutes is. My main objective for that timeout was taking away internet from her without her freaking out on me. And mission accomplished.

About a week ago we lost power at 10:30 pm because of a windstorm. I can honestly say those 2.5 hours were some of the worst of my life. There was not rationalizing with her. Long story, short, not fun. I spent the next day feeling hung over.

I am going to Development Pediatrics tomorrow to ask about her referral. I left a message last week about it, and the recording said I would hear back in 3 days. One of the things is, I just want to make sure that they received her referral, and two, I need them to know that it's serious. So, we'll see how well I keep my cool tomorrow. :)

Victoria is doing well at church. I let her read one of her books during the sermon, but hope to stop that in the next couple of months. I love that fact that she is there with us.

She came home from school today and said, "I asked if they have Valentine's parties, and the teacher said no." So I'm pretty sure we will be having our own!! Super excited!

I just want to say thanks to everyone who has left comments about this blog and who is thinking and praying for us. It really means a lot to me. I am feeling very loved and cheered for. (I know that doesn't make sense, but I'm not changing it.)

My challenge this week

I started this blog post with this paragraph 5 days ago, must have gotten busy and didn't finish.

:-)

I believe there is a balance in parenthood in what to have your children do for themselves and what you should do for them. I pretty much have it down for Micah. I know what he is capable of and what I need to do for him. But everyday I challenge him to do things by himself and I am amazed at what he can do. Victoria is in a whole other ball field, playing a completely different game. Things that I think she should be doing by herself, she simply can't, doesn't know how, or is simply not able to do. However, she is very easy to take care of, and spoil. She is courteous, so bringing her a drink when she should be doing it herself, is hard not to do. I believe that one of our most important roles as parents is to prepare our children to be self-sufficient.

Today:

Last week everyone had a unexpected week off, including Matt. First we got dumped on with snow, and then an ice storm came. Over 300,000 people lost power last week. I was praying every second for the power to stay on, so that Victoria would have her computer. Thankfully, we did not loose power, however on Friday we lost our cable/internet. And I finally realized that Victoria is addicted to the internet. I know that the word addicted is overused in this day in age. But she had a complete meltdown. To her, loosing the internet meant, she would never sleep again, because part of her nightly routine is to watch certain videos on the internet. It was a very sad time for us. She wanted to be alone, so I told her I would check on her every 5 minutes. I suggest other things to do and she said it's not that simple for her to feel better. However, 10 minutes later she came out and asked to go the bookstore. I was happy, I would have taken her anywhere she wanted to go. So we went to the bookstore, the books uplifted her mood, and when we got home the cable was back on.

We tried to go to late service the last couple of weeks and it was not for us. So Sunday we decided to go to early service. Victoria wakes up at 7 for school anyways, so it really wasn't any different. Matt was the hardest to get out of bed. So I put on my drill sergeant hat and got everyone out of the house by 7:41, church starts 8:00 and it's 20 minutes away. We got there just in time. Victoria was very good in church, so was Micah. Well, Micah is usually good in church if we go to early service.

Victoria went back to school today after being off for a week, and she still is not a fan of middle school. She misses her school in Alaska, because they play games and she gets to get on the internet. So Matt and I are talking about some reward system for her, so that she tries her best at school. However, she does like gym, which is the last hour of the day. She really likes it when they do bowling.

A little about Micah Bear:

Micah is a Michigan Baby. He loved being outside in the cold and snow. Every time we came in he was screaming. Even when the snow was up to his knees. Every night he stops at Victoria's room to say good night. He says, "Bye." And she laughs and smiles.

Micah Bear 20 months

I feel like I have been neglecting Micah on the blog lately. (It's because he hasn't had a post since last March!) He is an amazing little boy. I think he is adjusting well to having Victoria coming to live with us. However, he has been a little bit more whinny and needing just a little more attention. Which is making me just a little bit more crazy than usual, so I try to remind myself what he is dealing with. Sometimes that helps my patience, sometimes it doesn't. Micah LOVES automobiles of any kind, especially "Big Ducks!(trucks)" He will point out all the big trucks when we are in the car. He loves buses, city and school, he's not particular. He has a whole bin of trucks, trains, planes, and bikes.

Micah has a very large vocabulary, but it could be just me thinking my child is a genious. :) He also does a really good job of repeating words we say. Which is mostly a good thing. Matt had a great time reading a book with him the other day, pointing out frogs and foxes. Let's just say I was cooking and thought I needed to wash Micah's mouth out with soap.

He LOVES LOVES LOVES to dance. It's like his body has a mind of it's own. When he is in the kitchen and he hears a song he likes from the living room, he can't ever figure out if he should go closer to the music, or stay in the kitchen and dance. It's very funny to see.

Micah has started to take care of his stuffed animals. He will feed them and put his pacifiers in their mouths. When we were at a friends house and a baby cried, he went to check on her. He will be a great big brother, someday. Cookie Monster is his favorite stuffed animal and character. He likes to say, "Night Night Cookie." We both agree that Cookie Monster doesn't have enough camera time on Sesame Street.

Before Micah was one, I was told by a couple of moms that his appetite would decrease when he turned one and started moving around. Holy cow, that boy can eat. He really amazes me sometimes. He eats more before 9 am, then some people eat all day. He loves his vegetables and will pick fruit over anything else. So I really can't complain.

Last but definitely not least, Micah loves books. Which makes his momma so happy. He doesn't really have a favorite book, but he does have his nap/bedtime books and other anytime books. He loves books about automobiles, obviously. But also likes to read books about animals.

I know there is more that I want to share about him, but I believe this post is long enough. All I can say is he is the sunshine in my day and can always make me laugh. Thanks for being you Micah Bear!! Momma loves you!