River is a mess!

River is a mess!
Originally uploaded by Que dicho es

This is what River's shirt looked like when I finally saw him this evening! He is a mess, this is how he gets many days. This shirt is actually a hand me down from Dawson, I think I need to do laundry commercials! River even had coloring on his back today which he said Christian colored on him. :)

Christmas Picture preview

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Originally uploaded by Que dicho es

We drove down to Austin for Thanksgiving and we have had a really fun time. This morning I asked my dad to take a picture of us and this one is my favorite. :)

Another day, another bounce house!

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Originally uploaded by Que dicho es

Yesterday was Dawson's school carnival. They had fun playing games and bouncing in the bounce house. River got sick last night and threw up in his bed so we aren't going anywhere today.

He has started the why phase which is really fun and exciting because that is something Dawson never did and it encourages me that he is doing it. I will never get tired of answering the why question! :) He did something kind of strange yesterday, he asked me to sing the River had a little lamb song. I substituted Mary for River and every time I sang River's name he would roll his eyes into the back of his head and hold his breathe then smile really big, I know he enjoyed it but he was acting a little strange. He is also in this phase where he colors all over himself. He will come home with dots on his face and arms. I asked him why he colored on himself and he said he did it “for school.”

Halloween Preview

Thanks to Kelly and her talent with duct tape, the boys get to be exactly what they want to be for Halloween, Lego Batman and Lego Robin. I'll take more pictures on the actual night.

Fall Fun

These pictures are from last weekend, we went to a fall party and the boys had a great time. Dawson wanted a red sword with spikes and River wanted a green alien painted on his face. They loved the pony but Dawson will probably be too tall next year. I asked the girl leading the pony if there was a weight limit and she said no but there was a height limit. Dawson was really good at cooking the marshmallows perfectly!

I had a conference with River's teacher on Friday. We talked about the goals they are working on with him right now. They are pretty basic but really important. His teachers noticed as David and I have that River only looks at you when he is talking to you if you tell him "Look at me River." There are some other speech goals they are working on with him too. He has an incredible vocabulary but some of the basic speech isn't there, he can't answer, "How are you?" or "How old are you" His answer is always River. His pencil grasp is something else they are working on.

Dawson has an ARD tomorrow and I will give you an update of that. The main purpose of it is to talk about a Behavior Intervention Plan. He gets up and walks around the classroom and bumps into kids a lot. He does some other things but it is really important to get a plan in place to help keep him focused and out of trouble.

David has the boys this weekend, they are about to come back home, I am a little nervous about the visit because he had swine flu last weekend but I have been assured that all symptoms are gone from the house.

This has been a cleaning, relaxing, and Twilight weekend for me. I finally watched Twilight on Friday night from Netflix. I have been boycotting that whole bandwagon for a long time (sorry Colleen...I now understand everything you were saying before completely!) Less than 24 hours later I can now say that I read the first book, all 500 pages and I am hooked. When you work at a high school and that is what all of the 14 year old girls are reading, you think twice about picking it up. I am now hooked though. When I was in high school, I went through a vampire phase when all of the Anne Rice novels started coming out, but I think I am going to like this series much better.

Pumpkins!

Here I am at 3, it is fun for me to see the resemblance. I just asked River who this was and he said "Uh, uh, River?" I told him it was baby mommy, and he asked, "baby mommy has a diaper?"

The boys were really excited to choose their pumpkins from the pumpkin patch this year! I can't believe we are here again in October. I am really looking forward to all of the holidays this year. Kelly, the amazing person she is, is making Halloween costumes for Dawson and River. It turns out they want to be the same thing as Isaac and Aaron. Lego Batman and Lego Robin, these are not characters you will find in the store. She is making them out of Cardboard boxes and duct tape! I was just going to buy them some other costume because those costumes don't exist anywhere. Thanks Kelly, I so appreciate it and the boys are going to love them, you are so creative! (Interesting side note, Dawson now weighs 78 pounds, River weighs 35 pounds!)

Here is Dawson's 3rd spelling test, 100% this time! I have implemented the Herman Method here at home and it is really helping him a lot to be able to read and decode words. I am very optimistic but I know I wish the progress was faster. Last year at this time he could only trace and relied on a teacher to hold his hand while he wrote and so this is awesome.

We also took a trip to the Lego store this weekend as a prize for Dawson allowing his teachers to give him a hearing test. There are two Lego stores in the Dallas area and they are like heaven to boys like Dawson. It was pretty cool, his first visit.

Dawson is being referred to a center for testing to see if he also has Central Auditory Processing Disorder in conjunction with the autism. His SPED teacher said that in her 10 years, she has never referred a student to get evaluated for this. It was first brought to her attention by the behavioral specialist who was observing Dawson for the Behavior Intervention Plan for his IEP. When he was 3, ECI told us that he had it but school systems always want their own evaluators to do the testing and they like to wait until kids are much older to test. This will likely be added to his paperwork soon, I am positive that it is another problem that he has.

Touch a Truck

Yesterday was a really fun day, so fun I am still trying to recover from it! First we watched Isaac in his soccer game! Go Titans! They did a great job! Next, we took the kids to McDonalds and then we went to "Touch a Truck" for just $3 dollars the boys explored all kinds of trucks. They had so much fun, it was all to support the Princess Alexa foundation. I texted Crys later on that day and she said they were able to raise over $1500 dollars, unbelievable!

Life has been beond busy for us, the boys are doing well in school. Dawson is picking up reading, writing is still a major struggle. I'll try to do better updating!