Mother’s Day!

Well we survived another holiday. Hannah has been so excited for Mother's day that she has been almost bursting for a week now. Any holiday that includes making cards, drawing special pictures and singing songs is right up her ally! Of course during the church program she sang many of the songs with her head hanging upside down but she smiled the whole time! Adam did a great job singing and was very dignified the whole time. Jack abstained, I'm sure he knows the songs but singing them out loud would be unthinkable for him. Connor did his best to make sure I didn't forget he was there. And I am really proud of Aaron for actually taking notes during the talks.

Before I even woke up John was up and trying to help me out by doing dishes. As he started to take out the garbage he noticed a puddle under the sink. It was a small puddle so he decided to tighten the pipes to fix it. As he tried to tighten them he found that the top of the pipe was no longer attached to the sink! The metal part of the drain that attaches to the pipes hat corroded away until the pipe was just catching water that fell its way! So in addition to a cleaner house I now have a repaired sink and some new plumbing tools ;)

Aaron

I have decided I can't give up on my blog one kid short, think of all the comments to a future therapist!

I don't have quite as many pictures of Aaron because he has his own camera and takes most of the pictures now. But he has figured out how to do self portraits so I have those.

His favorite subject to photograph is his littlest brother (poor thing) and the picture I started the blog with was taken by Aaron.

Aaron plays the saxophone. He doesn't always stick with things but he worked really hard on playing the recorder and when he asked to be in band in fifth grade he went to band every week for three months before we were able to find him an instrument. Thanks to his grandfather who used to be a high school band teacher he has his own sax and does very well, (and even better than that when he practices every day!)

I promised him I wouldn't put this picture on facebook but he forgot about my blog, hee hee hee.

Adam

Adam is almost as hard to describe as Jack. I like to think of him as my favorite contradiction.

He is sweet and loving, especially for anyone smaller than him, but sometimes that can be like being loved by a baby elephant! He is our keeper of justice; the world is black and white to Adam. Of course that just makes it more difficult if the rules of justice have been violated, especially by Adam since he gets so defensive! Unlike Jack, Adam has only a touch of autism, so while the way Jack's brain is wired affects his entire world, the way Adam's brain is wired only seems to affect how he solves his problems.

When the world is too much for Adam he often retreats into his room and creates. With his Legos, with paper airplanes, or any other way he has found to make his own world.

But most of the time he is just our crazy guy! And no one appreciates a bear hug more than Adam.

Why we can’t have nice things

Well the Nintendo Wii is a wonderful thing but the boxing portion of Wii Sports is more than just good exercise. Adam seems to have gotten a little too close to the new TV and since the attachment doesn't have a strap or padded guard his vigor had sad consequences. He was totally distraught, poor guy. There was nothing to be upset about, the natural consequences were harsher than anything we could have said.

Jack enjoyed the colorful lines in front of the picture and made a bad situation much worse by pushing on the screen and ruining it until it is unreadable and won't stay turned on anymore.

Now not only do we have to figure out how to pay for a new tv but how we are going to encase it so it will last more than a few months and still be viewable!

Giant Pickle!

My sister reminded me of some of the strange things that Jack says at the strangest times.

He is by no means mute like he was when he was little but he speaks in Echolalia. That means he echoes back phrases that he has heard in the past, kind of like a parrot might. But because he is so smart he uses his echoes to communicate instead of the words he can't find.

Unfortunately you often have to watch all the shows that he watches to get his full meaning but he is getting much better at picking only the most meaningful phrase.

Funerals seem to bring out his most mischievous side. He is not fond of church; with its uncomfortable clothes, shoes, long bouts of grownups talking, etc. Funerals to Jack just seem like extra church duty with overly emotional (and therefore even less understandable) grownups.

Just this last May at my grandpa Jackson's funeral service he kept trying to shout, 'Mission completion!' It is a phrase from the end of the Little Einstein's show on Disney channel and obviously he was hoping we would all get the hint. Of course it fits my grandpa to a tee and is exactly the sort of comment I can imagine him hoping for from one of the great grandkids. So the one loud shout only brought smiles.

My grandma Glissmeyer's funeral on the other hand was a bit more embarrassing. She had struggled with Alzheimer's disease for several years and could get pretty irritated with Jack because he made no sense at all. For his part Jack loved irritating her and when she stayed at our house several evening a week he would go out of his way to wander past muttering nonsense words to see if she would tell him to stop!

Just before they closed the casket for the services and in the middle of the family prayer, Jack announced quite loudly, 'Giant Pickle'! It is part of a Veggie Tales movie that he loves and also just the sort of nonsense that would get grandma to say something stern!

Oh Brisinger!

Well the new book is out in the Inheritance cycle (it turned out that predicting it would be a trilogy was a bit premature!) I enjoy these books for the same reason I liked the Harry Potter series, the first book seems pretty typical for the genre but by the time you read the second book you realise that not only are the characters maturing but little things that seemed meaningless in the previous book are now essential to the evolving plot.

I am happy to say that I am showing self restraint and letting John and Aaron read it first. It is so nice to see them fight over a book. Aaron didn't start to enjoy reading until fourth grade and John never read anything for pleasure until he got hooked on the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Besides I read to fast and then I have even longer to wait for the last book of the series to arrive! And as soon as they fix my internet I can post this.

http://www.alagaesia.com/books.htm

Jack

It has taken me a while to write this post. Jack is very dear to my heart but finding words to describe him can be difficult. He is just so different from the rest of this mundane world that it isn't fair to use our standards to measure him. He has very profound autism without having his intelligence affected negatively (in fact we suspect he is smarter than average but it can't be measured in any standard way). In our case he never regressed, he has been 'weird' since birth and that is the way we like him. I will never forget the time I picked him up turned toward me and he leaned in for a hug willingly and patted my back – I cried. That was almost a year after we started seeking help. He received a diagnosis of autism at the age of 2 yrs old and at the time he was mute. This is a collage I made of him when he was three.

He has made incredible progress since then and never ceases to amaze me. Socially he has progressed from the equivalent of 0 to 3 months at diagnosis to about 2 years. That is just measuring his social interactions of course; the rest is literally beyond measuring!

This summer he worked with my mom in a one on one summer school type of program. They had a blast together and she taught Jack how to draw (he hates holding anything in his hands with enough pressure to write or draw so those things have been major stumbling blocks for him).
As wonderful as that is it reminds me of the time his occupational therapist taught him how to take off his shoes. She warned me that I was going to hate it but that someone his age should be able to remove their shoes. His shoes haven't stayed on his feet since. Now that Jack can draw he has been attacking the walls with a vengeance, after all he has years of catching up to do!

Also, the picture of Elmo and Big Bird hanging out in the Shower caddy is Jack's handywork. We think of them as random Jack-a-stacks, turn the corner and you are likely to find something arranged in an intriguing way!

Hannah

Well it is Hannah's turn and she will be so thrilled to see herself on my 'web site'! With Hannah a picture really does say a thousand words.

She is very girly and loves to be beautiful and to dress up like a princess…

…but she is also a tomboy and just as happy to roll in dirt and play dinosaurs with the boys.

Not that you can't do those things dressed like a princess of course!

She is sweet and caring but her mind and body are equaly active so she has a tendancy to flit around (she has been known to catch flying moths because they seem to move about in the same unpredictable way).

My favorite story about this was just after my Gandfather's funeral. We had gone back to visit the gravesite with my mother. My mom looked over to see Hannah with big tears rolling down her face. When she leanded down to Hannah, Hannah said, "Don't worry Grandma, I'm just sad be cause he was a nice grandpa and now he is under the dirt."

My mom hugged her and started to tell her that she didn't need to worry because he wasn't realy under the dirt when Hannah interupted her and said cheerfully, "Can I go play now?" At least she doesn't have the attention span for the sad stuff either!

Connor

I thought I would do a little highlight of each of my kids, starting with the youngest.

Connor is a cute little toad who loves to do anything he isn't supposed to do. He is thrilled that as the youngest there are always other kids to entertain him and bow to his slightest command. He is quiet and careful by nature but loves to watch all the wild crazies!

Connor has carved out his own little spot in our house and loves his routine but he is a homebody who has trouble staying comfortable for long anywhere else.

Music is Connor's big thing; he has a good sense of rhythm like all the others but he is fascinated by all kinds of music. It started with bluegrass and rock and roll but has moved to include everything from classical to silly kids' songs.

I’m Back!

Well I got my peaceful naptimes back so I can actually start posting again. With summer over everybody is back in school but the babies and they are willing to take an afternoon nap. Hannah is in kindergarten and since she is a morning person I recommended afternoon kindergarten for her so she would be as calm as possible!

This is the loan that never ends…

It has been a while but it has been very crazy for me. Not because of Christmas, New Years, long breaks from school or sick kids; although all of those things have been going on. I have been enduring the worst home refinance ever. We started the process a week before Thanksgiving, didn't sign until just before Christmas and didn't get all the details straightened out until just last Friday! I will never do a loan over the phone again, I know people who have loans through Countrywide who have had no problems at all but this has been a nightmare.

I can't think of one thing that they got right; she sent the wrong address to the appraisers, and in a HOME loan the location of THE HOUSE should be an important detail! When the loan processor contacted me the phone number she gave me to call her back was wrong and the other lady wouldn't give me anyone's number to contact them she always just put me off, leaving me to deal only with her. When I called her around the time she had said we should be signing on the loan she said that she had received a note from the processor and read it for the first time right then and realized she had all the information they were waiting for right there! Then the loan processor insisted that my tax forms weren't enough for my home daycare business and I just don't have fancy paperwork because it isn't needed. So then they decided to do it with only John's income listed and she stopped talking to me all together and wouldn't answer my calls, only picking up from our number in the evening when it was John. After that we spent several weeks waiting because the processor didn't want to pay the fee to get John's employment information from the company that his work contracts through and basically held our loan hostage until he let them use his personal log on.

We finally were able to sign on it on the Friday night before Christmas (at 8:30 at night!) At that point we realized that the numbers were off from what we had been told. She kept telling John over and over that our payments would be the same even with escrow (he kept asking because it didn't add up to him) she was either incompetent or lying. When we signed on the loan we gave them the information to have the money wired to our account, because it had taken so long it wouldn't be until several days after Christmas before the loan finalized.

We kept waiting and waiting but no money came, she had called John and said the money would come in two days before what we figured it would come in and that made it worse. Then the day after the loan had funded the money still wasn't there and so I started calling. She actually talked to me once and told me it was probably my bank and to call her back after I checked with them. I called the bank and verified that nothing was processing and they asked for more details so I called her back requesting that info. She didn't call back after repeated calls. I tried calling her manager and just got voicemail there too and no return calls ever. Finally in desperation I called the main number and pushed the button to just talk to someone. The guy who answered gave me more help than anyone else yet and I was able to find the number of the title company in the loan paperwork, not where he had told me but at least it was close enough for me to figure out on my own. When I finally contacted the title company they said that the information to wire the money had been mislaid and the check was being mailed. She said she would put a stop in the check and wire it. It was 2:30 by then on the Friday before New Years and so the odds of it getting in that day by then were almost none. After being on pins and needles and calling the bank constantly on Saturday I called them back and found out that there was no visible record of the money being wired that they could see but that it can take 24 hours for the check to show up and so it wouldn't come that weekend. When the money finally did show up in our account it was in the same hour that the other checks arrived on our doorstep!

Oh did I mention that instead of paying off our debts directly they mailed us checks written out to the various companies and we were supposed to send them on, just one more delay. With many promises to the bill collectors who kept calling through all of the long delays we sent the checks off but they were all for the wrong amounts. So after they were credited to our accounts we had to find out exactly how much some were shorted and pay the rest off and two of the credit cards were even overpaid!

So we settled down to try and get on with our lives but then our old mortgage company started calling. We tried to figure out what was wrong and asked if they had a remainder that needed paying too but they were very confrontational and treated us like we were trying to cheat them out of something. Everyone we talked to seemed to thing we owed something different for different reasons but they all agreed that we still owed them. After several contacts there were at least two people who said that our loan was still active and that we were now behind two payments! So we started to try and contact the countrywide people again and no-one would return our calls and the option to talk to a generic person seemed to be disabled into an endless loop. Out of desperation I looked up the title company again and was referred to someone who looked it up and found that the loan had indeed never been paid! So now the one thing that you never expect to go wrong had gone wrong the guy said that he was going to try to find out why it hadn't been paid and would take care of any additional fees that had now been incurred. But then, after a week there was still money owed on the old mortgage. When I tried to call the guy back I got voicemail and no call back. I called the main number and the person who answered told me that the original amount had been short by $750.00 and that it had been automatically rejected (and no-one had noticed that?) but that they were working on it and it was scheduled to be paid soon.

The old loan was finally paid off on January 18^th more than seven weeks from when we started what was supposed to be a two week process! I am truly irritated and as much as I try to think the best of people, this has tested my limits. The sad thing is that I have a hard time believing that this is over and I will be looking over my shoulder figuratively for some time until I can truly relax.

'S', 'T', circle, 'P'.

Just before I took the girls out to lunch on Saturday I was sitting in the front room with John who was playing some music for me to listen to. Jack gets very annoyed when his dad's music interferes with his own internal soundtrack. He came in the room, turned to the wall and started writing letters with his finger. As he did it he named his letters, S, T, circle, P and then turned around and looked at John and said 'Stop'. He is working on learning the letters in his name at school but they said they haven't discussed the word stop. But then they would have taught him to say 'O' instead of circle! I am just fascinated when I can get a glimpse of how he works things out in what must be a very confusing world to him. Here is an example of him writing his own name at school, it has taken us years to get him to hold a pencil for more than three seconds.