27th February 2010

Catch-up

Since it doesn’t look like we will be able to retrieve the photos anytime soon, due to finances (although we did find a place where it will probably be around $400 instead of $2500, so that is good), so there are some photos that aren’t making it to the blog.

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27th February 2010

Moustrap

I know now why my parents never bought us mousetrap.  It is one of those games that is very fun as a kid, and insanely tedious as an adult.  We did get good at distracting them when one of us was “supposed” to turn the crank, even though there was no mouse to be caught, just so we didn’t have to reset the trap for the thousandth time.   The kids loved it though.  Both kids “won”.  Zane actually won, but Zora thought she did because she got to turn the crank and catch Zane’s mouse after the game was officially over.  win-win.

posted in The Kids | Comments Off

24th February 2010

Evile Sunglasses

Just a warning. If you wear these sunglasses by Oakley, I will dislike you. Intensely. If I am in the wrong mood, I might puke on you or “accidentally” break the glasses because they are beyond offensive to me. Ugh. WHY do people think this is a good idea?

posted in Autism | Comments Off

22nd February 2010

Idioms

Idioms and autism can be a frustrating mix.  All kids have hilarious interpretations of idioms, but neurotypical kids are usually able to learn or infer what the meaning is without explicit instruction.  Because Zane does not learn this way I am always looking for resources to help with issues like this that engage him.  Last week’s library trip yielded a big success and I thought I would share.  (it took about two days of “strewing it in his path” before he picked it up, but once he did, his nose was in the book for a while every day since which is ALWAYS more successful than presenting it in a “schooly” way) I even learned a few things from the book.  Zora keeps wanting me to read the pages with the spiders and bugs on them.  (and, by the way, it isn’t an easy book to “read”, it is more of a “sit down and study” type thing because there isn’t a narrative)

A few randomly chosen pages:


And the link at Amazon (there are both hard and softcover versions):  There’s a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me

posted in Autistic Life, Books, Homeschool, Language Development | 1 Comment

19th February 2010

Decorating

Found some cheap cardboard letters and brought them home and decorated with some leftover Tempura paint, some glitter that mom brought me, and a nintendo controller that didn’t work. (excuse my appearance, I wasn’t feeling top notch).  Not the greatest, but done with love and the kids were thrilled.

Z:  Nintendo Gamecube Controller
A: backround for Super Mario
N: “Stickman” figures that Zane likes from YouTube (that we have to monitor heavily because not all are kid-friendly)
E: a maze

Z: Pink with glitter
O: “Supercar” race track
R: Hearts
A: as requested: a spider, a frog, ants (crawling up the side you can’t see from straight on), butterfly, ladybug

Their bookcases for art projects and other treasures.

posted in Art, Crafts | 1 Comment

18th February 2010

Pity Party for me.

Our external hard drive, where we store ALL of our pictures (and the scrapbook pages I have spent hours on) and all of our videos, including heirloom pictures that we scanned in and no longer have access too, FAILED. It is a mechanical issue. (most likely a spindle motor failure…sad thing is, the very first Google result when you type in the problem is our exact drive.) The data is most likely still there, but it costs between $1200 – $2500 to recover it and nobody does it locally. The cheapest we have found so far is a place where we would pay to send the drive to them for them to diagnose how much it will be and charge us $65 just to tell us what the total bill would be.

Zach has been looking for a way to fix it, but so far, it looks like it requires a clean room/anti-static room to work on it, so it probably isn’t something we can do ourselves, especially since the data is so precious to us.

I have been sick for days. My fever returned about an hour ago, which means that my once a month, MUCH needed mom’s night out (autism support group meeting) is out. I haven’t been able to go to the gym for over 2 weeks now due to illness. We have no insurance (for the adults) since dh lost his job. We have very little money.

I am so sad. There are are around 15,000 pictures on there, not including the scanned photos, videos, and scrapbook pages.

I know there are worse things, but this sucks.

Any advice on data recovery related stuff would be welcome.

posted in Health, Me, Tech issues | 1 Comment

18th February 2010

Artistic Leap

Zora has been showing some exciting leaps in art lately.  Suddenly her happy faces are taking on dimensions and more personality.  She is into pirates for some reason, and draws (and names) her pirate portraits.  She draws the whole face, with features, and then puts an eye patch over one eye.

She also keeps generating “presents” for people.  She draws pictures, then rolls them up like treasure maps, tapes them closed, and tells us who it is for.  (mostly various grandparents).

She is also signing most of her work now too.

posted in Art, Zora | Comments Off

17th February 2010

Unavoidable blog break (at least the typical posts)

My photos are trapped on an external hard drive that appears to be having technical difficulties. We think it is a hardware issue (likely the arm broke) and are probably going to have to take it someplace that has clean room access to open it up and fix it. Ugh.

posted in Tech issues | Comments Off

17th February 2010

Dreamy

posted in Zane | Comments Off

16th February 2010

Schooly update

Since I was on the couch for the week, Zach took over the homeschooling stuff.  Zane finally seems to be seeking out learning again, after the disaster that was K12 Virtual Academy.  It took a few months of de-schooling and a lot of patience on my part not to push, but we seem to be back on track.

Zach and Zane decided it would be fun to do some math, so they pulled out the Miquon books and did a bunch of stuff on “time”.   They had a ball drawing different shaped clocks, square, triangle, amoeba (and a “no boundaries” clock) and drawing the hands as appropriate.

Then they talked about using the time to describe placement, like on a dinner plate, like this:

Zach drew a big clock on the chalkboard and wrote the problem on the board (Zane loves working on the chalkboard).  After he wrote out the problem, he had Zane draw it.  Mr. Literal Boy drew the contents on the plate in lines, in the shape of the clock arms.  :roflrly:

In other weirdness, Zach reviewed addition and subtraction concepts in a way only a guy would think of.  He drew people in a house, had people outside and did different word problems.  Many of the problems involved things like “if 3 people are struck by lightening, and 4 people run into the house, how many are left outside”.  There were also story lines about a “pit”, people falling into the pit, the smart people who built a bridge, the boulders that came down the hill running over people.  I could hear them laughing and giggling like crazy from upstairs and was amused to find out why.

posted in Autistic Life, Giggle, Homeschool, Zane | Comments Off

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