Mmmmmmmmm Cookies!

I spent all day baking Chocolate Chip Walnut and Oatmeal White Chocolate Cranberry Nut cookies. And pumpkin bread. Oh yum. I make the best pumpkin bread ever. I mean that. Tomorrow I'm making Mint Cherry Shortbread Cookies that are dipped in white chocolate and so so good. And Coconut macaroons.

I made my grandma's Almond Rocca today too. It's my specialty. Adrienne wants orange peel candy, but I'm not sure I'll have the time or stamina to make it in time for Christmas. Kevin's birthday is tomorrow. We're going to dinner and to see the new National Treasure movie. We have one movie theater here, with one screen, and the movie sometimes doesn't change for two or three weeks. Lucky there's a good one for Kevin's birthday!

His folks are coming to town tomorrow and staying through the day after Christmas. They're taking the baby back to Vegas with them for a few days and Adrienne and Nick are going to visit their dad for their winter break.

That means I have ten days, no kids, no work. I'm going to miss them. I'm going to love being able to write with out anyone pulling on my sleeve. Ten days, ya'll. That's 240 hours.

Socially Speaking (or, Don't Kiss Ruby)

I've been thinking a lot lately about Nick and his incredibly poor social skills.

Let me start with an example. Nick doesn't know when enough is enough until it's directly in his face, loud and clear. Say he wants Ruby to give him a hug. She does. But instead of going on about his business, he grabs her, tickles her, kisses her, hugs her again, until she's screaming for him to leave her alone. It's like he can't figure out social boundaries, and so he's always pushing against them. Luckily Ruby adores her big brother and doesn't hold it again him. Imagine the problems he had in middle school, when he'd offer a kid a high five and then tickled, noogied and generally harassed the poor kid until he was told to go away. The saddest part is he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand how people view him or how annoyed people get when their personal space is violated.

There has to be a way to teach him social skills. I'm taking this Positive Behavior Seminar. The main point of it is to teach teachers and parents how to change bad behaviors. I'm wondering if it couldn't be tweaked to fit social skills training as well. The main gist is to pick one problem behavior and replace it with a more acceptable (not necessarily perfect behavior.)

So let's take something simple.

The Problem: Nick doesn't listen to Ruby when she says "no" when he asks for a hug or kiss from her. His sustaining consequence is an interaction with his baby sister.

The Perfect Solution: Nick asks Ruby for a kiss, she says "no" and he says "okay" and walks away. His sustaining consequence would be that he was happy to respect Ruby's wishes.

The Acceptable Solution: Nick asks Ruby for a kiss, she says "no" and he pats her on the head instead and walks away. He will still get the sustaining consequence of an interaction with Ruby, while still respecting her right to not want to kiss him.

According to the PBS rules, I need to come up with a "million dollar reward" for Nick for the first few times he uses the acceptable behavior rather than the problem behavior. A reward that's so huge that he can't wait to try the new behavior again to see if he gets the same reward. This is where I run into trouble. For one thing, Nick is nearly impossible to reward (or punish for that matter.) I can't make a big deal about praising him, because it immediately sets off a rebound round of bad behavior. ("Yea, Nick! I'm so proud of you, you rock!" "Yeah right." Followed by a crash and something breaking.) Punishment is also a problem, because first he doesn't take it and then once he does, he forgets all about it and it doesn't have the desired effect. ("Nick, that's it you're off the computer for the rest of the day." Imagine kicking, screaming and a general tantrum for about ten minutes here, followed by Nick forgetting that the computer ever existed.)

He doesn't do well with rewards or punishments, I think because they upset his flow and make him have to struggle to get it back. He does, however, want to know that when he does what he's supposed to someone notices.

So I'm hoping that Nick is old enough and bright enough, that just learning to get along better will be reward enough. With some luck, just a nod or some small notice of his using the acceptable behavior will be enough.

Here are some future social skills that I hope this plan will work on:

Doing something nice for someone without saying "don't I get a thank you?" afterward.

Saying "I'm sorry" properly and with sincerity.

Having a conversation with someone where he looks them in the eye, has a give and take, and doesn't interrupt to talk about something else or ask if the conversation is over yet.

Keeping a comfortable amount of personal space around himself and other people (instead of leaning against someone he's sitting next to, sitting too close, standing too close, etc.)

Autistic people have to learn social skills by rote. Did you know that language is only 7% verbal? That means that 93% is reading tone, facial cues and body language. Autistic people can't do that, so they are only receiving 7 % of the message when someone is interacting with them. Nick can't read Ruby's irritation when he's trying to make her kiss him, until she makes it very verbal and loud. He can't tell when he is annoying someone, so he has to learn by rote which behaviors are annoying and how to avoid them.

Let Freedom Ring

Ruby is finally feeling better. She had a fever for three days, but it went away with antibiotics, so it wasn't mono like the doctor thought at first it might be. She's chipper and full of energy now.

Adrienne tired out for her school's production of a radio play of It's a Wonderful Life. So it's an anxious wait for morning to see if she'll get a part.

We went to Las Vegas over the weekend and I'm officially glad I don't live there anymore. It's smelly. It's dirty. There are too many people, too many cars. I hate Wal-Mart with a passion. I do miss Target, but you can't have it all, right?

And the big news. I'm going to start homeschooling Nick right away. Last night I enrolled him in Clonlara, which is a homeschool program that's very free and open to interpretation. Not free-free of course. Oh no. But considerably less than a private school. And worth it. Just to see his face when I told him he didn't have to go to school anymore was worth every penny and more. Today he stayed home sick from school and I told him he could do a trial run of homeschooling. Here's what he did today:

1. Watched one show on Discovery Channel closely enough to discuss it with me when I got home. (He watched myth busters and was able to tell me that the myth about people dying if they are completely covered with paint is a plausibility, not a proven fact.)

2. Went out and collected five very different rocks and made a list of their characteristics.

3. Gathered the items he needs to make a machine that will: push a toy car at least four inches, break an empty egg shell, pop a balloon and blow out a candle.

4. Brainstormed a name for his school and designed a logo. So far he's considering the following two names: The Congress Middle School and Nick's Ninja Academy.

5. Designed a menu for this weekend. Chicken chili, salad, crackers, hot chocolate and ice cream. Tomorrow he'll find recipes and start building a shopping list.

I already feel a thousand times more relaxed. I am done sending him to public school. I never have to deal with it ever, ever again. Never. Inside, I'm doing the Mexican hat dance. Inside I'm collapsing with relief. The struggle is over.

This is my last week as a teacher's aide. I have a bunch of sick leave that I'll lose if I don't use it, so I'm taking tomorrow off since all of my kids have been sick. It's a half-day at school and I'll be glad not to have to do the tutoring thing for hours after school. I'm incredibly excited about being a substitute. I'm going to work full-time until my next semester starts to pay off the Clonlara tuition. On Thursday I have to go and get registered into the sub system so that I can take jobs.

I think I'm going to dis-enroll Nick from school tomorrow. Let freedom ring.

*sniff*

Ruby is sssssiiiiiicccccck. I mean really sick. Poor kid. Night before last she woke up at 2:30 a.m. crying like her heart was broken. She wouldn't let me touch her, and she was burning up. By the morning her fever had broken, but she was sick off and on all day. She didn't really have any symptoms except swollen glands in her neck and a fever, plus being real tired and very whiney and cry-y. Yesterday afternoon she asked for a band-babe and when I gave her one she put it on her neck. Poor girl has a sore throat. Anyway, last night she did the same crying in her sleep thing and this morning I took her to the doctor.

The culture for strep came back negative, which you would think is a good thing. Except that if it wasn't strep then the doctor thinks she might have mono. I Googled it and the main symptoms of mono are: fever, severe sore throat and fatigue. Those are also pretty close to the symptoms for a run-of-the-mill throat infection as well, so he prescribed antibiotics. It'll take two days for the mono culture to come back. Antibiotics don't do anything for mono.

We're supposed to go to Las Vegas tomorrow. The doctor said Ruby could travel, but she's still contagious so we should be careful. Children's Motrin is working really well for the pain and fever, but when it wears off (six hours on the dot) she's miserable. If she's no better tomorrow, we'll probably cancel. Poor chickie...keep her in your prayers, huh?

Ah...to be so easily pleased

Ruby loves bandages. She calls them "band babes" and if she gets the teeniest, tinest scrape her face lights up, her hands go up in the air and she announces "oh goodness! Need a band babe!" She absolutely will not EVER allow ANYONE to open the band babe for her. She carefully, as though savoring every decadent second of band babe usage, opens it herself. If she happens to have gotten her hand on a Sponge Bob band babe, she'll squeal in delight, but a regular old flesh-colored is cause for celebration, too.

Currently she has a Sponge Bob band babe smack in the middle of her forehead. She scratched herself overnight and has a quarter-inch mark above her eyebrow. She's looking at herself in the mirror, making funny faces. And just now she turned to me and said, "I'm so cute, Mommy."

Yeah, band babe, you are.

Casey Junior

One of Ely's MANY (tongue firmly in cheek) claims to fame is the Ghost Train. At the tail end of the summer we took the kids in the summer youth program I was the director of to ride the train and my kids got to come along (Adrienne and Nick were too old to join the program and Ruby was too young.)




The train is a really awesome part of living out here. Twice a day you can hear the whistles blowing and the train making it's way slowly (SLOWLY) down the track. The steam engine goes from Ely to Ruth and the diesel engine goes from Ely to McGill. We saw a little herd of Antelope in one the bottoms that you can't see from the highway, that was real cool.

Every Christmas the steam engine gets dressed up like the Polar Express. I can hardly wait!