Another School Year

About a month ago, Conlan finished second grade!  It was a long school year.  I can't believe the school district here has school go so late into June.  He learned a lot, his teacher and aides were wonderful, and he grew a lot physically too.


Conlan's and Heather's Art Work

He can now write his name and most of the alphabet.  In first grade, his primary goal was to get potty-trained.  In second grade, it was to recognize letters and write his name.  What will it be next year?  To read? To effectively use his AAC to communicate not only his needs but his wants and dreams and wishes and likes and dislikes and . . . To talk?  There are so many possibilities, and he is very capable and up to the challenge.

The past few days when I arrived home from work, he was so excited to have me home.  It makes it real hard to leave every morning.  And when I leave to teach my night class, he stands in front of the door blocking my way.  He may not be able to talk, but he sure can communicate his feelings and wants.


 

 

 

 

 

 





Using Starfall on the Screen in My Classroom

Winter

A few months ago, we bought Conlan a new coat, with a liner.  His old one was worn out and not warm enough for these cold winters that we've been having.  At first, it took some convincing to get him to wear it.  The liner also worked as an extra jacket and easily zipped in and out of the main coat.  Well, Conlan didn't like having both on at the same time and quickly learned how to remove the inner jacket.  That's all good, if we know about it.  Usually he just leaves it on the ground.  A couple weeks ago, we went on a small roadtrip for the day.  A couple days later, we noticed his inner jacket was missing.  We tried remembering everywhere that we had been and called the places we had visited.  So, for the rest of the winter, he goes without the lining.

Best Friends

After school, Conlan usually goes right outside and plays with the dogs, mainly with Dewi, our male.  Dewi is just a few months younger than Conlan.  We got him a few months after Romney passed.  Since we got the dogs back earlier this year, it's been interesting to watch the friendship form.  For a while, Conlan would just taunt the dogs, holding the ball and running around instead of throwing it for them to fetch it.  Recently, Dewi has started playing the same game.  He'll run away from Conlan with the ball and wait for Conlan to come to him.  They could spend hours with each other going back and forth, and they do!

"You Don't Have to be Normal"

There were so many good lines from this talk over at TED. Faith shares the story of her two autistic brothers and encourages us to be extraordinary like them.


I really liked that the older of the two brothers had never lied; he had no concept of lying. She ends her talk with, "Please, don't call me normal."  Let's all be as extraordinary as we can be!

Of Dogs and Kids

Is he awake? I want to play!

Ever since Conlan was a wee little bairn, he has loved dogs - and not just our Corgis.

Kisses



At the dog show

When he could barely hold up his head, he giggled with delight each time they ran in a circle around the couch. As soon as he could crawl, he chased them. As soon as he could walk (at 11 months), he tried sitting on them. in case you were wondering, sitting on Corgis doesn't work very well. Because of our housing situations, we had to give the dogs to a family about a year and a half ago. Conlan gets very excited whenever we see a dog whether we're out on a walk or somewhere else. So when we bought our house, I thought we might eventually get dogs. I missed the dogs too. So when his mom asked if we could take the dogs back from the family, I was grateful, excited, and nervous to have them back.

It's been almost two months since we got them back. And they feel right at home. When Conlan gets home from school, he goes straight to the back yard to play and usually with the dogs. The dogs love to play fetch. They could retrieve a tennis ball for hours. Conlan knows this. At school, he likes playing chase with the other kids. It's no different with the dogs. He walks around with a ball in his hand, taunting the dogs. They follow him until he finally throws it (usually because we tell him to). Adara doesn't like following him around as much, but Dewi is always there with him - if he has a ball anyway.

Bread v2 - With Oatmeal Flour

The recipe we've been using was giving us some very dense bread whether we used the bread maker or the oven. So after much googling and weeding through numerous gluten-free sites, I found a recipe and modified it.

1 1/2 C rolled oats flour
1 1/2 C rice flour (brown or white or both)
1/2 C potato starch flour
1 Tbsp active dry yeast
1 Tbsp xanthan gum
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/4 C warm water
1/4 C oil 1 tsp lemon juice
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
3 eggs
2 Tbsp honey or agave nectar

I've made it both in the bread maker and in the oven. They both turned out fantastic. For the oven, prepare the yeast by combining the yeast, honey, and water. Then let it sit for 10 minutes. Whisk eggs, oil, lemon juice and vinegar. Mix dry ingredients in mixer. When the yeast is ready, mix the egg and oil into the dry ingredients and then the yeast. Put dough into a 9" greased pan. Let it rise for an hour (cover with saran wrap for first 20-30 minutes until bread touches covering). Then bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. When using the bread maker, use yeast that is made for bread machines. Because of the second cycle on most bread machines (including ours), the bread was more dense than with the oven method.

We finally have a recipe for moist, fluffy, delicious bread that the kids love! And it's gluten- and dairy-free. We made the oatmeal and rice flours using our Vitamix dry blender.  I think we bought the potato flour starch from Whole Foods. We'll have to find something else when it runs out, maybe just more rice flour. Next time I'm going to try it without the xanthan gum since a friend's mom is allergic to it and to guar gum. Rolled oats are naturally gluten-free but often get contaminated with wheat, so make sure the oats are certified gluten-free.

Update, January 19, 2016:
Since posting this recipe, I've changed it slightly.  Since most of the flours I use are heavier than conventional wheat flour, our bread was very dense and wasn't rising as much.  And since we don't have a scale to weigh the flour, reducing it to three total cups really helped.  And instead of using just the two types of flour and potato starch, I use whatever flour we have on hand.  For instance, the last time, I used 1 C rice flour, 1 C buckwheat flour, 1/2 C oatmeal flour, 1/4 C corn flour, and 1/4 C flax meal.  Sometimes I'll use some potato flour (dry shredded potatoes using a dehydrator and then the Vitamix to grind it into flour), almond meal (also made using our Vitamix).  Next I'd like to try some quinoa flour.

Muffins

A friend from our Church family recently gave us a juicer. It's not top-of-the-line or anything but does a pretty good job. Ever since we got our Vitamix blender, we've wanted to add a nice juicer to our already-crowded counter, so this was great. We were surprised by how much pulp resulted from just a couple cups of juice. So just like anything else, we googled it and found a few recipes and other suggestions to use the pulp. The muffins have been a huge hit. Here's the recipe that I modified from one I found on justjuice.org:

• 2 C flour (we used rice flour)
• 1/4 C flax meal
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 C applesauce
• 1 C pulp (or more)
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 C oil
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp sweetener (we used agave nectar)

Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes I'll add a little cinnamon, a banana, or whatever sounds good. We ran out of flax meal and liked them just the same without it.

Conlan loves the muffins so much that we have to hide them so he doesn't eat them all. And now we have a way to sneak even more vegetables and fruits into his diet.

 

I told Gavin he probably wouldn't like the muffin mix, but he still wanted it and liked it even.