A Day At A Time

...and just like that we're into May!

It's a busy month for us here, but most of it will be condensed into the next two weeks or so. Next week, we will be leaving Issac with Auntie Cole and Uncle Jon while we take Ayden to the Children's Hospital in Akron, Ohio. It's difficult to think of leaving my baby for that long, but of course he'll be great. I doubt he'll even notice we're gone!

As for Ayden, I'm sure he'll enjoy the time with Mom and Dad including our roof-top hotel pool. Luckily, these evaluations won't be too stressful on him, but mom and dad will get information overload! I'm more worried about the car ride as far as Ayden is concerned. Four and a half hours in the car is a lot for him, but we'll make sure we have Angry Birds charged up. I find myself wishing we had our portable DVD player by now, but we'll manage.

After our clinic visit, we have Ayden's IEP. While not our first IEP, it will be the first since his official diagnosis. I noticed they added and Autism specialist to the invite list - so that should be interesting. The clinic is already aware we have our IEP coming up and will be giving us some suggestions while we are there so hopefully the things Mr Awesome and I want will be given place on the IEP without much fighting (or any at all!). We're very lucky to have a good team with Ayden already, so I don't anticipate any issues.

Meanwhile, school is quickly coming to a close for Ayden and I need to be getting myself prepared for the summer months. That means making sure I have special one-on-one time with Ayden to do some learning/speech since he won't be getting that at school. We are also going to be looking into Speech and/or Occupational Therapy over the summer. Our insurance covers 36 visits a year if "medically necessary" - so hopefully we can get Ayden under that and get 1 or 2 visits a week while he is out of school. It shouldn't be an issue, but who knows with insurance! We are definitely bringing it up at the clinic visit and I'm sure Ayden's normal pediatrician will help us however we can - she is pretty great.

So, that's us n a nutshell. The good thing is we come out of this month with a definite 'THIS is how we are moving forward' plan. I'm very excited for the upcoming year. I think back to Ayden at the beginning of the school year and how he wouldn't even put on his backpack, talk, sign. His main form of communication was pointing randomly in a direction and we expected meltdowns every time someone outside our normal family even entered the home (let alone going to someone else's!). Now we see him walking up and down stairs, putting on his own coat, taking off his shoes/pants, washing his hands (with help), saying a few words, using some signs, going to other people's homes with no meltdowns, waving and/or hugging people when they come to visit... OH THE PROGRESS! It really is amazing how much he has grown since school started, so I'm sure you can see why the upcoming year is looking wonderful for us.