What's New In Sam's Life...

Well, so much for posting at least 3 times a week. Some family chaos that was started last week didn't help much. My mind was elsewhere and couldn't focus. A post is long overdue and there is so much going on in our little man's life.

Sam's speech continues to progress and for those of you who haven't seen him in a while, you would be amazed. He's even fresh!!! He had a visit to his neurologist last Monday and although his eye contact seemed to be lacking somewhat since his last visit, he seems to be making up for it in other areas. I also had his annual PPT meeting with his school and the Director of Pupil Services for the Town of Tolland last Thursday to decide Sam's fate as to whether or not he stays at Coltsville. Thankfully, Sam will be staying at his school for at least another year. We couldn't be happier. If Sam's teachers read this.....WE OWE YOU BIG TIME. THANK YOU!!!!!! Sam's teachers are amazing. And, he still is "in love" with Talia. This week is a big week for Sam at school. His teachers believe that he is ready to start the toilet training process. I'm glad it's happening there and not here. I'll just be doing a lot of laundry! Adam and I purchased Sam his first packages of "big boy" underwear this weekend along with a lot of sweatpants and sent them all off with him to school this morning along with water shoes. I was anxiously awaiting to hear how it went today, but they didn't start and will at some point this week. I've been busy with the fundraising efforts for Jocelyn's Run and soliciting donations of goods and services from local stores. I never realized just how difficult it is to do this until now. But, the efforts of the entire committee that Adam and I are on is certainly paying off. It's going to be a great night with lots of great stuff to be auctioned off with all the proceeds going directly to Sam's school. Keep the date of October 11th handy in case you want to attend.

I believe I've covered everything...I hope so. I don't want to miss sharing anything that happens in Sam's incredible recovery.

2008 Maine Vacation...

Loving the Quad!

Enjoying the pool with Gabby, Mom & Missy


Playing "Fireman Sam"

Fishing with Gabby

On the kiddie ferris wheel

Enjoying the Rides at York Wild Kingdom

Feeding the goats!

Not enjoying the butterflies

Dad's time with his joy's

Sam & Gabby with their new friend Ashley

Being cool on his bike

Notice the shirt "My parents are exhausted"

Sam ended his 3 week vacation from school (3 long weeks I should say) with our Maine vacation this past Sunday. Everyone was tired (including Brodie) and mosquito bitten. Poor Sam got the worst of the mosquito bites. He's still itching from them! We had reserved a campsite for us at Beaver Dam Campground in Berwick, ME for us to stay with our pop-up, but I have to say, we really only slept there. Although it was a very nice, well kept campground, there wasn't much there to keep the kids occupied. One of the best features the campground had to offer on their website was competely dismantled...The Hayride! I had the kids all worked up about it too. Plus, we came to the conclusion that the pop-up was just too small for all of us to be spending a week in. The result of that was us buying a 32ft travel trailer while we were up there. Yes folks, Adam and I have lost our minds if you haven't already guessed. So, we spent all of our time at Uncle Mike and Aunt Doreens house, which I certainly didn't mind at all. I looked forward to going there. My vacation week started out kind of rough, but ended up just great. I had lost a filling in my tooth not to long ago and have neglected to have it refilled. So, I had a great deal of pain, unbearable I should say, especially at night when I would lay down to sleep. I took a Tylenol with Codeine and ended up having a very bad reaction to it and was extremely sick the next day. At that point, Aunt Doreen took me to a dentist to get a temporary fill. I left the dentist with some pretty good prescriptions. One of the prescriptions was penicillan and it had it's own side effect, which started another problem that I won't get in to. Anyway, we did make it to Yorks Wild Kingdom with Uncle Mike and Aunt Doreen thanks to my cousin David for getting us the tickets. The kids had a really good time, enjoying the amusement rides the most. It's a good thing we walked around the zoo area first, because we would have never made it in there if we did the amusement area first. Sam really enjoyed the petting zoo where we were able to feed the goats by hand. I thought for sure he would be afraid, but he wasn't. He was so cute! Gabby is a butterfly freak and they had a butterfly house with butterflies flying all over the place. Sam didn't like that too much, so he clung to his Dad. And of course, he LOVED the rides. He pretty much went on all of them. He did have some meltdowns about having to wait in line, and when he got to be too much to handle, we decided it was time to go. Yorks Wild Kingdom is a great place to bring kids and I look forward to going back again next year. My aunt and I had our "alone" time, which included pedicures, manicures and lunch...Awesome! And as usual, Adam and Uncle Mike went fishing for the day. Aunt Doreen bought Sam and Gabby their very own fishing poles (Sam's is Lighting McQueen and Gabby's is Barbie) and Adam took them down to the pond to try them out. Gabby did great fishing, but Sam was concerned about Brodie swimming in the pond and didn't fish. Our week ended with Sam's Uncle Kevin, Auntie Maryjo, his cousins Timmy and Missy and her new hubby Henry coming up for a family picnic. That was so much fun! Definitely a time that won't be forgotten. Once Sam's 3 week vacation was up, he was definitely ready (as far as we were concerned) to return to school. He's been a tough little cookie showing a lot of attitude these days. His behavior has become quite concerning to me with his tantrums and we've got to nip it before he gets worse. He's talking more and really understanding things that we say even more these days. When I was driving him home from school today, I looked in the rear view mirror at him and noticed that his hair was getting a little long. So, I asked him if he wanted a haircut tonight. He sternly said this: "Note (that's Sam way of saying No), Not Today". And it's things like this that are coming out of him more and more. Unfortunately, we are seeing a lot of repetitiveness lately with him wanting to watch the same movie clip over and over and over again. I truly believe that 3 weeks is much too long for a child with Autism to be away from school. They regress so easily. He went back to school yesterday along with Gabby and is falling back into his routine nicely. Sam has a visit with his neurologist next Monday and his PPT meeting next Thursday at his school. That meeting will be the fate of how much longer he can stay at his special school. Pray that he stays another year. Although he's made tremendous progress, he needs to continue this progress and can only do so by staying where he is.