Cranial Sacral...

I'm a firm believer in paying attention to what the universe offers me.  So this is why, after several weeks of Dominic bonking himself on the head for no apparent reason (to the extent that Alpine's about to add it to his behavior service plan), when my friend that i've worked with for 14 years sat down at my desk on Thursday and told me that the chiropractor his whole family had used and loved (who coincidentally does NAET and got rid of his bordering-on-anaphylactic allergy to hay) had opened a practice in Colorado Springs (they live about an hour south of here...), I paid attention.  I called her, found out that not only does she do chiropractic and NAET, but also cranosacral adjustements, and made an appointment for Dominic for this morning.

This doctor actually got off the phone with me Thursday (after I'd given her a good 20min cliffs notes version on Dominic) and pulled out her grey's anatomy book to plan strategy.   Color me impressed.  She has been looking to expand her practice into the ASD kiddo world (she read Jenny McCarthy's story and said - Hey, I can help these kids) and why my friend's wife told her about Dominic, she really wanted to see him.  So win/win for both of us.

Anyway, after she did the cranial adjustment - which looked like gentle head squeezing (and by the way she said both his head bones were significantly out of alignment), i mentioned the recent head hitting stim, and my theory he had a headache and bonking himself was blocking the pain.  She felt his neck alignment and said "I agree with you" and promptly adjusted his neck. I have not seen him bonk himself since.  What i hope, is that this was such a new stim (and everyone's response to it has been to blatently ignore it so that we didn't reinforce the behavior) that he hasn't had time to ingrain it past the pain blocking stage.  If so, its likely we won't see it again.  Which would be nice. Its very disconcerting to see your kid make a fist and hit himself in the head relatively hard.

Other immediate changes - he's been MUCH calmer the remainder of the afternoon.  He spent a good hour playing outside (some walking the dog, some actually swinging and sliding).  I dont' see additional language today, but we'll see how the week goes.

She and I both want to do one big change at a time, so we are going to add the NAET / allergy work in next week.  If we can eliminate his allergies I'll be ecstatic.  We've set up a standing appointment for Saturday mornings for a while

(and yes, i'll be going to see her myself as well.  Both for chiro and NAET.  I'm excited.  Appointment for me is Thursday)

Monthly Alpine meeting...

So every month we go to a parent meeting at Alpine where we meet with Dominic's lead teacher, the program coordinator and the last couple of times (they transitioned between coordinators) a second coordinator to ensure smooth transitioning.

Today was our January meeting.   He's doing great - high points - we are not crazy, he is doing more sentences.  He's averaging 9.4 sentences (3 words and up) per day on average (have i mentioned that i love data?).  This afternoon when i picked him up, he said "i want tie my shoe", so i got a 5 worder out of him.  Definite progress.

All of his programs are going well - he is now using a knife to appropriately cut slices of play doh, and so tonight i had him cut his own chicken. And he did. 

Negative behaviors are primarily down across the board from last month with the notable exception of the new behavior that we noticed starting over the winter break - hitting himself in the head.  From what alpine has for data points, he's doing it as an attention getting mechanism, and so we need to work to give him language to do that instead of needing to bonk himself. And the appropriate response is to completely ignore him when he does it.

We have our IEP with D11 coming up next week and we'll be focusing on ensuring we have a good set of goals mapped out for the transition in August to full days in public school.  So hopefully that will go smoothly.

Oh, and the Alpine Autism walk is now on the Calendar for April 21.  They were not overly happy when I told them that this year I wasn't planning on doing major fundraising since I hit all my friends, family, acquaintances, imaginary friends from the innerwebz,  random people i met in the street, etc up in August for a big fundraiser for Dominic.  However, we will be walking and would love company.  So if you're local, please pencil in the date.  If you walk on Dominic's team, you get an awesome button with his face on it. :). If you are not local, and want to do something to support this, drop me a comment on this post and if there's a handful of you, then  i'll set up a fundraiser page. 

Thats just cute.

One of the things Dominic got for Christmas from some old friends of ours was a set of Toy Story themed wall decals.  This month has been ridiculous, so we finally had time with all three of us home and awake and not busy on something else this afternoon to put them up. 

Dominic LOVES them. They're in his room, all at his eye level.  He put up the smaller ones (they're like stickers, and with the bigger ones around a foot long, folding over and getting stuck to themselves was happening easily), and showed me where to put the bigger ones.

Tonight, at bedtime, he went around his room and said good night ____ to all of them.  The pig (which says ONK ONK), the horsie (then he neighed), the dinosaur (and he roared), mr potatoe head, Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and all the stars.  It was asorable.  Time will tell if this is a new required bedtime routine.

He also, after we put all the stickers up, retrieved his stuffed woody doll, and proceeded to carry him around the remainder of the evening.  Including sitting him down on the table at dinner. 

Primary care doc check up

We had to get a physical signed by the doctor for Dominic's Alpine paperwork, and today was the appointment.  Literally a matter of height/weight/doc signature.  Sort of silly, but I digress.  It'd been a year-ish since our primary care doc had seen Dominic and she was entirely floored at the improvements in his focus and verbals.  Very impressed with our protocol and Alpine's work.  :)  I like appointments like this.

And now after a 3 week hiatus.....

Sorry its been awhile since I've blogged.  Life got in the way in the form of me getting very sick and I just didn't have the energy to write anything up.

Dominic's doing fine. We're all ready for Alpine to start back tomorrow and school to start back Thursday. It'll be good to get back into routine.  We had a lovely holiday - much quieter than most years because of my illness, but lovely none the less.  No ornaments were broken, primarily because we only put non breakable ones up this year. Dominic loved the tree.  Dominic seems to be talking a decent amount, he actually said hello for the first time to a friend of ours who dropped by yesterday.  With eye contact.  He handled me being hospitalized pretty well - which was good for all parties involved.

We did not get the grant we applied for to help with Alpine costs, but are back in the hopper for next quarter automatically.   Not holding my breath, I'm SURE a ton of people apply.

Tonight I'm feeling inspired to say thank you to those of you who've continued to stick around, read these oftentimes distressing blog updates, and actively insert yourselves in our lives.  I realize that its oftentimes extremely difficult to wrap your heads around the knowledge that Dominic was fine one day and he was not fine the next.  And that he was 3 when it happened, and from what we now know, it could've happened to anyone.  Especially those of you around to watch the regression as it was occuring - I get that its uncomfortable and horrifying and hard to remember how he was before and compare it to now.  I live it.  I know that I'm not the most sociable anymore - I don't have time or patience to be tactful / superficial / whatever, so those of you who have hung tight - you have no idea how much that means.  Those of you who find it uncomfortable to be around me because it could've been your kiddo - I get it.  Or because I'm too intense now, or because you don't relate to my reality now, etc - I get it.  I may miss you tremendously, but I understand.    And those of who I've met on this journey, who are on the same road - I don't know that I'd still be sane if I didn't have you in my lives.  Thank you.