Moving

So we have finally moved into the new house. My daughters have really taken everything in stride. It amazes me how well they adjust to living in a new house. This is our second move within the year since we had to move in with my grandfather for the summer while our house was being built. The kids have handled things way better than I have.

Currently we are still in the unpacking phase. We have a lot of things and really should go through all of those things and decide what to keep and what not to keep. The good part about this is that we are unpacking a lot of toys that we packed up when we were trying to sell our house. The girls are pretty excited seeing them again. I am pretty sure that after not seeing them for 6 months they forgot about them.

So while my older daughter is settling into the house well she is having some regression issues when it comes to her play skills. She has never really had great play skills but she at least had some interesting in toys. Lately she really only has a fleeting interest if any and its mostly stim related. I spoke to her teacher about this and luckily they can provide some developmental therapy for us to possibly work on that issue one on one with her. Most of her therapies are provided in a preschool setting so it is hard to address that particular issue there with so many other kids and things to focus on.

We have also been dealing with some aggression issues at school. I think this is possibly related to her inability to communicate her needs. We met with a behavioral specialist and he thought it was possibly her trying to have interaction with her peers or her sister but not knowing how. If that is the case I guess its sort of a good thing, at least she is wanting to interact. Now all we have to do is teach her how to interact properly, this is much easier said than done.

We are also going to look into getting her an iPad through school to just use for communication. Currently we are only working with PECS and that is going well. I think the biggest issue with using the PECS system is trying to remember to get out the picture book and making her use it. She seems to know how to use it but prefers to just lead me to the things that she wants instead.

So one way I got to escape the stress of moving was to go to an event that was put on by the Autism Connection of Pittsburgh. It was a nice event held at a whiskey bar. I was really hoping to have a nice glass of wine but they only had whiskey. My friend and I both tried some of the whiskey drinks, they were alright. I was not really a whiskey drinker before I attended this event and I cannot really say I will be a whiskey drinker after this event, but it was nice to try something new. The event was fun and it was nice to spend a night out with my friend. I get to see her all of the time but its not often that we actually get to go out and really spend time doing fun things.

Well that is all for now, time to get back to unpacking!