week 16.

A quick story from last weekend (4th of July weekend):
On Saturday morning, one of Matt's friends from high school was in town and asked if we could watch their four kids for a couple of hours. That means we had six kids in our rather small home. It was definitely overwhelming, but they all played really well together. The reason why I am sharing this story is because their 6-year-old daughter is also autistic (something Matt casually mentioned to me 10 minutes before they walked in the door. Yikes!). So we had the opportunity to have two kids on the spectrum in our house. Kira is much different from Emmett. I would say she has great language development for her age. She also didn't seem to have any sensory issues. No eating issues either. She was also potty trained. The only thing her mom told me not to do was to wind up a music box. That seems to be the only thing that causes her to melt down. One major difference between her and Emmett is that she cannot stay still and snoops and digs through everything. She has to know what's in every drawer, behind every door, and under every chair. We had to keep a close eye on her! We didn't want her to get into anything that could hurt her. The other thing is - she runs. We took the kids outside to play and Kira ran off into the street many times! Matt had to run after her down the block a few times and guide her back to our house. I think she is just so curious about everything. Kira is a very sweet girl and I'm glad I had the chance to get to know her a bit.

This week has been devastating. On Monday Matt lost his job. The college he worked at closed 12 locations nationwide due to a funding freeze. I've been sick about it. So our insurance ends at the end of July. I am so scared that Matt isn't going to find a job by then and Emmett will have to stop therapy. I don't want him to lose all of the progress he's made. Of course, I'm also worried about money. I anyone is reading this, please keep us in your prayers. Pray that we will be guided in the right direction.
Therapy went very well on Wednesday. Zena is continuing to work with Emmett on using verbs and describe objects. He cooperated the entire time. She also worked with him on names of food. They put together a food puzzle, which Emmett really likes.
Teanna blew me away this week. She is working on ways that work to calm Emmett's body down. This week she did a deep pressure massage on Emmett while he was sitting in a bean bag. She also turned off the florescent lights and turned on some soft yellow light. This combination worked like a miracle. Emmett sat quiet as a mouse in that bean bag while Teanna massaged his arms and legs. She also tried massaging his face, but he did not like that. After the massage, she went on to doing an activity with aqua sand in water, which is a cool sand/putty mixture. Emmett is normally has a very difficult time controlling his excitement while playing in water, but this time he was much calmer. That massage helped to calm his body down so he could play in the water and not get too overstimulated. By the way, he wouldn't touch the aqua sand with his hands, only with a spoon. So Teanna wants us to try massages at home before we take him out to overwhelming places. I think this will work really well, as long as I can pull it off like she did!