The Farm and the War

A couple weeks ago, Ira talked her friend into going down to her friend's parent's farm in The-Farthest-Point-From-The-Bright-Center-Of-Civilization city again (It's right outside Capitol Reef National Park). The last time they went down, I had just started a new job, didn't have any PTO, so I drove them down and then picked them up. In the meantime, I managed to get raw milk poisoning and tear my meniscus. When Ira mentioned how fun it was, I reminded her that my memories were less than fond.

Anyway, this time around, there was too little warning and really a bad time to be absent from work, especially with our corporate taskmaster PHBs breathing down our necks. So, I drove them down Tuesday evening, spent the night, drove back to work Wednesday and then back Friday afternoon to pick them up. So much fun. Misha stayed home with Baba Liza cause Ira didn't think she could keep track of Misha and Nikolai at the same time. Misha and I did go swimming, which he absolutely loves. And we ate french fries. I think he really liked the 1-on-1 time with Baba and Me.

Friday when I went down, I drove quickly home from work and picked him up and he absolutely was thrilled to go on the 3 hr drive down there. So, coming back home, Nikolai was tired and he isn't as enthusiastic about road trips as Misha is, so he was crying and squawking nearly the entire ride back. Misha doesn't like it when Nikolai squawks, so Misha would belt out his own annoyed squawk every so often....I love going down to the farm!!! At least Ira and the kids had fun.

Church every week has turned into a battle. The older 3 monsters actually usually conduct themselves fairly well. The two youngest monsters have declared war. The Nikolai-Misha squawkfest continues there. Nikolai is just a one year old who doesn't want to sit on laps anymore. Misha doesn't like it particularly either, but if you let him go, he immediately goes for the accordian door seperation and starts pushing it back and forth. Even when you hold him, he start hooting, trying to get a good echo. He loves nursery though. Loves to go, loves to leave. He has even slipped out on occasion, from what they have told me. The only way to get both of them to somewhat calm down is to occupy them with animal crackers or other such goodies. I guess it's a blessing in disguise though, cause if I didn't have one or more worm on my lap, I am sure I would be dozing off.

Sibling rivalry

Misha has sibling rivalry issues big time. Whenever one of us is holding Nikolai or playing with him, feeding him, or whatever, Misha is there, vying for attention. Even if he has just eaten, he begs off Nikolai's food. When he is just changed, he will beg to be changed again if we are changing Nikolai. I already blogged on how he will try and push him away, or put his foot on his head. I have now found out a good use for this.

I was trying to get Misha to follow a 2-3 step instruction set. Go to your room, get a diaper, bring it back so we can change you. Misha was not moving. No motivation. He just looked at me and wandered over to a book and wasn't going to do it. After several times of trying to get him to do it, I finally told him, "Ok, I guess will change Nikolai's diaper then." Shooooom, Misha was off like a shot. Ran down the hall as fast as his wobbly little legs could take him and was back in record time with not one, but two diapers, climbed on the couch and was lying down waiting for me to change his diaper.

I wonder if it will work when it's bed time. "Misha, I guess I will have to go put Nikolai in bed."

Misha is in

Ira is overjoyed. A while ago, she applied to have Misha accepted into a relatively intensive preschool run by a mental health group. They specialize in autism and have a very structured system.

So, Ira had me go with her to the eval. They did some one-on-one with Misha and ran him through their observation tests. They also had us fill out some intensive questionnaires. I blogged about them a bit ago.

Ira was crushed when they didn't accept Misha into the program. She decided to fight for it though and played all sorts of phone tag with them in order to have him retested. Finally, she got something set up for this past Tuesday. It was in Provo, not far from where I work, so she got me from work and we went together. I think she needs me for moral support...and to keep her from getting too combative. Mother Bear syndrome, sheesh.

I picked up on a couple of things in this eval. One, was that the original test was done without us. They observed Misha and didn't ask us questions. All the info they got from us was on the questionnaires, which were geared toward a mental health eval, not a special preschool eval. Two, the people doing the initial eval were interns. That could be why they didn't accept him the first time.

Misha does have some quirky behaviors that are autistic like. Social interaction is a major one...that is the lack of. He doesn't interact with kids his age. He barely interacts with his siblings and that is only when they dance with, sing to, twirl him or get him something he wants. He has a lot of interaction with Ira, myself, and Baba Liza. Then the list goes to Baba Cindy, Deda Robert, and then siblings. For instance, he barely interacts with Melanie when she is down from WA cause he doesn't know her. The wheel spinning, button pushing, the hesitancy to touch things or try new foods. The histerical laughter when we drive past phone lines...stuff like that.

So, Ira was on cloud 9 yesterday when they called and said he was accepted into the program. I still have hesitations, but that is from the length of class, not necessarily from the program. I guess we will see how it goes.

Misha forgets words too

Recently Brady's mom worried about him losing his only word, "Yah!" Has any one else seen that with their 1p36ers I wonder. We have. I am not sure it's right to say it's "comforting" to know that they are similar in this, but it's the possibility that it is connected to the syndrome that helps categorize it. Misha has picked up several words that he uses for only 1 day or maybe even a week, then they are gone. And no matter what we try to do to get him to say them, he wont. He just garbles out his default "word".

He said "park" one day 5 times. The next day it was gone. He also said "Stiiiiinky!" for a few days. Now he just says "Aaee-eeee" (the intonation is right, just the letters are gone). I did't know why he lost that one cause it was one of his favorites. There are other words, but those are the two that popped into my head. There has been only one case I know of where he actually improved his pronunciation of a word. With the song he likes us to sing "All night, all day..." he change Awww yay to Awww dyay all by his lonesome. I don't know whether it is due to apathy, laziness, or just the switch in his head flipping back off, but it has happened.

I don't worry too much for a few reasons. He is improving and growing and advancing. He is picking up other words and signs and sometimes I have to catch up to him. He is a blessing to be around. He is healthy. I figure someday, he will reach the dev stage where he will talk. But whatever, however and whenever he does will be fine with me.

Eval for Misha

Misha has an eval at a new preschool this week. Ira signed him up on the waiting list a couple of years ago and he finally came up at the top of the list. The hours are 6hrs a day 4 times a week instead of 3 hours. Not sure how I feel about that.

His eval was at 8am and kids had school at 8.30, so I dropped Ira and Misha off at the eval and took the kids to school and came back and joined the fun paper work. The questionaires are made by the sponsering company behind the preschool which is a mental health services provider. Ira made me laugh. She was marking the funniest things because she was taking them out of context.

For instance: there was a section with a bunch of stuff on emotional problems like anger. She had marked the behavior "Runs away from home." When I asked her about it she said, "He runs away from home." I corrected her, "No he wanders off. It's not the same. He doesn't get mad at you and run off." He would have to learn to get mad first. The other was under a suicide section. She marked that he was "Detaching self from others." We got a good laugh about it.

What was nice was when we came into get him (they eval'd him seperately), he got all excited ran over saying, "Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah!" and grabbed my hand. When I got home from work, he ran over and hugged my leg. Sigh....it's nice to be loved.

Oh! Sole Mio!!!

Recently Misha has been trying to sing. What's funny is he doesn't do too bad, all things considered.

It all started about a year ago when we were are a birthday party for the daughter of a friend of a friend of a...dunno, somehow connected through the local Russian (Ukrainian, Uzbek, Ossitian, Georgian, Krgyz, etc) chain. I went cause they promised me yummy food. Anyway, when it came time to sing "Happy Birthday" Misha, who loves music, signed, "More". After a few times of me doing that, he made his attempt which I blogged about a when it happened here.

A month or so ago, Misha started singing another song from a russian movie and engaging us to sing it for/with him. The song starts, "Mama! Mama! What am I going to do? Mama! Mama! How am I going to live?" (translated losely from the russian song). Misha will try to get you to sing by getting in your face and singing, "Mama, Mama". The fun thing is that he gets the notes right.

His latest is the first part of "Angels watching over me" a gospel song. It goes "All night, all day angels watchin over me, my lord." He gets the tune right again, although he needs to work on the words more. It comes out more as "Aouu yay, aouu yay". But the point is that he is trying and I was thinking that this could be the key to getting him to talk more.

Little Dentist Shop of Horrors

Misha went to the dentist yesterday. He had a bit of decay on one molar and we thought it best to take him in. The other kids went in too. Asya has a canine that is coming in slowly through the gum, Kiril may have had some gunk but didn't, and Dasha had a little brown spot they drilled out and filled. He looked at Misha first, but decided to save his for last, so he got to watch the other kids go under the lamp. He was watching intermittently, signing "ouch" occasionally, and complaining the whole time. Then it was his turn.
The dentist, who is really good, sent Ira and the kids out. I got into the chair with Misha. I put his feet in between my legs, held, his hands against his chest with one hand, and held his head with the other. I thought I would be humane and also closed his eyes. He screamed the entire procedure which took just a few minutes. It's bad enough trying to brush his teeth, but this was torture for him. They didn't even have to deaden him. But he got a little revenge. A couple times he was able to chomp down on the dentists finger. Not that he did it on purpose, but hey...whatta ya do. He has been complaining to us about it ever since. He points to his mouth and lets us know that he knows it's all our fault that the mean ole dentist got a hold of him.

In other news, Kiril got baptised on Saturday. Yay. It was a fun day. We delayed it so that Baba Liza could attend. It went well. Kiril was excited. He got baptised with his friend Conner. And we had a banana split bar afterwards to celebrate.

I am working on putting tile in the master bath this week. Wheee. Will be so glad when it's done. Can't wait to be able to use my own bathroom and shower again. Also started biking to work again. Not too shabby after a break of a few months.