A dramatic week and an even more dramatic weekend.

It started on Monday when Mrs. Paggi asked to talk to mom after school.  During writing I was getting upset about something and screeching "wait friends" and it was scaring some of the other kids.  Ironically, my writing was better than most of the other kids but I kept erasing over and over again.  Mrs. Paggi chalked it up to my Obsessive Compulsive perfectionism...mom wasn't so sure.  Mrs. Paggi wanted mom to give her permission to talk to the class about me being different.  Mom was taken aback because this was the first she was hearing of this and she thought she had made it clear that she needed to know whenever I was struggling so she could try to figure out why.  Mom was pretty upset because she know how important it is for me to be just like my friends.  She thought about it for the rest of the afternoon until a light bulb went off.  She remembered that I had trouble during writing last year and called my old teacher.  Without telling teacher Mel her theory she asked what I had trouble with during writing last year and Mel said it was the inability to completely erase letters from the slate when it was time to do another letter.  The image lingering would throw me off.  I mean, if you write an "m" with chalk and erase it then write a "t"...its NOT a "t" if there's still "m" humps in the background.  So, mom went out and bought several dry erase boards that could be completely wiped clean and also made a form for Mrs. Paggi to fill out daily so she could see if there were any patterns of when I may be struggling.  Well,  the dry erase board worked like a charm and I had the best day in school that I've had since I started.  Writing is one of the first activities we do so it had been throwing off my whole day for three weeks making me have little upsets later in the day that I wouldn't have had otherwise.  Indeed, the rest of the week was awesome and I had absolutely terrific days with no upsets during writing or the rest of the day and only one upset on Friday because we went to the library for the first time and it threw me a little.  I'm making tons of friends and they all go out of their way to say bye to me after school.  It's so cool.
 
It was also a really good reminder that if I'm struggling there is ALWAYS a reason, and Autism or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder isn't it.  Those things may be why I struggle with things others might not, but its NEVER good enough to chalk things up to a diagnosis and just accept that that's the way its gonna be without trying to find a cause in my environment.  Mom had talked about that with Mrs. Paggi before but this was a tangible example of the concept and mom is hoping it made an impact.

Nixi had great days at school.  She got to ride a bus down the street and back to get used to it in prep for her fair field trip this month.  She was scared but did it and realized it wasn't scary and is super pumped to ride it again.  She's made a friend and she loves painting.  Thursday was "Happy Potato Day" in her class and she got to paint with a potato, hear a book read about a potato, and even got to take a potato home!  She promptly asked mom if she could sleep with it and take it to the park...and she did.  Great week.

We went to Farley Farms again on Saturday and picked peaches and grapes.  We had a blast scratching the piglet and playing with the Farley kids.  Jonathan showed me his one legged grass hopper and even asked me to watch it for him while he helped his sister with something.  It was awesome!

The dramatic part of the weekend...our rats are sick.  Really sick.  They might die and we're hoping they wont.  Mom and dad are doing everything they can and the emergency veterinarians in our area are no help because they don't work with rats.  Hopefully they can hang in there until mom can get them to the vet on Tuesday.  Send them some good thoughts.

And that's that....happy labor day!

xoxo
Safi