All About The Aubs

Blah.  Tonight is another night where Matt is working late.  It's 10:15 as I am typing this and he still isn't home.  Ugh.  I hope this means he won't have to go in at all over the weekend.  The good news is that we got to see him in the middle of the day!  Hooray!  Aubrey had her spring program at school, so he left work for a little while and met me, Charlie, and his Mom to see the program.

 (Blurry, but it's the best I could do)

It was super cute.  This year was a "Shrek" theme.  They can't do a typical play or musical, because the majority of the kids are non-verbal, and many of them aren't mobile.  But the people at this school are incredible!  They go above and beyond to put on a wonderful show.  And they use so many creative outlets to help the children have a moment to shine.  Including some kids who use iPads to communicate their lines.  It's really just wonderful.  It brings a tear to my eyes every time.  Seriously...for all the challenges, and pain, and struggle...that school is a really happy place.

Aubrey is doing well.  I wish I had a bunch of points of progress to write about, but I don't.  Right now at school she is working on matching letters with the sounds they make, and that is going really well.  Hopefully that will lead to being able to do sight words.  Which would be awesome!  Oh!  Here's something.  The other day I was doing that parent thing where I spell something out so the kids don't know what I'm talking to Matt about...and she totally knew what I spelled!  It was so funny.  I spelled S-T-R-O-L-L-E-R.  And suddenly she just started bouncing up and down and making her excited sounds...because the stroller is pretty much her favorite thing in the world. 

She is also working on picture communication.  It is slow going.  She can do it when she is asked to, but she never initiates it.  But they've sent the picture book home so we are practicing with it here as well as at school.  It's going to take some getting used to.  We've been doing our own type of non-verbal communicating for so long.  But the point is for Aubrey to have a standard way to communicate with everyone, not just us (We who know what all of her different gestures and sounds mean.  I mean we are nothing if not Aubrey whisperers:)

Once she masters the picture communication, the long term goal will be to use an iPad program called Prolaquo To Go to speak for her.  Speaking of iPads, I'm pretty sure we're going to need to set up a fund or something.  Aubrey is already on her 2nd...and I don't expect it to make it through the year.  Remember that one time when she ate my iPhone?  Yeah.  Her constant need for oral stimulation is really rough on technology.  And our furniture.

What else?

They are still working on toilet training with her at school.  And we are working on it at home too.  I really don't know how hopeful to be with that.  I keep hoping that someday something is just going to click, and she's going to decide she doesn't like wearing a diaper.  Especially when we do the budget and add up how much money we spend on diapering her every month.  And she's just getting over a really bad rash that needed medical attention.  The poor thing.  It's really hard to see her have to suffer like that.  But we just haven't found the magic trick to getting her toilet trained.

She is still the happiest, brightest, and most affectionate girl in the world.  And even though sometimes my writing might make it seem all hard all the time, there is an awful lot of fun and love to go with it. :-)

Oh, P.S. Matt got home like five minutes after I started writing this.  We talked and cuddled and now he is snoring on the couch while he pretends to watch Jimmy Fallon.  I better get my man to bed. :)