Everything

Best pin ever. (Click to see full-sized)

Tardy for the Party

Look who arrived at the Sasha house yesterday! Christopher Pop-In-Kins!

Yes, I know it was December 23. That's how I roll, very last-minute.

I have never been that excited about the Elf on the Shelf..... I think he's a little creepy.

But when I saw Christopher last week, I had to have him! How cute is he?

He comes with a great book, which we read when he arrived last night. I told the kids I had put in a request for an elf earlier in December, but they were backed up and ours had just arrived, and thank goodness he did, because he would have to head back to the North Pole sometime on the 24th.

And at 3 am I woke up and realized I hadn't moved him. Phew! So now he resides on top of the mantle. And hopefully sometime today I will remember to have him make the trip back to chat with Santa.

Hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Sashas!

Just wanted to wish you all Merry Christmas!

I'm joining in Angry Julie's Holiday Card Blog Hop! I absolutely love looking at holiday cards!

Soap Box Time

I get so emotional when I watch things about vision therapy, the program that P just competed 28 weeks of.

It is so frustrating that as parents we have to do our own research and find resources ourselves.

The fact that we can't trust opthamologists to make a treatment recommendation for us is unbelievable.

If we had "waited" as it was suggested to us by our opthamologist, where would our son be today? Father behind, that's where.

And I worry for those that can't afford vision therapy. We spent almost $4000 out of pocket, and it was so worth it, but what about families that don't have access to funds like that?

Such a shame that insurance companies don't recognize that vision therapy works.

To end on a positive note, though, P has made fantastic strides since we began vision therapy in May. Although I'm not sure that reading will ever be easy for him, his tracking and focusing have improved so much. He also has had the best attitude through this all- I am so proud of him for that. He understands that everything we are doing, and all the hard work he is having to do, is towards the goal of making reading and school easier for him.

As a supplement to vision therapy, he began Interactive Metronome therapy a few weeks ago with our OT and are already seeing progress there as well.

From www.interactivemetronome.com:

The IM program provides a structured, goal-oriented process that challenges the patient to synchronize a range of hand and foot exercises to a precise computer-generated reference tone heard through headphones. The patient attempts to match the rhythmic beat with repetitive motor actions. A patented auditory-visual guidance system provides immediate feedback measured in milliseconds, and a score is provided.

Over the course of the treatment, patients learn to:

• Focus and attend for longer periods of time


• Increase physical endurance and stamina


• Filter out internal and external distractions


• Improve ability to monitor mental and physical actions as they are occurring


• Progressively improve coordinated performance

Since we suspect P has a visual processing problem in the background, IM will hopefully help him in many areas. Our IEP meeting is on Monday, and I'm anxious to figure out what the school will be able to do to help support his education.

Love Actually

Last night the Mr. and I watched one of my favorite Christmas movies, Love Actually. Such a great movie! And this morning I headed to iTunes (and Amazon as well) ready to download Billy Mack's "Christmas is All Around", and I can't seem to find it available as a single song! iTunes doesn't have it at all, and it's only available on the full album on Amazon. Any other ideas on where I can purchase the song? I pretend to be technologicaly savvy, but we all know I'm not.

Please Watch For

If you are local, please keep your eyes out for Diet Pomegranate 7up.... I have been dreaming about it all year and waiting patiently for it to be released for the holiday season. Haven't see it yet, but as soon as I do, I'll get all the 12 packs I can find!

Holler if you see it!