I was nervous about this summer, but it hasn't been too bad. A few rough spots with Rachel, but they have been brief for the most part, and we're figuring out triggers and better ways to diffuse them. We're already past the halfway point of summer, and while I'm looking forward to school starting back up, the has gone faster than I expected.
Rachel started swim lessons today and is doing much better this year than she did last year. Last year was her first year of lessons, and she was so afraid of putting her face in the water or anything else that she didn't make much progress over the 16 or so lessons she had. I think she made more progress in today's lesson than she did over the entire course of lessons last year. She has an older lady for a teacher, in her 60s I'd guess, and the woman is no-nonsense and is making sure that she calls Rachel's attention back to her when it starts to wander elsewhere. Rachel needs to work on some of her techniques for floating and kicking, but she's giving it good effort even though she's still afraid of water going up her nose, which happened today. She's learning to do a better job of blowing out through her nose when she goes into the water, though!
Ben has been really sweet and started a few weeks ago to ask for "Hugs!" and "Kisses!" He's always been big on hugging and gives AWESOME hugs, but he's also starting to give kisses again, something he hasn't done in a long time. And when we say hi to him, he's responding much more regularly with "Hi! Hi!", too. He was in the church nursery during the mornings while the rest of us were involved in a week of Vacation Bible School, and he did very well in there. The main nursery care provider told me that it was a joy to have Ben there, and that's so nice to hear! It always makes me a little nervous when we have to leave Ben with people who haven't been around him much since I don't know how he'll do and, to a lesser extend, what they'll think.
I *am* finding out that people are generally pretty understanding and many even have experience dealing with kids on the autism spectrum. In fact, one of the other nursery workers during VBS used to work with severely affected autistic children. So neat the way that God works out the details for things when we don't even think to ask Him for the specifics!
We're taking a vacation in a few weeks, and I'm looking forward to that. We're staying in town because it's easier to deal with Ben's sleeping arrangements if we can just sleep in our own beds at night, but this way we'll be able to play tourist locally and do some of the things about which we keep saying "We should totally do that sometime!" We're planning on renewing our zoo membership for the Point Defiance Zoo and going there one of the days, along with a stop at Fort Nisqually afterward. We're planning on two day trips to Seattle to go to the Children's Museum, Space Needle, University of Washington Arboretum and probably one or two other places. Some of them won't take long, so we're hoping to do maybe 2 things a day plus lunch in between. I'm hoping to find a good Cuban restaurant in Seattle on one of those days. There's also a park not too far away that has a fountain play area that I think the kids would enjoy, judging by the fun they had at a similar fountain in Victoria, B.C. last year. It will be nice to just take it easy that week and let ourselves be in vacation mode. We'll have to resist the temptation to do yard work, though. That wouldn't be vacation for me.
