A really good week from a few days ago until a few days to come.

I am really excited about seeing the Mountain Goats Wednesday. I am thankful to whoever took this video of the last Mountain Goats concert I saw. I love this.

First post after the autism conference and man there is a lot going through my mind. Toby started what we like to call school, but is really day care today. He was happy to see us go and seemed into his new crew of friends. We also found out that there is an opening at Millhopper Montessori, so I guess this day care will be short lived. He starts real preschool in about a month.

Coming home for lunch today was interesting. I did not have to put Toby down for a nap. Henry finished school last week, so he is home for the rest of the summer. Virginia is planning this time for some home based therapy and the conference was a great inspiration for that.

I spent part of the morning organizing notes from the conference. I really did learn a lot. Lots of practical ABA advice. There were a couple of people who did a workshop that blew my mind about teaching through drawing and writing. The technique helps kids to learn theory of mind, and to place other people's existences into the general existence of, in this case, Henry. It seems completely obvious to most people that other people are in a room and that these people have thoughts and are a part of your experience. The reality about autism is that this is hard to learn, and this workshop pointed out that this is, in fact learned.

I also learned a bunch of OT relaxation techniques. There was a great workshop on how dogs help kids on the spectrum to relax. Relaxation is a big deal. If you have anxiety, it really effects mood and behavior.  I will probably find some way of posting the notes on the blog. I am thinking about posting them on my public drop box folder, so that Virginia can have access to them.

There was also a pretty inspiring workshop about the statistics on divorce and parents of autistic families being completely wrong. There is a often quoted statistic that couples with kids on the spectrum have an eighty percent divorce rate. It is actually about the same as any family with children, around thirty five percent. It is just nice to know that the relationship is not doomed.

Wednesday is the Mountain Goats. This should be awesome. I am also trying to map out some home projects, and getting ready to call some fencing companies about the fence and pergola ideas that we have. This feels like a really good week.

Thanks to Toni for keeping up with the kids while we got out of town for awhile.

Also, I bumped into my old friend Mike at the conference, and that was a super rad surprise.