Essary Family News

I have exciting news:  I'm officially married to a grad student!  That's right, Brad's going back to get his Master's.  He's doing online classes through Capella, and he is working towards a Master's in Psychology/Applied Behavior Analysis.  This is the ABA therapy that Korban receives and it's considered the gold standard autism therapy.

We are so excited about this, and I'm so proud of him.  He's been talking about going back to get his Master's for a long time, and was trying to decide what to get it in.  After much research, and talking to different people, and praying, we decided that this was the best way to go.

The things he learns from this will undoubtedly help our family, and he will be able to help other autism families as well.  A double blessing!  I think it's very cool the way it has all worked out.

This step was not entered into lightly--like I said, we've been praying on it and exploring options for a while now.  The timing finally seemed right, and God opened some doors for us.  Classes started last week, and so far so good.

Please say a prayer for my sweet husband.  I know he will be successful in this, but I have to admit I'm a little worried when I look at everything he's got on his plate.  (Just being married to me is a full-time job, but the benefits are good!  Ha!)

We are blessed to have this opportunity, and planning to make the most of it.  I'm just really excited for Brad, and a super-proud wife right now. 

This has been a good weekend, even though Korban hasn't felt very well.  Not sure if he's coming down with something or what.  We went to the drive-in last night and saw Planes and Smurfs 2.  We stayed through two movies and the kids did really well,(minus a few screaming episodes) so there's something to be said for that.  But remember, the drive-in doesn't start until after 8:00, when it gets dark, so we were there until really late last night.  Both kids took good naps yesterday and did really well; however, Korban had to wake me up after I nodded off several times and also had to tell his Daddy to quit snoring.  Ha!  I told Brad we are getting OLD and he reminded me that he only got about three hours sleep the night before.  I have no such excuse--the only thing I can say for myself is that I am the only member of my family with anything resembling a normal sleep pattern, i.e. I like to sleep, so that makes me weird to all three of them. 

We enjoyed both movies.  Korban liked Planes the best, while Selah favored the Smurfs.  Korban wants to know when they will make a movie about rockets.  He loves Cars, thought Planes was awesome as well, and now wants Disney Pixar to make a movie about rockets.  Maybe one day! 

We went to church today, and Korban did really well with the service again.  He did struggle a little more than the previous two weeks, but like I said he has felt bad this weekend.  While in the service he would ask if was ok to scream but not actually scream.  He would ask questions about random things over and over but when asked if he wanted to stay or leave, he would say stay each time.  We are so thankful for this positive turn.  And this afternoon, we went to a birthday party for two sweet little boys who are special to us.  It was a lot of fun. Had a few screaming episodes there as well towards the end, but that just serves to make me thankful for friends who are understanding about things like that. 

One more thing--Korban's ABA guy came to see us again last week.  He has me doing something new:  I'm doing some data collection on Korban's skin picking.  He left me something called a tally counter.  It's basically a ring you can wear on your finger and it has a little button you push every time something happens, and it displays the number on the screen.  I am setting the timer for 15 minutes on my phone and using the tally counter to count pinches/skin picking at different intervals during the day.  We are working on a behavior management plan for the skin picking, and we really need it to work.  Korban's skin looks worse and worse.  His doctor has ordered some blood work just to make sure he isn't having clotting problems.  That's how bad the bruises are.  I'm probably not collecting the data as often as I should be, but my top count so far was 227 times.  Can you imagine?  In fifteen minutes, he picked his skin 227 times, and many of those were hard enough to leave a bruise or draw blood.  So pitiful, and the more you tell him to stop, the more he does it.  :(  His teacher tried to get him to do it to her arm the other day and she could not get him to do it.  I told Brad about this, and he said he had tried to get Korban to pinch his arm before too, and he wouldn't do it to him either.  They were just trying to see how hard he was doing it and what he felt like.  It's so sad to see him doing that to himself. 

Tomorrow starts a new school week--Korban struggled with school some Friday, but I think it's because he wasn't feeling well.  I'm praying he feels better and settles into our routine.  He's still liking his picture schedule, and it's quite helpful.  Amazing how those things work!  Actually both of my kids seem to really rely on the picture schedule.  Korban will ask if he can see the schedule and always wants to hold the next card in line.  Selah gets verbally upset (maybe even more so than Korban at times) when we do something not on the schedule.  It is quite funny but makes us proud at the same time.  We try to work on putting together the schedule for the day as a family and both kids really like being able to do this.  It's cool how it gives them a voice in what is going on just by understanding what each card is.

I know this is a little scattered, but I finally got the all-clear to tell Brad's good news and couldn't wait to share it.  And now he needs the computer for homework.  My husband has homework!  I'm so happy for this new step he is taking.  And so happy he's the one with homework and not me.  ;)