Fantastic Day!

I'm writing today because I want to seize the opportunity to post something positive on this blog. Today was a fantastic day for lots of reasons. First of all, Elise is potty trained! She still has occassional accidents, but she's really progressing well. The whole potty training experience was so much easier than I expected. It just showed me that I should never underestimate Elise's abilities.

On Friday morning at 8, 3 consultants showed up at our house; one of the agency's PhDs, our parent trainer and a consultant who has been working with Elise. They started her sitting on the potty for 5 minutes and taking 3 minute breaks. Basically, she spent most of the day on the toilet. We had bought lots of new toys for her to use while she's sitting on the potty. By the end of the day, she was up to 5 minutes sitting on the potty and 5 minute breaks in-between. By the end of the day on Saturday, she was up to 9 minute breaks. She clued in really quickly and is very proud of herself. On Sunday, we were without consultants and training her alone. I give our parent trainer a lot of credit. Things about her drive me crazy, as I've posted here before, but she was great during this potty training experience. She literally spent the entire day with Elise on Friday cramped into a hot and stuffy bathroom. Then, she did the same thing for more than 6 hours on Saturday. Even on Sunday when we were alone, she called twice to see how things were going. For Monday, she found a consultant to fill-in afternoon hours so that we wouldn't have to take off work to continue the potty training (it was too much for the nanny to do since she also has the boys to contend with in the afternoon - definitely a two person job). On Monday, Elise had only one accident during the hurried morning getting ready time when we were unable to pay enough attention to her. Yesterday, Elise had zero accidents. Today, she had one because she was engrossed in computer play and forgot. She was very upset about it. She is now up to 40 minute breaks between her 5 minute potty times. The biggest news is that she made number 2 into the potty for the first time today. This is highly exciting news for me because I want to be DONE with that type of clean-up on a regular basis! She also started learning to sign potty and say the word. This will obviously become essential, especially since school is starting for her in two weeks. She seems to be picking this up quickly also.

Today, I received the news that Elise will finally begin occupational therapy services with a non public agency. This is great news, but the fantastic part is that she'll be working with her old OT who we loved and who was really good with Elise. We had hoped that this would happen, but saw it as extremely unlikely. She's a very talented therapist, Elise responded well to her and she was a great help to us when we were going through the very difficult time of receiving and accepting Elise's autism diagnosis. She means a lot to me and I'm very happy to have the chance for Elise to work with her again. Hooray! In this case, our hard work securing appropriate therapy for Elise has paid off. It's a few months too late, but it's ideal.

I'm feeling like supermom today. After the kids went to bed, I went to work baking brownies for a potluck at the boys' school tomorrow. These brownies are gluten-free, casein-free, nut-free, and egg-free. I thought they were soy-free, but then I discovered the Parve "butter" I used contained soy. OK, the nut-free may also not be a true statement since I didn't verify that every ingredent was not manufactured in a facility that also processes nuts. I certainly wouldn't tell someone with severe allergies that it was allergen-free, but it's not bad. The boy in Adam's class who can't have nuts, eggs & milk is not so bad that he is concerned about cross-contamination. He just can't have any of that as a direct ingredient. His mother is the teacher, so we got the correct story on this. The gluten-free only happened because I was out of wheat flour. I used the All Purpose gluten free baking flour mix that we have on hand. It should be an interesting experiment. I'll sacrifice and taste them once they cool to ensure that they taste good. They definitely smell great.

Well, that's about it for now. I'm enjoying today for today, yet hoping that we can ride this wave of fantastic for a bit longer.