This morning at the park (well, not *this* morning...months ago)

[Another post left unfinished from July.]

Today was day 1 of Transportation Week at Sam & Mommy's preschool. Last week was Farm Week, and I'll be sharing more about that in another post. [Actually, I probably won't. I was over-ambitious, we went to the library, farmer's market, and zoo, and I already posted the pics on Facebook.] But this morning we tried the library again, where Sam got into trouble for grabbing a little girl's arm to either take a letter magnet away from her or move her away from the magnet board, I am not sure. He had the same tantrum as the last time trying to leave, but I managed to get us out of there with a book about trains and a book about fire engines.

 The plane

The bench and sticks.

Then we went to Aronson Park in Lakeville, where there is a veterans' memorial with an old air force plane on display. I posted a couple of pictures to Facebook toward the beginning of our visit, but my attitude at the time wasn't great. Both were taken from the same vantage point, standing near the bench that faced the playground. My caption was, "Sam was generally traumatized by the size of this small plane...but he did say 'ay-pane' in passing a few times while playing with sticks on a concrete slab by a bench." 

He doesn't really do it right, but he likes it.

What I didn't post was that he later explored the playground equipment, examining the rocker, climbing the steps up to where there was a steering wheel, which he pretended to drive, and went down one of the taller slides once. He then took off across a grassy field, but not in the direction of the road, and turned around to see that I was following him several times, plus he came running back to me when I crouched down in the "come hug me" position with arms outstretched, after I yelled his name. He agreed to hold my hand and walk back to the bench to get Scout, and was happy to go back to the van with me after I counted backwards from 5.

These are little accomplishments, and things that I ought to be embarrassed to be proud of a 3 year old doing, but for Sam, they are progress. It just reinforces to me that I need to get back into a parenting support group again. We got the ECFE catalog for fall, and once again, the special needs class is only 6 sessions long while all the other classes are 12 or even 13 sessions long. It's not fair to make us wait until MEA to start class and finish around Thanksgiving when everyone else starts in September and goes through Christmastime. I want to sign up for a regular class, but I don't know if that will be useful for us or not at this point. It will all depend on what time Sam goes to school in the fall anyway.

[He went in the mornings, and as I wrote yesterday, I signed up for two classes in addition to ECFE. We're going to be plenty busy. Also, he's gotten accustomed to leaving the house at least once between noon and six pm. So I have that block of time daily, that I have to fill somehow, if anyone wants to have a playdate. Sam also has all day off tomorrow. He's also come a long way speech-wise since I wrote this--he's saying at least one real sentence a day. Yesterday it was "It got wet," after he spilled a cup of watery pop with melted ice all over himself in the car, and I asked "What happened?"]

More Than Words

This fall is shaping up to be the fall of classes. Mondays Sam and I are taking Music Together, and soon enough our ECFE class will begin on Wednesday nights. (Next week, finally.)  But last night I attended an orientation for a class offered by Sam's speech therapist and her sister, also part of the early childhood special ed program in our district. They received a substantial grant from the state, and last winter were able to attend a weeklong training in Florida to be able to teach this class. Due to the grant, they are also able to offer this class free of charge for eight families at a time. Last night I sat in a room with those parents, some of whom have children in class with Sam every morning.

More Than Words is a program that teaches parents of children with autism how to work directly with their children, in their everyday routines, to improve their communication. It meets each child where they are, whether verbal or not, and works right in with their current activities. Sam's therapist has done some of this with him in class, and he's made so much progress even with that small amount of help. Of the three classes we're going to be taking at the same time, I think this is the one that will be the most important. I've asked Dan to make it a point to leave work early to come with us, since I'll need him to be as involved as I am with the program, as he spends a majority of his time at home playing with (and feeding and bathing, etc) Sam. I just don't know if we'll get another opportunity to do something so beneficial to Sam for free again.

And now I'll leave you with the song that's going to be in my head every dang time I think about this class.

Slow-Cooker Beef Stew

This is one that's sort of what you might call "semi-homemade". It uses a seasoning packet, but I still have to chop up several vegetables and some meat, unless I bought it pre-diced (which I didn't this time). The recipe is here, or else on the back of whatever packet you buy.

Anyhow, this one is quite straightforward. You peel and chop some potatoes, carrots, celery stalks, and an onion or two. Then you chop up and add the meat. (I skipped the flour step, as the broth is plenty rich without being actual gravy.) Mix the water with the seasoning packet, dump it over the top, and stir. Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4. Bam. Tasty dinner.

Chopped veggies

And the meat

With the seasoning and water, all mixed up

Cooked down and done!

With a bread plate, that's my dinner.

You could literally eat it with a fork if you wanted to. It's basically Dinty Moore, except with flavor.

I used half a beef roast, the last one we had from our share of last year's cow. I think all we have left from the cow is the other half of the roast (destined for stroganoff, yum!), some ground beef, and a cube steak. We still have some pork spare ribs and chops, plus two ham portions and some ground pork. Overall I think we got just the right amount for what we would use.

I made a new batch of plain artisan dough and baked a boule to have with dinner and a demi-baguette for Dan to take to work today with leftovers.

I debated about chopping the rest of the vegetables for the next two batches of stew, and freezing them, since I knew they'd probably go bad in the fridge if I didn't. It didn't take long to get the veggies going this time, but I can imagine how excited I'd be to make this recipe if I just had to thaw a baggy of veggies and use store-bought stew meat, already diced. I could literally throw it together in 5 minutes. Anyhow. So I did. Two batches worth.

Tada!

Tomorrow night we are taking a class at Sam's school hosted by his speech therapist, so I plan to toss together some spaghetti with meatballs in rosa sauce when we get back from that. (Newsflash: it's half a jar of Target brand pasta sauce with a little half-and-half mixed in, and a dozen frozen meatballs. I have my nights of not-even-a-little-bit homemade, too.) I think I'm going to try to do a crock pot meal every Monday as long as we have Music Together, a reasonably quick pasta on Tuesdays, and possibly another crock pot meal Wednesdays once we start ECFE. I may need recipes. We may resort to pizza by Wednesday once we get on the classes every Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday night schedule.

Hmm. What happened there?

I honestly didn't plan to take a whole week off from blogging, but it looks like that's what happened. I'm not entirely sure where the time went, but I know I wasn't doing much different than usual. On Facebook I quit a group that was a bit toxic and joined a better one, so there were the requisite "getting to know you" posts, so that's probably where my writing energy went. I also took another weekend off from Facebook altogether for the last two days. There was cleaning, as I did keep up with my 20 minutes a day, plus laundry. We got Sam's hair cut in time for school pictures, which are tomorrow. I did some cooking but neglected to take pictures. Well, I took no pictures at all of my Chicken with Mushrooms, which was a winner; I took pictures of about 1/3 of the process for Roasted Vegetables with Sausage, but I don't plan to make that again any time soon. Today I made beef stew in the crock pot, so there will be pictures of that tomorrow. It smells amazing!

In the meantime, here are some random pictures that never made their way into posts.

Raspberry jam on the stove

Raspberry jam in the jars

The beginnings of applesauce...forgot to take any more pictures the whole time

And just a cute one of Sam waiting for the bus one day, pre-haircut.