Frankie's School

Starting at the beginning of June, Frankie's EI class is a drop off one. I stay for the first half hour, and then go to a parent group for the next hour and a half. He loves his "school". He gets a little upset sometimes when I leave, but is distracted as soon as I go. This morning when I mentioned he was going, he said, "Bye, bye, Mama"! He is getting so big!
The teacher says he does great and transitions well too. He knows the routine and will know what is coming next and what to do. Today they played in the water table with bubbles and painted cardboard firecrackers for the 4th.
It is exciting to see him doing so well. When I returned today, he was sitting their painting with his smock, too cute!
The parent group is a little long. It is not as informative for me as the Perkins group, because the moms have children with all different issues. So it is not specific to vision and albinism, as Perkins is. We talk about more general parenting issues.
It is fun to see him going to school, but a little sad that he is big enough to go to school!

Perkins Albinism Class

I have written some about the class at Perkins, but wanted to mention all the rest of the great things we did and learned. On the last day of class, (everyone was sad to see it end!), we did a sunblock experiment. We put sunblock in between transparent paper. We then went into a dark room and put photo paper under the transparent paper. We then went into the sun for a few minutes and came back inside to lift off the transparent paper with sunblock. You could see how much the sunblock protected, because the paper was not exposed. I used the Aveeno Baby sunblock and it protected quite well, judging from the experiment. I have been using it all season and it works great and does not irritate the skin.
We also got to test out some of the low vision aids. We got to try hand held magnifiers and ones mounted on glasses. I am going to call this week to the low vision clinic at Perkins to get an appointment for Frankie. That will be quite interesting to me.
There is also a workshop at Perkins where all kinds of devices are made to help blind and vision impaired children. The slant boards were very nice, it is a desk that is slanted at a 45 degree angle so the child does not have to strain their neck over so much to look at or read something. It is made from a type of cardboard, so it is lightweight too.
Overall, I do love the albinism class!

Summer Fun!

I have many posts about vision, EI, etc, but I wanted to blog about all the fun summer activities first! Today we went strawberry picking at Ward's Berry Farm, so much fun with the kids. We got to take the hayride out to the patch, just "a ride" to Frankie. : ) They each picked a pail of strawberries, and not too many were eaten up right then! I was noticing that Frankie did have some trouble finding the strawberries with his eyes. He would feel for them and not even bother to look sometimes. Tonight I may make some sort of strawberry parfait with vanilla pudding and bananas.
Last weekend we were in New Hampshire, at Storyland and Santa's Village. Both parks were great! They are quite shady, which was great for us, mainly geared towards kids 2-10. There are many themed kiddie and bigger rides, animals, storybook houses, Santa (at Santa's Village). We also stayed at a hotel with an indoor water park. This is our 3rd indoor water park and we love them! No need to even worry about the sun. When we are home, we joined our high school indoor pool, cheap and shaded!
Things that made me happy today:
Strawberries
Chatting with the kids on the hayride
A night walk
Finally blogging : )

20/60

I have been slow to post lately, sorry!
Let's see, Frankie had an opthamologist appointment 2 weeks ago. I seem to get more confused each time I go. The good news is that he improved on the teller cards to 20/60! We were happy about that!
At his last appointment, I thought that he would get glasses eventually when the degree of his eye turning was the same for 2 appointments in a row. Now that was not true, he does not need glasses. So I find it a bit frustrating to understand something one way and then it is different the next time. So surgery would be the only solution for his crossed eye, but not right now. I am hoping to try to ask even more questions next time, to be clearer in my understanding.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all dads! You are special. Lizzy and Frankie have a special bond with "Daddy" and do different activities with him than they would with me, which is nice. Lizzy loves to talk about space with Daddy and Frankie loves to go play downstairs with him.
Today we got to go to the car museum to celebrate Father's Day.
Things that were happy today:
Making pancakes
Calling my Dad (Pa to the kids)
Seeing John's Dad (Grandpa to the kids)
Going to the car museum and hearing Frankie repeat, "Car!"
Chai
Thinking about Lizzy's ballet recital yesterday and her Frosty the Snowman costume.

Thank you, Rick!

I did get to see Rick Guidotti last week at Perkins. So inspiring how he goes around the world promoting difference as beautiful!

Thank you Rick for seeing the beauty in everyone! For being so full of energy, enthusiasm and
kindness. Your warmth and love towards others is apparent immediately and lights up a room. As soon as we saw you last week, you immediately remembered us and talked to Frankie. We need more people in the world like you and working as hard as you do to promote goodness and harmony among so many different people. Thank you!