You've Had a Birthday

What a year its been for this guy! In the last year, Kent has been diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, and dysgraphia, has had some major diet changes due to constant stomach and headaches, gotten rid of most of his stuff to move into our travel trailer, lived in 3 different states (in one of them two different times), made friends with cousins, become obsessed with Minecraft, Sonic, and Pokemon, had his bike stolen and replaced, homeschooled, and learned and grown in many many many different ways. 

Jacob and I have had to open our minds to a new way of thinking and parenting and teaching where he is concerned which has been really good and really hard.

We love Kent so much and love all the things about him. 

He is so strong physically and mentally. He is extremely determined and even though in general its hard for him to notice others feelings and he doesn't the typical way to social things, I have found his boldness and directness in social situations to be supremely comforting and useful. 

One quick story about Kent. I already posted about my disaster of a birthday, but there was something about it that I loved. Because of the dark mood I was in all day, my family mostly just tried to go around me and give me space, and I felt lonely and sad. But Kent didn't. It was probably the normal thing to do to leave someone alone when they are highly reactive and prone to tears, but Kent kept coming to me and telling me he loved me or doing small things to show he cared. It wasn't big, but it was what my lonely heart needed that day and it was something only my autistic son could give me. 

Here is Kent's traditional giant cookie with a few modifications this year. Dairy free, sugar free and gluten free. It's hard to make desserts with those requirements, but we managed it! We had to make it at a friends house since our oven in the trailer works so poorly. (We actually use our oven as a storage space.)

 Kent's 9 year old birthday interview:

1. What is your favorite color? Orange, you already know that.

2. What is your favorite thing to do? Invent, or hug you

3. What is your favorite toy? Probably Lucky or my superman blanket.

4. What do you want to be when you grow up? Everyone knows that I want to be an inventor.

5. What is your favorite food? My favorite food? I have a lot of favorite foods. One of them is eggs and bacon, one of them is burgers. 

6. Who do you like to spend time with? Um...I like to spend time with my family sometimes, sometimes I don’t like to spend time with anyone. Most of the time I like to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa.

7. What do you do really well? Everyone knows what I do really well. Invent.

8. What makes you laugh? Not really anything. 

9. What is your favorite time of day? Everyone knows it’s after lunch.

10. Who is your best friend? My best friend is someone we moved away from. Remember, I think his name was Rylan. I don’t really have any friends now.

11. What do you like to do with your family? Um...I like to play games and I like to play games. 

12. What do you love to learn about? Um…programming. I don’t actually know because I know all I need to know about programming to be able to program a robot. I can program a sprite and I can make my own blocks that I can make do whatever I want. 

13. Where do you like to go? Arizona, Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

14. What is your favorite book? I don’t have one, I have like 10 million. The only ones that aren’t my favorites are the ones I don’t like. I either don’t like them or they are my favorites. I like that robot book where they build giant robots, Monster Mayhem...Keeper of the Lost Cities. All the books in Keeper of the Lost Cities. 

15. What are you afraid of? NOTHING!

16. What is your favorite animal? Dog, tiger. My favorite breed of dog is a mutt. It's a bunch of breeds mixed together.

17. What is your favorite snack? Probably Larabar or pistachios.

18. What is your favorite song? Everyone knows my favorite song is Christmas Bells.

19. What is your favorite game? Sorry

20. What do you like to sleep with at night? Lucky and my superman blanket and my heavy blanket. 

21. Is there anything else you want to tell me about you? Um...I don’t know, that I like to sneak and invent. I like to invent. So one time I invented a game where it's like a soccer game where you have to be the first to get to the end and when you get to the end you have to stop the other people from getting to the end. You are a little straw thing and once you get to the end you have to roll a dice, so you roll a dice to move, and when you get to the end  you roll a dice when someone is close enough to get onto the win place and if you roll higher than them then they can’t move and if they roll the same as you or higher then they get to go. I want to invent a super cool robot that can shoot bolts of electricity out of its hands like lasers and it has flashlights for eyes and it can turn on the flashlights when it's dark. And I know how to program it and I can program it with scratch and Dad thinks it's impossible but I believe it's possible. I want to also make it so that it has rockets on its feet so it can fly. And I also want to make a bunch of them and sell some of them so I can get lots of money and some of them will be tiny and some of them will be huge and some of them will be just the right size for me. And it will be remote controlled. That’s the part that Dad thinks will be especially impossible but its not, especially with Scratch. And I can create my own blocks and that is what will make it even easier because I can program Scratch with Scratch. And I’m going to make the coolest robots in the world!!!

Day 1

 Well, today was Jacob's first day of his new job and honestly its been a little underwhelming for both of us. He was hoping to be able to jump right into things and I was hoping to find out the location of our next move and to finally have a place we might stay and put down roots and possibly buy a house and move out of our trailer. Well Jacob didn't get much direction or information at work today. Mostly its just a hurry up and wait game. We found out that he will be working remotely at least until the end of 2021 but we don't know much beyond that. I guess I can be grateful for that amount of information at least. We made a plan through the end of the year of where we are going to stay. 

Rachel is turning 11 this year and this is her last year of primary. (sniff, sniff) We have made some friends in the ward we are in right now, and more specifically, Rachel has made a friend, which honestly I feel like is kind of a big deal. The last 10 months we've been traveling and trailer living, and Covid was before that. Add that to always being homeschooled, and Rachel honestly hasn't had a lot of friends, especially ones that shared her interests like this cute girl in our ward. Also, Rachel was invited to sing a solo in the Primary Program this year and she really wants to stay here long enough to do it. If it were up to Rachel, she would have us buy a house right here in Farmington. She loves it here. Anyway, we decided to stay here long enough to be here for the Primary Program at the end of October and then I told Jacob that if we were possibly moving far away somewhere, I wanted to spend some time near my family. I feel ready to drive to Utah today! So we will be spending November and December in Southern Utah this year. 

That's a longer term plan then we have had for a while, so I will be grateful for that, although I was really hoping for a 2 year plan. I feel like we are all wanting to get back into a house and have some permanence in our lives again.

Summer Reading Program 2021

We got to Farmington just in time for summer this year and of course one of the first things we did was check out the library. We got the four of us signed up for the Summer Reading Program and we had so much fun with it. Lots of prizes (shirts, board games, kites, I won a $50 gift card) and a really neat foam part at the end. 

Honestly it was one of the best summer reading programs we've ever been involved with and we've been doing them since Rachel was a toddler. 

Only drawback to the foam party, the next day all my kids were covered in spots, all over their bodies. I wasn't sure if it was an allergic reaction to the foam, the grass, or something else all together. We stayed home for the week (just in case) and the spots faded and went away. It was nuts!

 

Patience

 I thought I was more patient than this. I really did. When Jacob said we would find out in two weeks where we are moving and what is coming next, I really thought I could wait and be happy that the answer was coming. Instead, I feel more anxious about it than ever. I don't want to wait to find out! They better tell Jacob where they are sending us first thing the day he starts his job!

New Job

 Jacob got the job with Cognizant! We are so excited!!! Excited to have some idea of what is going to happen in the future, although, they said that they don't tell their new employees a location until they are fully onboarded which won't happed for Jacob until August 18th. I think I can be patient that long to find out where they are going to send us. Maybe. Sigh. 

Well, we are excited about the job anyway. August 18th better hurry up and come! I'm tired of being in limbo and not knowing what is going to happen next month. Kent keeps asking me where we are going to be on his birthday and a couple of weeks, and I have to keep telling him that I have no idea.