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| Jessica, Allyson & Christopher 2013 |
Ally, short for Allyson, is my oldest daughter. She is 9 years old and is currently in a 3rd grade inclusive classroom at a public elementary school. She's extremely fortunate to have a one to one aide with her at all times. She gets pulled out for Special Education services daily, occupational services once a week and speech services twice a week.
Ally was diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum by a child psychologist when she was just under 3, her official diagnoses is PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified). I will also be talking a lot about Sensory Processing Disorder, including how to make your own therapy stuff at home, because raising a child with Autism is definitely not cheap.
You can find out more about PDD-NOS and Sensory Processing Disorder here
PDD-NOS description by Autism Speaks
SPD Foundation
Next in the lineup is my daughter Jessie, and my son CJ. Both are "neurotypical" kids. Jessie is 7 years old and attends kindergarten at the same elementary school as Ally. CJ is 4 years old and currently goes to preschool. We are all excited that next school year he will be attending the same elementary school as his big sisters! Both of them have made a huge difference in Ally's growth and development. More about them and their relationships with Ally in future posts.
My husband Jim works nights as a Polysomnographic Technologist at a local hospital. He helps people who have difficulty sleeping, often times he sees people with sleep apnea which means the person involuntarily stops breathing while they sleep. We met in high school as friends, and started dating in 1989. Yes, we've been together for 24 years! Married for 15 years. And yes, we're still very much in love.
And me? I am very blessed and thankful to be able to be a stay at home Mommy for the time being. I have an Associates of Applied Arts Degree in Commercial Photography. I worked in the field for almost 2 years, but switched to working in schools doing administrative work when times were tough and I needed steady work. I worked at a private school in Oakland for 5 years and at a private special education school in San Francisco for 2 years. Currently, I've started a small business from home making crafts. I'm mostly working on amigurumi (crochet toy animals) selling online at Flumps 'n Stuff on Etsy.
If you'd like to know why I started this blog, please read my first post, "Welcome to Talk Ally- It's About Time...".
The name "Talk Ally" was kindly suggested by a friend of mine who thought it would be cute since it sounds like something Ally would say. It's exactly something Ally would say. It's also what we would say to her countless times when she was almost completely non-verbal a few short years ago. It also fits another way, here in Hawaii we use the pidgin term "Talk Story". Used in a sentence, it would sound something like, "Let's go grab a cup of coffee and talk story." So instead of talk story, we can talk Ally. Get it?
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| Top row: Caran & Jim Bottom row: Jessica, Christopher & Allyson |
One more little thing...
You will notice that I have included ads through Google and links to Amazon products. I have always sent people links to Amazon products in emails or Facebook messages so it's not new to me. The money (which I suspect will be very very little if any at all) that I may make from people clicking on these ads and links will be used to help pay for Ally's special vitamins, digestive enzymes and therapy items. Thank you!
