It's the first day of fall!

And boy, is it chilly!

Today was a pretty good day. It was day 1 of "Operation Unplugged."  I confess-I let Zach play electronics too often and too long. He's a tricky kid to manage, and I don't always have time to manage the tantrums that go on for hours and hours. Giving him my iPhone was an easy way to buy me some peace to make dinner or homeschool or call the plumber, etc. I knew his brain won't be able to heal unless we could get him away from screens totally, so today was the day we bit the bullet.

I braved myself and prepared for the worse-the tantrums, the whining, the violence...but I was shocked, I tell you, utterly shocked and unprepared for the reality. And here's what happened-he was a happy, interactive, delightful child. All day long. The end. I really couldn't believe it, especially since we tried this before (I ultimately caved in after a few hours of Z throwing heavy objects at people).


Today was also the first day we had real, actual volunteers come to the house to work with Z and K one-on-one. It went wonderfully well, so I am happy about that, too!  We are going to slowly build up to a full schedule (2 people coming each morning; one for Z and one for K), but we have quite a terrific crew of people coming so far.

The afternoon I took the middle 4 to the playground while the baby napped. Karis just lay on the ground the one hour and thirty-right minutes, until finally I convinced her to go down the slide. I went with her and said the word "slide" over and over. About the fourth time we went down she started saying it with me, so hurray for Karis!

Sometimes I can't tell if we're making progress of not, especially on days like today where she has lots of down time and isn't really interacting. One of my goals is to spend the weekends really documenting how much time she spends in a withdrawn state vs. an interactive one, just for my own records and peace-of-mind.