Behind the Design - Life 03.18.13

Well I just gotta do a little dance because the 31 Days of Branding are OVER! ...Don't get me wrong - I loved the chance to geek out and talk design and business, but staying on one topic for that long was hard! Trying to post every day was a challenge for me too so I am beyond excited to have a little more freedom! You might see some changes around here in the next few weeks as I try to take my own advice from the series. But for now, I'm just going to get back into the normal routine of posting whatever creative projects and fun adventures I have going on!  

Here's just a quick peek into what's been going on behind the designs lately...

I don't think I've shared much about my little guy and his language delays before. For the last six months or so, our silly-sweet toddler boy has been in early intervention (speech therapy) because he wasn't talking and interacting with us like a typical 2 year old. In more recent weeks we've come to the conclusion with the speech teachers that Micah is most likely on the autism spectrum.

Obviously this changes nothing about the way we see him and love him. Micah absolutely lights up our home with his contagious joy and playful energy. But he processes things differently and it's been really difficult to teach him or get him to pay attention to us sometimes. It's not just that he doesn't talk. He has trouble understanding our words and gets overwhelmed by a lot of social situations, including just everyday playing with us. So this has been the #1 thing on our minds lately - researching all hours of the night what we can do to love on him more and teach him in a way that he understands. The main reason I wanted to share this today was because I found this amazing resource for parents specifically for speech and social skills. I hope you'll pass it on if you happen to know someone whose little one is in a similar situation with autism or even just a "late talker."

The name of the website is Teach Me To Talk with blog posts and products by Laura Mize, a pediatric speech-language pathologist. We have the dvd set and liked those but what really helped me were these books... I bought the Teach Me To Play With You book which is full of ideas, games, songs, etc. for getting my little guy to pay attention to me during playtime. This was really hard for us before because we wanted to play with Micah and teach him things but he didn't attend to us or was just happy doing his own thing. So this book has been awesome with teaching us how to be more fun and gain his attention. The other one by her that I love was the Building Verbal Imitation in Toddlers with SO much info about how to work with your kids at home during everyday life. There are different levels of speech, so I liked knowing exactly where Micah fit and what to work on, what to say, different games to try, etc. I'll definitely keep researching and even trying out different diets and things but as for his language delays, these books have been so encouraging. They were well worth the cost so I just had to pass them on.

My little Ari girl is getting huge! She's doing the full out army crawl and she is FAST! It's been really interesting watching her do things that her brother still doesn't do - pointing, waving, looking at our faces to check our expressions, showing us things that she finds interesting. She is a quick little learner! It's so fun to see her and Micah finally playing together. We're essentially working with them on a lot of the same things even though they are 22 months apart:)

Like my new ampersand pillow? I've been getting my craft on and doing some really fun DIY projects lately for the blog New Nostalgia! I've recently become a new monthly contributor there and am so excited to be a part of the team. You can see my first project here and learn how to make this fun type pillow. It makes me smile whenever I see it in my living room.

So that's the basics of what we're up to right now. How about you? What's been up at your house lately? Share in the comments!