It’s awesome, not because of what it looks like, but like most good things, what’s inside makes the difference.
My 2yo son has therapy five days a week and we’re seeing amazing results. But to meet the time demands, he has a team of therapists, not just one.
His time is split between the autism center and home. I absolutely LOVE that he can receive therapy in multiple environments. He has different needs in different environments – something we all have in common.
But one of the tricky parts of having multiple therapists and multiple locations, is how to make sure the data tracking and the tools are consistent. That’s where his notebook comes in. And that’s where this bag comes in.
Basically, the notebook stays with my kiddo, which means I’m taking it home and bringing it back to the center during the week, which I’m absolutely happy to do, but my hands are kind of full sometimes.
Sometimes, I do this thing. My fingers type faster than my brain processes situations. For example, when the color guard moms are talking about ordering shirts to remind the band kids to keep clear so they don’t get hit, and my fingers volunteer to help.
So my fingers volunteered me Saturday to make shirts for the color guard. There’s six kiddos on the squad and two of them are mine. I think that’s why my fingers went crazy.
But we kept it simple and it was the weekend so I had some back up for keeping kids occupied while I worked on the shirts.
Right now, the 2yo is like this really adorable octopus when we’re trying to get him dressed. We have cute little suits for church, but some Sunday mornings they just aren’t worth the hassle. I used my Cameo and my heat press to create an easy option for those busy mornings.
My 6yo had an exciting summer so far. He got to go to camp! It was his reward for having some good days after a 4 week long power struggle and I wanted it to be extra special. So I made him a personalized camp bag. I was hoping for a draw string bag, but found a $2.00 back pack that worked just fine 🙂
At the end of the school year (I told you I was running behind) my daughter wanted a shirt for her and her friend.
The drama club in our high school has a tradition of sending the seniors off with a song from the musical Wicked. So my daughter asked for these shirts. Both girls loved them.
So, in the few months since our 2yo’s autism diagnosis, I’ve had a *little* bit of time to create. I’ve even been able to take a few pics. But having time to put them on the blog wasn’t so easy. So now, I’m playing catch up 🙂
First up are some shirts I made for my little guy. When we’re out, if we’re dealing with melt downs, or just out of the ordinary behavior, I want people to know what’s going on. I believe that when people understand something, they’re much less judgmental, and sometimes more likely to help. I don’t mind talking to people about what’s going on, but sometimes, there’s just not time.
But here’s the other thing. My kiddo has lot of REALLY GOOD days. Most of the time people don’t know he’s on the spectrum unless we tell them. And I want people to see *that* side of autism, too. Most people think they know what it looks like, but they’d be wrong. If you’re not familiar with my son, you’re not likely to see it. And that’s one of the reasons it’s called a spectrum 🙂
We officially, legally, forever-ly (yeah, I probably made up a word) adopted our son.
He’ll be two next month. The hospital placed him in our arms when he was three days old. It’s still very surreal. But what was once a dream is now our miraculous reality.
WE ARE LIVING A MIRACLE.
We waited 701 days for this day and it was worth every second.
To commemorate and celebrate the day, I made T-shirts.
Nine of them.
6 of the 7 children had a shirt like this (Front)
For the back, I used a line from the song This is Me, from the movie The Greatest Showman. I feel like this line sums up what it means to be in the foster community. You can’t be a useful part of this life if you’re not willing to fight for something or someone. When you become a foster family, you open your doors to battles raging you never knew existed.
Like systems that don’t work well, sometimes, but they’re all we have. We learn to fight by learning to navigate the system we’re now working in. We learn that sometimes, the best fight, is to be quiet and let things run their course. Other times, we learn we have to speak out.
We learn to fight by becoming a force for change in the system. Looking at areas we can help with then getting involved.
We learn to fight by encouraging others who are on this rocky path with us. Encouraging parents who try their best to love and help their traumatized children.
We learn to fight our children, to keep them safe from themselves, sometimes. We learn to fight FOR our children when we pour over article after article looking for ways to help them. When we call doctor after doctor asking for help, only to be turned away because they don’t see what we do – AND WE KNOW WE’RE RIGHT.
We fight for the relationships we had before we entered the foster world, because those are hard to hold on to when your whole world is taken over by one of the hardest good things you will ever try.
We fight for the relationships within our own homes because change is not easy. Bringing foster children into your family IS NOT like having the children next door sleep over one night and just never go home. Foster children are in the system, they walk through the doors of our home, because THEY HAVE BEEN TRAUMATIZED. Often – OFTEN – many times. The day the state goes in and removes them (for their safety) is a traumatic event all on its own. But there are circumstances that lead up to that removal. And when these children walk through our doors, they often do NOT want to be here. It’s nothing personal, but there are other places they’d rather be, than with more strangers. For our established children, that can be a hard transition, too. So we fight to maintain balance (that still feels like an unattainable dream most days) within our homes while fighting forces from without, too.
YOU CANNOT BE IN THE FOSTER WORLD UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO FIGHT. That’s why this line got my attention. We’ve been refined and molded into warriors.
My husband and I had slightly different shirts.
Here’s a picture of all of us. You can see mine says His, and His says Hers 🙂
And while we’re at it, a back view of all of us.
But little man, the whole reason for the celebration, his was a little different. His reflected the feelings of our family, extended family, and friends.
Yes, 90! Amazing! His mom lived until she was 102 or 103, so we’ll see what happens 🙂
But when someone turns 90, you gotta have something good because odds are they’ve seen almost everything.
So I put together a gift set for him 🙂
Here he is with his cake – isn’t he handsome? Sorry girls, he’s taken.
Here’s the packaged gift set
And unpacked with boxes and bags (I made those, too).
And individual pieces
He used to love to garden and liked his flowers. So we went with this card 🙂
And a sweet sentiment for him put on a mug – although I’m not entirely happy with how this came out. It was my first time using oracal 651. It just means I need to play more. Yay!
And something fun to wear like a big hug from us 🙂
Social work is a hard and often thankless job. The hours are long and the pay is low, but it’s some of the most important work out there. It takes someone special to do this kind of job.
We have been SO BLESSED to have THE SAME caseworker for the baby’s case the ENTIRE time. If you haven’t been in this world, let me tell you, this is HIGHLY unusual. Our case is almost 2 years old and our worker has been a stabilizing part of it. She made a tough, scary situation easier.
To thank her and show her our appreciation, I made a few things.
Here’s everything together. I made the boxes and bags, too, using my WRMK Template Studio 🙂
Up close of the shirt. I found the saying on Pinterest and designed something in Silhouette Studio to fit my needs. I use Siser glitter HTV in mint and now I think I’m in love with the sparkly htv 🙂
I used the same htv on the mug. Also a saying I found on Pinterest that I put into Silhouette Studio and played around with. I even got to use the conical warp tool!
I used my mug press attachment for the first time and I’m kind of in love with that, too! I do wish I’d made it a little smaller, but it’s a live and learn thing I guess 🙂
The mug says: You can’t fix crazy. All you can do is document it.
This card though.
It should have been easier.
I inked the flower stamp in different colors using a stamp positioning tool. But the effect was a little washed out. I did pick lightish colors though. So I grabbed my markers and inked up select areas of the stamp and stamped again.
I still wasn’t happy, so I got out my prismacolor pencils and added details and colors by hand until I was happy. And I LOVED how it turned out BUT I felt like there was too much white space. Hence the bricks.
I used my Cameo’s pixscan feature to cut out a mask for the stamped image. Then I ran some paper and a metal die through my Evolution Advanced die cutter to make a brick stencil. I masked off the flower and inked up the background. But it was a little, eh. So I got out my pencils and enhanced the bricks. Then I felt it competed too much with the flower. That’s the image you see right below.
So I did some fussy cutting (one of my least favorite things to do) to rescue the flower. Then used some other metal dies and an embossing folder to come up with what you see below. I was finally happy with it and called it a night. You can see the finished version below the bricked version 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!
Oh, the flowers on the are mine because my husband’s awesome 😉
I’ve been sitting on this for a bit! Now that everyone has their things, I can share it 😀
The younger cousins got together and had their own Valentine’s Day party this weekend. They colored Valentines I cut out on my Cameo, did a craft, had a treat then played.
But I played well before they did when I put together matching shirts for the kids.
I like how they turned out and the kids were cute in them.
The white onsies are for the girls and the red shirts are for the boys.
ajdurrant 