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Important Dates

Stuart
June 5, 1976
36 years
11 months
16 days

Natalie
March 6, 1981
32 years
2 months
15 days

Cameron
July 28, 2005
7 years
9 months
24 days

Tyler
Dec 8, 2007
5 years
5 months
13 days

Spirit
Dec 9, 2010
2 years
5 months
12 days

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June 2, 2010 - We just received a letter in Cameron's backpack from his teacher. The letter read:

Hi Natalie & Stuart,

This was our morning message on Monday. Some days I have the boys provide the ideas for the sentences & this is what they came up with. After reading it through together, I got an older boy to read it. Then Cameron asked to read it by himself & was able to read all of it except the 4 words underlined.
Good reading Cameron!

This was the message on the board:

Happy Monday,
Cameron slept at memere's house. *boys name* is going with Mummy and Papa to get his casts back on.
*boys name* has no more training wheels! *boys name* went to Sudbury.
*boys name* went swimming in Grandma's pool.
Love, the La Casa boys
xxoo

* I removed the names of the other boys

We couldn't be prouder of our boy, I don't know how much he could have gotten from memory but that's some pretty advanced reading! He sure loves stories and loves reading and you can just tell that he can't wait to be reading all the big words himself.


May 20, 2010 - Yesterday a bunch of smoke appeared over the city and traffic came to a stand still as a forest fire raged on just outside of town. Most of the city ended up with no power, even the street lights. We had no power as well and since I couldn't work and Natalie couldn't cook, we decided that we might as well go visit Richard and Ida even if we're not in direct danger.
They got it under control quickly and we returned home after supper... but to give you an idea, here are two pictures I took right outside my front door:
Fire 1
Fire 2

May 19, 2010 - A lot of topics to cover in this update... we'll get to the fun stuff first, the pictures. Natalie and I took the boys for a walk around Hershey Lake and naturally, I brought the camera and took some pictures. I think we'll soon make it a part of our routine, at least every second day anyway, because the boys just love going around the lake so much. And they weren't shy about going into the water, or trying to climb into the woods to get closer to the snakes. Yes, snakes.
Anyway, have a peek: Hershey Lake

Second on the agenda is a video! Over the last 2 months, Cameron has impressed me by being able to tell me what letter any word starts with that I say to him, except for tricky ones with silent letters like 'knee'. Anyway, the last couple of days, he's impressed us even further by actually reading a Dr. Seuss book!


Finally, on to what I have been doing... I took the time to revamp one of my sites: StuartDuncan.name.
It's not a .com, so it's not really of much use in doing something commercially with it, but it is obviously very personal, being my name. So I decided to transform it into a blog where I can talk about something very close and person to me, which is my experiences with Autism... and what it's like in raising a child with Autism. I figure it's good for me just to share, get it out there, but if anyone else can get anything from it, then all the better.
Perhaps some other parents will see exactly what it is we go through, perhaps some other parents of Autistic children will take something from it and be able to use it or even just to have you, reading this, learning a little more indepth and detail what it has been like for me... it's my chance to let you all see through my eyes a little more clearly than I have in the past.
All I ask is that you take the time to comment on the site, show others that you can open up. I like hearing your opinions and thoughts in person but I like to have it on the site, where I can look bad and read it over again in years to come.

May 3, 2010 - Last week Cameron mentioned to me, while waiting for the bus, that his "best friend" in school was no longer his friend. I asked why and he said he didn't know, he just didn't want to play with him anymore.
So I asked why his friend didn't want to play with him and he said he didn't know. So we just sort of left it at that but he was clearly sad about it.

This morning, Monday morning, I said to Natalie "Cameron told me that his friend is not his friend anymore" and Natalie asked him about it. Cameron went on to tell us that he "has no friends", "no one will play with me" and that "no one likes me."
Now, I have seen Cameron go through a pretty wild range of emotions from being so happy that he can't contain it to so mad that he hits, kicks and throws things, but I have to say that this is by far the saddest that I had ever seen him.

I explained to him that everyone I know likes him a lot, and listed off all of the family that he knows, the boys next door and downstairs and most of all, his little brother. Tyler was crying this morning, real tears, because Cameron wasn't awake yet. He just hates it when we're up and Cameron is still in bed.

I took Cameron out to the bus where he reluctantly climbed on board and I felt so terrible sending him off, telling him that everything will be alright when I know that most likely, things will only get harder.

A 4 year old shouldn't be feeling depressed.

April 30, 2010 - Well, we're at the end of month 1 in our new place and couldn't be happier. A lot has developed in this last month and I hope I won't miss anything but here it goes:
  1. We're all happy and healthy and really enjoying our family time. Words couldn't express how much we appreciate all that Richard and Ida (Pepere and Memere) did for us by taking us in and helping us out, but I'm sure they're just as happy to have their house back as we are to get a house of our own. It was a huge sacrifice for them to make for so long and I'm glad they can finally get back to a nice and quiet life with a lot more freedom. Likewise, we have done the same, more so the boys. We've really made sure to give them their space, time to play on their own as well as made lots of time to sit with them for family movies and games.
  2. Natalie's baby sitting full time now, his name is Troy. You can see pictures of him in the picture album below. He's a very happy and snuggly little boy that loves to be picked up and played with.
  3. Natalie's also beginning her photography career doing some free shoots for people this month. She did shoots for a radio host and his girlfriend, for some families, babies and more. It's going very well for her.
  4. Cameron's progressing well, even doing basic math such as 3+3. Also, you can tell him most words (within reason) and he'll tell you what letter it starts with. He felt a little uncomfortable on his new bus at first but has gotten over it and is fine now. He loves playing "Don't step on my shadow!" with me while waiting for the bus to come.
  5. Tyler is potty training and it's clearly not going as quicly or easily as it did with Cameron but he's doing well. He does great when he has no pants on, although it can be disturbing to people that visit... but when we put underwear or pants on him, he forgets all about what to do, and behaves as if he has a diaper on. That makes for a lot of laundry for Natalie.
  6. Tyler loves to play with all the big boys now, running all over the house and doing what they do. He's often the "bad guy" though since he's the smallest but that doesn't seem to bother him one bit.
  7. Tyler's speech is pretty amazing, he really has great grammar skills, and is very smart. However, it's proven to be a problem as he is always struggling to get words out. He doesn't stutter so much as stammer as he he will get stuck on the first word of a sentence while his mind is running circles trying to get the rest of his thoughts out.


Troy, Tyler and Bubbles

April 7, 2010 - We had a 12 person Easter dinner on Sunday, and it went really well. Natalie made a great dinner and everyone had room and had a great time. Before dinner, the boys had an Easter egg hunt with Emily, almost 90 eggs to find in total! Each of them with yummy candy in them.
Of course. I took pics:

Easter Egg Hunt and Dinner

April 4, 2010 - Pictures of our new place. We're missing pics of my office, the bathroom and our room but trust me... there's really not much to see there. The interesting stuff is in the pics.

April 4, 2010 -


We're comfortably settled into our new place, the kids love all the running room, the nice big yard and even enjoy playing with the little boy that lives downstairs.

Tonight we're expecting quite a house full as we celebrate Easter by having Easter dinner here with family and friends. Natalie is cooking up quite the feast and getting things prepared to host this holiday in our new home.

She's also been busily scrapbooking, adding new layouts almost every day and she's also been getting more and more into her photography hobby.. doing photoshoots with friends and family. She's really getting very very good at it and able to get great shots that simply require a quick trip to the printers to get printed.

Happy Easter everyone, have a great week-end!

April 2, 2010 - We live in our own apartment now, a 3 bedroom rather large place where the kids have their own play areas and I have my own office.

It's in Timmins, further away from Cameron school although his bus ride will be shorter. The boys love it here... we're pretty happy with it as well. However it will need a few touches to make it truly feel like home.

I have some pics, I'll be uploading them in the next few days.

Mar 18, 2010 - This week is spring break so Natalie and the boys are staying with Auntie Laurie, Uncle Jimmy and Emily... while I stay to work. They've been having a good week however last night Cameron woke up with a headache, a high fever and red ears. So Natalie took him in today to get checked and it turns out that he has a double ear infection... again. They recommend giving it another day to see if he can fight it before starting anti-biotics.. he's doing alright though but may have another rough night ahead of him.

While there, they took the time to weigh and measure him... he is now 47.5 inches tall and 45.1 pounds. Now, this intrigued me so I went to check it out online. 47.5 inches tall just shy of 4 feet tall. The average height of most 4 year olds? 3' 3"!!
He's a tall boy!
Also, the average weight for a 4 year old boy is 35-37 pounds so he's not exactly light either!

Mar 2, 2010 - Cameron came home from school with a picture in his backpack... we had no idea the event had even happened, much less that a picture had been taken of it... so it was a rather nice surprise for us.

It turns out that the Olympic torch, while passing through Timmins, made a trip to his school where some students had a chance to actually hold it...


Feb 14, 2010 -

Happy Valentines Day to everyone! This morning the boys and I woke up at 5am and did some artwork for mommy. The problem was, once they finished it at 6:30, they ran into her room to surprise her with it right away. She got to go back to sleep but waking her up early wasn't exactly in the plan.

Jan 23, 2010 - Tyler can now count to 10 on his own, he occassionally forgets but for the most part, he gets it right most of the time. He's doing very well.

Natalie has a new job at OLS starting February 1st, she'll be training for 5 weeks doing 8-4 five days a week. It's not ideal but it will help us to save up and get out of here sooner.

Jan 14, 2010 - Natalie added a new desktop wallpaper today for January:

January 2010

Jan 5, 2010 - We finally got the pictures off our camera and into some galleries... here are our Christmas pictures and some pictures of the boys sliding!

Christmas 09
Sliding

Jan 2, 2010 - The other day we were all just having a regular day, just like any other but while I was at the kitchen table having a snack, I saw Tyler walk in and go straight to the fridge where the alphabet magnets are... pull out the 3 that were in the console and quickly plug 3 new ones back in... then walk away.

It was all very quick, very precise and he was gone again as if he hadn't even been there.... I was rather shocked, so I took a pic really quick with my cell phone.