New Header

Did you see our new header picture? Another year, and Angela has moved to the middle of the group. I'm pretty sure that Amos has bypassed her since we took this picture in September.

Not many people are blogging anymore, but we have some really exciting things happening in our family, and are excited to share them with you. You can also find me on Instagram at SpringFamilyLife. I am trying to get in the habit of posting there. Still working on it!

The Dream

There was a night, several years ago, when I had the most vivid, realistic dream, I have ever had.

In my dream, I held one of my toddler children in my arms. He wore an outfit that was my favorite at the time: red pants with a red and white striped shirt with red suspenders. I could feel the corduroy in my fingers. Sleepy,  he nuzzled into my neck. I could smell his hair and breath. He whispered “My mommy” in the same voice I have recordings of. I rocked him. I sang to him, his favorite songs of the time. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word...” While I sang the phone rang. I didn’t answer because I was enjoying this moment with my son. But I blinked, and he was gone. All that was left in my lap were the pictures I have of him. I sobbed.

I woke, wiping tears from my eyes. My heart ached. I felt he was gone. I sat on the couch, fully awake, with tears streaming down my face that kept coming and coming. Why? What was wrong? Finally after several minutes I got on my computer. We hadn’t heard from him in several months Over the years I had learned where to look. I usually searched news stories and jail rosters, hoping to find him. On this night I did not.

The next morning, still feeling the anguish from the night before, I looked again, this time in a county that was just outside my normal search radius. If it wasn’t for the name listed I would not have recognized him. He was not the little boy in the pictures. He wasn’t even a shell of that child. The boy was truly gone, and in his place was a man I didn’t know. Several months later I would write about The Stranger in My Car. That was 3 1/2 years ago.

For three years he worked very hard, and did everything required of him. I went to family days at the treatment facility two hours away, and I was there for his graduation from the program.  He lead several of his friends to treatment facilities. I was, and am, so proud of him for all his hard work. He called often to check in with me and remained close to his brothers.

But mother’s know things they can’t always explain, and I could feel the threads being pulled, ever so slowly, until one night there was another dream, and I knew. He knows that we love him. He knows we worry about him. I believe he doesn’t contact us for many reasons, including that feels he failed. He let us down. He wasn’t strong enough. He knows I will help anyone who wants true, genuine help without enabling them to continue in a destructive path. Most important, he knows I love him and there is another chance. He knows what he needs to do, he only needs to reach out before it is too late. I won’t ask questions because there are none to be answered. I will just stand by his side. 

Organizing So Others Can Help

Recently my good friend Ellen Stumbo interviewed me about caring for a large family while also caring for myself during cancer. What are ways we can make it easier for someone else to step in and help us?

Let me tell you, giving up control was very difficult for me. I'm the type of person who cleans before the hired cleaning help comes. I know a lot of us moms (and some dads) are this way, so you'll understand when I say having someone else do the laundry was a major event for me. I mean, having someone come in and touch my laundry meant I would have to tell them what to do, or I would have to go back and re-sort everything, or re-fold things that weren't folded "my" way. That is a lot of control to just give up. But my friend who had been through cancer before me explained that the fatigue I would feel from chemo is not something anyone can describe, and that there would be no way I'd be able to keep up ALL the things I normally do. I NEEDED to give up control. Once I allowed myself to do that, I could move forward with setting up a laundry system that actually made having someone help be quite easy. I'm here to help you too!

1) I needed to think about the way I stored our clothes. I have changed this over the years, based on what sizes the kids are wearing, their genders, etc. For a time, my kids clothes were stored by size. Two of the boys wore size 7/8, two others wore 10/12, and the girls each wore totally different sizes. My current storage system is more traditional, and has everyone's clothes stored separately.

2) Laundry hampers: You need to find a way to store dirty laundry. These are the hampers we've been using the last two years. They have stood up to being crammed FULL, and dragged through the house by kids taking them to the laundry room. They are deep, and hold about a weeks worth of laundry. If you store laundry by size, everyone wearing that size uses the same dirty hamper. If you store laundry by person, only THAT person's laundry goes into THAT hamper. NOTHING else! I have the kids' names of who's laundry is in that hamper written in Sharpie nice and big so it's easy to see. This makes it nice and easy for anyone helping you. "Oh look, Asher has a very full laundry hamper. I will wash his laundry."

Make sure to get another hamper for dirty towels. 

3) Decide where you want your dirty laundry stored. For my kids, it works best to have their hampers right in their rooms. When clothes come off and they go IN the hamper. At night when I say goodnight to everyone, I reinforce this rule for those who need it. ;-)

4) Bins: Each hamper needs a corresponding bin. The clean laundry will go into these bins. Put the names of each person, or group, on the bin. (its difficult to see in this picture, but there are names on all those bins.)

5) Assign laundry days: For example, the laundry in my house is done like this:
Monday: Angela
Tuesday: Axel/ Abel
Thursday: Roman
Friday: Asher/Amos
Saturday: Audrey
Sunday: Mom/Dad

Got all that? Ready? Here we go!

1) Bring one full dirty laundry hamper to your laundry area. I have my kids carry their own down. Wash ONLY the clothes in that hamper. DO NOT mix anyone else's clothes in. If you have very small loads, add towels to fill them up.

2) When the clothes come out of the dryer, fold and put into the corresponding "Clean" bins. Here is my laundry area. (someday I will have a "beautiful" laundry room. Right now I have a "functional" laundry room. LOL )

3) If your kids are independent enough, when they come home from school have them get their clean bin and put their laundry away. If you have someone stepping in to help your family, they can easily see there is a full bin of clean laundry, and who it belongs to. They can either a) put it away where it belongs or b) easily find little Johnny a clean pair of pants because all his clean laundry has been put into the clean laundry bin and nobody else's stuff is mixed in!

You may find it helpful to have written instructions for your machines stuck right to them. Mine are printed, laminated, and velcroed with sticky-back velcro to the front of my machines where my kids who are able to do laundry can easily see them.

Thats it! That's the big secret system! Just simple, and easy for someone helping your family to step in and see what needs to be done.

Every family is a little different. Do you have a laundry system that works well for your family? Tell us about it!

OOps! Training Tuli

Apparently there were privacy settings on my previous post, so I am re-posting!
Tulip, aka "Tuli" is a 16 week old Yorkie puppy. All our dogs are bell trained to go outside, but we decided to give Tuli a voice. It is difficult to hear, but the blue switch on the floor, when activated, says "Tuli wants to go outside". This is training session #3. Today is the day we taught her that stepping on the switch causes the door to open! By the end of the day she will be obsessively activating the switch. It is important that door opens EVERY time so she learns we really will open the door EVERY time she wants to go out. (and of course, all our dogs helped in the making of this video)

Training Tuli

In September we added a new family member. Tulip, aka "Tuli" is a Yorkshire Terrier. She is now four months old. 

We have bell trained all our dogs. In our busy household this works well for us. We can hear the bells in any part of the house. Now it’s time to teach 4 month old Tuli, but we have decided to give her a voice. Once she consistently activates the switch, then we’ll move it into position, THEN teach her that switch causes us to open the door. They whole process will take 3-4 sessions over 2-3 days. This was session two. Please excuse whining Paris in the background! She was waiting for her turn. LOL

Using Goally to Gain Independence

Hello everyone!

It is time to resurrect this blog. Lots of things are happening here in the Spring household, and I know  many of you have been wondering what's happening with us. I have several update posts coming in the next few days. Today's post is one I'm really excited about!

First of all, can you believe Angela is 23 now? I know, right? When I started this blog in June 2005, Angela was just 9 years old! Here she is, all grown up.


One thing at the top of Angela's "to do" list is move out. SHE really wants to live in her own apartment, with some supports. WE aren't so sure she's ready for it. One problem we have seen individuals run into is signing a one year lease on an apartment only to find they weren't *quite* ready, and needed to gain some skills before giving it another try. There is an agency in our area that does one week apartment trials. This is an assessment tool to help determine what skills the individual already has, skills he or she needs to work on, and other areas where they absolutely will need supervision. For example, we know that Angela will need supervision for cooking.

Last spring we were considering having Angela do a one-week trial, but we were very nervous about it. One problem she was continually having was getting ready for her day program on time. It was happening too often that she would "stall out" on one or two steps of her morning routine, causing her to miss her Metro Mobility ride. And when you miss your Metro ride too many times, you get suspended! Angela was needing constant prompts from me to "hurry up!" and "Angela your ride is COMING in TEN MINUTES and you still aren't dressed!!!!" The same problems were happening at night when she should have been getting ready for bed, but she just couldn't get herself to turn that dang TV off.  I often found myself saying, "You're an adult. How are you going to live in your own apartment if you can't even shut the TV off at a decent hour?" The same things I said to my other kids years ago. She would get mad. "I'm an adult! Stop telling me what to do!"

That is when Goally came into our lives!

We were at a family retreat when a friend mentioned this new device she had heard about. Goally was designed as an assistive device for Autism and ADHD.  It is a task-managing device. The caregiver enters routines, adding a time to each task within the routine. The user then carries the device with them, using the visual timer and auditory prompts to move through the routine. Angela's Goally has become her morning alarm clock, getting her up and moving through her morning routine with ZERO prompts from me! In the evenings she uses Goally after dinner, then has some down time until Goally tells her it's time to get ready for bed. Interestingly, when a device is telling her what to do, there are no issues. LOL Goally has allowed her to gain much more independence, and she is now ready to do that apartment trial in just a few weeks!

Here is a quick video about Goally, and how it works for Angela. This has allowed her to move from a place of needing constant reminders, to being 100% independent through her day (with the exception of cooking and laundry!)

Be sure to visit the Goally website to learn more! I'll be posting more videos about how we use Goally for other parts of our day.