October 2022

We have lots of great photos and videos of Fall outings, Halloween stuff, and more. You can see them all here. 

Fall Outings (Rob)

Most people would agree that October here is the best time of year. We had great weather and colors. We enjoyed getting outside to Minnewaska state park, the Crawford Trail in Pine Bush, the Awosting Trail including apple cider donuts at Tantillo farm on the way home (the best in Hudson Valley), the Orange County Arboretum (twice because it is so beautiful this time of the year as always), Denning's Point, and the parks nearby our home among other outings. All very lovely.

The Birthday Plague (Rob)

As it has been widely reported, lots of people right now have been hit with the "triple-demic" of COVID, flu, and RSV. We got a pretty bad respiratory bug too that knocked Alex and Becky out for a while. Alex had it first and the poor guy was coughing non-stop with a fever for about 4 days before he saw improvement. He had a hard time sleeping due to the cough, and it is hard to recover when you can't sleep. We took him to a physician and they tested for the three viruses I mentioned, plus strep, and all came back negative (so who knows what it was). He also threw up and had diarrheia and lost his appetite for more than a week, and lost a lot of weight. It was a rough and slow recovery for him. Becky got it too, and had the same persistent cough for days. She too was in bad shape, including on her birthday so our celebration was mostly limited to making a birthday pie. She still has a cough but is otherwise recovered. When she gets sick like this, her cough can go on for weeks so she is seeing a pulmonologist to see if there is something that can help with that, now and in the future. By some miracle, either I didn't get it or I didn't have symptoms.

Therapies, Interventions and Play (Rob)

After a break over the summer, we are starting Alex again on occupational therapy (OT) and physical therapy (PT) sessions. The OT and PT are done at the elementary school, so Becky oversees that and shuttles him to his appointments. We are also continuing the swim lessons, where he is making very gradual progress.  It's a lot of work, but good to keep him occupied and trying new things that he wouldn't try on his own. Of course he also gets plenty of free time at home, where he mostly enjoys interacting with his iPad games/videos, looking at his books, watching videos of him at his favorite places on our phones, or just running around the house. He continues to be very imaginative, and has whole narrations to these activities going on that we can't understand except for the intelligble words mixed in (e.g., circle, triangle, school bus, tractor, set-go, etc.) But he is always excited to go get his shoes on to go on some adventure with us wherever we are going in the car, whether it is to the arcade at the mall (his favorite) or to the park or grocery store. He just likes getting out and mixing up his various activities so we try to do that.

New Roof (Rob)

Our house in the Binghamton area (where we don't live, but rent out) has a roof that is in very poor shape. We knew this when we bought it in 2018, and negotiated with the sale a $7000 cash credit to put towards the roof. The house had rolled shingles on a very low-slope roof, and one side was particularly bad with a lot of moss and even small trees growing up from beneath the shingles by the gutter. I had several people give me estimates and advice on the roof, and life happened, and we never got to replacing it as soon as we should have. So I just tarred the shingles in the weak spots in the meantime, and hoped we'd make it through a bit longer. I had another roofing company (Garvin) give me an estimate on it this past summer when I was there doing some maintenance, and I decided it was time to get it done. I didn't want someone to just put another layer of shingles on top of it, but I also didn't want to tear the whole roof off and replace it entirely (both options proposed by different roofers). I just wanted to replace the rotting wood that I was sure was there, and then put a metal roof over it that would hold up much better over time than what was there before. Garvin specializes in metal roofs and they seemed to have a good plan for fixing the problems, so we scheduled to have that done the last weekend of October. The tenants were really good about letting the roofers do work while they were there because I'm sure it was a noisy job. It took them a few days to get it done, and then they will come back to replace the gutters in early November. As expected, there was a lot of rotting plywood beneath the shingles that they tore out and replaced. Then they installed a nice black metal roof on top of purlins and a layer of 1" insulation. I requested the extra insulation because the house doesn't have an attic, and also because it might help dampen the sound during heavy rain. I went out there to check on things during the first day of the project, but I haven't actually seen the completed job yet. Below is a "before" picture I took while I was there and an "after" picture my tenants sent me. Now we just have to finish paying for it. But after seeing how bad it was under the shingles, I'm glad we didn't wait much longer.

Halloween (Rob)

Each year our Halloween decor includes plugging in "Sunny Pumpkinhead," who we thought we had lost in our move this year, but eventually found in a box. Becky got some additional Halloween decorations that included some fake bats on the wall. What we didn't plan was a real bat that we found  hanging on to an old window screen stored inside by our furnace. I moved it outside, but realized it was dead when it never flew away. So who knows how long it was inside, possibly hanging out on the wall with the fake bats. 

Alex's Halloween costume this year consisted of an Incredibles T-shirt, with a black sweater underneath and some matching red sweat pants. I got a matching costume for myself too. We dressed up for the ward trunk-or-treat potluck at our church building the weekend before Halloween (our first trunk-or-treat experience). On the evening of Halloween, we had nice weather and so we also took a walk around Montgomery and stopped at a few houses to show Alex what trick-or-treating is all about. He wasn't into it so much though, and he has no interest in candy. So we came home and watched Stranger Things and mom and dad ate his candy while he was happy to have cereal instead.

What Else Is New in October

Rob: I'm pretty stoked about the new Utah Jazz team. I have only seen highlights and followed the box scores, but it sounds like they are exceeding a lot of expectations and also a lot of fun to watch. Hoping they are the next 2004 Pistons (a team that won the NBA title with no all-stars that was also a lot of fun to watch).

Alex: We found a new playground in the area (town of Gardiner Majestic Park) that has many things Alex likes, and is right next to a library and rail trail. We ended up staying there late one foggy night before Halloween, well past sundown because he was having so much fun there. It is near an airfield where people go parachuting, so we enjoyed watching the parachuters and planes fly over on another visit there this month.

Becky:  One of my favorite things this month is getting some new clients.  Three of my kids/clients turned 3 and I'm only certified to treat birth to 3 in New York. (You have to have a teaching certificate to treat kids beyond age 3 because, past that age, almost all therapies are provided by the school district in New York.  In other states, home-based therapies are often provided through the state's Department of Developmental Disabilities well beyond age 3, as well as through the school district.) So that means I don't see them after 3, but it wasn't a big deal in this case since all 3 were doing pretty well and I expect will do fine without me.  

(I do miss them and their parents a bit since the kids and parents were both pretty great).  I got 2 new clients and will get a 3rd next month.  These kids/babies are more delayed and their disorders are more in line with what I specialize in (Apraxia and Autism).  So I feel like I'm with the families that need me most and some of the parents are especially great to work with.  All the parents are good, but some are just much more motivated to be trained and to provide an extension of therapy outside of sessions.  One more favorite thing this month was the sweet potato pie Rob made me for my birthday.  It's really good!