Jillian's Jewels

It is a day later, and I still cannot shake the memory of the special person we met while at Jiillians yesterday.

It was New Year's Eve, and My Father's 60th Birthday. The Arcade in Jillian's is huge. Adam could hardly sit at the table. Unaware of their Jillian's player card way of accessing the games, I gave Adam a handful of quarters and let him run over there. I didn't think It would last him long. After a few minutes, my inner-check-on-Adam alarm went off and I went to see how he was making out.

Well, I felt like I had interrupted him. He had captured the attention of a sweet Jullian's employee who had helped him convert the quarters and showed him some really fun games to play. Prepared to make explain Adam's inability to communicate, I quickly realized I didn't need to. I stood in awe as I watched this beautiful woman interact effortlessly with our precious Adam.

I have a life time of watching how people respond to the disabled. I have a lifetime of looking for inner beauty in people. Before Dec 31st, I had only met one who's life experiences and inner heart had melded them into someone spectacular. My sister was that sort of person. I used to introduce her as the greatest person I have ever met, "and she is my sister."  I write this so that I can say, I think I met another Elisabeth.

She tirelessly and enthusiastically looked for Adam and his entertainment. As I took occasion talk to her, the characteristics that I thought I saw came through in a million different ways.

I will never forget the jewel I met that day. It was a haunting honor, and one that was not lost on me. In her life, she may never fully understand what I saw. I pray that everyone in her life fully appreciates who Jewels has become.

Blessing for blessing us,
  

From Adam's Pictur...

Jillian's

We had some fun visiting Grandpaw at Jillian's - here are a few videos of the day, By the way, Adam is wearing Grandpaw's hat, the one he covers the bald spot with. Hope baldness isn't catchy!!! I won't wear that thing!

I have a bunch of Adam video's on line at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=LeapOfFaaaith

Here Adam groves on the stomp game:


And here Adam misses for the umpteenth time :( - But Jewels came through for us! We got a spiderman toy (see the next photo)



Here is his prize!

From Adam's Pictur...

Squished Edgar bug

This is one of the cutiest, most tragic moments I have had with Adam. It is a must see - but get the tissues

batman roller coaster ride

here is a great roller coaster video of my son and I. It is from several years ago. I just figured out how to post them to you tube. If you click on my name, You may see other videos that I will post.

Superman Roller coaster ride

Here is a video of Adam and I at 6 flags several years ago. Definately one of my favorite days -

hi again

This morning Adam and I slept in till 7:30 am. Now that is super late for us. I thought it was going to be an early early morning when Adam Woke up at 4am and jumped on me. Being in no mood for a wrestling match (his favorite thing), he was sent back to his side of the room. This morning I found out that Adam was "perfect" for Mom last night - even coming down to say good night before bed time.

This morning we went to get a haircut. The plan was to go to best buy after (to get a $12 music cd he earned) and then go to breakfast (all our friends are working today). Well, the cd wasn't there, and he wanted a video game ($29). Well, it was an easy choice for him. He had to give up his favorite breakfast for the game - which he did. So my morning budget didn't change and we didn't get fat by having two breakfasts - lol - Now I have to figure something out for lunch!!

As I type, Adam is counting out change: so we can go to the grocery store and buy cheese, lots of it, for his favorite - cheese toast. He has constantly interrupted my typing to take away my eyes, nose, hands, and mouth - laughing as I stumble around searching for him. Once I get them back, he gets mercilessly tickled :). Soon we will ride over to get his "lunch goal." Later, I will force him into one of our 3 mile walks later. Got to keep up boys in shape, you know :).

Tonight, I may swing by to visit a friend who is going to hear a couple of talented girls sing at a local coffee shop. (yeah, another Christian event). Then I expect I will be in chilling with Adam for the night.

Oh God, Adam has over $20 of change counted out - HOW MUCH CHEESE DOES HE WANT!!!!

Its been a while

It is amazingly rewarding, to come into Adam's room and kiss him on the head, while he is sleeping, and have him inhale hugely, as though releaved, though he is fast asleep.

It brought a moist moment to my eyes.

Lone

A new picture

We Want to start taking pictures and posting them. It should be a good new project. It is amazing what we are finding - to take pictures of. This is a Toad that Adam found as he was walking into Grandma's house.

 

cards fromTV

Here are pictures Adam took last night. They are the YuGiOh cards from his DVD. He prints these out and then cuts them to size - then uses them with the cards he bought.

hello

Isn't this a fun picture. Adam had fun lighting sticks. he was sooo very careful. Such a boy! 

5-9-06

5-9-06     

Adam is so silly. We have been having epic pillow stealing wars at night. He keeps taking all my pillows and hiding them...usually right under his own pillow. Of course it is a huge wrestling match to get them back. Usually the gorilla and the T-Rex (different Dad characters) have to whoop up on him to get them back. Finally I waited in the closet with a flashlight to catch him Stealing my Pillows. It was very funny.

4-27-06

4/27/06

I picked up Adam today from school. He had had a good day, but was quite silly today. Apparently he was copying Mrs. M. quite often. So silly.

He tried to negotiate a trip to “The Store.”  But he had been told that Dad would not be taking him until Monday. When he realized he wasn’t going to convince me, he then started asking for Friday or Saturday trips. I told him that he would have to ask Mom. Then he started practicing saying, “ Mom, Store Saturday? Yes?” I kept on telling him I didn’t know. ... I could not call her to ask as we are particularly not on speaking terms at the moment.

We got home and he settled in. He chased the cat’s, Angel and Kitty coon. – He also illicited Ruby the dog’s help for that adventure. So I decided we all were going to go for a walk.

We payed some tag on the walk. He decided that he had a new power called a Trap, Where I could not chase him up the hill when he said there was a trap. Therefore he could escape. I was such a great time.... except for the black flies...

Time is flying so quickly with him. And he is growing so big. It is kind of sad when you realize that, this is as small as he will ever be.... 116 lb and about 5’2”

march 14

Adam had quite a weekend with his me (Dad). As I write this he is sleeping peacefully in the other room. It is Tuesday and this is the end this big block of time together.  These mornings are hard.. but you can’t show that to him.

Friday we went and visited some of my friends/clients. Adam played with their son Alex. They had a great time. They played playstation 2 and with a cool remote-control dinosaur. They played for 5 hours straight. In my conversations with them afterwards, they invited us over again and again, saying their son loved playing with Adam because he could be free and fun, and that Adam was the most well behaved kid that had ever visited…. No, he wasn’t perfect…

Saturday we got to use a gift of money to go buy Adam a video that he has been wanting for three weeks. It was worth the wait. Aladdin came through big! He got the second and third Disney movies in the series. We also got to go to breakfast. Then it was off to home to enjoy the new entertainment. While we waited for Toy’s r Us to open, we hiked a rail trail in West Boylston, threw rocks in the water, and found muddy streams to step in.

Sunday started with Church. Adam was very well behaved in the prayer meeting that I was asked to fill in at. Afterwards I let him walk down to where the snacks were (I was close to the top of the stairs) He did great. At home he pursued me until I made a couple new Aladdin Lamps. These he began to color with a black marker (they were Jafar’s lamp).

Monday, before school, we rushed to Get Adam a chiropractic adjustment. He was quite off…. Probably from all the wrestling he and I do…. Lol. Actually, we do need to try to stop all pressure to his chin for a few weeks….

Last night we had a nice quiet fun time playing around the house. We went for another great walk. Adam stayed up working on some papers and playing our sock game. It was a great night.

Going to miss the guy tonight..

Christmas Vacation

It has been a little hectic, so I have not updated Adam’s site much recently. I am sorry for this and am going to try start communicating again.

Adam is adjusting well to his new schedule. I wish I could say as much for me. Lol. He had a good Christmas. His big Gift at Dad’s house was the original Star Wars movies on DVD. He has watched them almost non-stop.
His new project has been to commit the climax scenes of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi to paper. It is so cute. He is working tirelessly to add the words of the ewokes. It is amazing how well he is sounding out words and identifying specific ewoke phrases. He is proving that his hearing is better than mine.
We are also working hard on Adam being gentle. He is getting quite big, over 5 feet and over 110 lbs… He is going great; accept when he is a little frustrated. I Feel like I could be doing more on this if I had daily time with him… But that is not possible now…
I get to see him tomorrow after school. I am looking forward to it (

Weekend so far

We are nice and settled into Grandma's house. Adam has a great space upstairs in the master sweet. He has a TV and a computer, a digital camera, and a printer. His focus, so far, has been Wallace and Gromit. But he also did some work with Star Wars (the origional three movies.) He is so focused.
It was kind of strange at first, Adam was not quite himself. But by Saturday evening, he was quite talkative and funny.
We have a wood stove just below our bedrooms. It made things a bit hot last night. We had to open the window a crack. He re-took the photo's of the newspapers in all the different episodes of Wallace and Gromit. He the folded them andpretened to open them up and read them, just like in the show. So creative :)
He has this thing that we do, He pretends to take my brain out and then tells me to go to sleep, then he gives me different characters to pretend - oh, and every one of them tickles or wrestles with him differently. Origionally, it was, just T-rex, Dog, gurilla, and Angel the cat. Last night he added Muscles, monkey, tiger, lion, bird, snake, and Daddio ;).
haha, he just came down and asked me how to spell chew chew, like a train.
Well it is time to hop off and get ready for breakfast and church.

New Web site fun

Adam had a good morning. He was intent on transcribing the Disney Atlantis movie and named the project after the Cartoon network cartoon "Code Lyoco." Not sure exactly what the connection between the two is... but I am sure Adam does :). He was very intent on getting the initial scenes from each of the movies and VERY sure he wanted Code Lyoco as the name.

 

 http://www.lonemccord.com/ADAM/adamprojects.html is the new site for Adam's projects. (hope you like the fun banner I made for his site ;)

 

Adam's main page  http://www.lonemccord.com/Adam.html

Adam's Domain name attaches also www.adammccord.com

Adam's Picture history  http://www.lonemccord.com/ADAM/picturemenu.html

 

Hope you enjoy it!

adam is getting ready for the next revision

 
 

Adam is making a cast of Planks

 

There are over 20 Planks in the new cast 

First October weekend

 

Friday, Adam and Dad just came home and hung out. Dad cleaned, Adam disappeared a lot ;). Saturday we got up and went for haircuts. Then we visited our favorite breakfast place. After, we dropped off Oliver and his cage to their new owners! Oliver (the ferret) has actually been there a week - he is soooo happy! Then we went to Grandma's house. Adam and Ruby the dog wanted to follow the stream through the woods. So that is what we did. Adam eventually got his feet wet, Ruby was wet from the beginning. The brush was very thick and Adam had to barrel through some vines and brush to keep up. There were a few pickers. He learned what they looked like pretty fast and was very careful. We found an old ball that we through to Ruby. We also found a huge vine that we could yank on. Adam had to eat lunch outside because his pants were wet - he didn't care ;)

 

When we got home that night we ordered a pizza and watched TV. Adam worked hard on his papers - he now has 10 pages on his new project. It has mostly words from the Show Ed, Edd & Eddy. But he also put in a few from Snow White (He laughs so hard when he watches that ;).

 

Sunday, I (dad) didn't feel very well, so we missed church. Adam was so excited - lol - he said "NO MORE  Church FOREVER!" and then added an evil laugh - oh well... sigh. So With me lounging around, Adam had command of most everything. He used that to make several BBQ sandwiches and steal 90% of the popcorn I made.... He loves to sit on me, get tickled and squished, and laugh. We did that a lot.

 

This morning Adam slept in a bit. He had the normal morning drink for breakfast. He also made is final revisions to his paper before school. He picked out two typos that we HAD to fix. He told me "Good Job" after we were done.  :)

 

Note, we will probably be out of this house by the end of the month. It is quite sad, but I think we will do quite well in our new digs.

Plank's Girlfriend

 
 
Plank is coming to school today ;)

Adam's teacher emailed me and said that "Bob" has watched Adam all morning!  Adam even made a daily report card for him. 

 

He is so much fun!

Bob

 

Adam had me make him a "Bob" for school. He Buckled it in when he got on the bus. :)

Adam showed me his daily report from yesterday as soon as he got through the door. There was plenty to praise, so we only spent a few moments on his naughty "lunch Bunch." Sounds like he was hard enough on himself with his mom.

We are having more computer problems (connection to printer is broken) But Adam spent some time working on a new sheet with the words from the TV show Ed, Edd & Eddy 

one of Adam's favorite Ed, Edd & Eddy pictures

 

It is a foot print on the back of Plank 

 
 

I guess if you click on the image, it will be clearer - Reminded me of Adam...

Spongebob

Adam was excited to wear his costume at school for the 6th grade party.

Last night, he didn't want to go at first. He was making the x sign, saying, cross it out! We got to his Grandfathers house in West Boylston (dee's dad) and I got him to try one house. After that, he was fine and did the whole street. We ended it at his Grandfather's house. We had a great conversation. Adam was ready to leave after about 10 minutes.

This morning adam is very snuggly, He is leaning up against me now :) watching Cinderella. (not an unscary movie :( 

Adam has made three comic books from pictures of "the Fairly God-Parents" he had the first page printed big, then the following pages printed small, so he could cut them out and tape them to a blank page, makeing them more like a comic book. Kind of brilliant if you ask me... 

on Monday, Adam and I visited a nice breakfast spot "under the bridge" in Clinton. Great food. Adam then went with me to work and played on the computer while I took care of a teacher's mortgage. Then, whew, we went to Grandma's house and had some amazing chilli. Yummy! 

Adam took this picture of Murmaid Man's belt buckle From a Spongebob show. He is now cutting out an index card size photo of the picture - so that we can make him one of his own. :) 

here is the title of the movie - Not sure how much homework he got done at mom's house. Sorry about the incomplete stuff 

Adam is going to see Wallace and Grumit's movie after school today 

What a walk

Adam came home quite happy yesterday. (I called mom and she says that she "never saw his journal"...?? I hope she looks again and is able to find it.) Adam set about working on his papers. At around 5ish we visited Grandma's house for dinner. We were a little late, so we sat at the island and watched Wallace and Gumit on the mini DVD player. after our pasta and meat sauce (one of Adam's favorites) Adam and I had a 45 minute silliness session. It was so cute. We got home a little later and I (dad) decided we were going on a long walk, in the dark, with a flashlight. Around the block is about a mile and a half. The first half mile is uphill. Adam wasn't into it at first. He kept on asking to Go home and watch TV. by the half way point, Adam had settled into the walk and we started talking about the stars. At one point, with no houses around, we smelled fresh toast - very weird. We also walked past a place that smelled stinky, like a pig farm - ugh. We picked an apple off a road side tree, which Adam ate half of. Adam was very impressed with the stars. When we got home, Adam said, "We made it!" and we raced to the front door. He snuggled with me till he fell asleep, about 30 min later. It was a great night

Adam's Oliver

Thursday, Adam was given a ferret named Oliver. (pictures to follow.) I think I had an allergic reaction to the musk - but we re-positioned the cage so that it is in site, but I can close the door when the smell gets to me. I think it is releasing the smell because it is scared.... ugh. But then, he has not spent much time in the cage. He has been playing around the house, investigating everything. Adam loves it. Adam follows it around all over. Adam did a ton of typing again last night. He was up to 33 pages until I shrank the font and made it 29. He was upset at the change - but after 5 minutes he said he was smiling. That was cute.

Daddio

We are doing something new. Instead of unbridled use of Adam's time at home. We are setting a bit of a schedule. Our new soft rule is that at 7:50 Adam has to wrap up what he is doing, finish getting ready for school, and spend the rest of the time (20 minutes or so) talking and doing stuff with me (Daddio). Adam is so self-entertaining sometimes that I may be next to him, but we are not interacting. It is good that he is focused on his chosen task, but That should not be to the exclusion of quality time with good-old Daddio.

Over the weekend, Adam printed out 23 pictures of NewsPaper's in 5 of his favorite DVD's. He is choosing today to bring them to school Also, Adam's Script book is now up to 20 pages. I am sure you know how proud he is of these words and sounds he has typed. (I think it is about time to change the font...to something smaller. Well, I have only 8 more minutes with him, so I am going to go...

Rainy nights

Adam came home very happy and started right back into working on his paper. I think he is up to 17 pages now. Impressive. We continued to make up combinations of letters to describe the sounds of Sponge Bob. After his TV time, he and I decided to take a walk in the rain. Now that was fun. We jumped in puddles and held our arms out to feel the rain. Adam directed where we would walk... until he wanted to walk down a busy street without a sidewalk. Adam also found a box with the word free on the outside of it. Adam opened it and Got a Real Estate Guide. This had to keep dry, so we put it under Dad's shirt. It might be the only thing that stayed dry.

For the rest of the night, we looked at Star War's picture book, ate roasted chicken, and then looked at all our old 35mm pictures. It was fun seeing all the cute pictures of Adam. We put a bunch of them into picture books.

At bedtime, Adam was very silly. Dad could not find Adam because Adam was hiding. We said our prayers and tickled a little more. Adam held onto Dad's arms, took my eyes and mouth, and sang me a lullaby so I could not leave. Then he pretended to draw a tattoo on my face until I "woke up." But I could not do anything because he had taken away everything. lol - he is so tricky.

This morning he has been quite cuddly and cute. But I have to go, We still need to eat and shower....

Adam's computer is behind the chair. He is starting and stoping the DVD of Wallace and Grumit , copying the Closed caption and having me spell the other sounds. I am having to get creative - how do you spell the sound of an airplane. What is funny is that he is beginning to disagree with how I spell it these action sounds. I think he will have a few more pages of his script done by monday. The plane is dive bombing - what does it sound like.... iiiieeeeeeerrrrrrraaaaahhh.

Here is the stack of wood and the playful Dog Ruby. 

Adam and I took a ride after sitting around in our jammies all day. We went and visited His uncle and Aunt's graves, then we went and visited Grandma - She was up a ladder painting her house. We helped her by stacking some of her wood. Adam escaped that job after 10 minutes to play with Ruby, the dog. Ruby needed a good chasing :) 

Wallace & Gromit

adam is really into them, you can find a good web pages on them Here and Here