Sunday, December 23, 2007

Nintendo DS Lite Game Review Brain Age 2

Brain Age 2, More Brain Training, has the same idea as the original, of course, striving to give you some brain stimulating mental exercises every day. So, instead of sitting around consuming all the Christmas leftovers, why not put you brain to work while having a little fun?

All the glitches from the original have been fixed...

Monday, December 17, 2007

Surviving The Holidays With An Autistic Child

Tis’ the season…to be stressed out! The Christmas season is stressful for most people. There’s the shopping in over crowded stores and malls for that perfect gift, stressing about money or the mounting credit card bills. Maybe you have the stress of balancing, or arguing, over which families homes you are going to celebrate at or how you’re going to accommodate everyone in your home on Christmas Eve.

When you have a child with Autism, all these stressors are magnified tenfold. While Wal-Mart tends to already be a stressful place for a lot of Autistic children (high, open ceilings with tons of fluorescent bulbs), add in 20 times more people, even more noise and chaos, and the bell ringer from the Salvation Army that our children become so fascinated with that we can barely tear them away without a meltdown. Then we start worrying about how our child will handle going to someones home for a Christmas party where there will be so many people, and so many strange people. “How will my child react? How am I going to deal with questions, stares, etc when he has a meltdown? What will I do when he shows no interest for his gifts?” Just thinking about all those obstacles and past Christmas disasters can send me into a panic attack! How about you?

It really doesn’t have to be this stressful for us. As in everyday life with my Autistic children, I have learned to find ways of turning most everything we do into a learning experience/therapy for the boys...

Friday, December 7, 2007

How To Set Up A Planted Aquarium

Okay, I admit it. I’m an aquarium addict. Our home now has three, fully planted fish tanks and I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of my oldest sons’ new tank for his Bearded Dragon. Why? Because I want to turn his old tank into what my husband has made me promise to be my last fish tank. While he enjoys my tanks as much as I do, he is perplexed as to why I feel the need to keep setting up more. I just think he’s still salty over my replacing the bedroom television with a 10 Gallon Red Cherry Shrimp tank.

Many people keep aquariums and use fake, plastic plants and different fake ornaments, thinking that keeping live plants will be to hard or time consuming. Or, maybe they’ve bought plants from the pet store and stuck them down into their gravel, only to watch them wither and die. The truth is, if you set your tank up properly for plants, they will not only basically take care of themselves, they will also help in the upkeep of your aquarium...

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