Wednesday Morning 8:30 AM. Dropped William off at the day care and talked with Mrs. Rose Mary. She said William is doing good at swim lessons. He listened and followed instructions; but it’s hard to get him out of the pool when session ends :). The boy loves water! She sent me a picture and a video of William at the pool.
View Video of William Learning to Swim
Tuesday morning. Took a few pictures of the pool where William takes swim lessons every morning at 9:45 for 30 minutes. The first few sessions Mr. Daniel sat him out because he would not listen. On Friday, Thomas from TASKids said he heard the teachers said they had a hard time to get William out of the pool!
The fee is $70 for a 2 weeks session; it’s 30 minutes every day. In the morning, the teacher would change the students clothes and then take them to the pool. Once they’re done with the session, the teacher would take them back to the room. and change their clothes. They hang the wet clothes on the fence so that it’s ready for the next day. On Friday, the teachers send the bag with all the clothes back to us; So on Monday we’d bring the bag with all the necessities back to the teachers.
In the bag, I packed for William: swim suit, towel, sandals and swim diapers.
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Friday Morning. Dropped off William at the daycare and whiled waited for Mr. Gary to come, I took a few pictures of William. I did not know that they server snack at 9:00 AM. Today it’s pop corn and berry juice.
It took a while for William to come to the table, while as other children came to the table right away when they heard the snack was served. So William sat on the next table. He reached over to get a napkin, unfold it and placed it down in front of him, waiting to be served popcorn. I’m not sure he unfolded the napkin because he heard the teachers said so so he saw other children did that. He ate his portion of popcorn and juice.
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Aaron had been cancelled too many session so TasKids decided to remove him from our case and sent Thomas: a very young, nice guy. He paid attention to what William does, asked me what William likes, brought 2 bags of toys to every session (unlike Aaron, who came with only a notebook!). I’m happy to have Thomas covers the sessions; I concurred with what Taylynn, the scheduler from TasKids, “He’s very good!”.
Tuesday 8:30 AM. Vacation is over, it’s time to get back to reality. Today William will have his first swimming lesson at the day care.
Monday afternoon, normally it’s the PC session with Jody and One to One session with Aaron but Aaron cancelled so Jeannie covered for him. The supervisor Huy also came to go over the progress report that he had to prepare to turn over to his director; the report is due to the Cal Optima on Sept.
He went over the goals that set by previous company ABEST and how William achieved the goals. There are about 7 goals that he marked “Discontinued” because he thinks William achieved them. And in conclusion he recommended to reduce the One on One hours from 24 hours / week to 17 hours/week, meaning cutting back 7 hours/week. He also cuts back the PC hours from 12 to 10 hours/month.
We’re not happy with his decision because William achieved a few goals but there are still lots of goals in the list that we haven’t started yet. He based on the ABC data collected by the BTs at home or day care sessions to conclude that William achieved the goals. I was learned from parent training from previous company that in order to master a goal, William has to demonstrate that skill with BTs, and with parents and can generalize that skill out in the community as well. We rarely take William out to the communities during session so Huy would have no idea how William behaves when in the community. From our recent travel trips, we were very frustrated because William would never listen, he would run off unexpected and throw tantrum if we did not allow him to do what he wanted. Huy only comes few times a month, and observes for about 1 hour per session, how much can he learn about William in such a short time; plus, he just took over our case for only about 3 months! As a Mom, I know William the best, I know William still needs lots of training on controlling his behaviors so cutting back the hours is not gonna help. 3 or 4 hours of cutting back is ok but 7 hours is too much!
Sunday July 15, 2018 – After the church, we went back to the hotel to check out and left our luggage in their storage so that we could go to the Butchart gardens. We walked about 7 minutes to the bus station #75, fare is $5 for a day pass for each person (children under 5 is free). The driver won’t have change so must give him exact amount.
William cried when I told him we would take a bus; but when we got in the bus he got so excited and ran all the way to the back and sat there. It took about 45 minutes to get to the garden. Our friends left before us but because they took the wrong bus #31 so they ended up get on our bus about 15 minutes later. It was a surprised re-union :).
The garden has several gardens which are all beautiful: the Sunken garden, Italian garden, Japanese garden, Rose garden; we like the Sunken garden and Rose garden the most.
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Sunday July 15, 2018. It was a busy day today: church in the morning, Butchart Gardens and then flight back to Seattle.
We had breakfast at the hotel; it was quite good. Then we took a taxi to St. Andrew church. The taxi driver told us he knew where the church is but dropped us at the wrong church so we ended up walking! It actually takes only 7 minutes walking to the church, we should have just walked from the hotel. Finally we got to the church, went inside but William made to much noise that we had to go out. He wanted to get back in so he cried and kicked his legs! I guess after all these days he was just tired! http://www.standrewscathedral.com/
740 View St, Victoria, BC V8W 1J8, Canada
After 3 hours, we reached Victoria without any troubles. The weather was so beautiful with white clouds and blue sky. Victoria from a distant is a beauty with lots of hanging flowers baskets.
We walked to the Best Western Plus Inner Harbour; it only about 7 minutes. It has a small pool so we took William down there to cool him down a bit because he was crying when I was checking in at the front desk.
Then we walked to China Town to find something to eat for dinner; we ended up having dinner at Green Leaf Bistro, a Vietnamese restaurant. The food here is quite good, especially Pho and Hot & Sour Soup.
Saturday 14, 2018 – V2V Ferry from Vancouver to Victoria. We got the good deal “Buy one get one free” royal tickets which include lunch and drink on board. This V2V company is new so there was not that many customers. They’re lucky to have our party of 28 people on board.
Checked out at the Holiday Inn hotel around 11 AM; and took a taxi to the Canadian Place where the V2V ferry departs (its location is right next to the Convention Center), which only 5 minutes away. The port is beautiful! Some of our group rented the bikes to ride along the port and they said it was a very beautiful ride. Too bad that it’s one way for the bikers so to finish the whole circle would take 45 minutes.
The ferry left at 1:00 PM so we didn’t have much time; we took William on a stroller and leisurely walked along the waterfront while feeding him a hot dog that Tim bought in the morning at a convenient store near by the Holiday Inn hotel. We checked in most of our luggage when boarding so we didn’t have to carry them along which is easier for us.
Boarding was easy and fast because there was not that many customers beside our big group of 28 people. The boat is new so everything is very clean; we got the window seat which William loves!
Soon after the boat left the port, they started to serve lunch. Because we bought Royal Customer ticket, we did not have to pay for lunch, drinks and snack (for beer you can order 1 time free of charge but after that you have to pay). I ordered for William Meat & Cheese; as soon as the dish was placed in front of him, he picked up the bread and ate it. He must be very hungry! Then he had some chocolate truffles and apple juice. But that’s all he ate, he refused to eat cheese or ham or potato salad.
3 hours on boat was smooth. The men in our group was having so much fun eating and drinking beers. Our group occupied the whole top level of the boat!
