A Day in the Life in Argentina
Let's talk a day in the life here in Argentina. My seven year old autistic daughter was up from 3:00-5:45 AM so I'm exhausted, but my husband left for work around 7 and the baby woke up 45 minutes later so we have to rally and get the day rolling!
Ferry Boat Trip Social Story
When we went to Uruguay in August, we took a ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay. Since my seven year old autistic daughter has been on dozens of planes to this point, I thought that she would be fine with the process of getting on/off a boat and boat travel. Unfortunately, I was wrong. So, because of this experience and how difficult it was for her, I decided to create a social story about taking a ferry boat and what that entails.
A Day Exploring Buenos Aires
I took the kids to a new park, so come along with us while we explore the city! We went all the way to the Recoleta neighborhood (which is not at all close to where we live) to the Plaza de Republica de Chile, to the park and then I was able to do some exploring on my own later on.
Introducing Life Skill Downloads - Bathing
I've talked recently about our life skills list. This is a list of life skills that we've come up with of things that my daughter, a seven year old autistic girl, is able to do with or without accommodations to help her to succeed. The first thing that we did was bathing. Up until this point my husband or I were helping her with washing her hair, but I felt like this was something that she really could do on her own with some guidance. So I wrote all the steps out and put them on the wall in the bathroom here in Argentina. After doing this, I thought about all of the other things that would be helpful to her and other people as well and decided to make a whole life skills download and make it accessible for other people!
Tree House Build Plan
My parents have a beautifully landscaped backyard that the previous owners spent a lot of money and time doing. For the most part my parents are reaping the benefits of it, except for in the back corner. The previous owner used it as a dog run, but my parents don't have dogs so my mom has decided that she wants to do something about this space to make it more usable for the grandkids. She lives 20 minutes away from me in Tennessee and wants to spoil them whenever she is able. We decided it would be so fun to surprise my daughter with an amazing tree house build!
A Field Trip to Ecoparque
Tuesdays are the day that we have a cleaning company come clean our apartment here in Buenos Aires, which is awesome. However, they come randomly anytime between 10 and 6 on Tuesdays. I have started to put a sign on the door when the baby's napping because he's in a phase where he will only nap in his crib, so I really don't want that time interrupted. After that, though, I try to get out of the apartment so that we're not in the way when they're cleaning. We've started to make a fun "field trip" of it. This week we decided to go to Ecoparque.
A Day at Temaiken
Come with us for a day at Temaiken. This is a zoo and ecological park about 40 minutes outside of Buenos Aires. We went on a weekday when it was cold and kind of misting out and there was almost no one there, it was incredible!
Celebrating Día de las Infancias in Argentina
August 18th was Dia de las Niñas or Dia de las Infancias, which is Childhood Day here in Argentina and it is a BIG deal. I had so many people ask me if we celebrate this in the US and we don't, but I can confidently tell you that we should!
How to Add Edge Banding to Your Project
We're going to take a quick pivot from our Argentina content to talk about a previous project. Remember the wall of closets in my mom's house for my grandparents that have now passed away? The one thing I did not do was add edge banding to the drawers and the shelves. So, I figured I would go over why you want to add edge banding to a project and how to do it.
A Weekend in Colonia del Sacramento
Come with us for a weekend in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay! Our original plan was to be on the 12:30 PM Buquebus ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia, but immigration decided that we needed a document that we didn't actually need. So we had to push our ferry back to the 6:45 PM. Since it turned out that we didn't actually need those documents, it was incredibly frustrating that we lost half a day. However, once we were able to get on the ferry the day really turned around.
✨Different✨ Accommodations for our Autistic Daughter While in Argentina
My seven year old daughter is autistic and in June of 2024, we moved to Argentina for six months. While here we have tailored some of the accommodations that we do for her and are doing some things differently to adjust to our life here in Buenos Aires.
Going Shopping Social Story
Since coming to Buenos Aires, I have had to take the kids shopping on my own a lot more. This is a new experience for us because, in Tennessee, my daughter goes to school and my son naps at home where my husband works, or I can take my son to my parents house or I have the luxury of ordering groceries. In Argentina, though, it's really hard for us to get stuff delivered to us for a large variety of reasons and I don't have the added support, but I still have to get things done so I've had to take the kids out more. We're been going to the grocery store, clothes and toy shops, bakeries, and anywhere else that we need to. Sometimes it's just to give us something to do, but either way they're just in stores more. I noticed that it was really hard for my daughter, and despite thinking that I had sufficiently prepared my seven year old autistic daughter to go shopping, she was still having a difficult time. So I wrote a social story especially for her about going shopping.