DIY Halloween Decorations
Halloween is not really a big deal in Argentina, especially compared to what its like in the States. So I decided to make some Halloween decorations this year since it's October and my kids love Halloween. I went to Pinterest and found some craft projects that I really liked and were actual viable options that I could get the materials for here in Buenos Aires.
How I Plan a Trip for Our Neurodivergent Family
I often get asked how I plan a trip for my neurodivergent family. I have I process that I always go through, so let's talk about it before we head out on another trip.
Dental Hygiene Life Skill & Social Story
I decided the next life skill that I wanted to work on with my daughter was brushing teeth and just oral hygiene in general. My daughter seems to be struggling with that at the moment, even though she hasn't in the past so I knew it was something that I wanted to work on. I know that she's not the only autistic to have trouble with it, so I wanted to do a social story to go along with it. I already have a going to the dentist social story, but I wanted to make a dental hygiene at home specific social story.
How I Made Our Trip to Iguazu Falls Fun and Educational for Our Autistic Daughter
Since we are homeschooling our daughter I try to find educational opportunities wherever we go. Our family recently went on a trip to Iguazu Falls in Argentina and Brazil and I tried my best to make this trip fun, entertaining and educational for our daughter. While she does love being outside and she loves nature, I really wanted to lean into her special interests to make this trip as fun and as memorable as possible.
A Getaway to Iguazú Falls
Recently, we took a little getaway to Iguazú Falls. If you don't know, Iguazú Falls is on the border of Argentina and Brazil, right near Paraguay. It was a bit of an adventure, we traveled from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazú, which is on the Argentina side. We flew with Fly Bondi and it was, frankly, a terrible experience, but we still enjoyed the trip so I wanted to take you along for all of the ups and down of the trip.
Pantry Build Plans
If you've been following me for the last four years, you know about my pantry. It has wire shelving (which I hate) and doesn't use the space to its full potential. Well, right before we left for Argentina, there was a mealworm incident in our pantry and I had to rip everything out. I had to put some shelves up because there's a family staying in our house while we are gone, but they are really basic and just meant to be there until I can do something else. So the pantry it is at the top of my list of projects for when we get back from Argentina. Now that we are halfway through our time in Argentina, I'm really starting to think about what I want this pantry to look like and how I'm going to go about tackling the project.
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.