Backpack Harness, Child Locator, and other Outdoor Safety Solutions for "Runners"

When Dovi was about 2 1/2 years old I realized we had a big problem on our hands.

It simply wasn't safe to go out with him without a stroller.

He was apt to bolt at any second. I could hold his hand as tightly as possible; he always managed to wrench himself out of my grip and just run. He had no safety awareness whatsoever and easily ran into the busy road.

During the week it wasn't such a problem, as he was always in a stroller. On Shabbos, in the winter it wasn't such a problem either, as it was too cold to go out. But as winter turned into spring, and I started taking him to the park on Shabbos mornings and on long walks in the afternoon to visit my parents and such, I began feeling very scared and unsafe to go out with him.

Problem, indeed.

What a difference a year makes

Summer has always been a "big time" for me. I was born in the summer. I got married in the summer. Both kids were born in the summer. Some summers were amazing, and some were downright terrible - like the summer I had my first miscarriage. Or the summer my doctor gave up on me. (Foolish doctor.) Or the summer I was expecting Chaim and having panic attacks all summer (I was convinced it was another miscarriage waiting to happen.) Summer of 2010 was an extremely difficult one, with Dovi's new diagnosis and all the therapists camping out at my bungalow. By extreme contrast, Summer of 2011 will forever remain imprinted in my memory as the summer the wheel began to turn back upward.

We came home from that weekend in the country all refreshed and ready to tackle a very busy, very exciting summer. First came Dovi's move to a full-time program. FINALLY!!!! After suffering and struggling and tearing my hair out and enduring the grueling year of home-based E.I., Dovi was FINALLY going into TABAC. Yay!!!!! All those sweet, sweet promises, all those dreams of him progressing in leaps and bounds, all those hours of *freedom* - it was finally here.

:-(

Google Adsense has terminated my account, a week before I was gonna get my first, exciting, $100 check. For no reason. No explanation given. Was the blog getting too many clicks? I will never know. I'm sad. I was blogging primarily to make $$$. I have much bigger and better things to do with my time than write for free. All 3 weekly magazines are after me to write for them and I don't - and I probably should. And I should probably step up my ebaying. I don't know, what else can I do from home that doesn't involve selling or working on a clock?

I'm upset.

I will still continue this blog because it is doing a lot for me, and for others, and I'm still raising money somewhat with the donate button (hint, hint). But I'm sad; I feel like I'm being punished by the high school principal without explanation. Oh well - I was only making about $50 a month. The money will come in from elsewhere.

Does anyone know of a similar program like adsense - a pay-per-click / impressions type of program? I know there are. Please let me know if you do.

A Funny Thing Happened in Fallsburg

One of the difficulties in writing this blog is that despite this being in 'chronological order', I sometimes skip ahead and back, since the posts are sometimes separate topics. So although I already wrote about Dovi's upsherin, I'm going to step back to a week or two before his upsherin to tell you a really fascinating little story.

Although we were staying home for the summer so that Dovi could start attending the ABA center - and of course, due to our exciting upcoming move - we did try to make some vacation plans. We had our minds open to finding a place for the last 2 weeks of August, since the ABA center was closed then, as well as for the first long July weekend, as both Dovi and Chaim had a couple of days off.

We first tried a summer camp that was offering bungalows for the first weekend, but that didn't work out. At the very last minute, on Thursday morning, we called a different place, which sounded even better than the first place.

Dovi lived it up in the hotel/motel. He loved the grass, the fresh air, the pool, the swings - the whole works. This kid thrives in suburbia. He makes more social progress in the summer in the great outdoors than he does all year long. As you will see later, when I will write about our August vacation, his next big social breakthrough came during those admittedly very difficult weeks (I was basically solely in charge of him and it was murderously difficult).