Alaska Wittig Family Blog

Dorothy's Big Day

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:34:39 -0900

Dorothy and Jason were married on the 21st of June in Fairbanks. It was a lovely wedding. The skies were sunny with just a few clouds, the temperatures warm (for us), and a light breeze kept the bugs away. There were a couple of snags, like the music not being loud enough for anybody to hear, but nobody seemed to mind (or even notice) what might not have gone according to plan. It seems that with weddings, the only thing people are really interested in is seeing the bride and groom successfully wedded. The food was good too.

We didn't see much of the young couple during our visit. Dorothy apologized at one point for not having much time for visiting, but I [Michael] told her apologies weren't necessary: Dorothy did most of the planning and a good deal of the preparation for her big day, and I knew that this was not the trip for a visit. My gratification came from seeing them together, and happy.

Our drive up to Fairbanks was uneventful, although the runup to the drive was not. Three days before our departure we decided that Sheryl's Isuzu was no longer suitable for towing (the frame is rusting away thanks to Juneau's climate), so we bought a car. The next day we got a different car after discovering the dealership misled us about the availability of a trailer hitch (and they were disinclined to deal with us on the second car until we revealed that we took the precaution of cancelling the check we wrote for the first one, and the first deal was as dead as the check). We drove up in a 2008 Mercury Mariner.

My dad joined us in Fairbanks and came along on our drive to Wasilla. In a few more days Dad and I will fly down to Juneau to tackle a couple of home renovation projects, after which he'll be flying back to Illinois and I'll come back north to retrieve Sheryl and the kids, after which we'll drive back home.

I'm taking lots of pictures, as always, which leads to the topic of my column for June. Sorry I'm late posting it, but we were on the road when it went to press.

If a picture is worth a thousand words

By Michael Wittig | At Home with the Kids

Click. A precious moment of my children's early life is recorded for posterity. Click, click. Two more precious moments. Click, click, click, click. Get the picture?

I inherited my photography hobby from my father. He inherited his hobby from his father, who served as the photographer for a small Illinois newspaper. Because of their passion for pictures I got to see snippets of my father's childhood, his tour with the Army in the 1950s, and my own early years a decade later.

I bought my first camera when I was 8 years old, a Kodak 104 instamatic. I also bought my first roll of film then, and when my pictures were all taken I paid to have them developed.

And then I stopped taking pictures for a few months. I had to, since there was no more money for film and developing.

Until the digital revolution, photography was a hobby with a price. Every picture cost money, good or bad, with more tending toward the bad side than the good. Worse yet, film photographers had no way to tell whether a given picture was any good until it came back from the processor, and only professionals actually exposed enough film to capture the "right" moment.

The opening years of digital photography were slow to reveal the promise of the new technology. Early digital cameras offered low-resolution images of mediocre quality, and limited memory storage meant that only a few pictures could be taken at a time.

But technology marched forward, offering better cameras and more storage for less money. In this decade, digital image quality has improved to the point of rivaling film, and on-board storage has expanded from kilobytes to gigabytes.

When I first saw my father taking dozens upon dozens of pictures with his digital camera I thought it was a novelty. When I saw the results it was a revelation. To be sure, many of the individual pictures weren't very good, but there were so many of them that the number of keepers was actually quite respectable. Additionally, the sequences themselves were fun to watch.

I adopted my father's technique. If a picture is worth a thousand words, after all, then a sequence of pictures should be worth thousands of words, right?

I did my father one better too, by changing the setting on my camera from single exposure to continuous, so that when I hold down the shutter button the camera takes a continuous stream of pictures, slightly more than one every second. I've been taking a lot of pictures.

But even good concepts can go awry. After a recent outing to the beach I came home to discover over five hundred pictures on our camera, which I added to the nearly 18,000 pictures already on the computer. More and more, I feel as if I'm trying to contain Pandora in a digital box.

I try to pare down the pictures, I really do. But the reality is that although 90 percent of my pictures may get deleted, 10 percent remain. What am I supposed to do with 50 great pictures of a day at the beach?

I'm not much better with videotape. On our last big road trip I recorded 14 hours of video footage. How many bowls of popcorn does that equate to? Surely, I do not know.

The upshot of all this is that I believe digital photography has diminished the value of a picture. The pictures on my hard drive do not represent 18 million words. Indeed, the whole collection can probably be summed up in two words: too much.

My kids are getting into the act now. We bought them cheap digital cameras at Christmas, and since then it has become a regular event for my 3-year-old boy to come to me with tears in his eyes because his camera has quit working. There's never really a problem with the camera, of course. He's simply filled the memory card again.

And so a fourth-generation photography buff has come into being. I can hear him now. Click, click, click. More pictures he wants me to look at.

I see one-terabyte hard drives in the store these days. How many words are a million pictures worth? I'll find out soon enough.

The Monthly Column

Wed, 21 May 2008 07:13:08 -0900

When I wrote last month's column I didn't anticipate a loss of our cheap electricity. I actually got a few comments from locals who thought I might need to rethink my priorities after the avalanche, so with that in mind it seemed appropriate to continue talking about energy in this month's column...

Sprintime Activities

Sat, 17 May 2008 19:00:32 -0900

For those folks wondering how we’re doing with our electricity situation, we’re doing just fine. Last month’s bill indicated our usage was down by over half. Even better, the power company decided to implement the rate increase effective April 16 – the day of the avalanche that took out the power lines for Juneau’s hydroelectricity source – which means we got billed at the pre-avalanche rate last month instead of the anticipated higher rates. We’re also informed that rates will come down at the end of June, when repairs are now expected to be complete.

On to more important things.

I [Michael] promised Sheryl that we’d set up the kids playground once the ice was gone in the back yard. When Mother’s Day weekend rolled around it was time. The fence came down easily, and even the posts set in concrete came out of the ground with some effort. With substantially more difficulty Sheryl and I managed to move the structure from the side yard to the backyard. Once there it wasn’t too difficult to level things up and bolt on the roof and swings. Last year Sheryl got a trail for Mother’s Day. This year a swing set. Maybe next year she’ll get the first hole in our much talked about miniature golf course. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Sheryl also had a birthday this week. The kids loved it. We (me and the kids) went shopping and the kids got to pick out the flavor of cake mix to make, in addition to having input on what presents to buy (“Do you think Mom will like this toy boat?”). At home they got to help (mostly watch) with the cake, and with wrapping presents (ditto). The steaks came out from under the broiler shortly after Sheryl walked in the door, and we all enjoyed a happy birthday celebration as a family. The weather even cooperated, so we were able to try out the R/C boat in our pond without getting rained on.

It’s that family thing that makes for such good times. Becky “gets it” more and more, and with her vocabulary and other progressing cognitive abilities she’s fairly easy to communicate with, and she has a sense of humor too, as evidenced my her smiles and laughs when I catch her in a prank. Michael does not have Becky’s range of vocabulary but uses what he has with somewhat more ease than Becky. The interaction between the two of them is remarkable to observe, with Becky teaching Michael vocabulary and Michael keeping Becky’s attention focused much better than most adults do. Both of the kids are also interacting more and more with Sheryl and me, and it all certainly fits the “family” description.

The house Sheryl owned when I met her went up on the real estate market this week. We’ve rented it since buying this home, and with mortgage rates where they are it seems like the right time to sell. I am also selling property I own in Nevada (to the woman who has been renting it since I moved here in 1992). The idea is that we’ll be able to take the proceeds from these two sales and refinance our present home, leaving us with a lower mortgage here, about as low as we were paying when we lived at Sheryl’s house.

We’re anxiously watching gasoline prices rise as our impending trip to Fairbanks and Anchorage looms closer. We’ll go almost irregardless of gas prices, unless of course gasoline becomes unavailable at any price (highly unlikely). At some point we’ll have to rethink the whole road-trip paradigm, I suppose, but there’s more to life than what we can see and experience in Juneau, so as long as it’s still possible, we’ll still be trying to wing it. We’re still talking about using our Metro to tow our travel trailer too.

A Catastrophe in Slow Motion

Sun, 4 May 2008 13:35:12 -0900

Juneau did not get a disaster proclamation from the State of Alaska, contrary to the hopes of most folks here in Juneau, ourselves included. That means the bill for repairs to the transmission line and for the diesel now used to provide over 80% of our electricity (there is still some hydro close to town) will be borne by each and every Juneau resident and business concern. There is no panic nor any organized protest, yet. For all the hype, the first bills should only now be appearing in mailboxes. Our bill is still a week away.

And therein lies the first problem. The new rates imposed by Alaska Electric Light and Power (AEL&P) apply to the entire month of April, whereas the avalanche occurred on the 16th. Our meter was last read on the tenth, so we will be charged extra for the six days we didn’t know we were going to be charged draconian rates for the extra power. AEL&P contends this is fair because we will be see relief sooner once the problem is resolved. Of course, the rates are scheduled to come down in the middle of summer when electrical requirements are at their least anyway (very few buildings have air conditioning here). Rate payers who get billed in the last half of the month also have the benefit of knowing they need to conserve and have the opportunity to do something about it.

There are other problems too. The design of the original installation has been called into question, but the quick fix being pursued by the power company is to put up nearly identical towers on the same pads where the last towers were taken out by the avalanche. No alternative repairs have been seriously mentioned, such as laying the whole wire underwater (it is said to be too expensive, but nobody has mentioned a price). A lovely illustration of a concrete deflector (used in British Columbia and some western U.S. states without a single failure) showed up in today’s paper, but it wasn’t put in there by our power company. Instead, AEL&P has committed to nothing more than the immediate repairs and “long term study” to investigate possible solutions.

My [Michael] darker (and realistic) side suspects there will be several class-action lawsuits that derive from this whole fiasco. We may be a party in at least one of them.

Some good does come of our avalanche situation. Citywide electric usage is down by 30% as residents and businesses tone down their lights, and will likely come down further. Energy conservation is in vogue again in a big way. There is even some prospect that this will give our city a cause to unite behind, improving our sense of community and maybe even improving life in our town.

But much of this lies in the future.

I went to work on my insulation project the same day my picture appeared on the front page of The Juneau Empire (pictured above, me posing with my insulation stacked in the garage).

I was quoted in the article too:

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/042008/loc_270393062.shtml

Our cathedral ceiling, which accounts for about a third of our total ceiling area, was poorly insulated (like the rest of the house). The four inches of foam now installed (two layers of two inch) should effectively triple the ceiling insulation in that part of the house. We hated to lose the wood look of the original ceiling, and I tried to remove the cedar that was up there for reuse, but the pieces were sporadically glued and many of them came down in splinters when I tried to dislodge them, so the wood stayed. We can always put up new wood later.

The biggest irony about our situation is that we used wood through the winter to supplement our heat, and I was burning the last sticks of dry wood the same day the avalanche struck. Had we known I could have set some wood aside.

But all was not lost. I save leftover wood from every construction project I tackle, including scraps, partly because I hate to throw anything away, but also because I think I’ll find a use for the wood in some future project. Thus was born the “home heat” project. For over two weeks we’ve heated our home almost exclusively with scrap lumber from the garage. It works quite well, in fact it is the driest wood our woodstove has ever burned, having spent months or years (back to 2001) out of the weather. Between the wood and the newly upgraded insulation, we’ve been able to keep all of the electric heaters off for the past two weeks, dropping our electric usage by over half versus the month before the avalanche, and about a quarter of what it was before the woodstove was installed (best estimate, accounting for lighting/heating requirements and outside temperatures).

I always knew I’d find a good use for that wood.

Unfortunately, we’ll be running out of scraps in another week at the rate we’re going. Still, there are some pallets to be had around town (about a day’s worth of heat per pallet if the last two I found are any indication). My next door neighbor also said he’s had some wood rounds for a long time but no splitter for them, so we tentatively agreed to have me come over with my splitter in exchange for some of the split wood.

I recall that Sheryl was somewhat taken aback by the price quoted for our woodstove when we had it put in. It appears now that, if we can keep throwing wood in it, we’ll make up for the expense much quicker than in the original estimation. And still we wait for our first bill at the new rate.

We’re lucky: Sheryl and I have enough set aside to pay our electric bills through this crisis. Not only that, but we’ll continue with our home renovations pretty much per plan, since our renovations are largely to improve the house’s energy efficiency anyway. We’ll still be driving to Fairbanks for Dorothy’s wedding too, although our plans for a larger trip down south had to be set aside (which was becoming tenuous even before our avalanche due to the price of gasoline). We are acting proactively, I hope, rather than reactively.

I suspect the reactive responses to Juneau’s energy crisis (and it truly is a crisis) will begin within the next week, and will escalate with every electric bill delivered to the doors of an evermore distraught citizenry. I also suspect that much of the town is still in denial over just how bad this really is, and won’t truly appreciate it until the bills are opened. There are also a lot of people who simply don’t know how to cut back, people who are in many cases the same people who won’t have a contingency for this kind of emergency. The same thing can be said about many area businesses.

But this is a catastrophe in slow motion. It began over two weeks ago. It will continue through the summer.

The kids, by the way, have been largely unaffected by all this. They thought the ceiling insulation project was interesting enough, and they are a little more willing to wear sweaters in the house now.

Bitter Irony

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:32:27 -0900

An excerpt from today's Juneau Empire (online):

Electricity bills likely to increase by 500 percent following avalanche
Story last updated at 4/16/2008 - 4:02 pm

Juneau’s electricity rates are likely to quintuple as the result of an avalanche early this morning that cut all hydroelectric power to the area, according to an Alaska Electric Light & Power spokeswoman.
Juneau is now running on diesel generators at Auke Bay and Lemon Creek, said Gayle Wood, director of consumer affairs.
One transmission tower is down and four damaged on the Snettisham line, which connects hydroelectric power from the Snettisham lakes to the service area.
Outages were limited to the Thane area this morning because the power load transferred to the diesel generators that were already running.
Wood said it would be two to three weeks before workers could safely begin repairing the line, and that hydro power wouldn’t be restored for at least three months.
For more, see Thursday’s Empire.

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:40:29 -0900

We’re having a wet spring. This is really not too unusual for us because every spring is a wet spring, although it is somewhat unusual that the sun hasn’t been out at least a little. This is, after all, the “dry season” for us.

We are also enjoying (if that’s the word) an earlier spring than last year. The snow is melting, the creeks are flowing, and the blueberry bushes are emerging from their winter slumber. When it hasn’t been raining, and even when it is, we’ve been out in the yard with the big clippers, electric chain saw, rake, and shovel, clearing dead trees and clipping low branches, raking sticks and twigs out of the moss, clearing out creek drainages, and generally having fun on our one acre park and preserve.

We often feel like our yard is a park. It has many of the things that parks offer: forests and meadows, creeks and ponds, plants and animals, paths and trails, birds and mosquitoes. We’re even going to have a playground!

The rockwork I [Michael] put in last year survived the winter without incident, which doesn’t really surprise me but does give me a little more confidence in planning the stone arch bridges I want to put in. We’re also going to expand the trail system by running a strip of rock and gravel along the east side of West creek (for the sake of simplicity we refer to our two creeks as East creek and West creek). Both of our creeks have some marshy stretches but West creek is the worst, and the most logical place (we’ve concluded) for a trail is right along the marsh, hence the plans for more rockwork.

Apart from expansion of the West creek trail, we’re really reticent about putting in too many improved trails on the property. In some cases, like the marshes along the creeks and on a couple of steeper climbs, an improved trail makes sense to ease our passage and avoid damage to the terrain. Everywhere else, it makes little sense to put in trails because the forest floor is mostly open, the moss is fairly tolerant with light foot traffic, and an unaltered landscape looks really nice. Even now, we can wander pretty much at will almost everywhere in the yard.

The kids are fairly good about staying close by us when we’re out, so much so that we’re planning to take down the chain link fence that separates the back lawn (if a mostly level patch of moss can be called a lawn) from the rest of the yard. The benefit is that the kids will have a larger area to wander in (the rule is “stay where I can see you”), but there’s a drawback too: the bears will have easier access to the back deck.

Becky and Michael are both doing really well. They’re both talking more and more, and more fluently. They talk to each other. They talk to us. Last night Michael had a nice talk with his mom on the phone. I believe they are approaching parity in their verbal abilities, which I’ve been anticipating for several months, but Michael is only starting to sort out colors, shapes, letters, and numbers, and Becky has already learned a lot of this.

When Becky turns six she’ll get re-evaluated for autism. I’m under the impression that she will lose the autism classification then, which will make a difference on what degree of assistance she’ll get from outside services. She qualified for the preschool program because of her autistic side, and we also get weekly visits from a speech pathologist, but preschool is winding down for her and she probably won’t need the speech therapy in another year, so if she doesn’t qualify in the future I think she’ll still do just fine.

We’re still contemplating plans for the summer. Seattle is out. Chances are we won’t drive south at all, contenting ourselves with the drive up to Fairbanks, Wasilla, and other points north. We haven’t ruled having one or two of us fly to Illinois though, but the airlines aren’t advertising any specials that fly on the dates we’re looking at so it’s too early to tell what may happen.

And today is the third Wednesday of the month. Time for my monthly newspaper column.

I don’t chastise my children for leaving lights on in our house. They’re much too young to understand about energy use and conservation, and probably won’t come to appreciate these points for several years. But there’s another reason why I allow the lights to stay on. They heat the house.

Much of what passes for energy conservation is wrong-headed in a place like Juneau. The reason is simple: a watt is a watt, no matter how it’s used.

Electricity produces heat. To be precise, one watt of electricity produces approximately 3.414 Btu’s of heat per hour. This is apparently true regardless of how that watt is used. A thousand-watt electric resistance heater produces 3414 Btu’s of heat. A thirteen-watt compact florescent bulb produces just over 44 Btu’s. An 800-watt refrigerator throws off 2731 Btu’s.

Honest, well-intentioned people tell us to turn off lights and unused appliances to conserve electricity. What these people fail to tell us is that, in a climate where buildings require heat all through the year, there is no such thing as an unused watt. Every watt consumed indoors adds heat.

For every light or appliance that is not in use within a heated building, the heating system has to make up the difference. There is no net energy savings, merely a redistribution of how that heat is produced.

Our current home was built just before the oil embargo in the early seventies, an era when nobody gave much thought toward energy usage. There was no insulation under the floors when we moved in, no wrapping on the pipes for the baseboard heaters, and only two inches of fiberglass in the walls. Our home was, and is, an energy hog.

But our home is not quite the hog it used to be. When our oil-fired boiler quit working last spring we removed the entire heating system, pipes and all, and put in electric heat. We sealed all the holes in the floor –dozens of them – and installed insulation under the floors. We also installed a woodstove insert after realizing that the open fireplace drew more hot air out of the house than it radiated back in.

By comparing our power bills now versus a year ago, I’ve determined that we’ve cut our home energy requirements by about twenty-five percent. This doesn’t include the woodstove insert, the additional use of which cuts our winter electric usage substantially.

In truth, the time and effort involved in cutting, storing, and otherwise handling wood doesn’t save as much money as I could earn in most paying jobs, not yet anyway. Having said that, we have a lot of trees on our property, we have to do something with the wood that does come down, and I like the exercise. There’s also nothing quite like a warm fire to cozy up to when I’m chilled.

Between the insulation upgrades and the woodstove insert, our electric bill this winter was half of what we paid for oil and electricity the year before. We stayed just as warm too, even warmer when the insert was in use.

We’re planning several more upgrades. We’ll insulate the exterior walls. The cathedral ceiling above our living room will get extra insulation. Several of our windows will get swapped out with newer, more efficient models. We are also contemplating a geothermal heating system. All of these jobs will be huge, and expensive.

These upgrades will all reduce our energy requirements. The savings in our power bill will add up over time, and the improvements will add to the value of our house. Consider the alternative: if we don’t pay to reduce our energy requirements, we’ll continue to pay for the extra energy our home requires.

The cost of oil heat now exceeds the cost of heating with electricity, even after accounting for the surcharges imposed by AEL&P this winter. Since the price of oil is unlikely to go down, the home heating equation is likely to continue favoring electricity as long as Juneau continues getting the majority of its power through hydroelectric generation.

These little lights of mine, I’m gonna let ‘em shine. My kids like it that way. So do I. It keeps things bright and cheery, at no additional cost.

Wedding Update

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:31:00 -0900

M.J. just called to let us know that Dorothy's wedding is still on for June 21st, however, the venue has been moved from Seattle to Fairbanks! We are just beginning to figure out the impact of this on the rest of the summer plans we were making.

Michael's monthly column was published in the Empire this morning:

At Home With the Kids

By Michael Wittig

Suggested headline: Getting ready for Kindergarten

Our little girl will be going to Kindergarten next year. For most parents this is a significant event in their family’s history. In our household it is even more momentous: two years ago our daughter was diagnosed as autistic.

One year ago Kindergarten still seemed a virtually unachievable goal. Our daughter barely spoke even then, and she used a mumbled speech portrayed mostly by single words and a few carefully selected phrases. She looked at our faces only rarely, a common enough trait in autistic children, but very frustrating from the standpoint of trying to teach or interact in any meaningful way.

When the topic of Kindergarten came up in preschool conferences as recently as last autumn the conversation did not last long. At that time, we noted a steady increase in abilities and aptitudes, but we were months away from having to make a decision and our daughter was still performing far below Kindergarten level.

The Kindergarten decision came this month. Oddly enough, our daughter made the decision for us through a few of her actions on the very day of her latest parent teacher conference.

For months I have been feeding my daughter a script almost every time she wanted something, a sentence that reads like: “May I have some ____ (fill in the blank) please?” Until recently I always had to prompt her through at least some of the sentence, but on conference day she surprised me.

I was playing the piano in our living room that morning when I heard my daughter’s whining cry for milk coming from the kitchen. I called out to her, saying she would have to come and tell me what she wanted before I’d get it for her. Without another whimper she came into the living room and in a very polite voice asked: “Daddy, may I have some milk please?”

In the last few weeks it has become apparent that our daughter also knows the alphabet and numbers, not only recognizing them in print but also capable of drawing them. She demonstrated the connection between letters and words recently, pointing at a stop sign and saying, “Stop! S.T.O.P.” Getting into the car on the way to school she looked at the button on her car seat, then said, “P.U.S.H. Daddy, what’s that spell?”

At the school conference I offered an accounting of my daughter’s new skills. I also learned that she was doing new things at school, even offering up imaginative play compelling enough to entice her schoolmates to join in the fun. When the preschool teacher mentioned Kindergarten this time around we all agreed that she would be ready.

In the early days of my daughter’s autism there was a fear in my heart. The fear was that my children might need more time to get ready for the big wide world than we could give them, that my wife and I would either be caring and providing for our adult children well into our twilight years, or worse yet, that we might not live long enough to see our children safely through to independence.

As older parents, my wife and I keep a steady gaze on the window of time between our children’s coming into their own and the end of our working life. When our children were conceived we felt the window was narrow but acceptable. When autism reared its head it seemed that the window had slammed shut.

But daylight is showing through that window now. Our kids are growing and learning. The autistic toddler I knew has forgotten her aversion to looking at faces. She talks, and she asks questions.

Our little girl is going to Kindergarten. She’s going to enter it at the same time as her peers. It even appears that she’ll be on an academic par with her classmates at the starting gate.

There will be challenges ahead, and I am certain there will be more dark days and uncertainty in store for our daughter, just like there are for the rest of us. Life is seemingly difficult enough without complications like autism, but at least we know something of what she’s up against, and we can help her get through it.

Spring Break

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:55:45 -0900

It's hard to believe it's spring break already. I (Sheryl) haven't stashed the the poinsettia in the garage, the Christmas wreath still hanging on the front door, the paper cutout snowflakes on the windows, nor the twinkle lights that adorn the beams in the living room that have provided a significant source of light this winter.

Daylight savings time went into effect last weekend; I'm now going to and coming home from work in the daylight! Yahoo! Iditarod is practically over, the snow is melting, and Michael said he saw the first skunk cabbage peeking out of the snow near the McNugget intersection the other day, seed catalogues fill my mailbox. The vernal equinox is this week, followed quickly by a full moon and Easter (probably one of the earliest in years).

And following spring break, the last 43 days of the school year pass like a runaway freight train. Next thing you know, the four of us will be boarding the ferry on another multi-month journey to and through the Lower 48. We are planning on driving down to the Seattle area for Dorothy's wedding around summer solstice. I think Michael is hoping that Michael's 95-year old grandpa will travel from Illinois to Washington with Bob and Kathy in their motor home or we will drive to Illinois after the wedding to visit with him. We are hoping to visit with my brother, David, and his family, either in Ohio, or up in Wasilla (since it's just an extra 1.5 day drive from Illinois or Haines Junction, respectively). David and his family are planning on being in Alaska this summer anyway, and my dad is trying to arrange a bit of a family reunion in Cordova, where we all lived in the early 60's.

The kids are doing well. We had Becky's parent-teacher conference yesterday and collectively decided to move her on to kindergarten next fall. Her preschool teacher will be moving to kindergarten with her, co-teaching with the autism specialist-special education teacher in a new reverse mainstream class in my building. She will spend a good part of her day in that class, especially initially, but will join her regular classroom for part of the day. It seems like a good placement.

Both kids are talking more and more; Michael and I both noted that our road trip will be different this summer, with four voices instead of two. Becky and Michael play together well most of the time, with the exception of their tendency to hit, kick, push, poke and otherwise get physical with their sibling. Michael's most heartfelt recent complaint: Becky so mean!" But they do chatter back and forth as Michael is approaching Becky's current oral language developmental level.

It was nice to take the day off. Usually if I don't get going on laundry first thing Saturday morning, I'm regretting it by Sunday night, and definatly all week long as everyone's favorite clothes aren't available for wearing. But, whoop-dee-doo!, I've got the whole week off, so we took the kids to the 4-H pony rides fundraiser, a trip to the Scottish restaurant (codeword for McDonalds), and the whole family out for a romping around the yard until we got cold and came in for hot chocolate.

Michael has another monthly column coming out this Wednesday, so I always brace myself for whatever his last minute writing inspiration might be (cameras sixty feet up in trees, trips to the emergency room, etc.). Check back for that Wednesday.

Third Wednesday of the Month

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:41:51 -0900

It's almost like I can look ahead on the calendar and see when my articles will show up in the paper (which, of course, I can). Because of the formatting they used, I'll skip scanning it this month.

At Home with the Kids
By Michael Wittig

REACH reaches out to help families in need

My son turned three last week. To help him celebrate, I baked and decorated some car-shaped cupcakes and took them to his TLC group at REACH, where he shared them with eight other toddlers.

TLC stands for Two’s Learning Class, part of the Infant Learning Program, one of many services available at REACH. And, as the name of the class implies, the birthday boy was making his final official appearance with the group.

I have been a regular visitor at REACH since our daughter was born. At first I attended a weekly infant playgroup that borrowed the REACH playroom. When our daughter was about fifteen months old I started taking her to TLC, and after our son was born I brought him along.

In addition to attending TLC, we started receiving regular home visits from speech and occupational therapists that continued until our daughter was three. When our son also exhibited a language delay, he began the same program as his sister.

It could be argued that a one hour visit once a week can’t make much difference in the life of a child, but in addition to the help our children received directly, there was also the insight and training these visits provided to me and my wife. Quite often we were able to apply what we learned during the visits, and the responses from both of our children were invariably positive.

In an era when governments are looking to trim expenses anywhere they can, we were a little surprised to discover a government-funded program so well suited to the needs of our children. We were even more surprised to learn that we qualified for the program.

The reason we were able to get our children into these programs is because household income is not the criteria used to determine eligibility. The services of the Infant Learning Program were as accessible to my children as they are to any child under the age of three.

These services have meant a great deal to our family. The evaluations of our children’s development allowed us to gauge their progress, placing their abilities in context with typical child development. They also showed us where our children were challenged.

To say that my children have benefited through REACH would be an understatement, especially in the case of my daughter. A lot of research on autism has shown that early intervention is one of the best therapies, yet under current guidelines TEFRA Medicaid requires that the medical evaluation for autism be performed after the child’s third birthday. For this reason, most doctors do not evaluate children for autism before the age of three.

The support we received from REACH bridged the gap between our recognition of a problem and the official autism diagnosis, after which TEFRA stepped in to cover the treatment expenses that many insurance plans (including ours) do not cover. Without the services of REACH, the assistance our daughter needed and received would have come much later.

Like most people in Juneau we live a modest lifestyle, pay our bills, and manage to set aside a little money for a few of life’s luxuries. If necessary, we could have paid for the services we received for our children, although in doing so we would have severely compromised our modest lifestyle, to say nothing of the luxuries we would have to do without.

Because of REACH we didn’t have to choose a life of Spartan deprivation to afford services. We’ve kept our home, kept up with the bills, and we’re still able to put a little aside.

When my daughter turned three she left TLC and REACH. By then, she was enrolled in the integrated preschool with the Juneau School District. She’s doing very well there.

My son won’t be joining his sister in preschool this year. While it is true that he had a significant language delay a year ago – the reason he qualified for services through REACH – that delay diminished with time. Before his third birthday, he had literally talked his way out of preschool.

My birthday boy enjoyed his last day with TLC. The other parents, all mothers, marveled at my intricately decorated cupcakes. The kids just liked eating them.

Much has happened since our last blog entry. Virtually none of the happenings are worth blogging about, however, so I [Michael] haven't been.

There was, for instance, the really cold weather we endured until last week. For over a month the temperature never got above freezing, and one particularly cold morning dipped to fifteen below zero Fahrenheit. But our electric heaters all did what they were supposed to, and the woodstove worked well too; in fact, our electric bill last month was lower than the month before despite the colder weather, probably because I rarely let the fire in the stove go out. Ironically, we're using the heaters much more now that the temperatures are above freezing than we did when it was colder: we're low on wood and saving the rest for cold snaps and power failures.

Our frozen water pipe almost wasn't news, and really isn't. Of course, the pipe didn't freeze intil the temperatures warmed to ten above, and the only pipe that did freeze was the cold water line to the kitchen sink. Luckily we caught it early, opened the cabinet doors, and applied some heat (a torch) to the portion of pipe coming out of the wall, and the water came back in a matter of minutes. Our best guess is that the crawl space under the house never dipped below about 34 degrees.

The was also the visit from Grandpa Hall. He came the week before Michael's birthday, and was going to stay through that weekend, but snowy weather threatened to close down the airport when he originally planned to leave, and for fear of getting stranded he flew out early.

My history class is going well enough. I'm able to keep up with the reading, partly because I already know about much of the history we're plodding through. I turned in the first of three papers on Monday. The classroom lectures/discussions are interesting too, although I sometimes get the feeling that the discussions are more between the instructor and I than a class-wide discussion. Can I help it if I enjoy history?

It seems like there were some other things I was going to put in here, but I can't think of them at the moment. Moments when I can blog have become fewer as time goes on, mostly because the kids don't usually let me have much free (by my measure) time.

The Post-Christmas Season

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:02:51 -0900

It's easy to stop adding to a blog: just stop.

It's easier when there isn't much news, and there hasn't been much news.

There is the monthly article, which I wrote at the last-minute. I wanter to spend more time on it, really I did, but every time I thought about writing, topics would flee. I made two false starts, pieces that I couldn't get into or just didn't read well, and the morning before my column was due to publish I sat down and wrote out the following, which was given the headline, "Satisfying the insatiable need for attention is a full time job."

My boy is standing beside me as I write, pulling on my finger. He wants me to come with him. Ignoring him is not possible, and hasn’t been for over a year since he learned that by merely pulling on my finger he can make me rise from my chair and follow him to almost any location in the house.

He’s been training me to follow him like this for over a year. At first, he would simply hold my finger and slowly wrinkle up his face in an increasingly unpleasant expression. Then began the whimpering noises. When he started actively tugging fingers he noted a better response, and incorporated that behavior into the routine.

A few months ago he started using words. Now, in addition to the finger pulling, he issues short commands to motivate me towards the tasks he has in mind. Actually, he’s quite polite with his commandments, often punctuating his wants with a heartfelt “Pweese!”

How is a father to resist?

I am extraordinarily grateful to have two small children in my care at this stage of my life. I have a grown daughter who is getting married this summer, a daughter I did not spend a great deal of time with while she grew up. I feel bad about that fact from time to time, both for the lessons I could have taught and for the experience I missed out on.

But I had another chance. Even better, when my second round of fatherhood began I was given the opportunity to devote full time to the care of my two younger children. The decision to stay home with my kids is one of the best choices I ever made.

I know that many parents do not have a choice when it comes to holding a job and raising a family: they must balance both to keep the bills paid. Unfortunately, in pursuing both job and family, family life is usually what suffers.

The problem is that working parents miss out on the life of their children. In truth, most of what transpires on any given day is rather mundane and hardly noteworthy. But there are golden moments mixed in with the commonplace, times when a child first displays a new talent or uses new words. These moments occur at random, and a parent who misses the moment misses out.

Children have an insatiable need for attention, whether they are capable of asking for it or not. Kids who don’t get the attention they seek are commonly more fussy and frustrated. In some cases, they turn to destructive behaviors to take out their frustrations, setting the stage for harsh words and hurt feelings.

In other cases they turn to their peers. Depending on the group of kids and the level of adult supervision, peer interaction can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. When parents are absent from the scene, they have no way of monitoring what their children are experiencing, and are often taken aback when a child reveals a newly acquired bad habit.

Some young children have additional needs: my daughter, for instance, thrives on an elevated level of interaction to combat and counteract her autism, and my boy needs lots of verbal interplay to compensate for a language delay. For the past three years we’ve had regular visits from specialists, visits that would have been problematic if I had to schedule them around job responsibilities.

My children would probably have been far worse off if both my wife and I worked. While my son and daughter both receive special assistance, the value of that assistance comes more from the follow-through. By staying at home and directing my attention to the needs of my children, I can provide the follow-through.

My boy is tugging at my finger again, saying “Daddy, up pweese!” I am thrilled to hear the words, even though I am not finished working. I try explaining to him why I can’t leave my task, just as I’ve tried many times before, but he doesn’t understand, not yet.

Finally, I turn to him and say, “Okay, what are we going to do now?” We both walk away, smiling.

So life here has been rather mundane and commonplace, and there have been golden moments too.

Michael Robert, for instance, did not qualify for the integrated preschool program at the Juneau School District. That's good. His language delay is still present, sort of, but he's gained a lot in the past few months, and is quickly catching up with Becky.

Our insurance will pay most of Becky's emergency room visit (back in November). There was initially some delay in paying the bill, and the hospital sent a second bill to us saying our insurance had already paid what it would, which wasn't much, and they wanted us to cough up the other $3500 or so from the visit.

It's hard to fathom just how much the bill would have been if something had really been wrong with the girl!

I [Michael] am taking a course at the university covering US history from 1950 to the present. While I am not ignorant of that period, most of my reading has been in the European sphere in earlier days, so there's potential to pick up a little more history. I also need the credits (any credits) to maintain my teaching certificate.

A mild winter here so far, with little snow on the ground. We've had lots of the white stuff promised for a few weeks now but very little has presented itself. We don't mind. The driveway is very icy and makes getting to and from the car an interesting experience, but the woods and the yard have significant bare areas, or at least areas with a light snow cover, to trek through.

Our wood supply is holding out well. When the rounds were first cut many of them were cut too long for the wood stove, so at some point I'll have to cut them again (because they won't fit now). Since I haven't gotten to that point yet, I can say the supply is good: it seems that perhaps half of the total supply I originally cut in is in the too long category.

And winter goes on...