California shut down most of their county offices? WOW that is too bad. UC had one of the best multi-county extension services in the country. Many states pattern their programs after them. They still list individual county contact info and services on their website http://ucanr.org/County_Offices/ so they may be able to direct you to a soil test source. Maybe they have combined some of them during the state budget crunch and will be able to open them back up if the fiscal crunch ever ends. Meanwhile you can apparently get a soil test done via ANR Labs at UC linked site below with contact and how-to info. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: ANR Analytical Labs

Is he is speech therapy with a licensed SLP? I know you said 'Early Childhood Speech program -- but the quality of those programs can vary widely, and an ineffective program or one that's geared toward a problem your son doesn't have won't do much (if any) good! My younger son had a great deal of difficulty with speech, but luckily for us, a good friend put me in touch with our city's best resource -- so my son's speech problem was diagnosed quickly and correctly (childhood apraxia of speech) and we began appropriate treatment right away. Within a few weeks, it was very clear that the treatment he was receiving was effective, and we began to see good results. But then we moved, and he was enrolled in our local school's Early Childhood Speech Program. It took me several months to ferret out that their "treatment program" was what is called a "language enrichment" model -- In a nutshell, they assumed that the child had been language-deprived at home, and that all he needed was lots of exposure to good language models, a little encouragement, and time to develop. WRONG! It took 3 meetings, finally bringing in the district's head SLP to get the school to provide appropriate treatment -- at which point, positive progress resumed. Ninos - I've seen your writing, and it's clear you're able to provide your son with good speech and language models, so just being around more good speech won't cure your son's speech problem. If the other kids his age are teasing him because of his speech, your son needs speech therapy. If it's just a few sounds that are problematic and he's speaking in complete sentences, then it's probably not as serious a problem as my son's, and just a few months of good therapy should be able to really help. I'm linking to a site called Apraxia-Kids.org. I'm not suggesting your son has Apraxia (unlikely) -- just that this site has the most incredible resources for early childhood speech problems. Here is a link that might be useful: Apraxia-Kids

You know -- There are so many stories, and so many different outcomes because our children are all so different. In other words, my son's outcome and progress would tell your NOTHING about yours. I know you want to see into the future -- but I'm sorry -- you just can't. But there are some common threads that we see in varying degrees in different children: - Some children have genetic differences or syndromes that are probably at the root of their autism issues. (Mine probably does, but we haven't found it yet.) For these kids, they can improve, but they will never be 'cured' by anyone's definition. - Other children appear to have been damaged by certain toxic exposures -- possibly vaccinations, heavy metals, PCBs, pesticides, food intolerances, unknown other substances. Some of these kids have made remarkable improvements (or even recoveries) once the underlying problem agent was removed. These kids often have severe digestive or skin issues that can provide valuable medical clues. - Other kids seem to have been influenced by their early surroundings - Eastern Orphanages and such. They can also make big gains, but generally still have traces of 'stand-offishness' and interpersonal difficulties well into adulthood. To me, these are the saddest cases, because it just didn't have to happen. - Many others just seem to have been born that way, and we never have any idea why. I think that may be the hardest group because the parental guilt just has no escape valve. - Most autistic kids have speech and language impairments of some sort. Some will repeat long scripts verbatim. Many repeat key phrases over and over. Some develop huge vocabularies ('little professor syndrome') and others never get more than a few words. I'd say most high-functioning kids have 'functional but odd' speech by the time they're 8 or 9, and continue to sound different somehow throughout their lives. For many, the main difference is in prosody, the musical rythem of speech. - Statistics say that about 75% autistic children have IQs in the mentally retarded range, but I personally, don't believe that's true. I do believe they TEST in the MR range because the test protocols are so far out of sync with the way their minds work. But I've seen such a lively intelligence in many of these kids. And I've seen too many kids who tested in a MR range at age 4, but in an 'average' or even 'superior' range by age 10. (My own son doesn't test as MR, but I'm pretty sure he has a significant cognitive impairment.) - Most autistic kids do not have many other 'typical' children for friends past age 7 or 8 or so. It's sad, but true. Our kids are just too different and 'don't play well with others' because social interractions are just too complex to teach. But my son has many adult friends, and I'm hoping that when he's an adult, he will still have adult friends. He's also friends with other 'special' kids. But even those friendships are a lot of work relative to the rewards he gets. - In school, most autistic kids are in special ed. Some for academic reasons, some for emotional and social. Mine is and clearly has to be. He works one on one with the special ed teacher for reading, writing and math and is mainstreamed for the rest. We put him in private special school for age 3 to grade 4, then enrolled him in public school, repeating grade 4. The good news is that our son is extremely social, very affectionate, and about as happy as any child you've ever seen. He knows that 'technically' he's different, but also that 'Everybody's Different!' and that he is wonderful and very much loved. Try not to worry too much -- Just keep watching and 'therapizing' and loving your son. If he IS on the autism spectrum, it will be revealed to you as it becomes evident in his behavior. If he isn't, the therapy will only help him. He will continue to grow and develop and improve, and the best you can do is provide him the therapy and loving support to help him develop to his own best potential, whatever that turns out to be.

Mostly, I have either cut out the pieces and laid them out on a table, or, for more complicated patterns, used graph paper and crayons, and I thank you very much, Wanda, for the link to the site that lets you print graph paper. It is going to be tremendously helpful. Sometimes I use EQ6, but I am still a novice at using it, so can't use it to full advantage yet. I find it a nuisance to scan in the fabrics I plan to use, and in the case of my recent dark batiks, though I did scan them into EQ, I still couldn't get a good idea of how they would look in the finished quilt, because each one looked so tiny. What I did do for that quilt in EQ6 was to "create" the entire quilt with all its blocks, and then color-coded for each of the fabrics I planned to use in it. Each fabric appeared several or more times in the quilt, and, for example, orange could mean "rooster fabric," and green, "the batik with leaves," while pale peach was the background color. This, printed out, was very useful for remembering what went where. I am sure that, like Laura, I would use EQ6 for the blocks of any traditional-patterned quilts I make, but I would most likely not bother to try to find the exact fabrics or scan mine in, but just go for whatever EQ offers that would give an approximation of the colors I'm going to use. For I-Spy quilts, I lay out the picture squares in rows in the order I plan to use them in the quilt and then photograph the arrangement, because I want to get a pleasing set-up, color-wise. When a cat rushes over and messes the squares all up, having a photo saves the day!