Fingerprints of Autism

New Adventures

2011-06-21T23:03:00.000-04:00

Sierra is getting a little braver lately, check her out on the 200 foot Sky Wheel (just a really big Ferris wheel) in Myrtle Beach!

We asked her if she wanted to go on it and she said no at first, but when we were leaving she asked to go on it. Most of the time she will change her mind at the last minute.... not this time! She was a little nervous at first but loved it after the first time around!

Yes You Don't

2011-04-18T16:13:00.002-04:00

Sierra is a little argumentative lately. I am not complaining, it is actually really funny and I have to try not to laugh when she does it. Here is an example of one of our arguments:

Me-"Sierra I can't fix this toy."
Sierra- "Yes you don't!"
Me- "It's yes you can"
Sierra "Yes you can!"
Me- "It's broken, can't you play with something else"
Sierra- "No I'm don't!"
Me- "It's no I can't"
Sierra "No I can't!"
and so on......

It is music to my ears and I chuckle every time we do this. It was only 14 months ago that she was non-verbal!

Happy 4th Birthday

2011-03-17T12:33:00.000-04:00

Yes the 4 is backwards, just noticed that myself!

Sierra is now 4! Where has the time gone? We had a little party for her and I let her pick out the cake and decorations. She picked a Pirates Of The Caribbean cake and pirate decorations. I knew she liked pirates but she bi-passed all her favorite cartoon characters for them!

The biggest thing about her party was that she blew out the candle herself! Sierra has never been able to blow out her mouth until this past winter when she was sick and had to use her mouth due to a stuffy nose. I am so glad that she was sick all winter now, it really was a blessing in disguise!

Sierra has also moved up to a more age appropriate class today! She was in a younger class due to self help skills and socialization problems. I am happy about that but I am sad because her best friend is still in the younger class. I believe that he has helped her tremendously with social interactions, and he was always so glad to see her when she walked in (I just wanted to hug him for being her friend). I think he was the initiater of that frienship and I am curious to see if she makes any new friends.

I can't resist showing you our new puppy, we named him Mojo (darker one) and my mom's puppy named Sweet Pea which is Mojo's sister.

Mojo and Sweet Pea 11 weeks old

Getting Caught Up

2011-03-03T11:02:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a while as you can see, I guess you could say that I am in a funk. I am trying to pull out of it and get things going again. Here's what has happened while I was funking.

Last week Sierra had her IEP and everything went great! They are pleased with how much she has progressed and they tell me now that it mostly her speech that is holding her back now. They switched Sierra to a speech therapist that specializes in Speech Apraxia so we can focus mainly on her speech problems. They told me Sierra does not have an interest in coloring, drawing, cutting, or painting, which I knew already. The problem, I told them, is that those things are hard for her and anything that requires her to put an extra effort in she just chooses not to do. So they are evaluating her motor skills to see if she needs extra help there, which I am sure she will.

Birthday cake!

Hannah turned one year old and we had a little party for her. Every present that she was given has now been taken over by Sierra as well as all the ones she got for Christmas. I am working hard to get Sierra to share Hannah's toys with Hannah, and Hannah wants anything Sierra is playing with no matter whose toy it is.

Sierra has been sick a total of 5 times now since Christmas! 4 major (out for a week) colds and one bout with diarrhea. She goes to school for a week and then is out for a week. I think that is over now (hopefully) she actually has gone to school for a week and a half now.

I am battling a kidney stone and the stone is winning I think. It is a 2mm stone but it feels like I am giving birth to a 10 pound baby! I am on pain killers now as I am typing this so disregard anything out of the norm!

Our new puppy at 6 weeks old

We have done a world wide search for the perfect puppy and found one! He is a male Havanese and I will be bringing him home tomorrow, he is 8 weeks old. We are going to name him either Elmo or Mojo haven't quite decided yet. We also purchased his sister to give to my mother who lives about 5 houses away from us.

That is about it, I think I am all caught up now. Sierra is turning 4 next week..... wow time sure does fly!

Mom's puppy at 6 weeks old

Waiting And Watching

2011-02-08T07:58:00.000-05:00

Hannah eating bananas

Sierra's younger sister Hannah is turning one this month, so far I don't think she is showing any physical signs of autism yet. I have been watching and analyzing everything she has been doing since birth (it is impossible not to if you already have one child with autism).

Hannah has been doing everything early, she is the most aggressive child of all my children. Sierra had signs other than just the social stuff, she couldn't feed herself finger food to well over a year old. She couldn't wave, point, or clap either. I had to teach her to do those things by repeatedly taking her hands and going through the motions until she got it. Sierra never babbled either as a baby (except ma ma once in a while) and Hannah is babbling away

Now there are a couple things that Hannah does have that worries me and could be a sign. She still has not slept though the night (I am very tired too), and she does seem to have gastrointestinal problems. I have started the same approach to rectify these problems as with Sierra and we will see if it helps.

I am worried because there are people who say that there were no signs and then their child regressed. I do however think there were signs and they just didn't pick up on them. Anyone who has ever told me their child regressed with no previous signs also has admitted their child was behind in some milestones, which could be a sign. Everybody swore Sierra was on target with her development but she wasn't, she was behind in her fine motor skills. However I could be wrong (yes I admit it I can be wrong) and she could regress with no previous signs.

At this time in Sierra's life we were already pulling out of the stores and restaurants because of her behavior and she was running around like crazy and would never sit down. We are now able to go into stores and restaurants with both of them and make it through with no mishaps.

I am keeping my fingers crossed!

I Love......

2011-02-01T13:12:00.015-05:00

I Love.....

How you sleep all the way under your covers and upside down sometimes.

How you run to me yelling "Ma Ma" ever day I pick you up from the school playground.

When you come out of the bathroom with your pants down to tell me you can't reach the toilet paper even though you can.

How loud you are all day but when you say "I love you ma ma" you say it real soft and sweet.

How nicely you take toys away from baby Hannah (I don't think she likes that).

When you sing even if I can't understand the words.

How you look back and giggle when you are running away from me, during your favorite game of chase.

How you like to sit on my lap while watching TV.

How smart you are and how you always find a way to make me understand what you are saying.

How you yell "cannon ball" when you jump into the pool but don't do an actual cannon ball.

When you pretend to be a cartoon character, especially Eleanor from the Chipettes.

How you yell "DADDY" everyday when daddy walks through the door, and when you miss him coming in you make him go back out, so you can do it.

How Elmo has to kiss everybody goodnight along with you (Elmo really needs a bath).

When you have a bad blueberry you come and find me to give it to, instead of throwing it away or putting it to the side.

All the little tricks you pull to try to get us to tickle you.

How beautiful, smart, sweet, loving, and funny you are.

Sierra I love...you!

Summer Where Are You?

2011-01-28T15:49:00.019-05:00

If I have been scarce lately it's because we all have been sick since the week before Christmas. Sierra, Hannah and I have been sick twice since then and not all at the same times either. The girls have been tag teaming me with their ailments, Sierra is all better, but now Hannah has been having a rough go of it. Oh and throw my husbands one time of illness in there as well, you know how guys are when they are sick (I hope it is not just my husband that acts like the world is going to end).

Our house smells like throw up and diarrhea! I don't want anymore boogers handed to me like it was a gold nugget and I don't want anymore mega long snots hanging from their nose to the floor!!...... I just want everybody to be better!!

I can't wait for summer!

Hidden Blessings

2011-01-23T23:43:00.003-05:00

sick and she still posed for the camera, she even said cheese

Sierra has been sick since Wednesday, I think it is the flu. It has been a rough week but she seems to be on the road to recovery now. The poor thing wiped her nose so much that she has a huge sore under her nose. I tried to put stuff on it to help, but you know how it goes, she doesn't like any kind of ointment on her at all! Putting something on it causes more problems than just leaving it off. I did however put some stuff on it while she was sleeping to help it heal.

The good thing about this is that Sierra could never pronounce her "S" sounds because she doesn't know how to blow out of her mouth, only her nose, but her nose has been so stuffy that it has to come out of her mouth. I noticed her pronouncing her "S" words right and got very excited! I have been taking advantage of the situation and asking her to practice her words (I know she is sick but I couldn't pass up the opportunity) hoping she will understand and keep doing it, even when her nose clears up.

Even though she has been very sick, it seems that it may have been a blessing in disguise.

Stylish Blogger Award

2011-01-20T11:46:00.022-05:00

I was given the Stylish Blogger Award by dluvscoke at Snippets "N Stuff. I am supposed to reveal 7 facts about myself that people may not know, then nominate 15 new recipients. I am a very private person and I do not divulge information about myself too much. Yes I know I have a blog and the whole world can see it but I don't say too much about me in it. I am trying to work on that though, so here it goes

I was a party girl when I was a teenager and of course I got pregnant at 16. My oldest is 26 and my youngest is 10 months (I had her at 43). Everybody thought my first child was my sister, now everybody thinks my youngest is my granddaughter.
I took up skydiving for a short period of time, during my crazy phase.
I love all things Tivo! I currently have 3 Tivo boxes and I also gave one to each of my older daughters. I would be a sad person without my Tivo.
I don't like to be hugged or touched by people other than my children and husband. I can so relate to Sierra on that one. If someone grabs my arm while talking to me I hear nothing but my own mind screaming "let go of me!"
I have hot tea and toast for breakfast every morning ever since I was a kid. When we go out for breakfast I still have it, I just add some eggs and sausage to it.
I don't answer my phone unless it is my kids, husband , or parents. If you want to talk to me leave a message and I will call back, maybe.... I don't like surprises.
I am the handy man (woman) of the house, I will always try to fix something and my husband always wants to replace it. If I can't fix it he replaces it, works out good.

Well that wasn't too bad I guess. Now I would like to pass on the Stylish Blogger Award to some people, I am fairly new to the blogger world and I don't have 15 people to pass it on to that I don't think have had it yet, but here are the ones I am passing it to:

Chris P-M @ A Crazy Kind Of Faith
Apples and Autobots @ Apples And Autobots
Timmer Family @ Brycen: The Joys And Challenges
Dotcomkari @ Dotcomkari
S. Donovan @ From Parties To Potties
Casdok @ Mother Of Shrek
Ashley @ Stinker Babies
Chris @ Us And Them
4TimesBlessed @ Autism As A Whole
Jen @ The King And Eye

This next one is my daughter's blog, she is the one who got me started on blogging.
Coyote Rose @ Dancing On The Bar Of Life

Have fun checking out their blogs.

Too Many Billboards!

2011-01-18T10:41:00.002-05:00

I did not realize there were so many billboards along the roads until I had Sierra! On the way to school or on the way back I have to acknowledge numerous billboards that she points out. There is the one with the fireworks, one with 2 dogs, one with one dog, one with planet fun (her favorite place to go), we also have the balloon guy and the big blue gorilla she points out. I also have to watch for advertisements on trucks and other moving things.

Here's the problem, I can only understand Sierra when she is talking in context, if she comes out of nowhere with something I don't know what she is saying, which is about 70 percent of the time. If she points something out and I miss it she gets upset, and she will keep repeating it until I figure it out. Sometimes I have to turn around and go back to see what she is talking about to calm her down. It has to be so frustrating for her to talk to me and I can't understand her!

I have most of the signs and landmarks memorized around home, but when we take a road trip I have to be vigilant at keeping up with what we are passing, especially on a major highway when we can't turn around to see what she saw. When we went to Florida last month we pasted a sign for Disney but I didn't see it and we were on I95 and you can't turn around. I had to keep guessing what the sign was and asking 50 questions to figure it out. My husband finally got it and all things were well again. Another sign she saw was the Geico lizard but I was able to understand the word lizard after she repeated it a couple of times.

I never realized I was so unobservant. I think I should install a dash cam to videotape the roads, then I can just hit rewind to see what I missed!

Life In A Cartoon

2011-01-13T23:30:00.010-05:00

Just about everything Sierra does is tied into something she has seen on a cartoon show, and she always has a toy friend with her, here is an example:

Last year for Christmas Sierra had gotten a toy roller coaster and she likes to pretend that she is Fanboy and Chum Chum (cartoon show) when she rides it. Spongebob (friend) is Fanboy and he is scared on the roller coaster while Sierra is Chum Chum who likes it. In the video she says "Weee" that is Chum Chum speaking, then she repeats the phrase "don't look down" and that is Fanboy speaking.

Most kids would just ride it and have fun, but with Sierra it always involves a show and/or a toy. I guess roller coasters are always more fun with a friend! Right?

I couldn't resist showing you this next video. It is Sierra's 10 month old sister Hannah, she is our little daredevil of the family and does this all by herself. She can't even walk yet. Pay no mind to the messy house, it was a long weekend due to ice and snow.

Parents Advice To Other Parents - How Autism Affects You In A Good Way

2011-01-11T10:44:00.004-05:00

Having a child with autism can be a very difficult at times and can put a strain on any family. In the beginning you focus on the bad stuff so much that you feel like there is no hope. It is hard to see the future in a good way and the good things that autism will bring to your life.

When we took Sierra to her first evaluation we had to answer a lot of questions about her behavior, then the doctor asked me "what are the good qualities about your daughter?" That question hit me like a ton of bricks! I took a long time trying to come up with the answer and it made me realize that I was just focusing on the bad behaviors Sierra was displaying and not appreciating the good things about her! I later thought that all my children had something to deal with or overcome in their life and autism is no different but maybe just a little harder.

That day changed me and from then on I saw Sierra for her and how wonderful she is and I try to focus on the good way that autism affects us.

I wanted to get other parents point of view on this so I asked this question on Facebook "How does autism affect you or your family in a good way?" they came back with some great responses!

Denise F. - I have an 11 yr old autistic epileptic son and I could not imagine our lives without him. He such a joy. When he does give us a smile it is worth its weight in GOLD!! He is just an awesome boy. He tries so hard to please. He is an honor roll student in middle school. He's great.

Mellisa T. - I have 4 1/2 yr old son with moderate Autism and mild MR, mostly non-verbal. I also have a 2 1/2 yr old daughter that is neurotypical. I personally think that the best thing Autism will do for our family is teach my daughter about acceptance of other people and their differences at a young age. This is all she has ever known with her brother and I can already see the motherly actions coming from her. I think it will bring them closer together and will more than likely push her to also go into a human service field.
In another aspect, I have worked with families, children, and adults affected by a variety of disabilities for almost 10 years. When my own son regressed and was diagnosed, I think it helped me build better relationships with those families I serve. I think there is some trust that comes along with sharing the hard times with someone that you know has been there and done that.
Ceil C. - still trying to figure it out...
1) Autism, has made me a more patient person.
2) Autism has made it so I can help others
3) Autism ...........?
Debbie C. - I have 2 grandchildren on the Autism spectrum...You learn not to take for granted any accomplishments or achievements...even the tiniest ones will blow your mind and swell your heart with pride.

Erika P. - Autism has given me patience. I now enjoy the simple things in life. When my son smiles which is all the time I feel so good about life. Autism does not define my son although it is a part of who he is. When others say they want a cure my question is why. Sure I would love for my son to be able to verbalize and not have that frustration but why would I want to take away his talents for music and dance? Why would I want to take him from an innocent world and thrust him into an unkind world. My son is six years old. He has very little speech. He gives insomnia a whole new meaning but he loves with his whole heart...not just bits and pieces. He would give the shirt off his back to a complete stranger and expect nothing in return. My son has taught me the meaning of true love and innocence...and oh yeah I would be honored to blog and share about the love of my life.
Cheryl R. - My son has taught my older son, niece and nephew that being different isn't to be made fun of. There are many occasions they have stuck up for the "special need" children at their school or even for my son when people have treated him different. He has taught them a new type of kindness and understanding and unconditional love
Lori M. - Autism has changed my life in every way, but more than anything it taught me there is so much more to language than words. My daughter taught me so much before she was able to say a single word. I will always be grateful for that. She has also taught her brother and sister to stand up for those with disabilities of all kinds. I think our family has a stronger bond than most because of what we go through everyday.

Valerie J. - I have learned to appreciate the "small" things in life. I really can appreciate my son's accomplishments, no matter how minor. I also have learned to have a more encompassing sense of humor, such as realizing that I was happy the day my son first lied to me - hey, it's another accomplishment! =) I also love that I have met and become friends with many wonderful, kind people along this journey whom I probably never would have met otherwise.

Shai P. - My son taught me that saying I love you isn't always enough. I learned to show love everyday as I would tell him I love him as I would hug him. He learned love through my actions because this is one time that just saying the words were really just words to him. He taught my family what it means to really love on a deeper level. He now walks up and tells me he loves me as he's hugging me. I no longer have to prompt him to show love and say the words. I will forever be grateful for having my sweet little boy.

Kelly R. - The world of Autism is a word that doesn't have a face so you never can tell who has it and doesn't have it, it's a mystery in its own world of how our children see things and some times as parents we don't always quite understand why they don't see things in life like we do as adults. I learned about about my daughter she has taught me when things get hectic don't give up keep going to stay focused. With her it has changed me in many ways to see how all the changes one can go through & at the end of the day she still has a smile on her face. I as a parent have gotten so much help with her speech that I was not going to give up & say she would never talk and from 3 until now its a big difference. Having a child with a disability is some thing that has taught me to be patient with and see things on how she thinks of what should be done first in the order that she wants it to be. I have taken her to friends houses that have kids so some times I sit down and try to talk to them about my daughter for them to understand why she said something that they have no interest in or why she is so hyper at times. I just try to spread the word about Autism in many ways. My daughter is my world I tell people all the time she is the sun and I'm the earth I live my life around her daily schedule.

Thank you Facebook friends for all your great comments! If you still want to add your comment to this post, place it in the comment box below.

A Year In Progress

2011-01-06T13:05:00.002-05:00

Last year was a big year for Sierra in progress, here is the list of her improvements over the year:

Does not run off anymore and always holds my hand when out now.
Does play with other children and even has a friend.
Expresses herself in class and participates in group.
Potty trained.
Has met her self help goals
Only stimms if extremely excited.
Can be redirected from fixations most of the time.
Makes great eye contact and responds if spoken to 80% of the time.
Does not line up or stack anymore, and plays with toys appropriately.
Has added a number of new food items.
Meltdowns have diminished significantly..
Has gone from being non verbal, only making some vowel sounds, to talking in complete sentences and can be understood when talking in context. She also talks non stop now.
Is not hyper unless given foods that have sugar, and additives or dyes in them.
Sleep issues were resolved the prior year and have continued be a problem of the past.

Sierra has really come out and we are seeing so much of her personality now, and I hope this coming year will be just as good!

Fascination With Sierra or the Autism?

2011-01-03T02:50:00.025-05:00

Ever since Sierra was a baby she seemed to draw all the attention to her when we were visiting others or even just at home. When we go to my parents house, once or twice a week, we end up watching Sierra the whole time. My niece who is 13 came for Christmas this year and she said that Sierra is very entertaining. Sierra is just doing what she is normally doing, just trying to have fun and communicate in this world.

It is very amusing when she acts out what she is trying to tell you. Sierra is very determined to make you understand what she has said, if you don't repeat it back the right way she gets very upset. What's entertaining is how she tells you, the combination of talking, signing, charades, pointing and even singing to make us understand what she is saying. I have many times pretended to understand her to prevent her from getting frustrated, but she insists on repeating the actions until you repeat back what she has said, that I can't get away with it.

Pretending to catch a whopper (Backyardigans show).

Another entertaining thing is her acting out her favorite shows, if they are surfing on TV she is pretending to surf, if they are running and screaming, she is also. Sierra will also act it out later on, so you could be sitting there and all of a sudden she is running through the house screaming "ahhh a scary giant," holding one of her stuffed friends pretending to be running from a giant. Sometimes she just comes up to you and is pretending to be one of her cartoon characters and you are left guessing who she is. We could be out somewhere and she sees something that reminds her of a show and then she will act out the whole scene. Sierra will continue to act it out until we acknowledge what she is doing. My poor husband is not up to speed on her shows and it is particularly hard for him to figure out what she is doing (it's sometimes amusing to watch him as well).

I wonder if it is her personality that makes her so entertaining or is it the autism? Is it a little of both? I don't know if she would be so fun to watch if she could talk normal or maybe she is very comical naturally and would find other ways to amuse us. She does come from a family of amusing people.

Survivor Christmas

2010-12-27T00:33:00.000-05:00

Survivor Christmas is a game we started three years ago. I didn't have a lot of money for Christmas that year, so I made up some games to play to make it fun, and called it Survivor Christmas (can you tell I like the show Survivor). My older girls would play 3 games and whoever is the winner gets some silly prize, first year was an M&M dispenser, second year a Snuggie, and this year it was a fuzzy foot massager. They don't know what they win until the games are over. It was so funny to watch them play these silly games that it quickly became a family tradition.

This year I planned it with Sierra in mind and made it easy for her to participate. I picked games off of the show Minute To Win It that required motor skills that were simple for her.

The first game was they had to pull all the tissues out of the box only using one hand, and the first one who finishes wins.

The second game was using the same tissue boxes taped to their back, they had to get 4 ping pong balls out of the box buy jumping or moving anyway you can to get them out.

Love this picture

The last game was supposed to be where you move a cookie from your forehead to your mouth only moving your face, but the older girls vetoed that (Sierra loves this game but you look really funny doing it) so I changed it to getting tic tac toe bouncing ping pong balls into glasses. Sierra just threw them.

My oldest won the coveted prize of the fuzzy foot massager!

Sierra loved playing the games. We just let her join in if she wanted to and boy did she want to! When she saw her sister's pulling those tissues out of the box she jumped up and ran to her box and joined right in. It was so funny to watch them all playing the games, we had a blast!

Merry Christmas

2010-12-24T22:05:00.007-05:00

Closest thing to Santa

We have managed to do all the things on my list of "Christmas things to try with Sierra!" Hooray!!! She helped me decorate the house and the tree, and actually did a lot of it! We made sugar cookies and she cut them out and decorated them (at least 2 batches before she started cleaning the sink). Today she made presents to give to everyone on Christmas, they are paper snow globes with her picture in them. I did all the cutting but she glued them all together and then we wrapped them.

I would say this has been a very good Christmas this year, I can't imagine anything going wrong tomorrow when we open the presents. Then we go to my Mom's house (she lives 5 houses down) which she goes to all the time, no problems should arise there. I will keep my fingers crossed though!

Merry Christmas Everyone and a Happy New Year!

Why Didn't Anyone See It But Me?

2010-12-21T23:41:00.020-05:00

I like to look back at Sierra's videos and pictures to compare her with her sister Hannah just to reassure myself that Hannah is developing normal (which she is so far). I ran across these videos of Sierra on her 1st birthday and now it seems so noticeable to me that she is autistic. It also makes me wonder why, when I told other people that she didn't seem to be developing normal, they dismissed it? In this video she never smiles, doesn't look at anyone, and is humming the whole time, she also seems fixated on the ice cream. She is a year old, she should be interacting and babbling!

This next video she is playing with one of her presents, a ball popper, on her birthday (it's the same day, we had changed her clothes after the cake), there is no joy or laughing, no eye contact, just fixated on the balls.

All the pictures I have of Sierra before her 2nd birthday, she is not smiling. I tried to get her to smile and on occasions she would, but if I pulled out the camera forget it! She eventually was afraid of the camera. Hannah smiles if I just look at her, and I can always get her to smile for the camera. I knew something was not right because I had two older children and they smiled so easy as well, I kept saying this is not right.

I think some people might have noticed but just wanted to reasure me, but I would bring this up to her doctor and the nurses but they just blew me off. One doctor of the group even commented on her humming when she was a year old, and I told him, "that is all she does and she doesn't babble at all." He gave me some generic line about they should have so many words by such and such time. Bull Crap!

Sign Of Things To Come

2010-12-18T23:30:00.003-05:00

    Today we were making sugar cookies, Sierra cut out the shapes and decorated them with colored sugar. She did a very good job and seemed to like doing it. After the second batch I put her up on a chair by the sink, so she could wash her hands. There was some soapy water in one of the sinks and she began to play in it,

    I rolled out the dough for the third batch and called her over to cut the shapes out. Sierra said "no" she didn't want to help make cookies anymore. I understand that water is more appealing to her so I said she could play in it. I turned around to see what she was doing and she had the green scrubby pad and was cleaning my sinks!

    I normally wouldn't think anything of her playing with the scrubby pad, but she was scrubbing the sink and she said "I'm cleaning the sink" (not as clearly as that but I understood it). She did just that, she cleaned it pretty darn good too, and then moved to the second one and started scrubbing that one.

    So there we were, me making the rest of the cookies and Sierra cleaning the sinks. I know with autism there are obsessive tendencies, is this a sign of what is to come? On a number of occasions she has asked me to clean the mirror in the bathroom, is she going to be an obsessive compulsive cleaner? I am not the cleanest person in the world, is she is just trying to tell me something? Maybe, we shall see.

Christmas Decorationg

2010-12-17T13:28:00.002-05:00

Christmas decorating this past week has been fun! Sierra was really into it this year. She put most of the ornaments on the tree.

I made some paper decorations and let her decorate the living room. I told her to put them on the walls where she wanted them, and I tried to tell her to spread them out but that didn't happen. This is where they all ended up. She was so proud of herself, so that's where they are going to stay!

I did manage to get some decorations on the other walls when she was done.

This next week we are going to be making cookies and making some presents for the family. I love Christmas and I think she is understanding it now.

Express Yourself

2010-12-14T11:33:00.003-05:00

    Sierra, like any other child doesn't like to go to bed. I usually get a lot of "Ma Mas" calling me back to the room, and some crying or stalling tactics. She usually goes to sleep within the hour, unless she has slept during nap time in school that day.

    Last night was a typical night but she must have had a nap at school that day, because she was taking a long time to go to sleep. After many trips back to her room for various reasons, I decided that was enough for the night. The next time Sierra yelled "Ma Ma" I yelled back "go to bed!" Sierra, clear as day, said "No, I don't want to go to bed!" I was shocked and I said to my husband "Did you hear that?" Evidently he did because he was laughing!

    Sierra's speech has been moving along at a good pace now, she talks in sentences all the time, I just can't understand all the words she is saying. For her to say a whole sentence clear as day, along with actually expressing herself instead of crying, was well worth her being up so late! I hope she didn't see us laughing, but I did let her know that she did a good job telling me her feelings. Sierra fell asleep shortly after that.

It sure is funny how she can make herself understood when she doesn't want to do something! Hooray for progress!

Normal Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

2010-12-10T23:19:00.010-05:00

Today I was wondering what Sierra is going to be like as an adult. She has made great progress over the last year that it gives me hope of a normal life, but then she does something that makes me think she will not have a normal life. Then I began to think about "what is a normal life?" Is it what I think is normal, or is it what someone else thinks is normal?

Think about all the people you see that you think are weird or different, they think they are normal, who is right? I guess they are right, because "normal" is in the eye of the beholder just like "beauty" is. Yes I would love for her to be my kind of normal, I won't lie, but I will accept her normal because I love her. The question in my mind now is "have I been accepting of other people's normal?" The answer is, not as much as I have been for my own daughter. That is one of the many lessons that I have learned from Sierra.

You Can't talk? You Must Be Stupid!

2010-12-08T22:53:00.003-05:00

    I am tired of people thinking that Sierra is slow, not just strangers, but friends and family as well! I feel like I have to tell people over and over that she is academically ahead of her peers, in other words, smart! They also seem to have a problem understanding the social and sensory problem as well.

    Here's a conversation about Sierra the other day. I said "she is behind in her speech, because she was non verbal until she was almost three so she has to learn how to form the words correctly" and I said "her vocabulary is at the appropriate age level or even higher but we just can't always understand the words she is saying." Then we were talking about her sensory problems with eating certain foods and they said "Well, Sierra is still like a baby and she still has to learn how to eat and talk." Now I understand the talk part (not really, but I will give them that one), but what about her eating is like a "baby"? Sierra likes to have everything in bite size pieces and she uses a fork, because she doesn't like to bite into food or touch it, it's not that she doesn't know how to eat it!

    I am also tired of people talking to her like she is a baby, she is almost 4 and knows everything any 4 year old knows. People ask her questions that you would ask a 2 year old, where is your belly button, what color is this, where is the circle. Sierra is already sight reading words, can count forward and backwards, knows shapes like octagon, and hexagon, and yes she knows all her body parts! I am not saying she is super smart, she knows the same things my older girls knew at this age, but she scored above average academically.

    Do people treat deaf children the same way? I hope not! Even when Sierra couldn't speak she was still smart and pointed to or showed you the answers. How insulting it is for someone to think you are stupid because you cannot talk or pronounce your words correctly! That's like saying "oh you can't walk, you must be stupid" or "you can't hear, you must be stupid.".......... "You can't talk, you must be stupid!"

Tired

2010-12-06T22:54:00.013-05:00

    I am tired, since Sierra was diagnosed I have been going like a freight train, and now it seems like I am running out of steam! My 9 month old does not sleep through the night ever, the constant demands and stress of an autistic child, the rest of my motherly duties, the stress from last weeks death in the family, and the trip to Florida, has really taken a toll on me.

    Maybe it is my age, I am 43. Being an older mother helps in many ways except in the energy department. I haven't been eating right, when I don't get enough sleep I try to compensate by eating junk food. I have a couple of things causing mental stress at home as well, that I won't get into. We also had to get rid of our dog of 9 years, he was not being nice to the young children, and we think Hannah is allergic to him. Whatever it is, I need a break!

    I just want to run away for a few days, just me, even if it is to a local hotel to sleep for two days! But How? I have no one that could take care of my children for that long, my mother is too old, my husband can't handle it, and my older daughters have work or school. I have never left Sierra with anyone other than close family, and she usually doesn't do well in that situation anyway, especially overnight.

    I remember hearing about "Mommy's little helper" pills, I think they were Valiums, I understand why the mothers took them now.

Grandma Lucy

2010-12-03T15:05:00.002-05:00

Lucy with her children 2005

Sierra's grandma Lucy died this past week. This was my husband's mother, she lived in Florida and we live in North Carolina, so Sierra only got to see her twice a year. She really wanted to see Sierra and her sister again before she died, and we had plans to go see her at the end of the week. We got a call to come down on Tuesday that she wasn't doing good, but she was not lucid enough to talk to Sierra again.

Lucy loved her kids and loved her grandchildren very much, and she was a wonderful Grandmother. It makes me so sad that Sierra and her Sister Hannah will not get to know her and how much she loved them. I know she is watching them from Heaven. The girls will make you proud and I will make sure they know who you are and how much you love them.

Sorry I Haven't Called, But We Moved To Another World

2010-11-28T23:05:00.008-05:00

    Sorry I haven't called, but we moved to another world, the world of autism. We started to move slowly into that world called autism back when Sierra was around a year old, that is when she started to get worse. We stopped going to restaurants first, then we stopped going to the stores with her, then we couldn't go to the playgrounds, and so on. I think our final departure from our old world was when we had her evaluated and it was official that she had autism. We canceled our plans to go to my nephews wedding and our plans to go visit family for Christmas that year and moved to our new world.

    We didn't want to move here, but how do you explain to your friends why your child is banging their head on their floor, or how do you explain why it is not a good idea for your family to come to your house because it upsets their routine. How do you tell your Sister your sorry for your child screaming through your nephews wedding vows, or throwing the dishes on the floor to see if they spin at the reception, or explaining why she is having a meltdown on the dance floor. How do you explain to another mother at the playground that your child doesn't want to play with their child and will cry if they come too close, or why your child won't move from in front of the slide because they have to clean all the sand off of it. How do you tell your family why your child stands at the dinner table or why she can't eat the chicken because it is stringy. Finally how many times will I have to tell someone that it has nothing to do with them why my child won't look at them, or why she cries if they talk to her. That is why we moved away to another world, to not have to do those things.

Sierra has gotten a lot better since then and we have been visiting the old world quite often now. We don't have the problems at the park anymore and she is very well behaved at the stores most of the time. We can go to kid friendly restaurants, and she does sit down, but still doesn't like stringy chicken. Sierra has come a long way socially and has good eye contact, but I don't think she will do good at a large gathering like a wedding. We even tried taking her to the movies to see Toy Story 3 and she did quite well except she was definitely too loud, but so were other kids.

    Yes, the old world is nice to visit, but I don't know if we will ever move back, we have found lots of new things to do in our new world. You know how it is, you move away and you miss your old home but you make new friends and a new life, and you can't ever imagine moving back. This is our home now.

Christmas!

2010-11-27T14:53:00.004-05:00

Sierra is very into Christmas this year, she already has three things on her list. I guess a Christmas list is something that is ingrained into children, because I have not told her to make a list but one is forming anyway. Sierra wants the Olivia playhouse, a Crayola Glow In The Dark Color Board, and something to do with Thomas The Train, I haven't figured out that one yet. She already has a train table and train set, so she either wants a new train to add to it or something else to do with him (plenty of time to figure it out I hope).

2007 9 months old

Last year she didn't know what was going on and we had to open her presents for her. She liked what she got but there was no excitement with it. She didn't do any of the stuff you like to do with children before the holidays like decorating and making things. Sierra liked the tree of course, that has always been one of her obsessions, but it wasn't the same

I am very excited about this Christmas as well, this is the first year Sierra seems to understand what is going on and she talks about it all the time. It's like my little girl is finally emerging from the shell she has been in! I have so many ideas on what to do with her, like making paper chains to hang around the house, decorating the tree, making homemade ornaments, making cookies, and maybe have her make presents for other people. I might be pushing it a little, but I can dream can't I? There is one thing that I love to do, that I know she will love to do as well, driving around looking at the Christmas lights and decorations! She has already pointed out a few she has seen and we had to go back and look at them. That could also cause a problem if Sierra wants to stop at every house that has a set of lights on it! I guess we will worry about that later, right now I am going to dream of what fun is to come!

Progress Report

2010-11-23T10:22:00.002-05:00

Sierra has received her progress report and instead of the "some progress" and the "plays alongside her peers" she normally gets, Sierra is showing good progress!

This is their scoring system:

No Progress

Some Progress

Good Progress

Almost Complete

Complete

Here's the report:

Demonstrate age appropriate self help skills in her preschool class. - Good Progress

Demonstrates appropriate social skills by initiating/participating in positive interactions - Good Progress

Comments - Sierra continues to use the potty independently and has met self help skills. She continues to need prompts to clean up. She is using phrases and playing with her peers. She participates in group time and expresses herself.

I knew that she was playing with one kid in her class, but she is participating, playing with peers and expressing herself as well. To have it officially written that she is playing with her peers is great news, I think I will frame this report!

My Grieving Process

2010-11-20T08:09:00.002-05:00

    After I had written the post My Dreams For You
I realized it sounded similar to going through the 5 stages of grief also known as the Kubler-Ross model. I began to think about my range of emotions and realized that, even though she was not diagnosed with a terminal disease, I still went through the process of grieving Grieving for the child I thought I was going to have. Don't get me wrong, I love Sierra with every ounce of my being, but nobody dreams of having a child with autism!

    Denial - I didn't want to believe there was something wrong with my precious little girl! I made many excuses for why she wasn't talking, late starter like her dad was, or she was working on learning the physical stuff first. I made excuses for Sierra not making eye contact with certain people, they were all blond and she comes from a dark haired family so they are just different for her. I knew there was something wrong but I didn't want to admit it.

    Anger - I prayed for another baby but I also said "God I would love another child but please don't give me a special needs child, I don't think I have it in me to take care of one." I was very angry with God for giving me one anyway and of course I did the whole "why me" thing.

    Bargaining - Lord please let her come out of this and be a normal child, I will do what ever you want.

    Depression - I would cry every time I would imagine Sierra never talking, not having friends, not getting married, or just not being the little girl I dreamed of when she was growing inside me. I didn't want to go anywhere or do anything, but wallow in my self pity.

Acceptance - I came out of my pity party, and started to research autism and what I could do to treat her symptoms and in turn improve her quality of life. I also realized how very special she is and their is a reason why God gave her to me!

   God has given me a wonderful little girl she's smart, loving, beautiful, funny, and giving, she just happens to have autism.as well. I realize that now, but I had to go through the process of grieving to get to this point.

    This is not part of the process, but I just wanted to add this in. Back when I was praying for another child, in hindsight it was almost like God was telling me my baby was going to be special needs and I kept arguing with him saying, "I want a baby just don't give me one if it is going to be special needs." When we were trying to have Hannah I never felt the need to pray that.

The Things In The Tub

2010-11-17T08:25:00.001-05:00

This is the sequel to The Things In The Bed I wrote a few weeks ago. Sierra's bath time is as much of a show as bedtime.

I am going to try to list them in the order of their recruitment into the tub:

The fireman temperature taking duck we have used since her first bath.
The little baby duck that used to light up but doesn't now.
The frog that used to croak but doesn't now.
A duck that has a snorkel and arm floats on, that she calls the daddy duck.
A duck on a inner tube, that she calls the mama duck.
Letters of the alphabet for learning the alphabet which she knows, so now we use them for spelling words in the tub.
The Backyardigan's pirate boat that comes with Uniqua, Pablo, and a treasure chest.
A pirate duck (she loves rubber ducks).
Wind-up shark and a wind-up whale.
A duck dressed as the Easter bunny.
Nemo and Dory (Finding Nemo) cake toppers from her 2nd birthday.
First batch of tub animals that squirt containing a whale, shark, turtle, alligator, octopus, and a pelican.
A net to catch her toys
4 boats
Wind-up Nemo fish.
Two watering cans, the first one didn't work so good so we got another one, then Sierra wanted both.
Second batch of tub animals that squirt containing a whale, octopus, frog, starfish, hippo, elephant, polar bear, and a seal. These were a reward for her going on the potty for the first time.
The last thing is a wind-up scuba guy we just got last weekend at the aquarium.

All animals have to do the cannonball dive into the tub when we are filling it up. This started this past summer when Sierra learned to jump in the pool and do cannonballs. She thinks she is doing a cannonball, she just yells it when she jumps in (very cute). That's about all of it! I think we are going to scale it back soon, we need room for her sister Hannah to take a bath with her.

The Progression of Obsessions

2010-11-15T00:01:00.011-05:00

    Every child with autism seems to be obsessed with certain items so I thought I would map out Sierra's obsessions over time.

    The first thing I remember Sierra becoming hyper focused on was a blue bird on her bouncer chair, she couldn't reach it at first or the thing you pulled to make it spin but you could tell she just had to have it! When she could reach it, she would grab hold of it with a death grip and just stare at it!

    The next obsession was the Backyardigans. She would stop everything if they came on or if she saw a picture of them. Even a meltdown would cease if they were on, of course we used that to our advantage! That was as early as 7 or 8 months and that obsession is still going strong till this day!

    The next thing I noticed Sierra was obsessed with was water, but that wasn't as bad as the others. She is still drawn to water as are many other children with autism. We are trying to teach her how to swim because I am worried about her going across the street to the pool or pond one day and drowning.

    Now this next one was hard to deal with! Stairs....anytime Sierra saw a set of stairs she had to climb up and down over and over and over!!!! We had to start mapping our route to avoid stairs, we never realized how many sets of stairs were around until we started to avoid them! She was doing this soon after she could walk at 11months. I would say she stopped this one altogether, although I couldn't say when, it just dwindled off.

   Around the time we were thinking of having Sierra evaluated, about 18 months, she started with fish and Christmas trees. The Christmas trees won over the fish when we went to the aquarium and they had a tree around every corner!! We spent forever just looking at the trees and not the fish. She is still very drawn to these but she can easily be redirected from them now.

    I am not sure when this one actually started I think around the same time as the fish and trees. Toy figures, all shapes and sizes. Sierra loves toy figures and small stuffed characters as well. She loves ones from the shows that she watches, but she also loves ones that are not. Sierra does not disciminate, all toy figures are welcome! During the height of her lining things up, she would have them doing a conga line all the way around the table! I wish I took a picture of that, it was so funny! I would say the figures are still her biggest obsession, even over the Backyardigans.

    Pirates and Super heroes, I believe the pirates started with the Backyardigans, one episode Sierra loved was when they were pirates. The super heroes are more recent, anything with a mask and cape she is instantly drawn to. I had to make her a mask and cape because she would pretend to have them by placing one hand over her eyes for the mask and one hand waving behind her to signify the cape. It was so funny but I couldn't let her go on like that!

Vending machines, all vending machines by the front door of a store. When we go to the store we have to stop by the vending machines for Sierra to push the buttons and the gumball machines for me to tell her what is in them. She doesn't ask for anything she just wants to know what is in them or if they have a button for her to push. This is one that has started recently and it has become a routine now. When we go to Walmart we stop at the vending machines first, then we go to the fish section to look at fish, then to the toys for her to play with, and then we go where we went there for. Walmart always takes forever!

    This last one, is one that makes me want to strangle the store employees, only because we can not get her out of a store if she sees them. These are also toy figures, but the little wind up ones you see in toy stores and book stores. They put them by the door or checkout, so you can't leave without buying them! I wouldn't mind buying one, but there are about 20 different ones and they charge 5 dollars a piece! Sierra can not decide which one she wants and she has to try everyone a couple of times. Damn you stores for placing them where my child will see them!!! j/k

    Obsessions come and go and some are here to stay, but as long as she is not doing any harm we try to go with the flow!

Parents Advice To Other Parents - Newly Diagnosed Child

2010-11-12T11:17:00.001-05:00

I asked a question on Facebook and I thought the response was great, so I thought I would make it a blog post! I did not change the answers in any way except I did a spell check and I omitted their last names, they are also in the order that they were posted. Here's the question;

If you could give one piece of advice to a parent who has a child that has just been diagnosed with autism, what would it be?

Kerry - I would say always believe in yourself as a parent, don't let others judge you or your child

Lori - You are your child's #1 advocate

Anne - I agree with Kerry - also, talk to other parents with autistic children - it makes you realise you're not alone and can give you good tips on how to cope - support is vital

Gaby - Start the Gluten Free-Casein Free diet ASAP! Look for support of all kinds: family, friends, strangers, internet, READ BOOKS specially the ones written by parents... this has helped me A LOT! I've read more than 7 books of autism. And, visit the TACA website:
http://www.talkaboutcuringautism.org/index.htm
They have lots and lots of info. Good luck!

Dawn - There is help available; don't be afraid to ask for it. Asking for help does not make you weak, but the help you get can make you stronger.

Teri - Love them for the special people they are, and always try to see the world through their eyes....

Emilie - It will be OK.

Gillian - its what makes them who they are !! unique !!

David - Remember this is happening to them, not to you.

Flo - it's time to begin researching the subject. There are many books that will help define the subject plus guide you to advocate for your child. You will need a strong support system for yourself to endure YEARS of needs for both you & your child --- emotional & otherwise. Please give time to yourself daily. You deserve it.

Lee Anne - Find some support - a group, a best friend, another parent who has a child with autism, someone. It's a long road with lots of ups and downs and having someone to talk with REALLY goes a long way!!

Nicole - just love them for who they are and don't try 2 "fix" them they will teach you a lot of special things and you'll discover qualities you didn't know you had XX!!

Sara - don't try n change them, talk to someone, take each day as it comes, count your blessings their special and bring their own love

Debra - Love them for who they are for they are innocent even as an adult ,have the patients of a saint and be very very grateful that you were the one god selected to have this very special person in your life for they love unconditionally.Can we???

Louise - don't give up, fight for whats right for your child otherwise you don't get anything! for my son Finn 6 years old Autistic, love you with all my heart xx

Marion - my personal advice would be to have a great deal of patience and a good support team ....with time and a lot of work it actually gets better

Kellie - my advice would be to not let people push your child into therapies that may not be right for them. Celebrate the little things and remember your child is not broken, needing to be fixed, maybe they are exactly how God intended them to be. Therapy should help your child be the best "they" can be not change who they are.

Gion - My advice would be to look at progress in small things and when you look back at his achievements you will realize they were paramount!

Ana - Never give up.

Elizabeth - Have lots of patience and give lots of hugs and most of all don't look at the label.Forget about the word Autism and look at all uniqueness of your child.I guarantee that child can do and excel at at least one thing that a child not diagnosed with Autism cannot do.

Carrie - They are children before anything, they just need to be heard differently. Time, patience, and understanding helps. When they have a melt down just remember they can't help it, calm them down by hugging and rocking. That always helps my son. They are special people they will exceed, my son was severe now he's mild with... autism, that took years of speech and occupational therapy. I love to be blessed with my son, because god knew I would be able to handle it. He amazes me everyday, always something new, and it is great. Like Ana said never give up, they need you and you will find you need them. I don't do shots or give him drugs to calm him down, therapy can help you without harming them just to make them be quiet, remember they just want to be heard and sign language helps, baby Einstein DVDs are great because of the music. Just ask for help, don't let others make you do something, if you don't feel it in your heart don't do it, you know what's best for you child.

Leah - My advice would be to remind them, this is the same kid they loved before the report.. AND as most kids are diagnosed around 3/4.. I'd tell them that those ARE the hardest two years (experience and what others parents say) it does get easier.. it becomes awesome and fun and enlightening and differently wonderful than... you ever could have imagined. Be gentle on yourself, love big.. ask for help!

Thanks for all the great advice!

Don't Baby Sierra

2010-11-09T23:06:00.008-05:00

    My husband Bill and I have always been on the same page when it came to our children, most of the time anyway. I have two girls that are 26 and 21, and Bill has a boy 25 and a girl 23, all from our previous marriage. We have been together since they were 7, 6, 4, and 2. We had our ups and downs dealing with our ex's and learning how to be step-parents at first, but we came together and we raised some pretty darn good kids! Two are in college one just graduated with her Masters and the boy is a police officer.

    We had Sierra when the youngest of the other children was 18 and just heading off to college. I am not going to get into why it took so long for us to have children together, but I always wanted more and waited a long time to have Sierra. She has been very special to us since before she was born, and then we were blessed once more with Hannah who is 8 months old right now.

Here is the problem, Bill has babied Sierra since the day she was born and it got worse when we found out she had autism. He had not done that with the other children and we have always prided ourselves in raising independent children, but I cannot get the point across that you have to work harder to achieve that with Sierra. Bill agrees with me when I tell him that, but his actions say something else. If I had left it up to him Sierra would still be in diapers, we would still be rocking her to sleep, she would still be drinking from a bottle, and she would still be in a crib. He just gives in as soon as she starts to protest! Autistic or not, you don't just let them do what they want.

    I admit that I have been guilty of babying her more than the other kids too, it's hard not to sometimes, but I am very persistent in making sure that she keeps moving forward. If I let her, she would not move up to the next age appropriate behavior. Most kids want to be a big kid and want to do it themselves, so they move themselves up to the next level. Sierra, because of her autism and her need for routine, will not want to change her routine to move up. I think it is a detriment to the child if the parent lets them continue to act like a baby when they are not. It is bad for their self esteem and tells them that you don't believe that they can do it. When Sierra learns the task at hand she beams with pride, but it takes a lot of patience and praise to get her there!

I would say to Bill "let her do it by herself, she knows how to do it" but I catch him actually asking her if she wants him to do it for her! Then I have a battle with her to get her to start doing it by herself again. I don't know how to get him to realize what he is doing and that he is making my job that much harder. Bill is a wonderful husband and a great dad and I know he is not the first father to spoil their little girl but I feel like I am climbing up a steep hill.

    I just thought that I would write about this because I know there are a many parents with the same problem, in fact many parents with autistic children end up divorced. We are no where near divorce but Bill if you read this, I love you but STOP babying Sierra!

The Yo-Yoing Toys

2010-11-05T13:29:00.005-04:00

Sierra has always been afraid of talking moving toys. When she was very little we couldn't walk down the baby doll isle of Toys-r-us because all the dolls would talk or move and she would be scared to death by them (I always thought it was a little creepy myself). Even now if something catches her off guard she screams and runs to me.

We haven't had Sierra tested for allergies but we know she has them. Every spring and fall for about 2 months she has the tell-tale signs of allergies, dark circles around her eyes, sneezing, runny nose, sinus infections. But something else happens during these times of the year. The toys that talk or move have to be taken out of her room because she is scared of them!

The regression in her symptoms are very noticeable at this time. The toys are ones that she loved at one point and played with them over and over again, but now she won't even go in her room if she sees them. Along with the toys bothering her, the loud noises are scaring her again, and she is also very nervous about going to school.

I was so worried that she was regressing when this would happen, but all of a sudden she would snap out of it and then she is back to where her progress left off, before the regression, sometimes even better. Then all her toys can come back in her room. Obviously the allergies are doing it and it makes me wonder what else is she allergic to that might be causing other problems. Maybe we can't tell because she is allergic all year round and don't see the yo-yo effect with them. We have cats and a dog that we are in process of getting rid of because Sierra's little sister is very noticeably allergic to them, maybe she is too? Have to have her tested!

Potty Training Regression

2010-11-02T11:55:00.005-04:00

    Sierra was potty trained over the summer, so I thought. She has regressed to going in her pants a little first before she will to walk to the bathroom. When she was first trained everything was good.

    When she is home from school we go through a ton of underwear! When she is at school, they have a lot of potty breaks and she also drinks less, so she only does it once or twice. When she gets home from school she is at full force with wet underwear every hour sometimes more. I know she can do it because she was doing it in the beginning. We have used rewards and Sierra has responded to those for a little while then reverts back.

    I have bought extra underwear so I wouldn't have to do wash all the time and I put them in a basket that is easily accessible to Sierra. So this is the routine now, she will wet her panties a little, then kick them off wherever she is, go to the bathroom, and then bring me the new underwear.

    I want Sierra to be independent so I don't want to keep reminding her to go to the bathroom all the time. I guess it could be worse, she could be pooping in them too! I think I will wait it out a little longer and see what happens.

    If anyone has suggestions please share them with me.

Halloween Practice

2010-10-30T08:05:00.006-04:00

Halloween comes so easy for most children, not for Sierra and of course many other children with autism. Sierra wants to be Tinker Bell even though she has never watched anything with her in it, I guess she likes her from commercials.

We have been practicing all week. I got out Sierra's old pumpkin bucket form last year and I had some left over candy form Christmas (Sierra doesn't like candy too much, just lollipops). I would take her outside and have her walk up the walkway, ring the doorbell, and say trick or treat as best she could. Daddy would open the door and give her some candy. She thought this was hilarious!

In the house she started practicing herself with her doll house. She would use her little toy figures and ring the doorbell, say trick or treat, and give them some candy through the little door. It was so cute! Then I got in on the action. I had a line of all her different little toy figures and they would ring the doorbell one at a time. Sierra would hand them candy through the door (same candy we just kept reusing it). Then we would switch places. It was a lot of fun!

Last year Sierra would not even put her costume on and forget about trick or treating! I think she is really into it this year and she seems like she is ready. At least she is well practiced. If not we will just go do something else fun. We have alternate plans in case she changes her mind.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Top Ten Rules

2010-10-27T11:02:00.021-04:00

Top ten rules to keep peace in the house:

The big brown rocker/recliner chair is Sierra's only (Mom is allowed to sit with her)
All Elmos in the house are hers even though some are her sister Hannah's
The dog is not allowed to eat what Sierra drops on the floor. She will try to take it out of his mouth! In fact he is not allowed in the kitchen when she eats now.
Sierra has to be sitting in her chair ( the brown rocker/recliner) when Daddy comes home. If she is not, Daddy has to go back outside while she gets in it.
All the bath toys have to say cannonball and jump into the bath before she will get in (there is about 30 of them).
I must have cold juice in the car for her when I pick her up from preschool, and her 5 favorite stuffed friends have to be buckled in with her.
All bedtime toys must be present before going to sleep.
None of her toys (other then bath toys) are to be wet in any way! No baby drool, dog spit, drips from a drink, tears, rain, etc. All things cease until they are dried off.
No one is to be sad or mad in the house, this makes Sierra very sad!
All rules can change at any moment without notice and without telling you what the new rules are!

There are many other ones but these are the everyday ones. I call them rules but I they are just a way to make Sierra feel secure. I will do almost anything to make her feel secure especially in her own house!

PS This was to give a glimpse in our everyday life, and it was meant to be a little comical too.

The Things In The Bed

2010-10-24T23:22:00.005-04:00

These are the things in the bed with Sierra every night, I mean every night! If we can't find one toy she is not going to bed, unless I can negotiate for another to take it's place!! (I pick my battles wisely!)

Elmo (#1 favorite toy)
Larry Boy (Veggie Tales)
Spongebob
Alvin, Simon, Theodore (Chipmunks)
Baby Worm (small wind up toy)
Flicker (flashlight from Handy Manny)
Stuffed chicken pillow
Abby (from Sesame street)
Muno, Tootie, Plex, Foofa, Brobee (Yo Gabba Gabba figures)
Unicorn
2 smaller plastic Spongebobs
Wind up robot
Mr. Incredible
space guy and rover (from Planet 51)
Tyrone, Pablo, Uniqua, Tasha, Austin (Backyardigans stuffed toys)
Blue (Blues Clues)
Big Alvin (chipmunks)
The musical crib toy she used as a baby (she doesn't use it, I guess it is decoration)
A burp cloth from when she was a baby (uses to wipe her eyes or nose if needed)
An assortment of other stuffed animals that are not critical to going to sleep.

   If you notice Tasha on her Backyardigan pillow is not covered. That is because Tasha is her favorite and Sierra and Elmo lay their heads there. Items 1-15 come back out with her every morning, these are her everyday toys she plays with. Now the very special ones are Elmo, Alvin, Simon, Theodore, and Spongebob, they go with her in the car as well. They have to be strapped in the seat belt with her!

    It started out with with just Elmo and Flicker, then it slowly grew to this. The unicorn was added last night when we couldn't find Brobee and I negotiated to have the unicorn sleep in it's place. We found Brobee today but now the unicorn has become one of the pack!

    I don't mind doing this for her every night if it makes her feel secure. The only problem we have come across is that if she wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn't see one of them, she gets upset. That doesn't happen too often, so we are good for now, until we have to buy another bed just for her toy friends!

I'm In Here!

2010-10-22T10:41:00.017-04:00

    I am not one to preach to people on how to treat your child that has autism. Therapy, bio-medical, medication, there is an argument for any way you choose. Just being a parent of a child with autism is very challenging! The one thing I am going to preach about, is the fact that your child is in there, ever present and taking in everything that is going on!

     I was lucky to learn this early on when I changed Sierra's diet. She had came out of her fog and I was amazed on how much of the stuff I taught her she knew, and then some! What I want to get across to everyone is to keep your child engaged at all times. Even though they seem like they are not listening or taking in what is going on, just pretend like they are. They want to be a part of everything and to be normal, their body just doesn't let them.

    Here is a video of a Carly that is severely autistic but found a way (with the dedication of her parents) to communicate at 11 years old. This gives a lot of insight to how they think and feel.

That Helpless Feeling

2010-10-20T01:23:00.003-04:00

    Sierra was stung by a wasp on Monday, yes I know she was just bitten by an ant last week, and had all those sores in her mouth too! It has not been a good time for her. This one was different in the scale of feeling helpless.

    I had just picked her up from school and we were walking to the car when I noticed her scratching her forehead. Then I saw the wasp fall from her hair. In a split second I said in my own mind "Oh Shit!", and the screaming began!

    I had to drag her back inside screaming because I needed someone to hold the baby for me and I was hoping they had something to help her. All they had was ice, but Sierra will not let me put ice on anything. She already had a welt above her right eye, and she kept clawing at it like she was trying to get it off of her!

    I realized there was nothing I could do for Sierra except to try and console her, but she was having none of that. Sierra kept signing wipe it off, and help, as well as saying help me! It was a total feeling of helplessness and it just tore my heart out! I just could not explain to her what was going on so she would understand it. When I told her that it was a bee sting she became more upset, like I had just told her that aliens did it.

   I eventually got her in the car, and on the way home Sierra cried all over her stuffed animal friends that go everywhere with her. That made her cry more because she can't stand to have them wet and she kept telling me to wipe them off! Halfway home she stopped crying and seemed to be over the worse of it.

I never had that total feeling of helplessness with my other children. They would understand what I was telling them and let me do what I needed to make it better. At times like these I wish that there were autism interpreters so we could communicate better.

Pineapples And Ant Bites

2010-10-17T22:30:00.029-04:00

Last week Sierra had some weird thing happen to her. I think what they were are canker sores, they looked and acted like canker sores, but they came on suddenly. She had about six of them in her mouth, one on each side of her tongue, one towards the back of her mouth, and a couple in the usual places in between the cheek and gums. She had one really bad one on one side of her mouth that swelled up.

    OK the back story is, we went to grandma's like we do all the time. Sierra went outside and got bit on the toe by an ant. The last time she was bitten by an ant she got a weird rash on her foot the doctor couldn't explain. Then grandpa picked one of his pineapples and cut it up. Sierra for the first time decided to try the pineapple, which made me very happy! She rarely tries new foods.

    Not too long after the ant bite she was eating the pineapple and she was whimpering about the inside of her lip. I saw a sore that looked like a canker sore starting to form. A little while later she seemed to have a slight fever. Later that night I saw one on her tongue. I wasn't searching her whole mouth yet, so I didn't know how many she had or when they started. It is safe to say she didn't have them before that day, because she had no problem eating until that day. The next morning Sierra couldn't eat and I got the flashlight and looked in her mouth, that is when I saw all the sores! My poor baby was actually asking for me to put orejel on her sores so she could eat, but all she could eat was jello and a little bit of rice.

    The fever lasted two days but it was a low fever, and the sores lasted four days and they disappeared as fast as they showed up. Usually canker sores linger on for a while. I am still none the wiser as how, or why they showed up so fast, and so many of them. If anyone has had this happen I would like to know. I would like to say it was the ant bite because of the fever, but she never had pineapple before and I know they can be a trigger for them but not so many at one time.

    Well anyway, Sierra is fine now and I just wanted to share that just in case someone else has or had this happen.

Autistic Boy Singing

2010-10-15T13:40:00.002-04:00

This video really touches my heart and I wanted to share it with everyone. His name is Draven he is 5 years old, autistic, and mostly non-verbal. He is singing The Revelation Song by Phillips, Craig and Dean. I heard about this on the K-love radio station and it made me cry! I got it from YouTube.

This is what I mean about the Fingerprints of Autism. These moments touch us so much deeper than they do with a neurotypical child. My other daughters sang all the time and it never made me cry!

Saved

Potty Training

2010-10-12T12:53:00.004-04:00

I potty trained Sierra this past summer and I did it in less than a day! Not really, I had been prepping her for a year, so I guess it was a year and a day!

First time on the big potty!

    When she was two I bought the potty chair, I wanted her to get used to it before I tried to actually train her. Then I bought videos and books that she could watch and read about the potty. Over the year she watched those videos over and over again, she really liked them! They taught her everything she needed to know about going to the bathroom. We practiced sitting on the potty, wiping her bottom, flushing the toilet, and washing her hands. She knew how to do everything except to let the pee come out into the potty!

    That was where we were at three years old, everything except the actual act of peeing in the toilet. Sierra refused to do it. She would sit on the potty for a while, but when she had to pee she would throw a fit until I put her pull-ups back on. The same thing with training pants, she would not pee in them.

    During the summer I was determined to train her so I talked to her behavioral therapist, she told me to cut a hole in the diaper so the pee comes out into the toilet. She said to slowly over time to cut the hole bigger and bigger until she was used to going in the potty and gave up the diaper. That was good advice, but it didn't work with Sierra. She was already used to sitting on the potty with no diaper on, so she wouldn't sit on it with a diaper on. I had to find another way.

I went to the book store and scoured over the potty training books for some good advice and came across a book called Toilet Training In Less Than A Day by Nathan H. Azrin, PH.D., and Richard M. Foxx, PH.D. It is fairly old but they have given it a new cover, copyrighted in 1974. I chose this one because it went along my guidelines of my mental picture of potty training, and they have training in Applied Behavior Analysis, also they developed this method with the mentally retarded that have been institutionalized. I thought if you can train them in this manner then I should be able to train Sierra who has similar problems, but not as severe.

The supplies needed were a doll that wets, snacks that Sierra loved, stuff to drink, lots of lose fitting panties, and of course a potty chair. The general idea was to have sierra teach the doll to potty and the doll got the treats, then Sierra wanted the treats so she had to potty to get them, and a lot of practice runs and praise in between. I did have to remove every diaper in the house before I started. Sierra went looking for a diaper when I wanted to put the panties on her, and she threw quite a fit when I didn't have any!

It did work and it only took a day, but I did have to kind of hold her when the first pee started to come out. Sierra wanted to get up when she started to pee but I handed her a snack she loved to eat so she could eat it while she was peeing, and I kept my hand on her shoulder to encourage her to stay seated. Once she peed the first time the subsequent ones were easier. When she had to have a bowel movement I had to encourage her to stay seated again, but once she went in the potty their was no turning back! For bed time and nap time I bought completely different pull-ups and called them "night time" panties and told her they were only for sleeping, she seemed to accept that.

Their was more to the process but I would be writing the book all over again to tell you, so I encourage you to get the book if you want to try this method. It really was one day of actual training. I also recommend the two videos Sierra learned so much from. Potty Power and Go Potty Go. If I only could buy one it would be Potty Power, it taught her the most and she loved to watch it!

My Dreams For You

2010-10-07T11:39:00.012-04:00

The dreams that I had for you were many when you were growing inside me.

When I finally saw your precious face my dreams were coming true.

Slowly my dreams faded away as you started to spiral downward into a dark world.

When I realized you had autism my dreams were torn from me!

When we were fighting our way through the confusion of therapy and treatment my dreams were of healing.

When you started preschool my dreams were of acceptance, friendship, and fun.

Now when I think about my dreams for you they are the same as they were in the beginning!

My dreams for you never left me!

Heavy Metals And Chelation

2010-10-06T13:26:00.005-04:00

    The doctor had us do some testing to see what heavy metals Sierra had in her, and we found out that she was extremely high in lead. I mean the line went off the chart high!!! She was also high in mercury and was elevated in aluminum, thallium and antimony. I am not sure where she got all the lead from, she did chew on metal a lot, but I always channeled it to a good metal. I had bought some metal baby keys and some toys that were lead free to keep her from chewing on bad stuff. We live in a new house so it wasn't the water pipes. We gave up on trying to figure out where it came from and just focus on what she is touching or eating now.

    We chelate her twice a month for three months and then we take a break for a few months and do blood work to make sure she is fine. We are finishing up on our second round right now. This is how we do chelation: Sierra takes one DMSA capsule (which I open and mix with apple juice) first thing in the morning. She can't eat for two hours but she can drink. We do that for three days on and eleven days off (2 weeks total time) and we do that for three months. That comes to six rounds in three months. There are other ways to do it but this is what we decided on with her doctor.

    The chelation and the B12 shots have just propelled her forward so fast! In one weeks time something connected in her brain because she started to

Drink from a straw.
Jump with both feet off the floor.
Catch a ball.
Play in the sand (sand used to bother her if it was just on her hands).
Ride on toys (she didn't like anything that moved before)
Sing

From that point on she just keeps improving. It seems like every week her speech gets a little clearer, she gets a little more social, she gets braver, sensory problems are diminishing. I can put her hair in a ponytail now, just last week she rode a pony which she would not even get near before. Sierra doesn't toe walk as much, she hand flaps only if she is very excited and I was also able to finally potty train her!

Sierra still has a long way to go, she still has meltdowns if you change her routine and is still very much behind in her language and self help skills, but she is making such great progress lately!

Sierra was reevaluated when she turned three (5 months ago), which was a little over a year later than the first one. They gave her an official diagnoses this time. They said she is no longer on the path to classic autism (what they said in the first unofficial diagnoses), but she has PDD (pervasive development disorder). She was 30 percent delayed overall in language, 20 percent delayed in cognitive, but was ranging in the normal for social-emotional now.

So that was the path that lead us to our present time and I am looking forward to see where our path leads us to now!

Zinc and Iron

2010-10-04T10:42:00.002-04:00

This is going to be a quick one on zinc and iron and how it helped.

Sierra chewed on metal and ice like crazy! We would go to the park and she would chew on the swing chains, at home it was anything metal she could get her mouth on! She was about a year old when she started full blast with this and it continued until she was two years old when we started giving her zinc. She had slowed down when we put her on the multivitamin but she didn't stop completely until we gave her extra zinc. Here are some pictures of her chewing on the doorstop!

The same thing happened with ice, she was chewing on ice constantly when she wasn't chewing on metal! She would hold an ice cube in her hand and just eat it like it was a cookie! Sierra's hand would turn bright red from holding the ice and it didn't seem to bother her. So after the zinc stopped the metal chewing, we focussed on the ice. The doctor gave us iron to give to her and she stopped chewing on ice right away!

Now I have always known that ice chewing could be a difficiency in iron but we were giving her iron in a multivitamin so we thought that something else was causing it. We just were not giving her enough the doctor said. He had done blood work and said she was low in these minerals even though she was taking the multivitamins! Eating or chewing on non food items is most often a sign of some vitamin or mineral deficiency.

Doctor Visit #3 and B12 Shots

2010-09-28T12:35:00.005-04:00

Most of the doctor visits are the same now, we go over the changes in Sierra and he adds and takes away vitamins or medicine accordingly. Some are phone visits and some are office visits. Things start to pick up now with symptom changes so I am going to focus on the things that we gave her that caused the biggest changes.

Sierra was already taking B12 liquid when the doctor added Valtrex which was to reduce inflammation on the brain. He said that there has been studies done on autistic brains which show that most of them had an inflammation of brain. Sierra started taking Valtrex and soon after she started to say ma ma again, which she stopped saying after her 6 month shots and had been non verbal since. Then I ran out of the B12 liquid and decided to wait to get it at the next doctor visit. Then Sierra stopped saying ma ma. The doctor said the Valtrex reduced inflammation and the B12 restores the nerve cells so they kind of helped each other. He said it was the B12 that was helping her to be verbal. We decided to switch her to the B12 Shots every 3 days instead of the liquid because the shots are the most efficient way to get the most B12 into her. Almost immediately she started saying ma ma again and actually referred to me when she said it!

We started giving her the shots right after her 2nd birthday which was about a year ago. Her verbal skills have done nothing but improve since then. She started picking up sign language really fast and started to use whatever she could find to tell me something. She would run and get a toy, to show me what she wanted to say or she would act it out like in charades. I am amazed when she comes running out of her room with some toy, I didn't remember she had, to help me understand what she is saying. Example - She wanted to watch an episode of the Wiggles and I could not figure out what she was saying. She ran and got her play dough box which had an octopus on it like the one in the wiggles. Then she does the sign for dancing and runs and gets a space shuttle toy. She was saying "the Wiggles episode called Space Dancing"!

The other thing B12 does for Sierra is reduce her stress levels, which enables her to do things she was afraid to do otherwise. Most of her fears are reduced or gone when on the shots. Normally when we would go to the park she would be afraid to go on any piece of equipment if another child was on it. If the park was crowded she wouldn't go on anything. Now she will hop right on anything as long as the kids are not trying to touch her. Sierra wouldn't get on anything that moved at all, now she is swinging on the swings and even going on amusement rides! She wouldn't put her face in the water when swimming, now she jumps in!

We had to increase her shots to every other day instead of the every three days, because the doctor said that even though she was taking B12 she was still showing a deficiency in it. That was maybe two months into taking it, now she is back to every three days and we will decrease it as long as she doesn't regress. We had stopped giving her the B12 for two weeks when we went on vacation, and she did regress by the end of the two weeks. She started to be afraid of things she hadn't been in a long time and her stress increased so much that she was asking me to give her the shot. She definitely knows that the B12 shots make her feel better!

The shots are easy to give you can even do it in their sleep. It is a small diabetic needle and it goes in their butt. I give it to Sierra when she is awake, she protested at first but she is ok with it now. My Mom, 2 nephews and a niece are diabetic, and Sierra's one shot every couple of days is nothing compared to how many shots they have to take. It is well worth it!

Sierra Has A Friend!

2010-09-19T21:40:00.006-04:00

    I know I keep jumping from past to present, but I just want everybody to know our past history before I move to the present. Every now and then I have to write about the present because I can't wait to share something, as in Mean People and Petty Poo. I definitely couldn't wait for this one!

    In North Carolina when you are in the early intervention program they move you to a preschool when you turn three to receive therapy and to help with socialization. This is a regular preschool that also accepts special needs children. Sierra has been going for a few months now. I drop her off everyday around 9:00 am, her class is usually outside on the playground at that time. I walk her to the gate, give her a kiss, and watch her go off. Normally she goes straight to the ramp that takes you to the slides, never acknowledging the other kids on the way except to move away if they get too close I usually watch from the parking lot for a little while before I leave and she does watch the other kids and will do the same things they do but not with them.

    Lately I have been noticing her saying hi back to the kids every now and then, but still on her way to the slides. This past week I saw her run up to a boy and a girl that said hi to her as she came through the gate! Wow, I did a double take! The next morning the girl was at the gate and Sierra ran off with her and I asked the teacher what her name was. I told her I wanted to know her name so I could talk to Sierra about her friends. The teacher said "oh she's in another class but Sierra plays with Christopher most of the time". At that moment I looked up and Sierra was standing on the ramp looking around, then a little boy came running up to her and they went off. I said is that him and the teacher said yes. I was on cloud nine! I went out to the parking lot and sat there for a while spying on them, and they were truly playing together!!!!! When I came to pick her up that day they were sitting under the slide playing in the sand together!!!!!

    Well that was Friday and I can't wait until Monday to take her back to school just to watch her play. I have worried so much about how she will do in regular school, but now I am a little less worried!

Doctor Visit #2

2010-09-15T23:27:00.016-04:00

    The second DAN doctor visit we were able to do by phone since we lived three hours away. I would say eighty percent of our doctor visits were by phone. They have since opened an office in Fayetteville NC which is only one and a half hours away now. We used to live in Fayetteville when my husband was stationed there at Fort Bragg and we always love going back to visit.

    On the phone we would go over everything that changed in Sierra good or bad. Sometimes bad was good, like when the yeast is dying off it produces toxins too fast for the body to eliminate and can cause regression until the body gets rid of the toxins. That is good because you know it is working. Sierra had very little die off reaction, just some cold symptoms for a few days. The doctor had told us at the first visit to use melatonin to help Sierra sleep. That didn't help her at all. It helped her to go to sleep but did nothing for her 2 hour meltdowns every single night! All her other progress was great as I detailed in my other post Doctor Visit #1 Results

    This visit the doctor added a few things for Sierra to take and had her stop taking a few things.

Detoxosode -kills parasites in the intestines.
Bio B100 - vitamin B complex
B12 liquid
Antibiotic -to kill any bad organisms in the intestines.
Sporanox -to kill off yeast
Stopped L-glutamine and vitamin A, those were only to be taken until she finished the bottle.

Ok now the results.

Stopped chewing on metal only chews on ice now.
Now has imaginative play
Started to play appropriately with toys, but still lines and stacks.
Started to imitate.
Stimming has lessened only stims when under a lot of stress.
No language yet
SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!!!! The day we gave her the Sporanox she slept through the night and has been ever since!

I was so excited about having her sleep through the night, I wanted to kiss the doctor! Sierra stopped sleeping through the night at 7 months and was up every night until I gave her the Sporanox when she was just turning 2 years old. Things really started looking up at this point.

Doctor Visit #1 Results

2010-09-13T22:39:00.001-04:00

    After we went to our first DAN doctor visit I felt a little overwhelmed on how to get supplements into her when she doesn't eat anything that you could mix it into, and even worse how to collect her first morning urine! Jeff our vitamin guy gave us a detailed dosage list which helped on when and how much to give her, but not how to get her to ingest it and most of the stuff I had to give her 2 or 3 times a day!

    I started out giving her one vitamin for a few days before adding another one so we would know how each one affected her, good or bad, doing it that way also made it easier to figure out how she would eat it with the least amount of resistance. Just about everything ended up going into her bottle. I found out that she pretty much drank her bottle no matter what was in it, as long as she drank it right away, if it sat too long she wouldn't drink it. The vitamin C I put into her sippy cup with juice because they wanted her to drink that throughout the day and she normally nursed her juice. Liquid stuff was easy of course and capsules you can open and dump the contents into the bottle.

    Now getting urine from a non potty trained toddler that does not like you to even wipe her at her diaper changing was very hard. The doctor gave us these pediatric urine collection bags that were sticky around the opening. I was supposed to attach it to her private area and it would catch the urine, yeah right! That was hard! Sierra threw a fit when I tried to put it on, so of course it was not on that good. The urine always seemed to miss it and go into her diaper. It had to be first morning urine so I had only one shot to collect it each day. On the third day I put it on her and I cut a hole in her diaper and pulled the bag through which held it place better (that was in the Tips section of the instructions that I didn't read at first, stupid me). I held her on my lap in a certain way until she went so the urine would flow in the right direction, and finally I got enough to use!

   Ok, so now the results. The urine test was too diluted, Sierra would wake every night for two hours and I would give her a bottle to calm her down. This time it was around 4 a.m. which caused her urine to be too diluted. The doctor said we would try again later, that we would go ahead and treat for yeast anyway based on her symptoms. I kept a notebook of her symptoms to keep the doctor informed on what improved and what didn't. This is the list that I wrote.

Went to the restaurant four times, Sierra didn't yell, cry or throw things.
Her poop was looking more normal (used to be hard black and really smelly)
Stopped blinking
Actually held my hand twice for a little bit.
Ran up to a little girl at the park, smiled and touched her arm!
Seems calmer doesn't run like crazy when out.
Had a slight die off reaction from the yeast, was like cold symptoms.
Played appropriately at playground, did not get fixated on the dirt, rocks or pine bark like previosely.
Chewing on metal has decreased.
Headbanging tantrums have lessoned.
Has more receptive language.
Sierra has started to limit food even more, only eats a few things, but has started to use a fork.

That was the list I made to give the doctor at the second visit, and all that was during an eight week period. So much change in so little time convinced me that we were doing the right thing, and we continued seeing the DAN doctor.

At's Petty Poo

2010-09-09T16:03:00.007-04:00

Sierra's speech has exploded lately and she is talking in very long sentences, I wish I could understand them though. I do understand this one "At's petty poo". She is saying "That's pretty cool". So now when I think something is pretty cool I have been saying "at's petty poo", which could be misunderstood for something petty and stinky I guess. Better watch who I say it to! Here is a picture of her I took when she put her swim goggles on, which she thought was petty poo!

I am so excited that she has been talking so much lately, it wasn't long ago that she wasn't saying anything, just crying and yelling ahhh! I am happy with anything she says even if it is petty poo!

Doctor Visit #1

2010-09-08T10:11:00.013-04:00

Before we took Sierra to the doctor we had to fill out this enormous information packet, I pulled out the copy I had so I could write this post. Going over the symptoms I listed, I realized she has come a long way since her first visit 1 1/2 years ago. I am going to list everything here so you know where we started at, she was 21 months old.

Rocking
Stimming - flaps/twirls hands, spins stuff, rolls things in her hands, bangs table
Non verbal -hums
Head banging
Smacks own head
Chews on metal and ice
Itchy ears
Mood swings
Tantrums
Fears/anxieties
Hyperactivity
Inability to concentrate
always fidgety in seat
Impulsive
Poor coordination
Processing problems
Problems with social interaction
Sensitive to crowds
Trouble remembering
Difficulty falling asleep
Night waking (2hrs a night)
Blinking
Dark circles under eyes
Sensitive to sound/noise
Constipation
Gas
Sensitive to texture of food
Difficulty swallowing
Food cravings
OCD behaviors
Reflux
Toe walking
Rashes

    We headed off to Raleigh for her first DAN doctor visit which is a three hour drive, Backyardigans playing on the dvd player in the back (couldn't go anywhere without them). We meet up with Sierra's sister Amanda so she can help with Sierra while dad and I are talking to the doctor.

    The staff was friendly as they should be at any doctors office. Sierra was hyper as usual, the stranger the place the more hyper she becomes. We sat in an office with the nurse and went over the entire list of symptoms, and she asked additional questions about her symptoms, living conditions, eating habits, family life, environmental things where we live, my pregnancy with Sierra, my other children, my dental fillings, and there was probably more but I can't remember it all. Sierra was good for a while but Amanda had to take her out after about 30 minutes. I don't think we really had to bring her, they didn't examine her, it's more about what symptoms she has that plots the course of treatment.

    The doctor came in when the nurse was finished and they discussed the symptoms and what treatment they wanted to start with. The first thing they wanted to do was heal her intestines, so everything they gave her was toward those symptoms. They said you have to heal the intestines first so Sierra can properly absorb the nutrients that she needs to bring her body back in balance. Some of the symptoms she has is because her gut is messed up. Here is the list of stuff we had to give her after the first visit.

Vitamin A
L-Glutamine -amino acid for intestinal health
Saccharomyces -good yeast
Vitamin C
Similase -digestive enzyme
Ultra Flora -pro biotic
Melatonin -for sleep
Molybdenum -a supplement they said to take if we had a problem with yeast die off
Continue vitamin suppliments and cod liver oil

     Then the Doctor told us he would need blood work done, he didn't want to stress Sierra out too much so he said he would get that at a later time. He also needed us to do a urine organic acid test profile (tests for yeast and other stuff), which we can do at home and send to the laboratory. Getting urine from a toddler who hates to even be wiped is a post in itself! He did a lot of other explaining about treatment, you know the hows and the whys, but I will leave that up to the doctors.

    We then went to the vitamin guy Jeff, who gave us what we needed and a detailed schedule for dosage and administering. We didn't have to get it from him but it was convenient and we could be sure of getting the right stuff. We paid $426 dollars for this visit, that is including the $200 dollars we had to pay earlier for the deposit, and we paid $131 dollars on vitamins. He didn't give us anything that needed a prescription yet, all of it was over the counter supplements. They gave us the urine collection kit and all the paperwork we needed for that, plus some pediatric urine collection bags. They gave us all the doctor's instructions and what we needed to file our own insurance. That was it and we drove home a little overwhelmed on how to do all this stuff.

    This was Sierra's visit tailored to her needs and it changes from child to child. Please see a doctor for you own child's needs.

Finding a DAN Doctor

2010-09-06T11:29:00.009-04:00

    Once we had Sierra's evaluation done I went right to work on finding a DAN (defeat autism now) doctor. My first stop was Jenny McCarthy's Generation rescue website, which has most of the stuff you want to know about treating autism. Jenny was the first person I ever heard say that you can treat autism, so that was the most logical place to start. Her website at the time led me to the Autism Research Institute for the list of DAN doctors. Now I live in a small town in North Carolina so of course their were not any DAN doctors here. I ended up picking one in Raleigh which was three hours away, but Sierra's older sister was going to college at UNC Chapel Hill which was close by and we could visit her while we were there. They also had an office in Greeneville NC where Sierra's other sister was getting her masters degree at ECU.

    I made an appointment with Dr. John Pittman from the Carolina Center for Integrative Medicine, he has treated many children with autism. The staff was friendly and the website was very informative. I was able to find out everything I needed to know from the website, how they handle insurance (they don't you have to file it), How much I had to pay ($200 deposit and $246 at time of first visit), what was needed at the first visit, and how long it would be (90 minutes). At the time they mailed you the packet to fill out but now it is on their website, here is the link if you want to look at it, new patient registration. The form you have to fill out is huge and it took me forever to fill out, but you want them to be thorough when treating your child.

    This was my doctor experience, other doctors might do it different or charge more or less, but this should have given you a rough idea on what to expect and it didn't cost as much for subsequent visits. You should always check your doctor out and get all your questions answered before making an appointment. My appointment was a month away, so I went about getting books to read on the subject. I wanted to know how and why they were going to do things. The two books that helped me the most were, Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder by Karen Seroussi. This book explains how much of this treatment came about and why it works. The other book is Healing the New Childhood Epidemics Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies by Kenneth Bock, M.D., and Cameron Stauth. This book listed just about everything my doctor gave Sierra, what it does, and parents ratings on symptom improvement. It also talked about the different diets used. I still use this book every time my doctor gives us something new for Sierra to take. If you have any questions about anything else I would be happy to answer them.

Don't Point That Camera At Me

2010-09-03T11:46:00.006-04:00

Sierra became very scared of having her picture taken, I think it was because of the flash. I always had a hard time taking her picture but it got to a point when she was two years old where she would scream and cry if you pointed a camera at her. The main picture of her in the pink dress at the top of my blog was the second time I had taken her to have her picture taken, she was two. We had the hardest time getting a picture we could use. Sierra cried or was scared to sit on the platform. If she did smile she would put her hands in front of her face. We were about to give up when the photographer just pulled out a sheet for a background and threw flowers on the floor. Sierra was all into the flowers and when she looked up the photographer took that picture, which has become my favorite picture of her! I wanted her to overcome the fear of camera so this is how I did it.

I took an old digital camera I had laying around and let her play with it. we took pictures of the dog, daddy, the tv, anything she wanted to. Once she was used to having the camera around her I had her sitting on my lap and I took a picture of my toes. She thought that was funny so then I took a picture of her toes and yes I saved that picture. Sierra loved it, so then I held up one of her toy figures and took a picture then she started handing me stuff to take pictures of.

The whole time I was doing this it was on her terms, I didn't make her do anything she didn't want to or push her in anyway. Then I just asked her to hold one of the figures for me while I took a picture of it. She did but she held it far away from her. She would always look at the picture after I took it. She liked it, so then she started bringing every stuffed animal and toy figure to me to have their photo taken. I must have taken a hundred photos, I have around 50 that I saved. Over time she got herself more in the picture, as you can see in the photos below.

The whole process only took three days, the majority of it on the second day. The third day she was posing for pictures herself without a toy. Now she has to be in the picture every time I pick up the camera and I am loving it!

ZDRFCBS8S5ZH

Mean People

2010-08-30T11:54:00.005-04:00

   My family went out to eat last night at a restaurant here in town. We usually go to kid friendly ones that are pretty noisy already. If any of you have an autistic child you know how they cannot control their volume very well. Sierra is very loud and she doesn't speak that well yet either, but she talks all the time and she squeals a lot when she is having fun. She was happy and being silly, a far cry from a year ago when she didn't talk and just cried and yelled when we took her out. We try to teach her how to use an inside voice when we are out but she does it for a minute and goes right back to being loud.

There was two elderly women sitting across the isle from us and they were just horrified by Sierra, they held their ears and shot glances at us like my child was throwing knives at them. I do usually apologize for her being loud and I did to the other tables closer to us, but they were being nice about it. Now it wasn't a constant loudness, she was being very good and eating her food and just being silly because other people were playing with her and her baby sister. When we were done my husband got up to pay the bill and that's when one of the elderly women said to me, "Can you keep your kid quiet or does she have to screech like that?" I almost choked on my french fry, I have never had someone be so mean about it. If she had actually took a minute to look at Sierra she would have noticed that she doesn't talk clearly in any way and that she uses sign language while she is screeching as she put it. That might have been a clue that maybe my child makes noise like that because she does not know how to communicate properly yet! I just said in a very loud and mad tone, "she is autistic and she does not understand how to be quiet!" Then she just gave me a blank look and said, "OK". I know she was a coward because she waited until my husband left the table to say it. I hope she was embarrassed. There was so much more I wanted to say but I just couldn't get it out, I get so upset then I start to cry and I didn't want them to see me cry.

   I think people are very judgmental about autistic children, they don't look close enough to see that there might be something wrong with the child, all they see is an unruly child. If they walked in our shoes for one day they would never be judgmental about another child and their family again. The next time you see a child crying by the gumball machines it might not be that they are having a temper tantrum for candy, it could be my daughter crying because they changed what is in the machines. At the restaurant she is crying because the chicken is stringy and she can't eat stuff with strings hanging off. At the park its because the other kids scare her. At the grocery store it's because we walked a different way through the store. Sierra very rarely cries because she can't have a toy, she cries when her routine changes or when she has trouble communicating her needs, and she gets unruly when she is scared and or on unfamiliar ground. Imagine having to live life like that and think twice about being judgmental.

   I love my daughter so much and I wish other people could see her through my eyes, how wonderful, loving, and smart she is and how frustrated she gets trying to adapt in this world. It breaks my heart every day knowing that she will have to put up with mean people that don't understand her and what autism is.

The Gluten Free Casein Free Diet

2010-08-27T23:17:00.008-04:00

    The gluten free casein free diet was a hard thing to start at first. Gluten which is found in wheat, rye, and barley seemed to be in everything and coupled with Sierra's picky eating habits made it extremely hard to find something that she would eat. At the time we started the diet Sierra was crazy about pretzels and I had read that she would have withdrawal symptoms when we took her off of gluten and casein. Well let me tell you that is true, because she had the biggest meltdown when she couldn't have the pretzels and they continued for three days. She refused things she normally did eat along with anything new. The only thing I was able to feed her was her bottle, so I loaded her non dairy milk with vitamins and I even snuck in some cod liver oil. She finally calmed down and began too eat again.

    I chose to go cold turkey on the diet and stopped all gluten and casein, some people choose to stop one thing at a time to see if anything changes with either one. I wanted her to get better as fast as possible so I just took it all out. I fed her Vances Darifree milk which is made from potatoes, Perkios cereal, peanut butter balls (a recipe from Karyn Seroussi's book), pears, apples, and baked chicken. I gave her potato chips to compensate for the pretzels, she liked stuff that was salty and crunchy, I tried to use nuts but she wouldn't eat them. There was so much more I could have given her but she was extremely picky and she also would throw up with certain textures of food like mashed potatoes, applesauce, green beans, etc anything mushy. I also gave her Carlson cod liver oil and vitamins from Brainchild Nutrients.

    Within two week of starting the diet she started to come out of her fog and she entered our world again. Sierra started to respond to us talking to her. She would answer questions by pointing or using gestures. She started to show us stuff she wanted us to see. Her eye contact improved greatly. I was able to quiz her to see what she knew and I found out that she knew all her ABCs and she could count to ten and she knew all her basic shapes, and she could point to all her body parts. I did not think she knew all that stuff, when I would quiz her before, she would just stare off and not respond or she would just do something else as if she didn't hear me. We were amazed and we took her over to my parent's house without telling them what we had done to see if they noticed anything. My parents could not believe how much she had changed in a few weeks. Sierra actually was making eye contact with them and she was starting to interact with them. We were so excited and could not wait to take her to a DAN (defeat autism now) doctor to find out how to help our precious little girl.

The Evaluation

2010-08-17T11:05:00.006-04:00

    When the doctor suggested getting Sierra evaluated I knew it was autism but I had not come to terms with it yet. I had not told my family that I thought it was autism, I just always said things were not right. I did not want her to get evaluated and have the label of autism placed on her, but I wanted to get her help. It took me a few weeks before I made the call. In that time I told my husband that I thought it was autism. He did not think anything was wrong with his beautiful little girl. He didn't talk until he was two and he thought she was doing the same thing. I kept telling him it was not the same because he babbled all along where Sierra didn't babble or say anything at all, she only hummed and she was 20 months old. He didn't want to believe me so I showed him videos of autistic children that were around Sierra's age. The kids were doing the same things that usually were always visible in Sierra, flapping their hands, toe walking, no eye contact, humming, and using their parents hands to move stuff. I think when he saw those videos it hit him for the first time that their was something wrong with his little girl.

    I had seen Jenny McCarthy talk about autism a long time ago and how she helped her son overcome it, so I checked into her website and learned about treating autism bio medically. I wanted to do anything that would help her so I thought I would try the gluten free casein free diet (gf/cg diet) that was suggested. I will get into the whole diet and DAN doctors in the next few blogs but I just wanted to see if that would help before I went any further. Two weeks before her evaluation I started the diet, in those two weeks she started to come out of her fog and responded to things we said to her. She had more eye contact and we finally were learning what she knew because she would answer us, not verbally but with gestures and pointing. We found out that she new her alphabet, her numbers up to ten, and her shapes, and she was only 20 months old.

   We took her in for her evaluation, it was with the Early Intervention program that I think most states have. The first thing they did was check her ears and do a hearing test. She hates when people touch her especially her ears and she threw up on the floor. For the hearing test Sierra had to sit on my lap in a sound booth and they would play a sound and she would look that way if she heard it which she did, but she was very scared of the booth and some of the sounds. Then they took us in a room and one lady played with Sierra to she what she could do or what she knew and the other lady asked us a ton of questions about her behavior. Sierra was fine for that part and she did a lot better than she would have two weeks earlier before we started her on the gf/cf the diet.

    The diagnoses was... they would not officially diagnose her because she was two young. They said that they like to wait until they are three years old before they officially diagnose them because children can grow out of a lot of their problems. The unofficial diagnoses was that she hit all the requirements for autism and because she had no speech at all meant she probably has classic autism instead of aspergers which is a high functioning autism where they talk. Because of her age they just called it PDD (pervasive development disorder), which is autism at a lesser form. Then we talked about what therapies would be best and how often to have them and that was about it. I didn't feel too bad about the diagnoses, I had already struggled with it and had a game plan in my head by the time we had her evaluated. It seemed to still bother my husband, he had it it his mind that she wouldn't be able to do anything and that there was only one level of autism where they can't function at all in society, and she would have no quality of life. Even though he saw how she had gotten better with the gf/cf diet, hearing it from official people made it seem final.

For The Love Of The Backyardigans

2010-08-06T23:44:00.004-04:00

Before I go on with the next faze of Sierra's life, let me tell you about the Backyardigans. Sierra from the time she was 3 months old would just fixate on the Backyardigans. My husband thought it was cute and would sit her in front of the tv. I didn't like it and I would get mad at him for doing it, not wanting to use the tv as a babysitter. Well as time went by, Sierra would have serious meltdowns on a regular basis. We started to rely on the show to get her out of it. I caved in because she would become uncontrollable and or inconsolable and the only thing that would get her to stop was to put the Backyardigans on. We would put the show on and she would just freeze and listen for a minute and then run to that room, soon enough she forgot what she having a meltdown about. The car rides were horrible because Sierra would just cry the whole time, so I would bring the Backyardigans dvd and she would be fine as long as she could watch them. I never went anywhere without a dvd with me. My tivo has almost every episode of the Backyardigans and I have the rest on dvd. In fact I have two tivos with about 50 shows on both of them just in case she is in that room. I know that sounds bad and I wasn't one to promote tv watching with my kids, but you just want to keep some sort of peace in the house. The meltdowns became so nerve racking that I would do anything to try and calm her down.

Sierra is three now and does not have meltdowns nearly as bad so we don't use them for that anymore, but she still loves them and would prefer to watch them over anything else. She memorizes every episode and acts them out with her Backyardigan dolls. I think that the show blocked out the things that were stressing her, or watching the show was a form of stimming. I don't know if this was the best course to take in that situation but it worked for us and I am very grateful for the people that make the show. They got us through some hard times!

I Know It's Autism

2010-08-05T12:01:00.005-04:00

    Sierra's eating habits began to get bad around 9 months. I could never feed her stage 3 baby food, she would gag and throw up. That continued for a long time and even as she was older she would do the same thing for applesauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, cooked carrots, etc. We finally realized she couldn't eat anything with a soft mushy texture. Still to this day she can't and she is three now. As she got older the foods she would eat got less and less. Pretzels seemed to be her food of choice and she went crazy for them. She did not eat anything sweet only salty stuff, not even candy or cupcakes.

     Sierra started humming all the time and everybody thought it was so cute. I got comments on how happy she must be humming like that. She was not a happy child, she was either crying or humming, no babbling at all except the occasional ma ma which she did not relate to me. The doctor at her 12 month checkup even commented on her humming and I said she doesn't talk she only hums. He gave me the usual "they should have so many words by a certain age" line again except the age kept getting older when he would tell me that.

    12 months to 18 months it all went down hill. Sierra went into a fog kind of, she usually didn't respond to her name but it got worse, she didn't acknowledge most of anything. I didn't know what she knew or didn't know because she never answered anything. She would cry and I would have to figure out what she wanted. She started banging her head and pinching herself, not all the time but too much for me. Sierra was scared of any talking, moving toys and loud noises. She didn't like new places and would become very unruly if we took her somewhere new. We had to stop going out to eat because she would yell very loud and would not sit in a seat.

Meltdowns were becoming very frequent and it was mostly for things we didn't realize she added to her routine. If we walked a certain way to somewhere more then once, she considered it part of her routine. If we tried to go a different way or to somewhere else she would have a meltdown. Just saying something to her during bedtime once or twice and then not saying it would trigger one, and I had to figure out what she was upset about. She also lined things up repeatedly, especially her little figurines and if one wouldn't stay standing or got knocked down she would have a meltdown. It would take us forever to calm her down until we realized the Backyardigans show would snap her out of it.

    Sierra would not play with anything in a normal way. She would spin stuff or throw it on the floor and watch it. She lined everything up or stacked stuff. She was obsessed with ceiling fans and the Backyardigans. If Sierra wanted to do something she would move your hand to do it, instead of doing it herself, she had very little self help skills. Hand flapping was more noticeable and she rocked continuously in the recliner. Chewing began to rear it's ugly head now. She chewed on anything metal, anything she could find even the door stops!

    When Sierra went to her 18 month check up the doctor (which was a different doctor from her 9th and 12th) said that we need to get her evaluated. At that time I was thinking autism and I searched for the symptoms on the Internet. My heart just sank she was hitting all the markers and I knew it's was autism.

I'm Getting Worried Now

2010-08-02T10:41:00.007-04:00

When Sierra was 7 months old I started to get really worried. She stopped sleeping through the night in fact she would be up for two hours or more just crying, or sometimes she would be playing. She was crawling then, but she never picked up anything to put it in her mouth ever. Everybody thought that was great since she wouldn't put unwanted things in her mouth. I thought it was not normal, kids learn by putting things in their mouth. It also meant she wouldn't feed herself at all. I could not give her any finger foods until she was well over a year. We had to teach her by physically putting the food in her hand and then bringing it to her mouth. The same thing with clapping and pointing, we had to teach her by repeatedly doing the motion for her.

The car seat was still a major problem, we eventually had to face it forward and that helped a little. I still couldn't drive her anywhere by myself, because she wouldn't last long and the screaming would begin. I think she was around a year old when I put a dvd player in the car to keep her distracted long enough to get somewhere. I had to play the Backyardigans for her, oh how she loved the Backyardigans! That will be a whole other post in itself!

Hand flapping started around 8 or 9 months old. She would have her hands up by her ears all the time. She was teething and we thought it was because of that. It was different though she was not pulling at her ears, she was sort of waving her hands. She is doing it in the picture here of her and her big sister. I didn't know anything about hand flapping yet so it was just another thing she did that everybody thought was cute.

Sierra's 9 month doctor's visit was the first time I voiced my concern about her not babbling. The doctor checked to see if she was tongue tied, where the skin underneath the tongue was too short. He said it looked fine and that all kids develop different and that she should have so many words by a certain age. I can't remember how many words by what age, it seemed to change every time I went to the doctors. She also started walking at 9 months but as soon as she could walk it turned into running. She pretty much ran any time she was out of the house. In the house she was always moving, she wouldn't even sit to eat. Sitting became a hard thing for her to do. Going out to the stores and restaurants was getting hard as well, she just wanted to run and would start crying if we tried to get her to sit anywhere.

I was definitely starting to think something was wrong and started to voice it to family but I also didn't want to believe anything was wrong. I was guilty of rationalizing everything as well, and I just hoped she would grow out of it like everybody suggested she would.

Something Is Not Right

2010-07-28T23:14:00.003-04:00

    When Sierra was 3 months I was already watching everything closely looking for anything wrong because I already felt like something was not right. She was hitting within the normal range for her development but it was weird. She rolled over at 4 months but only one way, from her back to her belly, it took another month for her to roll from her belly to her back. She cooed but not that much. She would not grab something but if you put it in her hand she would hold it and play with it. She didn't smile or laugh easily but she did do it. She sat up and crawled all on cue but she was lacking other movements that required finer motor skills.

    When she was 5 months old one well known sign of autism appeared, eye contact. She would not look at certain people, my mother, her aunt, and her sister's friend. They all had blond hair and the rest of us had dark hair so we connected it to that. My other daughter didn't like men or people with hats so I thought it was something along that line. My mom thought she just wasn't bonding with her, but they lived around the block from us and I went there once or twice a week. That was hard because my mom had always been close to my older girls and she wanted the same relationship with Sierra.

    At 6 months Sierra was babbling ma ma pretty good and then we went to the doctors for her 6 month check up and shots. The day she got her 6 month shots was the day she stopped babbling. I remember telling my mom that she hasn't said anything since her doctor's visit two weeks earlier. She eventually did say ma ma again but it was far and few between, she never babbled anything new either.

I am not sure when I first thought autism but I do remember it flashing in my head sometimes. I always dismissed it because she was doing just enough of the developmental guidelines to be in the normal range.

How It Began

2010-07-27T10:48:00.003-04:00

Easter -1 month old

My husband and I have two children each from a previous marriage all of them grown, Sierra was the only child we had together at that time. I was 39 years old when I had her. Some studies suggest that age has something to do with autism. I don't know if that is true or not, I have heard all kinds of reasons for autism which just makes things confusing. I tend to believe that genetics do play into it but the environmental factor plays a bigger roll in it. I believe Sierra was born with it because of the environmental toxins in me. I say that because of the treatment we give her is to remove all the environmental toxins from her body and bring her back into balance, and it has done wonders for her.

They do not give you the signs and symptoms of autism in babies because autism is hard to detect that early. Many children don't show any signs until later and then they regress, a lot of parents just do not pick up on it or the doctors dismiss the symptoms at such an early age. I had a nagging feeling early on about some stuff and other symptoms I realized in hindsight. I was a seasoned mother though and I knew what was normal and what was not. It would be hard for a new mother to catch stuff especially if the doctors keep saying everything is fine. So let me tell you what symptoms I noticed in Sierra and maybe it will help some of you because early detection is crucial in autism. The sooner you realize something is wrong the sooner you can get help, the younger the child is when you start treatment and or therapy the greater the recovery I feel.

2 months old and very heavy

When Sierra was born she did not cry, she was breathing fine but the nurses tried very hard to get her to cry so she could fill her lungs good. They poked, prodded ,and rubbed but she just looked around like it was any other day. She did eventually cry but I thought it was odd. She could not keep her formula down in the hospital, they said she had reflux. We had to add rice cereal to her formula to thicken it up so she could keep it down. The reflux lasted almost a year, she would choke if you fed her juice or water because it was too thin. She was very constipated and her bowl movements were very dark and smelly, the doctor said it was her formula but it wasn't. She started to eat a lot, like she didn't know she was full. She got very fat and the doctor said to feed her as much as she wanted but just water it down. That worked and she thinned out fairly quickly. Sierra did not start smiling as quickly as I thought she should and I had to work very hard to get her to smile. What was really hard was that she hated the baby swing and she hated the car seat. She couldn't sit in the swing at all she just cried and I couldn't drive anywhere without her screaming non stop. The only way to stop her was to pull over and give he a bottle. If I had to go anywhere it was with someone else driving and I would have to sit with her and give her a bottle. Any one problem here was normal but the more I learn about autism the more I realize that these were probably early signs. All this was just in the first 3 months of her life. I didn't think autism yet but some of those things were starting to worry me but everybody that saw her said she acted perfectly fine. Let me tell you now that you here that a lot in the first 18 months, but you know everything is not fine.

Fingerprints

2010-07-26T12:25:00.005-04:00

Sierra age 1

     My beautiful little girl has autism and she touches my emotions so deeply that she leaves fingerprints on my heart.

    The overwhelming love you have for your child. The heartbreak when you realize your child is slipping away from you and you can't pull them back. The undeniable frustration when they try to communicate the only way they know how but you don't understand and don't know how to bridge the gap. The determination you have to free them from the prison they are in. The pure Joy you feel with each and every step forward they make towards healing no matter how small it is. Those are the fingerprints of autism.
    This blog is an account of our journey through life and our dealing with autism. The struggles the triumphs and everything in between.