I Guess We're Famous Now...

Well, in Jackson at least.

They did a story about Autism in the Citizen Patriot yesterday and used Chase as the "face" to go with the story. I thought the article turned out really good. You can read it here. There's a gallery of pictures from the story here.

It was interesting to meet with the reporter and photographer. They were shocked that Chase was so "normal". Even though I had told them he is very high functioning, they weren't expecting a kid that wanted to show them his toys and guinea pigs.

People not affected just don't get it sometimes. Chase is a poster child for early intervention, but it took a huge toll on our family to give him the help that he needed. All the time off of work added to the tremendous emotional roller coaster. I never thought I'd be able to adjust to living with autism.

A year ago, Chase didn't say Mommy or Daddy. He didn't say "I love you." He couldn't say "I want..." It took us two months of speech therapy to get him to say "I", sign the word "want", and then point or grab what he wanted. But, that whole time, he would hug about anyone. How could he be autistic and hug anyone? Autistic kids don't do that right?

Thinking back now, I can't believe that he's come so far in a year. Compared to other kids his age, he seems "normal" at first, but if you know and you watch closely, you can see that he struggles to communicate with the other children and wants very much to be accepted. He's doing better and better every day.

It's weird to think that he's only about 2-4 months ahead of Cory (who just turned two) in expressive communication, when he's advanced in other areas. He is a smart kid. He can write his name pretty well, he knows his alphabet, he can spell some words like stop, go, Chase, mom, dad, nana, he can count to 30, he can read letters, and he's a mean Jedi with his light saber.

Wow. We are so fortunate that we didn't lose him. And, honestly, we're a closer and more compassionate family for having gone through it.

Look at me! All Political and Stuff!

So, I actually testified at a Health Policy Hearing of the Michigan House of Representatives. Crazy!

They are looking at 4 bills that will mandate that insurance companies cover treatments for Autism. (Right now, 99.9% of them actually state that anything with a diagnosis of Autism is explicitly not covered.) Read my post from April 27 for more information about this.

If you are in Michigan and interested in helping us pass these mandates into law, please contact your senators and representatives. The Autism Insurance in Michigan blog has information about how to help.

Chase Update
He is doing soooooo great! He knows all of the Christmas songs and all of his letters. He also has this Little Leaps game thing that plays games with a controller and a DVD. He keeps wanting to play it in German. He's able to turn it to German by himself, and he even follows the directions. Maybe languages are his super-power. Maybe he really was speaking Chinese before he started speaking English? We used to joke about that all the time.

Corinne Update
Our little peanut is putting words together in almost sentences. Like, "No momma pop! My pop!" and, "No momma cookie! My cookie!" It's amazing how different she is than Chase was. I realize now just how far behind his speech really was.

Christmas
I'm about 99% done shopping (mostly online) and about 1% done wrapping. I'm going to have to work on that soon. My favorite things that the kids are getting are guinea pigs and this thing:
Hopefully, I don't regret the guinea pigs...

Also, TechSmith put out our Christmas Card. There's an online version and photo album that you should check out.

Happy

Despite the looming shutdown of Michigan's government, which really is very silly, I'm in a very good mood. Things that make me happy today:

• It feels like summer, even though it's almost October
• Our writing group went out for lunch to celebrate how awesome we are
• We're walking in Autism Speaks fundraising walk on Sunday at the Detroit Zoo
• I'm heading up to MTU to recruit for my company
  NMU too, but big whoop. ;o)
  
• Chase is doing great
• This is gross, but the fact that Cory puts her finger in her nose whenever she feels shy. If she's REALLY feeling shy, she does a finger in each nostril. We call that one the "Mary Catherine".
  
  
• "Decorating" a coworker's cube for his birthday
  
  

Updates from the Bad Blogger

Wow, you'd think I could find five minutes to write something once and awhile... Actually, if I could just take five minutes, it wouldn't be an issue, but you know how I like to talk...

Chase
Chase started preschool. He goes to daycare in the morning, and then the bus picks him up and drives him across the street (seriously) to his school. He's at school from 12:30 to 3:00 and then the 1 1/2 hour bus ride home. Funny how we live about 10 miles from school and it takes THAT long.
He LOVES school. He's in a class with six other autistic spectrum kids of varying abilities. I don't know all of the kids, but I do think that Chase is one of, if not the most verbal kids. It's vary structured and they do all kinds of things: speech therapy, occupational therapy, gym class, music therapy, and swimming.
He also loves the bus. To put it mildly, I freaked out when they said he'd have such a long bus ride. More like I was a weeping annoying parent. But, he has really surprised me and LOVES his bus ride. His bus driver, Sandy, is great, and since he's in a booster seat and buckled in, he's not wandering around on the bus. Whew!
He's also using the potty almost all the time, except he'll only stand. So that means only #1, no #2 or "poot" as he calls it.

Corinne
Or as we call her "Jaws".
She started biting two days ago. Because my major coping mechanism is to laugh, I'm not helping much. I'm hoping we work through it quickly. She's also throwing HUGE fits and hitting me, Chase, anybody who doesn't let her do exactly what she wants. Well, at home at least. She doesn't do this stuff at daycare, so I guess that's good. She just tells them "NO!" It's amazing the difference having a child that won't watch movies and talks so much. She's as much of a handful as Chase ever was, but in a totally different way. But she's so darn cute.

Lessons
This whole "autism adventure" with Chase has taught me more life lessons and compassion than I had learned in the first 26 years of my life. I can't believe the wonderful "differently-abled" kids, loving families, and caring teachers I have met. I feel ashamed that I ever made a shortbus joke, or complained that I couldn't find a close parking spot because there are too many "handicrapped" spots. Chase is doing really, really good and is really breaking out of most, if not all, of his autistic behaviors. But, I can tell you that if it turned out he was 100% "normal", I'm glad that we have been through what we have because it's taught me a valuable lesson and opened Chase up to people he might never have interacted with.

I hope that you will all encourage your children to get to know some differently-abled kids. Although it might be hard for your children to understand why someone is different, I promise you that you, your child, the disabled child, and that child's family will forever be changed for the better, and the world will be just a little better place because of it. :o)

Minivans

New Baby
My good friend Katie had her second baby last week! Steven Robert was born on July 23 at 7:58 a.m. He was 7 lbs/4 oz and 21 inches. I was just talking to Katie, and it sounds like everything's going good. They've been home since Thursday. Big Sister Sophie is very happy with the new arrival, so far.

Congratulations Katie, Erin, and Sophie! Ready to pick up that minivan?

Minivans
Speaking of minivans, I just trading in my SUV for one. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it yet. I was kind of sick to my stomach when I left the dealer. While it is a really nice car, I've had 4 wheel drive for so long, it's odd. And, I also realized that there's only like two other minivans at work.

I probably wouldn't have done it, but after 95,000 miles of no car problems, I've had two wheel bearings, a cv joint, and something that I had never heard of go bad in my car. So, I traded her in at 99, 680 miles. I have a 6 year/100,000 mile bumper to bumper and 200,000 mile powertrain warranty now, so that's nice.

Craig is coming around, I think. He said, "These doors are kind of nice. I wonder why they don't put these sliding doors on SUVs? That'd be nice."

... Forgetting I can't drink like when I was in college.

Saturday, I went out with my book club/birthday club friends for Heather's birthday. We had a great time, even though we had our dinner reservation pushed back until 9:45 PM, Lansing bars were DEAD because everyone was celebrating MSU graduation in East Lansing, Casey's car window was broken out, and I mixed beer, hard cider, shots, and mixed drinks. I'm excited to do it again, but next time, only one kind of alcohol per night.

Talk Talk Talk
Chase is talking up a storm. He's repeating tons of stuff and did something really neat. I told him last night that it was almost time for bed. He said, "Momma, no go nigh-night." This may not seem like that big of a deal, but it is for the following reasons:

• He understood what I was saying.
• He was able to realize that he didn't want to do what I was saying.
• He was able to respond to me.
• He responded to me using words that I had not said.
• He related my "time for bed" with "no go nigh-night".

So, it really is a great thing. I'm very happy about that. :o)

Pictures

Grandma and Chase at the Zoo.

Shouldn't I be IN there?

If you always carry a chair, you always have a place to sit.

Someone thought that it'd be funny if I looked like Erkel.

... I don't want to be responsible

How is it that we have all these classes and tests to be able to get a driver's license, and yet we can have kids without any regulations or tests to see if we're good enough to be in control of another human's life?

So, today I want the kids to be able to go to daycare. I'd really like to be in the office more. Saying that, now I feel totally selfish.

I do feel that Chase could handle daycare better, but maybe I'm just hoping that he could. Besides, it'd be better to spend the money on speech therapy than daycare. I'd rather not have to make decisions like this. I'd rather that someone told me what I have to do and then I'd have to do it. Wow, I am so less responsible than I'd like to think I am.

On that note, yesterday, I had a great "stay-at-home-mom" day with the kids. I took Chase to swim therapy in the morning and then met another family at Portage Lake Park for a nice afternoon of playing. Chase really had a good time and the other parent remarked about how social he is. Yay!

I have some pictures, too. They're of my baby sister Stacy before her Junior Prom last weekend and our outing yesterday. Looking at the pictures, how could I want to put them in daycare? :o(

I love people!

I've never been a real "people-lover". I've sometimes enjoyed picking on people (not to their faces, of course), gossiping, being sarcastic, and not always giving people the benefit of niceness. But, today, I am amazed at the number of people that are not like, well, me.

I sent an email out to my company about Chase. April is Autism awareness month, so I thought that I should let the company know about the walk. People have responded in such a nice way. Some have donated and some have sent very nice, encouraging emails to me. THANK YOU! Wow! I guess I'm going to have to start thinking better of people in general! ;o)

On a related note, I should mention that I work for THE best company ever. TechSmith Corporation is the most employee-friendly company ever, and they are smart enough to hire very good people. It's those great people that have been so supportive of me and make the company an awesome company to work for. I am so privileged to work here and be in the company of such great people.

To anyone that I used to work with at Unisys, read this as "TechSmith is pretty much the polar opposite of what we were used to."

I'll hopefully have an update about this week later today.

Hello Friday, again!

I wasn't going to write anything, but, since I have three readers, I'll have to do a quick line or two, or seven... or ten...

We've all had a pretty good week. Life's starting to settle down, and we're getting used of the routine of therapies. It doesn't seem quite as hard to deal with any more.

Greenfield Village went great. We left our house at 9am and didn't get home until about 7pm. That included an hour trip to the McD's play room in Chelsea. Chase finally isn't scared of climbing up in it, so that's fun. He did get stuck once, but his daddy climbed up to save him.

Funny enough, Cory was the one that got to be a handful. Chase really had a great time, even if we did get yelled at a few times for running...

Here's some pics, note the crazy large wagon that's twice the length of a double stroller... But, they seem to like it...

Checking In

Hi guys, all two of you that read this!
Anyway, I had a minute and thought I'd tell you what's going on.

I was only in the office on Monday this week. My Grandpa had surgery, so my Mom went to Toledo to help my Grandma out. He's doing fine now and should be home today.

Chase has been doing great this week. He's been having some little temper issues, but it's like any other 2 year old. It's hard to explain but he's really finally acting his age, for better and worse. This makes me soooo happy! He hasn't regressed at all with any of his speech and actually started saying "rock" yesterday and "pancake" today. In our house, this is huge! He has become a little more dependent on the sucky thing, but he knows that he has to go up to bed when he wants it.

We're going to Henry Ford Museum tomorrow. My sister has to catch a plane at DTW for a flight to Ontario, California. We decided to take her and make a day of it.

Hopefully, I'll have some pictures of the trip on Monday.

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Hello Friday!

It has been a great week! Chase has been in a great mood and has been acting much more like children his age.
Chase
He repeated almost every word the speech therapist asked him to, even when he was frustrated. He got mad because he wanted a piece of train track. Robyn pushed him into asking for it. He said, "I want (signed) more track!" and he got it.
He recovered very quickly, like 5 seconds after he got the piece, he was fine! This is HUGE! There was a time he wouldn't have recovered but would have continued to be crabby for hours. There was also a time when he would not say anything while he was mad, he would just scream. So you can see why this would make us happy.

Me
After Monday, I was pretty happy this week. I'm really excited about this Autism Walk. I've got one other person signed up for the team. So, if I've invited you and you haven't signed up yet, please do so. It won't cost you anything to sign up!
I also decided to stop being crabby and start asking for want I need or want. I explained this to my hubby, and he shocked me by saying that he understood. Wow! I don't give him enough credit most of the time.
I also got a great deal of real work for work done this week. It's amazing how much better I feel when I actually accomplish something. Helps me stay motivated for other things, like housework. I even got up early to clean up the playroom, which is going to seem useless when I get home and it's already a disaster area... oh well.

Putting up the pictures of Cory's Birthday made me look up some old pictures of Chase. Here's a couple from his first birthday cake. He loves him his cake!



On a side note, looking at those pictures from his July birthday make me REALLY want it to be Summer! It was 73 degrees on Tuesday, and then we woke up with 4 inches on snow yesterday. grrrr...

Crazy Weekend

First, I should mention that we're testing Chase's success with the GFCF diet. He's been off of the diet this last week, but continues to take his supplements. He is doing extremely well in my opinion. I have not seen anything that looks like a negative reaction. We'll give it a month and see what we think. We're not telling the therapists to see if they notice anything.

We had Cory's birthday party this weekend. I'll hopefully get some picture up soon. Chase was very good, although he and Ethan really enjoyed running up and down the hall of the hotel. There was a mix up with the room we had reserved, and issues with the cake, ice cream, and me forgetting a bunch of stuff.

Chase went swimming twice and loved it. He really figured out the swimmies/waterwings. I'm excited to go to swim therapy and see how he does there. He didn't want to get out of the pool at all. He was very interactive while we were in there. He even said a new word - steps.

Non-Chase Issues
Then our propane ran out, but we had no idea. We now know that propane seeping into your house smells like a poopy diaper. We're getting more brought out today. Fun. I miss being connected to natural gas.

Next, Cory hit her face on the coffee table, and Chase wasn't even near her. Nope, she did this one on her own. She's got a fat lip and cut that thing that holds your upper gums to your lip. She's ok, but looks like she got in a bar fight.

Then, this morning, I had just pulled out of the driveway and could see a bump in the road. I always assume it's Mica (our cat) but usually, it's a squirrel or rabbit. This was a cat, but it was so dark, I couldn't tell if it was Mica. I didn't see a collar, but I had to be sure. I went back to the house and picked up a flashlight and snow shovel. I confirmed that it wasn't Mica and moved the poor black kitty off the road. That really got to me. Poor thing.

My Issues
Top of all this with me just being general crabby all weekend. I need to figure out how to keep from snapping at Craig about little stuff. Does any other mother out there get sick of feeling like you have to handle everything and make every decision? Ever feel like you can't handle making one more decision? Or, feel like you have to explain everything in painful detail to get your husband to understand what he needs to do to help you out? I always feel like, "Um, how come you don't just know this? I do!" That's my rant for the day. I've been a little on edge lately, and Craig gets the brunt of it. Sorry honey.

Too much thinking.

I'm feeling crappy today. I'm really feeling sad about what Chase is missing. Poor kid. Last night he found several things that he wanted to eat, and I couldn't let him have them. He even wanted yogurt, but refused the soy kind. I've been doubting the GFCF diet lately. We just did so many new things at once, I don't know what is really helping and what isn't really doing much.

Right now, I think it's the extra speech therapy, vitamins, probiotics, DMG, and B12 shots that are helping the most. I really want him to be able to eat "normal" food soooo bad. I think that maybe we'll try adding some things back in this month and see what kind of reactions he has. I did notice yesterday that he got really goofy hyper after he ate an apple. It makes me wonder about the phenol thing. I need to learn more about that. Although, he was tired and maybe that was just the problem. We'll have to test that one out and talk to the DAN! doctor about that. Oops, I really need to figure out when that appointment is...

The Weekend
We had a pretty good weekend. Chase was really very manageable and seemed very "with it". We ran to the mall to mail the invites for Cory's party and to return something to Kohl's. We had to wait about 10 minutes in line at Kohl's, and Chase stayed in the stroller and was really good! He even said "Hi!" to another little kid. Yay for Chase! (And for me.)

My Issues
I talked to our friend Michelle this weekend. Her little girl is exactly the same age as Chase. Michelle was saying how Jaden has been bossing them around. She's saying whole sentences about "Mommy, I want to watch this movie!" and other things like that. That's the times I realize how much I've lost in all this and feel sorry for myself, which I then feel guilty about (of course.)
I should be so thankful that Chase is as loving and interactive as he is. I shouldn't concentrate on the fact that he can't vocalize everything. Arg. It's so frustrating. I thing what gets me with all of this is that I still really believe he's just going to start talking one day. He'll start talking and all of this will be behind us. When I see "normal" kids, it hits that belief kind of hard.

Here's some pictures to make me feel better. They're from New Year's eve. Chase went to bed, but got back up in time for the countdown. He even toasted with us (sparkling cider, of course.)



There. I feel better now. :o)

Please Help Support Autism Reseach!

I know that I've been off for awhile. Before I do an update on Chase, please consider sending a letter to your Representative to encourage them to support fully funding the Combating Autism Act. Click here for more information. It only takes a minute or two, figures out who to send it to, and the letter is already prepared. All you have to do is enter your name and address, and then click Send.

Since I last wrote, we have had two really good weeks. Chase has been doing good with the diet, but we had some minor infractions. One was I guess not really minor, he had both dairy and wheat. The next day, his stools were pretty loose, but back to normal the next day. I didn't notice any behavioral issues, and believe me, I was watching! The only thing that I did notice was that he woke up in the night, but he's been doing that randomly the past month or so.

He's gained more eye contact and speech, and he's initiating contact a lot more. For example, he takes off his pants behind the couch, so that I can't see him. Then, he comes over to me and smiles at me. If I pretend not to notice, he starts fake sneezing. When I look at him and say, "Where are your pants?" he laughs and sometimes says, "Where'da go?" It's pretty cute.

I wonder if the B12 shots are helping. He's been more "with it" these last two weeks. I'm thinking that we'll keep him on the shots this next month, and possibly try adding some gluten back in. (I think the dairy is more of a problem.)

We have an appointment with the DAN! doctor soon, but of course, I can't remember when it is... I better call.

Chase was sick on Monday. He woke up with a nasty cough, and I had to take him to the urgent care clinic. By the time we saw the doctor, he wasn't coughing anymore, so I thought, "Great. Another doctor rolling his eyes at me." But, to my surprise, the doctor said Chase's lungs sounded bad. He had to have a shot, breathing treatment (which went surprisingly well), and medicine. Of course, he hasn't taken any of the amoxicillin, but he seems fine now. Never had a fever.

I did wonder one thing: The cake I made for Cory's birthday dinner was GFCF, but I used some whole milk in the frosting. I totally forgot and poured it in. I wonder if that really could have been enough to make him sick like that. Interesting...






Here's the pretty cake I made. I totally suck at lettering. It was REALLY good! It was a mix from The Really Great Food Company. They have the BEST mixes. Everyone liked it. You couldn't tell it was GFCF at all. Cory approves!