Christmas is near

And so is the birth of Gabe's little brother. We are all very excited. I have a scheduled c-section for December 30th. I am very nervous about having a c-section but I know I can get through it. We keep doing social stories with Gabe about the birth of his baby brother. I let him pick out some pacifiers for the baby and he helped pick a bottle brush. Matt and I are hoping this little baby doesn't rock Gabe's world too much. We are expecting some set backs, but hoping not too many. My biggest fear is he will regress in the potty area. He is doing pretty good with the potty and I don't want to see that go backwards.

Gabe's behvior has been a little rocky the past few weeks. But I am sure I have been snappy with him too. The whole house has been sick off and on. Poor Gabe has been sick the longest. We might even need a trip to the Dr. to get him some antibiotics. So, I am cutting him some slack in the behavior dept. But only a little slack :-)

Gabe recently learned how to count to 20. He skips a few numbers here and there and not all the numbers are understandable to the unfamiliar ear, but it is a big step for him. He wanted nothing to do with counting past 3 for a long time. And would only count 1,2,3,3,2,1 and would get mad if you made him count higher.

He is becoming more flexable. Although, he is still very ridgid in most things. Transitioning is often hell on earth. He has managed to memorize a lot more of the TV shows he watches. So now we hear..."It's puzzle time" and "no more no less" and the moon sand song. (Thanks for that one B!!!)

Turkey Day is upon us

I can't believe tomorrow is Turkey day. I am so excited. Mostly because it means I am closer to having this little baby. I love being pregnany but this time I am so tired. Chasing Gabe and not sleeping are wearing me out. I don't sleep more then 2 hours at a time. It is horrible. I pray every night before I go to bed that I will sleep and every night I wake up all night long. It is making me a miserable "B" and I know it. I wish I wasn't feeling that way.

Gabe is doing pretty good. He actually did some pretend play last night. It was so cool. I don't get to see pretend play very often. We have been doing social stories about the baby coming. We started about a week ago. I tell him the same story about the day the baby is born in hopes that it won't rock his little world too much.

As far as Gabe behavior...it is something to be desired right now. He is having a really hard time transitioning and he keeps leaving his room at preschool. He also won't sit and eat dinner and he won't sit still for his preschool teacher either. We are looking into getting him a special seat coushin to help with some of his sensory issues. Hopefully it will work. I am also thinking a weighted vest might do him some good.

Gabe hasn't had OT since the idiot we saw before. I do have the name of an OT but with the baby and everything I have put off calling her. I should do put a call in before the baby is born...just incase there is a waiting list.

Potty training

Well I think we did it!! Yay! Gabe has been wearing nothing but big boys for the whole week now. He had two accidents over the weekend. But that's okay. I am so excited...I'm not going to have two kids in diapers.

Sounds....

Gabe has always been a little sensetive to sound. But nothing that really worried me. Here lately he is having a miserable time dealing with noise. Even little noises are bothering him. Today I was reading the newspaper and Gabe was covering his ears and crying that the noise was loud. When my mom and I are talking in my car he sits in the back seat and screams "no noisey" I have taught him to cover his ears but this only helps for a few minutes. Yet loud bangs don't even seem to phase him.

I sure hope this doesn't last long. I wish Gabe would keep a headphones on...or earplugs in.

so busy...

Things have been busy at our house. We decorated for fall, started the potty training process, continue 3 days a week of therapy, and work. Gabe is doing pretty good with the potty training. I refuse to go back to diapers. He still has accidents everyday but we just remind him that it's okay to have accidents. He isn't stressed at all and honestly Matt and I aren't either.

The baby is really starting to get strong. I can really feel him moving around now. The other night I swore he was going to jump out of my tummy. I can't believe we are going to be adding another little boy to our family. I am so excited.

Gabe decided that he wanted to be spiderman for halloween. This is the first year that he picked his costume. I wanted him to be a monkey, but it's a no go. He insists on Spiderman. That's okay. As long as he has fun. We are planning on having a small Halloween party for the young kids in our family. I can't wait.

Gabe is starting to talk more. He is starting to form natural conversational speech. Though it is still choppy and he gets very confused with statements that we say back to him. We here a lot of huh? His processing time seems to be slow. Hopefully that catches up.

Everyday is a new day...

He is....he isn't....he is....??? Does anyone know?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Is there an easy answer to all of this? I am so tired of hearing one therapist say...yes, Gabe is autistic...then hear another one say...no way...then we get a dx from the neuro. But no direction on where to go. Then the school starts their eval and says...no Gabe isn't autistic...but the neuro at the next appt says...yes he is...

So, I do have a request in for an eval with the child psych at hershey...I am calling to see where he is on the list.

In the mean time I started Gabe in OT for some sensory stuff...now the OT doesn't want to work with him...because she says it isn't sensory it is behavior and OCD and ODD and some ADHD...but she see no autism...FINE....don't work with him...but how can I tell if he is acting a certain way because his little senses don't know how to process what is going on....or if it is straight behavior. Some things are no brainer...smart mouth...behavior...other things are not so easy...like running around the grocery store shaking his head back and forth...and spinning in circles....he isn't being bad then...just not really listening that he needs to stay with me...is it behavior or sensory...are the people bothering him? Are the lights and sounds bothering him? How come he wasn't doing acting that way before the store. How come the rest of his day was shot after going to the store? WHY?

She told me she doesn't know how to help him....yet his private ST says OT would be good for him...I just can't stand this....Here I am with this kid who has an autism dx...who can't sit still to play one game of candy land but can sit for hours and watch the TV or play a video game....I don't know who to go to for help....what I should be doing to help him...other then what I am already doing....and if he can't sit to do work now...how the hell is he going to do it in school? I know he is only 3.6 years old and sitting to do work isn't really important yet...but he will sit and do puzzles with me...and play video games...and anything that is Gabe guided...but as soon as I or anyone else for that matter says we are doing this and Gabe doesn't like that idea...all hell breaks loose....

I am tired of all of this...where is my freaking autism manual? And why do some people say Gabe is autistic....and other people say no way...."they" all tell me not to compare my kid to other kids....yet they are doing just that when it comes to autism...

I can't wait to go see the child psych at hershey....so my kid with a pinch of autism, a dab of OCD, a speck of ODD, and a dash of ADHD can be evaluated. Oh, and lets not forget the dx of apraxia of speech and expressive language disorder...If Gabe's dx's were credentials his name would look like this

Gabriel C. ASD,OCD,ADHD,ODD,CAS,SID,ELD

and me...after surviving all of this silliness I want my name to be

Jessie. Phd....

It's a boy!

Well, we found out what's cooking in my tummy. We are adding a new little boy to the family. Gabe still insists it's a girl and now tells me he has a girl in his tummy!! I am so excited to be having another baby. To be honest I had my heart set on a girl but I have had a change of heart. It will be great for Gabe to have a little brother. And I think I am more cut out for boys. Girls are just too dramatic for me. I can't wait to get out all the baby stuff. Still a little early yet...

My son is a yo-yo

Just last week I was so excited that Gabe was making better eye contact and acting more NT then he has in a long time. Well, that's all gone after this weekend. What a stinker. Tantrums out the waazoo over the silliest stuff. It didn't matter what I did to help him I just wasn't doing it the right way. And the poor cat was tourtured consitantly. Not to mention he ran away from me while we were outside and went right for the road. Luckily the neighbor can run fast and got him. Gabe smacked him in the face when he picked him up. Gabe also smacked me in the face this weekend. He has never hit me or any other adult before. I sure hope this isn't the start of something. He even refused to go to bed on Sat and was up well past midnight! No matter what I did he just would not go to sleep. I sure hope this week ends better!

Looking at mommy

Gabe doesn't have very good eye contact. He says hello and goodbye to me without even looking at me but the past week or so his eye contact has improved. He actually stares into my eyes sometimes. I love looking at those big blue eyes. There is even an added sparkle that I just haven't seen for some time!! I feel like Gabe is coming out of his little world and really for once joining ours. Even my family has noticed the difference. It's exciting.

We called Hershey medical center yesterday to set up an evaluation with the child psych. there. I am so excited to have some solid evals done on Gabe. The school district evals way back in November were a joke. There were huge red flags for autism then and not one person opened their mouth about those concerns. It didn't matter that Gabe didn't talk to them, ignored most of their requests, didn't copy anything they did, and pretty much looked like classic autism at that point! Well, since finding a great neurologist we have finally got some answers. Whew...now we can go to Hershey and find out just where Gabe is as far as autism is concerned. I just feel like it is high functioning or even pdd-nos. Regardless of their findings I just want Gabe to have every oppurtunity as a NT kid has. We are so on our way to that.

Looks like we are going to finally get some OT as well. We have our name on the waiting list at the local rehab hospital. Hope we get a call soon! We have our name in there as well for speech. And I am thinking about adding some ABA for Gabe. We are seeing some behavior issues as he gets older as well as he has an extreemly hard time reading body language and facial expressions unless they are happy or crying. He doesn't understand limits as far as personal space goes and can't understand when people are angry and want him to stop. Hopefully OT or ABA can help with some of that.

How Gabe sees it...

We see a screen door. Gabe is more amazed at how it feels. Running his fingers across the screen feels so neat. We see a TV that's turned off. Gabe see's a wonderful opertunity to paint it with his tongue. We see a match box car. Gabe see's every tiny detail right down to the little number 3 on the door or the flames on the hood. Water coming out of a sprinkler looks awesome if you bend down to just the right level. A cupcake should never be cut in half. And spinning in a circle on Grandma's office chair is amazing as the different colors zoom by.

What's so wrong with running your fingers across the screen door? Or spinning around in a chair for 20min at a time? I don't know. But some people find that weird. Me, I am amazed by how much Gabe see's that we don't. Every feather on a bird, the detail in a painting, the perfect shadown on the wall, the way you can line up toy cars in just the right way to make a square.

Gabe is one neat kid. I am so proud to call him my son. He has been so great the past two days. I almost forgot he was autistic until tonight. We went to my dad's for dinner and there were more people there then I knew were coming. If there are going to be a lot of people I usually tell Gabe. Today I didn't know. He burried his head so far into my leg I thought we were going to need the jaws of life to get him out. He refused to stay on the deck with these strange people. He spent most of the evening on the grass. Finally he came up on the deck with us but he spent a lot of his time in his little world. My dad would talk to him but there was no responce. He just sat and blew the pinwheel my step mom gave him. Of course there were fleeting moments of coherent Gabe but they were quickly lost. I could see the look on my dad's neighbors face when she tried to give Gabe sunglasses. He turned completly away from her with a blank look on his face. And in that split second I read her mind and it said, "wonder what's wrong with him?". And my heart broke.

Autism isn't like cerbral palsy. No one can see it. Gabe is the little boy that doesn't talk well, is bad, doesn't listen, can't sit still, and even worse dumb. The sad thing is he can talk in his head. He knows what he wants to say. But he can't say it. He does listen but he doesn't always hear everything that we are saying. Sitting still isn't easy when the world if full of exciting and wonderful things. And he is definatly not a dumb child. Sometimes I feel like yelling to the world...please be patient...Gabe has autism...but would the world really listen?....

This is a long road...but Gabe is going to do great things...I just know it...

Going to the beach

Gabe watches Noggin all the time. And all summer long it has been a beach theme. So, this weekend we are taking Gabe to the beach. Just a one day thing nothing big. I can't wait to see what he does when he gets in the sand! Oh those senses will love that. Mr. Sensory Seeker should be so happy. The last time he was at the beach he was about 18 months old and he didn't really care for the sand or the ocean. Wonder how he will do this time?

Our SpringBoard arrived

Yay!! Gabe's new talker to try out has finally arrived. We have been waiting for awhile now. This time I set it up so has to make sentences with his talker. Before he only had to hunt pictures. Now he has to do some real digging to get what he wants. The amazing thing is he already made a senstence. "I like swimming" was his first sentence he made with no help from me. I don't know how he picks up on this stuff so quickly. I can't wait to see all the things he does with it. We get to keep this talker till Sept. So we have some time to play and figure things out.

Happy Birthday

Today is Jasmine's birthday. The big 17! I can't believe that. I am getting so old. She was 9 when Matt and I started dating. July is a busy month for birthdays in our family. My sister in law shares a bday with Jasmine and my bday is on the
18th. What a busy month.

Tip toe...tip toe....

I have noticed that Gabe has been up on his tip toes a lot this week. This is something we don't see very often. I am wondering if his sensory issues are really bothering him. He ran around the pool today way up on those toes when he wasn't in the water. He LOVES the pool so much. He finally jumps in all by himself. That's good and bad becasue now he has no fear anymore so we have to keep an extra close eye on him. My family is great at helping watch for Gabe. My mom and Aunt get paranoid even if he is two inches away. It is nice having the extra eyes around.

and the frustration mounts...

We had to send back the demo Vantage that we were using for Gabe. He has been horrible since sending his device back. He tries desperatly to tell us what he wants but ends up screaming and crying when we don't understand. I knew the talker was helping but jeeze I didn't realise it was helping that much. I am kind of glad to see the difference because it will help us decide if we should really buy a device or not.

Yesterday was so bad for Gabe. He spent most of the day crying and telling me no, no, no. It didn't matter what I tried to do for him he just was unhappy. Today isn't turning out any better. I made him peanut butter toast this morning and he ate one piece and told me more. He still had one piece left on his plate but refused to eat it. Then he decided it would be a good idea to put the toast on the floor and roll it under his feet. So I threw the yucky toast away and started to make more. For some reason the piece on his plate was "contaminated" and he wasn't eating it. But when I threw it away he screamed bloody murder. Needless to say I was loosing my cool. So I made him a new piece and said "This is it, you don't eat this one and there is no more." He ate it...ugh...what was wrong with that other piece? I will never know. Sometimes I just don't get it...why couldn't he eat that other piece before he played footsies with it?

Tomato Soup

We had tomato soup and toasted cheese for dinner tonight. Gabe decided it would be fun to crunch all of his crackers in his soup but not eat either. He then decided his brand new car would love to take a "bath" in his cracker mushed tomato soup. Ugh. He also thought shoving an entire half of a toasted cheese in his mouth would be a great idea. It doesn't matter if you can breathe, right? I am always amazed at the elasticity of Gabe's mouth. And that we haven't had to call 911 for choking. Today I caught Gabe with woody wood pecker in his mouth, a car, and one of his word whacker letters. Nothing in the house is safe. Not even the cat.

Gabe spent two hours today playing with a new toy his aunt got him. It is a car maze. The cars go around and around up the hill and back down. He loves to lay on the floor and just watch the cars going around. He played with it for hours yesterday. He finally stopped playing with after lunch today. But he has to hold the little cars for it all the time. They took a bath with him and went ot the store with him today. I wonder if he will start kindy with having to take a car with him. Better yet I wonder if he will be a grown man and still carrying around a little car?

All about my monkey family

I have three monkey's in my house and one monkey on the way. The first monkey is the oldest monkey...his name is Matt aka daddy. Monkey number two is going to be 17 soon and her name is Jasmine. The third monkey is Gabe and probably more monkey then the rest of them. I am Jessie...and some days I really do feel like I am in a zoo!!

I have known Matt for more then 7 years now. He is the greatest dad in the world. He loves his children and life. Matt is an avid guitar player. He plays acoustic guitar as well as electric. He also plays piano and records music. Along with being a great musician comes those artistic traits. My mother always warned me to stay away from musicians :-). I can't imagine life without Matt.

Jasmine is my step daughter who is also very artistic. She can draw very well. Jasmine has bipolar disorder which is something that took me a long time to understand. Despite having a hard time with her disorder she has shined through the fog. I couldn't be more proud of her. She loves dolphins and I would love to take her to swim with the dolphins. She always wants to help everyone and wears her heart on her sleeve. Not always a good thing in this world we live in.

Gabriel is my three year old little monkey that loves to climb, climb, climb. There isn't much he is afraid of these days. Gabe loves everything cars, powdered doughnuts, and chocolate milk. He is also turning out to be a little artist. Definitely a trait from his daddy. Gabe has sensory processing disorder, apraxia of speech, and autism spectrum disorder. He is truly an amazing kid. There is never a dull moment in our house. NEVER.

Now onto the monkey in progress. I am 3 months prego with my second child. I am very excited and sending out pink baby dust in the hopes for a little girl. I just want to buy baby dolls and little cute dresses. I am tired of cars and iron man!

There is also another member in our family. Mr. Milo the cat...who thinks he is the master of this house. Milo has some sensory issues of his own. He can't eat any other cat food beside IAMS kitten food even though he will be turning two in October. He also is obsessed with my hair ties. He hides them under the couch. One day I was cleaning under the couches and I found at least 30 hair ties under it!! Milo is also madly in love with a stuffed Kermit the frog. It use to be Gabe's Kermit but Milo took ownership.

Oh, and I guess I should add a little about me. I play violin and I am not near as talented at music as Matt. But I love to play none the less. Some days I feel insane dealing with all of Gabe's therapy, Jasmines issues, Matt's artistic ways, and the cat doing the dirty with Kermit! There are times when I could pull my hair out. But at the end of the day I sit back and look at my wonderful family and all they have to offer...and I realize I am one of the luckiest mom's in the world. I love all my monkeys...and my zoo!!