When Addison was learning to walk she had such a personality. She'd wiggle when you'd ask her to dance and laugh and make eye contact. Around a year old she was babbling, using small words like "dada" and signing "more". Around 18 months old she was using words like "side" for outside and "sing" for "swing". It was sometime around 18 months that I notice a few quirky ways (later I'd realize these were the starts of stims for her). Addie would sit on her knees and rock while watching her favorite DVDs. Sometimes she'd make small moaning noises or squeal and flap her hands in front of her. We thought it was cute. We had no idea that it was a red flag we needed to pay attention to.
Organized Chaos
Friday, August 26, 2011
Addison
When Addison was learning to walk she had such a personality. She'd wiggle when you'd ask her to dance and laugh and make eye contact. Around a year old she was babbling, using small words like "dada" and signing "more". Around 18 months old she was using words like "side" for outside and "sing" for "swing". It was sometime around 18 months that I notice a few quirky ways (later I'd realize these were the starts of stims for her). Addie would sit on her knees and rock while watching her favorite DVDs. Sometimes she'd make small moaning noises or squeal and flap her hands in front of her. We thought it was cute. We had no idea that it was a red flag we needed to pay attention to.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Jordan's Journey
Monday, March 7, 2011
Party of Five
You may know us. You may not. Either way, I decided it was time to give you details about our lives. We are a family of five. A family that only three short years ago was simply a husband and wife. We had tried for three long years (ironic, isn't it?) to get pregnant when we were blessed with triplets.
The road to our triplets was a long one, but the road with our triplets is where is gets interesting. Not a day goes by that I think "wow, now that was a boring day". From the day our triplets entered the world, our lives have been turned upside down. We've learned to live with only 45 minutes of sleep a night (I know what you are thinking, oh I remember when my baby slept only 45 minutes at a time...ummm- no I mean literally we got only 45 minutes of sleep TOTAL in a night!), being able to feed three babies at once with only two hands, changing three diapers within 5 minutes of being awake and learning to make space for three at once on your lap.
I know what some of you with multiples are thinking. Yeah, its tough. I remember how hard those days are. Well, let me throw you another curve ball. Autism. I know, its a scary word. Its a word that parents don't want to hear and hate to say out loud. Its something I need to tell you about though, because if you are even wondering if your child could be on the spectrum then you need to hear what I have to say. My plan with this blog is to get the details of my kids lives with Autism out there. I want other parents to hear exactly what we went through to get diagnosed and what happened after that.
Autism effects 1 in 110 children and 1 in 70 boys. Early detection is key and can make a huge difference in the child's life (and the lives around them) that it effects. I hope that by starting this blog, I can help just one other parent get an early diagnosis for their child.