Life is Crazy....but good!

Wow, it's hard to believe it's been eight months since I've written anything on here.  I didn't even remember my account access information or even which email I had used when I opened the account.  Luckily, I stuck a link to my blog on Babycenter.ca under the Special Needs community board and it was still there.

A lot has happened since I've last written.  April marked a year since Ian started IBI Therapy and I'm pleased to say he's come a long way in a year.  He used to be a child with no verbal communication with limited eye contact and little understanding of what we were saying.  Now he`s finally talking, not a lot, but he`s doing a lot of echolalia, which is echoing what he`s hearing.  He`s repeating almost everything he hears.  He has become excellent with eye contact and now looks people in the eye, not just family members.  He also is understanding everything we are saying now and following through on verbal commands.  This has been one of the best things I`ve witnessed because now we know that he`s in there listening to us.  I`ve chosen to keep him back from starting Kindergarten for another year, I think an extra year of IBI the way he`s been receiving it would be very beneficial to him.  It`ll also give us another year to try to get him potty trained....we haven`t had any luck with it yet.....sigh!  I have a lot of hope for Ian, and I`m not as afraid for his future as I used to be.

Amy has had a great year too.  This is the first year of school where I haven`t been called at home because of her behaviour or have been told ``her medication needs to be increased``(She`s in Grade 4).  I`ve been very grateful to her teacher who seemed to take her diagnosis seriously and took her under her wing.  At the beginning of the year we were told she`d have to be put on an Adapted Math program since she was tested at a Grade One level in math.  Her teacher told me at our last Parent-Teacher meeting that she has been in the regular math program and has been doing quite well.  I have to wonder, did something just all of a sudden ``click`` in her brain (my question mark isn`t working on this keyboard).  Whatever it is, I`m not complaining.  She`s also shown an interest in art and has been taking art lessons from a local artist for the past 6 weeks.  She`s still an avid reader and I try to make sure she has plenty of books around to read.  This was something I never developed since reading was such a struggle for me growing up.  I was in Grade 7 before they finally figured out I couldn't read!  Although she`s doing very well in school she`s still lacking in social interaction and awareness.  To me, Ian has become more socially aware than she is which worries me, I hope it `clicks` someday.

Lyla is my little terrorist now!  We`ve been aware of her slow speech development for awhile now and I`ve finally went to the doctor to get her into speech therapy.  I`ve been holding out because I know the speech therapist, she`s Ian`s therapist and is totally useless!  She`s government appointed, when I complained about her before she stopped seeing Ian for a long time and then we had no speech therapy.  So, I`m still not sure what to think about Lyla, `she has great eye contact, understands everything you say to her, follows verbal commands and is making progress on her own with talking.  She has developed quite an attitude though and is sometimes worse than Amy or Ian put together.  It`s funny how Ian and Lyla seem to be both at the same developmental level, again, it gives me hope seeing that he is progressing.

As for Curtis and I, we`ve been managing alright, I have my good and bad days.  My moods are very affected by my blood sugars though, if my blood sugars are high or low then I`ll be in a very negative mood, which hasn`t been happening a lot.  We`ve even managed to take a long awaited vacation together.  Thanks to Ian`s IBI tutor who was patient enough to take care of our kids while we were away, we had 8 days away, 7 of them being in the Virgin Islands.  It was a wonderful vacation!  Very relaxing.  Now it seems just a distant dream, like did we actually do that.

So that`s eight months in a nutshell.  I really hope to continue writing this time, I have more time on my hands now since I`ve taken a few months off work.

I hope you stay tuned!