Team James

We have decided to start a new blog to share experiences with James' autism. I figured that everyone is not interested in the day to day details and stories and my venting, but some people are. So if you are interested then you can join Team James and read about our progress, setbacks and stories.

Crazy Mikey

Mikey has learned a ton lately! He loves to crawl around on his hands and feet and looks really funny doing it. He loves to be outside and whenever the door is open he "runs" to it. He has learned to climb stairs, but he doesn't know how to go down. We are working on that right now he just tries to go head first and I have to go get him before he falls down. The biggest reason he doesn't really get the stair thing yet is because the only stairs we have are the two steps in from the garage, the two steps in from the back yard and the three steps in to the front door. Not a lot of practice.

Mikey also has learned to stand up on his own. He loves to just stand up in the middle of the room and gets so proud of himself. Yesterday he was just standing in the middle of the room and I thought "What a great time to get a picture."After I took the picture Mikey started being really silly. It was so cute. Usually he can stand for quite a while and is pretty stable, but I think he saw the camera on and decided to ham it up!

The funniest part was when I showed the video to everyone last night. James thought it was hilarious and started acting it out. Mikey thought it was the funniest thing he has ever seen and was just laughing and laughing at himself. These two boys are sure a lot of fun!

P.S. I almost forgot to put our big news on here! Mikey took his first steps yesterday! He took one step to me. Then a few minutes later he took two more. Yea, maybe he will learn to walk after all!

Blake's Birthday

Monday was Blake's 25th birthday. He came over and we had steak and potatoes, presents and cake! It was a lot of fun. We even set up a scavenger hunt because 1. he already knew what all his presents were, and 2. he used to always do scavenger hunts for our Mom and Dad. It was a really fun evening.

Summer Time! (At least some days)

Summer has finally come to Rexburg...some days. We have really nice weather followed by really bad weather. So we have been having a lot of fun outside when we can. Both of the boys love to be outside, and so do I.

James loves to play in this hole that Doug and Tim dug for a sand trap. He likes to "climb a hill" and if I can't find him, this is usually where he ends up.
Mikes loves to climb stairs. I put him out back and he immediately crawls to the stairs and climbs them (there are only 2). Then he can't get back down so I have to get him down. It gets pretty old getting him down the stairs every 30 seconds so I do everything I can to slow him down, put him in the sand box, on the other side of the yard, or in James' lawn chair...
The other day it was really nice so I loaded up the boys in the bike trailer and rode to the park. Doug and I do this a lot, but he is usually the one pulling the boys. I never realized how hard it is. The park is about 2 1/2 or 3 miles away from our house so needless to say I was exhausted. Then we got to the park and I changed the boys into their swim clothes to play in the splash park and James took off to the playground. So this is what we did instead...
I love when the weather gets warm enough to play outside.

On a side note, we found out today that James was approved for the Katie Beckett program which means we can get some therapies going for him. He already started speech (which we now wont have to pay for) and hopefully tomorrow I can get him signed up for occupational therapy.

James and Mikey

James and Michael are becoming such good friends. Mikey idolizes his brother and wants to do everything he does and loves any attention he gets. Playing magnets on the fridge:

Wearing matching shirts that Grammy bought them:

Playing puzzles at the table:
Watching Mickey Mouse together:
I just threw this picture in because we can now eat corn on the cob...it's James' favorite but he doesn't like to pick it up to eat it.
And we finally solved our 1 car issue. We bought this scooter for Doug to drive to work on Wednesday. On Friday Doug drove it to work for the first time and decided he made a mistake and now we are trying to sell it. The problem, it is a little to small for him to ride with his golf clubs and takes too long to get to work. But James will keep driving it until we sell it. He loves it!

James' World

For the past two months our family has been dealing with some life changing events. We discussed for a while whether we would just keep it to ourselves, tell our immediate family, or share it with everyone. We came to the conclusion since this is such a big part of our lives, and we would probably be posting things in future blog posts, that when we found out for sure what was going on, we would just do a blog post about it so everyone would know and we didn't feel like we had this big secret we were trying to keep from everyone. So what is our life changing news? James has been diagnosed with Autism. Wow, that was a lot harder to type then I thought it would be. Maybe doing this will be a little therapeutic for me.

This may get a little long, so if you are not really interested in reading the rest, don't worry, I am not going to be offended. About two months ago James' nursery leader pulled me aside when I dropped him off. She started asking me if we had him in preschool or anything. Then she reluctantly started telling me about her grandson who had an Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD) and said she noticed a lot of the same things in James. I was pretty caught off guard by this, but didn't doubt what she had said. We had always joked about James' "Autism" his whole life, but I never actually thought there was any truth about it, he just did a few things that were a little autistic. I had read things and thought that it just didn't entirely fit. I shared the information with Doug and we decided to have his 3 year check up about a month early. The next few days were so hard for me, just thinking and worrying. On the morning of the appointment the doctor called in sick! Great, another day of worrying. But it actually turned out perfect, the extra day actually gave me a chance to calm down and be less emotional. As it turned out the Doctor was home sick and decided to read up on Autism because he had a parent in asking questions that he didn't know much about, so it was fresh on his mind.

We told the doctor all our concerns about James as well as what we had heard from others. Our biggest concern was James' speech delay. James talks, but about 95% of what he says is just repeating things he had heard. I learned this is called echolalia and it is a symptom of Autism. The doctor said he would be surprised if James did not have Autism and referred us to several specialists, a hearing screening to rule out hearing loss, a speech therapist, and a Neuropsychologist to get a diagnosis. We had the hearing test, it came back normal just like we thought it would. We set up appointments with the Neuropsychologist, it took a month just to get the appointments set up.

Meanwhile I contacted the school district to try and get things going there. Because the school year is basically over, I met with all of the specialists for the school, they did their evaluations and we wrote James' IEP for him to start preschool in the fall. Overall this process has been slow and frustrating. We just want to know answers and how to help James and it just seemed to take so long.

We finally met with the Neuropsychologist and she asked us questions about James, observed him a little and gave us several evaluations to fill out. She explained her feelings that Autism is over-diagnosed and she would probably give James a diagnosis of PDD-NOS. That sounded good to us, we knew he wasn't severely autistic. A few days later we went in for what was supposed to be several hours of evaluation. James was having a bad day and demonstrated most of his autistic behavior. He wouldn't do anything asked of him and had several meltdowns. So after 45 minutes they told us they had enough information and we could go. As the technician described James as, "being in his own world." a statement I have made several times.

Two weeks later we went in for the official diagnosis: Autism. It was a little hard to hear because we were expecting something less, but at least we are on the right track to getting James help. As she described it to me; it is like James is in a room with no doors, just windows. He can't get out so we need to show him the windows and help him get out of the room. She recommended Speech therapy, which James starts this week, Behavioral therapy, which we can only start if we can get on a Medicaid program, and Occupational therapy, which isn't as important, so we will see how the Medicaid program goes.

During the past two months I have learned so much about James, and things are making more sense. Some of these things are: I now understand why he says "ouch" whenever someone touches him, why he doesn't talk to people, and why he has a hard time interacting with peers. It helps to understand why he has so many tantrums and that time-out and other forms of discipline don't work for him. It is not just because we are bad parents. It makes more sense why he can quote an entire movie, but not answer a simple question of "What do you want for lunch". I also understand better why he wanders and doesn't have to be close to mom or dad, he also is fearless and puts himself in some dangerous situations because of it.

We know that James is going to have a very difficult time, and we are going to have a difficult time raising him. But we have hope that with the right kind of help and guidance from professionals from us he will be able to function normally someday.

I don't know why God decided to give us James, or why James needed to have this trial in his life. But I do know that this was God's will for James and for our family. It was not an accident or a result of anything we have done as parents. We love him so much and are so grateful to have him in our family.

Happy Birthday Michael!

Michael turned 1 yesterday. Isn't he so cute! I can't believe that he is already a year old, we love having this little man in our family.

For his birthday we went to the doctor because my mom was in town to watch James. He was so cute flirting will all the nurses. Here are his stats:

Height: 28 1/2 inches (13th percentile)

Weight: 18 lbs 14 oz (4th percentile)

I can't believe how little he is! James was always skinny but tall, Mikey is just all around small, I love it!

He got to have spaghetti for dinner, it is his favorite. He ate more then the rest of us, it wasn't the best spaghetti we have ever had.
Then James and Dad helped him open presents. He loved playing with toys but wasn't that interested in opening them.
I made Michael a golf ball cake because golf balls are his favorite toy. I ran out of time and it didn't turn out as cute as I wanted but oh well. We had a really busy day, I should have done it the day before.
He was not interested in the cake at all! He just cried and cried, then wanted to be held. So I held him and he still didn't want the cake. I have yet to have a kid act appropriately to their first birthday cake, James also cried at it.
Things about Michael:

• He is so busy, he loves to crawl everywhere, and lately he likes to crawl on his hands and feet(not knees) it is so cute with his little bum up in the air.
• He loves balls, mostly golf balls
• He loves his mom
• He loves bath time and being outside
• He says a few words (tries) mama, dada, gypsy
• He has the cutest big blue eyes I have ever seen
• He likes to dance, at it is pretty cute
• He is the best eater, he eats anything, and a lot more then his brother does