Jayson has been sick all day. His fever was around 103 - 104 all through the day. We've been giving him pedialyte and alternating Motrin & Tylenol every three hours as per the doctor's instruction. His fever finally dropped to 100.4 a little while ago and he is sleeping now. We will probably head to the doctors first thing in the morning so that they can check his ears and lungs. I feel so lousy because he's been crying all day and there's nothing I can do to make him feel better. It took three doses of medicine to get his fever down, that's 9 hours of crying and being yucky feeling. He downed four bottles of pediatlyte so no worries about him being dehydrated. I don't know how he drinks that stuff. All the flavors kinda taste like medicine and they brun a little going down...

I am prepared for no sleep tonight because I know I'll be getting up to check on him constantly. I can't remember a time when he's ever had a fever that high for that long.

At least he is getting better at bedtime. he doesn't kick and scream anymore when we head into his room for the night, so I know he is getting used to sleeping in his bed again. I am so glad for that. He likes to put a "bonus" sticker on his chart when he wakes up in the morning for going to bed nicely the night before.

Well, I hope tomorrow is better and we're not battling a terrible fever again. I keep trying to tell myself fever is good, it's the body fighting infection and all, but it still scares me to watch him crying in pain like that and not knowing what's hurting him. Ugh. I'm gonna try to get some shut eye, but most likely will wind up camping out in the couch watching Juno so that I can fnally take it off the DVR. BTW, season premire of Supernatural was awesome. Dean rocks. =^)

Therapy on Tuesday was a nightmare. It was so bad that it gave me that little extra push I needed to put my foot down and insist on a serious schedule for Jayson. So I went to see his doctor on Wednesday and together we came up with a schedule that is fair to Jayson and will also reinforce the bahavior we want to see. He has to get up at 8:00 every morning and nap again by 12 or 12:30, so that he is refreshed for afternoon therapy. It also helps him to be tired enough to go to bed early. And he's doing all of this in his own bed!! Which is a big change from sleeping on the couch the last six months. We have a reward chart now and he gets stickers on it for meeting all of his goals, which include waking up, taking naps and going to bed nicely as well as brushing his teeth, cleaning up toys and paying attention in therapy. So far so good. The last two days he has napped and slept at night in his room. He has been in a much better mood all day long and his therapist are surprised at the change. He still gives me a little issue with sleeping in his bed, but we made it clear to him that it was no longer negotiable and he seems to be accepting it. I gave him a "Good Dreams Car", which is a gold matchbox car that he holds on to at bedtime. I told him it will send him lots of good dreams and keep all the bad ones away and it seems to be helping.

His ABA yesterday was great. He did everything he needed to and was very interactive with Sophia. Speech today was good as well. It is only a half hour session and I kind of feel like not much gets done during it. I am trying to give the therapist some time to really get into it, since she also works at a school and this is her first week back. One more week and hopefully she will have things worked out better here. I have to remind her to bring my goal calander next week...

We did get some other big news today... first, here is Jayson's reaction:

And the news

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Jayson is going to be a big brother!!!!

It is super super early and I won't even be seeing my OBGYN until Monday, but I took like four of these just to be sure. We are so excited!! We only came to our final decision about having number 2 a few weeks ago, and we kind of expected it to take a couple of months. But it didn't! So we have an appointment with our wonderful OBGYN on Monday morning. It will definetly be too early for an ultrasound but they are going to do the routine bloodwork up and everything. Since my last pregnancy was calssified High Risk from a medical condition I already know there are going to be a lot of precautions this time around. I almost didn't want to tell anyone this early, but I decided no one really reads this and I was going to explode if I didn't say it somewhere!

Anyway, everyone is asleep and I'm going to join them, so until next time, love & light..

Jayson napped in his room by himself today! I am very proud of him! Just finished eating nectarines dipped on vanilla yogurt for lunch and now we are just waiting on his ABA therapist.

I'm still here. Haven't forgotten about the blog or anything but I've been super super sick. I think I have the flu. Jayson has done so awesome with his therapy. I am so so proud of him for all the hard work he has done. He names so many things and has begun to use words more often to express his needs. He even goes through his books and names the pictures and knows some body parts. He is making so much progress and I am so proud of him. He is starting to listen so much better and he understands things so well now. His ABA therapist is so wonderful, he really likes her.

But I am sick so I am going to head off now and relax, but I haven't given up on this thing yet!

Another Day of ABA

It's been a long day. I started out by making eggs in a basket for breakfast, then getting ready for Jayon's therapy. Today was one of the more difficult ones regarding therapy. The therapist made a mistake in the appontment time and was an hour and a half late. Because of that Jayson was just too tired to participate in very much of anything. He wound up falling asleep 20 minutes into the session. On the plus side, it gave me plenty of time to discuss some of my concerns for Jayson with Sophia. I appreciated her willingness to stay around and talk to me even though Jayson was sleeping. I was concerned about not receiving parent training because I wanted to know that the work I do with him at home myself is the right thing to do, so she offered to give me a half hour of parent training on Wednesday. I am glad for that because I will learn the same techniques the threapists are using.

Other than that... I think I am sick. My throat is killing me. I am either sick or suffering a terrible side effect of the off gassing process tempurpedic mattresses go through. The smell is supposed to go away in a couple of days but I laid awake last night just thinking of all the potentially hazardous chemicals I was inhaling all night. I didn't get much sleep.

What else? Mary's birthday is tomorrow. We are stopping by for a bit to drop off her gift, which I am so excited about. We got her a bumbo to help with her PT and I can't wait to give it to her. There will be Aunt Joyce's cake, which is fantastic!

Other than that, I just got Jayson into bed. We read three stories tonight because after the first two he said "book!". How can I say no to that, especially when it is the first time he's ever said it! Now he is sleeping soundly and I probably should be too, except that I am going to try to call Debbie back since I missed her call earlier...

Jayson's words today: Chicken, juice, apple, book, car. help, milk, please, snack (Yay!!)

ABA Therapy Part One and Some New Progress

We are now set up with a speech therapist and ABA specialist for behavioral therapy. We are still waiting to hear from the occupational therapist, but I am grateful to have this much figured out. So far we have speech on Tuesday and Thursday and ABA on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We have playhouse on Wednesday as well. I am hoping the OT takes place on Monday & Thursday. He will have two sessions each day Monday - Thursday but will have a three day break afterwards. I guess we will have to wait and see where the occupational therpist can fit us in.

So Sophia came by for our first ABA session today. Jayson took to her quickly, especially once he saw she had play food and cars. He did well, in my opinion, repeating words like banana (nana) and open for Sophia. We were given a Calendar for this month. Each month Jayson will get a new goal and we have to record how well he does every day. This month his goal is to learn to sound out and repeat words relating to food during mealtimes so that he will be able to better communicate his needs in terms of eating. So each day that he meets the goal by sounding out and repeating various food words we put a check on the calendar. Any day that he doesn't gets a minus and the calendars are used by his service coordinator to track his progress. Of course Jay and I have to work with him constantly to meet the goals. It is nice though because it gives us a "group" of words to focus on which makes me feel like we are taking control of the speech issue instead of being overwhelmed by it.

Today he repeated banana for me (by saying nana). He actually used that one a lot before dinner because I just bought bananas and he loves to eat them. He also said pear and peach when I sat him in front of the fuit bowl to indentify fruit. Later on, during dinner, he asked for a drink and I asked him if he wanted water or milk and he said "juice" which is a big deal to me because he rarely uses a word by himself. Normally he will only repeat a word after someone else says it.

I really feel so much more organized and in control by having a goal and knowing what exactly we need to work on each day. And I am so happy to see him being receptive to repeating the words and even using them himself to indicate what he wants! I think this is a huge step in the right direction!

Besides the therapy today we also had our new mattress and coffee table delivered and I'm glad to have that out of the way. The rest of the day was spent cooking and cleaning up after the furniture delivery. I am exhausted now, and I'm hoping to convince Jayson to sit down to watch a movie with me for a bit before bed. Hopefully it will be an early night (I know I say that every night and it never happens...)!

Good Night!

Why I think the world is ending, and the never ending day...

Today started out good. Jayson got a big surprise when little Miss Lucy, my oh-so-adorable niece popped in for an early visit. They got to spend an about an hour playing before Lucy had to go and Jayson had to get ready for speech therapy.

So after that we began our second speech therapy session, which was short and painless and Jayson seemed to enjoy playing with the therapist and the toys she brought. He really loved the Mr. Potato Head and after buttering Daddy up after work he wound up owning his very own. Jay had a surprise for me as well.. when he came home he announced that he was making dinner tonight. This is where the "I think the world may be ending" bit comes in. I was very surprised, but pleased, and Jay served us a delicious dinner earlier tonight.

I finally got the ABA specialist on the phone and we've worked out a schedule. So now that's two out of three therapists. Jayson gets ABA on Monday, speech and ABA on Tuesday, ABA on Wednsday, Speech on Thursday and... here's my exiting news... Jayson got accepted into Playhouse, which is pretty much the only Mommy & Me playgroup in our area! I was very excited to day to find out that he's not being wait listed. He will be doing that one Wednsday as well, before ABA therapy. So our schedule is pretty full already. We still have to fit in two OT sessions somewhere. The next year is going to be insane.

Anyway, we had to run some errands and fit in food shopping tonight and I am exhausted. Tomorrow is our meet n greet with the ABA specialist and I am having our coffee table and new mattress delivered, so I expect to be pretty busy all day, but I will update when I can!

The Breakfast I Didn't Cook & Speech Therapy Begins

So I woke up today, rolled out of bed and made my way towards the bathroom. About halfway there I realized the house was filled with a buttery, delicious smell. Further investigation led me to the kitchen, where I found this:

Yes, that is Jay making a grilled cheese breakfast. I am unfamiliar with the mayo technique, but I assure you it was quite tasty. This is only the second time I have ever seen Jay cook, so it was definetly a surprise. Oh, and I blurred the edges a bit because that's how things look to me before I've had caffine in the morning.


After breakfast Jay went off to work and Jayson and I went out to get some errands done. After picking up a few household essentials (read: Red Bull) Jayson spotted this lovely toy in the store:

Knowing that we would probably be spending 30+ minutes on line at the bank I told him we could buy it. Turns out this "Dancing Truck" actually lights up and plays some sort of annoying, repetitive techno jingle while boucing up and down. Let's just say there was a collective sigh of relief when we finally left the bank. Unfortunetly I was not part of it because I had to take this toy home with me.


We had our first meeting with the speech pathologist, Doriann, this evening. Jayson was tired and grumpy, so he wasn't interested in interacting with her at first but warmed up towards the end and wound up crying when she left. She is coming back tomorrow evening for his first official therapy session. We are still waiting to hear from the other therapists, which is lucky for Doriann because right now she gets her pick of days.

We decided to take it easy for the rest of the evening. I'm going to pop in a Disney movie and pop us some popcorn so we can camp out in front of the TV and relax a bit. Last night Jayson was up until 3am and somewhere along the way he got his hands on the TV remote and recorded The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. I figure if he's going to fill up the DVR behind my back at least he's choosing good programs to do it with. But hopefully tonight will be an earlier one!

I'll be back around tomorrow, so until then.. goodnight!

Through My Eyes by Thanh Bui

A beautiful song by Thanh Bui that attempts to help people understand what it is like to live with Austism Spectrum Disorder.



Through My Eyes by Thanh Bui

Day One

I am starting this blog as a way to (hopefully) keep in touch with family we don't see often, to let them know how crazy we are what's going on in our lives. Also, I hope this serves a  record of all those little, everyday things I never get around to scrapbooking about.

As I start this I am 23 years old, Mom to an almost two year old monster boy, Jayson, wife to 27 year old marine enthusiest, Jason (Jay). We share our home with a yorkshire terrier who will be three this week, a bearded dragon and a handful of fish. We are avid gamers and generally awesome, fun people and (little known fact) I am, quite possibly, the most awesome person you will ever meet (I'm just kidding... sort of) ;)

Jayson is developmentally delayed, due to an illness. He is starting speech, occupational and ABA therapy in the next couple of weeks. We will have 7 therapy sessions a week, which makes me think our lives are about to get a bit crazier. My goal is to get at least one short entry in here a day so everyone will know how we're doing and so that we have something to look back on years from now when Jayson's big and doesn't believe he ever wanted to spend this much time with us.

Anyway, time to start thinking about bed, but hopefully I'll be back here soon.