Spring is Here!

It seems like spring has taken forever to come.  Last year for Easter our tulips and daffodils were already in bloom and this year they're finally showing up.  I love seeing all the blooms and everything coming alive again.  We went this last week to Longwood to see their Spring Blooms Festival with Shawna and Aubrey.  It was so beautiful!  I'm really going to miss having Longwood as a getaway from the city.

One Year with ASD

This last Friday marked one year from Nathan's autism diagnosis.  What a year it's been.  One thing that scared me when Nathan was diagnosed was not knowing what Nathan's life would be like.  Will he learn to talk? Will he be able to attend regular school?  Will he be able to create friendships?  Looking back now one year later, I couldn't have imagined the progress Nathan has made.  He can say words sponanteously.  He'll follow simple directions.  He's coming out of his shell and interacting more.  He's starting to put together sentences.  That blows me away.  They say that early intervention leads to the best results and from what I've seen with Nathan I'm a believer.  I have high hopes for this kid.

We're all different people after Nathan's diagnosis.  Nathan has obvious changes from all the therapy he's been doing.  But Brad and I are different parents because of Nathan and his autism.  With my background in child development I went into parenthood mindful of the kind of parent I wanted to be.  But that has had to change.  I didn't want Nathan to have an over scheduled childhood and now he does 15 hours a week of therapy.  I didn't want to be a helicopter parent, but the more I engage in his world the more he come into ours.

In some ways it still hurts.  It hurts when I see kids younger than Nathan that can speak better than him.  I marvel sometimes to see parents have perfectly normal conversations with their kids and I yearn so much for a conversation like that with Nathan.  I would love for him to be able to tell me he's hungry or tired or frustrated.  I would love for him to tell me what he's interested in.  He struggles so much to be able to communicate with us and I wish it wasn't so hard for him.

We are stronger for this last year.  We've learned to push for what's best for Nathan.  I've had to fight our case worker to get Nathan's hours increased and to keep therapists.  I've educated myself on autism through books, websites, and workshops.  I've had to speak up and to have an opinion.  I've learned how to be the best advocate for Nathan I can be so that he can have what's best for him.  We've had our patience pushed farther and learned to listen more closely.

Every night this year when we've put Nathan to bed we've sang to him, "I Am a Child of God." The second verse in particular touches close to my heart.

I am a child of God,

And so my needs are great;

Help me to understand his words

Before it grows to late.
Lead me, guide me, walk beside me,
Help me find the way.
Teach me all that I must do
To live with him someday.

While Nathan does have a lot of needs, I feel so blessed to have him in our lives.  We've known from the beginning that Nathan was a special little boy and that Heavenly Father wanted him in our family.  I feel such a responsibility to help him understand and learn.  That responsibility motivates me every day to keep going.

I was recently reading "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.  Frankl quoted a patient of his who had a son with severe disabilities.  She answered his question as to what the purpose of her life was by saying, "And so I have made a fuller life possible for him; I have made a better human being out of my son."  I may not know what Nathan's life will be like, if he'll be able to go to regular school or if he'll make friendships.  But if I have the goal that I can make a fuller life possible for him, to make him a better human being, than that is a worthwhile purpose for my life.

I have had one of my questions answered about Nathan's life.  When Nathan was first diagnosed with autism, I wondered if I would ever hear Nathan say, "I love you."  I've wanted to hear him say that more than anything else.  A few weeks ago we were once again putting Nathan to bed.  And for the first time Nathan told us, "I love you," on his own.  Brad, Nathan, Evelyn, and I were hugging at bedtime and Nathan just said it. And it made my heart want to burst.  This year has been hard.  Really hard.  But to hear, "I love you," from Nathan makes it all worth it.

Please Touch

Last week our friends invited us to go with them to the Please Touch Museum (#13.)  I've wanted to take Nathan for a while but I've been concerned it might be a little much for him.  I've heard it can get pretty loud and overwhelming.  I didn't want to have to pay for a ticket only to have Nathan go into sensory overload right after we get there.  I was so glad that our friends invited us to go and get us in with their pass.

For the first hour, Nathan loved it.  There were cars, space ships, trains, and motorcycles.  What more could any little boy want?  There was so much to play with and Nathan loved exploring.  Jake liked to show Nathan around to all of his favorite things and Nathan liked having a buddy.

But after that first hour, poor Nathan got so overwhelmed.  There was several school field trips that day and it was loud and crowded.  He was playing in the grocery store and there was so many kids around him that Nathan bolted out of there screaming.  He ran into a less crowded room and when I got to him he said, "I'm sad.  Big tears." I had looked online before going and they said that they had a quiet room set up everyday for kids to go to calm down.  So I asked a staff member and they didn't have one set up yet.  A manager finally had us go to a conference room. Weird.  Once Nathan calmed down Evelyn wanted to eat, but refused to.  So we called it a day.

I'm glad we gave it a try and I think on a less crowded day Nathan would have loved to see the rest of the museum.  It was lots of fun to see our friends and have Nathan and Jake play together!  We'll miss them once we're both done with dental school!

Evelyn at 2 Months

- This little girl is so happy.  She's usually content to look around and coo.  But if you give her your time she's tickled to interact with you.  Evelyn loves to coo and talk to someone.
- Her 2 month stats: 13 lbs, 3 oz (83rd percentile), 23.5 inches long (87th percentile), and 39 cm head circumference (65th percentile.)  She's growing up too fast!

- She's an AMAZING night sleeper.  Usually in the 11 hour range.  She goes to bed around 7:30 and she's waking up around 6:30.  She's sleeping through the night at 2 months old!  I don't know how we got so lucky, but we're very happy we all get a good nights rest.
- Now in the daytime, sleep is a different story.  She'll take maybe a 45 minute long nap.  Which would be ok, but she wakes up still tired and just wants to rocked back to sleep.  And she takes forever to rock to sleep.  I could get her completely asleep and she'd pop back awake as soon as I laid her down.  So we did a little sleep training and now she can put herself to sleep.  She still wakes up about 45 minutes into a nap, but she can usually get herself back to sleep.

- I love watching her when she starts kicking when I have her on the floor.  Evelyn will get a rhythm going and be rocking her whole body.
- She only poops about every 4 days, but when it comes you better be prepared.
- Evy had a clogged tear duct this month.  Her poor little eye was so gunky and red.  Lucikly it cleared up pretty quickly.

- Super happy for bath time.  Super unhappy about getting out of the bath.

- This little girl is so tall that she has to wear 3-6 month dresses otherwise they aren't long enough to cover her diaper!
- Likes to fall asleep in her carseat.

- Takes her vitamins like a champ.  Nathan would projectile vomit every time we gave them to him so its nice not getting vomitted on just for feeding Evy her vitamins.
- Evelyn hardly ever spits up.  I think she's maybe done it 4 or 5 times in her whole life.
- Went on her first visit to the zoo.  She slept the whole time in the wrap, except for when she wanted some lunch.
- Evy does NOT like to wear headbands.  I keep trying to get her to wear them cause they're just so cute, but I usually give in to the crying.

- Evelyn has the best smile and she is such a happy influence on our home.  We can't get enough of this cute and smily little girl.

Happy Easter

Nathan & Evy were spoiled with their Easter basket.  Both Grandmas sent them Easter packages and they loved their gifts.

Nathan had been practicing finding eggs all week in preparation for the real deal and loved finding eggs.  When we had our real egg hunt outside, Nathan was ecstatic.  He loved running around to find the eggs.

Later that afternoon we had our friends, the Murphy's, come over.  We "watched" the last session of General Conference together, but really we ended up watching the kids a lot of the time.  Nathan was having so much fun playing with their 7 month old, Aubrey, which makes me really excited for when Evy gets a little older and can interact more with her brother.  After conference we had a big easter feast.  It was nice having an evening with the Murphy's to catch up.  Both of our families are graduating and moving on to new things.  We are going to miss them a lot!

Happy Easter!

Easter Eggs

Nathan was so excited to color easter eggs.  He wanted to help with everything.  He was in awe when we dropped in the color tablets and seeing the vinegar change color.  Nathan loves to color with white crayons, but gets so frustrated when he can't see it on his white paper.  So he loved coloring on the eggs and being able to see what he was drawing.  I loved watching his face when we'd pull out an egg out of the dye.  He was so proud of himself.