Junior Preschool

So Dalton just had his last Jr preschool class.  I think he was the youngest in his class. The class was advertised for 3-4 yo - at least in the group run by his speech therapist, but she wanted him in it. 

They did lot of cute art projects & he learned his shapes fairly solidly in the class.  He knew his shapes somewhat before hand, but now he is a pro - we are still working on him naming them.  We have to pretty much say "where is the..."  then he will point & say it.  If you were to say "what is this" he will answer "this".  Our therapist recognized this a few weeks back & has started to incorporate yes/no question into his therapy.  She said that is the easiest to learn then they move on to "who/what/were/when questions.

His class was made up of 6 or 7 kids who had mostly speech delays, so although he was younger he was fairly level with most of the class speech wise. 

I also learned that while he reacts to auditory stimuli (mostly loud groups) at first in group he warms up & interacted nicely!  We know he reacts to over stimulation of audio input, but it was nice to have some proof that others see it too & that we arent the only people that see the symptoms/characteristics of autism in our son.  It is hard to live with family & friends who see nothing more than a speech delay...

Anyhow, also after the last class he had speech like the past few weeks.  And I was reminded again of what I will have to start doing.  In early to mid september I need to contact my local school & get him evaluated for 3 yo preschool & get him an iep.  He should qualify for both speech delay & autism dx, but we will see how this all goes.  I am nervous of him borderline not qualifying.  I cant believe my baby will be possible starting school in january.  And yet I am still waiting to freaking get added to the waiver list.  Folks we are 7+ months into waiting to be qualified to be approved for ssi to be added to the waiver wait list.  Average time for this is 2-3 months.  Our worker is of NO USE - or at least it feels that way.  She always just says she has nothing new for me when i ask status & has no info of people higher up I can contact about it... because really at this point it is crazy & i am ticked.  Because once we get approved to be on the waiver wait list it can take up to 2 years just to "get your number called" so to speak to get therapy started.  Ugh so aggravated with it!

Well i guess this post got a little ranty! Ha!

The other "A" word

So forgive me!  I really didn't blog much when Greysen (Tbug) was in our home, since we were busy with a lot of medical stuff for both kids. 

We were placed with Greysen very shortly after Dalton's first birthday. Greysen was a 1 month old & yes I know... my kids are super close, yup i know.  We were told in broad strokes of what Greysen had medically wrong, but finite details were never covered.  We were only the foster parents & the interested relative was going to take him between 1-3 months from then...

G got really sick at about 3 months & even had a 2 night (ehm technically 3 if you count the fact we didn't get a room until 2am the next day after we came to the er.) hospital stay.  A crap load of tests were run. We were asked if he had brain abnormalities, we said yes, but we didn't know what, which is the worst things to say about your kid... but we really didn't know. Anyhow test after test came back normal, they did a sedation mri after tracking biomom down.  We got clearer info about his brain. Gotta say we were kinda scared for his future & we still are.  Bottom line, one area of his brain has more little ripples than it should. He has two other minor brain malformations that really shouldnt effect him. But he does have a higher than normal risk of seisures - so we are careful!

That same summer (last summer) we had questions about Dalton & our pediatrition was in disbelief of what I was thinking. But being the people who know our son best, we went and got him evaluated.  We had discussed a lot privately & even taken M-Chat test/evaul in our home before getting him evaluated.  Yep he came back with an autism dx. And a little higher on the spectrum than we thought.  We knew in our hearts he was autistic before we were told so.  While we "knew" it, it was pretty hard for someone to actually tell us as such. 

Many people think we are crazy. Many people do not see how he can have this diagnosis - he looks perfect after all!  Autism for some is a somewhat hidden disorder.  It effects the brain & if you don't know what you're looking for you don't see it. 

Some things that Dalton does is considered "stimming."  He flaps his arms while excited, lines things up, needs to kick/jump to wind himself down, and others.  He is a bolter, gets quiet & non verbal in somewhat loud environments (think a bday party), stripping clothes often because of the tag-is always irritated with tags. Refuses toothbrushing (unless it is on his terms ...doesnt work well)  Hates hair combing, prefers to avoid body contact w/ others & more.  With all that makes him unique, I wouldn't change him for the world, I love him dearly.

Our biggest challenge now with him is  getting him services.... We currently are waiting to wait....
So I will be trying some at home ideas to improve his speech & help him with sensory issues.  Our short term goal is to get his iep started in fall & hopefully get him enrolled in school in January.

Kinda jumping around.  After we got Dalton diagnosed we switched to a new (awesome) speech therapy program that we had finally gotten Greysen into.  The months kept ticking along. Birthmom was not involved in the case for Greysen at all, but she kept mentioning guardianship -that she is willing to give us gaurdianship.  That doesnt exactly work for her to do that for us as we didnt know her before his birh as i guess that is part of the rule of who can get gaurdianship.  Anyhow, we went to court in late 2013 with the hopes she would voluntarily give up her rights. It was highley thought she would.  She didn't.  We went back to court late january 2014 kind of unsure how the case was going to progress. Sure enough, she decided to put Greysen first & surrender her rights.  We were unsure if she would appeal, but she didn't. So we adopted our son Greysen in early april & life has continued ticking on!

Very shortly after we adopted Greysen we closed our home & license.  I have a different perspective going through this than I did when I started.  I personally think in 5-10 years from now, we will open our home again, but even if we don't I will volunteer or be involved somehow in the foster system.  It is one screwed up system, but I was blessed with two little boys.

Ok so were is this blog going? I started this about when we started the adoption journey & now I am done.  Well I hope to bring daily life to this blog. I hope to share some ideas we are using for the kids to help them learn. I hope to bring the ups & downs of life with 2 special needs kiddos!  Stay tuned :)

The speed of molasses

So here I am today, prepping for a Christmas gathering turned bday party turned back to Christmas party. All because of a little boy named Sprout.  It has been one roller-coaster ride of a week emotions wise. I am back on the upswing of this roller coaster. Things are looking goodish. As good as we could hope.  His chance of coming home to us at any point is 50%. The reason it is so "low" is because it all depends on whether or not we hear if current Fmom is going to fight license revocation.  We were supposed to hear yesterday, but our guy hadn't heard anything and wasn't able to get a hold of supervisor yesterday. From the brief convo hubby had with the guy at 5pm, he didn't sound like he was about to retry calling her, said he is in his office on monday.  So we are hoping to hear something.

Last week was bad, we were so excited to be welcoming Sprout into our house. Monday the case seamed to have changed-or maybe our case manager said it in a way that lead us to believe that. We didn't hear from him till wednesday-and all he sent was an email saying "no news yet."  My mom called later that day to get Christmas gift advice. She asked about the case I told her no news.  Thursday we had thought we lost him. We just wanted to hear something. Yes/no. We were fine with saying goodbye to this boy we didn't really know.  Thursday my mom called asking more xmas stuff. Said something about our case (can't remember exactly... but by then I just needed to let the tears out anyhow...) and I just started crying on the phone. My mom didn't get why I was upset, her comments really didn't comfort me either.  She doesn't really know what this process is like, she knows what we tell her, but emotionally she doesn't know what it feels like.  Emotionally it is like finding out your pregnant with a home test, going to the doctor and "oh maybe your pregnant. I'm leaning towards yes. Oh but this test came back bad. I donno you might be pregnant"  That is as close as I can come to an explanation.  It is hard. I am emotionally attached to this little boy. I want what is best for him.  But at the end of the day it is hard.  So I cried, let it out, moved on.

Now we are back at our holding pattern, waiting for news. I am still just wanting to know yes/no-but a different yes/no. Is she gonna fight it? Are we gonna get him?

Hoping to get off this roller coaster one way or the other this week-we will see...

Dear Sprout

I have been thinking about you alot. I can't believe I have thought so much about a little boy I haven't met or have seen a photo of.  Things seam to be changing.  That or we are reading to much into what our worker said.   We hope we get to meet you, but ultimately we want what is best for you little man!   We know that if your pulled from your foster home you'll have a hard time adjusting. We know you wont trust us. We are willing to endure these if we are lucky enough to care for you.  I have been praying for you, praying that God would do what is best for you.

I am having a hard time waiting to find out either way, having been bugging the hubbs so much about what he thinks. I think he is trying to tell me what I want to hear, but really I want to know what he thinks is going to happen.  He has thought that we probably won't get you, but has also put our chances at 50-75%... so I donno.   We hope to hear tomorrow... our guy said at earliest it would be tomorrow..... so we are crossing fingers & toes!

What is told does not equal Actuality...

Hmmph-where do I start. First off I really need to work on not being such an open book, and so willing to tell people were we are at.  Now if this doesn't go through, what will I say. OH MAN!  So hubby called Chris to get some more definite info-which let me tell ya... that is one hard thing to get.  I understand why... but I might want some info about why it is taking longer.  I know ultimately it is for Sprout's best interest to for sure decide what needs to be done instead of just making willy nilly decisions.

The low down is our worker said last week that it is 95% certain they are pulling Sprout. Now we hear that it is undecided and we wont know any more until wednesday. Great..    I know they are tryint to choose what is best for Sprout, but it is hard to know that you got a few things for a little boy that we may never meet.

All I can do is pray. Pray for what is best for Sprout...