Not a day goes by that I am not in love with my kiddos. Kaytlin shows more and more signs of the delays and comprehension issues, but on the flip side, not a day goes by that I don't want to show her more and more that I love her. Kaytlin was in a car wreck with her dad and brother back in November. She has developed an anxiety of riding in cars, luckily not one she is actually aware of anymore, but her physical signs show her mind is aware of it. When we get in the car her thumb goes directly in her mouth and she rubs her jacket or shirt or whatever is there between her thumb and fingers.. God Bless her I understand why, but holy smokes that sound is like nails on a chalkboard! The car insurance is going to have to pay out a lot more than they realized and we have settled on all but her. You know it isn't about the money but if because of stupidity this happened to my baby, you know someone has to pay.. I would much rather her not have this anxiety issue.

5 years old...wow

I took Kayt to a pediatric neurologist Friday, February 3, 2012 and after speaking with her for about 5 minutes he said, " Well she is definitely on the spectrum, no doubt about that. Luckily it is such a broad spectrum and she is on an acute portion of it." Hehe he said my girl was cute...lol But seriously I guess there is always that part of me that is waiting for a doctor to say oh michelle it is all in your head, she is just fine! I mean seriously I would rather say OH I WAS WRONG, than to tell someone that I know my baby has autism. I know that we all have a struggle as parents already, but to add on top of that the fact that there is such a struggle with every day things makes it even harder.
The doc did give me a little advice that may help others also! HE said with trying to teach our children things that others will find something they just do we have to go about it differently. For an example with an autistic child you cannot just turn their attention on something else, and I found out us trying different techniques is what is causing our efforts to be fruitless. He said no matter what we have to stay consistent with what we are doing for example if we take her to the room after she plays in the dogs water then we have to do it that exact same way in order for her to stop doing it. To her, even though she has trouble connecting the punishment to the result you make it more of them going together.. So you keep it the same way every time, however, if you do it a different way that one time even after doing it 30 times that will hurt the effort and will be like starting all over again! It makes soooo much sense! We have just been ruining all of our efforts! Sabotaging ourselves! Ugh that was soooo sucky to kknow that if someone could have told us this long ago we prob could have saved a lot of frustration! So, this is our next thing to try :)

Okay so now to speak on where she is at this moment in life. Kaytlin is doing quite well, she is able to count to 20 with no problems if it is in school, so like she connects that and school and can do it well. If she is not in school she tends to miss a few numbers here and there, I don't think it is as much of pulling my leg as it is the place with the action. She can recognize K for her name but that is it so far. She recognizes her name when she sees it all together, but not if you ask her to find the letters individually without having just those letters out.

Kayt turned 5 this past Jan 22, we had a wonderful turnout for her birthday party! She loved having so many people here for her.. She got tons of Barbies :) Today we got her brother a bed and put it in her room, we are going to try to let them room together now that he is big enough to get me if something is going wrong.

Set back time again

We haven't had a mental set back like this in a very long time. Kaytlin is having a lot of times where she is just completely zoned out, I know that a lot of us zone out a bit, but for her its different and lasts a long time over and over right after she is snapped out of it. We were at soccer the other day and she usually respondes when her coach talks to her, this time she was so zoned out that he had to call her 3+ times and actually touch her for her to realize he was talking to her.. She kept sitting down on the field forgetting she was playing and would just pick grass.. She has been having a lot of breakdowns again. I held her yesterday for kicking her brother, well actually first I tried to put her in time out on the front porch because we were all outside and she freaked (she usually doesn't) and so I picked her up and put her on my lap and it was a total breakdown tears and everything.. screaming kicking you name it.. This hasn't happened before like this, especially if I pick her up and hold her so she won't hurt herself on the concrete porch from the kicking and stuff.. She has also starting having pee come out on her panties 4+ times a day, this hasn't happened since the last time I worked, and nothing has changed so I don't know what triggered this misfiring in her brain this time.

Why is it that just when we think things are going so well our babies our love our wonderful beautiful children have a set back like this. I am very thankful she is verbal and high functioning, but that doesn't mean that I don't feel bad for her when she is so lost and confused like she has been lately.

I love you so much Kaytlin you are my beautiful daughter and if I could I would take all the pain in the world away.

My thoughts, my fears, my blessings

I am watching a great episode of Dr Phil today on my DVR about children that are having outbreaks etc and the thing these kids have in common is that they do have autism however were not diagnosed earlier. They are the age of my friends children that have violent outbreaks etc, 8, 9 years old. The biggest thing is they don't know how to control their anger and they dont know how to deal with the anxiety. It worries me that Kaytlin may be there one day because her issue is not comprehending a lot of things that children her age comprehend. I guess I get into a lull where things seem much better and we have a better handle on things and I forget what can happen if I don't stay up on the certain discipline etc. I find myself in that lull and realizing I need to make sure to find things out now in case I need them later. I love my daughter so much and the other day while we were at soccer practice I realized that she still needs to be told things one step at a time as well as shown what exactly to do in each step.. then when we were at mcdonalds a classmate that is in there for developmental delay was able to comprehend everything I was talking to him about and I realized even more how much she prob is not getting what I am asking of her, and it makes me feel bad when I get frustrated because she doesn't deserve me getting frustrated and forgetting that she doesn't get it. It's too easy to forget, its hard to work.

kayt did so well tonight at her first soccer practice! everytime she kicks in the air her feet about hit her nose lol

Terrible 4's

Man are we ever going to get out of the terribles lol.. Hit them at 2 and they seem to never end! They cancelled Kaytlin's soccer practice today due to storms, that means she is only going to have 2 practices before her games. She is really excited about playing though! I cannot wait to see her out there playing I know she is going to love it. I took her and Robbie to a playdate yesterday at Jump N Play they had a blast. We ran into some people we hadn't seen since Easter of last year and the 3 of us and our kiddos went on to McDonalds after we were done playing. Kayt helped another little girl to go to the top of the play area because she was scared, it was so sweet. Then she walked her back down the way they went up because the little girl (Reese) was too scared to go down the slide, I was so proud of her! She is such a caring and loving person, I bet she will be in teaching or something like that when she gets older, she loves to help so much. Then Reese was at the top another time and crying so I asked Kayt to go and get her and she rushed in there and up to her, it was sooo sweet.

It's so funny when anyone asks Kayt how old she is, she still answers two. I don't know how to help her understand that she is 4, even throughout her whole 3's she still said 2. Robbie can tell you his and her age which is pretty awesome since he just turned 3 in March. I'm kinda glad I will be going to school this summer because I think her and I would irritate each other if we had to stay home the whole summer together lol. She told me this morning that she was glad I wasn't going to work because she liked that mommy was home. She keeps telling me she doesn't want to go to school because she wants to stay home with mommy.

i am so blessed and love my little girl soooo much! Thank you Lord for blessing me with 2 beautiful children that I have more love and patience for them than I ever thought possible.

Locks that work!

Sooooo glad that school is back in session! I love my daughter but she drives me nuts when she is with me 24/7 for days on end, like spring break. She has been doing really well and her teacher says that she behaves well and plays really well with others, I wish the same were true here at home. We recently upgraded all of the locks on cabinets etc because we are so frustrated with constantly having to get on her about getting into cabinets and in the refidgerator. We felt like we just didn't know what else to do so I spoke with her ped about what options we had and she gave us a few. The last straw was when I got home from delivering papers to find most of the food from the fridge, including eggs, bacon bits, all the fruit and veggies, plus more scattered all over her brother's room. The eggs were broken perfectly on some and the yolk still in tact, pretty impressive if they weren't on the carpet. The doctor told us about magnetic locks and finding an actual padlock for the fridge. I went online to amazon.com and found a padlock and it works great! Not only did we not have to drill into our fridge, the sticky stuff doesn't come off easy so she can't pull it off! If this is something you need here is the link to it: Black & Gray (Two Tone) Refrigerator Lock with Padlock
We also found some magnetic locks for the cabinets and you take the handles off and there is another magnet that you use to open the cabinets, these work wonderful also! Cabinet Locks: Magnetic Tot Lok Starter Set . These two things have saved us so much energy wasted on having to continuously get on her about getting into these things, AND no more eggs on the carpet lol.
I should mention we did have the regular cabinet locks, which she learned to push down and open the cabinets easily, and the fridge lock from walmart that just slid in and she learned how to open it, then started tearing them off the fridge and freezer.