Another Quilt, another gift finished just in time

I finished this quilt on 5pm the night before we would see Maude, Evan's music therapist right before Christmas. I didn't think I would make it. Maude is a very special person, always helping us fight to get the best for Evan. I wanted to make her something very special to show her how much she means to us. Thank you Maude for all that you do to help Evan.

Merry Christmas and fun in the snow

Merry Christmas to everyone. Emma and Evan had a really fun day. We wish you all a very Happy New Year too.

Evan's Surgery Today

Evan had surgery early this morning to cauterize his nose and also to clean his ears from wax that had decreased his hearing significantly. Well, things went well in the nose but the ears I think will always be a problem area.

Evan's right tube had to be replaced and the doctor noted that there was a great deal of scar tissue so he didn't know how much the tube would help to improve the hearing in that ear. Should I mention that this is his good ear! The left ear has a major perferation, or rupture. He did not replace the tube and is willing to give his eardrum upto a year to heal itself before he would do a skin graft to repair it with surgery. That just seems like such a long time for a non-verbal four/almost five year old to wait to hear better. The doctor wants to see us in a month to check how the hearing is. He thought hearing aides might be an option if it doesn't look good. UGH! I feel like we have just stepped back in time by two years since back then we thought he might need them.

Evan does seem to be in good spirits and is playing nicely after a long nap this afternoon.

Sue

PS, I forgot to mention that they drew blood to see if Evan has a clotting disorder with the severe nose bleeds and how much his ears bleed after surgey each time. Please pray that this is not the case. This poor little boy doesn't need any other issues.

Emma's Second Meet

Emma had her second gymnastics meet this past Friday. She did well but still did not qualify for State, but the third time will be the charm. We are so proud of her. One of the other mom's on our team is a professional photographer and took this cool shot of her and many more. Thanks Jennifer. I have tried several times to upload some of the short videos of her routines with out success. Maybe someday.

Emma's Scores:

Beam: 7.10
Vault: 8.80
Floor: 7.90
Bars: 8.05

Sue

The Diagnosis

Lately this cute little boy does not want to be upstaged by his big sister. These are just a couple of the shots in which Evan didn't want me to take pictures of Emma with out being included. He loves to run in front of the shot. As is saying "what about me?".

These last few months have been very difficult for our family. Evan's behavior has been even more challenging. We have had several doctor's appointments in the last few weeks and all the doctor's agree. Evan is AUTISTIC! He now has a diagnosis. While it is very upsetting, it is nice that it is finally out there and almost three years of stepping around that diagnosis is over. Four doctor's have agreed. Yesterday we went to Shriner's for a behavioral exam and IQ test. The doctor thinks that Evan is a mild to moderate Autistic and has a borderline mental retarded IQ. She also mentioned that she thought if we could get him to sit longer to work on the IQ test that he would have scored higher. He just struggled to keep focused for the two hour exam.

This is still good news. Last week at Evan's parent teach conference I was told that Evan will be tested at school and would most likely be labeled as severely mentally retarded since a good portion of the testing is verbal. As you can imagine, I was DEVISTATED! Now I am only mad at the schools inability to administer a test for a non-verbal child that doesn't take that into consideration. UGH! This information will determine his Kindergarten placement. Again I was told that he would most likely be put into a Life Skills class since he won't probably be a functional adult so it was more important to teach him daily skills. What do they think that I am working on everyday at home.

I am hoping that U46 will now look at the testing that Shriner's took yesterday and at least consider it for Evan's placement next fall. I am now looking into other options even if that means moving into a better school district. Not the option I want to consider monetarily but if needed we will seriously consider it.

I will keep you updated as more information comes our way.

Sue

Emma's first Gymnastics Meet

level four team with coaches

team leo
team warm up

stretching before the meet

the hardware afterwards

A few weeks back Emma had here first gymnastics meet. She did such a good job. I was so very proud of her. I have waited to post in hopes that someone got some good shots of her but I don't want to wait any longer. Here are her scores.

Beam: 7.0

Floor: 7.4

Bars: 8.4 - 4th place

Vault: 9.0 - 6th place

Way to go Emma!

Here next meet is on December 4th. I will let you know how she did much sooner.

Sue

Happy Halloween

Halloween started off a little scarier than we had planned. After a week with two kids having H1N1, trick or treating was to be our first outing since the previous Saturday.

At 8:35 while I was on break at Target, Emma called and told me that there was blood everywhere and Daddy is laying on the floor. I asked her if she called 911 and she hadn't so I told her to do that and I left work immediately. Once getting home with the ambulance only two minutes behind me I arrived to find Evan on the bathroom floor with a nose bleed. Doug who is very nervous around blood was white as a sheet but feeling better. Evan had a nose bleed for almost a half an hour and had lost quite a bit of blood. He and Daddy were very scared. The parimedics decided to take Evan to the ER to be sure that his palate hadn't ripped and also to help stop the nose bleed. Doug and Emma would come later to pick us up. The parimedics did offer to have an ambulance come for Doug since he was so very white and shaky but he declined. Evan and I were only at the hospital for an hour. Hopefully he will not have this happen again. Our house looked like a crime scene and can never be luminoled or we will be in big trouble. :) What a big girl Emma is. I am so very proud of her.

Trick or treating was much more laid back. We did a few practice runs with Evan since he still doesn't really grasp what this is all about. I think after the first six houses he finally got it and enjoyed it. Shaking the bucket was also a big hit. Emma and her friends Nick and Daniel had a great time. Bedtime came early (7:00 pm with the time change).

Evan's practice run. "Hey what's going on?"

the pumpkin and gymnist on their practice run

Nick, Daniel and Emma

hot chocolate after is a real treat

Emma and Daddy

Swine Flu

Emma has swine flu. The poor girl is so sick. Hopefully she will be better soon. The doctor said to plan on her missing the whole week of school though. Please keep her in your prayers for a speedy recovery.

Thank you,

Sue

Yearly Gotcha Day Celebration

Last Saturday we celebrated our 6th Gotcha Day with our adoption group. Sadly, two of the families were missing this year but we still had a great time. It is so much fun to see how much the girls have changed over the year. Emma is the only one in her group that hasn't lost any teeth yet. They all played so well together and had fun with the many activities that Mrs. Hurst had planned.

Pumpkin Painting

Face and Arm Painting

Yummy Gotcha Day Cake

Evan's favorite part!

Every year we have a professional photographer come to take pictures. He takes group pictures of the girls and then will take individual family pictures. He prints them out and gives them to you on the same day. He is just great. You can truly see how much the girls have changed having the pictures every year. What a blessing they all are to us.

My two cuties! Evan would look everywhere but at the camera.

Ba Ba, Jie Jie, Ma Ma and Di Di

A Stitch of my time...

As you know, once you have kids your previous hobbies usually get pushed to the back burner. Well mine certainly did. Last fall I started a quilt for a very special person to me, Cheryl Denz. She is a social worker that I started seeing with Evan while he was in early intervention. She specializes in behavior therapy and working through issues that come up when you are raising special needs children. The state pays for the therapy services and charges you a fee on a scale based on your income every month. Way less than the typical therapy costs for sure.

When Evan aged out of early intervention at the age of three Cheryl offered to continue seeing me at no charge until the end of the year. Remember, his birthday is in the middle of March so this was a huge burden taken away from me since paying for speech and OT weekly was going to be a huge burden for Doug and I. I was going to have to put my needs aside again with out her help. What a blessing she has been to me it's difficult to put into words. Adopting Evan and raising him has been the most difficult thing that I have ever done in my life. Cheryl has helped to make daily life a lot easier for me with her helpful suggestions and wisdom but mostly just listening to me express my feelings and telling me that they are normal and excepting them.

In March when I got laid off, I did have to quit seeing Cheryl. I am still at her office twice a week for Evan's music therapy and his music and play group. I also know that she is only a phone call a way. That is just the kind of person that she is and I am so lucky to know her.

So, back to last fall. I started a quilt for her to try to express my gratitude for her kindness. My sewing machine broke and needed several hundred dollars to repair it. Which we did. Then time got away from me and needless to say my free time evaporated when we added four additional therapies a week for Evan. Cheryl's quilt was not finished in time for Christmas, or in March when I had to stop seeing her. Finally last month, when Doug was on vacation, I took a vacation from driving Evan to school, picking him up from school, driving him to therapy appointments and driving Emma to gymnastics. You cannot believe how much time I had on my hands! I was able to spend hours each day working on the quilt. Below you will see the finished project. I actually had to quilt it as well since paying for someone else to do that is very expensive. This this date I have only quilted table runners. It was quite a challenge but I am so happy with the final product.

Cheryl liked it too. I am so glad. I hope that it show her just how much her kindness has meant to me and my family. Thank you Cheryl. We love you!!!

Sue

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy Birthday Mom! I hope that you have a great day and many more birthdays to come. We love you.

Gotcha! 6 Years Later.

Six years ago Doug and I met this shy, sad yet beautiful little girl of 15 months. It was the happiest day of our lives. It has truly been a blessing getting to know this little girl who is no longer shy or sad but full of life. I can't wait to see what the future brings. Thank you God for the most precious of gifts!

Evan's first playdate

This is Evan and Lilly. They have become friends at their Music and Play group. So we thought that we would see how they would play outside of the group. Since both of them have some social play issues they mostly parallel played or played separately. I think that they both had fun though. Evan was kind enough to share his drink with Lilly. She is patiently waiting for her turn before us mommies put a kabash on their sharing.

Lilly, Brett and Emma eating their fun snack that Chrissy designed for them to create and eat.

The fun halloween snack. 1 oreo cookie. 4 pretzel sticks broken in half and two chocolate chips for eyes. Yum!

Evan was amazing at playing with the drum set. Enough to get a set at home? I am not sure, do they come with earplugs? His music therapist recommended a drum set to me a few weeks ago and he really did have fun. I will have to think about it some more.