Blog - Page 278 of 1612

Never Underestimate the Power of a Chicken

Never Underestimate the Power of a Chicken by Kristin Jarvis Adams (Based on an article originally published in the Washington Post) When my son was in the third grade, he brought home a baby chick. That day Andrew, who has autism, had his first real conversation. But it wasn’t with me. It was with the little-mottled chick he named Frightful. “You are my new friend,” he told her. “You know my heart.” For the first time, he was able to string words together that revealed his hopes and dreams, and all the scary feelings that had no name. Stuffed into his jacket and zippered up to her beak, the scrappy little hen went everywhere. It was clear that I was no longer the most important chick in town. When I…

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April 5, 2018

Will you accept my #Autism Awareness month challenge?

It's Autism Awareness month once again. I see the Blue lights going up, the Memes spreading across the Internet but I want to make a suggestion to all of you out there. I believe Autism Awareness month has been around since 1970 and it seems that each year we pretty much do the same things. Autism organizations use the month to raise funds for whatever they actually do, some people protest these organizations and others do whatever they feel is right. It's not perfect but the world's still spinning. This year I want to issue a challenge to you and the rest of the Autism community. I want to challenge you to focus on self-care. I know that focusing on yourself can be very difficult, especially if you're a single…

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April 4, 2018

Family Pets / Fish Tank / Gallery / My thoughts

Something cool happened in our tank today

I wanted to take a minute and share this because the boys really thought it was cool and frankly, it kinda was. We're all about our fish tank and we have lots of interesting creatures living in our aquatic ecosystem. We also have two small crayfish in there as well. There aren't any predators and the water is warm, they are growing like crazy. This is the closest I've come to actually catching one of the crayfish shedding its shell. We know they do it and we find the empty shells all the time but we've yet to witness this happening. I was pretty close today and I wanted to share the pictures. Click the image to see the gallery [foogallery id="76838"]

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April 4, 2018

Contributed / Sponsored Post

5 Surprising Benefits Of Playing A Humble Board Game

Do you have a stack of board games at home, that are simply collecting dust? Brush them down, and reintroduce them to your family in order to recapture the magic of your own childhood.

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April 4, 2018

Depression / My thoughts

I’ve been off #Paxil for a month and the nausea is still a problem

It's been about a month since I took my final dose of Paxil. To say it's been an easy process would be a boldface lie. Frankly, it's been an absolute nightmare. Slowly lowering my dose over 90 days was rough but it didn't truly suck until the Paxil was completely out of my system. Having taken my last dose about 30 days ago, the medication has been out of my system for about the last 25 or 26 days. It's a very short half life and that's one of the reasons it's so hard to come off of. For the first week or two, I was completely overcome by emotion. It was like Paxil had been functioning like a dam and when it was gone, the emotions it had kept…

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April 4, 2018

Elliott / My thoughts / School / Today's Victory / Victories

A MAJOR Victory flew under the radar yesterday

Yesterday was a rather challenging day for me personally, but I muddled my way through it. In all the frustration, stress and otherwise chaotic events of yesterday, something didn't get mentioned that should have. For years we've struggled with Elliott and homework. It didn't matter what it was or how much he had, it was a nightmare. There were plenty of times I was hanging on by a thread because the whole homework thing was too much. I don't know what happened or when it actually began but Elliott's attitude towards homework has changed. He does his homework right away and without issue. In fact, lately he's been working on his homework on the way home from school, like you see in the picture above. This deserves to be mentioned…

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April 4, 2018

Autism Parenting Struggles / My thoughts

My kids with #Autism never fell asleep last night

It's been the longest night ever, well at least recently anyway. For the second night in a row, Elliott hasn't slept. Monday going into Tuesday, I think he got about two hours and that's it. He did okay at school the following day but last night was really rough. This time however, Emmett was awake to join him. Elliott never went to bed but Emmett woke up from a nightmare and was too afraid to go back to sleep. When 7 AM rolled around this morning, they were both so exhausted that there was no way we could send them to school. They would be setup to fail and that's not the right move. Both boys went to bed and are currently sleeping. Our goal is for them to make…

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April 4, 2018

My thoughts

Life is NOT easy be we have a great deal to be thankful for

The boys had a pretty good day. They got off to school without much problem. I was pleasantly surprised because Elliott only had a couple hours of sleep. He's been struggling to sleep the last couple nights and we may have to speak with his pediatrician for advice because Melatonin isn't helping. I went back to bed cause I wasn't feeling well, still due to the whole Paxil thing but I felt better when I woke up and was able to get quite a bit accomplished. One of the things I'm really struggling with is taking in enough water, especially since herthis whole Paxil thing. I'm making a concerted effort to fix that but the nausea is pretty rough at times and I don't want to think about eating or…

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April 3, 2018