Thanks to my amazing wife (you can find her at My Life Beyond Labels), I was able to sneak out and hit the track at the park again.  My goal is to get in 15 miles at minimum per week.  Today, I was able to sneak in 3.05 miles in just over 50 minutes.  At around 300 lbs, that's pretty good time.  It's actually a bit slower than usual.  I'm normally doing about 15 minute miles.  I have to lose weight and my goal is to lose at least 40 lbs busy the end of the year.  Getting away is not easy, especially with 3 special I'll needs kids and my wife incapacitated most of the time.  I'm hoping to find a used treadmill at some point so I don't…

I'm totally aware that the meltdowns are not their fault. I also know the difference between a meltdown and a tantrum. What I don't know, is how much more I can take today. Good lord, it feels like it's been one meltdown after another.  Emmett's been a constant stream of screaming and melting down,  over God only knows what.  Trust me, if I could identify the stressor, I would do horrible things to it and make it go away and leave him alone.  Of course, if the stressor is one of the other boys, that would make me a monster so scratch that idea.  The ugly truth is that even though I know, these meltdowns aren't his fault, they are quite literally driving me crazy.  I can feel myself cracking…

Let me just share how the last 12 hours have gone. The Cat Last night,  Lizze and I were watching a movie and we heard this really loud noise.  It sounds like someone was trying to kick in one of the bedroom doors. Maggie and Bella heard it at the same time and they followed me upstairs. To be honest, I don't know what I really expected to find but it was a bit creepy. When I got upstairs, I couldn't see what was going on.  Next thing I know, I see my bedroom door shaking  and I hear this howling.  The dogs were going nuts but I finally found the source of the commotion and shouted for Lizze to come upstairs right away. I wish I would have gotten…

With Gavin being home again after 7 months of staying with his grandparents, one thing is for certain, he has no filter. The filter thing was a problem before but it's definitely a problem now.  The filter I'm referring to, is the thing that stops him from saying every single thing that pops into his head. I'm pretty sure this is a relatively common Aspie trait. Although, in Gavin's case, it's the things that end up coming out of his mouth that's the real problem....and of course the fact that his little brothers are right there to hear it doesn't help either. How many of you experience this missing filter issue? This site is managed via WordPress for Android, courtesy of the @SamsungMobileUS Galaxy Note 2 by @Tmobile. Please forgive…

Emmett is going through something and it's remarkably similar to the terrible 2's. With Emmett, the terrible 2's were awful the first time around.  This isn't any better. He's really struggling right now and my heart breaks for him. The reality is that we are dealing with sensory related issues and there isn't a whole lot we can do to help him.  I have no idea what the triggers are and why he's so upset but he's definitely upset.  He's already been screaming for the last 20 minutes and at the time of writing, it's 7am. While Emmett is definitely paying the higher price, this is destabilizing to the whole family. Now with Gavin back in the mix, we need to keep things as stable as possible.  This site is…

Gavin's been home for 2 full days now and we are already having a few issues.  Gavin's not used to having a lot of rules. In our house, we have to have rules because kids on the Autism Spectrum need ridged routine, firm boundaries and as much predictability as possible. Gavin's already getting frustrated at times because we don't allow him to play Sonic games on his tablet.  For many years,  Gavin was very, very into everything Sonic.  It was so bad that it interfered with everyday life.  We basically had to ban Sonic from the house because Gavin just got way, way to into it and became so incredibly intense, it wasn't healthy.  Since the dawn of the autonomic dysfunction, we have to be extremely careful because the level…

I promised I would share the pictures from our bonfire on Saturday.  Here they are.  There is a bit of a story to go along with the pictures.  You saw from a previous post that Emmett was kind enough to jot down some instructions on how to build a proper bonfire.  We followed them to a tee and everything went well.  At least with the fire.  Somehow,  between the grocery store and home, we lost two packages of hotdogs. We never did find them.  It's kinda a hard to cook hotdogs without hotdogs to cook.  :-( Thankfully, we still had 5 hotdogs in the fridge, so we were able to cook then for the boys.  Of course, Emmett dropped his and the friggin dogs ate it but we had enough…

We had been talking about cooking hotdogs over a bonfire, all day.  All the boys were excited.  Emmett however, wanted to make sure Daddy built the bonfire correctly, so he illustrated it for me.  In fact, he used crayons and construction paper.  :-) When we went outside to set everything up, Emmett proudly carried his instructions, confident that they were the only way to have a successful bonfire.  He's so stinkin' cute.  :-) I got a ton of pictures from the sorta successful mini cookout.  I'll share them in another post. This one is dedicated to Mr. Emmett John.  His artwork deserves it's own post.  :-) This site is managed via WordPress for Android, courtesy of the @SamsungMobileUS Galaxy Note 2 by @Tmobile. Please forgive any typos as autocorrect HATES…