As many of you know, Emmett, currently 4 years old, is a rather extreme perfectionist.  In my experience, this is a fairly common #Autistic trait and from what I understand, it's somewhat sensory related. Coloring for Emmett has been both a blessing and a curse. The reason for that is that until recently - and by recently I mean the past few day- Emmett wouldn't actually color by himself because he was too afraid of going outside of the lines.  Despite lots of time, energy and sanity spent trying to help him understand that things don't have to be perfect, it always ended up in a meltdown. Having said that, over the past few days, Emmett has been coloring with Elliott.  He's actually coloring on his own. This has been…

Elliott and I just arrived home from his classmates Birthday party.  He had so much fun and everyone was really nice and down to earth.  We will have to have a friends Birthday party for Elliott come March. I'm so happy that Elliott had this experience and that it went so well.  They were very understanding of his wanting me to stay and his new food allergies.  Lizze baked Elliott cupcakes for him to take so that he could have something while everyone else did.  Turns out, everyone else had cupcakes as well, so he didn't feel out of place.  Elliott's first Birthday party........check! Elliott was kind enough to pose for a picture, while he was at the party.  :-)

I'm sitting here at the party and Elliott is having a really good time.  The little girl having the party ran up and gave Elliott a big hug when he arrived. I'm so happy for him. 

Yesterday it was in the 60's and sunny. Lizze was comfortable with the weather and that's always a good thing. However, late yesterday afternoon the temperature began to plummet. As I'm writing this, it's currently in the 20's and we actually have snow sticking to the ground.  It's not a ton of accumulation but it's our first snow fall of the year.  Needless to say, Lizze is miserable and the boys are excited.  If you don't like the weather in Ohio, wait 5 minutes.

So last night, Elliott sat in bed and began drawing.  When I asked him what he was doing, Elliott explained that he was designing his new room.  You may remember that we are going to move Elliott and Emmett into Gavin's room because it's bigger and Gavin into Elliott's room because it's smaller. Anyway, went to great lengths to lay things out in a way that allows for his love of Super Mario and Emmett's love of Spiderman. If you look closely, you can even see that he mapped out the electrical floor plan as well. He drew dotted lines to connect the light switch to the light etc. That's pretty darn impressive is you ask me. Our goal is to make the switch by Christmas. However, we still need…

Dear President Obama, I have a suggestion for you.  Instead of spending millions of dollars on your angulation celebration, after spending $1 billion on your campaign, why not do something for the people. I challenge you to go simple on your celebration. We all know you were reelected, do we really need to waste all that money on a party to celebrate that. Your job is to lead our country.  Like any good leader, shouldn't you lead by example? I'm a special needs parent to 3 boys on the #Autism spectrum and trust me when I say that life in not easy for families like mine.  Honestly, I think life is rough for much of the country.  Don't you feel guilty about considering such a lavish celebration for yourself? I…

I wanted to share one of my recent parenting mistakes in hopes that you can learn from my bad example.  It's no secret that I have a soft spot for Elliott.  I have a unique bond with him because not only is he my first born but he almost didn't make it.  He had a really rough start to life and Lizze and I were told to prepare for the worst by the doctors in the NICU. That kind of situation forges a unique bond. With that said, Elliott has been going through a really rough time emotionally and now physically with his new tree nut allergy.  Essentially, he's an emotional wreck and it's breaking my heart.  As Dr. Patti likes to correctly point out, I'm a fixer. When I…