Does this make me the monster I feel like I am?

I'm going to cut to the chase. Putting things bluntly, Gavin is driving me absolutely crazy and I'm not as patient with him as I should be or as much as he deserves. He's constantly asking me the same questions and sharing outload, every thought that pops into his head. It's exhausting, frustrating and overwhelming. I used to be so patient with him in this regard and would listen to every word that came out of his mouth. Over time, it's chipped away at me and as Gavin's overall cognitive ability suffers, the constant talking increases. Getting him to do one or two step tasks requires multiple attempts and a great deal of coaching. I've no question in my mind that he's doing the best he can. I also know…

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Emmett’s Martial Arts Tournament Results (Tons of Pictures AND Video)

It's been a long day, but I've finally recovered enough to write this post. I'm going to keep this brief and let the pictures/videos do the talking. ☺ Emmett had his martial arts tournament on Saturday morning and it was a pretty awesome experience. I had originally thought this was going to be something that wouldn't have any actual competition but I was wrong. There was no sparring or contact anything, but they did compete. Everything they did was scored by the judges and the highest score won. He competed in the Empty Hand Kata and the Weapon Kata. I'm super excited and incredibly proud to share that Emmett took first place in both competitions. He had the highest scores of anyone who competed today and there were a ton…

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I’m really pushing myself today

We leave for Emmett's martial arts thing in about an hour. I'm absolutely not feeling well and I just want to go back to bed. Obviously, that's not an option. I'm going to have to really push myself this morning. I know how important this is to Emmett and I will not be the reason he doesn't make it there. My hope is, after I get moving around a bit, I'll begin to feel better. I'm so excited for Emmett and I want today to be all about him.

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I have an exciting announcement

So this is pretty exciting. Emmett will be in a martial arts tournament tomorrow morning up in Akron. Every year at the end of the school year, the school invites the kids to participate in a martial arts tournament. In previous years, the tournament was held in Columbus, Ohio and that was a bit too far away for our guys. This year it's in Akron and only about a thirty minute drive. Emmett was all over this when it was announced but Elliott wants nothing to do with it and that's totally okay. Over the past few weeks, Emmett's been working very hard to prepare for this event, including practicing with weapons. He's really excited about that part because he gets to demonstrate how they are used. ☺ Martial Arts…

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It’s funny how things work out

Tomorrow marks one week since Maggie passed away. I'm not sure if the significance of the day will strike the kids or not but I'm certainly not going to raise their attention to it. We've been preparing for awhile now that Maggie wouldn't be around forever but we had no idea how soon she would be taken. When I stumbled across Ruby a few months ago, I had no idea how important that moment would be. We would have survived Maggie's passing and eventually moved on, because that's the way life is. I will say that having Ruby a part of our lives has made the adjustment a little easier, especially for the boys. She may only be the size of my shoe but she packs a whole lot of…

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If I had known 6 years ago

I've not been feeling well today and I'm getting really tired of it. Everyday it's wash, rinse and repeat. If I had known six years ago that Paxil would be so devastating to come off of, I would have never gone on it.

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Why my day was so stressful

It's been a stressful day for about a million reasons. About half of those reasons were Autism related and the rest were the result of a few other things. I'm still not feeling a hundred percent but I'm probably upwards of sixty or seventy percent lately and that's progress. I'm really grateful for that. We're also coming up on the one week anniversary of Maggie's passing and that's still a pretty fresh wound. It was a rough day. Everything was going okay until the mail came. Inside was a letter stating that we had lost our insurance coverage. More specifically, Lizze and I had lost our insurance coverage. The boys were not impacted and that was blessing. We're on Buckeye insurance, which is a managed care provider for Medicaid in…

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It’s the little things

I've been working to keep everyone in the house as active as possible but the fricking weather isn't wanting to make that job any easier. I think it was five days ago, it was 80°F and now it's snowing again. Lizze doesn't do well in the cold weather but I'm getting the kids out for a little bit at a time, almost every day. Yesterday, we left a bit early for Dr. Patties so the boys could walk around the Garden Center and catch Pokémon. It's way colder than it had been a few days prior, and it was snowing quite heavily. The boys lasted about fifteen minutes before we headed back to the car. While it's not perfect, it was fifteen minutes of activity that they wouldn't have otherwise…

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