Game On

Baseball - Spring 2012

 Hockey - Fall 2012

Keep On Truckin Baby

Love

Mom

Scientific Equation

Lets be honest, you still have a long way to go and I am not blind to where you are today but the world around you is opening up their eyes and seeing that you hold a whole world of potential inside.  Over the last two years you have struggled with colors, shapes, numbers, associations, and other foundational concepts.  You have refused to show those around you that you have been taking it all in and that you do understand cause and effect.  You have refused to allow yourself to succeed and be pushed to the next level.

All of the sudden you have decided to change.  You have finally demonstrated that you do know these foundational skills and that you also know so much more.  You are taking after your Uncle Mike and Aunt Suzanna with a passion for science.  In less then a week you learned what a beaker, thermometer, scale, hand lens, and ruler are and most of their functions.  You also have a grasp on the five senses and how each body part helps you explore the world around you.  With this, you still would prefer not demonstrate that you actually know what your head is or that you understand when someone says "blow a kiss" but honestly this is just you being stubborn.  It is almost as if you feel the simple goals are below you and until we challenge you, as with science, you do not feel as if you need to answer.

For two years teachers have worked on your identifying the letter B which has made me crazy, and you insane, but in the last two four weeks you have learned uppercase and lowercase letters A-L.  You are starting to match sight words to pictures, label pictures in books, and participating in computer programs.  You are recognizing money, working on the calendar, and continuing to master your manipulation skills.

On top of this your language continues to grow and with that your personality is showing through.  I have a feeling within the next year you are going to keep me on my toes even more then you do now.  Yesterday on the playground I told you "gentle" as we were running around. You proceed to look at me and say, "I'll show you gentle" and then pull my hair.  Hmmm.... is it true that I only have myself to blame for the little man you are becoming?!  At hockey practice you told the coaches to "go play" and "go away" because you wanted to skate with the girls.  You tell me "you go" when you do not want me in your room and so much more.

We still have a long way to go.  You are still your own worst enemy when it comes to compliance and actually making learning easy.  You give your therapists a run for their money and it is a miracle that they have not quite on us yet.  If you are able to to learn at this rate and acquire these skills with all the behaviors you are so nicely sharing with us, then image what all you are capable of if you would just sit down and listen!  I guess you wouldn't be my little hot mess though if you played by the rules.

I love you baby
Keep on Truckin
Mom

Should Have Known

Often times I go back and read what I have written to you in the past.  It helps remind me of how far you have come and also where we still need go.  A lot has happened in the last two weeks in our world and after reading through the letters to you from last month I should have known what was coming.

The big news and change is that as of this week you are officially home schooled.  Yup, I know how confusing this must be for you.  We picked up from Virginia and moved over 400 miles away to a place where we did not have a support system or a clue what would be around the next corner, specifically for a school that I thought would meet your educational and language needs.  I was filled with hope and promises and I so badly wanted to see you in an environment that understood you and would challenge you.

I remember sitting in one of the very first IEP meetings we had for you in VA and Nancy actually came with me as my second set of ears.  I sat there and tried to explain to them the little boy I saw that was hiding behind the walls and my hopes for you in their school.  Most importantly though I remember Nancy, with tears in her eyes, explaining to them that they could not let you regress.  That you had already made so many gains and they could not let you slip away.

Well, unfortunately they did allow you to slip and I believed that coming to Ohio would provide an educational setting that would only allow your feet to move in a forward motion.  As I have told you before though, I have discovered we are in Ohio for so many more reasons and the school is not a part of our future but provided us the leap of faith we needed at the time to embark on this adventure.

Since moving to Ohio our relationship has grown immensely.  We have always had a special bond from the moment we met but since our move we have become more in sync then ever.  I watched this weekend and could not believe how much you have grown physically and developmentally.  You are now a little man, missing four teeth, and growing like a weed.

Your language has exploded thanks to the help of our wonderful speech therapist who has never given up on you and continued to push through your escapades.  What we are discovering, as we always suspected, is that your own language and jargon is actually real words that are slowly being shaped into the english language.

Socially, which has always been your strongest area, continues to impress those around you.  Today at the park you consistently engaged with your friends asking them to come run with you, come sit in a car, play in the sand, swing on the swings, and race down the slide.  You are determined to get and keep their attention and do everything in your power to keep up.

I continue to try to open new doors for you daily. You think you are ready to push them down and speed ahead.  Now is the time to close the gap in your academics.  You are ready for more and need more in order to keep up in all that you try to do.  So, for that reason, your bedroom will now be split and shared as your classroom and your therapists have become members of our family as they spend so many hours here.

Honestly, I am excited and cannot wait to see you tackle the academics that so many have been afraid to push and I am also scared to hold it all in my hands.  Reality though, I have tried to hand over the control to the school, actually 4 different schools to be exact, and none of them have stepped up to the plate.  None of them them have seen the spark in your eyes.  Now that you are starting to believe in your own potential you needed a team of individuals who believed in you and saw all of you that is awaiting to be unlocked.  We have found that team and I am thrilled to see what tomorrow brings.

Keep on Truckin
Love
Mom

6 + 2 = 3??? - Wait a Minute

So I guess I should start by telling you that math was never my favorite subject in school nor is it yours but I really do have a rationale explanation to this equation.

For all intensive purposes, with a little rounding, you were six the year I adopted you.  You had spent almost all of the first six years of your life in the less the desirable conditions.  And now, you have spent the last two years in my arms.  So technically, yes, you turned a whopping 8 years old yesterday! I started to think that I could not believe you were eight and where has time gone....

Well, the truth is, in my eyes and in your own eyes you are not 8.  Today, you are more of a happy go lucky three year old always looking for your next adventure and constantly finding new trouble to get into.  As I have told you before, when you first arrived home even though you were almost six years old you really had the skills of a 10-11 month old baby.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into and all the twists and turns our life would take.  Today though, watching you bounce around me, your developmental age is more of a three year old and you are aging everyday.

So, in my world, in our world together, 6 years of life before you became my forever child plus two years of life with me equals an amazing three year old little boy!  Which, lets be honest, means you are ahead of schedule developmentally!!! Since your life did not start until two years ago and the first time you experienced the world around you was just two years ago I am beyond pleased that you are overall on track with a typically developing three year old.

Now don't get me wrong baby you do have some skills that are well beyond those of your three year old peers and other skills that might be slightly lacking but what is most important is the little man I see today.  You have a face of innocence but yet a look in your eyes well beyond your years.  With everyone that works with you, you end up teaching them more about themselves and about the world they once thought they understood then they end up teaching you.  What is amazing though is that you do this all without talking.

Some people may ask me how I know you have a sense of humor, how I know you are happy, or how I know that you are taking in the world everyday that you wake up and get out of bed.  Simply put, once you see the look in your eyes how could someone not see all these things.  You have discovered that it is hilarious to make animal noises at the most inappropriate times.  That if you watch those around you long enough you can start to play games on them and just smile and walk away once you get their attention. That you pick people out of crowd who just need a smile to make their day.

The world has accepted you for who you are.  People around us cannot help but smile when you bounce into a room and break it down with your beat boxing (against my better judgement), and more importantly people have started to see the spark right before you act upon a very thought-out high level of manipulation.

You have a giggle that echos and a smile that even you are in love with. You cannot get enough of watching yourself in mirrors and obtaining the attention of those around you.  Your pretend play has exploded and your new best friend... yup, thats right, its Elmo!

Today I could not be more proud of the young man you becoming. Even though you fight the world on so many levels you have accepted and grown on so many others.  I cannot wait to see what this year holds for us and how old you will be next year on your birthday.

Keep on Truckin
Love
Mom

Your Own Worst Enemy

Yup, you are your own worst enemy.  There is no other way to describe it or a way to sugar coat it.  You fight the world with all the energy you have yet if you were to just let down your guard everything would come so easy to you.  Don't get me wrong, I understand why you fight and that it is your natural reaction but I wish, just for one day, you would let yourself enjoy all of the world and show what you know.

I do not talk about school a whole lot.  Obviously this is on purpose as it is not the highlight of your day, week, month, or even year.  School has always been your biggest battle and the place where you feel the most insecure.  The direct pressure of having to perform, to being on the spot, and to know that at times all eyes are on you is just too much for you.  If it were not for the fact that you love peers and a part of you loves your teachers as much as you fight them I would home school you.  There is still a part of me that is hoping, praying, that when you walk through the doors to school you will show them who you are and all that you hold inside.

This school year has started off no different then years past.  The school not sure where to put boundaries into place - you running around like a chicken with your head cut off - and then you spiraling out of control from not having boundaries all day.  Its a vicious cycle and this is the fourth time we have been through it.  I had such high hopes that since you went to this school last year and you knew it was safe, that this year would just fall right into place. Yet again though you taught me to laugh at myself and that nothing will ever come that easy.

Before school started I made the decision to remove all of your academic goals from you Individualized Educational Plan (IEP). I wanted an IEP that focused on language, behaviors, and generalization of skills. I want you to learn this year that you do have to follow a schedule, stay with your class, generalize mastered skills into a group environment, and most importantly you have to use all the language that we work so hard on everyday.  This does not mean you are not exposed to all your core subject matters and skills because as long as you are participating you are in all your main subject areas you will be part of the lessons.  With this though, I also knew we needed more at home to find the balance.

So, you guessed it.... You now have 15 hours a week of ABA therapy primarily to focus on all your foundational academic skills. Lets just say you bucked the system the first two weeks and made your therapists earn their stripes BUT you all survived and now you are working your little butt off (or as you say "aaaaaass"off :) You have two wonderful therapists that you quickly won over with your smile and a subtle "hey" as you flirted but we all expect and believe in great things from you.

I pray that right now this is the right balance for you. That I am allowing you to shine in the right areas in the right environment and playing upon your strengths.  I hope that one day you will feel safe and secure enough to show the world the little boy that I get the honor or watching grow up everyday.

Keep On Truckin
Love
Mom

Hard To Remember

It is becoming harder to remember the little boy you used to be.  I mean the one that I brought home on that flight from Idaho a little over two years ago.  I remember thinking that you and I were now full speed ahead and you would suddenly wake up with all the language and skills you were missing.  That all you had needed was a home and it would just happen.  Oh how I laugh at that thought now!  Yes, you did need a home, you do need unconditional love, and most importantly you need time.  As I have told you before, you have taught me more over these years then I have learned in my entire lifetime and one thing you test me on daily is the concept of patience.  Well, with all the patience and all the time you are starting to unravel just a little bit more.

Here is a video of you about two weeks after you came home.  You used the words "mine" and then an approximation for "help" with the therapists prompting.

Now, after two long years, the words are flowing.  We still have to listen closely and some of the articulation is hard for you but you are able to use three and four word sentences, ask questions, answer questions, make choices, and most importantly express your likes and dislikes.  Hearing the change in your voice between two years ago and now and how much you have grown and matured is absolutely amazing.  Watching the older videos and then ones from today brings me back to reality of just how hard you work, how far you have come, and that tomorrow is always a new day.

Keep On Truckin 

Love

Mom

More Than Enough

This summer has been filled with learning, sharing, laughing, and, of course, crying.  It has been a very trying summer on some aspects and one of much success on others.  Let me back up though and fill you in on all the changes that have occurred.

Towards the end of the school year I started to question why you were on the medication you were.  Not that we did not have positive moments and for the most part predictability in your behaviors but given the high end "designer" medications that you were on I wasn't seeing the expected results.  For this reason, I had the bright idea to try to take you off of them. With the help of your psychiatrist we slowly started the process to wean you from your mood stabilizers.

At first, life was golden.  Your personality returned, you were not as tired all the time, and your language continued to grow.  We had a few bumpy moments but overall I was thrilled and thought that maybe you were ready, that we were ready, to try to live without the medications.

Unfortunately though as summer has continued the success has not been there.  What hurts the most though is seeing the amount of pain and anger from your past that you are carrying that was masked by your "designer" medication.  Maybe it was helping to control the impulses so you did not think about your past or maybe it just caused a cloudy feeling so you were not processing the memories, but coming off the medications has opened a door I am not sure either of us were ready for.

What I am quickly learning is that you are experiencing PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).  You are repeating phrases that I can only assume were said to you as a small child, you are acting out behaviors that I can only assume were done to you, and you are feeling every aspect of the pain and anger this is causing you. You will scream as you run up the stairs "I said go to bed," followed by "no hit."  In the bathroom you will look in the mirror and say "bad boy," "no hit," "no bathroom" followed by you tossing your body against the floor and slapping yourself.  Today with the babysitter you just sat on the bathroom floor and sobbed.  All we can do is hold you, comfort you, and assure you that you are safe and that nobody is going to hurt you. I knew that one day we would need to experience this and work through this as it is part of who you are and part of your past but I never knew that time would come now.

I wish you had more language.  That you could tell me what you were thinking, what is causing the pain, or what the memories are.  I wish that I could help you work through your demons but all I can do is be a shoulder for you to cry on and be a safety net for you to fall into. I have to remind myself that just now have you been in my arms as long as you were in foster care and you still have not been my little man as long as you were in your biological home.  Maybe you also have an internal clock that is ticking away.  I am sure you still hold onto the unknown and the unexpected.  You not only experienced the trauma of your abuse, neglect, and drug exposure, but then foster care placement, and finally the placement with me.  A long plane ride to an unknown place and a life that has never been the same.

With all of this though I am learning who you are.  I am learning how I can best support you to grow and develop.  I am learning that your behaviors are not an unknown to you but instead an unknown to me and that I need to give you more time and patience.  That we are taking life at your pace and when you are ready. You are the one driving this ship baby.  We have had more than enough of our share of growth, development, and emotions for one summer but I am proud to say we are both still paddling with our heads above water.

Keep on Truckin Baby
Love
Mom