LEGO KIDSFEST IS COMING!

I am SO FREAKING EXCITED!! LEGO KidsFest is coming to Kansas City again this year and I get to take my kids. They are SO into LEGOs and this is going to be heaven for them. Why? Because ...

Seriously! If you see nothing but LEGOs all around you, how can you NOT be in heaven? *Parents keep shoes on or suffer the pain of stepping on LEGOs*

C - Causes & Cures

This post is going to be a fairly short one. It is the discussion of many debates, and I think it is vital that it be brought up. If nothing else, so you know my views.

I personally do not believe there is anything outside of gene mutation that causes autism. I do not believe that if a mother eats or drinks specific food that it causes it. I do not believe that vaccines cause it. Now ... I DO believe that there are negative reactions to high levels of metals. I DO believe the links from autism and Fragile X. There are many things I do agree with .. but I do not believe if you do x, y, or z, you are going to end up with a child that has autism.

B - Bullying

Bullying is something that just gets to everyone. No one likes bullies ... unless you're the bully. Unfortunately, it is easier for a child to be picked on if they are not "normal." I put that word in quotation marks because I have yet to determine exactly what "normal" is. I have three children who have an acronym diagnosis and then a child that is theoretically neurotypical. However, I would not classify her as normal. *laugh*

Children with acronym diagnoses, especially ASD will find bullying happens more often. Autism often comes with a lot of other diagnoses or symptoms. Children find it hard to speak, and they may even stutter. Other children find they run more awkwardly than others. When you add in the inability to control movements or sounds, then you run into all sorts of things to be picked on.

A - Asperger’s

So this month carries two things ... the first is it is Autism Awareness Month. You will not see me donate a dime to or promote Autism Speaks. I abhor the group. I will talk about them more in a couple days when I discuss the letter, "C." The second is just that ... letters. The month of April is the annual Blogging A to Z Challenge. I normally do a big reveal on the blog, but I didn't get around to it this year. However, I am going to ATTEMPT to get through it this year. I feel like I say that every year and always fail. So, I have selected a topic that I am passionate about and want to get more info on.

This year ... my topic selection is the Autism Spectrum. I HATE adding the D on the end, because I feel that disorder is so negative ... I would rather just say Autism Spectrum Diagnosis. There is SO much that goes into autism that it is very important to be clear that just because you know someone who has a child that battles the symptoms autism brings, you cannot say that you have seen it all.

My life got crazy, but I have a GIVEAWAY to apologize!

This blog has been much neglected over the last few months. I apologize. I have a lot that I need to update on, but let's talk about that title first! *PS - read to the bottom to get to the entering part*

I am being compensated for this post by USFG and LEGO by being allowed to take my family to KidsFest 2016 in KC. THEY are providing the two free passes for my readers!

The Thanksgiving that wasn't

You know, there are times in life when everything just goes down tube. Despite your best efforts and the hopes that you have that it will still pull through ... it just doesn't. That was our Thanksgiving 2016. Let me back up ...

Jeremy and I had talked extensively throughout the year about our family and traditions. We had decided that we REALLY needed to get some family traditions going because we have children that are getting older as we speak. The older two believe in Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy because they choose to. They know the truth but they firmly believe in the magic that is behind them. Well ... at least the magic behind Santa ... the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy are just for fun. We decided that this year we wouldn't travel for the holidays so we could have a chance to get some traditions going.

Fun for some ... hell for others

Halloween used to be my all time FAVORITE holiday. I absolutely loved getting dressed up and going to parties. Then after having kids, I fell in love all over again. Getting them all dressed up and watching them go door to door in pure excitement.

However ... Halloween became the holiday I dreaded. I dread most holidays. It is completely shake up of the routine, schools usually have shortened weeks, there is travel involved ... change in diet ... yeah, it's just a complete mess. Peanut has always done well with Halloween. She is my social butterfly. Bullfrog does great with the trick-or-treating, but put him into a closed room for a dinner or party ... you often have a mess on your hands. Monkey THRIVES on Halloween. While she's not exactly a social butterfly ... she is a seeker. She loves dressing up, loves going door to door, loves the games, loves touching ... stuff. Halloween is a great time for her. Thankfully, she and Bullfrog are super tight, so they usually stick together making Halloween fun for him!

Goth Unicorn

SuperGirl

Zombie ... in the beginning stages after a bite, I think

Now, enter my Turtle. Turtle is my neurotypical child ... but she definitely has her limits. We are starting to notice that she is a HUGE avoider. She prefers things to be quiet and peaceful. She is a dare devil, but does not care for large groups of noisiness. She was a complete MESS during Halloween. We went to a Halloween party at my college, and she found a quiet area and stayed put. She was so stressed that she wouldn't even eat her pizza. The next day, during trick or treating time, she HATED it ... until we found a street that was completely lit up and I pushed her in the stroller. That stroller was her safety spot. Once we got all that figured out ... she never wanted it to end. She was a riot most of the day because ... well ... candy!

What was my kids favorite part though? Definitely me dressing up as Minnie Mouse this year.

So, how do you celebrate the holidays when you have special needs children? Let me know in the comments below!

Education is the best place to start!

When I began to suspect my son may have Asperger's, I realized that I needed to increase my education on the subject. I started joining support groups that would walk by my side through the entire journey. This, probably, was the best thing for my family. I knew that I would need a lot of allies, since I had a lot of people battling against me.

I found a couple great groups that mean the world to me and how far we have come with Bullfrog and Monkey. The first is the Joshua Center and the second is the Autism Society in the Heartland. We decided to join the Autism Society group and have been enjoying the activities they have been holding. Bullfrog is looking forward to attending summer camp with the Joshua Center and even made a GoFundMe page to raise money for it. He is hoping to raise half of the cost of the camp prior to next spring when payments are due.

I decided to volunteer for the Autism conference this fall, but ended up on the wait list so we paid for me to attend. It was my birthday present from my husband. I could not have gotten a better gift. While I was there, I got to reunite with a friend that I worked with at PetSmart many years ago, but more importantly, I got a lot of helpful information. I learned about how to make our family work as a unit with an autism diagnosis, but also found out a lot more about what autism is, how it differs in boys and girls, and even what options there are if we cannot ready to send Bullfrog out on his own when he's an adult.


The conference is extremely affordable and I found more people to add to my support tribe. Again, when I am battling against the school and other people who do not understand the diagnosis, it is helpful to have a tribe on your side. I came home with a ton of information that I have not had a chance to completely go through, even though it is a month later! The wonderful joys of being a parent who is attending school.

Have you ever attended a conference? What are some things you got out of it? Which conferences are your favorite?

Been a while ... I know.

It has been forever since I have put up a post. I guarantee it is not for the lack of desire. I have been doing freelance writing for so long now that when I sit at my computer, I cannot get creative. I am not able to create blog posts or work on my novel. Now that I have made that connection, I write by hand first. Hopefully, this will mean more posts will be put up.

Let me try to play a little catch up. However, I do have several posts that are planned for after this one so this is going to skim the top. We have been struggling with two of my four children who have special needs and are nearing puberty. This past spring, we decided to wave the white flag and get professional help from the State of Kansas in the form of Case Management. We had to apply for a SED waiver to get the state healthcare. Yes, we DO have personal health insurance. However, our insurance does not cover case management ... at all. We are extremely grateful that our kids qualified for KanCare so they could receive the services they needed.


Adella is battling ADHD and OCD. We were making huge progress over the summer and now we are almost right back to where we were before. I'm struggling as a parent because I see the medicine she is on really does help with keeping her focused and on task. However, we are noticing that she has fallen into a cycle of two great days, followed by 36 hours of hell. This "hell" consists of refusing to accept responsibility for her actions, extreme snarkiness, extreme disrespect for others, and so on. It's almost like she has an anxiety attack every two days over something ... even if there is nothing to trigger it!

It has gotten to the point where we are back to scratching our head and brainstorming. If anyone has any ideas, please let us know in the comments below. We are struggling with the defensiveness, disregard for other people, and refusal to take responsibility. It's almost like she is a possessive dog, who goes absolutely guanopsychotic when someone nears her space, but then is the cutest creature the rest of the time.

On the other hand, my son is doing loads better. He is headed to KU in just a few weeks to start the screening process for an Asperger diagnosis, but we have already started treating it as such at home. We were dealing with extremely volatile meltdowns at home and school. As our case manager worked with Bullfrog and an emotional therapy animal entered the home, he started doing better at home. We still have meltdowns, but he is getting better at sensing them and going to his room to begin the calm down plan. However, school was still a major problem. Thankfully, we sent the case manager there to start getting everyone on the same page because I felt they were not listening to me. We are finally seeing progress there, slow but definite progress. He is pushing himself in the social area and then working with his therapist when he begins to falter.

Anyway, that is the slimmed down update. I believe our family has come a long way, especially since we started looking at this as a family solution instead of pointing fingers at who was doing things wrong.

Jackie, our emotional therapy animal. She's a rat terrier who is between 5 and 6 years old.

A seeker's paradise!

I have two children who are on the autism spectrum and BOTH are seekers when it comes to sensory processing. They need to be squeezed by someone they feel as safe when they are overloaded, need to jump, tackle, and otherwise be all over everything. In an apartment (or townhome), that can be a tad difficult.

Earlier this year, I was given the opportunity to check out SkyZone back in April for my daughter's fourth birthday. We let Monkey get the birthday party since we knew that this would be a way for her to have a party without feeling overwhelmed.

We were right and wrong. Monkey did LOVE SkyZone, but she was NOT a fan of the massive amount of people and loud music. Thankfully, SkyZone holds a Sensory Night. They try for every month, but it has been every other month, with the last one being held on Monday.


Last week, however, they held a Back to School bash. During this week, they brought back the decal promotion. This promotion allows drivers to put a SkyZone decal on their vehicle for 30 days, put it on social media, and then get free jumps as payment. We will be getting 6 hours free ($108 value).

Decal going on

Making sure it was clean and sealed

He's excited, I promise!

The van at home!

Progress Being Made

This house has been an absolute mess the past week. While I don't mean physically messy, I do mean everyone is just a hot mess. My son has had longer and more volatile meltdowns, and the emotional & verbal abuse has taken its toll. I finally said enough is enough and took him in to a crisis therapist last week. We saw very little change from that, but we did get an appointment made with his regular therapist. That appointment was today.

Normally, my son gets to see his therapist without me. However, I wanted to make sure my son didn't try to tell his therapist that everything was good. I had recordings and text messages that my son had sent me when he was angry and refusing to implement his new calm down plan. We conversed in depth on everything. The therapist decided that my son definitely qualified for the SED Waiver, which will grant us KanCare for case management services. In addition, we were given information we needed to get my son prepared for an IEP evaluation at school, speech therapy, and a meeting with the Child Development specialists at KU Medical Center.

However, my son was also able to understand several things and I think some things really started to sink in today.

• He realized that he cannot determine emotions very well, especially if someone is making faces.
• He realized that he has no recollection of what he actually does during a meltdown.
• He realized how hurtful he is during his meltdown.
• He realized that most people have no problems explaining how they get an answer, or why a character acted the way they did in a story.

These are some KEY aspects to Asperger's. We are hoping that the new case management plan will help him with his anxiety and anger, but we also hope that our push for the IEP and Dev Ped at KU will give us more support.

Birthday Parties & Sensory Children

If you are like me and have sensory children ... whether it is autism, Asperger's, or just Sensory Processing Disorder ... birthday parties can ring fear in your hearts. There is a lot of noise, a lot of people, the variable temperature changes ... did I mention a lot of noise and people?

I KNEW this going into yesterday. We were invited to a very dear friend's party yesterday. Her daughter is 6 months older than my Turtle. We RARELY get to see each other because she's moved out-of-state. When I heard the party was going to be at Pump-It-Up, I was guarded but hopeful. I have to say, regardless of a few snags, I was very happy with how well yesterday went!



In all reality, I did set myself up on Saturday. Saturday morning was our monthly CoderDoJoKC meet. Peanut and Bullfrog LOVE going, although, sometimes I think that Peanut likes it more. She has really gotten into coding and has begun to build some pretty complex things in Scratch. This is the second month she has taken 1st place with her project, so she submitted it for Scratch Mastery. That will be presented next month.

CoderDoJo is all about trying to get children to get into coding, and our group has grown to having 100 kids PLUS a waiting list EVERY month. It is so awesome to see every month and watch the children learn. However, it is also very taxing on my son with his sensory issues.





So, I shouldn't be surprised that if he was already melting down before noon ... that 2pm wasn't going to be much better. However, I knew that it would be WORSE if he didn't go with us to the party.

We ended up getting there about 15 minutes late (my bad because I needed a power nap to tackle my anxiety-induced exhaustion). The first room was the BEST for all FOUR of my children. There was a slide (Turtle's favorite), a bounce house with basketball goals, and an obstacle course. It had something for every age range. LOVED it! There was also enough space that it didn't feel like ALL the kids were bunched together.



However, after 40 minutes ... we left the room where sensory children all got along. The next room was not as much fun for the younger children. There was a slide ... but it required you to pull yourself up through several layers of netting. This meant my wonderful son was NOT able to go up ... nor Turtle (who was irate at that concept). My son has issues with things that do not have sure footing. This includes walking and standing on nets. He tried a few times, but it all ended up with meltdowns. The other things to play with was a large bounce house, Nerf ball shooter, and an interactive floor mat. This room was met with doom.



I ended up having to take Bullfrog out before the play time ended. He just had enough and everything was causing meltdowns. He didn't want to leave, but I saw the warning signs and I didn't want him to completely lose it at the party. When I was taking him out ... the most awesome thing happened ... one of the employees asked him if he was okay. When I explained that he's just in sensory overload, he said this:

"I totally get it. I have Asperger's and some days are harder than others. Aspie fist bump for making it this long."

Bullfrog took a few minutes to recover, but he was able to enjoy the remainder of the party. I know that if I had not pulled him out and put him in the quiet room ... that wouldn't have happened.





So, why do I feel that Pump-It-Up is great for sensory children?

• Several activities in every room so it divides up the groups of people


• Keep people moving so boredom doesn't occur


• Routine kept, without feeling like there's a schedule


• Large party rooms that allow children to sprawl

I do wish that there was an ability to reserve only one play room ... or have the ability to go back and forth. Especially considering ages and activities available. I didn't like the fact that two of my children weren't able to do much of anything in the second room. It was also difficult dealing with the strong emotions from Bullfrog when he just wanted to go into the room that had things he could enjoy.

Overall ... it was a great birthday party. I am so glad I was able to see friends and celebrate another year. It is also showed me a location that I could throw a party at for my children in the future, without having to be super stressed about all the details!

Busy Day!

Today has been one of the best in a long time. I told Monkey last night that we were going to go purchase a book or two with her money from Aunt Shannah. She was SO excited. What I didn't tell her was that Dora was going to be at the mall as well! I had been looking forward to today all week long!

On the way to Barnes & Noble, we talked about how many books we were going to get. Chloe told me she was only going to get one book today. I was totally okay with that, although I knew the selecting process would take longer. It was okay though because we had two hours to just have fun.

Taking in all the books

Starting the selection process

She had a HARD time deciding between these two

After we settled on a book (the musical one), she was ready to go play. We still had an hour before Dora was coming so I took her to the play area of Oak Park Mall. Monkey was cracking me up with her sitting on the car and waving to me like a princess. She had lots of kids wanting to talk to her and that was causing her to shut down a bit though.

After playing for quite awhile, we went to wait on Dora. She was SO excited that she talked about it non-stop. Well, that was until Dora came out. It was great while Dora was in the distance ... as she neared, and her size grew .... Monkey was a little more than intimidated. She did let me get her picture taken with Dora ... as long as I held her!

After coming home, we got everybody ready to go and then headed to the church. It was the day Bullfrog was being baptized. He wanted it done when he was 8, but he wasn't home on his birthday. We waited until he was home and we got back into a routine. Then he had to go through the missionary discussions since he was over 8 years old. It was nice having them over weekly. One of the missionaries got transferred to the Independence stake, but he came back for the baptism (which was awesome).

Many of the family members were able to make it! <3

Bullfrog was bummed because he was told to be serious

Missionaries on the left are our current ones, and the one on the right came back

The day was just overwhelming for our Monkey ... she collapsed in the car on the drive home ... and then again on daddy's lap after dinner & ice cream.

So ... how did you spend your Saturday?