Gila Valley Temple

Sunday Stephen and I were able to see the Gila Valley Temple dedication. No one under the age of 8 was allowed to go. All I have to say about that is we sat next to each other the whole time without a single interruption...no I want a snack, I need a drink, I have to go poop yelled louder than it should be, he took my toy, Lincoln ruined my game, kicking the seat in front of us...oh it was a glorious time just like the good ol' days when we got to sit next to each other the whole time and actually listen to the speakers.

We arrived about 20 minutes before it started so I ran to the back of the church and got a drink. As we were walking in to take a seat towards the back one of the ushers came and said, "follow him he'll show you to your seats." We followed and figured there was somewhere that had a couple random seats unfilled. Would you believe we were seated all the way up in the Chapel on the padded seats. We were about 10 rows back from the front row. It was SO cool and such a lucky thing to happen. My back was sore from the drive the day before and a bad night of sleep so padded seats were such a welcome blessing. My eyes are so close to useless, I can hardly see anything. Being this close to the front meant that I could actually see without squinting and looking angry, creating a lovely headache, and straining the whole time. I'm thankful for that little blessing.

There were three different sessions, we went to the first. Which happened to also have a choir comprised of singers from the Thatcher, Safford, Pima area. The choir came in to sing their first song and who did I see??? My cousin Jordan. So fun to actually see him. We've not heard him sing a ton, but enough that we were able to pick his voice out a few times. Pretty neat. I was told that his wife Ariana was outside in the choir for the cornerstone ceremony too. I wish they'd zoomed in with the camera so we could've seen her too. Fun Sunday.

Stephen even let me have a nice nap in the afternoon. How he kept the boys quiet enough that I didn't wake up I'll never know, but I'm thankful to be blessed with such a compassionate husband that doesn't judge or make comments about his weenie wife that gets worn out so easily. It was a nice day.

Said little boys are definitely making up for any quiet they may have had yesterday. It's some seriously LOUD times we're having today.

At long last...

we managed to get back up to the Temple. It's been too long, I won't even venture a guess how long. One of Stephen's scouts is leaving on a mission soon; we were able to share this special day with him. I'm a little worried this might make us old. It was strange when some of the older kids started getting married, but now it's the little ones all growing up. It's even weirder to have been married long enough to have young-ins we've worked with old enough to go on missions. Pretty much all of my 8 year old cub scouts are already 12. YIKES and WOW. While I'm at it, who the heck do all these big boys running around my house belong to? Other people have first graders, not me. My kids are little.

It was so nice to be back in the peaceful, quiet, calm of the Temple again. My mind was at ease. It's been so long since I've been able to enjoy a quiet mind void of all the nagging "stuff" it's been busy with. It was similar to the day we found out Stephen had gotten a job. I could breathe and didn't feel like I was being crushed anymore. I've been feeling crushed again. Oh, it was nice to have the crushing worries lifted for a time. We've wanted to get up there for a long time. But, the times you need it the most, babysitting costs combined with gas costs combined with schedules at odds with each other, it just kinda puts it out of the question. I know my kids are NOT easy to babysit, so I try to pay enough to make it worth someone's time to come herd them. The other day I was watching them run wild and thought...these are the kinds of kids that back in the day I would've babysat once and never gone back to. There were several families that I did just that with....one time and never went back again....now....we're one of those families. {sigh}

The day we got married we took one picture by a big tree covered in purple flowers. Every year we'd go up and take an anniversary picture by that tree. Our anniversary was several months ago, but my sweet Stephen was willing to take it today. Would you believe they took the tree out?!? I figured it was a tree and would be a safe picture spot for years to come. We found another pretty little area so we'll use that now. As an added bonus, we had a combined (*child free*) drive time of almost 4 hours all to ourselves. We talked...or didn't, so nice. I've always enjoyed that, even when we were dating, we could just quietly be with each other. Secure comfort is a good thing for the high strung, worrier that poor Stephen got himself hitched to. I'm so grateful we had this day; it was much needed.

*Side note: we picked the wild beasts up at my mom's house then Stephen ran an errand with them while I stayed home. They got back and came running in. I'd noticed their shirts had lots of mud splatters on them and figured they'd had a grand time at Nanny's house. I asked Gabriel, "What'd you guys play at Nanny's?" He answered with a sparkle in his eye and a great BIG smile, "MUD ZOMBIES!" Oh, the never ending imaginations these boys have...

Last Name

I have a little confession...I watch People's Court every day that I can. I like the judge, she points out instances when common sense completely escaped the individuals involved, but isn't mean about it. Seeing some of the dumb people that are out out in the world make me feel smart. Some are totally legitimate cases, but the others leave me feeling like genius! I have the lowest IQ in the family so these times of triumphantly declaring; "at least I've got them beat" are good times.

The other day I was watching and the Plaintiffs were a married couple. She was a lawyer so they had different "professional" last names...hers was Strong; his was Wiener. At one point the lady mentioned they had a child. My only (evil) thought was did they hyphenate the baby's last name?

Ha ha ha ha! I start laughing just thinking about that kid's first day of school. Ha ha ha ha

I know pretty juvenile. I was watching it the day we had the conversation with Wells Fargo (we both were and still are seething) which made it that much funnier.

Migraines....

are awful!
Really is there anything more that needs to be said?

Once, when I had a migraine, Stephen asked me what a headache feels like; I had several ways to share the joy of a headache come to my mind. Fortunately for him, I didn't act on any of those thoughts. Since that time, he's had once that he thinks he might have had a headache. Sometimes it's difficult to live to someone that never has his body fail, or gets sick. He's a great guy so I guess I'll keep him anyway. :-D

I hope the kids all get his health.

Dear Wells Fargo Mortgage,

You make me crazy! I loath you and hope you die a long a painful death. You acquired us not the other way around!

You're inept, minimalist mortgage employees are worthless and a drain of your money. They're a drain of the rest of our time and resources. They're a drain on the air the rest of us breathe. They're a drain on the patience of the fatigued and downtrodden. They're a waste of human flesh!

If your little cashier people ask me one more time if I'd like to open a checking account with you since we already have a mortgage the answer is #$&% NO and always will be!! I'll try to keep myself from scratching their eyes out and kicking them in the knee though. I don't want to have anything to do with you ever. I never did want to have anything to do with you, that's why we went with someone else. Remember, you acquired us.

Even though we didn't pick or want you, we were good little payers. We did it right. We bought at the low end of what we were approved for. We've always had a fixed interest rate instead of one of those variable rate scams. We refinanced into a 15 year, lower interest rate the second we could. We always paid on time and paid extra anytime we had even 5 bucks to throw at you. We worked hard. We communicated. Did you return the favor? No.

You stink!
We will NEVER have anything to do with you ever again.

Thanks for topping off the worst week I've had in a long time.

Disgustedly,
Your Peon Mortgagee

*Sorry for the rant. I'm emotionally exhausted from trying to keep myself under control as we faced one ridiculous incident after another this week. I'm ready to let someone have it and figured the faceless inept at Wells Fargo was a great idea.*

The Week...

This week has been annoying. We are both exhausted! He's physically exhausted and I'm just plain ol' all encompassing girl exhausted. I won't go into all the boring car details but will say, back in the day horses never had ignitions freak out, or went kaput because you were 600 miles past due for the 60,000 mile maintenance. Grrrr! All they needed to do was last for two more weeks till the darn school year ended, but oh noooo. Wednesday I managed to break BOTH of our cars; I'm talented like that. One is "running" again; Stephen is talented like that, he fixes what I break. Glad he's mechanically inclined. Isn't it Sunday yet? What, I still have another day of work on Saturday?

This is the s'mester that never ends,
It goes on and on my friend...

Whew!

I'm almost through the week and have survived so far...kinda. Except, I think I have a cold, or sinus infection, or something. I can't breathe and have started coughing now. If I don't breathe just right my head will throb a little. Fun times. Good thing these boys are so calm and subdued so I can rest and get better. Oh...wait, those aren't my kids? Aw dang!

This little Lincoln of ours is SUCH A CLIMBER! If I'm off my game I'm afraid he's gonna get hurt. He's so quiet and sneaky, kinda like his Aunt Sassy was/is, if I'm not on top of him every second he gets into something...usually something well above ground level. So Scary! Gabriel has done a pretty good job, really a little too good of a job, honing his tattling ability so he'll run in and tell me if Lincoln is doing something, but Garrett just joins in the "fun". Yikes.

School's out next week; having all three home will insure absolutely no chance of recovery. Woo Hoo, I'm excited. Gabriel is doing a summer 1st grade prep program so at least it'll just be a couple of 'em for a few hours each morning.

As a completely random side note: I recently discovered Costco now sells Rice Milk in bulk, not just the soy (fruit of the devil) milk. Anytime we find something for Gabriel sold in bulk it's a very exciting time around here. Then just to make me happier I found that they now sell Clorox in a 3 count box, not just 2. I was seriously excited about that. The little shelf in my laundry closet can hold 3 of the Costco size Clorox bottles. Before they only sold 2 count boxes so I'd buy two boxes and have to figure out where to store the darn 4th bottle. My little problem has now been solved....looovvveee it.

Wow, a nap sounds so nice right now....except Gabriel pick up is in an hour. {sigh} I'm pretty whiny today, that should be nice for Stephen to come home to. Poor guy, it is not easy being married to me.

I think I'm ready...

FOR THIS SEMESTER TO END. I've liked the work, and I'm a girl so, of course, I've liked the money, but I'm ready for it to all be over. I'm tired, my allergies are driving me crazy, and I'm just ready to be done...for a week or two anyway.

One more week. I can do it....I think.

A Long Morning...In Pictures

Our little Linc-a-doo didn't feel good and couldn't go to sleep a couple nightsc ago. So, I got to sit and hold him for a good portion of the night. He seemed to do better in the upright position. He was finally able to fall asleep at 3:42 AM. That gave me just under 3 hours of sleep before it would be time to get Gabriel ready for school. Normally, Stephen is super Dad when kids are up a lot at night, but I knew the next day he'd be cutting cars up and wanted him to be rested and alert for that activity. I'd heard of first responders being injured and killed by delayed deployment of airbags, but he recently learned...and told me...just how many airbags are potentially in cars and explained if you touch the wrong thing or cut wires in the wrong order it's VERY seriously dangerous. As a completely unrelated side note, I now have a new cause to fight for. I'm gonna start writing letters and contacting car manufacturers to see if we can get airbag information in sticker form put on the inside of trunks or door sides next to tire pressure information. I've got a slim chance, but I'm gonna try anyway.

The next morning he followed me around fussing. I was trying to get the big boys dressed, fed, and Gabriel's lunch made and couldn't do much for him. As I was zipping Gabriel's lunch box closed I turned and found him like this. Heartbreaking. He'd brought his blanket out dropped it on the tile and curled up on top of it. Poor kid was so miserable. His breathing was worrying me a little; he'd started wheezing and was retracting when he breathed. It was looking much to similar to what Garrett was doing when we ended up in the hospital for 3 days. I put breakfast on the table for the big boys and told them they were on their own to not mess around and eat while I gave Lincoln a breathing treatment.

This big boy chose to not eat anything, but had a grand ol' time messing around...right up to the moment he ran himself into the door and cut his eye. It must not have been too deep because it didn't bleed like you'd expect a head wound to bleed. That was a very good thing because it was already 10 min past the time to be driving to school. He later only ate 1/4 of his lunch. That would explain why he ate a ton for dinner (in addition to the lunch he hadn't eaten). The eye is a little bruised and slightly puffy, but not too bad.

Stephen's been leaving me these funny little notes for a couple weeks now. They are really funny and help me keep my sanity. I was feelin' this one! I dragged myself through the day and crashed into bed right after the kids that night. It took 3 more breathing treatments for Lincoln to start sounding a little better and I'm happy to report he slept soundly that night.
What a long day...glad it's over. :-)

Life Changing

When Gabriel was a baby I decided that he was going to be an only child. I was pretty open that the craziness I'd been thrown into was NOT what I signed up for and adding more to the mix was not an option. I went through a short phase of being pretty ticked off that Young Women lessons never touched on the less than perfect situations that life includes. I felt punk'd. All those nice little lessons talk about the "ideal" in life with no warning or ideas on how to navigate the other situations that arise. I had only found one other person that agreed with me on the lessons. We were talking one night and she said, "Or warn you that sometimes they die." (She only had about an hour with her newborn here on earth.) Many people liked to look at me and laugh when I said only one, but I was so incredibly serious. Stephen knew I wasn't joking and he's the only other one that needed to be on board with NO MORE BABIES. I had a gut feeling that something wasn't right, but didn't feel like I could pursue figuring it out as a first time mom. I just thought I must be the biggest failure wuss that had ever embarked on this motherhood thing and must be making excuses. I was really not enjoying anything about parenthood.

The Lord laughed at me and sent Garrett despite birth control. I was SO mad, then felt guilty for being mad, then was a wreck that something bad would happen to him because I had two vaccines before I'd figured out I was pregnant. Long complicated story short Garrett arrived healthy and fine. Funny thing happened after his birth...I saw what a typical baby was like. This confirmed that I wasn't totally a wuss (I am a bit wussy) but that we needed to figure out what was going on with Gabriel.

At his two year well check the Dr. noticed he was saying nothing. I explained that he had been saying a few words, but had stopped. He sent a referral right away to for a speech evaluation. Here is where I have to make very clear that the Lord sent a baby to us with a long list of stuff going on, but He didn't leave us on our own. He started by sending us the fantastic Pediatrician we have. That Pediatrician sent us to TMC for a speech eval and to an ENT to make sure he was still hearing. He never responded to auditory input so I'd started tapping and getting in front of him like he was Deaf. He'd had so many ear infections I thought maybe he'd damaged his hearing at that point. Even before Gabriel was born I just had a gut feeling that something was wrong. When he arrived and looked fine I just passed it off as I'm crazy. Within days of being home that gut feeling was back. As he grew I kept seeing things that were red flags. Before the TMC evaluation I had to fill out a big packet of paperwork. One of the questions said something about is there anything additional you'd like to add. I looked and thought, started to write then stopped then started then stopped and finally just put it down. I had a suspicion there was some autism going on. He had so many of the symptoms. If it was there, I knew it was mild, but up to this point we had done nothing to address it and had no idea where to start.

The TMC eval happened and the speech therapist called in another therapist that worked primarily with autistic children to help do a more thorough evaluation. In the end the other therapist had some real concerns and referred me to a Pediatric Doctor of Integrated Medicine and a Developmental Pediatrician. Gabriel was just under 2 years old, but only at an 8 month old developmental level. He was tall and very difficult to manage what a amounted to a giant 8 month old.

He started speech and occupational therapy right away, I made appointments with the two doctors we were referred to, and started a series of appointments with the ENT trying to clear the massive amount of fluid out of his ears.

All of this was happening while I struggled with horrible post postpartum depression that set in after Garrett's birth. I think I'm still kinda crazy from that.

My first appointment arrived with the Pediatric Dr. of Integrated Medicine. He specialized in children with Autism and ADHD. He was able to get 95% of his patients off meds with natural methods and dietary modification, the remaining 5% he was able to reduce the amount of meds. Miracle. I arrived tired, worn out and pretty sure I was a complete failure. Gabriel and I went back to his office. We were supposed to sit on a leather couch (I was pretty sure Gabriel would ruin it before the session was over) while we discussed our concerns. He'd ask a couple questions then just watch Gabriel. I squirmed when he did this, I was so used to the looks and comments that strangers so freely shared about his behavior, I assumed he was thinking the same things. Then he looked over and said, "It's pretty hard, people probably say things don't they?" I was in shock, he wasn't judging me, he was validating my discomfort. I almost started crying, but stopped it quick.
Deep Breath.
I'd found help here, and I knew it. He gave me the multiple-elimination diet to see if there were any issues with foods he was eating. He is SOY and LACTOSE intolerant. The dietary modification alone gave me a new kid. Later, he introduced me to the book Transforming the Difficult Child, I read it and was so filled with hope I thought I might burst. Kids like Gabriel, or worse, are simply explained as intense children. It is such an accurate description. That boy of ours lives life with such intense gusto he can hardly contain himself most of the time. It's the nurtured heart approach. These kids need nurtured hearts so badly. He also starting gaining weight with the elimination of soy and lactose from his diet. He was so skinny and looked under nourished. I was always worried about his health. We had to pay out of pocket for this doctor.
IT WAS WORTH EVERY SINGLE CENT!
The Lord happened to bless us with the income we needed to be able to pay this; I'm grateful everyday for that blessing.

We continued with the therapies, diet, and ended up putting tubes in his ears a week after Garrett was born. The ENT said the fluid was so thick and mucus like that he knew why the less invasive techniques had failed. It took quite a bit of time, even with tubes, for his ears to clear out. It was weird seeing the world of sound open up to him. At this point we started to finally see results from speech therapy. Loud sounds still bother him...but only if they are sounds that he's not making. ;)

The Developmental Pediatrician had a wait that was several months long. By the time we could get in we no longer had insurance. Once again the Lord blessed us with the needed income to pay for this visit too. She had gathered all the reports from all the doctors and therapists he'd already seen and asked extensive questions about techniques and methods we were using with him. She sat and watched him for a while, looked up at me and said, "If you'd come to me first instead of last I would have diagnosed him as ______, but you have it managed well so just keep doing it. If you feel like you want to come back in later for more help contact us any time." He has no official label, but remains "managed". That little sentence spoke volumes. I was right, there was something going on. We were doing everything known to help overcome obstacles he was facing and we just needed the strength to keep it up.

Some days we end as glorious failures in parenting, but other days we succeed and are rewarded with the glorious look of satisfied achievement from our boy. We still have struggles. Any time he has to be in front of an audience I'm nervously hopeful that 'today will be a good day, not the other kind of day'. He's still unpredictable, but getting better everyday. Training, training, training. Even if he doesn't understand or know why he has to do something, he can memorize appropriate behavior and is choosing to more and more often to adhere to it.

We've had a rough behavior patch in school. That little life changing book I read (Transforming the Difficult Child) had a behavior modification technique for school aged children. It came to my mind several months ago, but I didn't do anything about it. You'd think I'd have learned by now to act on those little thoughts that come to mind...especially in light of how we've been living. Dumb girl here. Last week I finally acted on it, and it's working! He's working like a champ to get a good report sent home everyday. I'm reading the whole book again with a nearly 6 year old in mind rather than a super delayed pre-schooler in mind. He's well on his way to a green everyday this week. He asked what he gets if he has green all week. I told him he could pick something special to do, just him and Mom and Dad. He looked over at Garrett and said, "He can come too." That's good too. Who knows what he'll pick. {;+D

So what is the point of this really long rambling post?
I am forever grateful for the guidance and wonderful support we found in the professionals that helped us figure out how to help Gabriel conquer the world...or at least his life. I love the uplifting positive light Transforming the Difficult Child refers to our intense kiddos. I am grateful for my gut, it tends to be right, especially when I'll actually follow it. I'm so grateful for the people put along our path that were proactive, but wanted to treat the root of the problem not mask it with meds. We were led by the Lord in which way to turn and who to trust. He wants all of his little children being raised by his slightly less little children to be provided with every opportunity this life has to offer...and He will help make it happen if we turn to Him.

Off to my reading...I've re-read the introduction and am so filled with hope again. I can't wait to finish it....again.