Maybe we aren't so different.

A friend sent me a message on Facebook today. She had some information she thought we might be able to use. I was touched by the gesture but what really hit was what she said later. I'll share that in a minute.

I have said many times that I wish people understood what it was like to be in our shoes. She responded to that honestly by saying, " I cant say that I understand completely except from one parent to another your happy when they are happy, you laugh when they laugh, you cry when they cry because you love them so much. "

That statement really hit me. If more people felt that way then maybe we could bridge the gap. Maybe we wouldn't have to feel so isolated. People wouldn't have to walk in our shoes to show or feel compassion for our children. They would just understand on a basic human level. Our kids are hurting so we hurt. On that level who couldn't relate? Clearly we have different challenges but we all love and support our kids. We all hurt when our children hurt. Maybe we aren't so different after all.

LT

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It has been an "oatmeal" kind of day.

It's been a rough day but Gavin has been very difficult. Gavin has listened at all today. He just seems to ignore the rules anymore. I swear to God if I hear him say "I'm sorry" one more time my head is going to explode. He's only saying sorry because he got busted. He doesn't learn from his mistakes.

We are seeing more of the mental health issues at work here. These problem's go way deeper then Autism alone. I honestly don't know how much more of this I can take. I gave him chance after chance today and he still choose poorly. So he had oatmeal for dinner. He had almost 30 min to eat a really tiny bowl. He didn't cause he was stalling. What he didn't know was that he would have gotten desert if he had eaten it. Honestly he had more then enough time to eat what was given to him. Again he choose poorly. At least it's good to know the oatmeal is still effective.

LT

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I want a do-over for today

So I go to my mailbox and get a letter from the bank that we over drafted. So I log in to my account to see what happened. I looked over the account and ALL activity. I should have never over drafted. I was never over my limit at all. The over draft or should I say over drafts (4 total) however have caused lots of over drafts themselves.

I have a call into the bank and I'm sure they will figure it out but until then I have lots of money but it looks like this. "$ -xxx.xx". :(

At least they didn't screw up the business account.

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Long night

Last night seemed to go on forever. EJ was sick and fussy all night long and ER kept having bad dreams. I think I finally got to sleep around 3am. Lizze let me nap this morning and that helped. I just got ER off to quiet time and I'm going to just chill while everyone is sleeping.
Maybe catch up on some "Splinter Cell: Conviction"....

Thank you for sharing our lives. LT

Rough day

Today has been a rough one. Gavin got off to school on a bad note. I was up all night again with ER. EJ few off the couch several times today and has a bruise running up and down the left side of his face. We can't sem to stay ahead of him no matter how hard we try, and believe me we do.

As you are aware we have had some family drama which has impacted us in a negative way. We have begun to rise above this and I plan on leaving this behind me now. We have more worthy things to spend our precious little amounts of energy on.

Gavin had a good day at school but a really rough time once home. He just doesn't listen at all. He was talking to ER about his dead cat. I have told him countless times not to talk to ER about ANYTHING like that but he doesn't listen. So I had to spend over an hour trying to explain why we could not save Gavin's cat and bring him home so Gavin can be happy. Gavin has become very good at stalling when he doesn't want to do anything. Pointless question after question time and time again. It's driving me crazy. He won't just do the extremely simple and mundane tasks we ask of him. He drags it out to the point that I want to say "forget it, I'll do it myself". However, I can't do that because he will just do it again and again. We can't let these things work or we will be chasing our tails forever.

Lizze has returned to the school PTA as president. While I have my concerns about her taking on anything else right now, she is really good at it. The school really needs her and it might do her some good and be a distraction. She let the position go this year because it was just to much. The principle wants to take her to lunch the first week of June. She is really excited about this. I'm very proud of her and look forward to helping her next year.

We owe the school a tremendous amount. They have really helped Gavin and will eventually be helping EJ. This is a charter school so they need all the help they can get. I can't say enough about how they change the lives of these kids. I think Lizze might be doing an article in which she interviews the school for the examiner.

I'm currently catching up on my shows and doing laundry. It's really the only quiet time I get so I take what I can.

Have a great night..

LT

Thank you for sharing our lives. LT

Pins and Needles

We are in the waiting room waiting to get the results of Lizze's MRI from a few weeks back. We will hopefully find out about the migraines, the tremors and the neuropathy. This has been a really long wait.

LT

Some news on Emmett John

Today has been a really rough. We got Emmett John to see his pediatrician today to follow up. Turns out the hospital missed quite a bit. This is what we learned.

His nose is broken but doesn't require surgery at this point. The biggest thing was the bruising behind his ears. I heard that and got sick to my stomach. That is a sign of intracranial bleeding. He said he is concerned about major internal head injury. Dr. H said on a scale of 1-10 he is worried at about a 6. Emmett John is doing fine after 24 hours so most likely all will be fine. We have to watch him closely over the next few days. If we notice anything at all he goes straight to the ER.

Gavin had a perfect day at school but struggled at home. Elliott Richard is fairly traumatized after watching his baby brother fall down the steps. He was so brave. After it happened he calmly came upstairs and told me that Emmett John fell down the steps and needed my help. Elliott Richard was ok till I told him that I was taking Emmett John to the hospital. He began sobbing hysterically. He was so scared for Emmett John. He is my sweet little angel. We must be doing something right because Elliott Richard is turning out pretty good.

Lizze and I are both still sick but still alive. Lizze has really been struggling with her pain the past few days.
I wish she could catch a break.

I have been better but also worse. I just wish I was in a better physical condition (mainly my back). I would be able to do more then whàt I can do now.

LT

Another long night......

Last night was another long night. Emmett John woke up about 3:30 am screaming again. We couldn't do much of anything to console him. I wish I knew what was going on. Lizze ended up taking him downstairs about 4:00 am.  She is upstairs now with him sleeping. These nights are killing us....

So far so good

Lizze and Emmett John took a 4 hour well deserved nap. I in turn, got to hang out with Elliott Richard. We had fun, didn't do much, but we had fun.

Picked up Gavin from school he did really well today. He got frustrated and was hitting himself again but at least he wasn't hitting anyone else :)

Gavin and I had to run some errands before going home and he did really well with that also. He walked into people while at the store but that's par for the course. I can live with that.

Now it's getting close to dinner.

Leak fixed: Mission Accomplished

Fixed the leak. But have to pull it apart in the morning cause I forgot to tape the threads.

It's Raining (in my freaking kitchen) UPDATE

So I pulled apart the top of the tub to check out the plumbing. Turns out that is may not be so tough after all. Now it's just finding the correct parts and taking it apart. Not much room to work.

The main problem is finding the money and deciding if we replace the whole setup. Lizze needs something with easier handles because it hurts to use the handles on this set up.

Been looking on line but I think I'll just have to go to the depot.

It's Raining Up In Here

So we got up this morning and trying to get things done when we notice it's raining on us. So what, you say. Well the problem is that I happen to be standing in my freaking kitchen. The leak in the bath tub faucet upstairs apparently has decided to become worse through out the night. Now it's leaking through the kitchen ceiling. When it rains it pours....

Rob

Lizze MRI update

Lizze had her much anticipated MRI on Friday morning. This is a precautionary but necessary step because of her migraines, tremors and neuropathy. We will hopefully hear back soon because we need some peace of mind.

I don't expect anything to come of this because the migraines are probably related to the firbo. She has also cat scans done and they have all been clean. Please keep her in your prayers.

Rob

Lizze's migraine

As I have mentioned before Lizze suffers from migraines. She has migraines almost daily. Meds don't work to prevent or treat them either. She just got back from her new neurologist she has through pain management and he is categorizing her as basicly disabled. She is having an MRI in 2 weeks to rule out a tumor but her cat scans have always been clear. This may be related to the fibro.

I guess when you have migraines for more then 14 days out of the month and they don't respond to meds it's considered disabling. I didn't realize that. I knew it was bad but not that bad. He has also striped her diet of anything with tyramine ( I think that's what it was) in it. My mom is on the gluten free diet cause she has celiac and this appears worse then that. I didn't expect this. I thought maybe they would increase her Topamax or something. Good thing we haven't gone shopping yet.

LT

I launched my new business website..

I had big issues trying to migrate our business website to a new host. As a result I had to start from scratch. I have been fixing computers for many years. I have worked for Microsoft for about 12 years now. My last project I worked on was Windows 7. I have been using Windows 7 for a few years now.

After I destroyed my back while I was a firefighter/paramedic I needed a way to continue to provide for our family. As our family life became more "complicated" and my back continued to get worse we decided to pursue the computer repairs (that I was doing for everyone anyway) and grow it into a home business. Things have slowed down since Emmett John came along really because our attention has been so divided.

Things are getting tougher so I decided to more aggressively pursue new business. I wanted to migrate our website to a new host but that ended in disaster. So I had to start over from scratch. I finally published it the other day and thought I would share it with you guys. Be nice because it is a work in progress :) www.computerrenew.org


Thanks

LT

Anyone out there looking for a nice video camera?

 I just put up our video camera on ebay to help generate some funds.  If you are interested or know someone who might be check our my ebay auction.  If not well that's cool to.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200454571997

Thanks

Lost and Tired

Random stuff

Sitting waiting to go into Gavin's appointment. Trying to think thru getting our computer business back up and running full steam. I just built my new tower and it's running really nice. I also got most of my testing gear together. I got external burners and external docks for just about any HDD you can imagine. I am in the process of transferring my domain to a new host and my website will be back up. I am going to be working on some marketing things this week as I have time.

We never actually shut down we just stopped pursuing new customers. I still had business but we had just to much going on to focus on both businesses. When the site is back up I post a link here so you can check it out.

Lost and Tired

Common Sense

One of the most frustrating and draining things about raising Gavin is the fact that he lacks common sense. I am very serious when I say that. Gavin does not have any common sense. That part of his brain just doesn't work. While he is extremely intelligent it's also "think to breath" so to speak with everything else. He doesn't recognise even the most basic safety things like the burner is hot or that's way to high to jump from.

Honestly, Elliott Richard past him up in that department a while back. It's hard to always keep in mind that Gavin really doesn't function very well in the real world. It's really easy to lose your patience because all you see sometimes is a 10 year old doing things that his 4 year old brother knows is wrong.

You have to visualize Gavin as a 2 or 3 year old in a bigger body. So what Gavin does is really appropriate for his emotional age but not his physical age. Way to often I see him as an out of control 10 year old. Gavin is really smart and can do some things that are well past is physical age so it's easy to forget where he really is. That is really one of the most difficult parts of this whole journey.


Lost and Tired

Waiting for relief

Well I finished my steroid cycle for my back and sadly it didn't work. My doctor will only let me do this once a year because the steroid that reduces the inflammation also destroys the rest of my cartilage in the process. So I am left with my muscle relaxers. Hopefully they can relax the muscle enough to relieve some of the pain caused by compensating for my left side.

Lost and Tired

Welcome home

I have decided to move my blog from blogger to here. My wife was locked out of her "Award Winning" blog today for what they claimed was terms of service violations. She has had that blog for 4 or 5 years and never violated anything. We believe someone filed a complaint as a "passive aggressive" attack. Anyway, she will be moving here also and when she is up and running I'll share the link.

Thanks for following

Lost and Tired