what an "interesting" past 6 days

so..here's the story. i took collin in on thursday to the pediatrician's office for a referral to a pediatric gastroenterologist(they deal w/digestive issues..which collin, let's just say he's got a lot of issues). our pediatrician tried to, in my opinion, save face by recommending a 2 week trial run before we could get the referral. so, collin got switched from one over the counter laxative supplement we had been using(magnesium hydroxide) that was causing bleeding, to a powder called miralax. supposedly it is more gentle than the magnesium.

um..yeah. whatever. it'd caused his frequent constipation to get worse, which is causing constant tantrums. he is back to the classic autistic head-banging symptom(walls, doors, me). he hasn't done that for almost a year now. he is also been very aggressive and takes awhile for each time to let up. for tantrums & the aggression, we had JUST gotten it to under 3 per day. more "spacing out" and his speech is jumbled up(more than usual and different than a couple weeks ago when he was talking to me before bed).

while i was trying to put two & two together last night, i stumbled upon this article(written by a mom with an autistic child).

we have now switched pediatrician's (thanks for the recommendation rebecca!) . i had a few things going on before this i didn't like, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. he's now all set for a new patient visit & referral in a couple weeks. and hopefully that'll be one less challenge in our life.

Marching to the beat of her own drum...

Ivy is so funny, the thing she does and says. She loves me printing out activity books & coloring pages, which I have no problem with. Tom brings tons of scratch paper home from work just for this purpose. I find it strange, though, she asks for things in the wrong season. For instance, a couple days ago she was telling one of Collin's therapists that she needed to make Valentines for Valentines Day--never mind it won't be Valentine's Day till next year. Today she is asking for "fall pictures", even though it's not even summer yet. Oh well. Luckily for me, I've become quite the expert at finding online coloring pages for her, and have everything bookmarked so I don't have to search for it again.

In other news, Ivy's having a hard time distinguishing between my birthday(a couple weeks ago) and Mother's Day this Sunday. She doesn't understand why I get a present and she doesn't. I told her why we celebrate Mother's Day and that she can get a Mother's Day present when she's a grown up. I also reminded Ivy that her birthday is not for a very long time(December).

my little chatterbox

andrew has a couple new things he likes to say "shoes"(he sounds like a snake when he says it "sssss") while pointing to either the shoe shelf or his toes, and "hi" (sounds like "ha"). today he went up to ivy and said hi. she was busy watching something, and didn't respond so andrew squatted down, got in her face(literally) and said hi again. i made sure ivy answered that time. ;)

andrew can also say "hi dada". still waiting for "mama". i know he knows how, he said it once before christmas but for whatever reason likes saying "dada" better. maybe daddy's more of a novelty than mommy, since we only see him after the kids & i eat dinner and on the weekends?

Prayers *finally* (sort of) answered

Collin got up early today before church, and took a long nap this afternoon. We only woke him up from the nap for a diaper change before getting Ivy & Andrew ready for bed. After the diaper change, Collin was excited to be awake, but obviously couldn't stay up and play or watch a movie like he was asking for since he needs to go to school tomorrow. After many failed attempts at getting him to eat or drink anything before getting ready for bed again, I sat w/him on the rocker in his room & just sat there talking to him. He really doesn't like rocking in the chair, just likes to sit still on my lap(I chalk it up to his autism) I just talked about things like what happened this weekend, what's going on tomorrow. Collin did an amazing thing! He started to *try* to talk in long sentences to me. It was all babble, so I didn't understand a word of it, but I kept telling him about I like him talking to me & using his words. I actually let Collin do most of the talking since this is such a rare thing. He talked to me probably a good 3-4 minutes before I had to put him in bed so he could go back to sleep. It was so hard not to cry listening to him babbling to me. He obviously felt he had something to say to me and was trying to express himself which is such a hard thing for him to do, more so than a typical child.

This is something we've prayed for, for so long: to be able to have a 2 way conversation w/Collin! I can't tell you how many times we prayed just to get Collin to talk a year ago--too many too count(multiple times per day). It's such a relief and comfort to know our prayers are really being answered. I admit there have been several times I've wondered if Heavenly Father is really listening or paying attention to our little family? I feel like lately, in our prayers besides thanking for the typical things, that it's more asking for things than anything else. But at the same time, I feel like we sure could use all the blessings we can get and why shouldn't we ask for things we need that are completely out of our hands after all we've done?

I would have loved to know what Collin was trying to say, but at this point, I'll take what I can get.

What happened?

This is half of Andrew's "what happened" sign. He typically does it with both hands.

Teeth update

Andrew has most of his 1st molar in. Yay! I'll have to take a picture. The suprising news was actually Ivy. She has her first loose tooth, something I wasn't expecting for another year or two. The tooth with the green circle around it is her loose tooth and the one circled in purple is the new one that *apparently* has grown in to replace it.

KAOS anyone?

IVY: "Mommy, look at me. I'm being a KAOS agent."

**methinks someone's been watching a little too much "Get Smart"**--Tom got the dvds for Christmas.