Lily is FIVE!!

Well, I'm finally updating. Lily is FIVE! I always said recovery by age five and look at her now! She's not fully recovered of course, but she's EXACTLY where I knew she would be! She has overcome so much and I am so proud of her! Reading, writing (the best in her class! This from a girl who would scream and cry in frustration of having to draw even one line on a piece of paper), singing, joke telling, manipulating (mommy, PLEASE?!), negotiating (how about I eat my dinner and then have TWO cookies?), artistic (her drawings are getting to be the highlight of my days...her people actually wear CLOTHES now! LOL) are only a few of her many talents. It's hard to see the autism most days, with the exception of some short emotional meltdowns and her difficulty switching her attention to you if she is engaged in play or watching TV. Also she still has  difficulty with sound sensitivity (toilet flushing is a big no-no) but over all she does very well with the day to day and the things that she needs to work on (your typical social stuff) will come with time and aren't quite as important now as they might be next year or there after. She will be in a regular kindergarten class next year, which was always our goal.

Though Lily is far into her recovery, I think about autism daily. My other little girl wonder, Meadow (who is now 20 months old), is a constant reminder of where we once were with Lily. She's incredible and her ability to communicate effectively without much speech is amazing. All of the little things she does are so appreciated. Her sideways glance, her naughty nature, her call to everyone for attention, her complete ability to understand most EVERYTHING. Meadow could be the poster child for the "neurotypical". She went through some speech issues though (she still is, but it's too early to matter now that she's got the ball rolling). When I took her off bottled water and started giving her filtered tap water (she was about 8 or 10 months old I think), she lost most of her ability to make sounds. With the exception of Mama and Dada, she only ever grunted. I had her evaluated and she didn't show the natural pattern of speech delay, it was definitely something more. Meadow babbled as a young baby and her second word was not "Dada", it was "Lily". She also could say "cheese" and "baba". She stopped producing sounds. Luckily this was her only area of impairment. As soon as I came to the realization that it was our water that was effecting her (some people might think I'm crazy, but my gut hasn't been wrong yet...and there can be some nasty stuff in your water system these days and few think about that), I started ordering Zepherhills water and had a cooler brought in. I not only use that for our drinking water but I cook with it and use it to wash our fruit. I started giving her epsom salt baths as a natural chelator and it started to help her develop her sounds again almost immediately. It's been a couple of months now and she now says a hand full of words, and all kinds of "almost" words ("Paaa" for "Pop" for example) and can say "cheese" and "Lily" again. I can still sense her struggling to put sounds together that she shouldn't have to struggle for (for example, she can say each sound individually, but can't put them together....like she can say "mmmmm" and "eeeeee" but can't say "me". But she's getting there. I was never concerned about her "speaking", she's a bit young for that and everyone speaks when they are ready, but not being able to make sounds? Hmmmm....been there before, NOT normal.

Our kids systems can be soooo sensitive, I'm not sure why that is but one thing is for sure...ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS CAUSE AUTISM. No one disagrees with that. Meadow has not had one vaccination yet, but has had her brain compromised by some kind of toxin. Lily's toxins were INJECTED in her in large amounts, hence the major damage and longer recovery. Toxins are everywhere in our world, especially in today's world. That's why virtually everyone you know, knows SOMEONE affected by autism in some way.

Boy, she's come a long way! Here's a video from when Lily was 2.

No one will ever be able to tell me Lily must have been "misdiagnosed".  I'll post a recent video soon.

May 2011

I guess it's time for my biannual entry, lol. Meadow is now one and walking and chases after Lily all the time. She still craves attention from Lily and Lily is still hard pressed to give it to her, though Lily does clearly love her sister it's not all Meadow would like it to be. Time will help, and when Meadow can start verbalizing her wants, I know things will take a turn.

Lily was having a hard time with her anxiety over pretty much everything and it was hindering her progress at school. Meltdowns around every corner. It is so hard to watch your child cry and become upset over trivial things. Having to go to the potty, wash hands, pick up a toy, get dressed for school, transitioning to another activity etc. To everyone else they are trivial...to Lily they are things that trigger emotions in her that she just can't control. So after trying everything that I could think of and her teachers doing the same, I decided to bring her to the doctor so that she could get some antianxiety medication. BINGO, a home run from the very first dose! Her body is very sensitive so it doesn't take much to affect her. Her teachers were thrilled, as was I. She started to get more hyper during the day and had trouble settling down at night, so I increased her trazodone in the evening and that seemed to help a lot, but by 3 or 4pm she seemed overtired so naptime for everyone! It makes her bedtime later, but her body seems to like that schedule. Last year she used to nap from 2-6 and then sleep 8 hours at night.

january 8, 2011

Where do I begin? Lily is doing awesome, as usual. Things were rough with her relationship with Meadow for awhile. It was so hard to watch Meadow crave Lily's attention so badly to just have Lily reject her. We tried every kind of encouragement we could think of. I even tried bribing her to spend time with her, thinking if she only started the interaction maybe it would increase...no go. Meadow tried so hard and now that she is crawling she can literally chase Lily for attention. Sometimes Meadow would just look at Lily and laugh (her only hope of Lily looking her way). It worked initially, and then it stopped. Lily's resentment towards her sister was just too great.

Now? Things have FINALLY made a turn around. We were all stuck home sick for 2 weeks over the christmas break. Lily had no where to go to get away from her sister. With lots of positive reinforcement and lots of time together things began to improve. A friend of mine suggested I write Lily a "social story" outlining her "story" of getting a sister and how great it is to have a sister, what you can do with a sister etc. I wrote up a pretty lengthy one and included lots of pictures of everyone and Lily LOVES it. She calls it her "adventure book". It made all the difference. Lily actually shows excitement to see her sister in the morning when they get up. She recently invited her to play and introduces her to strangers at the store when we are out.

Have I mentioned that Lily is READING!? I can hardly believe it! She is really very good and it is so wonderful to listen to her. She recently is doing better with writing, though she still has a lot of difficulty, she loves to connect dots or trace letters and numbers. She actually asked me yesterday if she could color...wait...isn't this the girl that HATES to color? Lily LOVES to do arts and crafts and loves to work on workbooks that I buy for her at Target in the dollar section (whenever I happen to see some).

Lily did better going back to school this week. For the past few months she really had a hard time with going to school and would have meltdowns in the mornings ranting about not wanting to go to PE, or do table time or have to go to the potty at school. I really think all those were excuses and that she just couldn't voice that she wanted to stay home with mommy too. I think she was jealous of Meadow. Since her relationship with Meadow got better, so did her outlook on school...coincidence? I may never know for sure.

Lily is changing in so many positive ways. I'm hard pressed to come up with other things to work on with her...yay! She still has difficulty following a point, so I need to describe where things are instead of pointing. We will continue to work on her writing, that part of her brain needs a lot of repair. Auditory processing is going to be her longest hurdle, but she improves every day.