He Has Autism - But it Doesn’t Have Us!!

i captured some flora and fauna in the new backyard of the people i work for.

enjoy…

the yard.

find the hummingbird…

probably my favourite..

so much fun!

the other day kaya was in the backyard playing with her little buddy tia. my mom has a big back yard that she shares with her neighbours. two of the neighbours have dogs, who the kids both really enjoy. the two dogs happened to be fighting over a bone on that particular day.

anyway, kaya and tia were sitting at a small table. buster the minin daschund was sitting under the table chewing on the bone he had won from the other dog. kaya got off of her chair and crawled under the table to get a tree leaf that had fallen under the ground. before anybody could say anything, the dog snapped at her, having decided that she was trying to take his bone.

his top teeth punctured her cheek just under the eye and his bottom teeth scraped up her cheek, leaving an awful bruise.

we chose not to make a big deal of it, although we clearly let the owner know that we were’nt happy. but i decided that the dog was being defensive rather that aggressive, and that we could prevent the same thiing from happening again.

so guess it’s just a really tough lesson learned.

the day after it happened. it was still a little swollen. the briuse wasn’t as obvious because her whole cheek was red.

day 3, the swelling was down and the bruise was much more obvious.

yesterday, the bruise was turning all those wonderful bruise colours and was very obvious.

poor princess!!!

here is a declaration:

autism is a word
it is 6 little letters
i refuse to let it change my expectataions
it will not change my view of the world
or the world’s view of my family
it will not dictate how far we can travel
or how successful he’ll be

autism is a word
it is 6 little letters
i refuse to be intimidated
i will not get frustrated
and i will not give up
i won’t change my course
we’ll just fight that much harder

in 20 years you’ll look at him
and that word will not be the first thing to slip into you’re mind.

President’s Choice is a brand name here. They sell all kinds of food and household products. They have a charity called President’s Choice Children’s Charity. They don’t buy any kind of lifesaving devices or send kids on vacations, but they focus on making lives easier. taking care of the little things. you can apply to have them fund therapy, mobility equipment, disability related home renovations and many other things. We wrote to them and asked them if they would help us get a larger stroller for liam. he still very much needs one because it makes him feel safe when we’re out and he has so many social phobias. we were quickly approved for funding and our snazzy new stroller arrived real fast!!

thank you president’s choice!!

it’s a virtual kid chariot!!

if you live in canada - go out and buy something PC!!

liam spent the day at sick kid’s hospital a little while ago. he was there to get an MRI. we’ve always been a little concerned about the growth and proportions of his head and he is prone to headaches, so this test was to assure that everything is growing and developing typically.

Liam was to be sedated for the test. not a general anestetic, but an IV sedation. we had no idea how awful that would turn out to be for him. but, i’m getting ahead of myself, here.

so, we took a cab there. liam was thrilled to see it was a minivan cab.

sick kids hospital is world renowned for it’s research and treatment. and it really is a beautiful place.  here’s liam in the atrium.

in the waiting room they had a teeny tiny MRI machine that the kids could look at, climb in and get to feel comfortable around. liam and i were both extremely amused!!

fooling around while we waited.

giving us the finger.

he said his ‘coupling broke’

hiding in the linens.

after that fun came the hard part.  liam hated being sedated and fought it hard. he took about 20 minutes to go to sleep and cried and struggled the entire time.

still sleeping.

waking up.

he was very unhappy when he woke up. they warned is that he would feel ‘heavily intoxicated’ for up to the next 24 hours. well he did. he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t even sit up straight. he screamed and fought and hated every second of it. it took at least 4 days for him to feel back to normal.

but don’t worry, he recovered in a couple of days!!

and a cute picture of kaya just for fun!

and i’m happy to report that the MRI was totally normal!

the backyard is probably liam’s favourite place. a hot day and a kiddie pool is all he needs to be happy.

if you’re wondering where kaya is, she spends her days at a preschool/summer camp. she loves every second of it!

joy in flight!

you may find him in a tree.

or diggin dirt!

or swingin

but you’ll always find him happy!

he is a child of summer.