's All I'm Saying...

The Eagle Has Landed!

I am standing at the hall closet getting out some towels. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Liberty brush past me and into the bathroom. He has his headphones on, a t-shirt and Spiderman underwear. I watch as he sits on the potty, pulls his pants down and not off, urinates, and pulls pants back up. I almost say, "Remember to flush..." but he beats me to it, turns around, high fives me, and runs back into his room to finish watching The Wiggles.

And, that apparently, is how milestones get reached. No fanfare, no trophies, no jumping up and down. Lib acted as if he'd been doing this for years. A switch went on and stayed on. Something somewhere synapsed.

I just stood in the middle of the hall with my mouth open.

And then I thanked God. Profusely.

How to be inspired to write...

Go Away Gustav

WANTED: Nice corner of the world to live in. Must have great services for autism and affordable homes. Must be far away from the path of any hurricanes as possible but not so far north as to get snowed in most of the year. It would be a bonus to not be in a tornado alley. While it would be lovely to live near water, would like to live nowhere near a flood plain. It would be extra nice to be in a community that supports locally grown food and organic products and is far away from any coal-burning plants or Superfund sites.

I am either:

a. Looking for the yellow brick road to Emerald City.
b. Sick to death of dogding hurricanes.
c. Tired of having Labor Day ruined by making "exit" plans.
d. ALL OF THE ABOVE.

On His Own

- Going into the bathroom and using the potty.
- Using a spoon by himself to eat the (previously dreaded) applesauce and pot roast.
- Following directions.
- Loving his new auditory CD for social/emotional/V O C A L support and saying almost sentences.
- Insisting on using a regular cup to drink from, filling it from the refrigerator door with no accidents (or naughtiness a.k.a. flooding the kitchen).
- Cleaning up any accidents of any kind.
- Putting away his toys and trash.
- Hanging up his backpack at school.
- Waving bye-bye and hello.

and it's only the 2nd week of school...

What a great start! The only pull-ups I buy now are the nighttime ones and they last at least a month.

You were right, Carrie. It does get better. :)

The Hope Rises Again

A Good Mantra

"There is nothing for you to go back and live over, or fix, or feel regret about now. Every part of your life has unfolded just right. And so --now -- knowing all that you know from where you now stand, now what do you want? The answers are now coming forth to you. "

"Go forth in joy, and get on with it. "

(quoted from Jerry and Esther Hicks and Abraham)

Liberty Report a.k.a. Film at Eleven

This past weekend has been so crazy weather-wise. The Weather Channel was wrong, predicting we would get rain in "biblical proportions." They actually said that.

Unfortunately, the rest of Florida and Alabama have gotten inundated with rain. I think Tallahassee, Florida got 22 inches of rain in one day! We got our supplies on Friday, cooked, and hunkered down to get through the weekend with predicted power outages and the possibility of the schools closing on Monday. The weather stations continued to predict the torrential rain and high winds up through Saturday night. Thankfully, all we got was a steady sprinkle of rain. Sunday turned out to be absolutely beautiful with the sun shining and a little wind. People with cabin fever burst out of their houses on Sunday to get out and circulate.

So, we had a very normal day yesterday, only to awaken this morning to tornado warnings and a report of nearby Mobile, Alabama receiving torrential rains during the night. Again, we seemed to only get the eye wall of this thing.

It's blustery, dark and overcast this morning with a tropically warm feel. It's lovely, actually. We need days like this to punctuate the monotony of the long late summer days here.

The weather predictions being so "off" reminded me of the way I am constantly in a position of theorizing about Liberty's experience. Because my son is not speaking yet, one can interpret his actions, verbal and nonverbal, 'til the cows come home, as they say.

Therefore, if my daily theories about Lib were put in the form of a weather report, it would probably go something like this:

Due to the MB12 shot yesterday, we are expecting clearer thinking and good eye contact, with few tantrums and possibly some puzzling unpredictable behavior. Since soy was given in the past three days, it is possible to expect a "bathroom event." A summery mix of squawking like a parrot and throwing items across the room may occur at times, followed by interludes of calm and quiet concentration when the therapeutic listening is employed. With conditions such as they are with the influx of new supplements, continued normal biological growth, and a sudden bout of willfulness, be prepared for any and all types of behavior patterns uncharacteristic for this time of year.

And, tune in tomorrow where I will be wrong again.

Film at 11, as they say.

Sent from Heaven

I use a lot of "props" to help me cope with stress - and that would be specifically books, movies, puzzles, crafts, etc. and MUSIC. My latest obsession.

Nature heals

The fairies dance..

When was the last time you laid in the thick, green grass and did some cloud watching? Me too, until today.

For Susan with Love

Seminole Wind

Ever since the days of old,
Men would search for wealth untold.
They'd dig for silver and for gold,
And leave the empty holes.
And way down south in the Everglades,
Where the black water rolls and the saw grass waves.
The eagles fly and the otters play,
In the land of the Seminole.

So blow, blow Seminole wind,
Blow like you're never gonna blow again.
I'm calling to you like a long lost friend,
But I know who you are.
And blow, blow from the Okeechobee,
All the way up to Micanopy.
Blow across the home of the Seminole,
The alligators and the garr.

Progress came and took its toll,
And in the name of flood control,
They made their plans and they drained the land,
Now the glades are going dry.
And the last time I walked in the swamp,
I sat upon a Cypress stump,
I listened close and I heard the ghost,
Of Osceola cry.

So blow, blow Seminole wind,
Blow like you're never gonna blow again.
I'm calling to you like a long lost friend
But I know who you are.
And blow, blow from the Okeechobee,
All the way up to Micanopy.
Blow across the home of the Seminole,
The alligators and the garr.

Nostalgia has it limits

It wasn't all good in the "good old days." Anyone remember this? I didn't.

School Daze

The school season started for us yesterday morning when the brand new bus pulled up curbside. These buses look like real charter buses and the backs of the seats are so high. The staff in charge of transportation won't provide a booster seat for Lib or let us get our own, so he cannot see out the window and we cannot wave good-bye to him. I'm none too thrilled with that, but he seemed to be okay with it yesterday; at least we were told he did well on the bus ride.

Since there were massive budget cuts this year, the start and end times for school have changed and everyone is disoriented. Lib has a rather long day, leaving around 7:30 and not getting home until around 3:15. Some kids don't get home until after 4:00, which seems absurd to me, but the buses have to be staggered since there are not enough of them to pick up the kids at the same time.

To add insult to injury, the teacher's budget for the entire year for the entire class is $200! It's laughable. So, we are looking for grants and asking for sponsors for Lib's classroom this year.

I hope that Lib's sleep schedule straightens out after this week. He is so wiped out that he takes a nap when he gets home, but only after he has a snack. He slept from 5 to 7 last night and was up until midnight. It's hard to prevent him from falling asleep and hard to wake him from a nap when he is so utterly exhausted.

So, we are a little dazed and confused right now, but nothing out of the ordinary! Soon, it will become routine and we will be in a comfortable groove once again.

A note of gratitude: Tropical Storm/Hurricane Fay spared our Gulf Coast this time.

No Child Left Inside

I have fond memories of being a kid and running wild in the summers. I mean, being let loose on our own, me and my best friend and our dogs, until we were called home by the street lights or a cow bell ringing. We had neighborhood games of kickball, red rover, hide and seek, swinging statues, volleyball, and badminton. We had no air conditioning in East Tennessee in those early days of the sixties, and we'd come inside panting from playing hard and drinking glasses of water from the tap that tasted so sweet. You'd only cool off after taking a bath and putting on pajamas and hanging out in front of the old fans that swung lazily back and forth throughout the night. We slept with our windows open. We knew the smell of fresh air. We were close to the earth.

These days, we are used to artificial environments and wonder at the smell of damp earth and fresh breezes when we throw our windows open in the Spring and Fall. I love the smell of my son's hair when he comes in from playing out in the yard. Such a striking difference from being inside all day.

Though I am not truly complaining about modern conveniences (we like our air conditioning in Florida where the temps reach in the 100s in the summer), I do believe as children we have lost the connection to nature that many of us older generations had when we were kids.

My older sisters speak of being free to roam all over the air force base when they were kids and my father was a pilot. I often wonder what it's like for children now who are constantly supervised, who have not known the excitement of planning adventures each day around the neighborhood, building forts (in my generation, it was secret hideouts), and climbing trees. We were shooed out of the house on beautiful days. Only rainy days were saved for plopping in front of the TV and watching cartoons.

When I was in fifth grade, my entire class went on a field trip up to the Blue Ridge Mountains which were not that far away from our city. We were away from home for one solid week. We divided into "teams" and did all of our learning outside. We were given journals and were required to remain completely silent for at least 30 minutes to one hour each day. We all had our own large river rocks to sit on during this meditation time that we chose ourselves in the middle of a beautiful running stream that meandered through the middle of camp.

I will never forget that experience.

There is an organization called No Child Left Inside that has been created to allow children to reconnect with Nature as their natural classroom, and to understand the importance of their role in helping preserve it and to foster a love for it. Thought you might want to have a look.

Get 'Em Outside Video

Four More Days...

...until school starts. Hallelujah! I love my boy and everything, but okay...he needs the structured environment and I need the T. I. M. E. to myself. And to be able to work and make more than 5 cents.

It's coming, I know it. Lib has made profound changes this summer. I am grateful for it all.

Yesterday, he tested the limits though. He just could not leave the water in the refrigerator door alone. I can't tell you how many towels we went through. I can now say, "Clean it up!" and he gets a towel on his own and cleans it all up. Also, he likes to take his sippy cup and spit the cold water all down his chest, then try to get ME to take his wet shirt off.

These things happen in the blink of an eye. I take a phone call. I walk to the laundry room. I check an email. It's so fast. I turn around and there he is soaking wet, AGAIN.

He's just plain bored.

But, he's eating better, he's signing, he's going to the potty, he's understanding so much more.

He's ready. And so am I!

A sweet good-bye to the last days of summer. Bring on Autumn!

The Work

Are you guys familiar with these interviews by Oprah on XM radio? They are also on her website. You can use the drop down list to listen to some fascinating people. One of my favorite teachers and incredibly interesting person is Byron Katie. What she calls "The Work," has helped me untangle many uncomfortable feelings, especially in regard to my son's issues.

Check out Oprah's Soul Series.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Nothing like playing in the cool, gentle rain and taking a nice hot shower afterward! Yes, showers are Lib's new thing. No baths for this boy.

Be in the World, Not of It

Angry and frustrated again, I remembered these words this morning that are attributed to Jesus.

This morning, I had an onslaught of emails mainly from a yahoo group about the dangers of a carcinogen produced in potatoes at high temperatures and Kettle Chips seemed to be the worst offender. The ones that looked the most healthy. The ones my son loves to pieces.

I really have finally had enough.

There are many, many benefits to the Internet, don't get me wrong. I've done lots of searching on Google, made many online friends, had access to chat groups and newsletters, and lots of online ordering - my favorite being Amazon.

B U T

I have also invited a lot of unwanted vibrations into my life, mainly of the fear-producing kind.

Each and every day, I hear about the dangers of this, the carcinogen in that, and how our food supply is being poisoned, etc. While I do not want to bury my head in the sand, honestly, folks, I was a much calmer, happier person when I relied strictly on my own internal compass about what was best for me and my family's health. The constant bombardment of what we classify as "information" is beginning to be detrimental to my health.

I spoke with my sister about this today and we agreed that we need to have a certain amount of discernment about what to listen to, what to watch, who to believe, and that discernment has to come from within ourselves.

I believe we are living in a world now that requires us to rely increasingly on our own internal compass, our own intuition to live the best life that we can. We just can no longer rely on the media to represent the truth. That is Old World thinking.

What crossed my mind this morning are the folks who smoke and live to be 100, or the ones who are addicted to say, Tootsie Rolls, who never develop diabetes or obesity. You know what I'm talking about. We are all put together differently, and what we think about, what our disposition is to Life really determines the quality of it. Period.

There is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach for all of us. What we think about every day and how we ALLOW ourselves to feel matters to our health, too.

So, whether or not some food is good for us or not, I just really don't know. I don't have access to the actual research that some claims are purported to be based on. Think about these tidbits of information we get on the national news, "studies show..." What studies? We are never told where most of this comes from unless we sit and Google for hours.

Meanwhile, my life is waiting...

I was happier when I lived my life without the bombardment of so much information, most of which is negative!

In a similar vein, my sisters and I were discussing how much fun it was as children to sit on the floor of our parent's home and flip through the Encyclopedia Britannica. I remember I loved the sections on dogs of the world, and costumes and dress the best. When we wanted information, we went to books. Our minds focused on one thing at a time.

Now, all we have to do is Google a word and we get 500,000 pieces of information returned. This is too much for our brains, I feel. It's ridiculous. We don't even know what the best piece of information is, unless we rely on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Can you get how insane that feels?

The bottom line for me now is, I have to wind my way through all of this information now, deciding what I will listen to, what I will "plug into," and what I will discard. Separate the chaff from the wheat. And, all the while, setting the deliberate intention to feel good, to find things to appreciate, taking into consideration that an integral part of my health is the way I am thinking about it right now.

Yes, sometimes the world is way too much with me. But, I have the remote. I can choose a different channel.

What She Said

My friend Michelle has said beautifully what I have been feeling for a good while now. I have gotten so much mail - some saying how dare you think I need to recover my child - some saying I'm not doing biomed enough or right!

So, today, I let Michelle be my voice.

Go!

It is very interesting to me how Liberty has gotten the idea behind the sign "go" and it's various meanings and applications.

Imagine this: The sign for go is to roll your hands and arms around each other, like when you do the pattycake song.

When Lib really wants to go elsewhere badly, he does a BIG ROLL of the hands, like the robot in Lost in Space - "Danger, Danger Will Robinson!" The more he has to wait on me, like when I am talking to a teacher, the bigger the roll of the hands. It's so cute, we just all crack up.

When he wants the car to go after we stop, obviously, he signs "go." That's normal.

But, if I point to, say a bag of pretzels, and ask if he wants one, he signs, "Go!" In other words, in this case "go" means "Yes! Do that, keep going and unzip that bag and give one to me."

The funniest thing I've seen is when he's sitting on the potty waiting for his stream to start, and in the meantime, he signs "go" to himself! A little self-encouragement never hurt anybody.

Think about how we use the word go, even in slang, "And, then she goes...then he goes..." meaning "says" but it seems so natural to say "go."

Also, he has learned that when he wants me to leave the room he signs "go" and then waves me away, for "go away!"

I just wonder at the process of language and how Lib can use his hands and make one sign and realize it has many meanings that were not taught to him.

I really get now that he has language but not speech. Yet.

So much remains to be seen.

I'm a Believer

Well, it's been four days since I took Liberty off of casein; specifically milk-based yogurt. I have not seen one episode like the ones I was witnessing that looked like some type of seizure or brain blip. KNOCK ON WOOD.

Also, I just realized Lib is probably going through a type of opiate withdrawal since he has had a few interesting fits "out of the blue."

Here's a refresher on how gluten and casein proteins can affect brain function:

"...a note on the opiate receptors from Great Plains Laboratory:

The peptides from gluten [gliadorphin] and casein [casomorphin] are important because they react with opiate receptors in the brain, thus mimicking the effects of opiate drugs like heroin and morphine. These compounds have been shown to react with areas of the brain such as the temporal lobes, which are involved in speech and auditory integration.

Children with autism frequently seem addicted to wheat and dairy products. Presumably, people with Autism and schizophrenia incompletely digest wheat and dairy products. These incompletely digested peptides are then absorbed into the body and bind to opiate receptors, altering behavior and other physiological reactions."

I first placed Liberty on a gluten free/casein-free diet May 7, 2007. It was around the end of April of this year that I began to re-introduce the yogurt into his diet and I really did not see much in the way of reaction. I thought I was safe because I was also giving him an enzyme to help digest the food. But, apparently, the casein can have a cumulative effect. So says Dr. Bock. His words, "You'd be surprised at how nasty casein protein can be."

Well, we will see. I am hoping this is it so we won't have to go on an anti-seizure medication, especially since we were unable to obtain an EEG. And, he seems so much more with it, especially today on his first day back to OT and Speech. And, wouldn't it be nice if it was something SIMPLE for a change?

My blogger friend Robin has been so gracious in helping me collect GF/CF recipes to try.

If anyone has any great tried-and-true meals, send 'em my way, okay? Thanks and I'll be happy to return the favor with my tasty but extremely limited repertoire of gf/cf foods.

How I keep my sanity

We're Okay

Lib has recovered from his ordeal. It took a long time for the Benadryl + chloral hydrate combination to wear off.

In the meantime, I am sitting here waiting for his doctor to call for our follow-up phone appointment, and he is in his room quietly dismantling it.

Liberty has developed a sudden penchant for showers. No baths.

He loves Herb Alpert.

He loves Mr. Potato Head and he goes around with Mr. Potato Head's sunglasses trying them on all of his stuffed animal friends. This is new. He suddenly knows his body parts.

And, Kettle Chips are the bee's rollerskates.

At least for today. Maybe for three days. Then he will be onto something else.

I am disoriented today without camp, being in between school, and the solar eclipse.

More later, but thanks for all of your support and concern and general good energy that came our way. I can always count on it and I appreciate it so much.

LOVE.