Happy Halloween!

Drew had his Fall Party at school on Wednesday and since his costume wasn't ready yet and the other costume that he owns was a little big for school, I gave him a couple options. You would have thought he would have chosen the construction guy complete with hat and tools, but no..... he chose Daddy. So we pinned up one of Daddy's work shirts, grabbed one of Daddy's ties and some of Drew's khaki pants and there you have it!

Drew was SO PROUD to be Daddy. When asked what his costume was he said "I Daddy"

Drew wanted nothing to do with a new costume for Friday, he insisted that "I Daddy" So we continued with the Walgreen Store Manager costume again on Friday night!

We went to an AWESOME Halloween gathering at a friend's house last night complete with roasting hot dogs, marshmallows and lots of play time outside. We then went trick or treating in their neighborhood and we had the absolute best time!

Trick or Treating with Daddy! This was the first year that Drew had a concept of what was going on. He had a blast getting candy and hanging out with his friends!

Hop on Over....

For those of you that don't know, I have another blog that goes along with my website.
http://daisylayneboutique.blogspot.com

Be sure to keep an eye out over there for specials and giveaways! Today, there is a giveaway over at www.three-peas.com giving away 3 of my Holiday Baby Bibs - so be sure to join in on the fun!

What else did you expect?

How else would a weekend of quality time with grandpa (that started with an afternoon of learning to shoot a bow and arrow) end? With a trip to Bass Pro Shop of course!

Here are pictures that Grandma took on Sunday. He came home to tell me that he "pet a moose" Yep..... I see that...

And what trip to Bass Pro Shop would be complete without a trip to stare at the giant fish tank and waterfall... Someone really needs to take this boy fishing..... hmm.... I'm sure someone will take care of that soon...

WHAT IN THE WORLD!?! Okay it is just a video game, but come on! This boy clearly has an idea of how a site works on a gun, at least he doesn't have his hand on the trigger. Okay grandpa, Please - lets wait to teach my boy to shoot a gun for at least a few more years!

Archery 101 - It's TIME

For those of you that have known me, my whole life, this post will NOT surprise you. For the rest of you, yes, my father is teaching my son to shoot a bow and arrow at 3 years old. Because yes, by 5 years old he should be out hunting with Grandpa.....right? Well, maybe not, but you better bet there is some tromping around in the woods with Grandpa in the near future!

This weekend, Grandpa decided it was TIME. Time to teach Drew to shoot a bow. Grandpa has been saving this old recurve bow since Matt and I outgrew it many years ago, just for this occasion. He had been holding off because he thought that he didn't have a big enough target, but he dug out the old bow and a few little arrows and headed outside anyways!

Here Drew is mastering the one finger above, two fingers below technique. When Grandpa got out his bow later, Drew proceeded to repeat, "two fingers below" to Grandpa to remind him how to pull it back. Only problem is Grandpa uses a release, not his fingers, but Drew reminded him anyways.

Next time they will work more on positioning of his arms and drawback. Clearly it is a little off, but they were more concerned about keeping the arrow on the string and proper finger position.
I love this one. Drew's eyes are all squinty after he let go of the string. He was so intense!

LOOK! He hit the target! No need to worry about the size of the target!

My Baby Cousin Cooper

Bonding Time with Baby Cousin Cooper

Drew and I tagged along on the super quick trip to pick up Mom from Uncle Matt's house. There was a lot of driving involved but it was worth it to see the newest member of the family. Drew did absolutely wonderful with little Cooper and loved holding him. I love the way that not only Drew is looking at Cooper, but the expressions on Cooper's face in these pictures.

In this picture Drew is holding Cooper's hands and singing the ABC song to him.

Me with Drew and Cooper.

Surprisingly, Drew was never jealous of sharing mommy or grandma and grandpa (or Uncle Matt!).

How many men does it take to change an itty bitty diaper????

Apparently Grandpa and Drew needed to supervise and make sure Uncle Matt was doing it right.

Bonding time with Uncle Matt

It's in his eyes....

Well, with all of this wonky weather that we have had lately, all of our allergies have been going crazy. Poor Drew has had incredibly itchy, red eyes. His eyes were very red and swollen for a couple days, but didn't have the gunk or pinkness of pink eye yet and I was convinced it was just bad allergies. I decided to keep him home from school yesterday just in case, besides the fact that he would have just been miserable with how puffy his eyes were.

Well, I took him to the doc just in case, and sure enough by his 3pm appointment he started getting the pink eye gunk in his eyes. So he now has to have the antibiotic eye drops for pink eye put in his eyes, four times a day. Four times a day, you would think that we could have a better way to cure pink eye than pinning down a small child four times per day! The part that cracks me up is that the directions say to keep eyes closed for 1-2 minutes after putting drops in....yeah, right..... After the 4th dose I was able to hold his hands to keep him from rubbing his eyes and ask him to close his eyes and count to 30 with him, but that was as far as he could get. But the good news is that his eyes aren't nearly as red today.

The doc is having us give him Zyrtec every morning now. It should help him keep from getting pink eye over and over this season since he rubs and itches his eyes so much from his allergies. I guess any germs and viruses that he rubs in his eyes can cause pink eye.

On another note, he is to stay out of school for 48 hours. That would have him going back to school on Friday. Friday he has no school because of a teacher workshop, so Drew has a mini vacation.

Only a few more days until my boys eyes are back to normal!

Baby Cooper is home!

I JUST got this picture from mom. She went up to stay with Matt and Amber for a couple weeks. How CUTE is Cooper?! He is so precious! I can't wait to hold him and spoil him! After all he is my only nephew!

I told Matt that Cooper has to love me as much as Drew loves Matt. Drew thinks the world of Uncle Matt..... so Matt have you already been telling Cooper how awesome Aunt Kelly is!?!

Love you guys!!!

If you think I dropped off the face of the earth.....

So I have been slacking off with blogging lately. Maybe it is the fact that I have been going to the gym after Drew goes to bed at night during the time that I usually blog, or the fact that Drew has had some regression that has taken more attention lately, or that Tony has had more testing going on to figure out what is wrong with him, or that I had a brand new nephew born this week. I don't know, but I am trying to play catch up today so bear with me!

Thank you for all of the phone calls and emails to check to see if there was something wrong with the blog and to check on us. I will try to do better this month! Check out the back posts, there is too much catching up for one post!

The thing about change....

We see regression at certain times, primarily when Drew is getting sick, but also when he is understimulated, overstimulated, extremely tired, when there is a lot of change and a little bit sometimes when he is going through a growth spurt. When he is going through regression we see him having tantrums, screaming, not using his words, spinning in circles, hitting his head, lining things up more than usual, tipping his head to one side, and he makes a constant humming type noise. We see his OCD kick into overdrive where he likes things 'just so' and gets VERY upset when things don't go exactly as he plans.

It's also important to remember that just ONE YEAR ago, Drew was not talking at all except for a few random words. He did not know how to communicate at all and would basically tackle any one that took anything from him. One year ago his favorite activity was taking all of the cans out of the pantry and lining them up in the kitchen floor. His progress in the last year has been amazing. He now has some pretend play skills, can request things, has a HUGE vocabulary, will share (usually) and take turns (usually), and he can even read.

(picture from last Winter - Drew loves the snug feeling of being in the cube)

The problem comes with the changes in the school system's Pre-K program this year. Basically it boils down to a class with 12-13 kids (last year I think there averaged about 5 in the class on a given day). Drew does not do well in large groups. He does best in structured activities in small groups. He can handle other children as long as it is structered and guided. Drew has been regressing since school started. He did so well last year, but I think with the smaller class size he was getting more attention and guidance. Yes, he needs to learn to be independent, but he needs the skills and guidance to know how. He still needs someone right there to know what to say when someone takes something from him, or what to do when he uses his words and asks to play with something and the kid says no.

It is so sad to see Drew this way. His teacher thought he might be getting sick, I guess because that is the only time she has seen him regress before. I even took him to the doctor yesterday to have them check his ears, urine, etc. Turns out he is 100% healthy. Nothing physically wrong. He got his flu mist while he was there, and the pediatrician recommended that we add a probiotic like Culturelle to his daily regimin which includes a multi-vitamin, magnesium, and two mega doses of fish oil.


Drew's teacher says he is not getting along with his classmates. Doesn't want them being around him, and screams when they are playing with what he wants to play with. I know this is frustrating for her because she didn't see this side of him last year in such a small class. But this is who he is, he has autism, he has problems with social skills, this is what he needs help with. We are just hoping that the school year only gets better or we find a better solution.

Daddy and Mommy update

As many of you know, Tony has had his ups and down this last year with his health. He has had stomach problems pretty much every week since November of last year. Over the last few weeks Tony has had more appiontments and testing done to try to figure out what is wrong. On Friday, he went in for an endoscopy. He now has to take 2 medications for his stomach to see if it helps. Hopefully over the next few weeks he will be feeling 100 times better!

Tony has also started seeing a new endocrinologist for his diabetes. Tony has not had a typical case of diabetes and was originally diagnosed as type 2, and then 1 1/2, and now 1. He was only diagnosed with diabetes in the last few years. The confusing diagnosis often made it hard for diabetes educators to help him and keep it under control. This new doctor is awesome. We had to wait a long time to get into him and he doesn't usually take new patients. It has been really great to basically "start over" with care. This doctor was really proactive in helping Tony figure out what is wrong with his stomach and thinks that his diagnosis last winter was wrong. He has also been proactive in getting Tony an insulin pump. We have received the pump, but Tony has to wait for his appointment next week to learn how to use it. Not only is this new doctor awesome, but the diabetes educator is a Registered Pharmacist and that makes Tony happy.

Tony was also pulled out of his Walgreens store in March to open a new store that just kept being pushed back. Great News! This week he has been in the new store getting it ready! It has still been pushed back another week, but construction is finishing up and hopefully they will start stocking product in the next couple weeks.

In August started babysitting a few days a week to try to get a little cash. Between the rising prices and all the medical bills, we really needed it. It isn't a lot of money, but it helps with the gas and food. I babysit a little boy who is 15 months old. He is an absolute sweetheart and such a good boy. Drew and him get along 90% of the time and play really well together.

Baby Cousin has arrived!

Baby Cousin Cooper arrived on September 9th at 10:00 pm. He was 7 lbs 5 oz and has the cutest reddish blonde hair. I can't wait to see pictures of the little cutie and the new family.

Drew is still basically taking credit for him. It is so cute. He says MY Baby Cousin. We have talked about that he is outside of Aunt Amber's tummy now and his name is Cooper, so now he is "MY Baby Cousin Cooper" He still hasn't dropped the Baby Cousin. I can't wait to see him!!

Hooray for Grandparent's Day!

Today was Grandparents day at School. Grandma and Grandpa paid Drew a surprise visit. They took some pictures of him in action in the classroom. I cropped out all of the other children, since I didn't have their parent's permission to post, but I guarentee you he is not the only one in the class!

Just realizing that Grandma and Grandpa were in the room!

Drew's speech teacher doing Circle Time

Look Grandma!

I love you Grandpa!

Fixing the doll house

Back to School

Today was Drew's First Day back to School. This is his second year of Pre-K at the Elementary School, as he started last winter after he turned 3. He is in the 3 year old class again this year. Next year he will be in the 4 year old class, and then off to Kindergarten in the fall of 2010!

This is what Drew thought of my idea of taking some cute first day of school pictures..... obviously this didn't go so well... Just imagine a cute little smile on his cranky face....

Once we headed for the door, Drew was a little more happy to let me take a picture. He looks like such a big boy!

Let's go already! I just want to note that his backpack is actually much smaller than a normal size backpack. It still looks huge on him though! The funny thing is that I don't really think he grasped the concept of the summer vacation from school. Every few days during break, he would put his backpack on and say "go to school." He was definitely ready to get back to school!

It was starting to rain, so while we waited outside for a little bit, Drew was playing with the umbrella.

Of course his little engineer brain had to take a minute to try to figure out.

Drew had a great first day!

Last Summer Hoorah!

Today was the last Friday before school starts! Tiffanie from Three Peas and I decided to take the kids to the zoo for one last hoorah before school started. Her son and Drew are in the same class at school, and love to get together to play. We packed up her 3 kiddos and Drew in her van and headed on a little road trip.

Drew playing in the sand at the kid zone at the zoo.

Drew getting brave on the playground at the zoo.


Yes, we did see animals, I just didn't take pictures of the animals. I guess I was more concerned about getting a few pictures of the kids. We never did manage to get all of the kids in one picture together. We had a great time though and it was a beautiful day. It was still a little warm (right around 80 degrees), but it was the coolest day we have had in a LONG time.


On another note.... Today is Tony's Birthday! Happy Birthday Daddy!!

Drew woke Tony up this morning saying 'Happy Birthday Daddy!'

Stop the Itching!

Poor Drew, he has had eczema for as long as I can remember. We have done the basic hydrocortisone for the last year and it really hasn't made a difference. Drew has finally started sleeping more than 4 hours per night and for the longest time he now gets up around 2 am every night screaming. We realized in the last few weeks that he is also itching like crazy when he gets up. He usually will go back to sleep, but after a lot of fussing. He is just miserable. We also notice that when he takes a nap, he wakes up itching and scratching.

I finally decided enough was enough and talked to the doctor about it. She gave us a Rx for an eczema cream (which insurance will NOT approve-lovely) and a Rx for an antihistimine to give him before bed and naps. She is also having us give him fish oil and milk of magnesia in addition to his multi-vitamin. She said that there is studies about fish oil with autism and with eczema so it definitely is to his benefit.

The dose he has to take is pretty high. She told me it was going to be hard to find a pallatable fish oil for him, but I found one! Looking at the ones in the regular store (chewables) he would have to have 10 or more per day and that bottle would go fast! So Drew and I headed to the Vitamin Shoppe and the salesman recommended Carlson for Kids fish oil. It is a liquid and Drew LOVES it!! It is lemon flavored, and he loves it so much that I can use it as a bargaining tool! It was not cheap, but it should last us quite a while.

The great news is that as long as I give Drew the antihistimine he sleeps through the night. He is sleeping 10-11 hours per night on a regular basis now and does not wake up itching. I have forgotten to give it to him a couple nights and every time he wakes up at 2 am.

Zoo Trip with Aunt Alyssa

Drew had a great time with Aunt Alyssa this week. Of course, I'm sure Alyssa was ready to get home to sleep in without Drew running around like a wild man at 6 am, and screaming "wake up lazy beans." Poor Alyssa, it's a good thing she isn't a light sleeper! ....and Alyssa, he tells anyone who is sleeping, 'wake up lazy beans' so it isn't just you. He seems to get a kick out of waking us up in the morning by saying that. Drew is such a morning person.

Alyssa and Drew got plenty of bonding time over the last week or so. Drew loved cuddling up with Aunt Alyssa and playing computer games at night. Alyssa quickly realized, that Drew really DOES know how to read, as he would recite her IM's back to her as she typed to her friends. Nothing slips by him.

Alyssa got some great vacation time, relaxing, going to movies, shopping, shopping, more shopping, and having lots of fun with Drew!

We packed up the car and headed to the zoo on one day of her trip. It was super hot, but we had lots of fun. After the zoo, we headed to the pool to cool off. Here are a few pictures from the zoo.

We had a great time having you here Alyssa! Hopefully we can do it again next year!

Aunt Alyssa helping Drew onto the Elephant Statue.

Drew driving the helicopter

Alyssa taking a break in the misting tree.

Drew hatching out of the eggs.

Alyssa and Drew talking about the monkey.

Alyssa took this picture of Drew and me. We hardly ever see pictures of me and Drew, because I am always the one taking them!

Thanks for visiting Alyssa! We had a great time!!!!

Pool Party

Drew had a blast swimming at a pool party playdate today!

He LOVES the water!!

Stop Wording!

Well, we made it home. We had to leave a little earlier than planned to get home to watch DEA dog. But we had a great trip! We even brought Aunt Alyssa back with us, so I am sure we will have a great time this week!

I do apologize that we didn't get to see everyone. It was a busy week and we didn't stay in town the whole time so it was hard to get around to everyone.

As usual, it was a long ride home, but Drew watched a few movies and slept just a Little bit.

When Drew wants quiet, sometimes he says "Stop singing!" Of course with his southern accent, he says 'stop sangin'. Yes, my boy has a southern accent, not so sure how, but he does. It's kind of funny sometimes.

On the car ride home, apparently Daddy was talking too much and Drew held his hand out and said "STOP WORDING!" It was so funny and he was so serious. We decided he meant Stop Talking.

Thursday at the Fair

We didn't spend too long at the fair on Thursday. We spent part of the day with Grandma and saw a little bit of the tractor pull, but after watching a few tractors, Drew was more interested in reading all of the seat numbers on the bleachers, so we headed for a last lunch at the fair and a quick walk around before we headed back for naps.

Walking to the fair with Grandma and Daddy.

Before bedtime, Drew went on a stroll through the backyard with Grandma and Great Grandma. He found a golf ball in the backyard with the letter J on it.

Hugs to Grandma.

Drew heading to check out the pelican (statue).

Drew was very intrigued with Great Grandma's hiding place for her gardening tools!

One of Drew's favorite things about staying at Great Grandma's House was picking little tomatoes every night! That boy LOVES tomatoes!