What's happening now.

Wow! It's been a good minute since I've used my my little writing outlet. How is everyone doing? Life is all kinds of insane, but in the best way. I've worked on some beautiful pieces recently that I can't wait to share on here. Our daughter is about to be out for summer while our son is about to start pre-school. Jasper's birthday actually is in a few weeks. Four years old. My goodness, time sure does fly when you're busy as hell. Can't wait to share his fourth birthday photos on here soon enough. I'm also entering a new career path, but I'll get more into that later on as well. I've worked really hard for this and it's exactly where I want to be. So much to tell, but we'll break everything down in time. We moved! Yup, yet another change. This new place is beautiful and spacious. The kids both have their own bedrooms and bathroom while daddy and I have our cozy own space and master bath. Everything is decorated completely different than before at our old place. Spent almost three months decluttering our old apartment so we could start a more minimalist life...well, sort of.. Most of our furniture is upcyled by yours truly. Still need to work on a few things, but everything is coming together beautifully. Something we're currently embarking on as a family, something I'll be posting about more in-depth when we have more answers is our son is currently under evaluation for ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). We were referred by our doctor to the most wonderful psychologist who currently is evaluating out son. I know your curiosity is kicking in right now and I'm here to let you know its okay. Ask away anything. So, let me break this down a bit:

Q. What made you start to question if your son had ASD?
A. No parent wants to self-diagnose their child. For one, the internet will scare the shit out of you. But in our particular situation, there were too many red flags I started to catch on to. Our son didn't start crawling till he was almost one years old. He didn't start walking till about 15 months. (insert: every child does thing's at their own pace) and you're completely right. That's why I turned my head to it and insisted my son was a late bloomer. Around two we started with potty training and at three he was full on in underwear. About six months ago he began to regress in using the potty. He started to hid in his tent, the closet, pretty much anywhere we couldn't see him to use the bathroom in his pants. Our son also has a speech delay. He usually speaks to us in one or two-words phrases, or quotes things he heard in movies (this is called repetitive speech). Our son also experiences over-stimulation. Sometimes, if he's around too many people or too many sounds, he'll begin to break down. He covers his ears or will begin to cry. It's heartbreaking.

At his three year check up I began to bring up the issues with our sons pediatrician. He's a wonderful doctor, but very old school. He also assured us Jasper was most likely a late bloomer. So I suggested speech therapy. The first time he dismissed it, but the second time a few months later, he wrote me the referral. I can go on and on about what happened next but the short story is his insurance dropped the ball with the situation. Returning to the doctor only frustrated us more because I was pretty much on the edge of getting our son a new pediatrician if he didn't acknowledge the issue. He did his own evaluation and referred us out to see a specialist. (BTW we never received the referral)

A few months ago I met a women who's son is on the ASD spectrum. I don't like comparing children, but our son's had A LOT of similarities. She invited us to an autism awareness event where we finally started to figure thing's out for ourselves. We found a local autism resource center that directed us into the right path we needed to be in. About a week later we finally were able to see a psychologist, he screened our son and sent us home with a parental evaluation for us to fill out. We go back in about a week and our son will be see the psychologist by himself. To interact and get a better feel on his own. By the third visit we should have some definite answers. We'll also be starting speech therapy with in the next month.
,br> It's weird because it's nothing I ever expected, but at the same time I've had this feeling the whole time. This gut feeling telling me to keep pushing for answers. We're going into this with open hearts and open minds. No matter the outcome, no matter what the doctor diagnosis, our family is strong and can take on anything.


We'll this turned into an emotional post. Lol. I have tears in my eyes thinking of the frustration we've felt for the past few months. The doctor for not taking us seriously, the insurance for dropping the ball on the whole situation, having to wait 45 days for the new insurance to kick in, the months we missed out on of speech therapy. But we're finally on the right path.

To be continued....