My real life by Yvonne: Turtle Soup

Our wildlife of the day....

a snapping or alligator turtle that made it into our yard. Steve got a shovel and put him over the back fence so he could head off towards the river.....

I tried to pick him up but he wanted to take a piece of me....

But we didn't make turtle soup

Good day yesterday. I took the boys to a late movie, it was actually a really cute one "Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs 2" I LOVE going to movies. I wasn't allowed to go to them when I was growing up. In fact the first one I saw was "Blue Lagoon" I was pretty sure that Jesus was going to come back and I'd be "left behind" The ironic thing is my best friends' dad owned the theater in our town until it burned down! When I was a senior in high school and a bit older, I did go and work some weekends at his other theater in Madison Fl. That was fun to me. One of my friends and me saw one of the "Freddy Movies" at a midnight showing and were too afraid to run to her car LOL fun times!

Anyhow I love going to the movies, we don't go that often, but sometimes it is just fun to go , get a Pepsi and some pop corn and have a good time! That's what we did last night.

And why was I able to go to the movies? We had a night nurse:) and Jon stayed with the little ones who were already in bed:) It was a good time!!!

And we have a night nurse tonight!!!! WOOHOO! You have no idea how good it is to know you'll be able to sleep through the night!

Sarah now will touch MY nose when I say "where is mommy's nose?" She learned it just since yesterday. She has the WORST habit of hitting us over and over again. Not in anger but just to touch us. It's hard to explain. Being blind, she now feels confident to touch us but she has to do it quickly, she won't stroke my arm like Sam would do, she would lightly hit my arm over and over again, just to touch me. Sam did this a little bit but only for a short time. So now I catch her hand and kiss it and then while I'm holding her hand in mine, put my hand to her mouth for her to kiss my hand....just today she is starting to put her mouth on my hand when I bring it up to her mouth. It's really cute. We are really trying to discourage the hitting which a friend of mine described as "being pecked to death by a duck" LOL Please understand she is not unhappy when she does it, she just wants contact but can't handle her hands touching someone for a long time. So it satisfies her need to touch and explore. She will also hit objects at times, so she can touch them but not too much. We totally get it and it is a "blind" behavior for kids who can't tolerate too much touch. Sarah loves to be touched but even then sometimes she will move your arm from around her. She'll want to sit on my lap but can only tolerate my arm for a little while. Sam was soooooooo the same when he was little. Sam totally prepared us for Sarah.

I've gotten on to her but just raising my voice and saying NO loudly scares her and I can't do that to her. I'd much rather change her behavior by love than discipline. I say NO softly then kiss her hand...it seems to be helping without scaring her. She loves to reach out to us. And she loves rocking herself in this chair. She'll sit there for an hour and rock happily. It is actually good for her, it gives her the vesicular motion she craves in a "normal" way.

Sam lost another tooth...his third in just a couple of months. Now he is 9.5 he is actually loosing teeth. His dental stuff has been quite interesting. He didn't have any teeth until almost 2 years old...then he grew his front bottom ones and top ones in a short amount of time. It took a long time for his baby teeth to all come in. We've seen several dentists and they'd never seen anything like this! So he is starting to lose teeth about 3 years later than most kids.

We have often wondered if Sam had a gene that kept him younger longer.... We've all heard of the genetic condition, progeria, that ages kids faster and they die young looking like an old person.... Well for Sam, it's the opposite, he seems so delayed in his growth that maybe he has a "youth gene"

Sam has so many unusual things that we have actually brought up a theory like that to several doctors and Geneticist. No one really has taken us seriously but we did see a medical show on three kids suspected of having something like that and it doesn't have a name yet. Sam was more mentally advanced than the other three on tv but we contacted that Geneticist and gave them our info. He did not put Sam into their study since he has a chromnosal deletion in another area.... But they have our info if they ever expand the study. I tell you our dentist thinks Sam is unique, he'd never seen a child take so long to have teeth. Just last year Sam went back to the dentist and he said the xray of Sam's mouth looked more like a 4 yr old's than a 8 year old's.

I think the doctors felt like we weren't accepting of Sam's disabilities. But that was not the case, there were just so many odd things even like his hair and teeth not coming in. Yes he is delayed but he makes "normal advances". Most kids with developmental disorders, as they learn to do things, they dont' do them in the "correct way" like crawling and walking.... Neither Sarah or Selah knew the correct way to crawl and Selah didn't know the correct way to walk....the steps in walking like how to get herself up off the floor. That is a basic skill how a child learns to stand. A lot of kids with developmental disorders, "commando crawl" rather than crawl normally, it's like steps are not included.

Well Sam has been slow, but he has done each step in his gross motor skills in the correct way. He crawled, learned to pull up and walk correctly even with not having good sight. He has learned to walk up stairs etc...in the correct ways. That is what gives us and a few of the folks we've worked with/seen over the years some questions about an undiagnosed genetic condition..... Anyhow it is interesting to think about. We kidded around when we went to St Augustine's Fountain of Youth that Sam didn't need to drink anymore of it! LOL