Hallelujah! The Flood Gates are Open!

For Those who have experienced the stress and emtional turmoil of having a severely Autistic child, having more children following one can be kind of nerve wracking while you are waiting for those magic mile stones to appear that say, "Ta-Da! I'm normal Mom!"

Our not quite 10 year old son Sam appeared normal and Healthy in every way at birth with both Apgar scores a 10, and in fact the Nurse Midwife was awfully impressed that his umbilicle cord had an extra major vein or artiery(it's all a bit fuzzy now) and exclaimed that he had one of the thickest, healhiest looking Umbicial cords she had ever seen and was equally enthusiastic about the really beautiful and healthy looking Placenta and tried to show it to me but I was feeling faint and not interested-go figure!

Sam was a delightful and happy baby, but at 18 months he suddenly lost all of his language skills and it was not until he was nearly 7 that he finally began using complete sentances instead of screaming or 2 or 3 words at most.

Under divine inspiration we decided to have one last child and on November 6th, 2007 Jared was born after a high risk pregnancy and a frightening birth experience during which he could no longer decend down the birth canal because the cord was wrapped around his neck, and contractions compressed the cord dropping his heart rate very low. He emerged very blue but picked up very nicely after vigorous rubbing and was breathing well on his own.

Fast forward 14 months. Jared likes to babble and has been saying Daddy and Mama for months but hasn't gained a lot of words. Certainly no cause for panic but we have been quitely anxious waiting for more language to emerge. Today we were given a gift that made us feel SO much better, and I wanted to share.  Last night we picked up a baby Hamster that a friend was giving away(assured of course by PetSmart the Hamster SHE bought was a boy.....it had 8 babies.) For now we are keeping the cage high up on a shelf to protect the Hamster from little fingers, but we brought the cage down for a while before bed so the kids could visit and we could talk about a name. We toyed with names like Boris as it is a Russian Dwarf, and Mulch Diggums from the Artemis Fowle series(because it is a Dwarf, obviously, but the winner, weighing in at 25lbs with silky blonde hair and an impish grin was Jared in the naming game, who repeatedly called our new furry family member, "Kitty-Kitty!" How cute is that!

Now if that sotry doesn;t make you smile, you either died in front of the computer and were too busy to notice or you need a laxative!