Friday, April 22, 2011

Autism awareness month



April is Autism awareness month. As many of you know Ezra was diagnosed with autism and because of that it is a huge part of our family. Day in and out we have therapist in our home. Between his preschool and therapist he does a total of 30 hours a week of therapy. We have an amazing team of people working with him, and I fee so blessed. He is a hard worker! I haven't talked much about this on my blog, it honestly wasn't something I wanted to do because it was so personal, but really I want people to know now. I want people to understand what autism is and what its not. To learn more about autism I suggest going to this website, Autism Speaks is a great website and tool for everyone that is interested in learning more about autism. Ezra amazes me constantly with his progress. A year ago he could barley say 20 words total, but now is speaking sentences. For example he is banging on the door right now saying "open door mommy, watch baby Einsteins" This is huge, for him to combine so many words together is huge progress. A year ago they said he was talking a one year old level and his receptive language was even more behind, this made him almost 2 years behind his age, now he is 3 1/2 and is talking at a 3 year old level and his receptive language is at 2 years and 9 months! he is catching up so quickly and I love it! He LOVES his ABC's and can read and write many things, for his age he amazes his therapist on this level. He also is a smart little boy with numbers. I honestly thought he could only recognize numbers 1-13 but just the other day he went all the way up to 30, not just saying the numbers but actually recognizing the written number and now he is even writing numbers 1-10!

April is autism awareness month and to kick it off on April 2 they had a huge walk in Tucson. We went and had the support of my brother and his wife along with my grandma and grandpa. The walk was 3 miles, and I'm pretty sure Ezra walked at least 2 1/2 on his own. The kid enjoyed the bounce houses, train rides, and animals. One lady that does horse therapy brought horses for the kids to paint on and walk. Rylie was seriously in heaven! Her and I must have stayed with the horses for at least an hour. I think she is a cowgirl at heart. I also make matching shirts for our little group to wear. On the back we did "Team Ezra" with the kids hand prints. On the front we had the autism puzzle and our names that Ezra calls us by. For Ezra's front he wrote his name and it said "team captain"

If you have any questions you would like to ask me, feel free to ask. Like I said, I like to help educate people and I don't mind sharing our story.

yes ezra is dancing around with no shoes, he refused to put them on, and i figured it was his day so why not let him keep them off for the moment!

Some updates Feb-march


So even though I have blogged in two months we have actually done quite a bit. February we finished celebrating Rylie's birthday by FINALLY having birthday cake with her, and you can see she really enjoyed it! Then of course we had valentines day. Both of the kids are in a preschool program so between their friends, teachers, and therapist I think I almost went crazy making homemade valentines. I make a total of 22 crayon hearts with a starburst candy and wrote on their card "hope your day is bursting with love and color" . Then for the teachers and therapist I made cake balls. (soo yummy) The note for them read "you are as sweet as cake". Valentines was fun, and I actually really did enjoy making all homemade treats, however 22 kids and 9 teachers/therapist adds up pretty quickly so next time I will simplify! Also in the Feb. collage is a wreath that I made. I like it a lot, I just need to spray paint the hook to a more neutral color. And that folks is the month of February Highlights :)



The month of march proved to be a fun month for us too. We went to the zoo early on in the month then to Vegas to play with Grandpa Baker. Rylie loves animals, and loved the zoo. Unfortunately its too hot here already to go back, zoo months in Arizona are really in the fall and winter. We also had fun playing in shaving cream and getting all messy! In Vegas we went to Coke world and tried soda from all over the world, honestly I think I only like 3 flavors!



In march my mom, or Sweetie like Ezra likes to call her, came to visit for a couple days. It was a lot of fun because we had her here for 4 days with no agenda. Seriously she just came and played with us and we didn't have to rush anywhere or do anything on any time frame, it was really nice. The kids enjoyed the sprinkler under the trampoline (and still do), planting flowers with sweetie, getting messy with sidewalk paint and chalk, and just playing all day! We love when Sweetie comes to visit and look forward to seeing more of her this summer!


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