Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Happy Easter

We have been enjoying a wonderful Easter season this year by celebrating the entire liturgy of Easter in the church calender. Beginning with Ash Wednesday, through 40 days of lent, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, and continuing all the way through Pentecost, we have been celebrating the death and resurrection of our King!


Easter Morning, ready for church


Decorating eggs the day before, Aidan wanted to sample...

Attempting to NOT let him drink vinegar water, while Neal snaps the camera...

That was gross, but fun!


Easter morning, checking out the baskets


Indoor egg hunt before breakfast and church


After church, we were invited to a friend's family ranch to participate in a large outdoor egg hunt, an egg toss, sack race, and general play time! We had a great day!

We hope you all are enjoying this time of remembrance and celebration that He is Risen!

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Party Time!

Last Saturday we did a joint birthday party for Aidan and Evelyn. We decided on doing a "spring" themed party. The kids painted clay pots when they arrived and all planted sunflowers before they left. (No pictures of that activity since I was needed to help do to the use of "real" paint!) Then we went to a field near our house to fly kites, play with bubble wands and throw around frisbees.

Aidan and his bubble wand

The group flying kites...don't worry the electrical lines were WAY farther than they look!
The dads had a blast flying kites!

Evelyn got her kite up in the air on her first try!

The girls and their kites

Afterwards we went back to the house for cake and presents.


Everyone had a great time and left with their own kite, bubble wand, frisbee and sunflower pot!

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Happy Birthday Evelyn!

Evelyn turned 4 today!


We gave her baby pinkie pie...which is "what she always wanted"...

Evelyn continues to be a source of great joy to us. She is full of life and spunk! She isn't afraid to try anything new, she knows no stranger and is just down right cute! She loves ponies, my little pet shop, strawberry shortcake, and anything big sister Madeline likes. Her favorite color is pink. She loves to play outside and has been a great "help" to me lately by digging in the gardens. She is a great cuddler, giver of hugs and sweet kisses. She has also become a bit pious lately, reminding us regularly that we must obey God by not hitting anyone, not stinging anyone and by smiling. She asked Neal to "write a prayer to God on the computer". This is what she dictated...
"I love you God. Thank you for our day, and thank you for our sister named Madeline, and Aidan, and Mom and Daddy. And I love Mommy and Daddy. And I love you all. And we have a message for both of us. And we do the same thing as our family and our cats and we love our cats and thank you for this day. And thank you for our Mom and Dad. And thank you for the beautiful sky and the birds and thank you for the sun and the moon, and thank you for the books we have, and thank you for our family. This is one for Aidan and this is one for both of Mommy and Daddy, and I love you Daddy. And I only love you, because I only love you. And I love you and this is the most family, and I love you."
As you can tell, she makes us laugh all of the time and is our family entertainer.


Monday, March 10, 2008

Happy Birthday Aidan!

Aidan turned 6 today! He is such a big boy!



We are very encouraged by so many of the things he is doing. We have talked to some of you about the treatments we have been trying and the progress he is making. I thought I would take this opportunity to get everyone on the same page.

In January, we met Dr. Eli Camp. She is a homeopathic doctor who specializes in Autism Spectrum Disorders. She just moved back to Norman from New Hampshire, where she had a thriving clinic, and is setting one up here. I heard about her from another mom at Aidan's school. She does not prescribe ANY pharmaceuticals, using only natural and gentle remedies AND she ONLY makes house visits! We called her for a free consultation and then set up our first home visit after feeling that she is EXACTLY what we have been looking for. Her ideas and treatments are just what we have been wanting to do for Aidan, but have not found anyone to guide us.

In an attempt to not make this post too long...here is a basic overview of what we are doing.

Step One: Make his body healthy.
We know that Aidan's immune pathways have been damaged and we suspect it was due to his vaccinations. Mercury has been a suspicion in many vaccinations, but it is also becoming clear that simply bombarding an immature immune system with several diseases at a time is reeking havoc on many children's immune systems.
The body's immune system tries to fight off the diseases so that the child is immune, but if it is overloaded, it just can't handle the attack. Aidan had his 15 month shots which included MMR, Hib, and DTaP. If you count up all those diseases you come up with the number 7! It is appalling to me now that I allowed my 15 month old little boy to be given 7 diseases in one fell swoop! (In our state, if you follow the recommended vaccination schedule, a child is supposed to receive 33 vaccinations by the time they turn 5.) This was the beginning of our long journey. It was very shortly after this that he began his "autistic-like behaviors" and his dietary problems began. (Note: The brain has its own immune system and is also affected by these diseases.)
In order to get him healthy, we are maintaining his gluten free casein free diet, switching to all organic fruits, veggies, eggs, and meats, giving him a probiotic to boost his immune system, doubling his multi-vitamin dosage, and adding omega 3/fatty acids to buffer his immune system in the form of strawberry flavored cod fish oil...yummy!

Step Two: Find a homeopathic remedy.

This step is REALLY interesting to us. Obviously, Aidan's body is lacking in certain elemental areas and has WAY too much in others. So, we need to balance him out chemically. After observing Aidan and talking to us for three hours about all things Aidan, and doing research for several days on all of his specifics, Dr. Camp came up with using homeopathic zinc as a balancing element. We are trying to find the right dosage amount by giving it to him in increments. When we see a good change in behavior, we know it is working. When he starts to crash, we know it is time to go up to the next increment. He started with 30C of zinc. It took a couple of weeks to kick in. We really were not sure what we were supposed to be looking for. Dr. Camp just told us that "we would KNOW it was working". We were a little skeptical until one day it happened, we KNEW it was working. For 2 full days Aidan did NOT have a running dialog of movie lines. He did a few here and there, but it was not constant by any means. He was attentive to us, our conversations, his sisters, everything around him. He started talking to us more clearly and directly, asking for things in more complete sentences. That is also when his hand-writing changed. It was really amazing. Then after 2 days he started to slip. It took about 2 more days and then he was back to how he usually is. The movie lines are back, the stimming and non-focusing are also back. However, his writing is still good and some of his requests are still good. We were very discouraged, but we found out in talking to Dr. Camp that this is the cycle we are supposed to be looking for. We have bumped him up to 200C of zinc and we will wait to see the next "high". She said that as we get closer to the right dosage for him, the good times will become increasingly longer than the bad until eventually there will be no more bad times and all good, then we will not have to give him zinc anymore because his body will have what it needed. Also, she said that it may turn out that he does not need zinc, but another element in the same family. (Looking at the periodic table, the other elements around zinc are copper, and nickel.) She said as we bump up his dose it will be obvious if he does need zinc or if we need to change to something very close to it. The way we will know is if he develops any new "bad" or "odd" autistic like symptoms. We know that we are at least in the right element family because of the good things we have seen already.

Below are writing samples for you to see the difference. The "F.H.E." (Family Home Entertainment) was one he was doing in January and is a good example of his typical writing. The "Baby Einstein" was one he started doing in February after we started his "remedy".

If you can imagine this jump in development in just his handwriting and use that as an analogy of his development in other areas, then you can imagine how excited we are.

Step 3: Get the "bad stuff" out.
This is the next step we are going to be starting in about 2 weeks. We did another urine test for heavy metals and found that his levels are elevated in Mercury, which we already knew, but they are literally off the charts in lead. The reason being that Aidan's immune system is not working properly. We are all exposed to toxins every single day, but normal/healthy immune systems flush them out. Aidan's body has been trapping these harmful heavy metals for years. So in order to get them out of there, we opted for a treatment similar to chelation, but much more gentle on his system. It can take anywhere from 3 months to a year to get him cleaned out depending on how "stuck" these elements are. So, we will keep you all posted through this process.

Step 4: Food Allergy Panel. Once we balance out his homeopathic remedy and clean out the bad metals, we will do a blood test to determine what other foods may be bothering his system. It is our hope that once his immune system is working properly, he will not have any dietary restrictions, but we have to wait for that.

Step 5: Develop a specific multi-vitamin. This is the last step in which we will do another blood test and determine what EXACTLY Aidan's body needs. There is a lab that designs multi-vitamins based on a person's specific metabolic deficiencies so we can fine tune his chemistry.

It is our hope and Dr. Camp's goal to get to a point of healing for Aidan. He should not need treatment forever. Once we heal his immune pathways in his body and his brain there is a great chance that we will have our Aidan back permanently, not just in the short glimpses we get now.

If you want more info on homeopathic medicine and/or Dr. Camp you can check out her site at http://www.normannaturalhealth.com/servicespresentation.html.