Zombie Cousins

 One of Scott's favorite places to go to is Grandma and Grandpa McEvoy's house.

When the cousins are there life doesn't get much better.

Here are Scott, Avery, Jaren, Maia, and Sophie watching Monsters University, which just recently came out on DVD.

Disney can often bring about some of the best adult time.

While these kids were becoming zombies, us grown ups were able to play and complete a game.

Good times for all!

Catching Fire

Mark has been working so hard lately.

He has been trying harder to eat healthier and work out more.

So rude, whatever happened to sympathy weight?

He as been in charge of many projects at work been working extra hard to keep up with the extra demand.

He has also been studying for the next CPA exam.

I'm not good at putting in the long hours studying so I can't help but being amazed at his dedication.

Well, after a whole weekend of sitting at the home office studying and taking practice tests he took the test yesterday morning.

We wait two weeks to find out how he did.

After the test he needed some unwind time and then we went off on a much needed date.

I love my one on one time with Mark.

It's amazing how easy it is for him to make me laugh and feel young and giddy again.

We first went to Zuppa's so he could keep up with his healthy eating with a delicious pina colada salad and I got my usual TBA sandwich and lobster bisque soup.

Then we went over and saw Hunger Games, Catching Fire.

So good!

Thanks babe for all your hard work and for taking such good care of your family.

You're the best husband and father and my very best friend.

Love you.

Hard Things

Scott is prone to anxiety.

He takes my perfectionist nature to the Nth degree.

So we have taught he a few things that we hope will help him in the future.

We go through his daily affirmations sometimes more then once a day.

"I am SMART!

I am STRONG!

Jesus LOVES me, 

Mom LOVES me 

and Dad LOVES me!"

I am hoping that whatever problems arise in his life he will remember these things and find hope and comfort in this knowledge.

Another thing we are also trying to teach him is that he can do hard things.

When we can see his anxiety rising over a task we quickly come to him and try to teach him how to do what he's trying to do while telling him that he can do hard things.

When completing we give him a hug or a high five or something telling him, "See, you can do hard things."

We will often tell him part of the script that applies to his issue.

In the picture below you see a sweet four year old attempting to do push ups with his dad.

As he was trying to do it he, in heavy breathing voice tells us, 

"I can do hard things."

Yes we were pretty proud of our boy.

We happily confirmed he can do hard things because he is strong.

A couple other times where he has drawn on this knowledge is while he's practicing a new letter and he tells me he can do hard things.

I remind him that he is smart.

While he tries to put on his shoes the first time he freaked out.

The next time he tried, after a lot of teaching mini step by mini step, he had a few struggles but I hear him say as I'm pulling my things together because of course we are rushing to get out of the door, "Don't freak out, I can do hard things."

Can I just say at that moment something changed in me.

WOW!

It might seem like something small to others but to me that was my four year old who is known to fly off the handle easily, think calmly through his problems.

I have a hard time doing that still to this day, maybe that's why I'm so proud.

By the time I got to him to praise him he had his shoes on and his face was in the biggest, proudest grin.

I say, "Scott you did it!"

He says so excitedly, "I put my shoes on and I didn't freak out!"

You would have thought he won the race or got the game winning touch down by both our reactions.

That my friends is called SUCCESS!

Since this happened Scott has had an influx of anxiety attacks.

They can happen anywhere, at any time, and we had no clue why.

They got progressively worse to the point that he seems out of control.

Mark and I have been clueless as to the cause of them.

For a while we punished them.

He was reacting to things badly and he needed to learn that bad choices got bad consequences.

This is a concept he knows and it usually has worked in teaching him acceptable behavior.

But the only effect it had on him was making it worse.

This past Sunday it happened in sacrament meeting and Mark brought him home.

I waited for the speaker to finish his talk before I too slipped out, knowing that if Mark took him home it must be really bad.

I got there and Scott was still going hysterical.

We're talking about 15 to 20 minutes long so far and it was elevated to a point neither of us had ever seen.

I grabbed him and tried holding him to console him.

He wanted me and hated me all at the same time.

It took me another 15 minutes to start breathing normally.

It was this incident that made me realize, this is not him going through a stage or acting out because of not enough sleep.

I remembered the doctors saying that if he freaks out it's because he's experiencing anxiety over his environment.

Here we were punishing him.

Knowing and having experienced anxiety attacks before, punishment is NOT the way to fix them.

So we had to figure out what was causing the anxiety.

It had been happening gradually for the past month so it was hard to find the consistent trigger.

But just last night I caught a freak out at the beginning stage and figured it out.

Scott, being in two schools, is learning two different things.

In one he is working on his letters and colors and hand writing.

In another he is working on behavior and speech and scripts of how to play with others.

Both schools are trying to get him ready for kindergarten and helping him be more independent.

He has finally developed the drive to want to do things on his own.

Before he was content with letting me do things for him.

The freak outs are stemming from a desire to do things on his own and a lack of developmental ability to do them without help.

This is an anxiety that pretty much every kid goes through around his age or some even sooner.

But his anxiety becomes so great that he shuts down and becomes unteachable.

Knowledge is power.

We now know what he is freaking out over and hope to help him learn to deal with it.

I know he will, as we all do still to this day, have a hard time with our desire to do something and our ability to do it often aren't always at the same level.

It is that desire that makes us as a person and us as a society better.

Scott, like everyone, needs to learn to do the hard thing and figure out how to adjust his ability or his desire to be at the same level.

I know he can!

He is SMART!

He is STRONG!

Jesus LOVES him!

Mommy LOVES him!

Daddy LOVES him!

And HE CAN DO HARD THINGS!  

Yet Another Rant

Sometimes I use this blog to get things off my chest realizing that no one reads it.

Well here I go again.

I have been so nervous to have another child.

Scott's issues as they are I wondered and worried if my next child would also have similar issues.

At first I was curious as to what caused Autism and Aspergers.

How can I prevent this from happening again?

It took a while to figure out that I didn't cause Scott's issues.

Mark didn't and Scott didn't and our family hasn't given us some gene that gave it to him.

God did.

Now I'm not trying to blame him negatively.

I'm saying that Scott is the way he is because God knows what is best for my son and what is best for me and for Mark.

Seriously, can people honestly say that because I chose to get induced or give my son a vaccine or whatever, that Scott became the way he is?

NO!

There are so many others who get induced and give their children vaccines and lay on their backs while pregnant that don't have children with issues I really can't believe that I am the one that those things or whatever have the wrong effect on me.

I can believe that God in all his perfect wisdom decided to send this amazing child into my home because he knew that I would love him no matter what.

I'm sure there are other reasons also.

God wouldn't leave something like that to chance.

Not for my Scotty Boy and not for me; he loves us too much.

It took Mark and I a while to decide to have another baby.

Yes we wondered if our next child would have issues.

But we came to realize that it wasn't having another child with issues that was holding us back, it was us and all our imperfectness that was stopping us.

Scott is a wonderful child, who wouldn't want another one of him around?

But we are not wonderful parents, we often do the wrong things, we're just as clueless as other parents.

We had to decide if we could do it again.

Are we ever really ready?

Anyway, I just needed to get that off my chest.

A lady on facebook posted an article about the MMR vaccine causing autism and how the pharmaceutical companies are paying people to keep it quiet.

This lady on facebook has a daughter who is an autism specialist.

While being grateful for all people who try to help autistic children I wish that they would stop trying to find the cause and just try to concentrate on more ways to help them and help educate the world on how to act around children with autism.

Ok, I'll stop.

Sometimes I just get sensitive and need to get things ff my chest.

Early

I am completely against celebrating Christmas before Thanksgivng.

Each holiday deserves it's time to shine.

But the stores have it all wrong.

They put out fall decor out and then Halloween and then got strait to Christmas.

So frustrating.

I usually hold firm on my belief that Christmas starts on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Usually but this year I broke.

Scott is so confused because the stores tell him one thing and I tell him another.

The stores made the more convising arguement this year.

Scott is really grasping onto the excitement of the season and especially the holidays this time of year brings.

I tried to tell him that after halloween it's Thanksgiving and after Thanksgiving its Christmas.

He didn't know what this Thanksgiving was even though his teachers and Mark and I tried to explain it to him.

All he sees is Christmas.

He's been seeing Christmas since before Halloween and has been asking if it's Christmas time.

Well Scott has also been having a lot of anxiety lately.

How do children handle anxiety?

They don't!

He's been having huge fits and Mark and I have been baffled as to how to help him through it.

So, in an effort to try to make him happy I let him put up his tree.

I set up our little four foot tree on a little table (It's the tree Mark and I bought together while still dating, I can't help but smile inwardly at the memories that flood back with that tree).

Scott got to hang all the decor on it.

He was loving it.

When Scott concentrates he sticks his tongue out and bites it just like his daddy, so adorable.

Anyway, here's the boy who has us wrapped around his finger breaking tradition.

28 Weeks

Well here I am, two days shy of 28 weeks.

I can only take pictures when I get ready and those days are becoming fewer and fewer.

The third trimester is a big turning point for many women and I'm no exception.

It's the last leg.

A lot of times with projects or challenges or whatever the last leg means that you're getting near to the finish line, there is light at the end of the tunnel, your second wind kicks in.

For pregnancy I haven't spoken to many women who get that positive "the end is coming" experience.

Don't get me wrong, the end is coming is a happy thought but with all the discomfort that one is going through the word "soon" is never soon enough.

I'm just can't help but think, as ill prepared I am for the baby right now, I would be ecstatic if I could have this baby tomorrow and know that the baby and I would be healthy.

But, alas, I get no such luck and get to endure that all round annoyance of the third trimester.

Oh well, at least it's just the babies kicks that wake me instead of the cry.

I can be grateful for that.