Beginnings...

So where did our story begin? Well for the most part, I spent my life moving around quite a bit. I am a second generation military brat and ironically a third generation military spouse. It seems as if I have been traveling around for most of my life. In the early 90s, my mom settled down with my sister and me, in northern California. My grandparents retired there and my mom's immediate family, to include a sister and brother, all lived within about a 20 minute drive of each other. My mom was a single mother, and the support of her family made things a bit easier on her. In 1996, my daughter was born. "Sunflower" and I relocated with my mom in 1997 to Las Vegas, where my sister eventually followed and where I would remain till around 2000. After completing a certification program there, I returned to Northern California. I spent 10 years there, raising Sunflower, before meeting my future husband, "The Sailor", in July of 2007. We had a somewhat whirl-wind romance, that was complicated by long distance. In June of 2008, we were married and almost immediately, Sunflower and I joined him over in Hawaii, where he was half way through a 3 year duty assignment. Our son was conceived soon after our wedding, and we welcomed "Sonshine" in April of 2009. We would finish up our time in Hawaii and then on to our next duty station. Someplace in the Rocky mountains. We found ourselves falling in love with the location, and as the Sailor had just one more duty assignment before his anticipated retirement in 2016, we began to talk about permanent residency. Autism was not something that I was concerned with right away. In the early stages of development, Sonshine did everything "on schedule", as far as the doctors where concerned, though for what I knew about my development or Sunflower's development at that age, Sonshine was definitely delayed. For example, while his sister walked 3 days before she turned nine months old, (admittedly an early walker, Sonshine did not take his first steps until he was fourteen months. By a year, he made only a few vocal sounds. MaMa, DaDa, SisSis, where his main words, along with a handful of others. While Sunflower was speaking in sentences when she was eighteen months old, Sonshine was not doing much verbalizing, and relied mostly on pointing and grunting to communicate. We never had issues with him, not having eye contact. He would engage us when we interacted with him, thought at times, I was concerned about his hearing, as he seemed to not hear us, depending on what he might be doing. Finally, by age two, I had convinced his pediatrician, that he was not speaking as he should for his age, and we had him evaluated, by one of the early intervention organizations in our local area. Sonshine was diagnosed with a speech delay, and began in home therapy, followed by pre-school at age 3, through the public school system, and private therapy paid by our insurance, when the in home therapy ran out on his third birthday. Overtime, I began to notice behaviors that were not considered typical. He would vocalize and rock, using house hold utensils, like forks and spoons to flap his hands with, focusing on those items, though not using them, or his toys in the manner they were meant to be used. He would wander around with a small car in his hand, but it wouldn't be to use it on the rug or pretend he was driving the car. I had a couple of close friends who had been given an ASD diagnosis for the children, and over time as we would talk about things our children did or they would vent to me about what sorts of challenges or behaviors they faced with their own children, I realized that Sonshine was demonstrating signs of possible ASD. It took about a year of pushing Sonshine's primary care provider, observations by his speech therapist and the staff at his pre-school, before we finally found ourselves on a wait list for the child development center at the local hospital, for an evaluation. In the mean time, we survived the passing of my mother and the Sailor's father, along with a decision to build a new home in a housing development, to settle into. This however, would mean that the Sailor would be going unaccompanied to what we assume will be his last duty station, in July of 2013. September 2013, is when Sonshine had his evaluations at Children's Hospital. I found out at the end of our first appointment, that medical time who evaluated him found enough cause to comfortably diagnose Sonshine as being "On the Autism Spectrum". That was the beginning of our journey in Autism. The day that our game plan was changed and we were issued a new set of rules.

Sleepless in La La Land

My mind just races some times. I've gotten used to lack of sleep. In six years, it's rare that I see a full night of uninterrupted sleep. That's part of the challenges that we face with our son. Oddly enough, he's finally started sleeping through the night over the last few weeks, as relieved as I am, I find that it presents a set of unique problems for me, now that I am facing sleep on a regular basis. Tonight, or rather this morning, the sounds of my teenager arguing with her significant other, combined with my concerns about the upcoming school year for my son, have created a lot of wandering in my mind and try as I might, I can't go to sleep. To make matters worse, my husband is going to be returning back to his duty station on Tuesday... I can feel my sense of nervous anticipation as his time with us dwindles down. He's not going to be home again for another 6 months, and again for only just a couple of weeks. This is not the way I would like to start this journey, writing about insomnia at 3 am in the morning. But, it's a start... Now that it's quiet.. I may just try to lay down again.