The Begining to the Historical Record of our children

I wanted to start updating this blog with details about our children. Not to get advice from those of you that read it, but to document these events so that I can show them to some of them and relish the aches and pains of old age instead of wishing I was younger and experiencing life with little ones. Don't get me wrong, I cherish the quiet moments rocking Isaac to sleep at night, as he softly rubs my arms and hands and snuggles with me. Just today, I asked Isaac to give me kisses and he leaned over repetitively gave me kisses on the lips. These are majical moments that give us hope and gratitude for our little guy!

I love watching Evie's Dance recitals and practicing the swing with her, lifting her over my head, flipping her around my back, through my legs, and seeing her giggle and blossom into the lovely little miss she is becoming.

I love Luke more than life. He and I spend hours playing games on PS2. We have lots of fun going to Maverick, playing video games at Fat Cats, watching Christmas shows, tickling each other, dancing to Christmas music, reading books, and snuggling at night time.

Recently we have discovered that he really has the ability to go on and on about his life!
Just before bed, when he obviously doesn't want to go to bed we can get him to open up and tell us about his entire day. He also likes to talk when everyone is listening, and he has center stage, like the dinner at Brady's when gave us a 30 minute lecture on spiders.

One night he told us about Anica the love of his life, a little girl with a lazy eye he met in his special needs class at school. He said that he had kissed her. He said, "She is the most beautifulest girl I ever saw!" We asked her what she said to him after he kissed her and he said, "Help!" We imagined our aggressive little boy running up to this poor little girl and hugging her and kissing her, while she screamed, "Help!" This had a rolling in laughter as Tausha and I rejoiced in his innocence and aggressiveness!

The greatest thing about these conversations is that we can actually talk with Luke and hear details about what he likes, who he likes, and how he views the world. This may sound like a simple thing but it is a miracle that I thought would never happen.

When we first discovered that Luke had Autism, every video we watched on autism warned us as parents not get our hopes up about them being able to speak logically. 70% of autistic children have an IQ below normal, and therefore we assumed our little boy would be disabled and nonverbal for the rest of his life. So every day that he comes home from school and tells us about going to the zoo, or what he ate for lunch, or that he wants a shark that swims under water for Christmas we marvel and praise the Lord, that we can understand what he wants and what makes him happy.

At age 3 was still nonverbal. So you can imagine our relief and belief in miracles, blessings, and the hard work of teacher and therapists at Carman Pingree School for Children with Autism.

Luke, is the most interesting little boy I know. He shocks us daily with his new ideas, exciting discoveries, and new disasters. The interesting thing about is that Evie and Isaac are just in case you begin to think that it is just Luke. They all keep us on our toes.

The last couple of weeks Luke has painted his face twice. Once with green paint and then later with permanent marker.

One catch 22 T. and I are faced with is how to curb in input of television, movies, and video games that Luke is daily digesting. We must be terrible parents, but sometimes it is the only way to keep Luke out of trouble is to put a show. The only problem with putting on a show, is that Luke takes everything literally. For instance, if Luke was watching, "The Road Runner," he would see depictions of, "Wiley E. Coyote," trying to blow up, push of a cliff, or have cars run over, the road runner.

Can you see the dilemma with having Luke watch these shows? The next thing we notice is Isaac flipping down our stairs. I honestly don't know if he just feel down the stairs or if the Lukster is trying out one of Wiley techniques on our little floor scooter, but you can see our dilemma.

The other day Luke watched, "The Grinch," a completely harmless movie about the importance of accepting others with differences, and having the true spirit of Christmas, right? Wrong for Luke all he sees is a cool guy that can eat glass, jump down shoots, or fly down a mountain.

No, Luke didn't start chewing on glass, but the other day he did come out with his face painted completely green. He is so cute and has so much innocence that it is difficult to get mad at him. We have initiated a token system and he will scream as we pull tokens out of his jar with the star wars character on it, but soon after he will forget the pain of the reprimand and will walk out with black permanent marker all over his face.

For some of you that are wondering, "don't you ever watch your children?" I invite you to take Luke into your house for a week. He is amazingly sneaky and mischievous. Even if we were to stay with him every moment of the day, besides not being able to clean the house, work on homework, or home improvement projects; he doesn't care if you are right in front of him, he will still seek and destroy.

I hope I don't come off sounding negative in presenting some insights on things that happen around our house. I am not writing this for pity, I am just documenting events, lessons, learns, and things that we will someday look back on and laugh.

At times I start to wonder like many of Tausha's friends do that maybe we are bad parents and that our disciplinary techniques are useless. Today at Berrett's farewell Luke the time he
I know that in terms of don't know if going to watch movies with Luke is such a good idea. For instance The first time I

When I asked him why he did it he said that he wanted to look like an ornament. I guess he was tired of his face looking the same so he decided to spice it up, just like he spiced up the Christmas tree.