Happy 8th Birthday Ryan!

Another birthday has passed and I can't believe my "baby" is 8 years old already!  Where has the time gone?

With our new shirts on May 12th, the morning of Ryan's birthday!

Mahopac Middle School

Take notice of Ryan's hand.  He was very possessive of his cake this year.  He didn't want Julia anywhere near it when it was time to blow out the candle.  By the way, the cake on our left is a GF chocolate chip cookie cake made by Carol, and the cake with the Darth Vader candle is a GF cake from The Pastry Garden.  Both were extremely tasty! 

717 pieces!

Before bed Ryan studied the box of his new Lego set.  He eagerly asked if he could head to bed to start his drawings now that he has lots of details in his mind.

This is where I found Ryan at 5:30 a.m. this morning. Determined to build his new Lego set without our help.  

He spent about 4 hours on it today (2 hours before school and 2 hours after school) and he is a little over half way done.
It is coming out great!

Some old pictures to look at.  No, this isn't Jack, it is Ryan!  He was 18 months in this picture.

And he was three and a half years old in this picture:

And how about this video of Ryan receiving one of his B12 injections.  It feels like a lifetime ago that we needed to do this.  It brought me to tears watching this video and reliving flashbacks of the months and months of struggling we went through to get Ryan to this point getting his injection. Ryan has come so far!

Since I didn't post for Mother's Day I want to share one of the gifts Ryan made me.  It is a letter that I will treasure forever!

My four beauties!  How did I get so lucky???

Last, but not least, thank you to everyone who reached out to Ryan for his birthday.  I passed along all of the messages and showed him the pictures of people wearing their Ryan Express shirt.  The Autism Speaks walk is coming up on June 1st.  We hope you can join us!  If you would like to join our team or make a donation, please follow the link below.
The Ryan Express team page

DC

Week 148

More daily meltdowns for Ryan, coupled with a bout of head lice for Julia and a fever and stomach virus for Jack, made for another busy and stressful week in our house.  But it wasn't all bad so I want to focus on some of the good this week.  First I have to say that Ryan's and Julia's report cards were excellent.  Ryan improved academically in many areas and Julia is above grade level in many areas.  We're so proud of them!

Celebrating my birthday

A play date with cousins:

I made Ryan grain-free peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, and he loved them.  One of my friends shared the recipe site with me.  You would never believe that the cookie is made mostly of chick peas, but they do taste best when warm and the chocolate is gooey.  Here's the website for the recipe:

Grain-free peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

DC

Week 43

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

In the spirit of Valentine's Day and LOVE, here is a video of Ryan with his cousins Amelia and Alyssa singing a song called "I Love My Nonna and My Papa", taught to them by none other than their nonna!  Be careful, if you watch it too many times, the song gets addicting!

And what would a Valentine's celebration be without lots of sweets???

Ryan enjoyed his special cake and cupcakes!

Unfortunately this week was not all sweets and smiles.  Ryan had some tough days.  We received a couple of bad reports from school revolving around Ryan having difficulty following directions.  After reading one of the reports, I asked him about what happened at school and he hit me and ran to sulk in his room.  We noticed "off" behaviors at home as well.  He had difficulty sharing and displayed lots of odd behaviors like running around in a zone, talking to himself, and making weird movements with his hands.  We haven't seen this kind of Ryan in so long and to be honest, it scared me a little bit.  Even his appetite at dinner was not normal and several days during the week his cheeks were red.  This led us to believe that he ate something that he shouldn't have.  But what??? 

I received the following information from the mother of one of my students.  Here is a blurb and a link for an upcoming conference, and also the link to an online newsletter called Autism Spectrum News.

2011 Young Child Expo & Conference brings together top leaders to provide the latest information about essential topics in early childhood development. Early childhood professionals and parents will learn also about services, resources, and products to help all children reach their full potential. In one unique event, this conference integrates learning about typically developing children as well as those with special needs, including autism.  http://www.youngchildexpo.com/

Here's the link to the newsletter: http://www.mhnews-autism.org/

Ryan and Thomas watching a Thomas the Tank video.

Here are some pictures that I took last week but did not post on last week's blog.  I had experimented with making GF bread for the first time. Ryan was so excited as it was baking. He kept asking what the smell was and if he could eat it.

Catching a whiff while it was cooling down.

It was delicious. We had some warm and there was plenty left over to slice and store for Ryan to eat during the week.

Last week I also made a huge GFCF and egg-free chocolate chip cookie for the kids.  I used a recipe from a cookbook I received as a Christmas gift from one of my students.  It's called The Food Allergy Mama's Baking Book by Kelly Rudnicki.  The recipes are all dairy, egg, and and nut free.  They are not gluten free but I am able to swap out the flour called for in the recipe with some GF flour varieties and Xantham gum.

DC