Greetings!

Hello & Welcome! I feel a bit like the Emcee from Cabaret.
"Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome! Fremde, etranger, stranger. Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante, Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay."

Ok, I just totally geeked out on you. Sorry about that. Yes, I'm a musical theatre geek. Or, I used to be...when I was single & had money. :) So anyway, if I haven't scared you off yet, back to this blog business. By the way, don't feel bad if you can't pronounce any of those foreign words above. I certainly can't. Had to google the lyrics just to be able to spell them. :)

I suppose I should start this off by telling you who I am & why yet another blog has been created in this vast Internet world of blogs. 

I am a stay at home mom to an amazing little boy named Hunter. He'll be 4 on January 18th (next Friday, eek!) & the thought of a blog has been rattling around in my brain for a couple of years now. My mom has mentioned, more than once (or three, or four, or five times) that I should start a blog.

Hunter was first diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder when he was around 20 months old, although not officially, because the therapists who evaluated him said that an official diagnosis is not covered by most insurance companies because it's a sensory issue. Trying to get services for him would be nearly impossible because of this, and we trusted them, so we just went with their advice. After all, they're the experts, right?Most people had (have) no idea what SPD is, so we found ourselves explaining a lot and doing a lot of reading.

It made things a little less scary & explained a lot, such as why he was rubbing his head along the carpet, or crashing into things, banging his head against the wall, etc...but in our research, my husband & I were like, these books and websites are describing autism also, and that sounds just like Hunter. All autistic kids have sensory issues but not all SPD kids have autism. So we asked the "expert" therapists & were told "It is impossible for Hunter to be autistic, because he is too social". That, my friends, is an actual quote. And we trusted them b/c they knew best. Or so we thought.

I'll go into this all more in detail later, but long story short, they were wrong, and our guts were right. Hunter was diagnosed on June 12th, 2012. It took her about five minutes of observing him before she was nodding her head and saying yup, that's a kid on the spectrum. He actually has "PDD-NOS" which stands for "Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified" but come on...who wants to say THAT?!? And besides, we would say that & then end up having to explain the whole thing anyway. It IS one of the 5 spectrum disorders. I googled it on Wikipedia, and here is the definition (copied & pasted, all rights to Wikipedia...and anything that might be mis-spelled, is their mistake. I didn't mess w/ their posting):

Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) is one of the five autism spectrum disorders (ASD)^[1] and also one of the five disorders classified as a pervasive developmental disorder(PDD).^[2] According to the DSM-IV, PDD-NOS is a diagnosis that is used for "severe and pervasive impairment in the development of reciprocal social interaction or verbal and nonverbal communication skills, or when stereotyped behavior, interests, and activities are present, but the criteria are not met for a specific PDD" or for several other disorders.^[3] PDD-NOS is often called atypical autism,^[4] because the criteria for autistic disorder are not met, for instance because of late age of onset, atypical symptomatology, or subthreshold symptomatology, or all of these.^[3] Even though PDD-NOS is considered milder than typicalautism, this is not always true. While some characteristics may be milder, others may be more severe.^[5]"


Still with me? Wasn't that FUN? Do you understand now why it's easier to say Autism? Autism, people "get". PDD-NOS, takes a lot of explanation & my brain is a tired one. Hunter is on the "less severe" (with most things) side of it, but it's still a daily struggle and some (many) things are harder ( & more frustrating) for him than for other kids not on the spectrum. 

So...this brings me to the blog & the decision to do it. When Hunter started eating solids, I made his food from scratch. When he had special issues we had to address, I did countless hours of research. I have done more research in the past few years than I did for any paper I had to write in college.

And sometimes it's been frustrating, sometimes fun, mostly rewarding. There's been a lot of trial & error, and my mother has told me that I need to share this information b/c it might help someone else.

Mostly, this will be about Hunter, what we deal with on a daily basis, recipes I've made that have worked (and not worked, but might work for someone else), products that have made our lives easier (or not), etc. But I happen to have an AMAZING husband who loves & adores his best little buddy more than life itself, so you'll prob get tired of reading about him, too. :)

So I hope something we've learned can help you, or maybe make you smile...and thanks for embarking on this journey with me.

Tamara