Back in the saddle... again!?

So, I took another hiatus. I thought I was back in July, but I must have had sunstroke... or something.

Actually, the summer was a whirlwind of excitement and mayhem. Though I can't really remember what sort of excitement or what type of mayhem. But it was definitely the Seamus variety. It flew by so fast and...

Summer quickly became fall.

Seamus started full day preschool at his new school. And as predicted he loves it and they love him. (Or at least that is what they tell us.) All kidding aside, it seems to be a really great fit and all our worrying and sleepless nights were all for naught... thankfully.

I didn't really discuss it in this forum at the time we were deciding on a school, but now looking back on the decision making process, we were really lucky that our struggle was not in trying to find a great school, but it trying to decide which great school to send Sea to.

I also may not have made it clear previously, because this past year has been a real struggle in coming to terms with the diagnosis and dealing with the ramifications of raising our child who has special needs, but Seamus is autistic. It appears to be a mild case, but none the less our child is on the spectrum. Something that, surprisingly, is not all that uncommon these days.

We don't live near a big city, if fact, some would say we live in the country. The closest city, if you want to call it that, is about a half hour away. For country dwelling folk, we are lucky to live in a county that has a lot of programs for children with special needs. And we are lucky that they have been fairly easy to find and readily available at no out of pocket cost to us. Though, if we had to, we would pay for Seamus to get what he needs, but it is nice to be able to take advantage of these programs.

The county and school district we live in have also, luckily, been very forthcoming in making these programs available to us without too much hassle. There was one bad meeting in the beginning, but since then we have had no trouble getting services for Seamus. We were even able to justify, and get, the one-on-one aide at his new school for this school year– which has been a huge help for Seamus.

But I digress, I guess the point of my ramblings is that parenting is hard and stressful and then when you add in a child that needs special services and schools, it makes it so much harder and so much more stressful. (Not surprising that statistically most couples with a special needs child divorce, but that's another conversation all together!) My point is that we have been lucky to have had very little trouble finding programs and services for Seamus.

I have to thank our pediatrician/family doctor for being so awesome and a force in our effort to get help for Seamus. When we first noticed that there was something going on and brought it up at Sea's 2 year wellness check, if our Dr. hadn't taken us seriously and just blown us off I don't know where we would be right now. But he didn't and referred us to early intervention services. The rest is a blur, but if we hadn't been steered in the right direction almost two years ago, I would be telling a much different story, I'm sure!

We have been very lucky. Lucky to have a great child and lucky to be able to give him what he needs!

So, even though I took another unplanned hiatus, I hope that it was just temporary.

I was pretty sure of myself the last time, so I'm not promising anything now!