April is Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness Month. But in our house, Autism is every month, every day, every hour, every minute. When you live with Autism, you breathe Autism. You have days of ups and downs, frustrations and praises, back steps and milestones.
The past couple days I have been thinking about can I do this again for another month, post something everyday that gives family and friends a little peak into our home and life. The mantra in our home, is you have to try, you never know what you can or can't do, if you don't at least try. So here I go, I will try...

Carson came into our world on April 15, 2001, he was 3 1/2 weeks early. He was our best gift from the Easter Bunny. He was a happy baby, developing right along at what I thought was typical. I really have a hard time knowing just when we started seeing things that where not right, he had lots of ear infections, and thought some of the delays were because of that, but he started not making eye contact, didn't want people touching him, hugging him. We were encouraged by his babysitter, to have him tested. She could see something was off, that was more then just delayed from ear infections. It was hard to hear from someone that they thought something was off, and I honestly can not imagine how hard it was for her to get up the courage to say to us that she thought there was something wrong. But Bill and I both are forever grateful that she was strong enough and cared enough to talk to us. She said the word Autism. I had never heard of it before. Then we were watching a Nascar race, and they were doing a piece on a driver with a child with Autism. So I went to the internet and started researching, oh my gosh, he was doing so many things they said are signs. No eye contact, touch sensitivity, lining toys up, flapping his hands...

We talked to our doctor and then we took him to Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh and got the official diagnosis. Just before his 3rd birthday, we were told that our little boy had Autism.

What do you do next? When your told that you child has Autism. ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that you can do in your power to give your child the best life possible. And so it began, and here we are 13 years later. Still going strong, still doing ANYTHING and EVERYTHING we can for our boy. A long, bumpy, windy road, and even though there are days I don't feel very strong, we are stronger then we were yesterday, and tomorrow we will be even stronger yet.