Recovering Noah

Shh, it's me. Can you tell? Two of my kids we're having some troubles, so I decided it was time for a daily visit from Forever Mommy from Planet Mom. My younger two have very active imaginations.... so I thought that they might be able to relate to me more if I were to join them in their fantasy world. So I decided to don my cape, tie on my mask, grab a fairy wand, and throw on a beret. The beret really doesn't have anything to do with the costume, but my alter ego likes to think that she's French and really sophisticated, polished, and able to eat all the Nutella she wants without having massive elephant thighs. Like I said... pure fantasy. Anyway, Forever Mommy is always there for her kids. She will never leave them and she will always protect them from dragons (bad people and bad things). She talks in silly voices and relates to her children. She plays with them and slays all the dragons with her magic wand. She also does silly dances and gives her babies jelly

Have you heard about KIVA ? It's this amazing organization that supplies loans to people around the world in need. Basically, you can go online and check out the loan requests and donate anywhere from $25 and up towards a specific loan. Once enough money is collected, the loan is given out and the person who requested it can start their business, buy food for their market stall... basically get whatever is needed for them to support themselves in their country. And once they start earning money, they work on paying back the loan. It's really cool. We supported a loan a few months ago for someone in Pakistan to buy a rickshaw so they could start their own taxi business and support their family. So far, we've received half of our $25 back... and we decided to transfer that money and add $12.50 so that we could help someone else get started. This time, however, we wanted to let Noah choose the person to support. So we did some RPM with him... you know, that awesome autism pr

This one is actually about Noah. We've been driving to Dallas 2x a week for a new therapy that we're doing. And, of course, our lame insurance refused to pay for it. 3-hour RT, twice a week, at $75 a pop for a 30 minute session. It adds up quickly. Anyway, I called their office today and cancelled our remaining scheduled appointments because we couldn't afford it anymore. It broke my heart to do this because we have truly seen some great changes in Noah since we started. But we didn't have a choice. Twenty minutes later, they called back. They'd just gotten the mail in and there was a letter from our insurance company. They AGREED to pay for the therapy. Ya'll, you don't understand. I fight with our insurance over everything. Maybe they decided to cover it because they realized it'd help - or maybe they decided that they didn't want to spend another summer dealing with Leslie-Noah's-Mom. I don't know. But they're covering it. This means w

I've never been one of those people who adopts because they want to "rescue" a child. I adopted because I wanted to be a mom, and I just always knew, even as a teen, that I would adopt someday. Having said that, last week I found myself thinking some terrible things. It'd been an awful day. RAD behaviors were at their highest and Nandi was testing me every single step of the way. We were running late and I was desperately trying not to lose my cool. I would get Nandi dressed, turn around, and she'd be undressed. Get dressed, undressed, get dressed, undressed. Shoes on, shoes off. It was driving me nuts. And, for the record, I did actually do reverse psychology on her once when she did this. I said, " No problem. You can just ride naked ." Sure enough, she rode buck naked all the way to a friend's house. Didn't bother her a bit. Of course, it didn't. She's a nudist. What was I thinking??? So, I had no idea what to do in this situation. She

Well, it was clearly premature to start a series of posts about what’s working for us… when it seems the only thing that brings peace and harmony around here is actually not being here. Last week was pretty good, but we were gone sunup to sundown. Yesterday? Eh… not so good. This morning? Ugggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh. But I’ll go ahead and humor you and tell you some of the things we’re trying. First of all, and perhaps the biggest, is that I’m having to change my attitude. I never realized my extreme need to control things until I had a little RADish… who also has an extreme need to control things. You know that book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. And It’s All Small Stuff ? Well, I sweat the small stuff. Big time. I’m trying not to sweat the small stuff anymore. That book that I read (the one I hated so much and hate even more because it actually taught me a few things and I really didn’t want it to because I hated it so much. You know, that one?) , well… it kept trying to get me to rec

I don't know why I have such a hard time blogging about what's going on. If you see me in person and ask me how I'm doing... well, I could very well bend your ear for hours. But to actually sit down and formulate my thoughts into words (when my thoughts are usually a million miles a minutes) and then type it up... I just find it hard. I like my blog posts to have some sort of cohesiveness going on... and these RAD posts are all over the place. Plus, my thoughts and feelings and just everything changes minute to minute. I'm constantly learning and things are constantly changing. What I write today might not be the same tomorrow. However, I guess I do owe you all an explanation of how we realized that Nandi has an attachment disorder. I haven't quite explained that yet. About 6 weeks ago, Sim and I were sitting in bed and just talking about how "different" Nandi is and we started listing all the things she does. Things that other kids don't seem to do.

I've realized that I shouldn't leave two depressing blog posts in a row and then disappear for nine days. Thank you to everyone who emailed me and asked if we were okay. I'm sorry I didn't even take the time to pop on here and post a short, "Hey! We're fine, just a busy week" message. But... here it is... Hey! We're fine... it was just a busy week. Seriously, thank you to everyone who emailed me. Some of you even de -lurked (!) to email me.. and I want you to know that I really appreciate it. The truth is... and it's not that interesting... is that we had a garage sale over the weekend up at our church. It was one of our fundraisers for the India trip and - including the sale - we worked on it for 49 hours total. It wasn't yo' grannies garage sale. Oh no, we do everything bigger in Texas. It was an uber garage sale. And, man, did it take a long time. So that - plus running around to different therapies and other various commitments - mean