Mesiodens

Our whole life is about having extra things....extra chromosomes, extra holes in things that shouldn't have extra holes, and now extra teeth.  While taking Stetson to the dentist over the past few visits, the xrays have shown that there was something abnormal in his upper jaw.  His jaw is so mis-shapen that its so hard to get a good panoramic xray.  But we tried as hard as we could and could tell that something was just not right.  After many attempts they decided that he had what is called Mesiodens .  These are extra teeth, so he had 4 front teeth instead of 2, and they would have to come out for the rest of his permanent teeth to come in right.  We went to the surgery center because they had a few small cavities that need filled also by his regular dentist and the extra teeth needed removed by the oral surgeon.  Our day was crazy, Blake was out of town, we woke up late and since I can never sleep before the kids have procedures I was exhausted.  Everything went good with the surgery, but man oh man was he mad when he got back to me.  They slit his upper gums and rolled them back to reveal and remove the extra teeth then stitched the gums back down.  He was so mad and bleeding all over the place.  We were able to go home shortly after he got out of recovery and he did really good afterward.  He has a very high pain tolerance and didn't complain much about pain.  The next few days the poor little guy looked like he got in a fist fight, he was so swollen and had a huge black eye.  He still has stitches in for a while until they fall out but his teeth are starting to move into place already.  He is going to look so different with front teeth, it has been years since he has had them.

A Happy boy before going in

So sleepy after surgery

Two days after, lots of swelling

The day after...bruised lip

The very weird, heavy squishy teeth

Tayller Ann

Tayller Ann

 My niece was born when I was 11 years old.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  I was so excited and proud to be an aunt for the first time.  She was my everything, I adored her, catered to her, and had her with me where ever and when ever I could.  She was so cute with big huge blue eyes and a bald head.  She quickly became my little side kick.  Since I was pretty young myself at the time, her and I grew up together like we were sisters.  I protected her, gave her advice and shared in all of her joys and sadness.  I enjoyed every moment that I got to spend with her.  Well she grew up right under my nose quicker than I had hoped, and on the 26th of May she graduated from Mt. Harrison High School a whole year early (which I feel cheated out of a year with her).  I couldn't have been more proud of her.  She has grown into such a beautiful young lady and makes me beam with joy.  She now has a boyfriend and is planning on moving in with him at his house in Portland to attend Paul Mitchell Hair School.  I am so happy for her, but clinging onto every day that I have left with her before she moves.  I am going to miss her so much, she is my best friend and I don't know what I am going to do without her.

Us crying over the slide show I made

Waiting to get her diploma

All the girls of our family with my dad

I was such a bawl baby

I love her so much

Welcome to Holland

I got this from a very good friend of mine, it really does explain a lot about the feelings of being told you have a child born with special needs. It is never easy to hear the news, let alone once, but still harder to hear it twice. Read this, and imagine what it would be like. I love my kids more than anything in the world and would never change it for anything... but it is a trying struggle every single day.






WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability -- to try to help people who have not shared the unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this ...
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip -- to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. Michelangelo's "David." The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. You must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.
But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Ballerina Baby

My sweet princess dances for 5-6-7-8 Dance in Burley. She LoVeS LoVeS LoVeS to Dance. It is so fun to watch her, she gets so excited. But on the same hand it is so hard to watch her. She never really gets the dance or the moves she just does her own little thing. And as the years go on the other girls gain skills and Brooklyn pretty much stays at the same level. And the older the kids get the more they stare at her and won't hold her hand during the dances or stand by her. And I don't want to be rude to them, but I do say something to them once in a while about being nice to everyone....when really what I want to do is walk over and smack their parents for not teaching them better courtesy and respect for all people no matter what their abilities. At the end of every year I say to myself... "We are NOT doing that again next year" ....then the next year roles around and we sign up. I don't know yet what next year will bring but this year is over and we are very proud of our sweet girl and her dancing. She is so beautiful and the smile on her face when she dancing is heart melting.

School System-and IEP's

I have grown to totally hate and despise the school system. Stetson went to school for 2 years at a private preschool, then for Kindergarten attended Declo Elementary. During that year someone (whom we have yet to figure out who it was) called and informed the school that we do not live in that county and Stetson would need special services so we wouldn't be able to continue attending that school, since when you have special needs all the rules for open enrollment change....You are no longer eligible for open enrollment, you have to stay in your own district. So this year Stetson was in 1st grade at Declo and a few months into the year they come to me and say..."you don't live here he can't go here because he will need to be on an IEP he is falling behind". We agreed to allow him to stay there for the rest of the year, and we would work on moving into the district so that he would be able to go to Declo on an IEP with no problems. So we started our quest for a home, and found out that our dream house was again up for sale in Albion. So we started the process of getting ready to buy our house and everything was going to pan our for Stetson to attend Declo forever. Then the bomb was dropped....after a surprise IEP meeting that I walked into totally unprepared and unsuspecting as to what was happening...they informed me that even if we moved there they felt that Stetson needed to go to a different school that they wouldn't meet his needs there any longer. So here we are in the middle of purchasing a home just so Stetson can go there, and now no matter what he can't go there. I was devastated, how was I going to explain to him that the school that he loves and the only school that he knows is being taken away from us. He is accepted there, he is helped out there, he LOVES it there...and now we have to start over. It was just not fair at all. So once again we were having to think of what we were going to do now. Our dream house seemed like something that was unnecessary to purchase now. Why would we want to live in Albion and have the kids bused to Burley to special needs class rooms when we could just stay where we are for cheaper payments and have them go to school in Heyburn. So in the end after many tears and sleepless nights we decided that we should just stay put and tell Declo they can shove their ridiculous ideas and IEP. This decision has made us so sad. We LOVE Declo and have always imagined the kids going to school there and us living there. We feel so discriminated against and that this is so not fair any so many ways. We had the best teachers and janitors and kids at that school that accepted and helped Stetson so much. It will never be the same, but we have to be optimistic and move on. So next year Stetson will attend Heyburn elementary for the 2nd grade and Brooklyn will go to Acequia for Kindergarten.