Marbles from Heaven

Wow, where does the time go? Just wanted to post a little about my sweet and precious first born. He is so amazing, so smart, so unique. He warms my heart and brings a smile to my face each and everyday. I love him more with every minute that passes. Isn't is crazy the amount of love we as mom's can have for our children? There is nothing like it. It is out of that love that we want to do what is best for them. It is why we nurture and pour ourselves into their little souls. It is that love that has motivated me to do anything and everything for jackson to help ensure he will thrive and excel in this life. Our spring and summer was filled with therapy, lots of therapy. I have spent endless hours on the phone searching for resources available to help my child who has been labeled and not labeled with so many things. ST, OT, PT, food therapy, sensory therapy, and on and on. There is way too much to put in one post, but just wanted to get some things down on paper, so to speak, to keep a record of where we are. It has been almost 3 years since that initial twinge, that first little voice within that nudged maybe there is something not quite right with our miracle. It was 3 years ago that he had his first evaluation and got an initial diagnosis of expressive language delay. We have since included sensory processing disorder as another "label" for what we are dealing with. Jackson is a good kid. Kind, loving, caring, sensitive, and full of life. He also has some things that pose a challenge to our everyday life. He doesn't like to eat. He has a few foods he will eat regularly and that's it. Any introduction to new foods is usually filled with panic, dread, tears, anxiety, and is just plain terrible. This summer we have really tried to include lots of therapy and encouragement to expand jackson's food repertoire. I am proud to say we are making baby steps and that will hopefully continue. We have expanded from strawberry nutragrain bars, wendy's chicken nuggets, rectangle honey grahams, and blue bell vanilla ice cream. We have added bananas, yogurt (in 2 flavors), mandarin oranges in a cup, butterfinger in and on ice cream at several different places (sonic, dairy queen, and edy's at home), several other ice cream treats like hot fudge sundae at mcdonald's and vanilla scoops at other ice cream shops. He enjoys fruit snacks and has tried 5 or 6 different kinds. Our biggest new accomplishment is eating red delicious apple without being cut or peeled! He bites them and eats the whole thing!!! We have also been thrilled with his expanded variety of chicken, however seem so far from the grilled and healthy chicken that I want him to eat. He will now eat Mcdonald's chicken selects, Times chicken tenders, uncle robert's chicken at Sunrise, and actually pretty much any chicken strips or tenders at any restaurant we go to! That is a huge relief since there aren't wendy's in disney world or at the beach! We have had NO luck with adding any veggies and that is so discouraging, but baby steps. He still enjoys turkey bacon at breakfast at home but will not eat regular bacon when we go out. He won't even look at pizza and we have a LONG way to go before a hamburger is even an option.
Our most recent specialist was a pediatric geneticist and we will see tomorrow what he says about all the lab work they drew last month. We started some vitamins and are hopeful that those will be helpful.
Whew, lots of typing to not say a whole lot. Will follow up some more later.