Bittersweet....

This is a family of geese living at Katie's Place.

I really love seeing them when we go visit her. It's really hard to go and see her sometimes. It hits home how much I so miss her and how hard it is without her.

These geese make it a little easier.

There used to be a family of foxes but we don't see them anymore :(.

Going to really miss the geese once the winter weather hits....

They actually come really close to you when you are outside your vehicle :).

And they are in charge. They just cross the cemetary roads, after all you are in their home :)

My Princess, xoxo

My beautiful Juli all dressed in her costume!

She said she wanted to be Princess Sophia. I have no idea what Sophia looks like but when I look this out of her closet she was ecstatic :).

As long as she's happy then so am I.

This was taken when I picked her up from school.

She had a great Halloween and got a good amount of candy.

She even let her teachers put face paint on her.

My beautiful princess 💞🌟

When beauty presents itself :)...

When beauty presents itself you just have to capture it and be thankful you had the opportunity to see it :).

This is one beautiful sunset in my old area that I'm thankful I got to see.

 The second pic is not as good, but still very pretty I think :).

Enjoy!!

Yummy :)!!

I have recently discovered this. It's so good for you and the best thing is it tastes pretty much like egg nog!

I'm really excited about this as I am adopting a dairy free diet (slowly I am lol), and this is my replacement for egg nog.

It's made with green tea which has many antioxidant benefits for your health. It's also made with soy. For those not allergic to soy it is a good source of protein.

This is just so good I had to share :)!!

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Cat Love :).....

Juli with our kitty Bella 💞

Bella is so awesome with Juli 🌟

Juli made this at school :)

This is awesome! She is starting to bring home her artwork now and this is one of those pieces.

Very proud of her.

Papou is the school mascot/companion.

Not sure how long till I see this again....

Gas has not been this cheap in so long! I'm capturing a picture (unfortunately not the best one - sorry about that!) as I'm not sure when I will ever see this price again lol :)

Choo-choo!

Juli had such a good time playing with her train set the other day, I just had to get some pictures of her. She loves Thomas and Friends and played with her trains for almost two hours. A lot of that by herself.

She got this set for Christmas 2012 from us.

Thought you might enjoy seeing some of the pictures and her looking so happy :)

She seems to love Cheerleading, but transitioning isn't her strong suit...

I took this pic of Juli a few days ago. She was preparing to put on one of her dance shows for me. She combines what she has learned in Cheerleading and mixes it with what she sees in Angelina Ballerina. She just adores putting on these shows for me :). I love it!

I'm considering finding a dance or ballet class for her to go to. She loves to dance. She was watching the Olympic figure skating with the biggest eyes and then trying to do the moves. I was actually very impressed! She can see it once or twice and copy it. The problem is she is trying to copy and do what has taken these adult skaters years to master and she gets so frustrated when I won't let her do it because it is way too advanced for her or she can't do it.

I know she loves her cheerleading as she tells me she does everyday that she doesn't go.  She practices her routine all of the time, everyday. She would practice it ALL day if she could lol.

Her coach created a group on Facebook where she uploads all of the videos of the kids routines. This way I can just go into the group and play the videos for Juli to watch and use to practice. At times, I've lost my computer for a couple hours straight while she watches the videos mesmerized and then tells me "Watch me mommy!!" and she goes through the process of her whole routine :). She can spend the whole two hours watching and practicing the moves, watching and practicing... It's beautiful. It amazes me how she has that much energy too.

She really blows my mind as she stands on my legs to pose and stretch her legs out as the older cheerleaders do. She has her legs in such a perfect straight tight position. Her somersault or "rolls" as she calls them are very well executed too. She is really good at this!

All would be fine and dandy if it were that easy. But of course, I'm learning, with an autistic child it isn't.

Enter the very hard transitions.

She has an extremely hard time transitioning from one activity to another and an especially hard time getting ready to leave the house to go somewhere. Even somewhere she wants to go.  If I didn't hear it from her coach when I pick her up I would seriously wonder if she enjoys it. The fight I have to go through to get her out the door on Saturday mornings is incredible. The minute she wakes up and asks me where we are going today, I tell her cheerleading, I get "I don't want to go to Cheerleading!"

Then comes the one to two hour process to get her out the door :(.... It's the same for everything.  If I didn't see her practicing all the time and hear how much she loves it from her coach I would think that she really hates it, but I learned a while ago that it is just her inability to transition.

So I force her to go all the time feeling like a horrible person because she is begging me not to make her go.  But I know when she comes out after practice she will have a smile on her face and tell me she had a good time. I used to wonder if she was telling me that because she knows it's what I want to hear, but her coach says she really seems to be enjoying it. Which makes me feel a bit better as I want her to find her passions in life. I just can't wait till the day that I don't have to feel like my dragging her there is like putting a cat on a leash and dragging it for a walk.

If I do decide to put her in a dance class - I was considering ballet as she LOVES watching Angelina Ballerina - I will have to make sure that I find out from her teacher honestly if she thinks that Juli enjoys it or not. Since Juli's problems with transitioning it can sometimes make it hard to tell if she really is happy doing something or not. And I want to make sure that she is happy and enjoys everything she does as much as she can. Especially her dancing :).

Lots of Time..... Lots of Answers....

It has been about 4 months since I have written a post and so much has happened in those 4 months. Sometimes you can have a lot of questions about things and not seem to get any answers - just more and more questions. People often say that the answers will come in time you just need to be patient and one day they will come....

I am thankful to be able to say that mine finally are.

Ever since Juli was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder or Sensory Integration Disorder we were always told that this was not a legal diagnosis in the province of Quebec. In the rest of Canada it was and in all of the United States, just not in my province - the province of Quebec.

The main reason for this is because most of the time SPD is not alone. Usually SPD is accompanied with something else, some other diagnosis. So the Quebec government doesn't allow it to be diagnosed separately as a legal diagnosis on its own.

This has made things kind of difficult for us over the past year. We have done weekly private occupational and speech therapies for Juli. Because SPD is not recognized, we can't apply for public OT, and putting her on the public waiting list for speech therapy would have taken two years.  By the time her turn came up for speech therapy she would have been so delayed the damage that would have been done by waiting would take 10 years to reverse if it could be reversed at all. Same with occupational therapy. So since therapy was a necessity to help her with her issues private was the only way to go.

And she has made awesome progress over the past year. She is a different girl with the therapies. I have gone from being her translator so people could know what she is saying, to her being able to be understood by over half the people she encounters.  This is so liberating for her and it makes her feel so good!!  The look of joy on her face when someone understands what she said is just priceless.

But I have always had a feeling in my gut that something else was going on and that is where the answers that I mentioned earlier come in.  First let me tell you to always follow your gut instincts.  That is the advice that I was being given and I'm glad in the end that is what I did.  I was also advised to enroll her in Summit school. A school for children with disabilities and delays.  We knew that there she could grow and catch up at her own pace. So we followed the procedures to put her into Summit.

This meant we had to get a psychological evaluation done.  I had been thinking about doing this for a while and a few people I know with special needs kids had advised I do it.  But I knew it was very expensive and I wasn't sure about it.  Juli's OT has always said that her sensory issues run very deep and she was recommending that we work on sensory issues first and then if there are issues remaining I could look into a psych evaluation at that point. That was the plan I was going to go with until I learned that Summit needed the Psych evaluation to admit her. Secretly I was actually happy about this as it was just the push I needed to do the evaluation and I knew now no matter what turned out I would have my answers. I was actually excited :).

And so the process started. Many appointments with the psychologist and a crazy month of December.  We needed to go at Juli's pace and we needed to get all of appointments done before Christmas so that she could review everything and have the report ready for us by the first week of January. We needed to get the application into Summit that first week in order for Juli to have the best chance of being admitted in September 2014. And the psychologist definitely agrees that Summit School is the place she recommends for Juli to go.

It was a very busy month, but it was worth it. I feel very blessed to have met this Dr.  She understands Juli very well and she helped us a lot.  I explained to her a lot of the things that I was concerned about and she made it her mission to find out exactly what was going on with Juli.  It felt so good to know that no matter what the report said at least I would know exactly what is going on with my Juli.

After many long extensive appointments and quite a few Saturday afternoons spent at the Psychologists office the time finally came for us to get our answers. You don't know how good it actually feels....

She explained that along with the Sensory Processing Disorder Juli can't control her emotions and has a lot of anxiety. The reason for this is because Juli has Autism. She is very high functioning, but she is Autistic none the less. This may sound crazy to you, but this makes me smile from ear to ear as this means that now we have a diagnosis that will allow Juli to get the help she needs through the public system.

After losing my first daughter I can definitely handle Autism. It won't be easy - far from it, but I can handle it!!

The psychologist referred us to an RDI specialist as she feels RDI (Relationship Dynamics Intervention) therapy will really help us and therefore help Juli. It will help us to understand Autism and Juli in particular a lot more and help us to be good role models for her. It will help us to be able to learn how to maneuver around the Autism and teach her properly without causing undue stress on her.

I am so happy about this and am really looking forward to this.

And another awesome thing that has happened since getting the psych evaluation is now we are being transferred to the correct department of the CLSC and we will have a social worker very soon who is going to help us get all the services for Autistic kids. We will apply for the TED program. And she will also help us apply for an Educator who will be giving us RDI therapy supplied through the government so at that point we can stick with public and we will not have to go private anymore.

And to top it all off, when Juli gets admitted to Summit in September of this year (I'm being optimistic), they have OT and speech therapy there as well, so we won't have to go private anymore. This will be awesome! She has wonderful therapists right now - don't get me wrong, but it is expensive....

We have applied for the Disability allowances and Handicapped allowances with both governments. The psychologist says she is sure we will qualify for both :). And until we receive an Educator that will pay for the private RDI therapies.

Everything is working out really well and is finally coming together.

We finally got our answers and I am happy that I did do the right thing and listen to my gut instinct :).  Or mother's intuition. It's up to you what you want to call it and it's up to us to listen to it as I am learning we have it for a reason :).