He amazes me

We made it through two more birthdays, easy breezy! His brothers and I make a great team. I love how his brothers are so willing to help with Atty's diet. When ever it has been time to sit down and eat at the parties he has a brother on each side to make sure he doesn't grab any other food or get food handed to him from someone else. His brothers tell other people about Atty's magic diet and are always asking me if certain foods are okay or not for him to eat. I talked to a lady at the last party that makes cakes and treats with almond flour and I'm going to get in contact with her to see if I can get some more ideas for Atty. We have another birthday party this coming weekend and this one has a pinata again, so I've got a bucket of little toys ready to take with. Last time he didn't notice the pinata but I'm afraid I can't count on that again. Atty is a weird combination of oblivious and super observant. It all depends on what's caught his eye.

We are almost done with one of his medicines and so far so good...which is awesome! He will be down to two medicines with in a couple weeks. Then after a short adjustment period {from going off this one} I'm going to bring up going slowly off of the VPA also {it's thinning his hair and doing Lord knows what else}. I would LOVE for him to be on only one medicine. For now. Eventually my hope for him is NO medicine, but we will have to wait and see. I feel that with him we have to go really slow with getting off the medicines. Some day though I hope to be able to say he is medicine free!! Some day. For now it is enough to say he is SEIZURE FREE!!! Wow that feels good.

I wish I had a better way to share ideas with other people who have been or are in the same sort of situation as us. Recipe ideas and such. The diet can seem so overwhelming and I guess a lot of people give up on it because of that. I would love to be able to encourage other families to stick with it because it's so worth it in the bigger picture. So many people with seizures or a kid with seizures still don't know about the diet options...too many. I don't know if I even have the right words to describe how much that bothers me. To see first hand how beneficial it's been for my child and to know that there are many other children out there suffering that could possibly benefit from this as well, really frustrates me. I want to reach out to them. I think about what life would be like right now for my child if we hadn't stumbled across the diet on our own. I don't know how I would have hung in there for months upon months of non-stop seizures...watching my child suffer. Taking him in for brain surgery was our last option and it wouldn't not have left him with the quality of life he has right now, it most likely wouldn't have even stopped his seizures all the way. So yeah, four months was more then long enough. Now it's been four months with out, Wow...I just came to that realization. Four months. It all seems so distant now. Thank goodness.

We went on a walk at Blackberry park as we call it. One of the boys favorite places to go and it has a great walking trail. I was afraid to go there now that the blackberries are ripe for the picking because the kids LOVE to pick and eat the blackberries right then and there but Atty can only have 5 and it's hard to balance that out. I didn't want him to get upset that he couldn't have more and I didn't want to have to limit his brothers because I'm constantly having to restrict things for them that I wouldn't normally do. In order to try and balance things out and make it fair. I don't want them to resent Atty though because of all the limitations it sets for them as well. Anyways all went well and there were no melt downs. I distracted them at first so they wouldn't think about the blackberries and then when that wasn't working I let the other two pick away and told Atty I would pick them for him and how many he could have. I'm always telling him to enjoy the things he can only have a little of, to smell them and eat them slowly. So right away he was carrying the first one around and telling me he was smelling it, so cute! Then he ate it and said "mom I enjoyed it" Ha, ha! I slowly gave him his five berries to spread it out and make it past the blackberries and it worked. Another challenge meet. :) Atty really is such a sweet and understanding child for the most part. He just seems to accept how things need to be and trust that I guess. I know at some point there is bound to be a melt down over the diet but so far I'm thankful that it has gone so well. And since I know it works any struggles we do have will be worth it. Meaning I'll deal with the little stuff like melt downs because the pay off is so very amazing!

He did have to go in for a major blood draw, first thing in the morning, poor thing. He was being so sweet and brave and adorable...which makes it all even more sad when they stick him. The look on his face as it crumples and he cries and says owie is so hard to take. I refuse to let any one else pin him down and I always get attitude on that at first but afterward I always end up getting thanked for my help so go figure. I just gave him lots of love and words of encouragement as they blew up the vain in his hand and had to move onto his other arm. He's a hard draw. That's an understatement in fact. Four big vials and three little vials later and he was finally done. It took a moment to calm his wild cries and tears this time but as soon as he understood we were in fact actually done he settled down. Then I pulled out a shiny little stuffed lizard for him and his bravery and all was good in his world. He even said thank you and good bye to the girls and stole their cold grumpy hearts on the way out. Pretty cute. I love my little redhead. I'm so proud of him and how he has been dealing with all the complications that have come swarming into his life. He continues to amaze me.