Third Birthday

We arrived to Bowling Green, found a house to rent in less than 24 hours and had one retail job secured that same night. We didn't think about where we were moving and what school our son would attend when he turned three and got handed over to the "public schools". So as soon as he turned three in January we were told that he would have to attend a school that by the looks of things, would be a very "rough" school. So to the district office I drove and we were told the only way to transfer preschools was if he attended daycare near a different school. They actually advised me enroll him in a daycare across the street from the mall. It would only cost me $50.00 a year and he wouldn't even have to attend, but it meant they would give him an alternate school so long as I provided the transportation...NO PROBLEM! So he was assigned Briarwood Elementary, one of the wealthier schools, but better than that was the teacher whom we would both come to love and cherish as she loved our son. I'll never forget the aingst in my heart bringing him to proschool for the first day. They had an alarm on the door that I knew would be tested by my son, and I remember telling them how worried I was that he would escape. Jacob was non-verbal, which means he had no language. He had lots of echolalia where he would repeat words and phrases, at this point there were a lot of Subway commercials on the televsion and his newest phrase was, "Subway...Eat Fresh!" It was a running joke for nearly a year.
January 1 2006 we had begun a gluten free diet and in doing so we had increased his dairy intake and saw his diarrhea worsen, so after two weeks I stupidly stopped the gluten free diet and went to dairy free since that seemed to be the culprit. (More on this later) Jacob ate school lunch everyday he attended school, and soy milk that they kept in the fridge. He had school monday through Thursday from 12-3:10 and Austyn and I would spend that time shopping and exploring the town.
One day turned in to the next and we saw little improvement, but Jacob did like school, and we all loved that. Mrs. Pillow was an amazing teacher and I knew that his special educators were just that...SPECIAL!

The Drive from CA to KY...(CAKY)

I have been neglecting this blog, I'll be honest, this post hurts me, although it was the beginning of our healing, sometimes the beginning of a treatment plan hurts the most, and this is the case with ours.

I'll never forget loading up our belongings and stuffing my Blazer until literally we were filled. My little girl, now ten months old, sat in the back surrounded by boxes, a cooler with our snacks and her antibiotics (she was always sick)blankets, pillows and our vacuum. My husband drove the rental truck with my son in the front seat, and towed his S-10 behind it and we said our good byes. Good bye to our home, goodbye to our town, goodbye to my parents, my community. That morning my mom came over to "see us off," and she said goodbye to her only grandchildren. I cried all the way to Vegas, I called my husband every hour or so and begged him if we could turn back. I can cry now just remembering my feeling of loss. My hopelessness and feeling of powerlessness, it was the worst feeling in the world at that moment.

Three days of fast food and driving during the daylight, sleeping in hotels along our travels, we had no reservations, no destinations along the way, just a final end point of Bowling Green Kentucky. Day two of driving my cell phone rang, it was my husband. "Something is wrong with Jacob, he put his blanket over his head and he won't take it off." My tears rolled off my chin, I knew then that we had pushed our fragile little boy further into himself. We may have lost him forever, the light in his eyes may have dimmed for the final time. I had to wonder how a two year old processed this, we had left everything familiar. His room was now packed up in boxes, his bed disassembled and stowed in the moving truck, his home cooked food replaced with fast food meals that came in sacks. His mother and sister in a car that he could only see in the review mirror...heck, I wasn't processing this well, how could I expect him to?

After three and a half days we reached Bowling Green and so began the quest to find what this town had to offer...