11/20/08

Well after much consideration, we've decided to drop out of the ESI Study at U of M. It was a hard decision. The first 9 months was so incredibly life changing for us and we are so thankful for everything that the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Center has done for us, it was a very difficult decision to drop out prior to the end of the study which was scheduled for May. The reason we dropped out is because I didn't feel that Tyler was benefiting at all from this portion of the study, in fact, I felt like he was missing out on good time at school, etc. as a result of the study and it was causing later work hours and lots of frustration on my part. So after talking with the study coordinator and making sure that they can use the data they have on us so far, we decided to no longer participate in it. We wanted to make sure that Tyler's data shows that the first 9 months, he made incredible progress so we'd be willing to stay in the study if that was gonna be lost because we believe in all of it. I just really wanted him to be in school. He missed Tues - Fri of last week due to illness and school schedules. Then he went on Monday and cried again when we dropped him off but on Tuesday, he was supposed to go playgroup for he study which would then put him at school at 11:30, so only 2 hours of learning time and then I would have had to work until 9:30 and I was incredibly sick that day and when I woke at 5:30 I wondered how on earth I was gonna make it that long. So that's just an example of how it's been impacting us. Now if he was benefiting from it or if others were benefiting from our participation or if we were gonna lose all that data then again, we would have stuck it out, but I felt I really just wanted Tyler to be at school right now.

So that's the biggest news in our lives right now. still kind of in survival mode due tio colds and coughs.. the boy sstill have a lingering cough and Tyler can really get running around when he's excited so we spend time just trying to keep him relatively still and complaincent so he doesn't give himself coughing fits. We are going away this weekend adn Aunt Susie will be taking the boys for us so we are getting the necessary food, dishes, cleaning supplies around for that trip. we literally haul everything but the kitchen sink when Tyler stays away from the house!