Meet my family!

There is so much information I would like to share, I think I overwhelm my own mind! So I will start simple :) I have a beautiful 5 1/2 year old daughter (Emma) who is incredibly smart, outgoing, and I am convinced she is going to be a writer or an actress she has such an imagination! She was always ahead in her milestones, and she was talking in complete very understandable sentences by the time she was 2! My husband is her stepdad, her dad is as involved in her life as we are (we happily share custody). Then my husband and I had our second daughter (Gracie), she is now 2 1/2. Looking back we are able to see differences now that point to what we eventually found out. She hit her milestones much slower than her sister, but was not necesarrily behind. She had sever torticollis from about 3 months until 8-9 months. At around 12 months she began saying a few words, and even was able to say our dogs name! Then at 14 months she lost her speech and began to have tantrums that terrified me! She would bang her head on the ground for hours and scream and thrash around and hit things. We went through a process of trying to figure out what was going on. Long story short, we had her assessed two completely different places and came up with the same diagnoses, PDD-NOS and SPD. PDD is Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, also know as a form of autism. This is often given to younger kids who are not old enough to meet all the social criteria for straight Autism or Aspergers. All three are considered autism. SPD is Sensory Processing Disorder. Kids with Autism often have this, but kids without Autism can also have this. It is when people do not process sensory input the same way other people do. My daughter is sensory seeking (where other times people are overly sensitive to sensory stimulation). One of the first things I want to be clear about is my position on vaccinations. I very strongly am against the idea that vaccinations cause autism! There have been very conclusive studies to show why this is not true, which I will happily show these studies later! I am 29 years old, and my husband is 37, there is a history of autism on his side of the family, and I was adopted so we do not know if it is in my side of the family or not. We love our girls, and have been through a struggle (and still do!) to get the help we need for Grace and balance that with Emma, to make sure she doesnt feel left out, and that she knows she is important! We are Christians, and I feel that has played the most important part in our journey! God is the strength and the comfort we have always had to go to during this time, I hope with this blog I will be able to help someone else who may be in the same position we are! Looking forward to hearing back from you!