Updates (I am not any more creative at the moment)

What's going on. Hmmm. We are busy over here with normal family matters like Ainsley's t-ball league, summer play dates, a family vacation (long overdue) and summer break. Wow, that sentence sounded so, so normal!

On the non-average American household side of life we embarked on an awesome week long conference on a therapy Stephen and I can put together for Baylor at home using us and volunteers, part time summer school for Baylor along with speech therapy twice a week and ABA anywhere from once to three times a week. We also started a prescription called Low Dose Naltrexone to help strengthen her gut/immune system. We also just received a hair analysis kit to see how we are doing in the heavy metals detoxing through chelation.

Honestly, we really are not as far along with chelating as I would like to be at this point. We have done 22 rounds and we need a minimum of 100! I thought we would be plugging away every weekend this summer but between her low immune system and our bouts out of town this is not going as swimmingly as I would have hoped. I am assuming we will not see much change with the hair test from our metals test before but hey, you never know. Bay still struggles with leaky gut (awesome diagnostic name isn't it?) and we know that it will not heal with metals attached to all her organs. It is a marathon, not a sprint. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Ah, I am talking to you not me. I will go on.

So in tandem with the chelating we need to change the diet. Again. I am so not excited about this. I have however, been praying for guidance and after a long wait on this subject matter I feel we should take the dive and do a diet called GAPS with a splash of SCD. If you feel the need to google go for it, but the nuts and bolts are we remove all grains and complex sugars and I start cooking like the Amish. Do not be ashamed that you just cringed, and feel free to judge but this is what the majority of people who have had kids on the spectrum used to heal their gut and transform their lives. Why not try it? God apparently thinks I need lots of challenges. Darn that changing thing. Fine fine, but I need to wait until my kids are back in school and I have some volunteers with Bay so I can live barefoot in the kitchen like a good southern housewife. Or something like that. With this new diet comes needing new kitchen gadgets. Like a really nice Vitamix that will do almost all my cooking for me. I hear it is the best thing for cooking for this diet. So if anyone works anywhere they can get a good discount, please let us know. These things cost way too much but feel as it is a necessary help for this new adventure in healing Baylor.

Stephen and I just had a new adventure in Sheffield, MA. Bottom left hand corner of MA is a compound type campus that is called The Option Institute. My fabulous MIL and niece came up to watch our girls as we took a flight to NY, a train to MA and a taxi to the middle of nowhere north to learn a therapy that focuses on the social issues children on the spectrum have. Basically you set up a play therapy room where the most interesting thing is you or the volunteer and have toys up on shelves that you bring down to try and engage your child in. This is a very loving, very nurturing and non-judgmental mindset that you bring to join your child in their world and slowly get them to join yours. It is called Son-Rise and we are looking forward to starting this as soon as our room is finished and we can figure out a slow start until school starts in the fall. We met people from 23 states and 25 countries. We have family now around the world. Nothing puts you and your child in the heart of complete strangers or they in yours like autism does. We look forward to praying over their children and watching them grow. That was an amazing experience.

Yeah, so that is about it for right now. That is about all we can handle at the moment, Lord willing. Baylor has been doing very well lately. We are battling some new but hopefully brief side effects that should subside soon but otherwise she is communicating with us still and repeating a lot so we know she is trying the best she can. She is still only 3 but sometimes I think she is 13. Not because she is high maintenance or anything. Ainsley is the best big we could ever want and is so awesome to have around more this summer. I miss that lovely when she is in school First grade this fall. I am in awe of my blessings.

Please keep us in your prayers as we keep the pace on Baylor's Journey. We love you and appreciate your support in every way you send it.

Happy Summer 2013 ~ Team Baylor

It is Well

What an amazing little girl we have. Well, we have two amazing little girls. How blessed are we? The one is the best older sibling a little girl in a big strange world could have, and the younger sees the joy from her chaotic viewpoint of the world we all live in. And man, does she love her big sister. Ainsley has been nothing but calmly patient, consistent in engaging and proud in Bay's progress. Baylor loves to sit behind her on the couch every morning and watch her play Lego Batman before school, climbs in bed with her in the morning instead of getting in bed with us, cannot stand to be on the trampoline without her among others. Our family sure has had a rough go the last few years but we have been immensely blessed with love. Not only from each other, but from friends, family and most importantly our Savior, Healer and Prince of Peace (among many other wonderful names He's proved Himself true on). Honestly, I have never been so peaceful in my life than I am now.

God has blessed us with some breathtaking moments lately. We are currently on Round 20. It feels like a nice round number, a small indentation on this journey we are on. This week alone our baby has gone from singing only Twinkle Twinkle to one I could not recognize when I picked her up from school, Old McDonald, Wheels on the Bus and the hand motions to get me to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider. Her socialization is getting better, too. In case you all were not aware, the two biggest issues for ASD kiddos is communication and socialization. It is just so hard on them. They process the world and all that is in it so differently than you and I. I would love a day in her shoes so I could be a better mom. She has enjoyed her friend Andrew and attempts some to play games with him and have him join her on the trampoline and while she plays at her dollhouse. This is really great stuff!  She also has responded to requests in the negative, "I don't want to." Heck yeah, I will take your attitude if you use words! She wanted to leave 5 minutes after we got home the other day and stood by the car and yelled at me. I asked if she wanted to take a ride and she nodded her head yes. She has done the head nod 'no' for a while now. I like the yes. So I burned gas for an hour. My little likes change of scenery.

This love for change in routine has helped in her new transition to speech therapy. She started twice a week this past week with a woman I am convinced was hand picked by God for Bay. She has 30 years of experience and a fabulous laugh and a background compatible with a new therapy Stephen and I will be traveling in June to learn about so we can help her more at home. So currently she gets some speech and occupational therapy at school 4 mornings a week, speech 2 times a week and ABA 2 to 3 sessions a week. We are still doing the gluten free/many other things free diet as well as supplements. We are working hard to get legislation passed so all our kids can get therapy covered because right now most families with a kid on the spectrum are having a hard time because we get no coverage. When each hour is b/t $40-80 depending on the therapy, you can imagine what a strain this is. I could talk about this discriminatory crap forever but I will spare you.

I will leave you with the update that hope is alive and well here, God has blessed us and will continue to. One day at a time, one fabulous moment at a time. Expect God's goodness and He will strengthen you as you wait. We love your prayers and support and I will try to update more than quarterly. No promises :) 

Much love from Team Baylor in TN ~

Chelating and School

Goodness, a lot has happened since I last blogged. Baylor just finished round 10 of Andy Cutler protocol for  the chelation of heavy metals, and she started a new school that happens to be where Ainsley goes. We had a fun little family birthday party for Baylor and then we had Christmas. Poor girl was sick over Christmas so we did not get any good pictures :( We still enjoyed the decorations, music, family, new toys and of course making cookies and birthday goodies for Jesus. Because we had so many illnesses over the past couple of months we did not get to chelate as often as we had hoped.

We are only chelating with one supplement called ALA because the other we want to use lowers her ability to fight off illness. Hopefully we can add that DMSA in soon. As far as improvements go we have really seen some gains! Baylor used to yell at me a whole lot and that has really calmed down some as she has progressed in the independent phase of her little life. I used to have to carry her everywhere we went and now she will walk in and out of places with me holding my hand and climbing out of the car all by herself. This has been a really nice change. Baylor requests a lot of her basic needs without prompting a good bit of the time. Sometimes she struggles getting the words out until she hears you say them but she is at least attempting to communicate. With this, she is also paying more attention to what it is we are trying to say to her.

This really helps with her teachers and her ABA therapists. They have been noticing she sits well for tasks at school and at home even if she does not like them. Which is big, because she likes things her way and will protest if you are not obliging her. Teachers and therapists also report she is transitioning between preferred activities and non preferred activities so much better than she used to. That is a good change for both caregivers and girlfriend.  Bay repeats words and new phrases almost every day. It is a beautiful thing to listen to her words and watch her engage.

Baylor is engaging us and her world a little more each week and we could not be happier. She is responding to hellos in stores and accepting major change in routine, generally speaking. She just got in her new big girl bed and has had absolutely no issues that we were not dealing with before. Bay does not calm herself down well. She never has. So at 2:00 a.m. when she wakes herself up thanks to sleep patterns, she does not go back to sleep until about 5:00 a.m. So if you see us, you may notice we are a bit sleep deprived. If she is improving, we will deal with anything :)

She is happier, plays better, pays more attention, interacts more with people and is working on words. We have a ways to go but for all He has done,  to God be all the glory!

On a totally separate note, we have not made our personal lives readily open for the public. However, we just went through a very personal, very difficult weekend.We were expecting another baby and we lost him at the same stage we did with Ezri. Eerily at 17 1/2 weeks. The best group of high risk doctors in middle Tennessee are baffled by our history. I was told that I am "not textbook" and many appointments are in the future to try to put together what has been going on. God is a God of only goodness and righteousness and we know that all things work to the good for those who love God (Romans 8:28). We look forward to finding the beautiful and the good in what we have been experiencing. Our son was perfectly formed, beautiful hands and feet, and we named him Parker Blumberg King. January 19, 2013. We know our family will be united one day but while the rest of our family is here we will keep fighting through the rough and persevere until the end with the guidance of our Savior. 

We appreciate your prayers and your support. Thank you for the love you show our family.

Many blessings,
Team Baylor

Turning 3

It has been way too long, but we have been busy and God has been working on Baylor! We are not where we want to be but we are making gains and everything forward is forward.

This fall Ainsley started Kindergarten and Baylor switched pre-schools. Baylor has been on a 3 day half day school schedule with speech and occupational therapy 2 times a week for each, and added ABA therapy 3 days a week for two hours each day.  Needless to say I do not have much going on outside of my children! Baylor has definitely made progress because of all her early intervention.One thing I do not mention much is your instinct. If you think something is wrong, get it checked. Everything caught early has a greater chance of healing.

New progress in her speech and social skills! I am happy to report that Baylor is trying harder to talk with us and today alone she had spontaneously spoken 5 times in 5 different circumstances. Poor thing, words have just been very hard for her to get out. Her ABA therapist tells us that she is cognitively over 3 she just shows more immaturity because of her lack of language. I was so excited to hear that! I know she is almost 3 but she seems 2 a good portion of the time because of her lack of communication. She brought me her snack and said, "I need help." She asked me in the car on the way to school, "What do you want to do?" when she normally asks that when she wants to watch a movie. She asked for "Help" when climbing out of the trampoline. Bay brought me her drink and said "Drink. More." When Stephen went to grill she said, "I want to go outside." She has been improving dealing with the rest of us people, too.

Baylor talked back with a friend of mine's son in their own language, she saw the chaos in the trampoline with mine and my neighbor's kids and joined in. She asked a little boy today "More" to blow bubbles for her and then she told him "Bye bye." She seeks Ainsley out by taking her things to get her to chase her. I just love watching her interact with the world! A year ago she had lost all her language, would not look at us when we called her name much less acknowledge anything going on around her.

Some people say, "So do you think it's really autism? She seems fine to me. Do you think she grew out of it?" I really do not believe you can just grow out of autism. You can heal out of it, but not grow out of it. If there was a child diagnosed on the ASD spectrum and was given no interventions but grew out of it, then they probably were never on the spectrum to begin with. I truly believe that the biomedical interventions that were brought before us have been healing our daughter. None of which could have been made possible without our Healer. He ultimately could have been touching her at the same time as what we were doing or just blessed our efforts. He gets all our glory, forever.

What we are doing right now. Well, we just finished Round 1 of chelating this past weekend. It is the process of mixing lemonade and DMSA every 3 hours round the clock starting Friday at 8:30 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. Sunday. You cannot miss a dose by more than a few minutes or you have to end your round. No pressure. Especially at 3:15 a.m.! This weekend looks the same and then the following weekend gets the chelator ALA. She needs a minimum of 100 rounds and could go up to 300. This will happen for at least 2 years. We are happy she takes her supplements well! This is hotly debated therapy that has tremendously helped kids on the spectrum. We are crazy excited about it. We totally expect to hit some bumps, but once we have it smoothed out it should  be really good for her. God's peace has been on us for this therapy in particular. Please continue to pray for her in this area specifically. We need more prayer, too for ways to take care of her other therapies.

When Baylor turns 3 she ages out of Early Intervention. She then goes to the school that Ainsley goes to in their Early Childhood program. Where we are is the best in Middle Tennessee. We are zoned perfectly for the best equipped school for Baylor. It absolutely brings me to tears to think on how God has magnificently guided our home buying before we had kids to put us in our school zone, our specialty doctor before we realized Baylor was sick (he quit accepting new patients a few months after we started with him), and the time of life that makes gluten-free, dairy-free living so much easier, and the list goes on. The downside of turning 3.

In 32 states there is autism coverage. Our state is not one of them. Stephen's employer does not selectively cover autism because they do not have to by law. Most here do not because it is not required. This means no speech, no occupational, and no ABA therapy. No coverage. Seriously. As if the supplements that are hundreds of dollars every month and the diet not 4 times that of the typical household were not enough extra. ABA alone is over $1, 100.00 a month. Speech and OT would be $1,600.00 a month. Do any of you have a spare $2, 700.00 a month? No? Us either. We were beautifully blessed with a grant for ABA only that will cover a little of the next year but not as much as she needs. We are unbelievably grateful for the grant but need your prayer for coverage for Baylor. God will provide and we do believe she is and will be a living miracle and example of God's grace and power.

I suppose if I blogged more this would not be so long. We appreciate all of your support, your prayers, keeping in touch to check on us, your financial support and all your love for our family. We love you all and appreciate everything.

And of course, a special shout of thanks to all our friends and family who came to support or donated to Autism Speaks in honor of Baylor in the Walk Now for Autism Speaks 2012! Your show of support meant more than you will ever know.

Much love and so many blessings!
Team Baylor

The Right Direction

Baylor has been doing well lately! She's moving at her own pace right now but it is still forward so we are grateful. Sometimes I just want to hurry up and see the future and that can cause me to almost overlook some of her really good moments if I am not careful. A couple of great examples is Baylor is repeating a lot! It is awesome. Just today she repeated gorilla as "illa" and zebra as "eba" and she signed "more" and said "more bubbles." Also, she wants to see what Ainsley is playing with (much to her dismay) and gets upset if I do not let her in her room when Ainsley is in hiding with her toys! We are so excited about all of this! Stephen and I are VERY watchful for anything that looks good and new so we do not feel like we are missing anything progressive. Since I last updated we have taken Baylor to a Vanderbilt doctor that specializes in special needs kids and we have had our first ABA appointment in-home last week. I am pretty sure these specialists do not harp on the negative and they expressed some things that gave us a lot of encouragement.

The appointment with the Vanderbilt doctor was really just a starting point for us to have our neurology appointment to rule out seizures (which none of these appointments that are in the future are set yet), a GI specialist to see if there is anything we can find out in regards to her food sensitivities and her digestive issues and a sleep specialist. We weighed and measured Bay and she is 31% in height and 50% in weight. Nicely on the charts. At least I do not have to worry over one child in this category! Our "new/other"doctor did not think Baylor is having seizures but she is willing to let us rule it out. As for the sleep doctor, we are not sure if there is some magic sleep potion but if we find out there is we will let you in on it. A beautiful thing she said was that our kids had immaculate behavior (God blessed us in this tiny room and they handled it beautifully) and she loved how Baylor had such inflection in her tone of voice and she sees a lot of potential for her speech. It was really nice to hear her say she had good feelings for the future. Sometimes it is really hard not to see that future. We have faith, we trust God but our flesh really wants to see it happen already! Just to let you know about  my quotations on the doctor we just saw, we decided it would be good to cover all our bases and have a typical doctor look at Baylor just so we do not miss anything. Baylor's amazing doctor will not be replaced at all, we really just wanted the foot in the door on what all Vandy has to offer. Stephen and I only believe in Rx when really necessary as does Bay's doctor. Typical doctors will basically throw the stuff at you. We are much more conservative in this department than regular doctors. Having one foot in at Vanderbilt will give us access to other options for Baylor's benefit.

One of these neat Vanderbilt treats is a series they do every month with rotating topics on things that are difficult in raising a child on the spectrum. They hold a 3 hour seminar with handouts and PowerPoint, all the while watching our kids downstairs in a building on Vandy's campus. Last weekend we went to a seminar on Rapid Method Toilet Training. So we have visuals for Baylor, awesome notes, and a psychologist's email that loves to help potty train kids. Sweet. I will pocket that for when I am ready to tackle this. In a few weeks we will work on behaviors for the grocery store and restaurants. This stuff is great.  If you have never potty trained anyone, just so you know, it sucks. Ainsley was great and it was still a no fun experience for me. Baylor is a stubborn little girl and I just do not know when we will both agree on when this should happen! Luckily, I had the conversation with Baylor's ABA, Carrie, and she thinks once we get some of her behaviors better controlled, it will be much easier on everyone involved. Whew. I am so not ready for that yet! Stephen was all, "Yeah, I think she could do it now." Sure, she knows what is going on but behavior wise.....no thanks. Not yet!

Speaking of Carrie, she is our BCBA certified therapist. What a God-send. She is top-notch qualified for behavior training and she works with the program Bay is in through the state until she is 3. Most therapists will not bother with the program because they do not pay like private pay. Carrie has more heart than 98% of the therapists that specialize in behavior in Middle-TN. Almost no one will work with us because the system does not pay well. What an amazing person to do her job in the first place. Anyway, she came last week and after an hour or so told me some more good news. Of all 20 kids she sees (her and other therapists under her) Baylor is the ONLY one who does imaginary play. What she said was ASD kids are so black and white, very concrete, and they do not play pretend because they see no point to it. They only ever mimic the play and none from their imagination. Baylor is creative with her imagination in how she plays with her dolls and her little Veggie Tales figurines. Not to mention her hands, as she will sit on the other side of the table and climb up and walk her hands over to my plate slowly and then they take my food. So, Baylor will be working on doing what we want and not always what she wants. 

Mommy over here has been a real push-over with her for a few reasons. I do not want to stifle her learning (as I believe she sees the world and experiences it differently than most) and since she likes to ignore what I say some, I do not know if she listened to what I said! When a child does not really communicate, it is hard to know all the time what to do. I can not put her in time-out and I refuse to spank her for everything that is not spank-worthy. Here comes ABA to the rescue. They are going to get me in better parenting shape for Bay! Man, I bet this is going to suck a little for a lot of happy in the long run. Praise God! We are incredibly blessed!!!!

I will update sooner than later as we are preparing to walk with Autism Speaks to not only raise awareness, but money to help in research. I can promise you, you will know more than just Baylor who is on the spectrum and this goes to help everyone understand more to help Our Kids. 

Please visit our site and if you only have a few dollars to donate, we would love your support. www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/tennessee/baylorsfamily. 

Also, if you would like to join the team to walk with us in Nashville on September 8, sign up on our page and  we will make whatever arrangements you need!

Thank you for your love, prayers and support.

Blessings,

Team Baylor

Floating Along

There has not been too much action on Baylor’s journey right now, which is a nice little break from the constant go we are on. She is still going to speech and occupational therapy twice a week and school two other days each week. Her schedule will shift in July to three days of school and two of therapy. She is a busy little girl! So is her chauffer.  Do not think that just because she has all this going on that she has not gotten to enjoy her summer.

You should see her little stuff in the pool! She has this floatie/life vest type thing that snaps on the backside and she has crazy freedom with it. She jumps off the side of the pool after saying a prompting of sorts (something along the lines of “ready, set, go”) and goes completely under water without the need to be caught. She then dog paddles to the side and sticks her head under water, pulls it up to breathe, back under again all while dog paddling. She will go up the climbing tunnel and down the slides all by herself at the pool and then swim out to the deep end. Two and a half hours later, she still wants to keep going. So does Ainsley, but I have to stop them at some point or they would turn into raisins. We have been enjoying watching them love life.

Bay is taking a break from chelating due to some unwanted side effects. Apparently what we were using and the method was causing Baylor to have yeast outbreaks. Basically yeast can overgrow in the intestines, or the gut, and directly affect mood, behavior and eating habits. Bay would act really silly, almost like she did when she was eating gluten and dairy. She would laugh all the time, wake up and laugh for hours at night and then all she would eat was carbs or sugar. This was not helping her in therapy at all. She could not concentrate and we felt it may be the wrong way to chelate. Graciously, God led a sweet woman to reach out to me to talk to me about the method we were using and another method she uses and the pros to what she is doing for her boys. There is a brilliant man named Dr. Andrew Cutler, who is a biochemist that had mercury poisoning from dental fillings and went into a lab knowing how the body works and came up with a way to get rid of the heavy metals in his body. His method calls for a more frequent dosing of a chelator that is done every three hours (including overnight) over every weekend for at least a couple of years. Apparently his way is more effective and safer, and children who have “recovered” did it with his protocol. I talked to our doctor and he is on board. Yay! We have not started yet, as we need quite a few more supplements in her system before we can start. Hopefully we will be able to soon as we are ready to get the metals out of her system.

Therapy is going well, and Baylor is repeating a lot of what her therapist is trying to get her to say. Bay is still slow moving in the spontaneous language but she is going at her own pace. We are happy to see ANY spontaneous language. She is using some short phrases which is really great. Today after therapy she went behind a bookshelf as I spoke with her therapist and we walked over to her and she said, “I poo-poo. I poo-poo.”  That’s awesome! Not that I got to change a stinky booty, but that she told me she went #2 and she used first person. She also says, “I don’t want to” and “I do it”. A lot of children on the spectrum can’t use first person correctly. This is not something we have had to teach her. Ooooh, something else new....

Baylor is loving on her therapist and going up and touching people she does not know. She has been going to my friends and people sitting down around her (I suppose she thinks they are there for her) for interaction. Again, social situations are usually another hard area for ASD kids. She is coming out of her shell and trusting others a little. She played with a good friend of mine in the pool today. I came over to her and she wanted nothing to do with me because my friend was playing with her and she wanted to continue with her. Honestly, I am not sure my writing can convey how big this is for her. She used to only let ME hold her, love her, play with and touch her. She did oxygen therapy and she began to interact and let others touch her. She continues to let that interaction grow each month. Now, she does not care that much when I leave her and when I come back she does not act like she is surprised I am there. Seriously, her understanding is growing and with it comes more typical behavior. She is being blessed by her Creator. We are in awe and give thanks daily for our blessings.

Please continue to pray for our sweet Bay. She is doing very well but we have a lot that we still need to have in place to have her heal. Currently we are waiting on our coordinator to arrange how many hours of ABA therapy we can get. We had our evaluation a few weeks ago but we need approval before we can find some time to schedule this therapy. This is in-home therapy that is not covered by insurance in the state of Tennessee. Right now we will be covered (whenever they get around to it) under the state until she is 3, and then 4 hours a week will cost around $1,600.00. We are working on getting her some grants because, seriously, who can afford that? If any of you know of anything that could help with this, please let us know!

Music therapy is on hold because Baylor will not tolerate the headset any more. Awesome. I may try again in a month or so. Sigh. I am not sure what happened there. We are waiting on an appointment with Vanderbilt to help get us in with neurology and possibly genetics. That appointment is in July.

So I thought this would be a short post but apparently not! Well, at least you are up to speed J We are still looking forward to the WALK NOW FOR AUTISM SPEAKS in September. Feel free to visit our site and we will update soon! www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/tennessee/baylorsfamily.

Thank you for your love, support and prayers. It means the world to us.

Love always ~ Team Bay

Speech Progress

It has been a while since I updated last and I am really sorry! A lot has happened since then, but we have been really busy this month.

Baylor had a quick outpatient surgery at the beginning of May to get tubes in her ears because she had been having so many ear infections. I sometimes wonder if some of her speech delay has been because could not hear because of fluid on her ears. She probably had around 6 ear infections from November to March. She had no complications from the surgery and her language is improving a lot! On a side note, Baylor was a major fighter when she came out of surgery. Apparently anesthesia and Bay do not agree.  Thank goodness it was not much anesthesia or that could have been a lot worse (you can tell this traumatized me)!

Back to her language, we cannot really figure out what has caused her huge jump in speech but we are so happy to sit back and listen. She repeats so much now, whereas before she was not repeating but maybe a few words. Now, it is amazing. She is working hard to say what she hears and she is using her words in the appropriate places. For example, when she was at school last week and was being put in her place to sleep, she said, “Sleeping, oh no!” That’s a whole phrase! We do not always get phrases, but we get told occasionally “eat” when she typically would never say anything about wanting food, or tell us or others “bye” before anyone else is saying it. Baylor labels things more. She spontaneously told her therapist, “choo-choo” and went to play with the toy train. She told me “leg” when I was putting her leg in her pjs even though I did not say leg. What is really cute is she will sing a song that is in her head but we don’t always know which one.  Her best repeating comes from a movie we watch by the Zinghoppers. They do music and have dressed up characters and Baylor sings and mimics what they do to all the little details. Almost each time we watch it she shows me something new she can do or a word in a song they sing. God is blessing her and us tremendously!

Another thing we have been doing that may be responsible for her leap in progress is chelating. I may have gone over this already but just in case I have not, here is the skinny. Baylor takes a chelating agent called DMSA by pill twice a day that smells terrible that she totally loves to take. It attaches itself to her heavy metals by pulling them out of her organs and out of her body via urine. It takes some good minerals, too, so we give her extra supplements after the chelating days. We go three days on eleven days off of this process. We test her next month to see if her metals are less present than they were before. Please pray specifically for her on this treatment.

Baylor has progressed in so many ways lately! She is comprehending  so much more and interacting with our world in ways we have not seen. She ran up to an office assistant when they opened the door to take us back and put her arms up for this complete stranger to hold her.  She picked her up and Baylor was just fine with it. She recognized it was time for her to go back and went for it before I could even get there. We are just thrilled with what God is doing in her life and we are looking forward to each day.

The other idea we have that could be what is improving Bay alone is Our Healer. I would not rule out Him healing her all by Himself. My God preforms miracles and is alive and working in our lives. Regardless if He was going to do it with no help from doctors or through the use of doctors, we have no doubt He's responsible for her healing.

We have our regular doctor appointment in a few weeks and we need a referral to a neurologist to rule out seizures. Once we do that, I think we may be done for a little while on specialists. We may do genetics testing. That could be fun. Her teachers think she may be having little seizures throughout the day that are not the major seizures you think of and they think we should rule out any genetics issue as opposed to a pure autistic issue. Either way, it is all neurological and we have a few more doors to walk through to rule everything out.

Speaking of fun, we are looking ahead to a walk in September. Saturday, September 8, 2012, we will be participating in WALK NOW FOR AUTISM SPEAKS, for Team Baylor. Please consider donating to this organization. They are funding research to help families and children with autism have better services, a better life, and looking for a cause. Please donate if you can, any amount would be wonderful. Also, if you would like to come walk with us for Team Baylor, we would LOVE to have you join us in Nashville! www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/tennessee/baylorsfamily.

So much love and blessings!

Team Baylor