painting

as the artist of the family--i've been getting brooke to paint. this is one of the painting she did today....she's been doing about 2/3 a day. this has been a favorite....look for the face on the right side of the painting...we call it "the angel"....

the diet

as most of you know...brooke is on a special diet. she cannot eat any wheat or dairy products. this of course makes it hard to feed everyone else in the family and her at the same time...i'm finding ways to manage in that area....we've avoided the boys and brooke eating together. that is just too hard....so we eat in shifts. Brooke eats between 4:30-5:00 and then the boys eat after she gets done...her favorite is soup....beef soup w/veggies, chicken stew, chicken noodle soup, and anything else i can come up w/in soup form...she eats it. someone has to sit w/her to help her not make a complete mess....but she manages pretty well. some want to know what the deal is about the diet....so i'll give it my dani "terms":
the food that you and i eat digest well...but she is not able to digest her food like you and i can....so it sits in her stomach and gets into her blood stream which acts as a foreign substance...which causes numerous problems such as "behaviors".
so....there ya have it. i'm not good at explaining alot of this bio-stuff...however, i do know something is working.
brooke is now saying "want tv please"...and candy please...and other 2 word phrases that she "wants".....we will start working on "i"...which is a bigger issue than i thought....we have been working on this for sometime now and she just can't seem to get the word "i" down....
i love seeing her progress....even though the diet is hard it's worth if for me b/c i know that she is getting better not only mentally but physcially and before i never thought she was as sick as she really was.

weekend

brooke has had a pretty good week over all. this was her last week of summer school so things will bounce right back into things come monday. we start chelation again this weekend....we will soon get test results back to find out her levels. we are looking forward into getting those.

we are headed to memphis this weekend for my friend Blaire's wedding. brooke will be staying here in good hands. pray for her that the weekend will go smoothly and peacefully.

"hold me Jesus i'm shaken like a leaf You have been King of my glory won't
you be my prince of peace"---rich mullins

cats & biscuts

we've had a good week w/brooke. although things started off rough w/her adjusting to summer school....it slowly tappered off. just yesterday i was cooking homemade pizzas for the boys (they were in the oven)..brooke had already eaten but she made her way in the kitchen (her favorite room in the house)....and said outloud "biscut"..."biscut". I was amazed b/c even though she didn't see them, she smelt them. before the diet brooke's favorite food item was biscuts....so it made complete sense. it was precious to see. it reminds me of the passage....though you have not seen ME you still believe. thanks brooke for the reminder in God's word.

today we went to walmart....her trip there went very well...as we were walking she noticed the sign of "PETS" w/the picture of a cat and dog....and she said "cat". it was great. it was very busy in walmart...when does it ever slow down...but for that split second my world stopped to notice the un-noticeable.

brooke is showing me a different vision. One that i can't afford to lose.

fall creek

brooke & molly

quick updates

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• chelation weekend
• tests will soon give results to see where she is in this bio-med stuff
• went to fall creek falls yesterday......brooke didn't like it so much!
• stayed home today....great day
• bill is home from trip....yeah, NO you must have not heard me YEAH!!!!!
• this morning i laid in brookes bed w/her for 3o minutes...having wonderful mommy/daughter time...it was very precious and i'll be hanging on that for a long time. this is a rare occasion
• brooke starts summer school again on monday for 2 weeks.
• still weary---but seeing some fragments of time to re-gather

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my storm

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have i said how much i hate autism?

the storm outside is in our home. yes, we've had great moments like her counting to 10...but we sure have had the bad like constant screaming and bad behavior for not getting what she wants. there are good and bad to all storms, true?

as before, i'm tired and weary in great need of a break from the storm...oh Lord...walk on the waves of my storm and cause them to be still i'm desperate for Your coming.
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