Joy's Autism Blog

My parents were married 14 years before they divorced. As a child that seemed like such a long time to me. Now it seems like a drop in the bucket. I look forward to many more years of marriage with the love of my life.

He’s so amazing. He sees the value in me being home with our children and supports our family with lots of hard work to make sure I get to continue to do that. It was a dream of mine to be home with the children. I wasn’t able to start being home with them until our 3rd child was born and thanks to Glen I am doing my dream job.

He’s funny. We have some good laughs and have a similar sense of humor. I so enjoy our late night talks and just hanging out with him.

I had a hard emotional week last week. I saw a little boy riding a skateboard who was about Adrian’s age. Playing with his friends and riding his skateboard. He understands what I’m going through and he supports me.

Through several job changes, four children, a big move to another state, an autism diagnosis, and lots of other big changes, good and bad, he’s my rock and my love forever.

I hope all you Dads have a great day.

My husband is an awesome Dad. I am so extremely blessed to have him and so are our kids.

Sanura,

You are most like your Daddy. He often says that he can relate to things you say and the things you go through at school because your personality is much like his personality as a child. I’ve been watching your Daddy teach you how to play the guitar recently and it’s so special to see you two spending that time together and see him look at you with such pride and love. I know you are getting too old to want to hold his hand or receive to many kisses from him right now but it’s so special that he wants to do that so, today? Let him hold your hand.

Adrian,

Your Daddy loves you so. He often reminisces about rocking you in a rocking chair when you were a baby. He is so proud of how far you have come baby. It’s so special for me to watch you two together because I know he will always love you and accept you just like I do. Daddy lets you squeeze his face just the way you like to, to show your love. I love seeing you and Daddy, Daddy’s first son. It’s very special and so are you.

Nevaeh,

You are Daddy’s little princess. I watch Daddy play princess and Barbie with you. I see Daddy comply with your “Pick me up!” when he’s trying to get out the door for work. When I get you all prettied up for your day, who do you run to to tell you that you are beautiful? Daddy. Keep running to Daddy for that little lady.

Lincoln,

In Daddy’s words…”Lincoln, get down from there!” and “Lincoln, stay out of the toilet!”

One of the favorite activities that the kids do with their Daddy is rough-housing. He loves tossing them around and pretending that their punches hurt. I don’t love it so much because it gets very very loud and generally someone, always one of the girls because our boys are rough and tough, will end up crying at some point.

Sanura strategy is the hit and run strategy. She’ll wait until Glen has his back turned and is distracted by one of the other kids and she’ll go in and get a punch in and run off. She likes to use a pillow to hit him or grab the hulk hands and punch him and off she runs. Sometimes Glen will grab a fleeting limb and pull her back but many time she runs off.

Adrian is a bull. He likes to wrestle, he’ll twist and turn and stand on Glen. He doesn’t really hit but he’ll head-butt and grind himself on Glen. He’ll jump on him and roll around and Glen will hold him down and tickle him which he really gets a kick out of.

Nevaeh is the chicken. Her only fighting style is pushing the other kids towards Glen as a distraction so she can sneak by undetected. If she does happen to get caught in the shuffle she’ll cry and freak out and when Glen let’s her go she’ll chant “Daddy! You can’t catch me!!”

Lincoln is a little bull too. He’ll charge right into the action. He loves wrestling and if he sees Glen wrestling with the other kids Lincoln rushes over to get in on the action. He’s got a mean head-butt! He uses it ruthlessly on anyone in sight.

And then when they’re all ready faced and sweaty they get to enjoy a little cuddle from Daddy, now that I don’t mind one bit.

Well now that hubby is home from his trip I can share all the gory details. Glen has his own nationwide computer business and he has a client in Houston who was relocating their office and wanted to revamp some of their computer equipment. So on May 12th he boarded a plane bound for Houston. Glen’s parents live outside of Houston so he stays with them whenever he has to go down there and his parents have never met Nevaeh, the last time we were there was in 2005 and I was only 6 weeks pregnant with Nevaeh at the time so we thought it would be a good opportunity for them to meet her, so with much apprehension I agreed to let Nevaeh tag along with Daddy to Texas.

I got her all set to go, making sure she looked extra adorable so when she met her grandparents they would fall head over heels for her, which would not be hard thing to do since she’s so darn cute! I set aside a section in Glen’s suitcase and packed Nevaeh’s PJ’s, hair stuff, pull ups for at night, baby wipes, and panties. His mom and sister were planning on dressing Nevaeh so she told me not to send any clothes. Can you tell she was going to be spoiled rotten? Well the point is, we planned all this were all set to go, checked in Glen’s luggage and Nevaeh’s carseat when we found out that a plane ticket had not been purchased for her and she was too old to sit on Glen’s lap. If she wanted to go it was going to cost over $800 for a last minute ticket for her. Well that was just going to be out of the question, so it was settled, she wouldn’t be going.

That’s not the end of the problems though, it’s just the beginning. Glen had worked on two computers at home and had shipped them via UPS to the business he was working with. The computers (big 60 pound server computers!) were to arrive the day before Glen was to arrive so you can imagine the uneasiness we were all feeling when he got down there and the computers had not arrived. The next day I was looking at our business bank account and saw that Dell had returned a large amount of money into our account. Hmm that’s strange I thought. It hit me the next morning, UPS had mistakenly returned the servers BACK to Dell instead of the requested destination. What a disaster! So Glen called Dell and tried to get the computers rerouted to him, no luck getting that done! They told him he’d have to order new computers so he did, but the catch was that he couldn’t find as good of a deal so there was about $400 down the toilet to get new servers.

He got the new servers ordered, whew what a load off! Or was it?

The next day I saw a note taped to the door after I got home from taking Adrian to school. Crap, fedex had been here with the servers that were supposed to be in Houston TODAY. So I go over to Fedex and the usually snotty lady was behind the counter and was of no help to me what so ever. Glen contacted Dell again and they were apologetic about accidentally shipping the packages to us here in Iowa instead of Houston where they were supposed to be shipped. Now this was a Friday and we were told the soonest he was going to get the servers at this point would be Tuesday. Well Glen was scheduled to come home on Wednesday so there goes that! So he had to reschedule his flight for Saturday. He did end up getting the servers on Monday so at least that was one extra day.

Then it was time to come home. Well you didn’t think that would go smoothly did you? Glen missed his flight on Saturday night and had to take one on Sunday night thus missing work on Saturday and being late on Sunday. Luckily they seem to be understanding about the situation.

Pretty much everything that could go wrong on this trip did. I am glad it’s done. At least the plane didn’t crash.