The craziness at the Cotterell house

So the last couple weeks have been filled with lots of craziness. Time just seems to be flying by and I am just trying to catch up with it. Today will be the last day of school for Porter and Nickelle. I am absolutely relieved it is over for Porter and heart broken for Nickelle. Nickelle has loved this semester. She talks about school every day and asks me all the time if she can go to school. She made lots of new friends and has grown to be really independent. She has become so much more helpful around the house and I noticed that at school as well as at home she has become a little mini Mom. She wants to take care of everyone. She made sure and did it all everyday. She wanted to experience every activity and had a good time trying lots of new things. Some highlights for her have been learning to recognize her name, learning all her shapes, colors and numbers. She has learned to really play with the other kids and was seen as a class leader for the other students. She loved getting to drive in with Daddy and getting to spend some time with him at work. One of the funniest things was that because Porter's class started earlier than Nickelle's, Dallin had to take him first. So she got to stay at the store with Dallin's cute worker Shayne. Shayne is a super cute girl and it was really funny because Nickelle would boss Shayne around and tell her when she needed to come in Dallin's office and hang out with her. Poor Shayne! That's all she needs a two year old for a boss.

I wish I could say the same for this last semester for Porter. I think you get a good group of teachers and sometimes you just get not a great group. I think in general this was a really not so great group. I worked hard to try and help them help Porter, and by the end of the semester I have been so frustrated, I usually pick Porter up in tears. I need to add that on top of really being saddened by things going on in the classroom, I have been overly emotional. I really hope it mellows out soon. I think the hardest thing for me to see is that the other children in the class have been really mean to Porter. Luckily because Porter is in general pretty socially clueless he has no idea how mean the kids are being. He thinks they are his friends. But as a mother watching it has been for me the tuffest thing to watch him go through yet. I really thought we had a couple more years before his peers would catch on that he is different so it really caught me off guard. I wasn't ready to see him treated like this from the other kids. What was even harder was some of the teachers treated him the same way which as a teacher I know that kids pick up on that and they treat others in the same way they see. If you were to ask me would I have Porter at the BYU-Idaho preschool again I would say yes. What he has gained this year has been a new attitude about school. He likes school. He loves how good they are with routines. He loves getting to spend some time with Dad. He enjoys the activity's. Has he learned anything educational? I would say no, but I can tell that the other students in the class really have. So I don't think that is a reflection on them so much as it is just a difficulty for him to keep up. Another thing he has gained is he seems more confident this year. I am so proud of him, and have loved having the opportunity to watch him grow.

Other goings on in our life have been that Bennett has started taking some steps. This last week he has been cutting a tooth which has meant a lot of waking up in the night. The kid can totally sleep through the night until he gets a tooth. That is why I am writing this so late. He is up right now. Bennett has just gotten cuter and more fun all the time. He is such a smart little guy and picks things up really quickly. I have to really watch him.

The pregnancy seems to be moving along and I am happy to say that in just a couple of days I will have made it to our goal as far as how far along we wanted me to be before I had this baby. It has been a difficult pregnancy for me, and it seems to have more challenges as the weeks go by but overall I just feel such an overwhelming sense of gratitude for this gift of being able to have this chance to be pregnant, and since we really think this is our last, it is in some ways a little sad to think that this will be my last time having this opportunity. Which makes me all the more grateful. I am excited to meet this little lady and have the chance to see that much more clearly why we needed her in our family at this time. I feel pretty overwhelmed and I am really hoping she will be like Bennett in the sense that he is just not a kid who needs a whole lot. Having four kids 4 and under and my oldest having autism is pretty mind boggling. Our next goal is to make it past Bennett's first birthday so they will be 12 months apart and then we will really be pumped. Sometimes I will ever wonder if we will have a night where someone isn't up at night. I really wonder if I will ever have kids out of diapers. But at the same time I have really loved my little ones and as they grow I feel so much sadness because I know we will never have them so little again. I love experiencing all the first with each one, and I am glad they are so close and get to enjoy things together. I really look forward to having another daughter and making our family complete.

To end all of this I just want to share that today is world wide autism day. This last week has been autism week. I have thought a lot about our journey with Porter, where we have grown and where we may still need to grow. I had an experience this last week that I want to share. I have a good friend in my ward who has a daughter with autism. She is 9. This woman has helped me so much with finding resources and helping me know about all kinds of things. She has two kids. Her oldest daughter who is 9 and then a son who is Porter's age. He had a little bit of a speech delay and was being treated for speech problems but all and all things were looking pretty on track for him. Because things have been so tuff for us sometimes it can be hard to look outside our family and be really aware of what is going on. We do not mean to be this way, it is just that our life is so consuming at times. So it took me a little while to realize I wasn't seeing them at church. Then when I was released from primary I noticed I was not seeing this sweet woman at all there. Immediately I had this feeling that their son had been diagnosed with autism. I cannot begin to say how many times I mentioned to Dallin I was really concerned about them. Also that I wanted to get over and check in with them. Of course life kept going on and I was so caught up in the day to day things I never made it over, but the feeling kept eating at me. Then this last week we had enrichment. I am not overly zealous about enrichment to be honest. I always have a nice time when I am there but I have such a hard time leaving home that it usually has to be something I force myself to do. Well all that week I just knew I wanted to go to enrichment. Which is unlike me. That night we had a really difficult last 24 hours with Porter I had to rush to make something to bring. Because of how difficult of a day Porter had, I had never even had a chance to shower. I was also contracting really badly because I had to physically fight a bit with Porter to keep him from hurting himself and the rest of us. Then I walk in and remember we were supposed to dress up. Every woman there was in a dress and here I was in jeans and a tee shirt, and not even showered. I looked so gross. I sat down at a table and true to form no one came and sat down by me. Because who knows what to say to the woman with the autistic kid. I almost always end up sitting alone. Then of all people to walk up to me it is this sweet woman I have not seen in months and she comes and sits down by me. Immediately I am so happy that I came. She tells me that indeed her son was diagnosed 6 months ago and that they have really been heart broken and struggling ever since. We talked for hours and swapped stories. I know for me how much it meant to sit down with someone else who gets my world. Who knows what I have been through and how devastating autism really is. I have been really upset about her son and it has been hard not to worry about my other children. Which I did before anyways.

I know that the last thing anyone wants to do is hear how painful and devastating autism is. I know we all want to walk away and think I am so sorry for that person and it can never happen to me. I know because not only did I feed this lie to myself, but I am constantly treated as if we are invisible. No one knows what to say, how to act, what to do, and honestly who wants to hear what life is really like when you have a child with autism. This has never hurt me, because I understand this. It is part of the package. I really mean it when I say this does not hurt me. But what I want you all to know is unfortunately this can happen to any of us. I am no different than any of you. Sometimes I am told that Dallin and I must have been special etc.. to get Porter in our family. This is not true. We were no different than any one else. Porter has made us special and different not the other way around. Please take the time to educate yourself today. Understand the signs, look for news ways to be of help to those around you who are in tremendous pain. Most importantly if you have the wonderful chance to be near or around a child with needs, include them in your lives somehow. We have been given angels on earth. They are not meant for us to look away from but instead to learn and grow from. They are our gifts and will bless us beyond anything.