We have faith, hope and love!

When we started this journey with Boo, we loved him. We didn't know what the future held but we had love and hey, love is all you need, right?
Well when we were thrown a few curve balls, we realized we needed faith. We needed to have faith in our ability to parent this special child but ultimately we needed to trust that God picked us for a reason.
After seeing several professionals and receiving sixty-eleven different diagnoses, we started to lose hope that we would ever really know "how" to help our son.

Recently and after several years of frustration, we finally have been given hope. The program Boo is in right now has turned out to be a huge blessing. I know I complain about the drive, etc...but we are seeing some huge breakthroughs and improvements. Boo now looks forward to going to school. He is surrounded by people who love and care about him up there. I have to give a shout out to the staff of the ECPHP program at UCLA. These teachers, therapists, volunteers, social workers, and Doctors are beyond awesome! They genuinely care about Boo. They don't "fake" laugh when Boo does something silly. They don't "fake" praise him when he does something positive or when he grasps a new concept. They MEAN it. I've witnessed this first hand. I am amazed at the level of commitment these professionals have. I only wish I could transport this program to every school district in the nation. If there were more programs like this one, there would be more children succeeding in school and beyond. I need to post more about this subject later but I just had to get that out for now).

The other HUGE news is that we were able to meet with one of the most brilliant minds in FASD research this last week. This Dr. has dedicated her life to helping children with FASD and to find answers and hope through research. We sat down with her for two hours last week while she gave us some feedback on her observations of Boo. She definitely thinks he has ARND (alcohol related neurodevelopmental disorder) which is on the FASD spectrum. The funny thing is, most people would be devastated to hear this news but we had already known for so long that it was a relief to finally get a solid diagnosis. There is no cure. There is no known treatment. This is permanent. Boo will live with this brain damage for the rest of his life. He will struggle every day with ADHD, anxiety, learning disorders and depression. He will have to work hard to keep his temper under control and he may not always succeed. BUT....I have hope. I have hope that this little boy who God has blessed us with is going to succeed. He is going to grow up surrounded by love, encouraged by hope and guided by faith. He is awesome. God has created him for a reason. He has a purpose. He is our awesome son! We are so thankful to Dr. O Connor for the work she does. I don't know if she'll ever know how much she has helped us.
Goodnight for now.........