Introductions

Hi, I am an army wife. Not the greatest job in the army, but definitely one of the hardest. My husband is infantry with three deployments to his career, but we are on recruiting orders right now. We have a beautiful set of twins. Yes, I know. Everyone thinks their own kids are beautiful, but ours really are gorgeous. We are so in trouble when they get to high school. Also, our twins (boy-girl fraternal) have been diagnosed by a specialist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute with PDD-NOS. That stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified. It is a high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder. They are very smart, very fun, VERY ACTIVE 4 year olds. They just have a couple difficulties in the developmental areas. For example, our son has difficulty with fine motor skills. He can already read and spell some, count to 10,000, and write all his numbers and many other things, but he holds the writing utensil with a fist, not with his fingers. They both learn better when there are pictures involved. My daughter also has a touch of ADHD. She has problems sleeping and we are still potty training her. She doesn't want to slow down to pee in the potty. Let me tell you something. If we could bottle her energy and sell it, we would be worth billions! Our daughter has trouble with retaining information...or it seems like it. I think she just stores it away for when SHE wants to use it. She is a redhead and SO stubborn. Everything is always on HER time. It can be very challenging. One of the things we are having the most trouble with is disciplinary actions. We are having a problem finding ways to discipline our daughter. Our son is doing great with a reward chart and time outs. Our daughter doesn't really care too much. If anyone has any good ideas, let me know. Something great about our daughter: she is so creative and has the greatest imagination ever. She never ceases to amaze us with what she comes up with in that head of hers. We have a full life of joy, and also, sometimes, frustration. Like last night, she got up at 3am and didn't fall back asleep until 5am. She wanted to play. Sometimes she doesn't fall back asleep and is up for the day. She doesn't nap, and she will be up until she goes to bed around 8:30pm. Momma needs some sleep today! LOL. We give the kids melatonin to help them get to sleep (recommended by the pediatric neurologist over benadryl) and it works great, but keeping our daughter asleep all night is definitely the biggest issue we face. I don't remember what it is like to sleep all the way through the night. *sigh* Maybe one day. As for right now, coffee is my best friend.