It should read:
America could run on Dylon Donnell
(He has so much energy and goes all the time!)






Well, since it is now July and I haven't updated our page I thought I would do so now! Dylon finished this school year and we are all happy about that. He will not be going back to the same school next year because they are doing away with the pre-K program where he went. We will see where he ends up next year. We should be getting a letter in the mail mid-summer telling us his new school so we can prepare appropriately. Dylon has adjusted nicely to his summer vaction. He continues to make progress in his goals. The only one we are fighting a hard battle with is potty training...go figure! :> In his speech therapy we recently did Dylon's annual test/evaluation. They actually did two test. The first one they did was more in depth as far as receptive (understanding) and expressive (words he uses) language is concerned. It also assessed things like sentence structure, Concepts and following directions, recalling sentences, etc. They would do like 15-20 minutes of testing then they would have their normal session for the remainder of the time. In this test his scores were still below the normal range but they weren't horribly low. In the test they asked questions like "If the dog is his then the cat is ___?" They showed him a picture of a boy holding a dog and a girl holding a cat. Pronouns are something he doesn't know. They would give 3 to 4 step directions and he wouldn't do what was asked. His therapist and I think that on some of these he was just in his own world and just done with the testing. For example, they asked Dylon to point to the picture where the nest was empty. He pointed to the picture that was half full. They stopped testing shortly after that. They played a game where Dylon had to hunt for Easter eggs. I kid you not when I say he found his first egg, shook it, opened it, and said "It is empty". So we knew he had the concept but technically missed the question in testing. (This is just one example of why I do not like tests for children!) This is why she did the other test, which she had given him the previous year. Doing the second test also allowed for us to see if any progress was made in the year. The second tests results showed that Dylon was in the normal limits in receptive (understanding what we say) and he stayed the same in expressive (what he is verbally able to express to others). Just so you know, the normal scores in these tests are 85-115. The lowest a child can bottom out is a 50. Dylon's scores were as follows and this is on the second test. For the receptive test he scored a 90. For the expressive test he scored an 83. Last year his scores were as follows Receptive was 53 (almost bottomed out) and expressive was a 74. As you can see he has made great progress through this year. With autistic children, normally their expressive (words they use) is a higher score/ stronger than the receptive (what they understand). It is not a bad thing that Dylon's is reversed we just want to catch his expressive up with his receptive. We are officially through with his sleep study!



This is not part of the sleep study but I thought this picture was too funny not to share. He is actually in his laundry basket, which he threw all his clothes on the floor to get in it. He normally spins with it on top his head but I guess he was too tired here. He leveled out on 1 mg of melatonin which is helping him fall asleep so much faster and easier. It really is amazing how easy it is now. During some lab work for the study we found out that Dylon's iron level was a little low, nothing to worry about right now, but low iron levels can cause sleep disturbances like waking up in the middle of the night. We are trying to correct his iron level now by giving him an iron supplement for 6 weeks.



Dylon will not be on Melatonin forever, just until he hits a baseline and then we can start to ween him off the Melatonin. We are very happy we did this.


Michael is glad that school is over for the summer. He will still be busy this summer with the Opry and school but he won't have to worry about teaching. As for me, I am well. I am still taking online classes towards my degree (I still have a eternity to go so don't ask how long!?!?!?!). I will be taking a class this summer and then two when next semester starts. We do not have major vacation plans this summer. We went to a Yankees/Braves game one night and it was the only night the Yankees lost to the Braves.

We hope you have a wonderful and blessed day!

AUTISM AWARENESS MONTH!!!!

Hello dear friends and family! It is already April and with this comes a time where Michael and I gear up to wear our autism awareness pins and answer questions about them when asked in public. This month I have decided to reflect and share a little of the past with everyone. Some of you may know these stories and facts and some may not but they are some that are dear to our hearts. In 2006 just after Dylon's 2nd birthday he was diagnosed with autism, which is one of many diagnosis on a spectrum. He is considered high functioning and the autism is viewed as mild to moderate. Autism host many challenges for children who fall into the spectrum but two of the hallmark features of autism is delayed communication (verbal and receptive) and a delay in social interaction. I am sure that many of you may have heard in the news that vaccines cause autism, environmental factors, diets....the list goes on. As of right now, at this present time, there is no know cause of autism. Research has not been sufficient enough to prove or disprove any of the theories above (and I will try to refrain from getting on a soap box about vaccinations!!!!:>). Early intervention HAS been proven to help decrease the autistic like behaviors in children but there is no known cure. Dylon is currently getting speech therapy and occupational therapy. Speech therapy helps him in expressive and receptive communication. Occupational therapy is helping Dylon with fine motor and sensory skills, amongst other areas that need to be met. Michael and I knew nothing of autism but we knew our duty as parents was to help our son. I researched autism and have read some books about it all in hopes to help Dylon. We learned to trust others in our mission to help Dylon. One of the most precious stories to me has a video that goes along with it. One of the therapies that we had in our house was TRIAD and they taught us the concepts of PECS (picture exchange communication system) and other such strategies. They video taped Dylon at the beginning of the training (which was a couple of weeks) and then they video tapped him at the end. In this time Dylon really took to singing, Kum By Ya was a favorite is one of a couple of songs, all from Veggie Tale CDs, I remember him singing at this time. I did not know he knew the song in the video. The girl took her camera out to video Dylon at our last session and caught him singing....not Kum By Ya but another song that was like a balm to my spirit given our recent events. Please view the video and sorry for us talking...we were trying to get him to sing Kum By Ya. Just watch the first couple of minutes... it's like 6 minutes long but you will understand in the first two.

After hearing him sing this song I thought to myself..."God is so good" and even though I was not blaming God for my son's condition I also knew that maybe I wasn't giving him the glory that I needed to. We love Dylon with all of our heart and in stressful times we don't always remember that God is good even if we aren't blaming him or mad at him. God made everything and said it was good, He is good!
Dylon has made tremendous progress over the past two years and continues to do so. One of my favorite stories of late is: One day Michael, Dylon, and I were going through a drive thru. It was a pretty and warm day so we had all the windows down. Dylon was sitting in the back seat on the driver's side. Michael orders for us and we pulled forward. We were not quite to the window yet when this little voice in the back seat says "Uh...yes, I would like a number 1 and a...number 2 and goodagoodagooda chicken nuggets...that's all...thanks!" He was so serious that Michael and I just laughed out loud! As far as the sleep study with Dylon, he is falling asleep so much easier now with no fight. He is still waking up in the middle of the night every couple of nights but we are hopefully working on that. Michael is doing good...ready for school to be over so he can enjoy his summer holiday. I am hanging in there with work and school. We hope to be available to answer questions that anyone has about autism. We do not get easily offended on this subject. Have a Happy Easter and enjoy the spring weather and flowers!

Michael's birthday surprise!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHAEL!!!! He turned 29 on his birthday. He walked into a surprise in his classroom on Monday morning...following his birthday the Friday before. This was the door to his classroom. Note the picture on the door. There were three more posted: one on his desk, one on the door to the upstairs, and one on the door in the front of the school.




This is a picture of his desk with a black table cloth and his chair wrapped in Happy Birthday banner.




29 balloons on the floor...29 balloons... He popped them all before his students called...there were 29 balloons on his floor! :>

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHAEL!!!!!!!

Update time!!! We are all healthy although a little sleepy at this point in time. Michael is having a good year at WHCA. For those of you that didn't know he got a bowling team up at school this year. He organized and coached the team and of course he was very excited about it. His master's class is keeping him busy with all the reading that he has to do but he seems to be enjoying it.

I trucking along with my school. I am taking math and American Lit this semester so I have quite a lot of reading to do also. I have been volunteering at Dylon's school for nap time since there are only 2 teachers and most days 6 kids that don't nap. This is the teacher's only time for lunch so I go and lend my services when I can. The kids are so cute and funny.

We believe Dylon is progressing well in school. He LOVES school. He never ceases to amaze Michael and I. Last night we were in the car on our way to church and he started singing. After Michael and I listened closely we caught that he was making up a song to Jack and the Bean Stalk while he was looking at the book. It was pretty cute. Since the last post...we have met with a research team here at Vanderbilt Children's hosptial about a study they are doing on insomnia in children with autism. They are looking at the melatonin levels in these children to see if they produce enough or if giving a melatonin suppliment would help. We are going through with this study. At night Dylon wears a little watch looking thing in the pocket of a t-shirt that records his movements when he is sleeping at home. We will switch out the watch every couple of weeks and once we send it in they will download the information as part of the study. We also fill out a sleep diary telling them what time we pushed this little button when the lights go out for the night and when we push it in the morning when he wakes up. The button leaves a little tick mark that with the sleep diary they can collect data when he sleeps. In a couple of weeks we will start giving him 1 mg of melatonin 30 minutes before bed to see if this helps. They will increase the dose every 2 weeks if needed. Before we start the melatonin we have opted for the part of the study that includes a sleep study on the first night to check the movements of body and the brain to see if that affects his sleeping. The second night they are supposed to do the sleep study and also blood draws. After every increase of Melatonin we will have to go back for a sleep study blood draw so they can keep a close eye on him. With this said, we have done the first two nights of a sleep study that is mentioned above. The first night they waited for him to fall asleep before the sleep techs started putting all the probes on him. They were probably half way through when Dylon wakes up like the Incredible Hulk and starts crying and ripping the probes off. They wanted us to try and put him back to sleep but Dylon was having none of it. We told them that the sleep study portion of this research was over. We took all the probes off and were packing our bags to go home when the doctor called and wanted to talk to us. She said that she understood Dylon's sensory issues with the probes and gave us a couple of options. She encouraged us to stay the night because they could video tape Dylon sleeping in the hopes to capture a night terror episode. The other option we had was to continue on and do the blood draw/video taping on the second night. We consented to both so after calming Dylon down we put him back to sleep to be video taped. We left Tuesday for a few hours and went home and showered and gave Dylon a break. Tuesday night went a lot better. His IV was placed aroun 7:00 pm and he went to bed at 8. They wanted to get 14 blood draws for the whole night. His IV stopped drawing around 11:00. They got 6 out of the 14 blood draws so I wasn't too worried and I didn't want them to do another IV. He did very well and we are proud of him. This study last up to 4 months so we might be in and out of sleep studies until May but if it helps it will be worth it. I can honestly tell you that deep down inside I am hoping that 1 mg of melatonin works so we can stop there. That is selfish I realize but I hope this really does work for Dylon. For those of you that haven't seen the video look below this post for you viewing pleasure of Dylon dancing.

We hope you have a great day and love and miss most of you!! :>

A laugh for the day!!!

This is just too funny not to share with you. The song playing is from one of those cards that play music. Dylon has had this card for a few months. My sister sent it to him knowing that he loved these kinds of cards....so for your viewing pleasure please enjoy Dylon's debute