A night of fun.

My girl being the centre of attention at her party.

Anyone wonder where she got THAT from?

 

Seven years of *cough cough* pure bliss!

Tomorrow is my little Harley’s 7th birthday.

Yes, that’s right. The 3rd birthday in 10 days in this family! We *ahem* didn’t plan THAT very well did we?!

I thought it only fitting to write a blog about my child with the most “spunk”  (spunk |noun – informal courage and determination).

And determined he certainly is.

I LOVE the steely determination that causes him to pick himself up and keep going. There are often meltdowns attached to situations when things don’t come as easily as they do to other people but I commend him for at least trying.

Harley has certainly lived up to the stigma that is often attached to the “middle child”  label – He has been one mighty big challenge from the day he was born and has been the driving force behind Mr Patient and I often sitting down in absolute dismay with our heads literally in our hands and sobbing:

Harley LOVES the stealth bombers he received for his birthday!

“What the hell are we going to do with this child”

and asking ourselves:

“Where on earth did we go wrong?”

He has been a huge challenge and even though there were MANY hoops that we had to jump through whilst seeking out a diagnosis, we were relieved the day we found out.

I remember blaming myself for getting sick and spending so much time away from him having surgery after surgery and wondered how much of his “behavioural issues” could be attributed to me being so absent in his life for such long periods.

I started believing the Drs when they told me that my brain tumour had clouded all judgements and that he was just a normal active little boy whilst ignoring the “mummy alarm” that was screaming inside of me.

For us  - receiving this diagnosis  was like someone was finally saying the words we’d been longing to hear for so long.

Those words were:

“This is not a result of anything you have or haven’t done.

You did not cause these behaviours by lazy or neglectful parenting.

This is WAY bigger than you”!

And we took great comfort in that – Sure, there was sadness and a little anger attached to finding out that our child has autism , but to finally have an answer and being closer to understanding our  ”troubled child” was fantastic.

Mum and I spent this afternoon making his cake  :)

And in keeping with his latest “special interest subject” of aircraft – he requested a rocket ship. (Well actually, he really wanted a B-52 spirit bomber (stealth) but I hate hate HATE working with black icing so I managed to talk him out of it and into something a little easier!

And I’m really happy with the result:

So – while he has certainly been a “challenge” to raise and his temperament and personality can be interesting at times to say the least! I wouldn’t change him for al the tea in China.

His “spunk” is one of my favourite things about him. And I can’t wait for the next 7 years. He’s going to be one hell of a teenager!

Happy Birthday My precious little Tiger!