My baby boy

Today my baby is 16 years old. I still remember the first day Ellis arrived. He was this little ball of crazed energy. The caseworker brought him over to the house and he hid under the table and kept peeking out with this mischevious look on his face. He had just met me and he called me mom, which made me really sad because he naturally thought every female he lived with was called 'mom', me being the 6th 'mom' in his previous 6 months.

The first night was rough. Ellis had a hard time settling down and going to sleep. He would wake up screaming and crying every 1/2 hour or so, and when I would go in his room to comfort him, he wouldn't wake up and he would just kick and yell. When he did wake up, he wouldn't let me comfort him. He didn't want to be held at all. You could pick him up and carry him somewhere, but he wouldn't go for any snuggling or affection at all. Eventually we got a routine down but the night terrors remained for 6 months. In fact, they stopped exactly when our family moved to Washington. My theory is that this time when Ellis moved, we came with him.

The first morning after Ellis' first night with us, he was already awake and standing at the end of the bed staring at me with this little smile on his face. I sat up in bed and said "good morning, sweetie!" And he instantly hurled an object at me with all the force he could muster. It was a tin jar of bag balm, and it hit me square in the head. This would define the future! This little, energetic child was not like any child I had ever known.

Ellis' brother was supposed to join our family as well, but taking care of Ellis was such a difficult task, one of which I was ill prepared for, that everyone agreed we needed more time to get a handle on it before bringing home Dean. When 6 months passed and I still didn't have a good handle on it, Brian lost his job in Oregon and applied for a job in Washington, which he got. We were moving out of state and we needed to bring Dean in whether we were ready or not! Poor Dean, barely knowing his new parents, was loaded in the car and on his way to a new state and life!

We quickly settled into our new home. I quickly lost my mind. Ellis proved to be a serious challenge to everything I thought I knew. Something was not right and I did not know what it was! I was totally and completly exasperated. Ellis was up at the crack of dawn every morning and was like this little tasmanian devil. Into anything and everything. I never knew what I would wake up to. He would climb up the cabinets and empty them out. He would pour cereal and milk and food coloring into every bowl we had. He would open up a pack of 500 sheet construction paper and have the entire living room covered in it. I was working evenings, getting up 3 times a night with a baby, and waking up to this. I was alone with the boys all day. Many times I would call Brian, sobbing about something Ellis had done. He thought I was crazy. Ellis was 'fine' for him. His parents thought Ellis just 'had my number'. I knew it was something more. No one believed me.

One day, Ellis walked over to his brother in the bath tub and proceeded to pee on him. That was it! I made up my mind to consider medication for his ADHD, after years of not 'believing' in it. He was only 5!

Well, after years of trials and tribulations and many, many, many instances of my boys challenging my own personal ideals of what a 'normal' family does and does not do, which NEVER worked for us, all of the people around us finally stared to understand that we weren't dealing with your typical child here. It took YEARS, and MANY Doctors and MANY counselors, and teachers...and I admit, several nervous breakdowns to figure out what we were dealing with. We had a child with ADHD, Attachment Disorder and Oppositional Defiance Disorder. We suffered so many years of heartbreak, and I believe if I had known this in the beginning I would have been so much better prepared and done so many things different. And after seeing all those 'proffesionals' who told me I was dealing with ADHD and he would be just fine, it took a teacher's help and introduction to a book that talked about Attachment Disorder- the first time I had ever heard of it! to lead us to understanding our son.

We've been through so much. Ellis has taught me so much. He has helped me grow more than anyone else ever could have. He has taught me so much about myself. About families. About love and forgiveness. I love him so much. I can't believe he's 16 years old. Though circumstances don't allow him to live at home right now, I think about him always and pray for him. I enjoy my visits with him and I'm glad we can go celebrate his birthday tomorrow. I'm a lucky mom to have a kid that has made me a better person.