Who are the Bloom boys

An important part of understanding all of my stories will be in understanding what makes each of my guys so special and amazing.

I adopted my 2 oldest sons when they were each 6 days old. However, by the time they were 15 months, I was pretty concerned about both of them developmentally. They both just weren't on target with language and had some quirky other things going on.
Through the blessing of early intervention, both M and D were able to receive a variety of services including Special education, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy and Speech Therapy.

Through lots and lots of appointments and hours with specialists, the best guess for today is that M is diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. This is a horrible, horrible, completely preventable diagnosis that impacts essentially every aspect of M. From his ability to communicate, to his ability to relate to people, and his ability do simple things like brush his teeth, get dressed properly and remember to care for himself, all areas and aspects of M are impacted by the Fetal Alcohol syndrome. This past year and a half has been full of major ups and downs as M is getting older. Apparently the true impact of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome- FAS- begins to show as children are in the middle elementarty years. M's story is one of the things that has pushed me to want to blog and to tell about our life.

For D, the medical world around us thought that since he was 15 months old he was on the Autistic spectrum. But as an educator, it just didnt seem like the right diagnosis to me. D was in intensive special education classrooms at the age of 18 months and yet he was still struggling to learn even the most basic rules of life- ie you can't run into the road, you can't knock down the toy shelves in your classroom, and if there is a fish in a fish tank, you should not dump out the water! Through speech therapy and special education, D had learned to speak and was able to put together 2-3 word sentences, but at 3.5, he lost that ability again. At that point we had an EEG done and it was determined that D has epilepsy. The day he was diagnosed with Epilepsy was one of the happiest of my life- that was the day that we found out what was wrong with D and the day that D was born for the 2nd time!

D is now a 6 year old boy full of laughter and smiles and a fabulous sense of humor. He is still very, very delayed, but his goal in life is to please people. He loves to tell me that he is "a cooking boy" or a "cleaning boy" or " a grocery helper!" My son who for more than 3 years wouldnt hug me or say he loved me or snuggle me, now is the snuggliest 6 year old on the planet! Everyday he is gaining skills and showing me new things he has learned!

Finally J is my youngest. I adopted him at 3 months old. Because he wanted to be sure he had lots of helpers in his life, he too has a speech delay due to an overabudnance of wax in his ears.....YES, you read that right! I, AMIE BLOOM, am likely the only person on the planet who has a child with too much wax in their ears to the point that it truly limits his hearing and has created a huge speech delay!

So there you have it in a nutshell, beyond being amazing, busy, loving, energetic guys, my boys each have a diagnosis that makes them very special, and creates a variety of daily challenges, but also constantly makes life unique and extremely entertaining.