Stone Family

The Stone Family

by Alexis Stone

We are the Stone family. We moved from Portland to Roseburg in 2019. I am Alexis and I have been with my husband, Jeff for 16 years, married for 12. We always wanted children more than anything but we had pretty much given up on the idea that I would ever get pregnant. To everyone's surprise it happened when we were least expecting it! In 2017, I was 34 and I found out I was pregnant. My pregnancy was pretty normal at the beginning, however; at 23 weeks I developed preeclampsia and was in and out of the hospital. At 30 weeks I was taken in for an emergency C section due to being in heart, lung, liver and kidney failure caused by preeclampsia. Our son Parker was born 10 weeks early and spent the first 2 months of his life in the NICU. It was an extremely traumatic time for us but we pushed through and are stronger now because of it.

Parker is an amazing, sweet, loving, and curious 4 year old with ASD and ADHD. We are particularly proud of how far Parker has come with his speech and communication in the last year. He loves everyone he meets and is somewhat of a social butterfly. He will say hello to anyone who crosses his path no matter who they are. 

Parker struggles greatly with transitions and adult-led activities. He struggles with needing to be in control of every situation and he also struggles severely with emotional regulation. He has a wonderful way of making you laugh and he has a knack for making you forget that he has just done something really naughty by being super cute and funny. Parker is an extremely silly, imaginative and affectionate child. 

Parker absolutely loves playing with his baby dolls and his doll house. He loves exploring outside and going to the park. He loves to help mom cook in the kitchen. He has recently become obsessed with anything Super Mario related (especially Bowzer.) His favorite characters from any shows or movies are ALWAYS the villains! He even cries when the villains get hurt or are in trouble. He loves to spin, dance and his favorite thing in the whole world is water play. He is most at peace when he is in water.

We love to do cooking projects together, garden in our backyard and go to the park, splash pad, and beach in the summertime. We love going on drives and exploring Roseburg and our surroundings. This past summer we discovered the Atom Bistro in Glide on one of our drives and it has become one of our favorite places. We love spending time with our family. Parker is extremely close to his grandparents who live in Portland and his great grandmother Mary who has lived here in Roseburg for nearly 80 years. This summer we are hopefully going to be able to go to the beach and possibly do a trip to Sunriver with family. We are looking forward to starting up our garden again when the weather gets nicer. I'm sure we will be spending lots of time at the splash pad like we did last summer. We made it a goal to get out more because we realized that COVID had held us back.

In the last year, we have had a lot of changes. One of the hardest decisions was leaving ABA therapy that we had to go to Eugene for. We just couldn’t make it work. We are hoping to find alternatives in the near future. Some things have been difficult, since moving to Roseburg and even more so because of COVID. All of our family, and many of our friends– other than my 87 year old grandma–live in Portland. They come down and help out and spend time with us when they can but it's obviously not as much as we would hope for. Since being born premature, and especially since we got the autism diagnosis, friends have pretty much faded away. Most of our friends have older, neurotypical children so it has been very hard for them to relate to our situation. Friendships were hard to maintain between the distance and the differences.

One great thing that we noticed in the last year is that Parker's language has exploded!. He says things everyday that literally shock me and crack me up. I often wonder how he knows some of the things he says. He has started telling us "I love you" which is amazing even though we already knew he did, it is always great for parents to hear! I would say that having a child with special needs has been difficult but it has also made me a much stronger person, emotionally. I have a deeper understanding of differently abled people and have much more compassion for families in similar situations. We are also so very fortunate to have experienced a love like never before!

To other parents, who find themselves in the same boat, remember that self-care is important and just remember we are all doing the best we can with the resources provided to us (or, perhaps, lack thereof) Give yourself some grace... 

I want to give a shout out to Haley Mcgee, who is Parker's early education teacher, for always putting up with my constant texts and questions! To Sadie Amstutz-Vetter for being Parker's favorite teacher and always making me feel at ease when leaving my child in the hands of others. Also to all of his other early education teachers for being so patient with him and making school a fun place for him to explore and learn.