Mini Cheesecakes

Thought I would change it up a bit seeing as its New Years Eve and you might be looking for an easy dessert for tonight or tomorrow.

Mini Chessecakes
These are a family favourite. My brother in law likes to take the leftovers and I try to make sure to make extra for him. I also have made them for a wedding and they were a hit because they are so portable. I sometimes serve with pie filling or make homemade berry sauce.

Mini Cheesecake
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
2 Tbsp. sugar
3 Tbsp. melted butter
Mix together and press 1 Tbsp. of mixture into 24 paper-lined muffin cups. If you wants thicker cheesecakes put mixture in 18 lined cups.  Set aside

3 pkg. softened cream cheese
3/4 cups sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
3 eggs room temperature
Beat cream cheese, vanilla and sugar with mixer until blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, until blended.  Spoon 2Tbsp. over crusts.  Bake at 325oF for 25-30 mins or until centres are almost set.  Cool completely. Take out of liners and refrigerate 2 hrs. Serve with favourite sauce or pie filling and whipped cream.  Enjoy.

Strawberry/Blueberry Sauce
3 cups of frozen or fresh berries
1/3 cups sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
Combine all ingredients in saucepan.  Cook and stir over medium heat till thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir for 2 mins more. Remove from heat. Cool to room temperature then blend with blender or hand blender and press through sieve. Cover and chill spoon over mini cheesecakes. Enjoy. 

Parenting

Parenting is a hard job sometimes. Marriage is hard sometimes. Being married and parenting special needs child is really hard sometimes. It's said that around 75% of marriages with a special needs child ends in divorce. I don't know if this is true or not but what I do know is our story. Marriage is not easy it's hard work. Put children in the mix even harder, add special needs into this even more. But I know I couldn't do this alone. My husband and I met almost 22 years ago. We have been married 14. We have lots of ups and downs. Mostly ups. The birth of our first child was exciting and scary. I had to move my salon to the basement 7 months into my pregnancy, doctor ordered me to slow down and I couldn't afford to keep my salon running otherwise. Our sons delivery was scary, he had no heart beat, emergency c-section, cord around his neck 3 times, my placenta had stopped working at some point starving the baby and had blood clots all over it, He was born on his due date but only 5lbs 6oz my husband was scared, I was in shock. That's not how it was supposed to go. But after 4 days let us take our "healthy" baby home. 10 weeks in we rushed to the hospital, the baby couldn't keep anything down. He had surgery on his stomach pyloric stenosis. 2 weeks later my husband lost his job.  At 6 months the baby wasn't hitting milestones he wasn't sitting up and didn't use his right hand. They sent us to physio they thought Erbs Palsy. About this time my husband started a job a 1.5 hrs away from home he drove back and forth everyday. During physiotherapy the therapist told me she thought it wasn't Erbs Palsy but something more. They referred us a neurologist. At 9 months they did an MRI. A little over a year old we had a diagnosis Right hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy. It was crushing for a young family. I took it better then my husband he chose to ignore it. I did all the appointments, he worked. Lots of runs to the hospital the first two years with appointments, hospital stays, swallowing tests, kidney tests, 2 weeks in for pneumonia. Then our baby girl came along just at the same time as our sons seizures started. Countless fights that I was doing everything and he didn't like hospitals. We went to support groups and therapy. They always tell you, you need date nights and time with the two of you at least once a week. Lol. Who can do that? You don't leave your child with anyone, babysitters are hard to find when you have a special needs child. My mom aunt and sisters helped as much as they could but they had there own lives too. We tried date night once a month for awhile but it's more like once every 6 months. It's hard really hard I can see why marriages don't last who could do all that and keep it together???  We have because even after the worst days we are a team. One might do all the kid work and one the pay work but we are a team!! Now the roles have changed as we get older and the kids. My husband is way better at dealing with things that come up and I'm usually a mess. We seem to go back and forth with our roles. I'm a realist he's a hopefulist Lol. In May I crashed, I think I took the news of our son not being able to live a independent life much harder then the first diagnoses. His dad took it with stride. So he lives with us for as long as he wants, he is who he is, ect. Everything always works out is my husbands biggest saying. And you know what it does. We yell, we scream (we are an Italian family after all lol) we cry but most of all we laugh and love. And we truly make it work the good, the bad and the ugly. We get through it all together as husband and wife, as mommy and dad, and as a family of 4. They are my life and I love them with all my heart and soul. 💕💕and I wouldn't change any of the downs. They make us who we are as much as the ups.

Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral Palsy is a condition caused by injury to the parts of the brain that control our ability to use our muscles and bodies. There are different types of Cerebral Palsy. Our son has hemiplegia cp, which effects his right side, so the damage in his brain is in the left side. I explain it to people as he had a stroke its easier for people to understand. We dont know when the damage happened before he was born, or during delivery. We had a lot of issues that we didn't know till after, cord around neck three times, clots on my placenta and it had stopped working well before he was born, starving him. Things no one could of known.  He doesn't use his right arm/hand at all, his right leg is weaker then his left and he wears a leg brace on it. His right side doesn't grow like the left so his hand and foot are much smaller as well. Many people with cp are very tight in their muscles but our son isn't he is really loose I would describe it as floppy. Which it makes it hard to get his arm through long sleeve shirts etc. He does mostly dress himself except socks are tricky. Zippers, buttons and tying shoe laces aren't something you can do with only one useful hand. He is able to do most bathroom duties himself except needs help with toilet issues, we are working on this and hope some day he will be totally independent in that way. Eating he is fairly independent but much prefers meals that he can eat with his hands eg: sandwiches, cheeseburgers etc. He does well with forks and spoons but it takes a long time. Solids and liquids together are difficult to eat because it's hard for him to chew and swallow together. His speech has been effected as well and still goes to speech therapy but to most they can understand him fully just working on his r,s,th someday he'll get them down pat. He also has epilepsy, a cognitive delay, some vision issues, auditory processing disorder and seperation and social anxiety all which I'll explain in other posts. All these things seem like a big deal to most but we are just so thankful to have him, he had no heart beat when he was born, we thought we had lost him then but he's a fighter, they said he wouldn't walk but he does, he likes to prove us all wrong. It's easy to look at all the negative and never move on but we choose to look at the positive and go forward. He talks, walks, reads, writes, laughs, and loves with all his heart ❤️ maybe not the "normal" way but his way. He has CP but the doesn't define him. He is an amazing, loving, funny boy and I'm so proud to have him as my son. He is who he is and I wouldn't change that for the world. I always say information is powerful. So this is what my blogs will be about information for everyone so we all can be accepting of ALL people.

Welcome

Hi. Welcome to my blog. So this all started with me starting to ask people to send my son a card for his 13 birthday on facebook. He has special needs and I wanted to make his 13th special and it truly was with over 1450 cards coming in the mail. It was amazing.  People shared it, then a fb page started where I then started to blog about our lives and here I now am starting my own "real" blog. I'm going to write about being a mom, being a mom to a special needs child, I also love to cook and bake so there will be recipes and some diy projects. I'm really excited about this adventure and I hope you'll follow my posts. My first posts will be from the fb page so you get to know a little about our lives.  I'm not a specialist or doctor. These are just posts about what we experience in our own lives. And I always say information is powerful. Welcome to our life. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

I grew up in a wonderful family with my mom, dad and three sisters. I'm the third out of four. We grew up on a dairy farm and then a hobby farm. I will always have the farm girl in me lol. I met my husband at 16 going on 17 he was 20. We dated for 4 years parted ways for about 6 months then came back together for 4 more years before we got married in 2002. We bought a house in my home town before the wedding and we are still in our little house. My husband never had that hometown place growing up and the 14 years we have lived here is the longest he has ever lived in one place so I will probably never get him to move. Lol.
6 months after our wedding we were expecting our first child, he came on his due date the following Dec.  our lives changed forever. I was totally in love. It wasn't always easy but we made it through, my other blogs will talk about his ups and downs. 4.5 years later our beautiful daughter came into our lives she completed our family.  We have a dog who my children adore. I work part time as a hairstylist in the basement of our home and my husband works as a team lead in a factory. Our children attend different schools as our son goes to a school away from our town to get the education he needs. Life can be very busy and crazy but at the end of the day we are always all together. This is a little background of our little family. More to come with every post.  💕 It's not always an easy life but it's ours and we make it work together. 💜