Our Precious Gift

       There will always be one person in our lives who alter our personalities and character. On July 7, 2007, my family was blessed with one of the most wonderful gifts we could’ve been given, and I was introduced to a person who changed my life forever.

    The picture above is a picture of my cousin, Kayden. He’s an amazing kid with a fiery personality, and we love him to death. Kayden was born with respiratory problems, and was hospitalized for about a month. It was hard for his parents to get through that first month. They only had the chance to visit him for a maximum of four hours, and most of the time, they weren’t able to hold him. I was one of the only kids in our family who went with them to visit him every day. It was saddening to see all of these babies in huge machines without their parents.

        Every day that I went to the hospital, I fell in love with him even more. The first time that I ever got to hold him was scary, but I never wanted to put him down after that. He was a normal child after that. He developed normally and learned to crawl, walk, and talk. Everything was perfect about him.

        When he turned two, we started to notice funny things about Kayden’s speech. He wasn’t saying as many words as he did, and he started losing the knowledge he had before. When we took him to Phoenix to get checked, they diagnosed him with autism. We didn’t know how different it would be to have Kayden around the house, and he wasn’t only diagnosed with autism, but with regressive autism. We had to adjust to the tantrums he had and how to communicate with him. It was hard on his parents at first, but later on it got really easy to talk to him. He never really looked into our eyes, but after regularly meeting with an occupational and speech therapist, he was better at communicating with us.

        Even after being diagnosed with autism, I taught him how to give me “kisses” when I had asked him to. It’s even better when I don’t even have to ask him. The first time I had ever cried over his “condition,” was when he had actually looked into my eyes, for the first time since he was about a year and a half, and mumbled what sounded like, “I love you.”

        I’ve learned many things from Kayden, including my toleration for children. I thought it would be so hard to handle someone I couldn’t talk to, but it was actually a challenge I was willing to take on. It taught me a lot about myself, and I enjoy having him around very much. He’s the light in my life, and he’s encouraged me to follow my dream and become a pediatrician.

        Kayden is four, and he can’t talk. He isn’t potty trained either; but with my uncle having two other girls to watch over, I’m always willing to jump at the chance to learn more from Kayden. He’s the person I’m not willing to leave when I go off for college.

        I wish everybody had the chance to meet special kids like Kayden; to have the chance to experience how wonderful it is to have a four year old change your life. Words can’t explain how amazing this little boy is, and if people just had the chance to be around such an amazing individual, they would know how strongly I feel about children like Kayden.  

The Train

             We've all waited at the railroad tracks for the train to go by, and it seems like it takes forever! Especially if we’re in a hurry to get somewhere! The other day, we sat at the railroad tracks for what seemed like almost 20 minutes.

            As I sat there waiting, I thought, this is what school feels like. It starts out fun in the beginning when you count how many engines are pulling the train cars, but towards the middle it’s like a repeated pattern of the same train cars, just in different order. Then, when the train is almost at the end, we get excited and most of the time we say, “Finally!”

            The train of our education is almost at the end, and I’m at the excitement point and ready to say finally. In kindergarten, we met our first teacher and we were excited to be in school. I don’t think I missed one day of school until I was in sixth grade, now look at me! But as we approached the middle of the train (Jr. High), school started to bore us. In Jr. High I did get the chance to meet all of you wonderful people, but it wasn’t the friend part that bored me, it was learning about the same history, a little more difficult math, and writing an essay to similar prompts every year. Sports were fun, they were the highlight of my day anyway, but the train still took forever to pass through those train cars.

            Then, we started nearing the end of the train when we started high school. It’s always fun to look back on high school though. I remember who I sat by on the first day of Mr. Nielson’s Pre-AP English 9 class (Elizabeth Perry), I remember who I used to play freshman volleyball with (Maria, Erin, Charmayne, Tamika, and Bethany), and although there were only six of us, we knew we were bad! Then, sophomore and junior year rolled around, and we couldn’t help but think two more years, then one more year. Now that we’re seniors, most of us caught that terrible “senioritis” disease early on in the year. But the train is on it’s second to last train car, and pretty soon we’re all going to be able to take a deep, long sigh and say, “Finally!”