THE BRUISING STARTS

First blog....so much to get out there that I'm not really sure where to start.  Here goes, up until July 4th, 2014, we were as "normal" that you could be....or I should say traditional since it isn't too "normal" anymore.  John and I had been married almost 9 years, bought a house, he has a good job with HEB (grocery store) and I'm a fourth grade teacher.  We have two sons, Jaden, 6, and Jake, 4.  We were spending the evening with friends celebrating the Fourth of July.  When we got home it was late and we quickly undressed both boys and changed them for bed.  I noticed lots of little red dots on Jake's stomach, chest, and back.  I called John in to see and he said, "Oh I bet it's from jumping on the tubes in the water."  I shrugged it off and we all went to bed.  The next morning, they were still there.  I knew it wasn't normal and because of an auto-immune disorder that just came to light with myself in the past year, I knew he had petechiae (the little red dots).  I had NO clue what it meant and we went on about our day.  I took the boys down to Austin for the day since John had to work and we visited the aquarium and Austin Park and Pizza.  We had never been to either so they were pretty excited all day.  On the way back home we stopped by my parents workplace as we always do when we leave Austin.  I sat in the parking lot and used 5 band-aides to stop the bleeding from a TINY spot that was a mosquito bite before.  It just wouldn't stop bleeding!  When we went in, I told my mom that I felt like something was wrong; with the petechiae, bleeding that wouldn't stop from such a small spot and he also had deep bruises on his legs.  I had noticed them but being with Jake 24/7, I couldn't see how bad they had progressed.  My parents both told me how deep and dark they looked so I decided to start taking pictures of him so I could compare from day to day.  He had a couple bruises before the 4th of July but nothing alarming; I mean he is a very active four year old boy.  The boys and I finally arrive home around 8 pm Saturday.  I took Jake's shirt off of him so he could jump in the shower and my heart sank.  He looked awful!  I mean, he was running around, laughing, fighting with his brother, yelling (all typical things for him) but his body looked like he had been in car wreck!  He had bruises all up and down his spine, arms, elbows, stomach, head, even under his toe nails were turning purple!  But his legs were the worst....my poor baby was black/blue/purple/green!