Baby J and More

Joshua started his first day of daycare this week! He will be going to daycare two days a week, two hours per day so he can start socializing with other children; more importantly he will hopefully be motivated by them to start crawling and or walking. Joshua absolutely loves being with the other kids and didn't even notice when Mandi and I left, nor did he glance toward the door after we left as I continued to look on.

We recently just re-did his ISFP(done with the state every six months)and the recommendation was for him to continue receiving the same services has been getting for the past six months. He's made his greatest strides with his feeding/speech therapist. Two months ago Joshua couldn't eat stage 3 baby food without having half of it come back out but he's now able to manage all stage 3 food and has continued to increase his tolerance of table foods, such as baked potatoes and soup. Currently the only typical child-friendly food that he eats though are graham crackers. He still won't eat Cheerios or any other smaller cereal/treats. He is understanding "eat" and "more" in sign language and responds to both by either clapping/smiling or shaking his head and crying. The daycare that we chose has someone who teaches sign language every Tuesday so that will be a great help to him plus the other children and teachers as he starts to learn more words. We think he's on the brink of saying"da da" but we can't call it an official word yet.

Joshua still cannot get into a sitting position on his own or move from a sitting position to a standing position on his own but once placed in those positions is really very stable. All of his one year tests came back normal which is great because they tested for Celiac disease and leukemia as both are highly common in Down Syndrome.

Just a quick update on me...I spoke with my doctor this week and asked to double up on my " magic" pill since its magic has faded. He is attempting to actually put together a trial for this pill but in the meantime I'm being given samples so that I can double up on this pill. He also suspects that my extreme fatigue is causing my shortness of breath and could be a result of lack of nutrition throughout the day. As a result, as of this week I am now having a can of food via my peg-tube once a day in addition to what I eat normally. I have clinic on 2-3-10 and he will check my progress at that point. At this point I am willing to try anything that will help overcome the fatigue.