vacation was great

We are adjusting to life without the beach. We had a great time and Gabe loved it. St.John's Virgin Islands is a long trip, but beautiful.

We made it!

After a long day of travel, we made it to st,John virgin islands. All the kids did great. Gabe did awesome on the plane and ferry. It is beautiful here. We are on the search today for a sandy beach as the one by the house we are staying at is by a big drop off and rocky. The house is nice and big and open. However, this means bugs get in and no air conditioning. So far it is breezy enough not to be uncomfortable. Gabe is loving hanging out with the other kids and we are looking forward to relaxing today.

5 more days till vacation!

We're going to the beach. I'm so excited. We'll see how Gabe likes the sand.

Gabe sings and signs

3/21 World Down Syndrome Day

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brown bear brown bear what do you see?

I'm so glad February is over. Bring on March. Bring on Spring. Poor Gabe had a bad cough at the beginning of the month. Then we all got the stomach bug. We are hopfully now all on the mend. His Gtube is bothering him a little lately. It looks good, but I changed it out and put a new tube in yesterday thinking maybe it was just positioning. He's still a little sensitive today. I think it may be getting a little tight and he may be ready for the bigger size now. Eating has not gone very well this month due to all the sickness, but luckily, Gabe's weight is still up. He is doing well with transitioning movements. He is able to go from sitting to rolling, to sitting, to crawling position, to sitting, to pulling up on his knees to sitting and throw some splits and flexed hips in there as well. He's frogging around in his walker. We finally babyproofed everything. I think I'm the only person who is greatful to finally be babyproofed. Still no active crawling, still no active walking, but he's getting closer. He's picked up alot of signs lately. Gabe can now sign: eat, drink, diaper, goodnight, book, more, help, mom, dad, up, play, bye. I went to the Central Kentucky Down Syndrome Association Conference in Lexington on Saturday. One of the ENT's at Cincinnati Children's spoke about sleep apnea. I am really thankful Gabe's apnea was caught early. It was very interesting talk. I also went to a talk that a ST did that gave me some good ideas. She had a bunch of free ipad apps to help with speech. She also suggested using the voice recording cards you can buy pretty cheap at Hallmark and taping pictures on them to help. For example, have a picture of daddy blowing out candles on his birthday and record daddy's voice saying "daddy. it's daddy's birthday. Daddy is blowing out candles on his cake. happy birthday daddy". She also emphasized word completion. For example, have a picture of a cat (can print these from clipart). When they say cat, give them a picture. If they say "ca", tear the cat in half and give them half of it since they didn't complete the word. Emphasize the end of the word and they can have the whole cat when they say the whole word. She also emphasized, when your child starts saying words like "ball", it's okay to get excited, but don't pick them up and hug them, and give them m&m's...give them a ball...they did ask for it afterall. Those were the take-home points. They also had a speaker talking about the grant KY passed to fund the Best Buddies program to help kids with DS go to college. It was very inspiring. It sounds like UK, and especially NKU are really paving the way for this in the state...go Norse!