Nicolas as Rolf in the Sound of Music

Nicolas takes on the role of Rolf in the Sound of Music for 4 performances this week.
I'm so proud of him!  This is a precious scene right after he sings "You are Sixteen Going on Seventeen" to Liesl.  Makes me teary every time!

Not so sweet anymore... Rolf has turned away from his Austrian heritage and is warning Maria and Liesl that if they know what's "good for them" they'll encourage Captain von Trapp to follow suit.

 

My daughter, Anna, plays Louisa in the play.  I hope to get some good photos of her and all the awesome costume changes soon!

If you're local, you can still see the full Broadway version of the musical tomorrow and Friday night at 6pm.

Random updates on my belly, John Michael, Saving Sofia... and Nic's arrow wound.

Last Saturday evening, Doug and I attended our kids' school auction - decked out like a 1950's diner.  So fun!  Great decor, music, food...  I did my best to dress up like a 50's gal.  It's hard to hide that belly, that's for sure  :-)  Me at 33 weeks...  boy is this baby weighing me down!

John Michael at 29 months old.  Loving life!

Fun, fun!  We love this little park...

and so do his buddies. 

That's Joaquin (Three's a Charm) trying to stand up solo and Joey (Our Bundle of Joy) on his tummy on the leopard blanket.  Sheridan (Genetically Enhanced) is front, right and John Michael is in the middle of his other local buddies.  Here, we're all waiting to give Joaquin's mom, Jennifer, a travel gift for baby Sofia (Saving Sofia), a beautiful little girl they're adopting from the Ukraine who also has Down syndrome.   With all the uncertainty of that nasty Icelandic volcanic ash, they were finally able to leave yesterday and are now literally headed to the Ukraine from Kiev. 

Our gift to Jennifer was an afghan, lovingly crocheted by CJ Field of the T21 Traveling Afghan Project.  Each color represent was chosen by Sofia's little friends and held a symbolic meaning.  You can go to Saving Sofia blog to see each meaning.  John Michael's color for Sofia was white for purity and grace and ties all the other colors together. 

Jennifer and her husband, Hector, are going to get to see and hold their baby girl tomorrow for the first time since falling in love with her back in December on the same day as Jennifer's beloved grandmother passed away.  The amazing speed in which they accomplished all their paperwork, home study, fundraising and now travels were literally guided by the hand of God.  There's no other way to explain how everything has fallen into place.  Even the ash made way for them to fly, when it seemed like all hope was lost and they'd have to wait until June for another opportunity.

There have been so many wonderful things happening lately, I just can't keep up! 

Finally, here's the not so great...  the gash Nicolas got yesterday (before 3 stitches) at his Renaissance Faire.  He was working the archery station and was accidentally shot with an arrow while retrieving other arrows from the field.  When he stood up, he was struck 1 centimeter from his eye by a blunt, metal-tipped arrow!  Poor boy!  He's still sore today, but has been quite a trooper, taking his battle wound like a man!   

My big girl...

Dear Greta,
You made quite a scene with your red hair when you burst into this world 5 years ago today.  You stole our hearts with your bright smile and cheerful blue eyes.

You are a sweet, bright, wonderful BIG girl now and we're so proud of you. You are John Michael's biggest buddy, therapist, advocate and you have so much to look forward to in your life.  You're also a great little sister and Nic says the house would be too quiet without you in our family. Anna loves you sooooo much and loves that she has a singing/dancing sister in the house, as well as a willing student for when she plays school.  I can't wait until you meet your newest little brother.  I'm sure he's already heard you talking to him  :-)

Happy Birthday to you, our sweet Miss Greta Sunshine!

Minutes before the dress-up/tea party begins... modeling the dress Mommy sewed up for you.

A table set for a princess...

The menu... Butterfly-shaped Nutella tea sandwiches, strawberry/grape skewers, Colby Jack cheese cubes, Pirouette white chocolate strawberry cookies, and pink princess cupcakes, served with fruit punch "tea"? Yum! What a beautiful princess!

Having a mid-week birthday means several celebrations.  Here's the cupcake "cake" I made for her for the family celebration.

Wordless Wednesday -- "Knuckle me..."

John Michael is loving having his older sibs, Nic (12 1/2) and Anna (10 1/2) home on Easter break.

What could be more fun than big brother flipping you upside down?

"Knuckle me..."


"Dude"
(or in John Michael's words... "Doooo")

Looks like the boys are telling Anna, our resident photographer, "NO MORE PHOTOS!"

Goin' on an Easter egg hunt... Happy Easter!

We enjoyed 2 Easter egg hunts today. One this morning in the park... John Michael was all smiles and loving choosing his eggs.

And, one at home... He caught on really quickly.

Big sis, Greta, found a bunch, too.

And now that Lent is officially over... let the candy-eating begin!
Nic and Anna enjoyed the "big kid" candy, while John Michael tasted a few M&Ms and Goldfish cracker-stuffed eggs.

I hope you and your family enjoy a beautiful Easter Sunday tomorrow, celebrating the Resurrection of Our Lord. It doesn't get any better than that!

Wordless Wednesday -- Miso Cute

                                                                               Photos by my 10 year old, Anna

Reflections...on Down syndrome... and Family

Palm Sunday 2010

Easter 2009

Easter 2008

The kids griped about posing for a photo in the same place for three years in a row. But, I think it's cool to see how much they've changed.  In the bottom photo, Greta was just turning 3 and often refused to smile for photos. John Michael, still in that cuddly baby stage, just thought the swing rope was pretty cool.  Nic and Anna were in 5th and 3rd grades, and already big helpers with the younger two.

A year later, Greta is all smiles and John Michael has grown out of his baby stage and morphed into a cute, crawling towhead. Nic and Anna had matured as well.  This was the start of a fun year, really living and feeling comfortable in our new world of having a child with Down syndrome.  We've met so many great local and online families since a year ago around Easter.  To date, I have at least 140 "friends" on Facebook that have a child with Ds.  Most of whom I've not met, but feel a deep connection to.  It's so strange, but wonderful... this amazing Ds community.

Fast forward another year... to today. Greta is almost 5, counting to 100 and spelling a bunch of 3 letter words. John Michael is 28 months old and quite the toddler, walking, running, climbing up and the down the slide, kicking a ball, and is full of love and life. Anna and Nic continue to mature and become more and more responsible and independent.  We've immersed ourselves in the Ds world... being comfortable in our roles as advocates, talking to a couple schools about Ds and the r-word, facilitating a mom and dad sharing session through the local DSIA, meeting moms with newly diagnosed babies and welcoming them into our fold, helping a friend raise money to adopt a child from eastern Europe who also has Down syndrome.  The list goes on...

I asked Nic tonight if he ever thought about John Michael having Down syndrome. He said he doesn't notice. John Michael does so much and it's only when we compare him to a typical child at the same age that we actually notice his "delays." But to us, he continues to grow and reach milestones that we don't think of him as "delayed." It's only society that places those labels on him. I know we will continue to experience great things as a result of haivng John Michael in our lives. I still hear from parents that tell me their son or daughter was positively affected by my talk on Down syndrome and the r-word!  That's awesome!  You never know if you'll touch someone or if they'll just roll their eyes at you and think "whatever..."  Hopefully, we're reaching more of those who will be touched and in turn will touch others in a positive way.

Sensory Exploration for Speech and Fine-Motor Skills

This afternoon, John Michael's speech therapist brought over 4 bags of dried beans and filled a large bowl with small rubber cars, boats, trains, fire trucks and airplanes in various bright colors. The idea was to have him find the toys and make specific sounds associated with each. For example, fire truck was "wa-oooo wa-oooo", boat was "toot toot toot", car was "voom voom voom", train was "choo choo choo" and airplane was "ma ma ma ma..." The goal was to get him to string more than two syllables together in succession. Rather than just saying "choo choo" for train, she tried to get him to elongate his sounds and string more syllables (at least three) together.

He enjoyed the activity for about 15 minutes and then was "all done."

She left the beans for us to play with another time.  Feeling inspired, we took the bowl outside and worked on scooping. At first I gave John Michael some small measuring cups to scoop and transfer, but after a while, more ended up on the patio than I'd hoped. So, I came up with another idea... to put another container inside the bigger bowl and give him smaller tools to work with. A small medicine cup and a medicine spoon worked well for scooping and transferring into the smaller container and was a lot less messy. He stayed with this for almost 30 minutes.

Another fun sensory exploration tub to make is colorful rainbow rice. I've made colored rice before, but this blogger, Pink and Green Mama, shows how to make it much prettier (and cleaner) than mine. She suggests adding Purell to set the color.  I love her blog for art ideas. Most of the ideas I use for my older kids, but this one struck me as something easy we can do for our kiddos at this particular age. Of course, if your child still puts everything in their mouth, I'd hold off on this for now. I've also put colored rice in a clear water bottle and filled it with small things (pennies, dice, beads, etc) for a "Find It" type activity.

Milestones and More...

I know... I've been a serious blog slacker, just trying to get away with a few extra words on Wordless Wednesdays, which often turn out too "wordy". 

There's been so many good things going on lately, but I haven't had the time to sit and write.

Last week was a huge week, culminating in an exciting weekend.  Friday night was the Saving Sofia Crab Feed and Silent Auction for our friends Jennifer (Three's A Charm and Saving Sofia) and Hector, who are adopting beautiful 13 month old Sofia from an orphanage in the Ukraine.  Sofia has Down syndrome and needs her new mommy and daddy and brothers desperately.  She has no idea how fortunate she is that another family values her so much that they are willing to make a huge financial and emotional sacrifice to get her.  The crab feed and auction was a huge success.  Lisa of Genetically Enhanced, uber-organizer extraordinaire, posted some pictures of the evening (including my 28 week prego belly).  Thank goodness black is "slimming."  Ha ha!  It was a fantastic turnout and so great to see familiar faces from the local Ds community. 

Then the next day (last Saturday), we attended a family day with kid activities and parents' sharing sessions through our local Down Syndrome Information Alliance.  Doug and I were facilitators for the 0 to 3 year old parent sharing session and enjoyed chatting mostly with friends and a new couple we'd just met.

Fast forward to this week and I'm feeling very behind in blogland.

John Michael has met some great milestones in the past couple months.  His new thing is running, stomping his feet, and kicking a ball across the yard.  His gross-motor skills are awesome and his upper body strength are very good.  He can pull himself up on almost anything.  He loves to climb and has added climbing up the girls' bunk bed ladder to his list of accomplishments, much to my dismay!  A couple days ago, I heard SILENCE, which around here can mean trouble.  I checked the girls' room to find John Michael standing at the top rung... not sure where to go next.  Anna (big sis) now has the added burden of taking the ladder down every morning and tucking it away.  Better safe than sorry!

John Michael's communication skills are blossoming as well.  He is saying STOP (dah), GO (doh), UP (ub), DOWN (dow), IN (in), OUT (oud), MORE (moh) and signing, nodding his head for YES.  He finally says Moo for cow.  Not sure why that one was so hard.  His Speech Therapist is trying to get him to say two different syllables together, like BA-BY, MOM-MY, and DAD-DY for starters.  She also wants him to try to get the ending sounds of words like HO"T", PE"G", etc. and not just the beginning sounds.

He is quick to sign the words he knows and will often sign or make a sound if he sees something familiar to let me know he sees it.  If he hears an airplane or a siren, he touches his ear and makes sure I know he hears it and then I'll identify it for him.

I love this new explosion of communication.  It seems he's confident in his gross-motor to the point that it's now second nature and he can focus on the other stuff.  He still needs help with stairs and will either reach for my hand or crawl up and down as necessary.  He has stopped pulling hair, dumping the dog's water bowl, listens to instructions better, helps to clean up when asked, and lets me know how much he understands.  Occasionally he still hits, but this is less frequent as well.  I just love this little guy -- he never ceases to amaze me DAILY!

I took some video with my camera yesterday of John Michael kicking a ball, climbing up the slide and saying a few words.  For some reason, my Microsoft Movie Maker software didn't recognize the MP4 video files so I couldn't splice them together. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER69AEol4Ic  John Michael kicking a ball

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8L5e_gvtOo  John Michael around the yard and up the slide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1xf1sQZqFw  John Michael laughing and then going down the slide

Can someone tell me how to embed a YouTube video into my blog post?  I've always done it a different way... but it's not working.

Signs of Spring

Nothing says Spring like...

Short sleeve shirts and shorts

Sitting on a bench, soaking up the sun

A scoop of Thrifty ice cream

The sounds of happy children
Smiling faces, basking in the light

Bright blue skies

Birds flitting and singing in the trees

Bright green growth on trees and plants

Signs of Life and Resurrection,
Hope and Renewal

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day. 

Not being Irish, I won't be making corned beef since no one in my family likes it.  BUT, I am making a gorgeous green pistachio pudding cake for dessert.  Can't wait to try it.

Wordless Wednesday -- "That was easy"

This is how I found John Michael while unloading groceries from the car the other morning...  Sitting on my coffee table (first time I've seen him do that), watching Yo Gabba Gabba and repeatedly pushing on Nic's annoying "That was easy" red button from Staples that he'd traded for from a classmate.  As if to tell me, "that was easy" getting up on the table.  Hilarious!

4th Grade Letters -- These Kids "Got It"

Yesterday, I received a beautifully bound book of thank you letters from the 4th Grade class.  This was in response to the talk I gave on Down syndrome and the R word.  If you didn't see the presentation, click on my previous post from 3/3/10 to see what it's all about.

I am deeply moved by their comments.  It's clear to me that some of these kids really got the message.  Hopefully, when this class is in 8th grade and John Michael joins them at the school in Kindergarten, they will still have that message inside them and keep a watchful eye out for him.

Below is a sampling of some of the letters.  You can click to enlarge.  One of my favorite comments is from Lenny (#5).  He wishes he were like John Michael.  Jack (#2) says he will never say the R word.  Devin (#7) thought John Michael was the best part and getting a high five from him.  I LOVE it!

Be MOVED!