An Update

You are right, Allie. It's been a long time since I talked about what's going on with us. My excuse is we've had a fun and busy summer. When I actually have time to blog, I'm usually trying desperately to make sense of the hundreds of pics we've taken lately and get them posted for those that we've played with to see.


The important thing is that we are all healthy and thriving for the most part. We are blessed in so many ways, far beyond what we deserve.

For example: Sweety is suddenly growing like a weed! If you remember last year, he wasn't growing at all (height or weight). From 3months old to 14 months old Sweety's gained height and growth were almost immeasurable. He dropped from the 65th percentile to -17th at his lowest. I've never heard of a child wearing out 3-6month clothing before, but Sweety did. Things were getting scarier and scarier, and then suddenly, for no medically explainable reason, he kicked it into high gear!

Thankfully, Sweety has continued to make up for lost time. At his two-year check-up last month his height measured in the 25th percentile! Smarty's never even made it that far! His waistline is tiny, as his weight struggles to keep pace, but he's not losing position in that area. It seams reasonable that once his body stops focusing so much on length, his girth will catch up.

After the data came in, our flabbergasted pediatrician furrowed her brow at me and asked, "What on earth are you doing?"

I was too giddy to think strait but stammered out something like, "We pray hard. A lot." Her only advise after that was to not stop.

Sweety is very interested in animals, colors, shapes, and body parts these days. Like his brother, his mind is steal trap, soaking up and retaining everything we can possibly poor into it.

He's talking more and more too. We only understand about half of what he says, but we're improving. Mostly we're just thrilled to hear his happy babbling.Smarty continues to catch up his speech skills too. Making about 9 months of progress every 6 months. This summer he's mastered the sound that 'y' makes in words like 'yellow' and 'your,' thanks to steady coaching from Grandma Reeder. He's also made real progress with letter 'l' and voiced 'th' as in 'that' and 'those.'

He is a constant stream of chatter now. His days of silence are so far behind us that it's hard to believe we ever depended on sign language to communicate.

He's reading well, requiring less and less context to figure things out. And he's starting to figure out basic math concepts too. I promise we aren't pushing him in these areas. He still has another year of pre-school before he's off to Kindergarten, he's just figuring things out for himself.

It's becoming obvious that controlling a pencil/pen and writing will be a big hurtle for Smarty to jump. His apraxia makes it difficult for his muscles to get it together. So that's the area we try to refocus him in. We attempt to color or do dot-to-dot kind of stuff every day. Hopefully we'll have him a little ahead of the game when he starts Kindergarten in a year. Then he'll be able to focus on adjusting to that change and his writing can coast a little bit.

Ben and I will both be heading back to school this fall. I'm excited to take another editing class. I really enjoy editing but get plenty of flack for it. I promise, studying editing it does not make me critical of everyone's writing and speaking abilities! I'm as bad as anyone, I'm just learning how to re-state things so they flow better.

I'm also taking my 3rd semester of ASL, which makes me nervous. It's been a full year since I was last in a sign language class, and foreign languages do not come easily to me! Wish me luck, people!

Ben is taking his last chemistry class and a customer service class to finish up his Associate's degree in Automotive Technology. After that he's considering applying to U of U to earn his Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering.

He's not really looking for a career change. He's very happy mechanicing for UPS. However, his job depends solely on his physical abilities which feels a little risky. Accidents and aging happen, so Ben wants to have another option on the back burner, just in case.

So there you have it. That's where we're all at. Life is good. We're the luckiest people we know. Here's hoping you can all say the same!