I Love Down Syndrome!

It is really quite sickening how crazy I am about people with DS! Well before Addy ever entered our lives I was drawn to people with DS. I was always so excited when we got a referral for a new student that had DS. My boss would joke that they needed to be hidden from me because I would snatch them!

Since it is DOWN SYNDROME AWARENESS MONTH, I'm just going to talk about what I love about Down syndrome. First off, the physical characteristics. Those beautiful almond shaped eyes, the crooked little pinkies, the gap between the toes, their short stature, and their amazing smiles! I am always impressed with their low muscle tone and flexibility, watching Addy in her "taco" position cracks me up!

I love their souls, I know there's the ole wives tale that children with DS are always happy, those of us that live it know that that is not true. However, they are honest to goodness, good, honest, loving, and giving little beings! I don't think I really have ever witness people I know with DS that have people they don't like. I'm sure that happens often, I've just never seen it!

We are so blessed that our dream of Addy came true. There were days that I had almost given up on our dream, so glad I didn't have to! May 17, 2007 will forever be a memory for me, that's the day Robin Steele called to let me know that a 6 month old baby girl from up north was available for adoption. That was my girl!

My precious little one is turning 5 in 6 days!!! I'm working on a montage of her first five years and all her amazing little gifts she brings us everyday! We're having a party at Build a Bear for her, should be a lot of fun, I wish all of our bloggy friends could join us :( Sometimes I think we should do fundraisers for all of us to have annual meetings!

Never seen

I had never seen this precious picture of my baby girl until today. What a precious beauty she was just a few days old :) I cannot thank her birth parents enough for sharing some wonderful pix with us. I will be putting some into a montage for Addy's 5th birthday coming extremely soon!

Fall Friday Nights

We enjoy going to our school's football game on Friday nights :) Addy works the crowd and claps with the cheerleaders and the band. She always says "touchdown" with her little hands waving in the air. It's so much fun.

Last night I took some pix of another favorite girl of ours :)

I can't wait to see Addy out there playing with the band, dancing, tossing flags or whatever she chooses to do :)

No wonder

No wonder I feel so horrible. I was up at 3am hacking my lungs up with a bunch of lovely "gunk". I decided enough was enough and called MY doctor and was able to get in to see him today. Thank goodness I did, I have pneumonia. Hoping the massive amount of antibiotics and stronger cough medicine will help. I am still completely wiped out. Fortunately this weekend isn't too busy and I can rest again.

Addy's so stinkin smart. How I love this girl!

(temperature anyone?)

I can't decide what color Addy's eyes are. They aren't really brown or green. I guess they are hazel? What do you think?

Fail

I have totally failed at this year's 31 for 21. Being sick for a straight week has kicked my butt. I am hoping that I will be much better by the weekend and I can do more for Down syndrome awareness! For now here is Addy's school pic. Had to take a pic of the pic (no scanner and it's illegal)! They are pretty darn cute if I do say so myself :)

I tried to get a good pic of Addy's cute new glasses (she had her old ones on in her school pic) but she was being a little uncooperative, she's got a case of my gunk and isn't feeling very well. She isn't leaving these frames on any better than her other ones. She doesn't touch them at school but the second we are in the car they are off and she only wears them for short periods of time at home before she chucks them across the room :( it's so frustrating!

We had her IEP this morning, it went really well. She attends a reversed mainstream Pre-K class from 8:30-11:30 Monday through Thursday. She is pulled out one hour per week for physical therapy. She gets an hour of OT per week as well as two and a half hours of speech therapy weekly, outside of class. She attends music (her absolute FAVORITE), PE, library, art and computer lab each week as well. Addy mastered all of her IEP goals from last year with the exception of interaction with peers. She is finally doing that but not at the level we would like for her to:) Almost every goal has a hint of a compliance to it :) Addy performs on her terms. Makes us crazy! She hasn't identified colors for her teacher in class, however, Friday night at the football game she did. All of them :) She has trouble with shapes but she did identify three of them during speech :) She recites the entire alphabet (with the exception of Q), identifies the majority of the Uppercase letters and a handful of lowercase, rote counts to at least 20 (we can't understand her after 20) and counts one-to-one correspondence to about 6 but that's just when she absolutely feels like it. Academically she actually above average, which is awesome! If we could just get her steadier on her feet, potty trained and interacting with her peers more I think it will be a very successful year! It's all on her terms. We've got to find the trick to breaking this, she knows so much more than she lets people know. Fortunately, the entire staff sees that and knows how smart and capable she is!

Day 2

Well I still feel horrible so once again you just get a pic of my chromosomally enhanced princess :)

Down Syndrome Awareness Month!

I feel horrible so my spunk isn't here today so to start off this awesome month we'll just stick with Addy :) She's what it's all about anyway! Oh how I love my precious girl!