Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Things I'm Thankful For...

-Noah is sitting!!
-Zeze is walking!!
-Zeze is eating with a spoon!!
-Kai is signing about 1/3 of the letters of the alphabet and can recognize ~90% of the letters when I sign them!!
-Kai is signing partial sentences "Want more food please." "Want socks and shoes please" etc.
-Noah signed "more eat" today for the first time! It was only last week that he signed "more" for the first time.
-Zeze can sign Ball, Eat, More, Cat, Water, All Done, Mine, and an occasional Banana. He is also saying, Dada, Mama, Cat, Ball, Nap, Juice and Get.
(Oh, we're all learning sign language since often kids with Down Syndrome take a long time to learn to speak even though they can sign much earlier. Zeze and Kai are absorbing the Signing Time videos like sponges which is a surprising bonus!)
-Kai is both spelling and reading many words like, dog, cat, mom, dad, ball, water, truck, cake, milk, malakai, pot, hat, car, book, spell, stop, go, apple, etc. It's amazing. He just keeps asking me to spell different words or to sign/spell them.
-Kai is getting more comfortable at school and for the first time has initiated conversation with his teacher and a friend...he talks a lot at home, but at school he'll only answer questions and not initiate anything.

Last week I was so discouraged because we'd all been in the same place for months. I thought that Noah would never learn to sit by himself and that Zeze would never stop crawling and Kai would never develop at school etc. Turns out we just need a week or two of being healthy and not being in the hospital for us all to flourish!

This is Noah SITTING by himself playing the piano!!

3 comments:

Heather Vitella said...

I know what you mean about progress. I was just reading back on my baby journals from when the kids were in their first year. It seemed like David was never going to crawl. And then finally, when he turned one, he started crawling! Sometimes it seems like progress will never come - and then it just does!

Cute photo of Noah!!!

ShirleyNewLife said...

Your graditude list is great!!!

After all your hard work with the boys, it's nice to recognize their progress. While it seems like "nothing" is happening, the reality is that their little bodies are getting ready for the next step.

Christy said...

Yea!! What an exciting couple of weeks around your house. Seriously, spelling? That is AMAZING!!! We did the Signing Time videos w/ Max when his speech was so delayed. We all enjoyed them, too.