Good Times

I love the library.  I am pretty sure most people know that.  I believe all my tax dollars go to libraries.  That, and roads to get to libraries. :)  There are so many things that make libraries great: all the free books I could ever want to read, super friendly librarians, preschool story time, books on tape/CD, and on and on.  These days my very favorite part of the library is the Hold Shelf.  I can browse the card catalog from my home and magically all the books I want appear in envelopes with my name on them!  It's like Christmas opening that envelope and peeking inside to see what treasure awaits.  I love it!

Sometimes though, it works out that several books magically appear at the same time, and being highly desirable they cannot be renewed so they must be read, and read quickly.  Last week that happened.  Three books and a movie all converged in the pretty blue envelopes at the same time.  So this past week I have been reading.  And not blogging.  That's why the dry spell.  I am trying to make it up (and back dating to fill in the gap) so please be patient with me.  And if you're interested, the books were great:  I Will Carry You, Water for Elephants, and The Help.  All amazingly different, but good in their genre.  Historical fiction is my fave, and The Help is awesome.  I Will Carry You is not to be read outside the walls of one's own house because nearly every page brings heart wrenching tears.  Buckets, in my case.  And Elephants I liked for the historical part of it, and the love story was enjoyable too.  I probably won't see the movie though, at least until it comes out on DVD.  (You know movies always ruin books!  Except in the case of John Grisham books/movies, but that's another story...)

So now I will attempt to fill in this past week in real life, the world outside my fantasy book life...

Test Results

We have heard back about several of Justin's recent tests.   Here's the word:

1. The thyroid tests are basically the same.  TSH is high but T3 and T4 still in range, so no treatment required at this time.  Just more monitoring and back in four months.
2. The nutrition tests all came back great.  All of Justin's levels are well within range which means he is absorbing what he's eating and it's all sufficient.  Also, the CBC came back fine.  (Always checking for leukemia...)
3. The speech evaluation was the only disappointment.  Miss Sarah thought he would be close to the "normal" range, but instead his number was 70.  (Normal being 85-110 or so, I think.)  He does really well in receptive language, but the one part he didn't do as well was the picking out specific parts of things or differentiating between two similar things (like "Point to the girl's sock" or "Point to the wheel on the car")  The test requires very specific verbage and that is what flubbed him a bit.  Of course his expressive is still behind.  She has started working on some vowels with some sticks.  The are different thicknesses and when you bite them you can only make a specific sound (we're talking vowels mostly I think).  She showed us the "e" one today and it's like a plastic popsicle stick.  It's actually very funny looking, but we'll see how it works.

Also, we heard from the sleep center and Justin has an appointment for an evaluation next month.  Very glad about this!

Save the Date

The 2011 Buddy Walk will be December 3!

And we are moving to a new location - Minute Maid Park Diamond Lot!

Mark you calendars and plan to join us for our fourth Buddy Walk.  It will be a huge event, and even more special because it's Justin's first Buddy Walk as a real walker!

Tidbits

Some little tidbits that make our lives unique!

• My mom is almost finished with chemotherapy.  Only one more to go!  And her hair is beginning to grow back.  She has the softest little peach fuzz all over her head.
• The garbage men came to pick up our pile of Be the Church Day trash.  One of our other neighbors, who couldn't help on Sunday, sat outside for over two hours keeping watch for the garbage men to ensure our piles would be picked up.  When they said that we had piled it the wrong direction (up the driveway rather than down the street) he help me move the pile so they would get it on their second pass.  Some of those bags were very heavy and starting to rip.  And did I mention it rained yesterday??  He is amazing.  He's the one who cleaned up our yard after Hurricane Ike while we were still in the hospital after Justin's surgery.  We are so blessed!
• We have been trying to get in some extra speech therapy sessions and our amazing Miss Melissa got us in for two extra sessions over the next few weeks.
• We have been making doughnut bread pudding from all our extra doughnuts that our Doughnut Lady gives us.  We put them in a bag in the freezer until it's full and then we make up a batch.  When Travis told her what we've been doing she looked confused so this time when we made some we brought it to her.  She was so sweet and thankful so she gave us more doughnuts!  And kolaches!  My mom decided that we would never get ahead!
• We are reading the last of the Little House on the Prairie series (The First Four Years).  Travis loves them.  He always wants to read the "Laura and Mary" books.  The other night Randy turned on the video monitor and we listened to him saying all the names of the family:  "Pa...Ingalls....... Ma...Ingalls... Ca..rrie...Ingalls... Grace...Ingalls..."  We laughed!
• Justin just had his re-evaluation for speech therapy and without having scored it, Miss Sarah said that his receptive language was almost in range for his age!  She was really impressed.  I was just thinking about that the other night, that it really seems like Justin understands most everything we are saying.  And he will respond to the best of his ability.  We keep asking him how old he is and he puts up all his fingers on one hand because the finger isolation is too difficult for him.  But he really tries!  He lets us help him do his fingers right, and then he can't hold it so then he laughs!  Super cheesy!
• We are only a few short days from welcoming our new little nephew into the family!  Thatcher is due in 15 days and counting!
• We are getting another new family member this fall when my brother marries his girlfriend, Olivia.  We are excited to do some leaf peeping up in Pennsylvania for the October festivities.

Shark Attack

Justin got a new towel for his birthday and it's a shark!  He opens his mouth wide whenever we reach out to wrap him up in it.  So funny!!

Be the Church

Yesterday was our church's fourth annual "Be the Church" Day.  "Be the Church" is serving in our community and doing practically the things Jesus taught.  We did tons of different things this year!  There were even more opportunities to serve than last year.  A group of people did automotive repairs for our older members.  Several people packed boxes for our military and missionaries.  We served a meal at our Impact Inner City Church.  A group went to the local park and handed out bottles of water.  There were lots of people who took homemade cookies and passed them out at a nursing home.  Last year we had a great time weeding and trimming a bush at one of our homebound member's homes. 

This year we cleaned up our neighbor's yard.  They are an older couple and the wife was recently diagnosed with lung cancer.  They are consumed with doctor's appointments and chemotherapy and testing and there is no time for the spring yard clean up that is so necessary here in Houston.  This year was MUCH harder work than last year.  We were the crew leaders on this project and so we spent a lot of time beforehand preparing for everything that needed to be done.  Randy started out on the roof raking leaves off.  He was up there almost an hour!  You can see the pile he accumulated on the ground.

I spent the day running around getting supplies (we had to make a mulch run), keeping the kids on task, and keeping track of Justin.  Justin did not sleep well on Saturday night and so he was wandering aimless and needing lots of love.  Fortunately he was able to play in our backyard and Randy could keep an eye on him from the roof.  When I ran inside to print a coupon for the mulch, I found him playing with the water hose.  He had managed to get the last few drops of water out and he was trying to drink by putting his face into the tiny puddle the drips formed.  I promise I had given him a drink!  After not too long I fed him some lunch and he laid down for a little nap.  Love those baby monitors! 

We had several other people from our church help us and we started on the flower beds.  I got a blister after about a half hour of raking the deep piles of leaves from around all the bushes.  Travis had his hard hat on so he wouldn't get hit by any falling debris.  I am not sure if that was necessary, but he wore it the whole morning.   He made friends with one of the teenage girls who was there with her mom.  Her name is Alexis, but Travis called her Alaska!  One of our great finds was some flagstones that form a path to the bench you can see in the picture.  We found about 8-10 stones and everyone got excited when they found one!  I had forgotten they were there!

I was so busy that I didn't get near as many pictures as last year.  (That and my camera battery was almost dead.)  We worked for four solid hours and we didn't get a chance to trim their bushes.  We will try to get to that later this week. 

The whole block ended up getting in on the party.  Our neighbors from across the street came home and offered to help along with their children.  And our neighbors on the other side of the house we were cleaning up came out with their sons too.  The little ones helped hold the trash bags open for us to put the leaves into.  Justin enjoyed having the help!  He was covered in dirt by the time we were done.  I threw him in bed without a bath, but that was the first thing we did when he woke up!

I had no idea how many leaves were in their yard until the bags began to accumulate.  This is what we collected in our driveway...

And this was in the neighbor's driveway!!

I counted at least 50 bags plus three trash cans full.  It was amazing what we collected.  Plus we put out 30 bags of mulch.  And another neighbor planted some flowers in pots for them.  We only had 6 people from our church who could come, but God sent our other neighbors to help with the rest.  Fifteen of our neighbors came out to help our little group finish the enormous task!  Our neighbors in the house we served were very grateful and we were so happy to be able to help them in the small little area we could.   And we had a great time visiting with our neighbors and working together for something way beyond ourselves.

More Doctors

I said this was our doctor week, and we had two more appointments today.  Since Justin had a birthday we went to the pediatrician for a check up.  We talked a lot about gluten-free diets and Justin's eating/food absorption.  That's one thing I am a little concerned about.  Justin is never going to grow very tall or be very large.  He has our genes plus DS working against that, but I think he still should grow a little faster than he is growing now.  He eats a lot of food and I am not sure where it's all going!  The doctor agreed to do some blood work and check some of his vitamin levels to see how that is going.  Then we can check with a GI doctor is that is a problem.  She also mentioned about the celiac test.  She wanted to repeat it every two/three years.  I had always thought it was a one-time thing, you either had it or you didn't, but she said that it can develop later.  The only way to be sure is to test for a genetic disposition.  I thought that's what we were doing, but actually it's only a test for the antibodies that are formed from eating gluten.  So if you're on a gluten-free diet, the test won't do any good, because there won't be any antibodies!  And the genetic test is too expensive for insurance companies to cover.  Interesting information!  So we have to wait for the blood work to come back before the next step.

Then after therapy we went to the opthamologist.  Still has the myelinated nerve fibers in the left eye, but no change in his sight.  He still crosses his eyes some, and he is far sighted, like most young children.  She didn't recommend glasses yet, since his eye still seems to track and focus fine with the other eye covered.  She seemed a little more concerned about his vision, but without him being verbal enough to tell us he is having any trouble, she doesn't really feel it's necessary to address anything.  So, back in a year!