Awww.....

Tate is finally smiling on a regular basis. It's so great to see him respond to us! Josh and I have to work pretty hard to get a smile, but Avery can just sit by him and start talking and he'll give her a big grin. I have a feeling he's going to have Mommy wrapped around his little finger...


Bismarck was fun. The drive there was a bit snowy and slow for the first hour or so, but fine after that. Avery was so excited to stay in the hotel and swim with Daddy. I took Tate with me to my seminar for a few hours each day so Josh and Ave could swim. As you can see, they had a blast! My seminar was great too. It was on pediatric chiropractic; I learned some great new techniques that I can't wait to try!

Josh joked on the way back to Fargo that we could plan a day trip to see all of the "World's Biggest Animals" around here. The world's biggest sand crane (or something like that) is somewhere between Bismarck and Fargo, the buffalo in Jamestown, pelican in Pelican Rapids, prairie chicken in Rothsay, etc. I didn't realize how many there are around here. Here's another little glimpse into Josh's thoughts. On the way back to Moorhead on Sunday he said "If Theodore Roosevelt was alive today, what kind of car would he drive?" Ummm, first of all I don't have time to think about that kind of thing, second of all I don't really care! We're so different. He always manages to make me smile though! We ended up discussing it and deciding that he would drive a hybrid pickup.

Not much else is new. Tate's weight check is Thursday, so I'll update again then. Just wanted to get a few new pics up. This last one isn't a great one of Tate, but it shows how strong he's getting. Enjoy!

Baptism, etc.

Tate was baptized on Sunday at our church. We spent most of the weekend getting the house ready and food prepared to have everyone over after the church service. We also had Taylar overnight on Saturday night (Josh's seven year-old sister), so we had a busy weekend. We were all set to be at church half an hour early so we could have seats at the front of the church and feed Tate before the service. Well, Avery was crouching down by Tate's carseat as we were getting ready to leave the house and the heel of her shoe caught on her dress and tore bottom layer of the dress about halfway around. The bottom layer is tulle with ribbon of fabric at the bottom, so the rip was pretty obvious. I don't sew well, much less know where any of my sewing stuff is, but I knew we had to fix the dress before church. So, Josh found needles and I managed to find some thread that matched well enough. Avery stood on the kitchen table in her dress and I did a quick, not-so-neat repair job. We still made it to church early enough and if you didn't know that I'd had to fix her dress at the last minute, you wouldn't have noticed. The dress incident was the only wrinkle in our day. The ceremony and the lunch went well and Tate handled being passed around very well. He seemed pretty content to just lay on his blanket on the floor for a bit after everyone left though. I'll post some pictures of the big day either tonight or tomorrow.

We had another therapy session and meeting with the public health nurse yesterday. Teri (the nurse) hadn't seen Tate in about 6 weeks and was very surprised to see how much he'd grown! I asked her to weigh him to make sure he was still growing well. He weighed 9 lbs 4 ozs two weeks ago at his two month appointment, and has only gained 3.5 ozs since then. We had been trying to nurse without giving him a supplement afterwards, but we'll have to go back to that to make sure he's getting enough to eat. We're also bumping up his bottles (when he's not with me) to 5 ozs, then 6 ozs next week (he's at 4 ozs now). He has another weight check next Thursday so hopefully the extra food will pay off! With Avery, she would cry to let us know that she was hungry or that she wanted more. I'm not sure if Tate is just more content, but he doesn't really cry much. I can nurse him for thirty minutes and assume that he's gotten enough, because he doesn't cry to let me know that he's still hungry. Sometimes he'll nurse for less time (especially if he's tired) so we'll give him a 3 oz. supplement and he'll take the whole thing. I guess our trouble now is that we never know if he's still hungry. For now we'll just have to keep offering a bottle after every feeding. Life with Tate is a learning process for everyone.

Avery has been enjoying our spring weather. She loves to play in the backyard by herself. It's fully fenced, so it's nice to be able to just let her play without worrying that she'll run off. We still have to keep a pretty close eye on her though. I check on her every few minutes and about half of the times I check she's doing something she's not supposed to. Her favorites are splashing in the water that collects in her toys when in rains, throwing toys over our fence into the neighbors yard, trying to climb the fence into the neighbor's yard to get the toy she just threw over, and playing fetch with Jersey (except she throws her own toys, not Jersey's). As long as we keep checking on her, she does okay though. It's nice that she can be outside by herself though, because it's been too cold for Tate to go out and she doesn't understand that yet. So, she gets to go out but he and I can stay in and watch her through the patio door. Hopefully spring will be here to stay soon so that we can all spend time outside!

Josh got his new pickup this weekend, so he's been enjoying driving it around. I told him the neighbors will miss hearing his squeaky car pulling out of the driveway early every morning... he didn't agree with me. The pickup belonged to Josh's dad, so he is honored to have it.

The whole family is heading to Bismarck this weekend for a seminar. I'll take Tate with me to the seminar (I'm hoping he'll sleep most of the time) and Josh and Avery can hang out and swim at the hotel. Should be fun (for the two of them anyway :)

He CAN hear!

Tate had his third hearing test today and finally passed part of it! Even though I knew he could hear (based on his reaction when his big sister screams or dumps out a bucket of toys :), it was a relief to have it confirmed. The hearing test they did today is called an OAE. It's done by putting a sensor in his ear while he is either sleeping or calm. The sensor emits sound waves and then measures the waves the body sends back after processing the sound. Does that make sense? The long and short of it is that the test isn't the "raise your hand when you hear the beep" kind. Tate passed on his first try on his right ear, but only passed two of three levels on his left ear. Because the results are all or nothing, they said he didn't pass and will need to be tested again in a few weeks. The good news is that even though he didn't pass, we know he can hear. The next test is called an ABR and will give us an actual measure of what tones he can hear and how much hearing loss, if any, is present. From what I understand, the test is done by placing electrodes on his head that measure his brain waves and how he processes sound. Tate will have that test on May 6th so I'll be able to explain it better then.

Tate is getting much stronger! We've been working a lot on tummy time and what I call "baby sit ups". I'll sit with my legs inclined at about 45 degrees and lean his back on my legs. He'll grab my fingers, tense his arms and neck, and I'll pull him to a seated position. This doesn't sound difficult to those of you with kids without developmental delays, but it's a huge deal that Tate is getting strong enough to be able to do this. It's funny to watch him... no matter how crabby or upset he is, baby sit ups get one of his lopsided grins to come out. :) The focus for this week is making sure he's looking equally to his right and left sides; he's shown a preference for his right lately and we don't want that to become a habit. Other than that he's doing great!

Josh, Avery and I went to the circus this weekend with our friends Alissa and Marcus. Avery has been asking about the circus for months, literally. She was a bit overwhelmed when we got there; I think all of the noises and the crowd were a bit much for her. Once we settled into our seats and the circus started, she did pretty well. Her attention span still isn't very long, so the hour-long first half of the circus was a challenge. The funniest part of the day was her looking at me halfway through the first half (so 30 minutes through the two hour circus) and excitedly asking me "Mommy, do we get to go in Alissa's van again pretty soon?" The van rides to and from the circus were her favorite parts of the day. Even more exciting than the elephant ride. She did pretty well with the day though and had fun with everything. She ate an entire thing of cotton candy by herself!

Check out Avery's new owie. I'm not sure on the spelling of owie- never written it out before. Anyhow, one of the kids at daycare pushed her into the bookcase. We thought she just scraped her bottom lip, but later that night noticed that her top gums were still bleeding and that the portion of her gums overlying her top two front teeth were bruised and purple. She said it hurt to even brush her teeth. Poor kiddo! I did call the dentist, but was told that any damage that is done can't be repaired now and to just keep my eyes out for graying of her teeth. Hopefully that won't happen!

Tate's baptism is this weekend so we're busy getting the house ready for that. Eighteen people in our little rambler will be crowded, but it will be nice to have everyone together.

I think that's all for now. Have a great week!

One more thing- I changed the setting on the comments section so you no longer have to register in order to leave a comment. Feel free to post- we love to see who's visited the site!

Drum roll, please.....

We had Tate's two month appointment today and here are his stats: length 22 1/4 inches (25th %); weight 9 lbs. 4 ozs. (10th %), head circumference 15 inches (15th %). He's on the smaller side for all of his measurements, but that's to be expected because he started out so small. I believe there are different growth charts for kids with Down syndrome, but these are his percentages on the "typical child" growth charts.

The doctor we met with today was great. She has an older child with DS, so it was nice to talk to someone who can relate to what we're going through and who knows what unique things to monitor for Tate. We asked her for a referral to a pediatric opthalmologist to check for cataracts and any other eye issues that are common in people with DS. That appointment is May 9th... hopefully they won't find anything and we can rule out one more potential health complication.

We had his speech eval a week and a half ago. The speech therapist watched him take a bottle and suck on his pacifier and was impressed with his oral tone. For those of you who have seen him eat, you know that he drools a fair bit of milk out the bottom and corners of his mouth while he's eating. This is due to less than normal muscle tone. The ST said his tone is pretty good for a child with DS. She told us to keep doing the mouth exercises before feeding and that's about all we need to do speech-wise for now. She'll continue to monitor him and said that we'll likely need to add speech to his therapy program once he starts on solid foods. The main thing she would work on with him is closing his mouth around the spoon. His ability to do that will directly affect his ability to make sounds like ma, ba, and pa... hence the reason the ST is concerned with his eating.

We had his IFSP meeting last week too. An IFSP is essentially his therapy plan. All of the professionals who have observed him and will be working with him meet at our house and go over their findings and recommendations. Overall, his development is pretty normal so far. The two main things we'll be working on with him are increasing his oral tone and head control. We do tummy time several times every day and he's gotten a lot stronger with his head already.

On to lighter topics now! He had his first bath in the big boy tub a few weeks ago. Prior to that we had still been giving him sponge baths because of his temperature problems. Check out the picture- he wasn't quite sure what to make of the tub!

As for Avery, she's counting the days until the circus comes to town! She's been asking about it since February! We kept telling her that it wasn't until after Daddy's birthday (March 15th). Well, she woke up on the morning of the 16th and said "Daddy, it's after your birthday. Is it time for the circus now?" She never ceases to amaze us! Between the circus on Saturday morning and Josh's school carnival on Friday evening, she'll have a weekend full of fun (and too much sugar, I'm sure!).

Work is going well for both Josh and I. It's hard to believe the school year will be over in less than two months. Josh just bought his dad's old pickup so he's excited to get it and start working on his deck business again.

I think that's all I have for now. Have a great week!