Catch up time - November and December

Wow - where did November and December go. Apologies in advance for the long blog and photo dump...I'm sure you're not busy getting ready for Christmas or anything. We started early November with a quick trip to Disney with Princess. Jimmo is not quite ready to take on Disney, but we look forward to this adventure some day. Nana and Uncle Muscles watched Jimmo while we were gone and did very well taking him to school and caring for him. Here is a short photo album of our trip. (Click on the picture of Tigger to see the album)

Disney 2008

Thanksgiving came quickly. This holiday, like most, is one of our favorites. Our family has so much to be thankful for and we enjoy focusing a holiday on being thankful for every blessing we've been given. We have been hosting for over 5 years now and truly enjoy spending this time with family and friends. We had a great time with our friends the D's and missed our other friends the E's very much. Here are a few shots of the men partaking in the cooking traditions and the girls before bedtime. And of course my friend K and I did the Black Friday shopping experience the next morning. We decided to be reasonable and meet at 6AM. Lots of fun, oh and great deals.

And this brings us to December. First we started off with celebrating our little girls birthday. We're still in denial that she's actually 5. She wanted to have a Gingerbread party - and WOW was that a lot of sugar! Imagine five little girls making Gingerbread houses covered in every piece of candy imaginable. Both sets of Grandparents were down for the first time ever, which was quite exciting for her. And of course Uncle Muscles came, now that he is local. She had a wonderful time and is already making requests for next year. Hmmm who does she take after? (Click on the below picture to see all the pictures)

5th Birthday

Gran Gran and PaPa were down from New York for most of December. This was a fun treat to share our Christmas traditions with them. This past weekend we had both of husband's sisters and their families down to celebrate Christmas. It was a cousins dream - they played and played.

Lunch at Five Guys

Singing Happy Birthday Baby Jesus - all the cousins

A trip to Mount Vernon to see it at Christmas time

Jimmo had his school holiday party. Since I last wrote, two new children have joined his class. Both children are verbal, which is great for Jimmo to have the example. So now there are 5 children to 1 teacher and 2 aides. Still amazing ratios. He continues to love school. In the morning as soon as I say, "it's time to go to school", he goes right to the garage door with excitement. His smile is from ear to ear at the Kiss & Ride drop off area where the teachers greet him. Here are a few shots from his Christmas party.

Decorating cookies (gluten casein free of course) but Jimmo was more interested in eating them. This is one of his classmates and his speech therapist and her daughter.

Dad helping Jimmo make a shaker plate. Here they are stamping it for decoration Santa came for a quick visit
Working on a door hanger with Mom

And finally - the best part - party food!

So we've had a busy season but we're looking forward to Christmas Day. Jimmo is fighting a cold and fever right now, but we should hopefully, with a little prayer, be all better for Christmas!

May the blessings of Christmas remain in your heart all year long.

Merry Christmas!

It's the most wonderful time....of the year

Yes folks, as most of you know I'm a HUGE Halloween fan. So I'm a bit late on this posting but we're down with an ear infection and strep on the little man so this is how it goes :0) Tis the season as my pediatrician said to me today. But back to Halloween......We started off our morning with a wonderful Halloween treat - Candy Corn. God Bless the creators of this wonderful thing! Jimmo will have to wait a few years to enjoy this treat but he had some yummy waffles instead!

Miss Terrific Teacher invited Princess and I for the Harvest Party. I was tasked with bringing the supplies for GFCF rice krispie treats. Jimmo was a bit tired for the party but he managed to participate in helping assemble the treats together with the teacher. and then quickly went back to his own business of reading his book.
And finally it's off to trick or treating. Jimmo's costume has been set for awhile - he was going to be a monkey. However Princess must have changed her mind about 20 different times from August till October 1st. Hubby gave her a deadline to bring an end to this wishy washy nonsense. Most 4.5 year old girls are princesses/fairies or something of that nature. Not this girl - she wanted to be a skunk. Yes a stinky skunk. It mostly has to do with an obsession she has for tails. And she was very excited that both her and brother Jimmo would have tails. So here are a few shots of our zoo?? Pre and post make up. Jimmo was really not into the in and out of the wagon scenario. Perhaps next year we'll have to change up our strategy a bit.

Jimmo taking a ride in his Halloween carriage.

Long night - time for bed!

Continued Success at School

You might recall on Week 2 of school, I explained the communication system Jimmo is using at both school and home. PECS, Picture Exchange Communication System, has been working quite well for him and each week he has been successfully graduating to the next phase. Without going into too much detail with the phases, below is a video from this afternoon as Mrs. Terrific Teacher is working on some new trials with him. You can see the two other sweet boys in his classroom on the video and one of the two wonderful classroom aides. And so you're not confused with the voices you hear, one of little guys is using his talking device for his communication system which you'll hear in the background.

In this video, Little Man does two out of three successful trials trying to ask for his rice cake sandwich. I know that sounds so delicious doesn't it? But truly it's such a perfect lunch for him. The crunch of the rice cake satisfies his oral needs and is conveniently gluten free and the peanut butter is good protein. Jelly is always a bonus isn't it? Happy Friday Everyone!

Little Man Turns 3 - Happy Birthday!

Little man loves when people sing to him, so we basically sang Happy Birthday all day long. Jimmo woke up well rested and ready to go to school.

He had a great day at school and Princess and I came at the end of the day with cupcakes for the kiddos and teachers. This was my first baking experience with GFCF, interesting to say the least but you can see he enjoyed his cupcake. The actual cupcake was fine but the icing was slightly greasy in my opinion.We visited his favorite park since it was such a nice day. We were the only one's there so we took advantage and stayed till we could play no more.On Saturday we had our family celebration. Each year we celebrate Jimmo's birthday at this great farm out in the country. It takes almost an hour to get there, but we (especially me) love it and we look forward to it every year. They have farm animals, pig races, a cow train, pumpkin trampoline, tons of slides and an apple dumpling to just die for. But the highlight this year was their giant pumpkin trampoline. Little man dragged us back three times to go on this. Here's a great video of how much he enjoys it. Do you see a trampoline in our future?

And a few more pictures to enjoy....



And later that night we had one of little man's favorite meals - Chili. He loves somewhat spicy foods like a lot of kiddos with Hypotonia because it wakes up their little mouths. The 2nd GFCF baked good - birthday cake - was little to be desired but we all attempted to eat it. We'll get it right for his 4th birthday. Happy Birthday Little Man!

Fragile X makes it on NPR

This morning, Fragile X Syndrome made the news again. NPR did a great special with FRAXA on their upcoming treatments and the history of how FRAXA came about.

It's only 7 minutes long and can be found by clicking HERE.

News clip from Denver

I came across this video clip from my listserv today and thought it was helpful to share. A local station out of Denver did a piece on a family with a 15 year old Fragile X boy. It's always encouraging for Hubby and I to see older Fragile X kids talking and interacting with adults. The only concern we had about this piece is that we don't think scientists would agree that the "cure" is on the doorstep, as the mother stated, but we continue to pray for it.

http://www.kwgn.com/pages/video/?clipId=2912790&topVideoCatNo=undefined&c=&autoStart=true&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=

Week 2 of School

Half way thru week 2 of school and Jimmo is going strong. As for Momma...still depends on the day. Mrs. Teacher and the aides have been wonderful. We had our first "Back to School" night this week, which was a great opportunity to chat with Mrs. Teacher and get to know her and how Little Man did his first week. He continues to be excited each morning when I get him out of the car and I have to tackle him to get my goodbye kiss in. The GFCF diet is going well. I definitely think his excema was tied to a dairy allergy. I have found the diet to be sometimes challenging for family dinners. Between the countless number of blogs out there and the library, we're slowly adjusting. It's a much healthier lifestyle so it's good for everyone. The juicing is going well. I've been trying to talk hubby into the Vita-Mix (thanks RF!). This "machine" is amazing and I think it might actually grind up a chouch if I tried. Princess has been testing out some of my concoctions and liking.....some.

When working on communication with Jimmo, we've collectively decided to follow the PECS program. We implemented it this past early spring and it's been going well for him. Essentially we've taken a picture of every toy in our house and one of all the food that he eats and we ask him to choose between 2 or 3 each time he wants something. For example, we have a picture of his toothbrush in the bathroom and he hands me the picture after he sits in his chair to let me know he's ready to brush his teeth. Or at breakfast, I show him a picture of a sliced banana and a picture of his cereal and he takes the picture from me that he wants to eat and hands it to me. Around mid-summer we worked on putting these pictures on felt boards with velcro and having him take them off the board and hand them to us. It's been a struggle over the summer with the boards and he usually pushes them away. He would rather take them from your hand. Today Mrs. Teacher was doing Discrimination trials with him and she devised a way (putting it on a slant) to use the board with success. Below is a video that Mrs. Teacher gave me this afternoon (isn't she the best) that shows him discriminating between a picture of the toy that he wants and a blank card - AND MOST IMPORTANT doing these trials ON the board. And Mrs. Teacher mentioned she started taping after doing it like 20 times and he was still successful.

Great job Little Man and thanks Mrs. Teacher for letting us share our achievements with our family and friends.