Final Post

I'm sure no one reads this anymore, but I feel like I need to make one last post for my own closure. But first are some pictures from our recent trip to Florida. This was Nathan and Logan's first trip to the beach and they both loved it as you can see! I was so proud of Nathan for walking through the water, playing in the sand, and just in general, things I wasn't sure if he would ever enjoy. How amazing it was to see the happiness in their eyes and to feel like I was experiencing those things for the first time again!

Back to the point of the blog...Nathan was released from First Steps before his third birthday and then released from Indiana State's speech therapy program one week into the spring semester. He scored well above age level on receptive, expressive and total language and there was nothing more they could do for him. It was so wonderful to hear that he was "normal" and even above average, and no longer needs therapy to keep up with kids his age. So gone are the days of constant therapy, diets, supplements, or any of the other things that took up so much of his young life. He will begin preschool in August and hopefully be able to just enjoy his childhood. We feel so blessed by this and realize every day how fortunate we are to listen to his sweet voice. Thank you to anyone who has followed our journey... the advice and support we received were priceless and I am so grateful to all of our family, friends and therapists. Love to all, Alison

So my baby boy is now a 3 year old! Not much new to report, but just wanted to share a couple of pictures and express my thankfulness for our little blessing. I love you sweet baby!

Happy Halloween!

Our Halloween was so sweet this year and not just from all the candy :) Last year I had a really difficult time when we went Trick or Treating at a friend's house and her 20 month old ran to the door yelling "Happy Halloween!" and Nathan (who was two weeks shy of 2 years old) couldn't even say 'mama'. What a different kid we have this year! I know it's been a while since I posted, so I'll try to remember as much as I can from the past few months.

First, Nathan graduated from First Steps. We thought he would be in the program until he aged out at 3, but after his final evaluation we were told he was no longer eligible for services. What a great feeling that was! He is still in the program at Indiana State where he receives therapy twice a week and we have been incredibly fortunate to have another wonderful student therapist. So anyway, during his last eval (in August/September) he scored at 2 years 11 months in expressive language and 4 years 11 months in receptive language! He was also tested for the developmental preschool a few weeks ago and we just received word that he is not eligible for services. I am beyond excited, but it is still difficult to believe when last year we were just praying he would be ready for mainstream kindergarten when he turned 5. What a blessing! We are still working on slowing down his speech and he still has errors and omissions, but nothing we can't fix.

On another front, we are surviving our second month of the "why" game. Every other word out of his mouth is "Why? Why, mommy? Why?" I told myself when he wasn't talking yet that if he would ever learn to speak, I would answer every question he ever had. But let me tell you, it is hard! It definitely keeps me in check though, and I don't take anything he says for granted. Even when he says the same thing 30 times in a row :)

Oh, and he has now decided that he's ready to be called Nate. The other day he says "Mom (I'm mom most of the time now too), I am big boy Nate and I will sleep in my bed by myself tonight." which of course lasted all of 30 seconds before he yelled at me to get in bed with him :) But I wasn't quite ready for the Nate thing yet. I knew it would come at some point, but I thought that time would be around 10, not 3. So for now I am still calling him Nathan and trying to hang on to my baby as long as I can.

And speaking of babies (or not so much), Logan has such a huge vocabulary, I can't keep track of his words. He can pretty much repeat anything you say and occasionally can string two words together. It's so amazing to see his speech develop and is such a relief.

So that's all I have for today. I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween!

Future President

With the heat that we've had lately, I've been trying to find fun indoor places to take the kids. We've done the mall playland, Children's Museum, libraries and Toys R Us. Someone suggested Books-a-million since they have a Thomas table so I decided to check it out. Little did I know that they have quite the selection of Thomas stuff for sale as well.

If you know Nathan at all, you know that he absolutely loves trains. He has a train table, of course and what seems like every Thomas train known to mankind. Nathan is such a great kid- no sign of the terrible two's, never asks for much and is great with sharing his toys. But when it comes to trains all bets are off! He has a list as long as his arm of all the trains he would like to have and why he wants each one. So when we get to the book store, his train-dar goes off and he immediately heads to the Thomas stuff. Wouldn't you know they have trains there that aren't sold at Toys R Us (we already have most of those). So he finds "Hank" who has a cow catcher (? not sure where this one came from) on the front and starts in on all the reasons he needs to add Hank to his collection. He's not whining, not begging, but telling me matter-of-factly why he needs this train. Meanwhile the lady standing next to us is cracking up and when I looked over at her she told me that he will most definitely be elected President someday. It cracked me up and I thought about how far he has come in the last seven months. And then I bought Hank.

Nathan's Favorites

One thing Nathan has had trouble with in the past is answering questions. He is to the point that he can say pretty much anything that's on his mind, however if you ask him something it's difficult for him to process and come up with an answer. So I've really been drilling him with questions lately and he has made a lot of progress. Last night as we were laying in bed, I decided make a list of all of his favorite things. He answered all of my questions very quickly and I was both proud and humored by his answers :)

Favorite food: meat and muffins
Favorite color: pink (yes, this has long been his favorite color)
Favorite number: 6
Favorite letter: B
Favorite animal: monkey
Favorite shape: hexagon (seriously?)
Favorite train: Gordon
Favorite song: ABC song (followed by a full version of the song)
Favorite person: mamaw and papaw
Favorite friend to play with: Colin
Favorite tv friend: Uniqua (Backyardigans)
Favorite book: Henry and the Elephant

So there you have it. All of Nathan's favorite things. :)

Longest Sentence Ever!

Yes, I know. Two posts in a week, what's up with that?? Anyway, we had such a wonderful Fourth of July weekend and I just wanted to share some highlights!

First, I took the boys to the Frontier Day parade downtown. Nathan had a blast and I was even able to let him out of the stroller to pick up candy (although he couldn't have any with his diet). We then walked to the Farmer's Market and back to the Children's Museum. We've been doing that every Saturday this summer and I've noticed such a difference already in his playing/sharing skills. That night, we did fireworks at our house. With Nathan's sensory issues, we weren't sure how he would do, so we bought REALLY small fountain-type fireworks. He loved it! He was so excited and kept squealing and screaming "Hallelujah!" (I think my mom taught him that one, lol!) Logan cried every time we set one off, so he and Bill went inside to watch from the living room window. Apparently Nathan decided that was the cool place to be because he looked up at them and said, "Watch fireworks inside" and proceded to go inside and close the garage door on me, my mom and dad and all of our chairs and fireworks! So we scrambled to get everything out of the way and had quite a laugh over that one.

Not much later, Bill had put Logan to sleep and we broke out the glow-in-the-dark necklaces. I was trying to clean things up and Nathan came to me laughing and said, "Nathan put necklace on Logan's head and wake Logan up!" I was so excited by how many words he had strung together, even if I was less than excited about him waking up his brother :)

Sunday evening I took Nathan to the park and decided to give the downtown fireworks a shot. I was nervous they would be too much for him, but we watched from City Hall and he loved it! He did get bored, which was fine as we left before they were over and beat the traffic.

So we had a great holiday weekend and hope you did as well. Lastly, I just wanted to say again how thankful we are for the progress Nathan has made. It was such a short time ago that we didn't know if we would ever hear him speak and I hope to never take anything he says for granted. After hanging out with a friend this weekend who has a non-verbal child it just reminds me to continually thank the Lord for our sweet baby's voice.

We're still here!

Yep, I'm seriously terrible at this blog thing (as my Uncle Ken so nicely pointed out :)). However tonight I happen to be down a kid as Nathan is staying with mamaw and papaw so I actually have a bit of time to update.

I've also added a couple of random pictures just for fun!

Nathan is continuing to make such tremendous progress. He is now speaking in 4,5 and 6 word phrases and is actually using a few sentences. We are really working on proper pronouns and function words (and, the, etc.) and he is beginning to use them properly. His vocabulary is unbelievable and according to his therapists is at or above age level. He's also beginning to speak more clearly, although I'm not sure how much an outsider would really understand. Oh, and a huge milestone is that he can now sing the ABC song! He can also count to 20 and sing along to so many different songs on tv or cd. We took a video of him singing the ABC's and Humpty Dumpty that I need to get on here for you all to see.

From a medical front, Nathan has undergone multiple tests to get to the root of his gut issues. He had 8 vials of blood drawn, 7 stool samples and 2 urine samples and the result is that he is not digesting disaccharides. So for the past three weeks he has been on a very strict diet with no sucrose or lactose. Basically we have had to cut out most sugar and dairy, which isn't the easiest thing to do with a two year old. It's not easy on the parents or grandparents either since we can't eat anything in front of him! The results have been pretty amazing however as he has had normal poop, far fewer stomach aches and no more vomiting! So we'll keep going down this path for a few months and then hopefully we'll be able to start adding some things back into his diet.

So there's the latest update. He's talking extremely well, feeling pretty good and funnier than ever. Most of you probably saw this on facebook, but the other night we were sorting laundry and I threw one of his shirts across the room into a clothes basket. He immediately said, "No throwing mommy. Bad boy! Go timeout now!" and proceeded to take my hand and walk me to the timeout chair. He then told me how throwing was a bad boy and counted to three and said "Get up!" The entire time I was thinking how I shouldn't let him think he is in charge but at the same time I was finding so much humor in the situation, I couldn't really stop him.

He has also just started saying "I love you" which melts my heart. Sometimes when I tell him I love him he says "to moon and back". He is such a sweet boy and is SO good to his brother even when he's being typical Logan. Now that he's walking he thinks he can do everything Nathan can do, but really all he does is destroy everything Nathan is doing. :)

Lastly, I wanted to address a comment that was left on the last post. I apologize, as I just now saw it (serious blog slacker here). Anyway, this is the dosage recommended by those who are doing studies on fish oil and apraxia and we have also cleared it with his doctor. If you have any concerns about the proper dosage for your child, I would just address it with the doctor and they should lead you in the right direction. Hope that helps! Good night everyone (if anyone still reads this!) and God Bless :)