It’s hard to believe that the school and program year begins
again in just two short weeks. It’s been
a whirlwind of a summer. I’ve been
traveling a lot for work and it feels like (since getting home on Wednesday
night from the latest trip) I’m just getting my feet on the ground for summer
vacation.
The kids have also been travelers this summer. They journeyed to North Dakota to spend two
weeks with my mom. Clara reported there
were a lot of “stay in your pajamas days”, board game playing, play dates with
Aunt Emily, dance parties, badminton and swinging in the back yard and way more fun than we’ll
ever know! My dad was up in ND for a gig
and drove over to see us when I went to pick the kids up. I’m so thankful the
kids got to spend time with my family over the summer.
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| Practicing on his Amtryke! |
Other than that, Connor’s summer has been spent with Carrie,
doing therapies and breaking in a few new teenage babysitters. I’m trying not to get down about it, but we
haven’t seen a breakthrough like I was hoping for this summer. I REALLY wanted to see significant progress
in feeding or communication, but there really hasn’t been any. So we just keep plugging away and hoping that
one of these days he will turn a corner.
One exciting milestone is that Connor can now sit up from
lying on his back. He can do it no
problem if there is a little pillow behind him and has done it three times from
the ground all the way up. You can tell
he’s very proud of himself!
He is starting to enjoy riding his Amtryke and is keeping
his hands on the handlebars more. Carrie
took him to Vacation Bible School at our church and he was pushed up and down
the hallway on his little bike. I’m sure
he was quite adorable!
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| Doing some standing in his new shoes that go over his DAFO leg braces |
We continue with the transition to the Intermediate
Unit. I found out last week that Connor
was approved for services (shocking, I know).
Our first IEP meeting is in two weeks and we will make the plan of
action then with our case manager. None
of our therapists will be able to continue on with Connor and I’m quite nervous
about how he will handle this change.
The IU people are really encouraging us to put Connor in some kind
of preschool. While I would love for
Connor to socialize with other kids, I think it would be too many changes at once
to start him this fall and I don’t think his therapies would be most effective
in a classroom setting. We’ll see –
maybe we can work out a happy medium where he would go a couple of half days
each week.
Finally, for those of you who are local, we’d like to invite you to a
fundraiser the Minister of Music at our church is doing for the Joubert
Syndrome & Related Disorders Foundation.
Vince is performing a solo piano recital on Sunday, November 9 at 3:00 p.m. at Advent Lutheran Church in Harleysville, PA.
We’d love to have lots of folks there to hear Vince’s amazing music and
donate to JSRDF!
