More Walking and Talking and Post Summer Update

I know it's been a while.

Dustin is doing great.

He is walking probably 75% of the time now while still doing his Mowgli-Jungle Book crawl. He is getting very proficient at stairs also and we still don't have the gates up. Do you think "Child Services" will come take Dustin away...? To encourage his walking we walk up and down the driveway, in the cul-de-sac, and on the sidelines during Zach's soccer games. His walking is off a bit and Dustin's physical therapist has indicated that he has Clinodactyly, which is a very minor thing correctable with orthotics, so these have been ordered - no big deal.

With speech therapy, his signing is improving also as he definitely has "all done" and he tells us when he does not want to eat anymore. For now the two primary signs are "all done" and "more" both of which are focused within the context of eating. With the speech therapist we are working on signs and making sounds and words like baby, daddy, and cookie, as B, D, G, and K sounds right now are the easiest for him. Every once in a while you can hear him say "baby" or "gobble".

No update on vision therapy as he won't really start wearing glasses for long periods of time until he makes the connection between walking and seeing more clearly where he is walking. This may take a bit. He does continue to have vision therapy with a focus on tasks that require him to identify colors and things.

With feeding therapy, Dustin is beginning to make use of his growing set of teeth and his pincher grasp is getting somewhat better - overall he still needs to be hand fed...no big deal.

No particular update on developmental therapy - this continues...and we will be adding occupational therapy which is focused on "meaningful tasks". Not sure exactly how this differs from developmental therapy...we'll see.

Of note with this update is that we told Zach for the first time that his brother has DS. He said OK...of course Zach does not fully grasp what this is for multiple reasons , one of which is that the challenges Dustin face are less visible to Zach at this time.

Zach started 2nd grade which is of course helpful to Lisa (back in school)! So far so good one month in...Zach had a very busy summer with camps, including science camp! Zach is currently playing soccer and will start swimming right after that.

We had a great summer going to the pool, playing tennis (Rob), biking (Zach and Rob), going to Disneyworld (all) and the Blue Ridge Mountains (all).

Check out recent pictures here, here, and here.

Also, check out this really inspirational article about a dad and his 19 year old daughter Gillian who has DS.

Prayer Request: Please pray for an upcoming surgery that Dustin has to have to cap some teeth that are coming in decayed. They will have to put him under for this.

Thanks and love,
Rob and Lisa