Eunice Kennedy Shriver Day [Disability, Special Olympics]

Today is Eunice Kennedy Shriver Day (EKS Day).  My friend Jen tagged me to help spread the word about this day celebrating Mrs. Shriver and her contribution to the world through Special Olympics and so many other avenues.

I’m in a conference this weekend but I wanted to share a couple links for you to check out…

~~Jen has a post with more info and some great quotes here.

~~More good stuff from Michelle’s post at Big Blueberry Eyes.

~~SpecialOlympics.org has a wonderful spread for EKS Day with many neat links and articles.

Mommy report: Skill surprises

I’m a horrible blogger lately.  No excuses except life. 

BUT--

There’s a couple things I just don’t want to forget that have happened lately relating to Braska’s development.

• We’re just beginning work on potty training.  I won’t go into great detail because that’s not really me in an area like this.  Suffice it to say that both girls are loving the process, and even though they’ve been totally fine to go for quite some time now, especially Braska, they’re picking up pretty quickly on the routine.  We’re not in “full training mode” or anything, but the preliminary work is going well.
• When I drop Braska off at school in the morning, she is to take her backpack to her cubby and then we go wash her hands and find her nametag.  The other morning she took her backpack (which is actually too big for her to wear…causes balance issues even though it’s a mini-backpack) and carried it right to her cubby.  Leaned over and patted her name on the bottom of it and said, “Braska’s cubby.”  Nice!  We know that she can recognize her name, but it’s been reinforced a couple times lately and with others besides just me, which is fun.
• She also can do her washing-hands and nametag-finding procedures by herself, too.  I generally help her enough that I don’t realize what all she can do herself.  I stepped back one day, not intentionally, but she didn’t wait for me and continued her morning routine just fine!  She stepped up to the big sink (on her stool), turned on the water, reached for the soap (automatic motion sensor kind…waited appropriately), didn’t quite get it scrubbed all around before it got washed off, but oh well.  She rinsed and turned the water off.  Then she stepped down (with assistance, steps are still very hard) and walked to the paper towel dispenser, pulled the rope 3 times like they’re supposed to (counting loudly “one! two! three!”), tore off the towel, dried her hands and walked to the trash and said, “Throw away!”  She marched her tiny self over to the table and found the correct nametag and said, “Braska’s nametag” and handed it to me to put on her back.  I told Julie that morning that I clearly have been holding her back by helping so much each morning.  She doesn’t need so much!  Amazing!
• Her teacher also told me that she can identify her two friends’ names from her own and will say each of them correctly when shown the names.  (On her “small class” days, two days a week, the class is just two little boys and Braska.)  The teacher held up one name and Braska proclaimed clearly, “Dominic!”  Then they showed the next, and she said, “Braska!”  And then the third one she studied for just a sec and said, “Colter!”  Apparently this has happened more than once and in various name order. I had no idea… 
• We’re preparing for her IEP meeting at the end of October.  Not too much to prep for this time, though. Our team is good, she’s met many goals, and I think we’re in good shape for this next year.
• She’s now good with her letters—upper AND lower case--thanks to Preschool Prep.  She can do her numbers 1-10 on sight and in order.  She can count to 20 consistently.  And she’s got at least 8 shapes down as well.  She’s doing well matching items of the same color, but she still struggles with naming colors appropriately.  She always says *a* color, but it’s not always the *right* color.
• And NO SICKNESS YET!!!  (For Braska, that is. Kinlee’s had it, but Braska’s not caught anything! Woo Hoo!)
• Her feeding is picking up a little, though it’s very slow. She’s just starting to agree to chew on something once or twice, and only if it’s in a pouch (so that pieces aren’t coming out into her mouth, which bothers her greatly).  But with a Ritz cracker, she will bite a piece, sweep the large pieces out of her mouth with her tongue, but she is handling the little pieces and crumbs pretty well. This is a HUGE improvement.
• Still no drinking of any real quantity. No straw success yet.  But she can raise an open cup to her mouth and sometimes get a little.  We only put a tiny bit in or she ends up soaked!  But she’s becoming more cooperative with the work process.  Our feeding therapist/OT is GRRRRRRREAT!

That’s all for now… I’m exhausted from a night of both girls being up numerous times last night.  Not sure what was up, but they really ganged up on me last night.  Hoping for better sleep tonight!!

Braska: Party weekend pictures

I can’t believe I forgot to show you more pictures of my fun weekend with all my new friends!!

On Friday night we played at Jack’s grandma’s house.  We were having so much fun that we didn’t really want to stop to take pictures with our mommies.


We had neat shirts that we wore, too.  So everyone could tell that we were all together.  Me and Jack wear matching stuff sometimes, but we even let KiKi have one too!


Saturday morning we went to a different church than ours and played with some fun stuff.  First we played in a room with toys.  Russell was showing me how to put the cars on this one. They went really fast! 


Miss Julie played with Micah. He’s from a place far away that has a really icky football team called Packers.  I say NO Pack, Go Bears!!  But I still like Micah cause he’s super cute and really funny!


We also got to play on this BIG playground inside the church!  It was SOOOO fun!


See me up in there with Daddy?  I just love to climb, so I played in there the whole time!


Here’s a picture of us after we played.  Some of my friends had already gone home, but this is most of us.  I’m so glad they all got to come and play!
 

More pictures soon!

Buy shoes AND support DS!?! Perfect!

ShoeBuy.com has a great deal today!!  On Thursday, September 9th only, (TODAY!) ShoeBuy.com is donating to the National Down Syndrome Society for each pair of shoes purchased! 

AND—you can get a 15% discount if you use code INSHOES at checkout. 

What a deal!!  Go check out the options!

(Thanks to Cate for the tip!)

Braska: Parties and more parties

When you go someplace, or when people come to your house, and there’s lots of friends and fun stuff, it’s called a party.  And tomorrow and the next day AND the next day we’re going to have a bunch of parties!  There’s a bunch of my blog friends and Mommy’s mommy friends who are coming to our town to play together all weekend.  (I think there’s some daddies, too, but a few of them might like to go to ball games more than play with us.)

It’s going to be LOTS of fun!  And I’ll show you some pictures while we’re playing, and then we’ll have a whole bunch when it is all done.

Here’s what we’re all going to be wearing… shirts with this on them.

Don’t forget to come back and see pictures of all my friends!!  Have a happy weekend!  I know I will!