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!

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!

I’ve come a long way, baby

I posted this on the iVillage DS board yesterday, and though it uses pictures I’ve posted recently here and on Braska’s blog, I thought I’d repost it here. Because sometimes I forget just how blessed I am…

Lately, my attitude-filled toddler is not wanting to cooperate with the dozens of pictures that I take every day.  So I get a lot of unusable pictures.  BUT her dad captured one on Sunday that made me stop and really realize how far we've come...

Just over 44 months ago, Braska was born, we were shocked, I went into meltdown, and all rational thought left my brain, apparently.  Even though I'd had experience with a variety of teens and adults with disabilities, including DS, I had a picture in my head of what my little girl would be like, and it wasn't pretty. It was grim, and boring, and unfun, and sad.

But wow...if I'd only been able to get a glimpse of THIS on that cold day in November...

I thought all my dreams of cute bows and girly clothes were lost. She wouldn't be pretty, she would just "look funny," I figured.  I figured she would be a sweet baby, but I never expected such a FUN little girl! 

I can't believe I thought she'd never giggle and play!  I can't believe I thought she would be a little bump in the corner who wouldn't interact with people.  If only I could have seen her with her little sister as they wrestle on the floor!

I thought we would never be able to chat about silly things, that she wouldn’t be able to talk clearly, that people would want to shy away from her. 

But this morning she has run around the house with her sister, giggling and saying, “So funny! KiKi silly!” over and over. She came up to me while I was typing this to say, “Hi Mommy!” as clear as anyone could say it, and then followed the hug I gave her with “I love you” as she turned to go back to play.  She’s a magnet in stores and public places and people just seem drawn to come over and chat with her.  She is always happy to oblige.

I feared she wouldn’t learn. But we just finished doing her morning practice for her letters, numbers, shapes, and colors.   She got every single letter in the alphabet right in the random flashcards. Twice through.  And she’s 3. And she has Down syndrome. But who cares?!?  She matched her colors and shapes like she was asked to do. She can name her shapes, and she is getting better with her colors.

She has amazed us over and over, but really all the change and growth has been in ME, for sure.  We went from fear over the diagnosis to actually hoping that our second one would have DS when we found out I was pregnant.  Crazy, I know!  (We kept KiKi even though she was all typical and everything. :o)  Ha!)

Not every moment is a party, but they are all so much better than I allowed myself to imagine!

Rock On!! You know you want to!

Check this out... like actually check it out, not skim right by. Just peek in there and see how cool a guy can be!

Andrew, an 18-year-old drummer with Down syndrome, sells t-shirts with his Rock On! logo on them to make money to go to college. Here's the link to his site. It's still new and in progress, but I just love the logo, and there will be one of these in our home in some form very soon. Andrew's mom posted on the iVillage DS board, and I linked over and checked him out.

I just love stories like this... and I hope that we can all Rock On!

Mouse races

Last night it was out on the town for me. I was invited to go to a mouse race fundraiser by Adrienne. She's the leader of our local DS group in St. Charles County and I knew of her on DownSyn actually even before we moved here. So last night I met her for the first time, and then met her four friends who also came to the event. And all these fine ladies have kids with DS. Handy, eh? And I was the youngest....that's a new position for me, for sure.

This is Carolyn, Becky, Allison, Adrienne, and Jane. (Not sure of spellings...sorry if I got any wrong!) Pardon the grainy pics, Motorola Q--not the best camera, but not a bad PDA phone.


The event was to benefit a family, specifically two young boys whose very young dad died suddenly two days after the youngest was born. This is that one...Anthony, named after his dad. He has DS too! He's 8 months old and A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E.


The fundraiser was to benefit the education fund for these two boys. There were appetizers, drinks, a silent auction for sports memorabilia, and raffles for a variety of prize baskets. I really hooped it up, and got a PITCHER of Diet Coke. Yep, that's right. Watch out world.


And here's the mouse race part.... (I'd never heard of such a thing prior to this. But apparently it's a "thing" around here. Must be like toasted ravioli.) There's a guy in some goofy get-up that's kind of being the mouse DJ or something for the night. There's a mouse roulette wheel on one side, no pic of that, where the mouse runs around and where he stops, that person wins. Yeah, I didn't go for that one. But the main event was the 6-round mouse races. The mice start down on the left by the numbers, then they turn the gate and some run and some just sit. It's pretty silly.


They run 6 races, then the winners of the 6 run the 7th for the big winner. People bet on the mice, who of course have names of all varieties. In the 5th race, I chose Speedy. That's him #1. And that's the mouse DJ guy striking a pose.


And there he goes, Speedy wins!


This was my proof of my bet. I had Speedy in lane 1 for race 5. I ended up winning 5 out of the 5 races I bet on. Pretty silly. Unfortunately they marked my slip wrong on race 6, but oh well. I don't know how much money I won, since I just let it all go to the fund.


It was an interesting evening. Not the most fun ever, but it was nice to get out. I still can't quite understand how this kind of an event can be such a big deal around here, though.

I think HE can dance...and more!

I'm a big fan of So You Think You Can Dance on Fox. Last night we were watching it on the DVR and when this young man appeared, I stopped and said, "No way!" Both M and I stopped what we were doing and watched...here's what we saw.



After it was over, we we grinning, talking about how great his speech was and all kinds of what I call "geeky" DS stuff (therapies, diagnoses, characteristics, etc). Then we both said that the blogs would go wild in no time. This is just the kind of thing that we like to see, so why not post it?!?

This morning, there are entries on a few forums I watch, and Meredith is the first blog on my reader to post on it. I'm sure more will follow. But all blogging silliness aside, this guy is really neat. He is a neat guy, DS or not, but I personally believe that at least part of it is because he IS who is IS and has learned to be more than ok with that. That's all we want really. Go Brett!!