Here is a review of the Stuffed Animal bluetooth speakers!
http://www.smartappsforkids.com/2015/02/review-and-giveaway-bluebee-pals.html
Here is the link to Bluebee Pals! Seth would love one of these, especially the lion, zebra, or puppy!
http://bluebeepals.com/collections/bluebee-pals-bluetooth-enabled-interactive-plush-animals
PERFECT IMPERFECTION
His hands are gentle though he forgets his own strength;
His walk is purposeful just shorter in length;
His smile is infectious but so are his tears;
His view of the world won’t be colored by years;
He’ll become an adult with the heart of a child;
If only the world could live a life so beguiled!
Many will judge him as imperfect but I wonder;
If ‘imperfect’ is an imperfect world’s blunder.
What if he’s perfect but so jaded are we;
That we view perfection so imperfectly?
– Anonymous
We are SO excited! I heard of a site that matches runners with those who can’t necessarily run for themselves, particulary those with disabilities. When I heard that there was a 4-month waiting list of runners waiting to be matched, I signed Seth up! Our first match never responded so I requested a new one, and this time, we got a gal who lives in Indiana and is striving to lose weight so that she and her husband can have kids of their own! What a perfect match! We are praying for her as she works hard to get healthy, so that God can bless her family with her OWN bundle of joy.
We are rooting for you, Anna!
Down syndrome Awareness Day 1:
Meet Eli! He’s 11 months old.
Biggest challenge DS has brought to his family’s life: The numerous health challenges and hospital stays he has faced in his short life.
Coolest thing about Eli: He smiles through any adversity. And his smile is contagious.
This is Seth’s little warrior friend Eli! Our family got to meet him when we were on vacation this summer. He is SUCH a delight and holds a bit of my heart.
Please pray for him this week as he undergoes surgery on Friday.
Timmy is a Sparky, Micah and Naomi are in T&T, and Joey is my adorable little Cubbie! Seth (not pictured) is a Puggle! They are very proud of their new books they earned by memorizing Scripture!
I had only brought my iPhone to take pictures, and “The Flash” didn’t slow down enough for me to get a decent picture, but at least I got one with him! Not so lucky with the other three!
The kids had a blast learning new games too, although sometimes it’s a little disappointing when they stop playing the game right before it’s your turn to play. 
But hey, they moved on to Dodgeball!
By the time I made it down to Timmy’s class, he had already been presented with his book for memorizing John 3:16. He’s very excited to learn more in his book so he can earn his vest!
After our vacation, I felt overwhelmed coming home. So much stuff!! So much mess! Even when the place is cleaned up, it still feels messy cluttered because we have accumulated to many things. Not bad things in and of themselves, but 6 weeks on the road with minimal clothes, toys, and accessories, made me realize how much I didn’t need.
It was so much easier to keep the laundry clean when each child only had 6 changes of clothes. There was no “Mom, I don’t have any underwear/socks/pants/etc.” ad nauseum each morning when told to get dressed. All of the clothes went into one tote in the hotel room closet, and every 2-3 days I did two loads of laundry, darks and lights. I promptly folded them and put them in their one drawer they were each assigned per hotel room. Granted, they were mostly summer clothes and didn’t take up a lot of room, but surely one dresser should suffice!
They had one church outfit that they also wore to the wedding in which we were involved. Granted, we went to a different church service each week, so it was easy to get away with only one set, but do we really need 20 different dress shirts? So many of them have been handed down from their older brothers or given to us, but are we really managing our space resources when we are housing SO many? And that’s just dress clothes!
The kids’ dressers are overflowing when all of their laundry is clean, which is getting to be more consistent, given that keeping the laundry room clean makes my mornings brighter since it is also my pantry. (NOT something I recommend, btw, but at the time we built our home, we didn’t really have a choice.) Oh, and having this room this clean?! Totally new! 😀 Even the washer and dryer are cleared off! Hooray!
And here’s my new plan for keeping single socks at bay. We’ll see how well this goes…
I WILL CONQUER THE “MISSING SOCK” MONSTER!!
The floors of their rooms became littered with dirty and clean clothes mixed together because I don’t always supervise the putting away and the picking up. When they DO clean their rooms, which is also becoming more frequent, I find clean and folded laundry in the hamper. Why? Because they have too many items!!
And this includes me. I have too many clothes too. Granted, I have maternity clothes, postpartum clothes, nursing clothes, and several sizes until I get down to my “normal” size, but really, enough is enough!
So…my reaction? PURGE! And so I have been. As I’m folding laundry, clothes that are stained, stretched out, too small, faded, worn out, outdated or even “I don’t like this shirt”, are getting thrown out! It is hard for me. I think I like the security of stuff. “I can always use more,” right? Ugh….
Purging feels good.
It all started when Seth was 4 months old. I got the flu and my best friend offered to take Seth for the day. I had some frozen milk, so I reluctantly took her up on it and sent him on his way. At the time, he was having 3-4 baby bowel movements a day (yellow mustard kind). The next day, he had nothing, and it would continue that way for days at a time. He wouldn’t have a poopy diaper for 8-10 days, and when he did, it was like little rabbit pellets.
I tried everything natural that I could come up with: Epsom salt baths, prunes, prune juice, apple juice, LB extract (from the herbal store), Baby move, essential oils (two different companies), calcium/magnesium, leg exercises, etc. I would try each one for a week hoping for some change, but nothing seemed to help. I even did several together AND take things for me, so he would get it through the milk! I got super regular, but it didn’t seem to help him.
I mentioned it to two different doctors (same practice, different appointments/months), and they both said it was normal for some kids and I shouldn’t worry about it because he was exclusively breastfed. I didn’t believe them. After 5 months, I finally resorted to using about 1/2 of a Pedia-Lax glycerin suppository every couple of days, just to give him some relief. They were supposed to take 15 minutes to work, but he would have a messy diaper within 5 minutes. I researched Hashimotos, obstructive bowel, etc. so I finally asked the doctor to give me a referral to a GI doctor. It took 6 MORE weeks.
Meanwhile, over the next month, on one Friday night, he couldn’t sleep. ALL NIGHT! He kept waking up, straining, and crying. SOMETHING wasn’t right. The next day, Saturday, I spent the whole day researching on the internet and in my books, crying out to God for an answer. Finally, I found something else to try.
According to the University of Michigan Health System, constipation is a symptom of iodine deficiency. Once an iodine deficiency is definitively diagnosed, it is often suggested that an individual incorporate more iodine-rich foods into the diet or add iodized salt to meals, says the American Thyroid Association.
Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/493441-iodine-constipation/#ixzz2VSj0JMgg
Huh, I thought. I know that kiddos with Ds can have thyroid problems, so maybe he’s deficient in iodine!
I had some bottles of Nascent Iodine (after the Japanese Nuclear fallout threat, and Alaska being possibly in danger due to the wind currents), so I thought, what can it hurt. I’ll try an iodine skin test to see how he does. So, I put two drops of nascent iodine on the back of his wrist. I also put some of it on me. I could practically watch his absorb. Mine stayed for hours. The next day, HE HAD A MESSY DIAPER!! (Here’s an article on the effectiveness of nascent iodine. And btw, I got the nascent iodine on sale, but I can’t remember exactly where I ordered it, but the amazon link is the exact type I have and use.)
I thought to myself that maybe it was just because it had been a few days. Maybe the suppositories are helping his colon remember what it is supposed to do, so I waited again for a few days. I put it on again on Wednesday night. Thursday, he had THREE messy diapers! After that, I put a drop on the back of his wrist daily, and every day, he would have a poopy diaper!! I was SO excited that I had solved it!! (My husband was SO proud of me!! :D)
Finally, the appointment with the GI came. I took the iodine with me and told the gal that I had figured out what the problem was. She completely dismissed it and said it was just a fluke that his body had just figured out how to have a bowel movement again. (Honestly, that’s exactly what she told me!) WHAT?!?!! I did SIX MONTHS of different things to try to help his bowels “wake up” to no avail. I even used the scientific method to test my theory, stopping treatment – NO bowel movement. Start treatment – BOWEL MOVEMENT! HELLO!!! She also told me that I was wasting my money giving him ANY vitamins, because they weren’t doing any good. “People never used to take vitamins, and were fine.” she said. WHAT?!?! SERIOUSLY?!? People also used to work in the soil IN THE SUNSHINE, eat fresh-cut organic food, fresh grass-fed meat, AND work their tails off too!! It isn’t like it WAS all those years ago, AND people STILL died of all kinds of diseases! YOU, my supremely “educated” doctor, are an IDIOT!
Oh, well, bringing my blood pressure back down now….
She did check his little bottom and said everything looked fine physically (which is what I really wanted to know anyway) and sent us on our way. Oh yeah, btw, when we got the bill, it was for $786!!! For 10 minutes of being berated by this gal!! Yeah, I’m still not over it…. She wasn’t even the GI I was supposed to see! Gaaa….
Anyway, my naturopath was impressed with my sleuthing. I have since taken him off of the iodine after he started taking his multivitamin, zinc, and selenium. I slowly quit applying it, and he hasn’t had a problem since. Usually he goes 2-3x a day, but he definitely goes at least once a day. And HE is a happy little boy!
And that, my friends, is my story. I SURELY hope it helps your child with Down syndrome. PLEASE let me know if it does!
Just bought this book a couple of weeks ago. It looks like it will be a good reference book for oils. It refers to doTerra products, but you can easily figure out which oils work best from other essential oil companies as well. I wanted to have a reference that wasn’t online too, so if the power is out or there is an emergency out of range, I can still look things up. Being reliant on the internet is not ideal when it comes to medical issues!
Good blog post….In Defense of our 5th Child. My favorite part is at the end:
“My four year-old said it best, “Can we have as many kids as the Duggars?”
Umm… maybe not that many.”
I get a lot of questions about what kind of chiropractor I recommend for kids with Down syndrome. I am COMPLETELY sold on this method: Sacro Occipital Technic and Chiropractic Craniopathy. Unfortunately, our *favorite* chiropractor is in Anchorage, about 1.25 hours away, so we also utilize a local gal whom I started seeing when I was pregnant with one of the younger boys. Dr. Stacey Lowe gets most of us through, but I still take Seth to Dr. Risch several times a year.
My first experience with Dr. William Risch was when my 2nd born was 7 months old. Aaron’s headplates were not aligned, he wasn’t rolling over OR crawling, and was very crabby, so our then pediatrician, Dr. Caeton, recommended Dr. Risch. We went to Dr. Risch three times the first week, followed all of the exercises that he recommended, and on Saturday, he started rolling over AND crawling!! I was SOLD on baby chiropractic after that!
When Seth was born with Ds, Dr. Stacey came and adjusted him AT OUR HOME! She was able to help me get him to nurse, as his jaw was pretty locked up. We took him to Dr. Stacey for most of his first year, but when he was about 9 months old, I finally took him to Dr. Risch because Dr. Stacey wasn’t familiar with adjusting his palate, and Seth was really struggling with constipation, so I wanted him to see my favorite chiro.
It was AMAZING! After the first couple of visits, Seth’s nose bridge started forming! He had almost none at all, and then, THERE IT WAS! It was truly amazing!
Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend a chiropractor for your infants!!