Holiday season....

Jeremy has been increasing his vocabulary, he's been saying, "I want that" I want to see that" "I want snick snack" and even last week Stacie our SLP got him to say, "OK". We are going on the 3rd week of having Barb, an OT come to the house. Barb is working on some sensory, vision therapy to help Jeremy. Stacie and Barb work together to get the most out of Jeremy, it's been an awesome 3 weeks. I was looking over some of his past pictures of the 1st 3 years of his life and with what they first told us Jeremy would do and what Jeremy is doing. It goes back to my vision, that one day Jeremy will say, "this is what they said I would do but this is what GOD did for me". I can not believe that he's 1/2 way through his 4th grade school year.

Friday was our last visit with our 3 OU students, we of course had another great group, they were awesome, eager to learn about Jeremy and what life is like. They come to the child's home, to learn about the child, family life & what the family goes through. They then try to visit the child outside the home in the community. Then they are required to research the child, which is always interesting to me since there is not a great deal out there on FG syndrome. Their final project is to come up with a plan. I'm all about new eyes on Jeremy, I think the more brains we can have will only make his life better. I want Jeremy to thrive at school, his community and when he gets older my goal is for Jeremy to contribute to society in what way he can. That is going to require he makes friends, be able to make friend with his typical developing peers, a major goal I've had for him many years. The students came up with some really neat ideas. Jeremy doesn't really interact with his peers and we've got to work on that and change it. He can interact with adults but it's because that is what he's been around most all his life, his therapy is play and who does his therapy, adults. The school has him a peer buddy, but after the 1st of the year I'm going to work with the school to see how we can build on this, get Jeremy to interact with his peers. The students came up with a little story you can laminate and read to Jeremy, about saying "hi", "bye" and "sharing". I haven't got to sit and read the report word for word, but will as well will be brainstorming ways to get Jeremy to interact with peers.

Jeremy is out of school until Tuesday, January 5. I have to work 3 days this week and then I'm on vacation until Monday, January 4. This is the 1st time in many years I didn't schedule one appointment for Jeremy. I normally am trying to make sure we get all his appointments caught up so we end up doing nothing but run the whole time. This will be Jeremy & mom time, we will sleep in, depending on weather may go to the zoo. I'm excited about Christmas, got a late start on shopping but got it all done, almost all wrapped, Christmas eve Jeremy and I are going to decorate a gingerbread house instead of cookies. I'm of course excited about Christmas day, spending time out with my family, we always have a great time, visiting, grazing. Then the day after Christmas I'm going shopping for a new Christmas tree & some decorations.

Here is a picture of Jeremy from school helping to decorate their gingerbread house....