Jack and Dasha’s sibs

Fact About Down Syndrome : In a recent study by Brian Skotko, M.D. it was found that among siblings ages 12 and older, 97 percent expressed feelings of pride about their brother or sister with Down syndrome and 88 percent were convinced they were better people because of their sibling with Down syndrome.

Pretty cool, I think.  So far, my oldest 3 seem to enjoy their little siblings.  Madelyn wants to show them off all the time.  All of them come home from school or wherever and greet them and carry them around and play with them.  And if any of the older 3 sit down, forget it!  There’s a little person on or right next to them!  So precious!

Andrew seems to be a preferred target.  He’s the sturdiest and has the most “holding” space!  All he has to do is remain in one spot for more than 3 seconds and see what happens??  I love it!!

I knew I wouldn't make it :(

Yep, missed yesterday. Oh well, this will be a very short, cheating, catch-up post.

I think I will get in writing what I would like to remember to blog about this month:

-Jack and Dasha's heart issues
-J & D's school, therapists, therapies, orthotics
-more facts (I will be mostly stealing these from other bloggers or fb posts!)
-information about Reece's Rainbow and kids with Ds from Eastern Europe
-the ever-popular, "21 Facts about Jackson" (I'm saving D's for her birthday, which is, in a cool twist, on Mar.21st!)
-more stuff from past posts

Anything else???

It's a widely known fact that when mothers are told the babies they are carrying have Ds, most of them terminate. A statistic I hear/see over and over again is 90%. 9 out of 10 women eliminate the baby they are carrying. To me, that is shocking. I also hear that it is very common for most ob's to encourage this termination, often citing out-of-date or incorrect information about what such a baby would be like.

I was lucky. My Dr gave me the news and told me I had "options" if I cared to discuss them. I did not. If you want to go back and read about how we foud out that Jack would have Down syndrome, go here. My Dr got me in touch with the Down syndrome Association and said "okay, then we will treat this pregnancy as any other unless we learn we have some other health concerns". And we did. We laughed about my weight gain, and how active Jack was, and took bets on my measurements at each visit. He's an awesome Dr and I am grateful he took care of us until Jack was born.

I want to feel sad for these other moms. Clearly I should; they are missing out. Ds has brought much joy into my life and I am grateful. But I am mostly angry and irritated at them. I hope to become more enlightened and forgiving at some point. I have some amazing friends who are leading me that direction but I'm not quite there yet.

I mean, look what they are missing out on:

3 days old and I was already head over heels in love.

What can kids with Ds do??

Well, let's see.....

(Clearly, this will be a partial list only. There's no way I could ever cover an entire list! But I am going to come up with 21 things about each of my cuties with Ds during this month, so this will be a little start.)

Dasha loves to "read" books. Hopefully she'll do it on her own some day. I'll probably be in trouble for posting this pic, but she loves her grandma too and I thought it was sweet.



Dasha is also learning signs, loves to swing, and RUN while holding someone's hand, she wrestles with her brothers, and she gets really excited to go to school each day.


Jack is learning to use the computer! He asks for this web series called Bunny Bop. He loves to watch videos on youtube sometimes too, especially Laurie Berkner and Veggie Tales songs. He can even hit the play button to start them over!

Jack plays with the dog, has excellent ab strength, loves Elmo, can use a fork and spoon, and gives super duper hugs and kisses! (He loves to kiss "owies". The other day I tripped on something walking into the kitchen and said "OW!!" really loud. He ran in and gave me such a nice smooch on my foot. It was the sweetest thing!)

Both kids love watching Signing Time videos, eating cheerios for snacks, removing the bookmark from anyone's book left unattended, and pushing doll strollers around as fast as they can!

And both are loved so very much!

Fact #1

Not sure how many facts I'll get to, but here's the first one :)

Fact About Down Syndrome #1: There are 3 types of Down syndrome - Nondisjunction which makes up about 94% of all cases, it means every cell has an extra 21st chromosome. (This is what Jack and Dasha both have.).
Translocation makes up 3-4% of all cases. This can be (but is not always) an inherited form of Down syndrome.
Mosaic makes up 2% of all cases. This means that not every cell has the extra chromosome, only some of them do.
The diagnosis of Down syndrome is made by a chromosome analysis test called a Karyotype.

Here it is again - Down syndrome Awareness month!

Last year I signed up to blog every day for the month of October. That didn't exactly go so well. I'm not a great blogger most of the time anyway, but a post every day?? Yeah I wasn't able to pull it off. So instead of disappointing myself again, this year I did not formally commit, but I'm going to do my best to post several times a week.

Some things I'm thinking about are Ds facts, past posts about Jack's birth, diagnosis, etc., and stuff about Dasha (her country's views on Ds and the adoption procedure, stuff like that). Pretty much anyone who might read this blog already knows all this, but I might think of something new :).

I've started out with a pic of my cuties with Ds! Time to get out our yellow and blue Ds awareness ribbons and think about Jack's birthday! He'll be 5 at the end of the month - how the heck did that happen?!?!

9-11-01

It was a normal Tues. Got 2 kids up, ready, and on the bus to school. Ty was 2, and we had a meeting with a Parents As Teachers educator, to check how my little guy was growing and learning. As I was doing my usual last minute "pick up the house and make it look like we don't live like pigs" routine, the phone rang. My neighbor Terry said "did you hear about the planes crashing into the towers in NYC?". So I turned on the tv. Ty didn't understand but he saw something that looked like one of his big brothers video games and kept saying "cool!!". We had a new puppy that had to go out often. I sat watching the tv all day, kleenex box on the coffee table, disbelief rolling out of my eyes. We put the kids in my room to watch videos that evening. We were glued to the coverage and entered a fog that didn't go away for weeks.

I am a chicken. I haven't watched ANY of the anniversary shows. The thought of it makes me cry. I can so easily go back and feel that day.

No, I won't ever forget.