Sweet Pea Update

I've been neglecting this blog more than I should so here is a quick recap of some of the things we have been up to recently.

Disneyland:  This was a wonderful day!  Sweet Pea was spoiled rotten by her aunt, uncle and cousins all day long.  She walked a ton and loved watching everything around her.  She went on a lot of rides and didn't have any problems in any of them.  Mommy was more afraid on Astro Orbitor than she was!  My camera was too slow to capture many good shots and I haven't gotten around to copying Uncle A's yet so you will have to settle for these:







Teeth:  Wow!  Sweet Pea has been having more teeth appear regularly for what seems like months!  She is now up to 11 that have broken through and at least 2 more are close.  She has her front four (central incisors) and her first set of molars completely in. The bottom lateral incisors have broken through (left first and then right came in) and the top are working on it.  The biggest shock was that I saw her bottom left two year molar has come through!  She doesn't even have all of her front teeth and she is got another molar?  That doesn't seem fair to her!  She deals with it quite well and only has issues at night and we give her Tylenol on the bad nights.

Play dates: We have been going on a lot of play dates and loving every minute of them!  I figure I need to get in as many as I can before the new baby arrives and makes life a bit more challenging.  Sweet Pea loves hanging out with other kids and is bored stiff at home so this is a favorite activity.

Park time: If you aren't local you may not know this, but we have been having summer weather for about a week now.  We took advantage of it and went to a couple of parks.  Sweet Pea played in sand at one of them and didn't try to eat it!  She ate a little when it was stuck to her hand when she put her hand in her mouth, but she wasn't intentionally trying to eat it which made Mommy very proud.  She is learning how to scoot forward to go down the slides, but her shoes still act as brakes and that makes going down a challenge.  She sure loves the slides though and is good at climbing the stairs to get back up.  This new skill will really be helpful when I have a little one strapped to my front soon!

IEP Training: I won't be able to attend the upcoming IEP training on the 29th so I'll need to try to find another one to attend before September.  I'm sure something will be offered since so many groups offer them in the LA area.  That is certainly a benefit of living in the Los Angeles area!  There are so many people and amazing resources at our fingertips!  I feel for the people that don't have that available to them.


Support Group:  I attended our local support group meeting this week and our guest speaker has taught sign language and been a deaf interpreter for many years.  She had a couple of helpful tips that I thought I would pass on:

• Don't just sign to your child.  Sign when you are speaking to your spouse and other children as well so that they realize that this is a way to communicate with everyone.
• It takes 500 times of seeing a sign for the typical kid to pick up a sign and 800 for a deaf child.  She didn't have any stats for a child with DS, but I thought it was interesting none the less.  I think this stat was for when they were just starting to use signs because it is clear to me that Sweet Pea picks up new signs now a lot faster than she used to.
• Sign language can even be useful long after they are talking for times where you shouldn't be talking, but want to say something...she gave the example of being at a party and signing potty to her husband across the room so he knew where she was running off to.

I think that is about it for now.