"Kick the ball to Naynan"

It's 6am. I'm making coffee. Nathan comes into the kitchen, carrying a rubber ball. "Kick the ball to Naynan!" he sings. As I am encouraging him to kick a ball in the kitchen before I've even had my coffee, I think to myself that there are probably other parents, perhaps even within a square mile of me, who would not be encouraging this, and who perhaps have a rule about no balls in the house, nevermind the kitchen. After all, some 4-year-olds don't have IEP goals about kicking that they've been working on for the past 2 years. Some 4-year-olds can, in fact, kick a ball really hard, in a way that is not appropriate in anyone's kitchen. Kicking has been hard for Nathan, though, and I'm excited he wants to initiate a short, impromptu indoor soccer game. I'm also excited about his use of language to initiate the game. I'm excited about a whole lot of things that might just be seriously annoying if another 4-year-old did them in another kitchen at 6am. It's a special needs mommy moment, a moment of pride in my child's small gains, and of being content in the moment with my child.

"Kick the ball to Froggy!" says Nathan. He leaves, returns with his singing stuffed frog. He can't quite seem to figure out this part of the game, though-- he's got the frog but can't seem to decide how to kick the ball to him. I demonstrate Froggy kicking the ball to Nathan, but Nathan decides just to play with the frog. Game over. We try it again later in the day when Nathan again tells me "Kick the ball to Froggy!", but he still seems equally perplexed about how this is is supposed to work. Perhaps he'd like the frog to kick independently. Stuffed frogs are not Nathans, though; no matter how many times we demonstrate kicking, the frog will not learn it. Nathan, on the other hand, is getting there. It takes time, and patience, and a willingness to encourage him when he is ready (even if that happens to be 6am) but he's getting there.

Step Up for Down Syndrome

Yesterday we did the annual Step Up for Down Syndrome walk. We had beautiful weather, great friends, music, and food. What more could we ask for? Oh, yeah, and we raised money and awareness for the Down Syndrome Information Alliance.
Here we are with Jennifer, Carlos and Joaquin who join us every year for this event:

This year we walked as the Yolo Community Network team. Uvaldo designed our YCN T-shirts with the "21" logo for trisomy 21, and Danielle had a banner made:

Nathan walked just over half the way


before finishing the walk in comfort (well, comfort for some).

We enjoyed a picnic lunch provided by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association:

I later learned we should really limit Nathan's hotdog intake... too many hotdogs is no bueno later. All in all, though, a fun day.

Large Cats

Nathan has so many things memorized. If you didn't know some of these sentences were memorized, and if you could clearly understand what he's saying, you might be pretty impressed with some of the things that come out of his mouth: "Sheep have long, woolly coats.", "Cats have soft fur.", etc. I often wonder what is memorization and what he really understands. I am sure he knows what fur is. Does he understand what wool is? What a sheep's coat is?

This morning we were reciting the book "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" Nathan can name all the animals in the book, from memory, without benefit of having the book in front of us or looking at the pictures: panda bear, bald eagle, water buffalo, spider monkey, black panther, etc etc. Nathan said "Black panther, meow", as he often does. This makes sense because when you look at the illustration in the book, the black panther looks an awful lot like our black cats. I told him (as I have before) that black panthers don't say "meow". I told him that black panthers are large cats, like tigers, they snarl and growl. "Lion," says Nathan. And then "leopard." Aha! He is demonstrating knowledge of what constitutes a large cat! This is not something we've memorized. We have not studied lists of large cats. This is understanding a category of animal! How cool is that?! "Yes!" I said, "Lions and leopards are large cats! Like black panthers and tigers". I snarled and growled a bit, although I'm frankly uncertain as to quite what a leopard says. I faked it.

And then, a moment later Nathan piped in "Jersey cows". Well, no...

October!

It's more than a week into Down Syndrome Awareness month and I haven't even written a bog post yet! Time to remedy that!

It's October, time for Fall fun, pumpkin patches, and of course the Step Up for Down Syndrome walk.

We made a pumpkin patch visit Friday with friends. The pumpkin patch was crowded and Nathan was initially cranky, and I was starting to fear the whole thing had been a bad idea. And then we took a train ride.

Post-train, we enjoyed pumpkin muffins, followed by lunch. And then we did the train again. We went to see the giant pumpkins and give them some love.

And we came home with a couple of (smaller) pumpkins.

The Step Up walk is 2 weeks from today. If you're local and would like to join us, we'd love to have you come walk with us! Click here to join our team!

And if you'd like to sponsor Nathan and support the Down Syndrome Information Alliance, click here. The DSIA does all kinds of cool classes, programs and events in our community to support and educate individuals with Down Syndrome and their families.