Today, I was browsing the internet while I waited for the bus to drop Kaelyn off at home. I was reading an article on today.com (click this link to read the article) and heard the little yellow bus RUMBLE up the street and forgot to close it down. You see, Kaelyn LOVES to browse my facebook, make new friends for me, delete some old ones, and try to play all these games. Safer to have it closed than have to re-add a cantankerous family member. While I was fixing up her snack, she looked at the monitor, pointed to the first picture and said " "hey. It looks like me!". It kind of struck me as odd that I never wondered if she would identify with someone with Down Syndrome. Looking at her, especially when she is tired, her eyes are more prominently almond shaped. Her geneticist said that since she didn't have the full 3rd copy of the 21st chromosome so she wasn't going to use the label/diagnosis of Down Syndrome because they had no way of knowing what would be effected. I have NO problem with the label/diagnosis either way. She is charted on the Down Syndrome growth chart, milestones are judged the same. A lot of how we deal with her, her health (yearly thyroid tests) her education (delayed speech) is the same as if she had the full copy of chromosome 21. But I don't think she's ever been around another person that looked like her, in that way. I guess I need to do a little reading, a little research and see how we can handle these questions in the future!
In other news, we've had a busy summer, Went camping, adopted a dog from the local humane society, and Kaelyn is on her 2nd year of 4k! She's loving her school, her teachers (shout out to Miss Wendy and Miss Billie!) and is growing in leaps and bounds. Her speech is coming along quite nicely and her sentences are getting longer. She can express what she does/doesn't want, what she feels ("I need to hug you mom!") and just be a silly girl. Aria is turning THREE soon, and got her first haircut yesterday. She was so good about it! I'll drown you all with pictures next time. I'll just post this one here. We had so much fun camping! Thanks for reading and sorry I haven't posted in so very long! I think my dad (Shifty Sven) blogs more than me!
