Friday, January 8, 2010

Therapists, toys, and throw up

I have a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head today so I am hoping I remember everything I wanted to blog about. First off Jude saw his speech therapist on Wed, and she was very encouraged that Jude is taking some solids. Jude doesn't take them all the time, but when he does he will take about 9 bites. He still chomps his teeth down on the spoon, which indicates low tone, and a poor reflex in that area. We are hoping he will outgrow this eventually. She was also thrilled to hear that Jude is making more sounds like ah, agee, ma, and da. He doesn't say them all the time, or in the right format, but he is saying them.

He also saw his vision therapist this week, and she brought Jude a little light up xylophone. As you can see it does catch Jude's attention for a second before he turns his head away.
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Emily and I sat down last night to talk about the future with her smile boxes. We are currently putting together 50 boxes for Scottish Rite in Dallas. She is hoping to actually meet some of the children, and give the boxes directly to them this time. Since they are a specialty hospital with clinics, this is more feasible than other children's hospitals. Emily is still to young to visit ill children in other hospitals so therefore she drops the boxes to the child life coordinators. It's also in the best interest of the children to be kept isolated from outside young visitors, and we understand this. So we are hoping she will be able to drop the boxes next Saturday to Scottish Rite at an event they are holding. In addition Emily and I talked about the company's ultimate goal. We would really like to see the boxes supplied to all children's hospitals in the US, and Canada. It would be wonderful if at some point we had a facility that drop shipped them, and the hospitals could place a "re order" when their supply got old. We also want to include items for the parents like debit cards for parking, and lunches. It's so expensive to stay a week at the hospital with your child when you factor in meals, gas, and parking. We were contacted by a radio station, and Emily and I are still crossing our fingers that comes to pass. This would make Emily very happy, and me. My ultimate goal was to someday work with charity work, and what better way to accomplish that than with my daughter. I told Em last night that it would be amazing if we could someday open a special needs camp in the DFW metroplex. That's a really lofty wish, but it would be wonderful!!

Jude is doing better, and I think the cause of his nasty cold was the new appearance of three small teeth. He is sleeping very well at night, and seems to be eating a bit better. Although, last night he got so upset when I sucked our his nose, that he threw his entire 6 ounce bottle up. Amazingly I sat him up so he wouldn't choke, and Emily dashed to the scene. She grabbed a towel that was on the couch, caught the throw up, wiped Jude's face and rushed it to the washer. Emily is an amazing kid!

4 comments:

Candace said...

Jenn, this is great...at our house we call this the Vomit Protocol! LOL! We keep buckets around the house in the event of emergencies! It's almost a joke in our house. You never saw people arise out of the bed so quickly on nights that we hear her gagging in bed!

Katy said...

I have big plans for the future too--I have some ideas of my own and am just waiting for the right time.

chuzzlewit said...

She is an amazing kid.

Caroline said...

Dear Jenn,
Sorry for lack of comments recently, I have been following,but just on my phone and it's less easy.
Pleased to read of Juder's progress. You know, him and Hope are soooo alike.

Anyway, you may find this wierd..even i do lol. But I dreamt about you last night. You, mike, emily and jude were doing a round the world trip due to some promotion about emily's smile boxes, and you came to visit us. funnily, we still all had our pjs on when you came round (this is probably to do with your fb status on the same subject the other day). Anyway, the best part was...Jude was just doing SO well. He was about 3 in my dream, and you'd been given a new diagnosis and found some new meds and therapy, and he was doing marvelously! Also in my dream, you were encouraging me to follow up on Hope's diagnosis, and saying 'look what it's done for us'. Told you it was wierd lol

Oh, and did you get my message on facebook about 'bikipegs'?

much love
Xxx