At this point readers should probably consider this blog as complete. Phoenix is 8, and our life keeps on moving forward a a big, messy family does - one day at a time at a pace where the days are long but the years are short. I don't feel as riled up about Down syndrome or disability as I used to, although it will always be a part of our lives. To anyone  who has followed along in our journey - I thank you. I hope you have learned a bit about parenting a child with DS, at least my experience of it, and I hope you can see the beauty and richness of our lives with Phoenix in it. Take care ..read more

It's been a long time since I've published a post. I've got the same excuse as always that we've just been busy. Which is true, we ARE busy and I even went on leave from my job in June with the support of my school admin. You see, at the end of May my mother was admitted to the hospital with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. In May, we all thought we would have more time with her before the unimaginable happened, and she died. In May, Mike called my sister and told her to come out to see my mom and to help me get her affairs in order so that she could just focus on the process of fighting the cancer ..read more

I took Phoenix to Edmonton last weekend for a head shot clinic for Changing the Face of Beauty. For a nominal fee the photographer took photos, provided props and provided clothes for the children to pose in. Phoenix chose this purple dress (her favorite colour) and refused to wear any of the clothes had picked out for her to wear. Gigantic sigh. Regardless, the pictures turned out beautifully, and totally captured some of the expressions I most love seeing on her face ..read more

This week Phoenix's school hosted a celebration of learning.  Mrs G arranged for us to arrive early so Phoenix could have the chance to really focus on showing us her daily routine and some of her learning activities. She showed us 2 videos that she narrated (by reading sentences along with the videos) about some of her work with microscopes and with counting to 100. The visit was mostly lead by Phoenix (who uses her visual schedule to cue her to the order of activities) who gleefully dragged us to the gymnasium to show us how she completes the mission impossible obstacle course ..read more

Ash and Wren turn 3! Because Ash and Wren's birthday falls at the beginning of December, we combine it with the In Laws Christmas and celebrate both together. It's wonderful to see family members from out of town and for the girls to see and reconnect with their extended family. The birthday cake is made by a local bakery and is done in the colours requested by the girls with many of the cartoon characters they asked for ..read more

A few pics and a video from a successful OT session recently. For the first time Phoenix declared "I do it myself!" when asked if she wanted help ..read more

Life is roaring along and is busy for us all. Phoenix is finally settled into the routine of grade 1, which has taken all this time since school started in Sept. The teacher and aide have noticed a big turn around in Phoenix's willingness to engage in school work and try new or hard tasks. Phoenix started the year reading B level books and has recently moved to C level and last night a D book. I tell her the new/unfamiliar vocabulary and she reads it back to me with the rest of the sentence. We generally have to do "mine turn/your turn" for her to engage and try, but when I do that she i ..read more

Life is busy!! Full time working mom with 3 kids is no joke. Phoenix is in grade 1 now. She has a 1:1 aide and is doing great. They are going to trial an AAC program called Touch Chat with her. I'm excited about this because even though P does a good job of expressing herself, she doesn't necessarily have the skills to be able to communicate what she's learning. So the fact that she can learn a program to express her knowledge is AWESOME. This is a cold Saturday morning. It was too icy to go out so the kids asked to bake. There was probably as much flour on the table and ground as i ..read more

We do home reading with Phoenix about 4-5 nights a week. We almost always read books before bed,  but I can't always convince Phoenix to read aloud to me. We get books sent home from school as part of their home reading program. Sometimes we get to them, sometimes, depending on what else is happening that night, we don't. I also have a few sets of levelled books that I bought at Costco. The set we read has books from level A to C. The books we get from school are level B, up from level A which she started at. For anyone not familiar with levelled reading, this is a great reading level for ..read more

We've recently put Ash and Wren into swimming lessons at a local pool. Mike takes Wren on Monday and Ash on Tuesday and I am left with the remaining 2 kids to hang out with after dinner. Last night I took Ash and Phoenix to the backyard and pushed them on the 2 seater swing and then we walked to the park to have a play before bed. While I was pushing the swing I reflected on how nice it was to just have 2 kids for the evening and how there is much less conflict between the kids with one of them removed.  What I realized last night was that at no point did I wish that anything was differ ..read more