Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Friends! While waiting for the kiddos to rise, I thought I'd update you all about my greatest gift: Ian's health. (And, yes, my father reminded me to do so.) Ian continues to do well. He is extremely active and loves to do all things little boy. He is super sweet, too. His speech has taken off. I can't even begin to count the number of words he has, and he is speaking in phrases and short sentences. When he gets a gift from someone he excitedly says, "What is it?!?!" before opening it and shouts, "Thank you, Merry Christmas!" I can tell that his speech isn't quite as developed/strong/clear as some of the children he attends daycare with, but he sure is getting there.  He complains about his eyes hurting about once a day, so we will have to have them checked, but he doesn't seem to be suffering from headaches or anything at this point. He isn't shunted because there wasn't any fluid issues before, but perhaps he's experiencing some sort of discomfort. It's times like these that I wish he hadn't been discharged completely from neurology. It would just give us peace of mind to have yearly check-ins and someone to quickly report eye complaints, etc. to. I know that's a pretty easy phone call and request, so I'll do that soon. Otherwise, we're just taking it one day at a time and thanking God for our many blessings. Merry Christmas and may 2014 bring you peace and good health.

Livin' Life

So my dad is bothered by the fact that I haven't updated my blog in a very long time. I apologize! Ian is amazing. Truly amazing. I don't think about Dandy-Walker every time I look at him now. I just think of Ian. Physically, he isn't challenged at this point. He walks, runs, jumps, plays on the playground (in your face doctor man!), kicks soccer balls; you name it, he tries it. His speech seems delayed, but who knows if that's associated to Dandy-Walker or just a 23 month old little boy. He has many many words, but not all of them are clear. He isn't speaking in many phrases, but I am confident that will come. He throws great temper tantrums and gets pretty emotional. This too can't be linked to DW at this point in time....we are entering 'terrible two's'! I have read that the cerebellum controls both language and emotions/behaviors, so only time will tell if these are issues we'll be dealing with in the future. I'll try to be better at keeping you all updated. I did rely heavily on blogs that I found and often wondered.....Now what? How are they doing/growing?......when the author just stopped updating. Thank you for thinking of Ian, and please continue to pray for him, other DW kids, and newly diagnosed families.