Cute Pics!

We really miss our kiddos back home, but they've been real troopers - and they're having a blast with Nana & Nice Wolf! Braden thought we needed new pictures on the blog, so Nana emailed these to me at Braden's request!


Hi Ruby! What a cute little dolly!

Nana's getting creative with Ru's hair!

Impressive!
This may be the longest Hot Wheels track we've ever had at our house - it looks like it goes all the way across the basement!

Good work, guys!

Daddy & I love you & miss you - we can't wait to see you! And we can't wait for you to meet Lily, she's pretty wonderful! She's going to fit right into our Z family!

The Puzzle King!

Braden & Nana have been enjoying putting puzzles together - on the counter, out of Ruby's reach. Braden has always been good at puzzles - and wow! These look like some really big puzzles!



And we miss that smiley face of Braden's!
Braden, when I get home, I'm going to kiss your cheeks 100 times!
Great job on the puzzles, buddy!

Look at these cute kids!!

We miss the kids so much! It's hard to be so far away from them, we've never left them for this long before - and especially gone so far away!  So, we were very happy when my mom emailed us some pictures she's taken of the kids!

Braden - showing off his soccer shirt!

 

 

 

 

This is a whole new Ruby expression!  Look at that face!
She stole Nana's slippers and has claimed them as her own :)

 

I think they look like they're doing just great without us!  We get to talk to them almost every day on Skype (except it's harder to talk to Karly, since she's at school - the time difference is tricky; but Karly has emailed me a few times, which was nice!)

Back home on the ranch ...

We miss our kids back home, but they're doing pretty well without us.

These pics are a couple weeks old - Ruby got hold of the phone, and she knew I'd take it from her, so she ran ...

and hid behind her house!

little stinker!

Lydia's Tree

Sunday was Ruby and Lydia's birthday.  On their first birthday, we started a tradition of tying balloons to Lydia's tree, in her memory - 5 balloons, 1 from each of us.  (This year, one blew away, so only 4 made it onto the tree ... and just think - next year, we'll have to get 6!)

Lydia's tree (a flowering prairie-fire crabapple.) is really blooming this year - it's beautiful!  It's not a very big tree yet, but it looks huge in comparison to Ruby.

The tree is much darker in color and much fuller than last year.

Also, the lilacs are blooming ...

on both sides of the house.

They smell amazing!

Nearly 3!

We had our monthly playdate with our local Down syndrome group this morning, and we tried something new - we wanted to get a group picture of the kiddos.  But since so many of the kids are so young, we thought the moms better sit in as well.


Twelve moms & kiddos!  Also in the picture is the T21 Traveling Afghan

Since tomorrow is Ruby's birthday & Logan's is this week, we had a little party!
Ruby was so excited about the cupcakes & the candles ... but she never actually ate hers.


Ru played with her friend, Hendrik, for a long while - they played so nicely!
You can kind of see here, too - Ru had a "Birthday Girl" ribbon pinned on her back.

Ru & Daddy

How often are children with DS twins?

I found this interesting; our Ruby & Lydia were identical twins (both with Down syndrome) and Lily is a fraternal twin with Down syndrome, and her twin was unaffected.

These figures indicate that, in a group of 1000 babies with Down syndrome, some 14 or 15 babies will be a twin or a triplet, with their other twins/triplets unaffected, and 2 or 4 babies will be identical twin pairs, both with Down syndrome.

If we consider all births, we estimate that identical twins with Down syndrome occur at the rate of 1 or 2 in a million pregnancies and non-identical twins at the rate of 14/15 in a million.

Full article is online here.

Crazy Day!

The final countdown for the school year is on!

Each day for the final 26 days corresponds with a letter - on Monday was "C = Crazy Day!" so Braden wanted crazy hair.


I think he's pretty darn cute with his 'crazy' hair!

Love ...

alternately titled: Braden keeping Ruby from standing on the chair, while he's watching Road Runner cartoons.

 

 

Stone Soup

Braden's kindergarten class made stone soup a couple weeks back.  

 

They brought home the recipe they used, as well as these "soup pot" paper bags with all the cut out veggies inside it.  

Braden started coloring the veggies at home, since he'd only had time to color a couple at school.  He asked me what color celery was, and I told him green.

A couple minutes later, he came and asked me, "What color with grey will make green?"  (I love his thought process on this one!)

I was confused, and told him just green - and he got frustrated with me.  He told me he colored with green, and green + grey = blue.  I knew the celery had a lot of shading on it, so ... well, I wasn't sure what to think.

I had to go check this out.

This was the culprit - a blue crayon in a green wrapper!

It was all fine, once we got a different green crayon!

Any Advice?

Okay DS Mamas - I know so many other kiddos are on thyroid meds like Ruby - how do I get her to take it??

We tried crushing it & putting it in juice, and she just didn't drink it.

Now, we are crushing it, adding it to a tiny bit of water and then torturing her to give it to her by shooting it into her mouth with a medicine syringe.

It's a struggle.  Any suggestions?

Headlines

I'm so annoyed by the trashy magazines at the super market - have you seen the latest headlines?  The "Tragic Down syndrome Report" of Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt's twins?  Really - that's a tragedy??

First of all, there are no official reports that either of their twins have DS.

Secondly, they are FRATERNAL twins, so while odds are entirely probable for one of them to have been born with DS, it's much, much, much more unlikely that both of them would.  (Our twins were identical, both having DS.)

Third - I'm sure if they had a child with a disability, they'd be wonderful advocates and a welcome addition to the DS family at large.  Angelina is well-known for her international adoptions and speaking out for humanitarian issues, I can not believe she wouldn't do the same in support of a disability if her child had one.


For the record, I have never found Down syndrome to be a Tragedy.  Losing Lydia, that was our tragedy.  That word usage just irks the hell out of me.   As does the word suffers.  Ruby doesn't suffer from Down syndrome, just like she doesn't suffer from having brown eyes.  It's simply part of who she is.