Jonny's Piano Recital

Look at my handsome boys! Growing up so fast.

Jonny with his buddies, Jacob & Josh.
(L to R Jacob, Jonny, Josh) It's fun to have twin friends.
They also take piano lessons from my sister-in-law, Dorinda.

Jonny had his end of the year piano recital last night. Sadly Isaac missed it due to being out of town working for a few days. I recorded Jonny playing so Isaac would still be able to see it. I am so proud of Jonny. He is such a wonderful, sweet boy and his piano skills have greatly increased. He went from never having played last summer to what you see in the video. He completed his first lesson book just a few weeks ago. Way to go, Jonny! I love you, sweet boy!

P.S. It's fun to be able to take piano lessons from your aunt!
P.P.S. You will need to pause the music on the blog before watching the video.

Good News

I went to visit my grandma today. Before I left Jason overheard me telling Isaac were I was going. He looked at me with a little grin and said "I would love to go visit Grandma with you because she likes me and it would make her happy to see me." How do my boys know just how to melt this mama's heart? :) I asked Jason if we should take Grandma a rose out of our rose garden and he though it was a great idea so he helped me choose which one (or ones - they were on the same stem). He carried it all the way from our house to her bed. He is one cute four-year-old. And Grandma loved seeing her great-grandson bring her roses. As we were getting in the car to leave I was scolding Jason for being shy with Grandma and he said to me "I haven't seen her a lot lately. That's WHY I was being shy with her, Mom."

Grandma looked great. She had the hip operated on this morning and it was a much smaller break than last time, so it should heal faster this time. Wonderful news. :)

Please pray...

...for my grandma. She and my grandpa lost everything when their home burned to the ground in the devastating Rice Fire during the San Diego Firestorm last October. Then in January she fell and broke her hip. She was finally starting to get around again (and even made it to church the last three Sundays). Today I got a call saying that she fell again and was in the ER. She has now broken her other hip. So, she will have surgery in the next few days. I worry about her. I love her very much and I know how hard it was for her to recover from the last hip break. Now she is weakened from just getting over that so I am fearful that at 85 she won't have the strength to recover. Please pray. The picture below is of her home that burned down. She told my mom after the fire that she felt like the fire had aged her ten years in just a couple very long weeks. At my grandparents age there is no such thing as rebuilding the lifetime they lost to the fire.

Joel's Developmental Evaluation

On Thursday Joel had the developmental evaluation that we've been waiting about nine months for. He did really well, even showing skills I didn't know he had. He impressed his mommy! It took about 3.5 hours and was totally exhausting. Both of us were exhausted.

The results: Joel was diagnosed with Developmental Delay. (We already knew that.) He was also diagnosed with a mild case of Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified (PDDNOS). This is on the Autism spectrum but he barely qualified and I'm not concerned. He is still the exact same baby as before we got the diagnoses. Something to take into consideration is that a lot of behaviors that could look like Autism could be caused by his visual impairment. They have a lot of side effects that are the same. So I am not sure that he actually has PDDNOS, but it's okay that he was diagnosed with it because it may help him qualify for more services. It also could effect the way I teach him, so I'll have to do some research.

Here are his levels of development based on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development -III:
Cognitive - 18 months
Receptive Communication - 15 months
Expressive Communication - 14 months
Fine Motor - 15 months
Gross Motor - 18 months
Joel is 32 months old and if you take away the 15 months that he had non-stop seizures and wasn't learning it would leave 17 months that his brain has been able to process information. So I think he is doing wonderful and is an amazing little boy! Side note: It actually worked out really well that it took us so long to get the evaluation because he needed to test at the 18 month level in cognitive thinking for the Autism evaluation to be accurate. And he did! A month ago he wouldn't have. It was suggested that we continue all that we are currently doing as well as start speech therapy.

I love this picture taken on Mother's Day. It has nothing to do with this post, but I like to post pictures because I think it makes the blog more interesting.

Internet problems

Sorry I haven't been able to post in the last few days. I haven't had access to the internet. We've been having problems with our connection. I am going to post today if the internet continues to work. We had an interesting day yesterday and I want to tell you about it. Joel had his Developmental Evaluation for Autism. So I will work on this post and get it up as soon as possible.