I love you, dad

Lately when I read Michael his bedtime story I've been reading him the Signing Time books we've checked out from the library.  Or rather he's been reading them to me.  I'll ask him what the signs are, and he loves to do them for me.  He has a ball reading these books to me, and it helps me see how he does the signs in his little 2-year old language.  For example, the sign for cracker is to stick out your elbow and knock on it with your fist.  Michael sticks out his elbow and knocks on his chest.  The sign for drink is to pretend you're drinking out of a cup.  Michael makes it look like he's pouring the drink onto his head.  Actually, that's pretty accurate way of showing how two year olds drink. :-)

A few nights ago, we read a Signing Time book with the signs for "love" and "I love you".  After reading the book and snuggling with him for a few minutes, I laid him in his crib.  He looked up at me with his big blue eyes and did the signs for "love" and "I love you".  That little boy sure knows how to melt a dad's heart!  We're so grateful for sign language, which has opened a window for us into Michael's heart and mind that he can't communicate to us through words or facial expressions.

Speaking of sign language, we were thrilled to get the news this week that Michael will be going to McGraw preschool in the fall.  That's the school where the teacher both signs and speaks to the class.  He absolutely loved it there when Liz took him a few weeks ago, and it will be a huge blessing for him to have a teacher who can communicate with him.  The only downside is that the school is across town.  We hope he will qualify to have a bus take him to and from school, which would relieve a huge transportation burden.

We also found out this week that Michael's insurance won't pay for in-home therapy when he turns 3 years old in July.  It will pay for in-office therapy, which ironically costs the same as in-home therapy.  But it would mean losing our wonderful therapists who have been with Michael ever since he was diagnosed at six months of age.  We're also concerned about Michael having the stamina to go to lots of therapy appointments outside our home after a full morning of preschool, as he wears out easily.  Not to mention the added burden it would put on Liz to drag Brooklyn and Spencer to Michael's many therapy appointments.  So we're working, hoping, and praying our insurance will make an exception and allow the in-home therapies to continue.

Michael playing playdough with his occupational therapist

Wheelin' Wheelers

Lately we've been testing out a wheelchair for Michael.  It's the cutest little thing.  It comes up to about my knee, but it has a long handle in the back that lets us push him around in it without having to bend over.  He's practicing pushing the wheels to help him go places.  We're still working on helping him learn to walk and hope that he'll be able to walk someday, but this may be a way to help him be more mobile without crawling or having us carry him everywhere.  After all, he's almost 3 years old and starting to get heavy!

His older siblings love the wheelchair even more than Michael does.  Spencer in particular will suddenly declare he has a broken leg, sprint over to the wheelchair, then go wheeling around in it.

Whitney has had several opportunities lately to share her talents with her school.  At the school talent show she and a friend sang "Let it Go" from Disney's Frozen.  What they might have lacked in being on key they made up for in their volume!  They sang their little hearts out and Whitney jumped up and down in delight when the song was over.

Whitney also had a role as a dinosaur in a show the first graders put on.  Liz helped make some of the costumes for the show.  And in classic first grade style, Whitney's dinosaur mask was too big for her and covered her eyes for much of the show.  At one point after reciting her lines, she couldn't see the microphone stand to put the microphone back.  She kept feeling around for it to the chuckles of the audience until the student next to her came to her rescue.  She was undaunted, however, and had a great time.

Brooklyn has been into climbing a lot lately and we'll find her in some interesting positions.  We found her upside down when she climbed head-first into a toy box, she can climb up a few stairs but can't climb back down them, or she'll turn other would-be obstacles into stairs.

Hazel's 3rd birthday

Liz and I were very fortunate to travel with Michael and Brooklyn down to Denver today to help Michael's little friend, Hazel, celebrate her third birthday.  A year ago in January her family received the grim news that her Ependymoma, the same cancer Michael has, had come back and was terminal.  The last time we saw Hazel was a year ago when we helped her celebrate her second birthday.  We wondered if that would be the last time we would see her.  We're thrilled that miraculously she is still with us and has made it to her third birthday.  What a sweet little girl she is.  Her body has been weakened by her illness and continued treatments, yet she smiled brightly at us when we wished her a happy birthday, and she seemed to thoroughly enjoy the card we made for her, signed by each of our children and with an outline of Michael's hand on the inside.

Happy Birthday Hazel!

We celebrated our ten-year anniversary a few weeks ago!  As part of our Family Home Evening that week we discussed how God has made it possible for families to be together forever.  That knowledge has been a particular source of comfort for our family over the last few years as we have been dealing with Michael's illness.

At the end of the lesson the girls got to try on Liz's wedding dress. They will make such lovely brides someday!

Liz's parents visited us for a few days last weekend.  Liz's dad helped me install some additional recessed lighting in the kitchen, and Liz's mom helped Brooklyn with her first haircut.  The lights turned out great, but the haircut came out a bit shorter than we expected.  Nothing that time or hair bows won't fix. :-)

We also had some fun playing with different hairstyles on Mikey during his haircut.

Michael's sign language skill continue to rapidly improve.  Liz and I are trying to catch up so we can communicate better with him.  I think a lot of his improvement has to do with his signing therapist, who is helping him bridge the gap between the sign language he has learned on the Signing Time DVDs and actually using those signs to communicate.  He loves it when people sign with him.  We've checked out some Signing Time books from the library, and as we point out each picture in the book and ask him what it is, he giggles and proudly shows the sign for it as if to say, "I know that one!"

Michael reading his Signing Time book

We were rather disappointed in the results of his recent evaluation for getting into preschool next year.  We really think he would do best in the sign language preschool where the teacher communicates both orally and in sign.  However, his evaluators didn't see him communicating much in sign language during their session with him.  We think it's probably because he was too busy exploring the room and playing with the activities there that he didn't realize it was time to "perform".

For his speech and signing therapies he sits in a specific chair and his therapists interact with him in a specific way so he knows that it's time to focus and work on his therapy.  He didn't get that during his evaluation, so he didn't stay focused.  The therapists and we are trying to get the evaluators to reconsider their results (or perhaps let Michael be re-evaluated) so that he can go to the sign language preschool next year if at all possible.