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| Alistair spied the car in the parking lot at school one day on his way to recess. He had his para take a photo of it and send it to me commenting on the nice car! |
Well, so far 2016 is treating us very well. We had a great Christmas Break. The kids started back at school and we have resumed our semi-busy lives. We have officially backed off all therapies to one day a week per visit (OT, PT, Speech). We know we are going to max out on our visits for the year, but it would be better to max out in June versus March! The other reason we felt ok doing this (as well as his therapists) is because he is getting an hour of OT/PT and an hour of Speech at school every week in addition to his outside therapies. People continue to see changes and improvements in Alistair. He had an appointment with Dr. Apkon last week and she was very pleased with the progress he has made since November. She noted that he has little to no tone left in his legs and feet and that the tone in his arms and hands seems to have decreased as well. He continues to struggle with his hands and the use of them for writing, coloring and drawing. His mouth also continues to be tight across his upper and lower lips. We have an appointment with a neurologist in a few weeks to see if she might have any thoughts on that or on anything pertaining to his medications: if he needs the ones he's on, if different ones would be better. Dr. Apkon has also mentioned the Parkinson's Mask when speaking about his face and wondering if there might be something to be done through that thought process. We shall see in a few weeks.
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| The kids love playing Just Dance together. Alistair has one song he really likes and they do it a lot. Whatever gets them up and moving...and having fun together! |
We see Dr. Lewin on Monday. Alistair hasn't seen him since November. We are finally beginning to see some positive effects of his surgery and the whole reason we decided to do it. Alistair seems to have more energy and is more willing to be active and do things with us! He also seems to not get tired as easily as he did. He has been killing it with his fitbit, routinely kicking all of our butts! Of course he has much shorter legs than the rest of us and thus gets twice as many steps. But still...reflecting back to when he first got it and was getting 6K steps and now he is getting 13-17K PER DAY!
Alistair is becoming the new Zack the Lego Maniac! For Christmas he asked Santa for the VW Bus set. It is an expert level set. He put it together in 11 days! Seth then wanted to keep the momentum (and OT work) going and bought the expert level Mini Cooper and paid Alistair in a lego set to build it for his office. Alistair built the Mini in 5 days and is now working on his payment, the Lego City Training Jet Transporter.
Next week Alistair is jumping in the Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser at school. Gillian jumped on Friday. They are working together to raise money. All the proceeds go to support the American Heart Association, which has become a very important organization to our family, Alistair and Gillian (with a little of my help!) put together their website and reasons for why they wanted to participate in the event. They are collecting money through next week. Here is a link to their page if you would like to support them
Lastly, Gillian is Daisy Scout (first level of Girl Scouts) and she is currently taking cookie orders through Thursday. If you would like to order some cookies, she would LOVE to sell them to you!
