"Stryders Journey"

Yesterday Styder had lots of therapy, for several hours. He is so cute and tries so hard. Jayme tried to get him to make a "g" sound, but he just can't get it and we tried every trick LOL. He loves playing with his therapy "friends". We will keep trying for a new word and are hopeful, but realistic.

We went to a baseball game on Sunday and we got boxed seats through Warren work. Stryder loved that he could go in and out he door and did so probably 200 times. Every time he would come in he would talk to whoever was sitting in front of the door and the poor man that was sitting there had no idea what to make of Stryder because he would come through the door and start saying something and since 80% of his words (and almost every sentence is dadadada) are dada the guy thought Stryder was calling him Dada. It was quite humorous actually and that guy just kept saying "I'm not your Dada," and Strdyer was having fun knowing full well that he wasn't dada. Kasiah had a blast too, although she is turing ten in a couple weeks and is at the age where she thinks she has to look and act "cool". Last year when the costumed people would come to her, she was excited, this year she wanted nothing to do with them, and the giant tree was trying to take her hat-it was fun to watch this little girl trying not to care when this big tree was trying so hard to make her care.

This last week it has rained a lot, even though the days are usually very sunny the rain comes in buckets and leaves. Because of that, we have a HUGe mud puddle in the back yard that he and Hershey find a lot of fun. Stryder HATES baths and has since he was a baby, so why a mud puddle is so much fun, I don't know. Hershey is a Chocolate Lab, so that's a given, but those two can get into a lot of trouble when left together. They decided today would be a great day to play in the water :( which also means that Stryder will come running in because he has realized that mud puddles have mud in them and it's on him. He really does not like to have ANYTHING on him. We call them little panic attacks, but he will be back out there to see if he can jump in again later, I'm sure.

Stryder is starting to get a cold which can cause seizures, coma or even death-but you just look at him and think that is the farthest thing from this little boy. I just hope we get the test results back so we can make our plan on which direction to go. We are starting to make plans to move back to Oregon, even though we never wanted to do that-with Stryder's new development, we need to. We are tentatively planning for the fall, or at least after we get all the assessments done and our goals outlined. I have checked with the speech programs they have there and they are just as good as here. Unfortunately, the hospital isn't equipped to deal with Maple Syrup Urine Disorder, but most aren't. We will have to do some research to see what our options are, but for now I remain positive and hopeful because Stryder's happiness is the main goal and always will be. It will be good to be around family again, but we really do love this area and there are a lot of fun things we have got to do.