Dipping Our Toes In...

25 Weeks

Saturday afternoon the 3 1/2 of us went to Sharonville Park for the DSAGC Early Matters Ice Cream Social - all parents of children with Down Syndrome; from prenatal [me] to 5 years old. It was very intimidating walking up to a park shelter knowing no one. We knew what Martha, the Early Matters Coordinator, looked like and started by introducing ourselves to her. 

After a nice conversation about how awesome all the families are and how well they are all doing, a nice woman, Julie, introduced herself and her 2-year old son, Jonah, with DS. Everyone we talked to was very open and honest about everything - a handful of mothers didn’t know their children were DS until after delivering - I imagine that emotional transition had to be harder than ours. A lot of families were very candid about how they went to dark places after their diagnosis. Everyone there truly said they are doing very well now and very happy and it really showed. 

I noticed that Nora towered over a lot of children there who were close to her age - I hadn’t  realized that children with DS are in smaller stature overall. Some of the children had just turned 2 and were just learning to walk. Which we’ve learned - the milestones happen much later than a child with typical chromosomes. 

We stayed an hour and felt good we’d made this small leap. The Buddy Walk is the next event on Sept 6th, but I’m a little nervous I could be close to delivering at that time! I know the Buddy Walk is a huge, wonderful event, so maybe we’ll be a last-minute registration depending on how I feel - ? 

After the ice cream social, we walked over to Nana & Papa’s house to visit and hit the St. Michael’s festival. Nana gave Nora some money to use and we played a lot of games that Nora won prizes at. The compact festival was overstimulation for Nora which says a lot!

We ran into the Morris/Godfreys and invited them back to Nana & Papa’s house. The girls played/argued over toys while the parents rolled their eyes in laughter.