Talking!

Here's a list of all the words we've heard Quinn say over the past couple of weeks:

- Nyet! (no)
- Booook
- Bye (sometimes said to people who've just arrived at our house)
- Dada
- Ma (Mama)
- Car
- Muh (more)
- KiKi (Kitty)
- Go!

And lots and lots of speech-like babbling. We are so proud of our little man!

Lazy about lazy eye treatment

So Quinn is developing a lazy eye, aka strabismus, a common problem for kids with Fragile X. We were prescribed some drops to blur the vision in his "good" eye so that he is forced to use the lazy one, and thus hopefully avert lazy eye. But as you can imagine, Quinn has no love for the drops, so we've been bad and lazy about using them. Has anyone else had to use these drops? Did they really work? Perhaps your success story will motivate us to adhere to the treatment a bit better.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Here I am, trying to wrangle Quinn into his stroller as we play tourist at Fisherman's Wharf last month (Dec 2009). Fortunately I am feeling better and better these days and have to wear that expression less frequently.

Fingers Crossed for a Boring 2010

Happy New Year! We are pretty glad to say goodbye to 2009. It wasn't all bad, but there was way too much going on. In the 12 months of 2009:

• Zac got laid off and got depressed
• I left one job and started another
• Quinn changed schools twice (one school closed, he "aged out" of the second school by turning three, and he began school district preschool)
• Quinn transitioned from "early intervention" to "status 2" services through the regional center
• In the regional center and school transitions, we had to changes social workers, occupational therapists, speech therapists, and physical therapists
• We bought a house, remodeled it (with two contractors because we had to fire the first one), and moved into it. We lived with the remodeling for some time, including periods of having no kitchen, no furnace, unreliable electricity, and people and noise in our house for months.

Of course this is an incomplete list. We are so grateful to our friends and family for supporting us through all of this. We know we owe you! Adieu, 2009. May 2010 be totally uneventful!