Hmmmm... It's been a year. I have been so bad at this. Well, we are doing good. We have had a lot of changes in the last year. Our family has changed so much! Evan is now a proud big brother to his little sister Alli (4 months old), and is doing really good most days. We still have our difficult days and new challenges arrise on a day to day, week to week basis. We skipped the conference this year with all the changes in our life, and our much larger family size, it just didn't work to go this year. I was thinking it'd be good to go as a family next year, but now I was told that it won't be covered as a reimbursement next year... so we might not be able to afford it. I really missed being able to see all the wonderful families I met last summer, I'll have to get better about emailing and chating with them all... to keep in touch. It gets so busy and crazy sometimes. The conference would be very beneficial to us all though. It's tough sometimes, and when you add a stepdad and stepsiblings to the mix, it shakes it up a bit.

Well lets see, I'll try to recap Evan's growth in the last year... He is potty trained finally. We don't take Miralax all the time because that seemed take it to the opposite extreme. He always goes a ton, but its not so bad if we make him sit on the potty and have a BM go at least 1 x every day. He has had accidents, a couple in the last couple of weeks. It gets frustrating, but we deal with it.

He has an orange cast. He broke his arm (actually, his wrist) while playing at the neighbors house a couple of weeks ago. He is doing well with it, although we have to remind him not to use it as a toy or weapon. He seems to think it's fun to hit things with it. He still uses his fingers to write and uses it for most things.

He went to San Antonio with grandma to be involved in a Chromosome 18 research study this past August. It was a really good opportunity and I'm very thankful that he was able to go. They did some testing with growth hormome, so I'm anxious to see the results of that.

He just started Kindergarten, and so far, so good. We have his IEP meeting in October, so I should get an update on how things are really going, from his therapists and teachers and aides, so that should be a bit more informative. So far I have his teacher on email, so we keep each other posted on dr apts. and daily updates.

We've been having some behavior stuff again, tantrums and outbursts... and not always listening... so we are having going to see someone at Southeast next week for some help with that. And there is a support group for Family Voices parents starting in Oct that Joe and I are going to attend. That should be helpful! It seems like we take steps forward and steps back, sometimes when we think we are past someting... then we see backtracking, when we had already seen progress. I don't know, it's very frustrating.

We have respite care now, so at least we can get some time to take a break, when things get to be just too much. It has been very, very helpful!!

That's all for now... but I'll have to write more later... it's been a long and busy year.