School

Have I mentioned how happy we are that James and his one-on-one nurse are still together? The fact that she quit her job at one nursing agency and took a job at another agency so that she could be with him just blows us away. She has become more than just his nurse, aide, and helper. She has become family.

You can just tell how much she adores James by the way she talks to and encourages him in the videos she takes at school, like the one below from gym class on Friday. We’ve met a few awesome people because of James, and she is definitely on top of the list.

It may be hard to see in the above video, but this is the shirt that James is wearing:

Stacy loves this shirt because she puts ketchup on her hot dogs. Anybody that lives in the Chicago area knows that you DO NOT put ketchup on hot dogs. A Chicago hot dog is topped with onions, relish, sport peppers, yellow mustard, a pickle, and celery salt, but never ketchup!

Birthday Gifts

James can’t play with toys like most kids can so it’s hard to shop for gifts for him. When people ask us what to get James for his birthday, we normally tell them clothes, DVDs, or money for his medical fund. He gets a bit stimulated from things that light up, too, like this gift that he got for his birthday:

There are a lot of toys out there for kids with special needs, but they are expensive! I’m not sure how we got on their mailing list, but we have a love/hate relationship with this catalog:

We love it because there are so many cool things in the catalog that we think that James could benefit from. We hate it because of those prices. I wonder how many toys they actually sell. Having a child with special needs and living on one income, our money is pretty stretched as it is. How are we supposed to afford those prices?

As part of the decorations we got for James’ birthday party, we got some nice wooden letters that spell out James. Stacy hung them up on wall outside of his bedroom:

Got our Flu Shots

James went to the pediatrician yesterday for a checkup and a weight check. He weighed in at 48 pounds. The doc thinks he is gaining weight a little bit too fast, so he wants us to lower his feeds a bit.

We all got our flu shots while we were at the pediatrician’s office. Anything we can do to keep James from getting sick. And this is just a PSA and something to think about. Just because your child will survive an illness, doesn’t mean that all kids will. Some of them, especially those like James, might end up in the hospital or worse.