A Much Needed Peaceful Summer

This summer Ayden has REALLY enjoyed swimming. He has a little swim vest and absolutely loves the freedom he has wearing it all over the pool. He will even climb the stairs and jump in all on his own, laughing after he goes under the water and pops up! His walking is coming along very well, when he feels like walking or we make him. I wish he had the desire to just do it on his own without being forced, but that will come too in time.
There have been just a few bumps in the road as the end of school brought the end of his favorite part of the day. So now we wait to get him back to school, he has pictures on the fridge and will stop and name each of his friends. We hope to send him back with no wheelchair as we still have a few weeks to improve his walking. We are also looking forward to new challenges and his goals will be set a little higher.

Medically speaking we are still dealing with some anger issues, but hope to resolve them soon. There are several factors we are trying to rule out. Ayden wants so badly to communicate more and we are trying to help him use his words versus the fits/hitting that has become routine. We are on two waiting lists for speech therapists and hope to get another therapist on Ayden's team soon. We had a sleep study done in June and will have his tonsils and adenoids removed on Wednesday to help him sleep better and hopefully improve his mood overall. We had some seizure activity about two weeks ago, but we are hoping a change in the medicine will do the trick. So far it seems to be so we are thankful for just a minor "bump" in the road.

Fortunately, we will be done with all this a few weeks before school in hopes of sending Ayden to school without any added discomforts/challenges. Overall, this has been an amazing summer with Ayden, doing things with him is getting easier as he will actually tolerate the grocery store, some restaurants, and the boat. All in moderate doses on "good" days, BUT we'll take it! :) When we stop and think about how far he has come over the past 3 years, it is truly amazing.