Josh is now 47" tall, and 49#. He easily eats 5-6 times a day, but burns all of it off very quickly. He is a VERY busy young man... who still explores his world full speed ahead :-). After the gift of an iPad to our family for Rob and Josh to use, Josh has become very adept at it, through sheer persistence. His experience has made him the unofficial classroom "techie" in his first grade... he's the one the kids call when they get stuck on their computer math lessons!
We've had a couple of "former" doctors of ours observe him briefly (and not ask questions) who suggested Josh could use some Ritalin to slow him down! :-O He is a very busy guy, bordering on hyperactive (or likely full blown hyperactive to others not used to ADHD kiddos, LOL). But he can focus for hours when he wants to :-), and proves hard to distract at such times. His teachers have wisely given him a "wiggle cushion" to sit on at school, and he does very well with that.
Josh's 14 yr old brother, Rob, is hard of hearing, and thus loud. Josh is louder! I'm still guessing he has a form of auditory processing difficulty yet to be diagnosed? But interestingly enough, Josh has become less tone deaf every month, and is learning to sing on key! :-) His english vocabulary is astounding. Where he has big, puzzling problems is in categorization. It took over 2 years for him to learn the alphabet correctly by phonetic name. But once he had the phonetic names right... the school went back and started teaching him the names of the letters. And guess what? He's losing his memory of the phonetic names. :-( Josh wants SO badly to be able to read, but it's a major issue for him. A team of specialists will be meeting in January to try to puzzle out what's going on. Praying they can!
Josh and I flew to the 2012 Vascular Birthmarks Conference the weekend of 11/11/12 in NYC (or "big bad New York" as Josh called it). Zounds... it proved a tense trip as first Hurricane Sandy, and then winter storm Athena hit NYC! We flew out at the front of winter storm Brutus, in increasing snow, and were one of the first planes to land at LaGuardia once Athena had passed. The taxi rides were even more "interesting" ;-D. We learned more at the Conference... mainly that we have a very rare jewel in Josh! His jaw and teeth issues are so rare, we got totally conflicting opinions from 2 of the top teams in Vascular Anomalies in one afternoon! :-O They only agreed on two things... Josh will need jaw surgery in the next 3 years, and he needs to start skin laser treatments where the Port Wine Stain is thickening on his face before it gets too thick for laser. We are still praying for God's guidance as to WHO will do the jaw surgery. And Josh is scheduled for his first laser treatment at UCLA, Irvine, CA on 1/11/13. At least we don't have to fly all the way back to NYC again! :-)
And it has taken us until now to learn how to best treat wounds in Joshua's Port Wine Stain. Apparently, his is thinner skinned, harder to heal than many? A consult with a Seattle Dermatologist had him say "You've likely never heard of a very rare skin disease called Epidermolysis Bullosa, or the bandage that works best on it, Mepitel, but...". LOL!! Phil and I fostered sweet Julia Grace in 2001... and Mepitel was one of the products we used on her bigger wounds from her Epidermolysis Bullosa! Our pediatrician was in awe, saying it was like an aligning of cosmic forces that we had this coincidence. No...it's just another God planned coincidence we experience with our incredible kiddos :-)). Those are indeed the highlights of our adoption roller coaster lives!
Happy Adoption Day, Josh!
