Hi everyone!  Long time no talk!  Cody's been doing great - he's now signing "help" fluently.  He had a fascinating speech session this past week.  He has been learning "help" (you flatten the palm of one hand, and the other hand makes an upright fist and bangs against the open palm.)  We have never been sure how Cody would handle a more complex "two-handed" sign - where each hand was doing something different.  But so often he hands me toys to turn "on" for him, that we gave "help" a shot.  At first he kept trying to make two fists and bang them together.  So we kept modeling "help" and doing hand over hand manipulating of his hands to sign it.  He was still trying to curl up the hand that was supposed to have a flat, open palm.  So I just isolated that hand of mine and held it right up to his face.  He stared at my flat palm, looked at his hand, stared at mine, looked at his.  I held it there for what seemed like an eternity as he looked back and forth.  And then, he uncurled his little fingers and flattened his hand out - just like mine.  YAY! I shouted - that's "help!"  It showed us  alot - primarily that he can imitate more than we knew.  I always thought most of his learning of signs came from repetitive hand over hand help.  But he showed us this time that he can imitate our motions.  That imitation muscle has been built up through all of his imitation programs in ABA.  And he's doing exactly what we'd hoped - he's "generalizing" imitation now and he's able to watch something I do and do it himself.  He's just doing so great, I'm so proud of him.  Another interesting we're learning with signs - is that he understands words.  If he's standing at the front door struggling to remember the sign for "open" -- I can just say "o p e n" softly and a light goes on - and he makes the sign.  So he's associating every sign with a word.  All such good learning.  And during these early development years when his brain is laying down those neuropathways, it is so good for him to have to search his mind for these things and do them repetitively.  He's also learning "bath", "nut butter" and "banana" over the next couple of weeks. 

His seizures have been continuing to stay down - what I told the Dr. is that they are "less intense" and "shorter" since the VNS.  He still has them, but they're milder and shorter it seems.  One thing I would tell anyone else reg. the VNS is do NOT turn it up more than 1 gradation at a time.  He had his turned up at the end of the week and was fine thurs/friday/saturday...but today (sunday) he woke up screaming for 2 hours!  We decided on thursday to turn it up 2 notches rather than just 1 since he'd been tolerating it so well since it was activated.  We'd noticed no side effects and it seemed to be helping with seizures.  So the nurse and I discussed raising it 2 levels rather than 1.  she said it happens all the time - esp. when people come from out of town.  She said I would notice any side effects immediately (coughing, irritability) so we turned it up 2 notches and waited for an hour to watch for any side effects.  Everything was dandy so we went home.  And it wasn't until today that out of the blue - he totally freaks out.  We ran him to the ER and the neuro on call lowered the setting and he was instantly fine again.  Clearly his system can't tolerate more than one level of increase at a time.  Good to know! 

Well, I must run.  Daddy is busy training for the marathon and Cody is getting ready too!  "Team Cody" is getting ready for action!  It will be a fun day (well, fun for me....tiring for Don!)  Love to all and I'll be posting daily until the marathon. 

Shawna