Oh, she's sticking out her tongue!

One of the comments we get most often about Meredith, other than "Look at all that hair!", is "oh, she's sticking out her tongue!" This is primarily related to her hypotonia, or low-muscle tone, since it takes work to hold your tongue inside your mouth. It is probably one of the characteristics that is most telling of Meredith's Down syndrome, but, if you don't know a lot about Down syndrome, as I didn't until April, you might just think she's hungry or being cute. However, at our tasting at our local wine shop today, it was Mer's tongue sticking out that led to a wonderfully supportive conversation.
When you begin reading stories about people who have children with Down syndrome, you start hearing about little whispered words of support that they get, from time to time, from other people in the community who are close to someone with Down syndrome. Since social coutesy demands that you don't mention a woman's bump until you know for a fact she's expecting, I have long wondered about these conversations, about the even more sensitive subject of a child's disability, start. It turns out, they start simply and sweetly like this...
Meredith was hanging out in her Baby Bjorn, flirting with our wine shop's owner and some of the other customers while Greg and I sipped a sangiovese. The woman next to me started talking to Mer and about the cute little tongue sticking out of her mouth. I had already mentally composed my response when she added, "My niece did that with her tongue for the longest time too. My sister used to always tap her on the tip of her tongue to get it to go back in."
I adjusted my response. Clearly, here was someone who was familiar with speech therapy and such in young children. Maybe I could explain about the hypotonia...maybe I could ask if her niece was still doing the tongue thing...I decided to go out on a limb...
"Meredith has Down syndrome," I started.
I had barely finished my sentence when she started hers..."So does my niece."
She had known. And she had reached out.
Gracefully.
Without offense.
And over a glass of wine!

Trick-or-Treat

Amoxicillin is a trick. Blue eyes and beautiful fall days are such a treat!
So, last Friday (a week ago) we took Mer for her 6-month well-baby check at our wonderful doctor's office. She weighed in, in the fly-weight division, at 11 lbs 14 oz, which puts her in about the 35th percentile for weight on the Down syndrome growth chart for girls. This is a little bit lower than her last visit, but our doctor is FABULOUS about reminding us that the curves on growth charts are made of averages of LOTS of babies and that each individual's chart usually looks more like a series of stairsteps, with sudden spikes and then more flat lines. This is, he says, probably a flatline time for her with a growth spurt right around the corner. What he was more concerned about, however, was the yellow gunk that has been coming out of her nose for the past two weeks. He quickly put her on a prescription for amoxicillin.
Now, those of you who have children know that giving a baby medicine is not necessarily the easiest thing in the world. (Those of you who have pets can imagine...it's really very similar!) We were just figuring out a system, on Friday, when Greg discovered a slight rash on Mer's torso. By Saturday, we were on the phone with the doctor as the rash had spread to her face and legs. Turns out, it took a week to show up, but Meredith has her first medical allergy, and we will be reminded of it for the next 3-6 days until it fades away.
The treat for the weekend, however, is that the allergy did not really explode until yesterday evening, so we were able to enjoy 2 beautiful days this weekend out "trick-or-treating" with Meredith. Friday evening we met up with some of Greg's colleagues to explore the Halloween festivities that JMU's Greek population has to offer...mostly bucketfuls of candy for every child in site! But there was warm apple cider for the grown-ups...and lots of 20-somethings ooh-ing and ahh-ing over all the kids in costumes while silently either wishing for cuties of their own or getting a real-life reminder to pick up some birth-control before going out to party that evening. Saturday morning we met up with a friend and her six-month old son to take in the sights in downtown Harrisonburg. Koala Meredith and her bumble-bee friend had a great time hugging each other in their soft and furry costumes and playing with the crunchy leaves around Court Square.

Bonus treat: we also visited the pediatric opthamologist about a week ago. Mer's eyes are in pretty good shape. She has a slight misalignment, but nothing that is likely to affect her vision at this time. Regarding the color, however, he said that a higher than average number of children with Down syndrome have blue eyes. Basing our previous predictions on her eye-color off of the Punnett squares you may have practiced in high-school biology, which said, in short, that brown eyes are dominant, we figured her eyes would be changing over soon. However, it turns out that that extra chromosome does some funny things, including things that affect eye color. Our opthamologist seems to think it quite likely that her baby blues are here to stay! :-)