Our art of blowing —Party Blowers

Since Tommy's was very little I encouraged him to drink with a straw and blow whistles and bubbles to strength his oral muscles. I still keep incorporating new blow toys to the art of blowing so he can practice using different complex blow toys that can be found at dollar stores, such as: whistles, party blowers, horns, pipes, bubble blowers, flutes and among others. 

A few months ago, I got party blowers and they were difficult for me to blow, so I put them away because I thought they would be too difficult for Tommy. Yesterday evening, Tommy took his blow toy box and open it. He found the party blowers! I gave him one party blower while I was blowing other one. Then, he blowed the party blower over and over again. I was surprised! Those are quite difficult to blow. I felt my oral muscles working while blowing the party blower. So watching Tommy blowing these party blowers was very impressive because of the fact he has Hypotonia (low muscle tone). He has to work his oral muscles twice harder of what I do. He enjoyed blowing the party blowers and I know for sure his oral muscle are stronger.

I know my letters

Wow! It was my expression when I discovered in the evening of April 15 my son was learning the alphabet capital letters from his teacher and not from me. In that week, his teacher was working on the alphabet letters with different activities. I thought it will be good to take out our foam alphabet letter to play in the bathtub and reinforce what his teacher was doing during the week. When we started to put the letter in alphabet order after the "letter A" I gave Tommy the "letter B" and he began to sing "beeh, beeh, beeh" with he tune of the alphabet song. I was surprised because I have never taught him the alphabet capital letters or their names –I have been doing the letter short sounds with animal lowercase letters from the Zoophonic program. I took the letters and I asked him: Which one is the letter A, the letter B, the letter C...? Until the letter G because he didn't want to continue. He chose the right letter every time I asked him. 

On April 26th, I discovered Tommy could recognized more capital letters of the alphabet during bath time, too. So I took the next 7 letters and he recognized all of them. He got a little confused with the H letter, but he named J, K and L after me. By that Time, my boy recognized 14 capital letters name that he learned in the classroom.


Early in the morning of May 8th, after I did Tommy's Asthma treatment around 5:45 am, I thought it was a good time to play with Sesame Street Alphabet Cards because we both were fresh and we couldn't sleep anymore. For my surprise, Tommy recognized the whole alphabet. Before I discovered he recognized the alphabet, I was thinking it will be confusing to teach him the alphabet letter names because I have been teaching the letter sounds first, but in lowercase. Everything worked out better than I could expect. We are extremely proud of our little man who keeps exceeding our expectations regardless his genetic disorder. He is learning wherever he goes, even his communication barrier don't allow us to know how much he knows.


The book that Tommy's teacher uses to teach the alphabet is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. She told me this book has been a hit in her class. So I am reading this book to Tommy once an while to reinforce the alphabet letters and I point to the letters while I read. I am also singing the ABCs songs.

I am glad God gave me the skills of 'observation' because I always discover when Tommy is accomplishing a milestone or has learned something new regardless his communications barrier. I always knew the path to raise my child would be different, but not less rewarding. 

Enjoy the video of Tommy recognizing the alphabet letters

This video is dedicated to Miss M., Tommy's teacher, 

for her dedication and passion for teaching a world of knowledges to her students. 

Learning to live with Asthma

Tommy's first three years were amazing happy and healthy. We were very grateful for having a child with a genetic disorder that barley got sick. Suddenly, everything changed since December last year when he began to get sick too often. In January this year, he got RSV and our boy had to spend 13 days in the hospital. Before leaving the hospital, we were aware he may get asthma due to the severity of the RSV he got. We were hoping it wouldn't happen, but  life can change in a second! 


Tommy got his first asthma signs since last Monday April 25th at night, but I didn't realize it. He began to cough while sleeping. The asthma symptoms got worse through the week. But we were thinking it was just a cold. But on Sunday night, I noticed Tommy was breathing using his neck and tummy muscles. I knew immediately it could be asthma, so I went to our room for the asthma action plan and I gave him 1 nebulizer as it written in his action plan. It worked for a while! Through the nigh the symptoms were getting worse and he had high fever, so we took to the doctor in the morning. The doctor say: I think he is developing asthma. After she checked his ears, she said: He also has an ear infection. It seems he got the ear infection due to asthma. The guy was feeling miserable! So  she said that we had to do more testing, which is already scheduled for June.


The doctor asked about things that could pull the trigger, I mentioned Tommy's favorite friend, Seumus, a dog.  She just said mmmm! I mentioned to her that he is a hypoalergenic dog. She said every dog produces dander that is in their skin, urine and saliva; which is an asthma trigger. She said that it is better to keep Tommy away from the dog until the testing is done and then they will determinate if it is safe for him. I remembered other things that pull the trigger. My husband left a cologne in the leaving room and Curious Tommy reached it and spray it on him the week he was getting sick. The day before his first asthma sign, we took him to a park and the pollen was too high for allergic and asthmatic people. 


Tommy was  spinning around this evening, then he got ditzy and felt hitting his chin against the tiles, so he got scared and couldn't control the emotion. Then, he stopped breathing! I felt life stop in a second, I didn't know what to do. I picked him up and run to call 911, but when I reached the phone he began to breath so I gave him his asthma medicine and everything when back to normal, except that I still has that moment in my mind. IT WAS SCARY! Today, we were just accepting the idea of him getting asthma and beginning to learn about how to deal with it when Tommy has first asthma attack. 


I still don't know much about asthma. But I will learn as much as I can to help Tommy to live a healthy life with asthma and teach others around him what to do if he has other asthma attack and avoid triggers that cause asthma. There is a possibility the asthma goes away as he gets older, so I am praying for that.