It’s Buddy Walk Week in Puget Sound! The Buddy Walk is an advocacy event in which everyone in the community is invited to participate. The Buddy Walk promotes community acceptance and awareness of people with Down syndrome. The Buddy Walk was started by the National Down Syndrome Society and has grown from 17 walks in 1995 to over 225 of walks worldwide today. More than 100,000 people participated across the world last year. 
I am proud to say that this year was my very first Buddy Walk…and I can’t even walk yet! We walked all around Seattle Center and, well, I actually slept most of the walk on my Daddy in the Baby Bjorn.
My Sissy came down from college for the weekend and to participate in the Walk and we got to spend some quality time together before she had to go back to school. The day actually turned out to be really nice and I got to spend time with Kayla and the Sarbachs and Mommy got to talk to and play with Holly. We raised $1501.00 for the Down Syndrome Community. I’m really blessed to have so many people who wanted to support me. YAY! And thanks everyone!!! :)
In other news, I managed to make it the whole weekend without pooping! As a result, Mommy had to switch me from rice cereal in my bottle to oat cereal. I also got to try a slew of new flavors and try eating with…a SPOON!
Mommy started with prunes, which I didn’t much care for until she mixed in a little of my milk, then I was ok with it. I also tried pears, which I am here to tell you, I do NOT like. They’re pretty tart. I also managed to slog down 2 oz each of apple and white grape juice. Juice is ok, but it’s definitely NOT my own milk, so it was kind of a shock when I first tasted it. Mommy was trying to get the motor going, so-to-speak. She felt really badly taking me to daycare on Monday and telling them that I was potentially going to explode. They took it in stride and when I finally did have a movement, they called my Mommy so she could jump up and down and rejoice. And then I did it 5 more times that same day!! Needless to say, maybe I didn’t need to ingest ALL those things over the weekend! But..it’s started me on the path to new experiences and to starting to try to work with a spoon.
I had more adventures at school this week:
- I went on a buggy ride without falling asleep!
- I had my very first taste of a mini-cupcake for a classmate’s birthday. I’m here to tell you, cupcakes are WAY different than pears. They're really quite delicious. I hope we have more kids who have birthdays in my class!
- I played with string and paper to do “pumpkin art”…the finished product will be shown to Mommy and Daddy at Parent’s Night at school.
- Ms. Colleen came to school to play with me! I got to show her around my school and have her meet Ms. Audrey. She said I’m doing really well, but do need to work on grabbing at toys and focusing on finding my middle. Ms. Audrey was excited to have things to practice with me and we’ve been playing “toy grabbing” all week. Also, we agreed I should work more on sitting up. The day after Ms. Colleen came, Ms. Audrey told my Mom that I did a tripod sit for more than 10 seconds! I have a feeling that having Ms. Colleen and Ms. Audrey working together means more fun playtime and milestones for me!
Here I am playing in my jungle gym at home, working on looking up and when I flip over, I get to play with the hanging toys!
Mommy took a really funny video of me playing the "All the Way Up and All the Way Down" game...you can see it below!
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