PROMPT Commands

This is a post I've been waiting to get up for weeks!

Over the years I had heard about PROMPT quite a bit and the benefits of it. I would have totally learned it myself already, but of course they don't offer training to individuals . . . you have to be a speech therapist or pathologist. While I am that for my little brother, I am no professional :).

When the ST we see now said she was trained in PROMPT, I was thrilled. And even more thrilled when I saw how positively PROMPT helped Osiyyah. Our ST is wonderful, she will do the PROMPT commands when we see her once a month and then show us how to do them on Osiyyah, so we can continue doing them with him. Slowly, but surely, I'm learning PROMPT now and it's such a blessing for Osiyyah.

Years ago one of my sisters and I learned Cued Speech. It is basically English on the hands. And it has helped Osiyyah a lot. That deserves a post of it's own! PROMPT is somewhat similar to Cued Speech, but with PROMPT, you touch certain areas of the face, mouth, throat, etc to facilitate where the sound is actually coming from or how it should feel when said.

PROMPT was what helped Osiyyah say "Me" instead of "Dee." Constant repetition of just trying to get him to drop the "D" sound didn't work. But, when the "M" prompt was given and also the "eeee" prompt with it, he was able to (and had to because of the way the prompt commands are) say it correctly.

PROMPT is extremely beneficial for children with Apraxia, children with Oral Motor Planning problems (that's Osiyyah!), children who are very visually oriented and then also just to help a child really "get" a certain sound.

I was going to include a bunch of pictures of the PROMPT commands we do so you can see how to do them and implement them yourself, but of course, I have no clue where all the pictures went! So, I will have one of my sister's take some pictures sometime in the next few days of the PROMPT commands I do with Osiyyah. And then I can do a post for each one, which may make it easier anyways :).

Until then, have a Happy 4th of July weekend!

Life On The Ranch: Baby Bunnies

Since I don't have time to do a long, detailed post right now, I thought I'd do a quick "Life On the Ranch" post. As you may know, I raise rabbits. Osiyyah often times comes out to the bunny barn in the morning with me to feed or even at night when I check on them. There was a litter of 8 babies born on Sunday night, so I thought I'd put a few pictures up of Osiyyah seeing this litter for the first time :).

No, it's not the first time he's ever seen a baby bunny . . . I have litters born all the time. But, it's exciting to see the new tiny babies everytime :)!

He likes to put his little hand in the box and let the babies jump up to his hand.

And if anyone wants to see a baby bunny, here's a picture of one of the babies in this litter at just a couple days old.

Have a great day! And hopefully I can finish getting some of my speech therapy posts written up soon :).

Homemade Nachos . . . And Chips!

Since being gluten-free, we eat a lot of mexican style food now . . . tostadas, tacos, etc. Which is fine by me, since it's quite good food anyways.

But, the other night, as I was cooking up a few pounds of ground meat, I decided to try something different . . . other than a quick tostada fixin' or tacos. Since we use corn tortillas all the time, I thought I'd fry up some homemade chips and make the dinner into nachos.

I cut the corn tortillas into quarters, then fried them in oil for a few seconds per side. Just long enough so they would brown and be crispy. Quite a few had to be made since our family is so big, but they went a lot farther than I thought! We even had left overs for lunch the next day. And, boy were the chips and nachos way more filling than regular tortilla chips from the store.

This summer when we're full of salsa from the garden . . .  I can just see it now . . . being asked for homemade chips instead of chips bought at the store. We'll see how many times we fry chips up now, since they were delicious!

The one key that I've found to frying tacos, tostadas or chips is to have the burner on high (or very close to it) for a crisp, not very greasy fried food. The lower the burner, the longer the tortilla has to be in the oil and the soggier the food gets.

After the chips were fried, I sprinkled a little bit of salt on each round that came out of the oil.

They were definitely a hit in this house :)!

When this post publishes (if it works right as a scheduled post), we should be in Broken Arrow for the DSAT 2011 Calendar photo shoot. Osiyyah is in it this year :)!

Ukraine Orphans

Remember this little girl I posted a picture of a few weeks back?

She's been home just a few short weeks and the change in her is already very obvious.

But, there are still millions of orphans around the world who do not have a family and many who will never know the love of a family.

The special needs orphans pull a particular string, because they are so much more helpless. Their parents abandon them at birth simply because of their genetics, a deformity or a disability They abandon them over something the child had no choice in. Did that child choose to be born with a third 21st chromosome? No, God is the one who made him that way. Yet, because they aren't "perfect", many of these children are rejected or looked down upon by the society they are born into.

And so, they live their lives inside of a crib.

And then at 4 years old are transferred to an even worse place, a mental institution. To either live the rest of their life out locked up, tied to a crib or die very shortly after being sent there. Like these two little girls I wrote about in a blog post a year ago February.

Living your life inside of a crib, starved of love and adequate care & nutrition results in this:

This little boy is Wade. He has Down syndrome, is 3 years old and weighs about 10 lbs. Unbelievable, sickening and sad. He is in the same orphanage that the little girl at the top of this post, Hailee, was just rescued from. In the same room, where the "most needy" children are. Left in their cribs alone. When I saw his picture on this blog post, I couldn't help but cry. This little boy is adorable and he would be a baby I'd adopt right this moment, if adoption wasn't so difficult.

I wish there weren't so many stringent requirements in adoption, because then so many more people could adopt. (Yes, I understand why the requirements are there, but I still think it's a bit over board.)

If little Wade was born into a family who loved him, he would not be 10 lbs at 3 years old. I've seen it with my own eyes. My little brother has Down syndrome and we've loved him and treated him like any other child in our family and he has thrived beyond anything we were ever told! Just simple love goes so far.

Little Wade could do so well in a family and I can only hope that God will open the doors for us to be able to adopt a little guy like him someday.

Specially Formulating Nutrivene?

I was asked a few weeks ago about specifically formulating Nutrivene and if we did that for Osiyyah. As in specifically formulating it via metabolic testing, blood work, etc. I thought this would might be helpful for others, so I figured I'd post my reply up here as well (with a few changes ;)).

We have not done a custom formula. We give Osiyyah the regular formula and it works incredibly well for him. And then depending on lab work we’ll add more of a certain supplement if he needs it. Like Zinc and Vitamin D. We supplement extra in both of those. He tests low in zinc if we don’t supplement extra and Vitamin D it is recommended to give a higher amount (they can’t get that high of an amount in Nutrivene-D).Or, if needed we would reduce the amount of certain supplements, but that has never been a need or problem at all.

The thing with Nutrivene-D is that it has been "calibrated", things added to it, nutrient amounts increased or decreased, things taken away from it, etc over the last 15+ years. All of this in accordance with the latest research showing the nutritional benefits of TNI or certain supplements in children with DS. Or, based on families and what more they may need to supplement, or what they are supplementing extra with, and all that.

So, overall, Nutrivene-D is quite complete and I have never felt that we needed something specifically designed to Osiyyah’s body. That's what Nutrivene does for us already - it's targeted to meet the needs of a 47th chromosome.

Just in the fact that Nutrivene is designed for kids with an extra chromosome, says a lot. Yes, there’s a difference in kids with DS, but there are LOTS of similarities, especially when it comes to the imbalances, overexpressions, etc of all the 250+ additional genes on the third 21st chromosome.

If we were just to do testing on my brother and formulate something for him specifically, I’d be afraid that we would miss something. Because some of the nutrients in Nutrivene-D can’t just be easily tested for to see if they are needed. Some may be there to prevent something which research has shown is off balance or overexpressed because of the triplicated chromosome. And you may not necessarily be able to know via simple lab work.

There are some families who have had to give their child a bunch of supplements, because they either aren't able to get Nutrivene or their child won't take Nutrivene. These families certainly have their work cut out for them even more, but they still do have a guide. That guide? Nutrivene & the research behind it.

I know one family in Switzerland and the list of supplements their child takes is HUGE. But, it's all components that are in Nutrivene already or components that research has shown to be very beneficial.

Hope this helps someone!

Recipe 3: Gluten-Free Zucchini Bread

We have had a few Zucchini from the garden, so it's getting to be time to make homemade Zucchini bread and all the yummy stuff you can make with garden produce :).

Some may cringe at the idea of "Zucchini bread", but it's absolutely delicious. It's basically just like Pumpkin bread. The recipe we use is a recipe that we have used for 10-15+ years. Originally it was a Pumpkin bread recipe, but we've used Zucchini with it a lot and it's always delicious.

Yesterday was the first time we had tried it Gluten-Free and it was fabulous. I think it was almost better than the "Gluten-filled" version of it! Partly because of the Sorghum flour we used in it. That flour (even the smallest amount) makes everything taste so good.

Gluten-Free Zucchini Bread 
Click here for a printer-friendly version of the recipe.

This recipe makes 6 loaves of bread.

3 Eggs
4 Cups Sugar
6 Cups Pumpkin, Squash or Zucchini
2 Tablespoons Vanilla*
1 1/2 Cups Oil
6 Cups Gluten-Free Flour**
1 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
2 Tablespoons Baking Soda
2 Teaspoons Xanthan Gum
1 Tablespoon Salt
1 Tablespoon + 1 1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
1 Tablespoon + 1 1/2 Teaspoon Nutmeg
2 1/2 Cups Milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 Degrees.

2. Mix all ingredients together.

3. Butter pans and fill each loaf pan about 1/2 full.

4. Bake at 350 Degrees for 35 minutes or until golden brown and toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

*I have also used 1 tablespoon of Almond extract instead of Vanilla and it turns out great!

**Flour mix I used in this recipe: 2 1/2 cups White Rice Flour, 2 1/2 cups Brown Rice Flour, 1 cup Sorghum Flour.

Gluten Free Kitchen Time!

This is probably a record - 4 blog posts in a day :). Hopefully it helps keeps things interesting for ya'll!

We've done quite a decent amount of gluten-free baking lately. My 11 year old sister is the queen of the kitchen and making all the "goodies" for the house. She's come up with some amazingly delicious GF recipes. She blogs all her favorite recipes on her blog, along with her photography. She has some great kitchen & photography skills at such a young age :). Check out her blog and leave her some comments . . . I'm sure she'd enjoy it!

Our newest quest has been to do flourless baking. We've actually been quite successful so far. I made a Flourless Chocolate Cake for my brother's birthday party on Saturday. It was a hit. So rich, moist and delicious! I found the recipe by just browsing through AllRecipes.com, followed it exactly and the cake turned out great. I used 3 bags (11.5 oz each) of Ghiradelli Bittersweet Chocolate Chips.

This is a flourless Peanut Butter Cookie my little sister made. It was a big hit at my brother's party . . . even among our friends who aren't totally "gluten-free." It's a recipe that you'd never know was "Gluten-Free" or even Flourless for that matter!

I decided to make some biscuits (using our favorite recipe that I posted sometime ago) this afternoon. But, when Osiyyah heard I was heading into the kitchen he asked if I was going to make "No Wheat Tookies" (Cookies). So, I went ahead and made some no-bake cookies that he could help me with before going onto the biscuits.

The biscuits were a hit again and all 29 of them were gone at dinner time. They were especially yummy with homemade butter & homemade blueberry jam on them!

TalkTools -Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson- Video Online

Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson (TalkTools) has a blog. She recently gave a presentation at ASHA on the benefits of and the "why" behind Oral Placement Therapy (previously known as Oral Motor Therapy). It's taken her a bit of time to get the video of the presentation she did up online and this is why:

Sara said,

I didn't feel it was appropriate to film while at ASHA so I had to give the presentation to a camera instead of an audience, never my favorite. So, now you know why the long delay, but you also now have access to the video!

So, the original presentation isn't filmed, but she re-did if for everyone to have access to and to see! Thanks Sara :)!

The video and the handouts that go with it can be seen at www.talktoolsvideos.com. This should be very informative and a great resource for parents, therapists and professionals alike! Feel free to pass this on to anyone you feel would be interested.

Free Shipping All Summer!

I received an email from the company which prints the book my mom & I edited and compiled, Down Syndrome: What You CAN Do and the email had a special discount with it. All summer, any order over $19.95 will receive free shipping! So, it works out perfect, since our book is $22.73 :). This is a good $5-$10 saving!

You can order the book & see a 15 page preview at http://stores.lulu.com/gotdownsyndrome.

Life On The Ranch: Birthday Party & A Summer Swim

This past weekend was a very busy weekend for us. One of my brothers turned 18 last week, so we threw a surprise party for him on Saturday at my cousin's house (who lives across the street ;)). My brother is a cowboy and trains horses with my cousin, so the party was a "Hoe-Down" kind of party with apple bobbing, gunney sack races, cowboy dress-up, cow dummy roping, etc.

Everyone had quite a blast. Osiyyah wanted to do all of the party games . . . even the apple bobbing. No, we didn't let him do the apple bobbing as he would not have been able to do that safely. But, one game Osiyyah did do really well in was the gunney sack race. He raced his little cousin. Osiyyah did so good for about half the race, but then tripped. He was so disappointed that he tripped up!

And I'll throw a couple pictures in of my 18 year old brother racing too!

The prize basket waiting for the winners of each game :)

Sunday was a very hot, humid Oklahoma summer day. So, it was the perfect day to go swimming at the creek. The spot we swim at is a nice 20 minute drive or so and it's the perfect place. Shallow in some areas for the little ones and deep in some areas for those who want to swim. The water is the *perfect* temperature too. Such a blessing to be able to go cool off on these hot days.

Osiyyah was having quite the time in the creek yesterday. Wanting me to help him "float" on his back and get the back of his head wet in the water. Wanting to dip his face in the creek . . . with us holding his nose and keeping his mouth closed.

Such a great weekend God blessed us with :)!