On November 18 2009 at 4:02 am William Alan Bartosch was joyfully welcomed into our family. He weighed in at 7 lbs 9 oz and 20 in long. We were stunned to discover that he was born with Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome. We love him unconditionally from the top of his toe-head to the tips of his toes. We know that this diagnosis will not define him. He is a happy, healthy little boy that just happens to have an extra chromosome.



Follow us on this unexpected and exciting journey as we learn how to live life Will's Way.



Sunday, March 27, 2011

We Love Pampers

The newest Pampers ad campaign features a sweet little baby girl with Ds and celebrates babies with special needs.  They join Target, Walmart and Toys R Us as companies that have featured beautiful children in all shapes and sizes in their ads.  Although I typically buy Target diapers...this makes me want to buy Pampers diapers too:)  Kudos to Pampers!  Check it out...
http://media.us.pampers.com/en_US/emails/POME_Miracles/email.html

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

World Down Syndrome Day Video



In honor of World Down syndrome day the IDSC for Life made this beautiful video.  This organization promotes respect and dignity of ALL life at ALL stages.  They seek to raise awareness of the extremely high number of babies with Down syndrome that are aborted each and everyday, nearly 90% of prenatal diagnosis', because of pressure and misinformation about the Down syndrome diagnosis.  This organization is dear to my heart from a pro-life stand point as well as an advocacy stand point.  Learn more at http://www.idscforlife.org/ .

Busy Boy

Will is getting so big!  This video makes me laugh:)


Sorry, that we have been away for awhile...life has been crazy!  I started a new job and it has been hard getting adjusted to the new schedule.  Will is doing really well though and moving along with all of his therapies.  He is doing lots of fun new things. 


He is standing himself up on the stairs and couch and on his little play table.  He has mastered getting up the first step but has not yet figured out how to get down:(  He has had lots of bumps on the head the last couple weeks as a result!  He is bear-crawling a lot more and has started standing upright in the middle of the floor, then hovering there for several seconds, then plopping down on his bottom.  He definately likes the feeling of standing up! 


We are still struggling with cup and straw drinking but are trying many new methods.  We started working with a feeding OT in the middle of February and she has been helping us think of new ways to get Will to like his cup better:)  So far we have not really done much more than sipping but at least we have some new things to try.  Will has been enjoying some face massage, working with a chew tube covered in Nutella to strengthen his jaw muscles, playing with his cups in the the bath so that we can learn to 'love' them more and drinking both thinned down applesauce and thickened chocolate milk.  We are continuing our bi-weekly visits to the PT and she is working on standing while playing, cruising and crawling up stairs.  We have been seeing a lot of our new home therapists too.  We have at least one session a week with either the PT, OT, ST or EI teacher.  They are all great and have been giving me good ideas for new activities to do around the house.  Working with items at our house helps us to make therapy a part of our daily routine rather than having to set aside time to work on specific things.  The speech therapist has given me lots of silly activities to do with Will to encourage new sounds.  He still has not said momma...but he has started saying 'up'.  We seem to be stuck on 'baba', 'dada', 'ahh' and the occasional 'p'!  We work on signs often as well, but the only sign we occasionally see is 'more'.  'Up' and 'more' gets Will most of what he wants at this stage:)


Will also recently attended his first OSU/IU basketball game!  The Mattas invited us to a game and we had a lot of fun.  Will was a little frightened by all the flashing lights and loud noise at first, but got used to it by the second half.  He was dancing and clapping by the end!  Although he wore his OSU sweatshirt, he was cheering for both teams!



We also celebrated World Down syndrome day on 3.21.11.  Thank you all for your support and awareness!