Most Mondays I take Wes (plus a two-year-old that I babysit Monday mornings) to the local library for baby sing-and-sign time. This morning I got there early, got a parking place in the parking lot instead of on the street (yes! major accomplishment), got Wes and the two-year-old in and settled, and then found out that the teacher was ill and class was canceled. A lot of moms had turned out with their babies, so the children’s section of the library became an impromptu playgroup.

A friendly lady struck up conversation with me and we chatted for a long while. One of the first things she commented on was Wesley’s Down syndrome. She had a lot of positive things to say about it, which I always appreciate hearing. She thought his smile is so bright and lights up his whole face, and that he’s very loving and good natured.

It surprised me, though, that she knew he has Down syndrome. When others mention the Down syndrome I always wonder, “How can you tell?” I don’t normally tell people he has DS. It’s not the kind of thing you throw into introductions: “Hi, this is Wes, and he has Down syndrome.” Like it’s part of his name or something. But I guess it must be visually obvious and I just don’t realize it. To me, Wes is Wes. I see him everyday, all day, and he looks completely like Wesley. Completely normal.

Yet others can look at him and tag him as having DS (or, as a lot of people say, as being “Downs”). It’s kind of funny that people can look at you and categorize you instantly like that. I guess we do it all the time, to all sorts of people you see everywhere (“he’s angry” “she’s a businesswoman” “she’s pretty” “he’s handicapped”).

I just realized I did a tag of my own the other day when I was at a store and Wes wasn’t with me. I saw a mom, a dad, and their teenage son (who had Down syndrome) in the shoe department. In the first millisecond of spotting them I unconsciously tagged him as having DS, then tagged him as a teenager (he was complaining about how long his parents were taking), and then I tagged his parents as wonderful, loving people whom I admire for raising their son in spite of his challenges.

Judging has a negative connotation, but tagging seems more like “sizing up.” And as long as people mainly associate positive things with Down syndrome, I can’t mind other people noticing it in my own baby.

(Wesley’s Halloween costume)

Wes has really taken off with crawling. He’s getting more adventurous and roaming wherever his hands and knees will take him. Yesterday I saw him crawl from the living room all the way to the dining room, which involves going around a corner.

I think our two cats (poor, unsuspecting souls) have greatly influenced Wesley’s crawling skills. They’re his favorite friends/victims. Kyra is the older, more maternal cat that, while not loving Wesley’s affections, will at least put up with him. Grayson is the younger, more skittish cat that whenever he sees Wes approaching gets the heck out of Dodge. Which helps encourage Wes to crawl even more!

Video: Chasing Grayson

One thing I’ve been helping Wes learn to do is climb the stairs. I barely started working with him on it last week, but he has apparently taken to it so well that he feels confident enough to do it when my back is turned. This morning I ran upstairs for a minute and when I came back I looked over the landing and couldn’t see him where I had left him. I looked down further and saw him standing on the first step and trying for his second. His physical therapist pointed out that fear is not a bad thing for kids to gain and we should give Wes “controlled falls” so he can experience a little panic and fear and realize he shouldn’t try to stand, sit, or turn around on the stairs. Guess I’ll have to get around to trying that sometime soon.

Video: Up the Stairs

I took Wes to the doctor today for his one-year appointment. The receptionist remembers Wes from when he was teeny-beeny (I had to bring him in every week for weight checks for the first two months), and she always comments on how big he is.

“Big” is a relative term, though. Wes is growing for sure, but I’m sorry to say that he’s stuck in that rear-facing car seat for a long while still. He has to be 20 pounds, and so far he hasn’t quite tipped 16 pounds. Today he was 15.95 pounds and 27.5 inches long (up from the 3 lbs 15 oz and 16 inches at birth).

His checkup was fine. The doctor said if Wes doesn’t get teeth in the next three to six months that he’ll order x-rays, but it’s not uncommon for kids Wesley’s age to still be toothless. We talked about Wesley’s eating habits. The short of it is that Wes will pretty much eat anything that comes in contact with his mouth–and like it too–but we always get the encore act of everything he eats when he spits it up again later, sometimes over and over again. I recently started giving him whole milk but stopped when I realized the smell of curdled, partially digested milk is way worse than formula or breastmilk. I mean, waaaaaaaaaay worse. When I asked the doctor when I could expect Wes to get over his spitting up, he shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” Although he did say that a lot of babies show marked improvement between 12 and 13 months. He wasn’t sure if that would apply to Wes since he’s much smaller than other kids his age.

Speaking of size, the nurse couldn’t get the computer program to print out the growth charts specifically for kids with Down syndrome, so we got Wesley’s stats on a regular chart instead. And he doesn’t even make it to the Zero Percentile for any of his measurements. You see all these lines zig-zagging upward, showing the range of growth progress, and then there’s Wesley’s little dot plotted a half-inch below all the lines. Poor kidlet. But I’m pretty confident that on the DS chart he’d probably be somewhere around 20% for most of his stats.

The doctor also said about Wesley’s reflux that it’s possible his Down syndrome is making it hard for him to get over it by the way his little body is set up inside. Maybe his stomach tissues are more sensitive or something.

Also related to his DS, I have to take Wes to get his thyroid checked annually. Wes is at a higher risk for thyroid problems because of the Down syndrome. Our doctor treats other DS patients, and several of them are on medication to help regulate their thyroids. The thyroid test involves a blood draw at the hospital lab, but I couldn’t bring myself to take him today since he got three shots and blood taken from his toe for an iron check. (It turns out Wesley’s iron level is low, but not anemic, and the doctor suggested we feed him more meat. Every man’s dream!)

It’s routine to take kids with Down syndrome in to see the ENT (ear/nose/throat) doctor by the time they’re about one year old. That’s because kids with DS have smaller ear and nasal passages than other kids, which can mean trouble (like frequent ear infections). Wes has been super healthy and hasn’t had any ear infections, and I know he can hear just fine. But I took him in anyway just to make sure.

Wes made fast friends with the receptionist and doctor by smiling at them like crazy. But when the doctor put the lighted tube into his ears and the tongue depressor in his mouth (which made him gag), he might have regretted his earlier friendliness and he had no more smiles for the doctor. The ear thing was cool for me to see, though. The lighted tube has a camera on it and I could see on the TV monitor what was in Wesley’s ear. It was done quickly, so Wes wasn’t uncomfortable for long. When it got to the ear drum the doctor froze the frame on the TV and pulled out the lighted tube and Wes could relax. Then we looked at the ear drum together, the doctor knowingly and me pretending to know what I was looking at, and the doctor declared that both of Wesley’s ear drums appear healthy. He said this is pretty remarkable for a kid with Down syndrome and congratulated me (not like I had much to do with it…).

The doctor did say that as Wes gets older and interacts more with kids in the world he’ll be more prone to picking up ear infections, so we’ll have to see how things go. I’ve talked to a lot of moms whose kids with DS have tubes inserted to help drain the fluid and prevent ear infections. It seems not uncommon for DS kids, but if Wes continues on track hopefully we can get away without the tubage.

On another bright note, I always thought Wes has a lot of ear wax, but the doctor said it’s actually not too bad. Which made me feel better because, wow, his ears seem dirty to me. Maybe that’s just part of being a little boy.

Last week we had Wesley’s picture taken professionally (I’ll post some pictures later), including some pictures in his Halloween costume from last year. Then he weighed only about 5 pounds, and the costume is size 0-9 months, so last year he was pretty much drowning in it.

But this year it fits him much better. I think he weighs around 16 pounds now. Anyway, I brought him home from the shoot in his costume and let him play in it a while until he spit up all over it and necessitated a change. It’s not everyday you have Superman in the house.

Wesley turned one on Friday the 12th. It was a quiet affair. We gave him a cupcake, just to see what he’d do with it. I wasn’t sure he’d know how to eat it, but he dug right in. I wonder, in retrospect, if I should have left off the frosting. It kept sticking to his hands, which he kept shaking to get the sticky stuff off, which meant cake pieces were flying around everywhere and John was frantically pulling over extra blankets around the high chair to act as protection to the carpet.

For his birthday we ordered three toys online, but none of them have come yet. But on his birthday we did give Wes two balls. Apparently until now he has led a seriously underprivileged baby life without any balls to play with. I didn’t realize they were The Thing to have. I’m really glad we got him the balls; he loves it when we roll the ball to him and he tries to roll it back. I’m loving that he’s getting so interactive.

I pulled this outfit from Wesley’s closet today, put it on him, and about died from cuteness overload. It was a gift from my visiting teacher last year. When she gave it to him I was worried he wouldn’t be able to wear it because the outfit is size 3-6 months, and when Wes was actually 3-6 months in age he was wearing sizes newborn and 0-3 months. But hooray, he’s finally big enough and it’s finally cool enough that I got to see him in it today. (The stuffed fox is part of the outfit. It’s like his little pocket friend.)

As a side-note, Wes has started to crawl towards our cats, who have quickly learned to run far away as fast as they can whenever they see Wes starting towards them. It gives him good motivation, and them good exercise.