Maddox....

A friend of mine asked about Maddox today so I thought I would share an update with all of my bloggy friends too........

Maddox is my 3 year old grandson.......my only grandchild so far. I hope there will be lots more :)

Maddox has struggled all of his precious 3 years. He had a lot of health issues and had to wait to become healthy before those issues could be addressed. And this may or may not have caused him to be delayed....we really do not know. But the first 6 months of his life, he did nothing. He did nothing but try to survive and get strong. Once healthy, he started his daunting task of trying to catch up. No label was put on him which was fine with us. As my daughter's pediatrician has said.......if we label him, expectations automatically are lowered. And I think that is very true. So our expectations for Maddox are high, as with any toddler. Our daughter is doing everything for him that can be done.....he has had physical and speech therapy since 10 months old. He is enrolled in special education pre-school and LOVES it. So really, if he was diagnosed with anything else, what would change? Nothing...

He is an awesome kid.......he walked late but with the help of braces on his little tiny ankles, he is walking good. He is talking a bit at school and starting to talk at home a little. He understands everything you say to him......he just for one reason or another doesn't talk.

It certainly doesn't stop him from getting his point across. He does sign a little bit....and he

can go get what he wants and I guess we have all gotten very good at reading his body language. And even with all of that, he is probably the happiest toddler that I have ever met. And he loves the outdoors. He thinks being outside is the best........we had dinner last night on the deck and he was so excited. Maddox might be delayed by a lot of standards but it does not faze him one bit. He's just an adorable little guy who is always working so hard to be like all of the other kids.

We laugh about how obsessed with his mommy he is but really, it's just about the sweetest thing I've ever seen. You can tell by the way he looks at our daughter that she is his entire world! He is good as gold and rarely fusses. If he does by chance throw a tantrum, it takes but a moment to make him forget all about it. He loves school, riding the bus, his babysitter, church, all of his aunts and uncles and cousins and all of his family. I watch him and it just brings tears of joy to my eyes. He has overcome so much but yet is just so happy.

We have noticed with him that he adores music.....especially live bands. And we've been hearing/reading about music therapy so our daughter has found a music therapy class for him for the summr while school is out. So who knows......maybe he'll come over one day and "tell" me all about it!

later.........