The below is from the mother of a daughter with Trisomy 21.

>>I think what impresses me most is your confidence applying information you’ve read in books internet or other research. I don’t have that confidence. Although I may see the logic in a particular therapy eg., I’m often suspect about the possible unpublished side effects long/short term). ANd I haven’t found any doctor that is well versed enough in both conventional and non-conventional worlds, without having an agenda to push, that I find reliable. Do you know what I’m getting at? I’d like to know with whom, in Israel, you have consulted that you feel comfortable with. Thanks.<<

This is an interesting question and basically it is, how do you make a decision without the approval of an authority figure?

There are many wonderful trained professionals out there, both conventionally and alternatively trained.  There are also plenty of professionals who are mediocre.  But no matter how good their training or how knowledgeable they are, they can’t know everything.  And no matter what, no one – NO ONE – cares more about my children than I do.  A parent has a level of motivation and concern that you can’t pay anyone to have.  

What helps me to be open to learning and applying new information is to look around and see who is getting the kind of results I want to have in my life – I don’t know if it’s ever been someone doing what everyone else around them is doing.  When someone has a high quality of life in any area of life, it’s because they’ve been willing to look to their inner compass and take steps outside of the mainstream despite their discomfort or fear.

Reading books or doing online research is only part of my decision making process for Yirmiyahu although that has been significant.  I began my online research specific to Trisomy 21 when Yirmiyahu was 2 days old and in the NICU.  During those first few days, I spent my time in the hospital pumping milk, spending time next to Yirmiyahu’s incubator with my hand on him (wasn’t allowed to hold him at first) and thirteen hours a day on research.  I was a research maniac, trying to cram huge amounts of material in a short time to become conversant with the important points.  Once he was out of the hospital my time spent daily on this dropped to about two – four hours for probably his first year.  I still read a good bit and the more you learn, the more you understand there is to learn but I don’t feel I have to spend as much time on it now as I did then since I’ve gotten a decent understanding of various issues involved.

For most decisions I’ve made, I’ve discussed my concerns with alternative and conventional physicians.  Sometimes they didn’t have an opinion because they weren’t familiar with what I was asking about.  You have to know who to ask about what – you can’t go to the hardware store to buy milk!  In addition to traditional doctors I also take Yirmiyahu to a naturopath and osteopath and I ask them both certain kinds of questions.  His osteopath can explain the specifics of facial bone structure and how it’s affected by manipulation whereas others who aren’t knowledgeable in this field would say this is impossible or unproven despite the long history of this work.

I’ve spoken to therapists about different approaches.  I’ve been in touch with those who aren’t certified but have become experts in different areas by studying every possible bit of information relating to their child’s area of challenge.  I’ve been in touch by with one such mother about T21 and another regarding thyroid issues.   I’ve been very fortunate to find two wonderful resource people in the US who have helped me interpret the results of Yirmiyahu’s bloodwork.  Everyone has different expertise and experience that they draw on.

There are consequences to taking action.  Hopefully they’re positive but of course there’s always the possibility that they won’t be.  At the same time, we too often get caught up in our desire for security and forget that not taking action also has consequences.

To illustrate this, I’ll share the following that is specific to Yirmiyahu, which I’ve written about before.  Yirmiyahu began having breathing problems when we introduced dairy formula that didn’t resolve until months later when I was finally able to convince the doctors he needed dairy-free formula.  When we introduced soy formula he began throwing up repeatedly after having just six ounces and had to be hospitalized.  But technically he has tested allergen-free on allergy tests and I was told by a pediatric allergist there’s no reason not to give him either of these things.  If I had chosen to be passive out of fear of doing something differently, he would still be having dairy formula and require regular steroids and nebulizer treatments twice a day to deal with the side effects.  

Knowing that Yirmiyahu was born with a weak digestive system that was further compromised by high doses of antibiotics in his early days, I chose to give him supplements that included probiotics early on (probiotics started at four days, vitamin supplements started at 8 weeks).  I also decided not to give Yirmiyahu gluten when he began eating solids.  He tested celiac free on every blood screen so it seemed I was being unnecessarily restrictive; more than one doctor told me Yirmiyahu has no issue with gluten and I could give it freely.  I didn’t believe it and continued to give him many other foods but not those containing gluten.   This decision wasn’t validated until recently when I sent his latest labwork to someone with alternative health training, who said the results clearly indicate an area of concern since he doesn’t eat gluten and yet his test results still are showing antibodies – that’s significant.  Two pairs of eyes looked at the same information and came to two opposing conclusions .

I’m giving these examples to show that just because you ask the professionals and you go along with their opinion doesn’t mean the results for your child will always be positive.  No  matter what, there will be different opinions about every single decision you need to make for your child.  No  matter who you listen to, you risk doing something wrong that could have consequences long term that you can’t anticipate.  So what do you do?

You strengthen your inner compass one decision at a time. You look into an issue as much as you can, you ask those who are knowledgeable for their opinions, you take it all into account, you ask God for help in doing the right thing for your child and then you make the best decision you can based on all of that.  We’re all doing the best we can with the information we have.  We have no guarantee that our efforts will bring us success, but we can be fairly assured that if we don’t make any efforts that success isn’t going to result.

My vision for Yirmiyahu’s future is one that medical and therapeutic professionals who are traditionally trained would probably say isn’t realistic.  Some of you would say I’m dreaming also.  That’s okay.  I’m not looking to anyone else to tell me what I want to do is reasonable or acceptable.  I’m looking to my inner compass.

Avivah

Yesterday dh and I had an appointment in the Jerusalem area and I thought today I’d be posting about that.  But literally two minutes before we walked out the door, ds6 woke up.  My husband saw him first and told me to look at him.  I took one glance and the trip was cancelled.  The entire lower third of his face was swollen and instead of the planned trip to Jerusalem, ds6 and I made an unscheduled trip to the pediatrician.

Thankfully, it wasn’t serious though it looked frightening; he didn’t look anything like himself.  I was trying not to panic thinking we were in for another hospital stay.  What it was is what the doctor called apthous; she told me was English but I had no idea what that was.  I looked it up and aphthous stomatitis is basically a canker sore.  I don’t have experience with canker sores and assumed they were something minor; I didn’t know they could have this kind of effect.  When we got home I gave him B12 and probiotics to help speed his healing and then he fell asleep for a few hours.

While he was sleeping, I took advantage of dh being home to get some paperwork for dd17 from the Ministry of the Interior.  In order to get the leniencies she’s entitled to as someone new to the country on different academic testing (she’s studying in a framework that is entirely in Hebrew), I needed to get a letter documenting when she entered and left the country.  After an hour and a half there, I got the paper and headed to the plant nursery that was a five minute walk away.

Ever since I took on the voluntary management of our apartment building, I’ve been wanting to plant some things in the entrance area.  I’ve planted a couple of plants I rescued that were being thrown out and started other plants from cuttings since there wasn’t money to spend from the communal funds.  That was nice but there was still empty space and I wanted some color other than green!  Since there’s now money in the building’s account (which I’ve been managing very carefully since it was in bad shape when I took over) I spent a bit less than fifty dollars on some perennial flowers.  I chose plants that will come back year after year and that will propogate themselves so they will get larger and expand with time.  That makes this purchase a one time expense.

When I got home ds6 was still sleeping but the other kids joined me in transplanting the plants I had planted a few months ago, then planting the new plants.  We filled all of the large stone planters that were empty.  I lined the bare patch owned by the city in front of our building with baby aloes that I took off a rescued mother plant and placed three small flowering  succulents in the center.   In our entrance area I cut back a plant that was mostly killed when someone painted their fence and a lot of paint was sprayed on the plant in the process, sectioned off the shoots that looked random and haphazard with a line of stones that we found when we were digging, and planted a circle of aloes in that area, too.  I’d love to buy white stones to fill in the path between them; it would look very pretty.  One day maybe I’ll do that but for now I’m being very frugal.  I know in the past they’ve spent more than I did on plants to have someone spray poison to kill the weeds so I feel justified in spending what I did.  Considering the budgetary constraints I’m working within it’s looking very nice.  

After a couple of hours of planting outisde, we went in and ds6 finally woke up.  He asked if he could play on Starfall.com, which I agreed to.  The last time I let him do this was a couple of months ago so it was a treat for him.

While ds6 was playing his reading and math games, Yirmiyahu showed us that he knows how to stand without holding on to anything!  We saw a first glimpse of that a month ago and were waiting to see this become something he does intentionally. We’re so excited – and now he can show off at his 18 month evaluation with the child development team in a couple of days.   I would have missed the excitement if I had gone to Jerusalem!  I posted this on my Facebook page, not planning to share it here but then thought some of you would enjoy it.

Yirmiyahu standing by himself

This is the reality of life with kids – you have to learn to be flexible.  Things often won’t go according to plan and that’s okay.  While my day wasn’t at all what I planned and I did have some frustration about having to cancel our appointment, which was something important to me that I really wanted to take care of – I had a really nice day!

Avivah

Today is Day 23 of 31 for 21.

 
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A friend recently sent me a link to a blogpost in which someone shared the details of the diet they fed their child with special needs, saying that it reminded her of me.  It was quite similar to our approach to food with Yirmiyahu, so I thought I’d share what we do in the hopes it will be helpful to other parents.  I’ve written about some of these things in the past but others are new so this is the latest.

As a society we tend to disconnect between what we put in our mouths and how we feel, but not only does what we eat affect the functioning of our physical body, it affects the functioning of our minds as well.

I’ll start with his current supplements:

Fermented cod liver oil – this is great for the brain and we give him about a 1/2 teaspoon a day in his bottle, split into two different bottles so the taste won’t be too strong.  This contains vitamin D, vitamin A, DHA and EPA.  I used to give this with butter oil but when he was hospitalized at eight months, he stopped taking his supplements for that period.  When he got home, he was no longer used to the taste of his formula with supplements and rejected them all.  I had to very, very slowly reintroduce them and build up his taste tolerance.  Butter oil just never got added back in.

Probiotics – these build the digestive system and are very important to gut health, which is at the root of all health.  He started getting these when he was four days old – I added it to the milk I expressed when he was still in the NICU.  He’s been getting 9 billion cfu daily but now his wonderfully high quality probiotics have clumped together into a solid chunk thanks to the moisture in the fridge over time.  I have to find a new probiotic to replace what we’ve been using until now.

Nutrivene-D- this is a special multi-vitamin for individuals with T21, and Yirmiyahu gets 1/2 teaspoon daily, split between two bottles.  He’s been getting this since he was two months old.

Folinic acid – this is a more bioavailable form of folic acid and I give therapeutic (ie high) doses of this combined with 5MTHF based on research studies regarding treatment of cerebral folate deficiency, which I believe is the underlying issue responsible for Yirmiyahu’s slow growth rate.  I bought the 5MTHF in capsule form so it’s easy to just open and add to his bottle, but it took me a couple weeks after starting with the 5MTHF to give the folinic acid since they’re tablets and it took me that long to experiment with crushing them.  It turned out it was pretty easy to do and there’s not much of a taste to it.

Colostrum – I give this daily to build his immune system.  In the bottle.  Naturally.  🙂  The best thing about his formula, other than being dairy-free, is it’s a great conduit for supplements!

Digestive enzymes – I’m currently adding in some digestive enzymes that we got in a free sample pack once a day to his bottle and hope to add this to my next vitamin order so I can make it something he gets daily.  I think his body would benefit from more help in utilizing the nutrients in his food.

Zinc – I give this daily via a spray that also has elderberry and echinacea.  He willingly opens his mouth and lets me spray it in – one squirt a day.

Siverbiotics – a teaspoon daily as a natural antibiotic.  This is unfortunately almost finished and since I’m not yet able to make another order, I’m planning to give him olive leaf tincture once this is gone.

Evening primrose oil – when I remember I rub some of this on his skin.  I started this just last week and haven’t yet gotten into a groove with giving it so it’s still irregular.

Homeopathics – I have a really hard time with homeopathics since they aren’t supposed to be given with food nor right after or right before food.  Without being able to tie this to something regular in my schedule, it’s hard for me to remember to give remedies that are supposed to be given several times a day.  So it’s kind of hit or miss.  I most often remember to give Bioplasma cell salts.  I have a couple of homeopathic remedies that are good for when he’s under the weather; R49 Junior is the one I used most last winter and it’s going to be pulled out again this winter as needed.  I have two others in this series but like I said, I’m homeopathically challenged.

Food – this has been challenging for me, since for so many months Yirmiyahu showed minimal interest in food despite my efforts.  Then he got interested but wasn’t eating what I gave him.  I worried a lot about this and it’s been a huge relief to me as he finally is eating solids consistently a few times a day, and all I have to do is prepare the food and spoon it in!

Early on I made the decision to avoid were gluten and casein, because both are difficult to digest and have other issues involved with them.  I did give Yirmiyahu dairy formula when I began supplementing and continued until he was eight months – it took me four months to convince the doctors that he was reacting to the dairy and get a prescription for the specialty non-dairy formula that we currently use.  I’m really glad we did this, especially after I did the reading on cerebral folate deficiency – a milk-free diet combined with supplementation is the treatment.  Even though I wasn’t able to actively treat it until now, at least he didn’t have dairy formula for these last seven months to make things worse.

I’m not yet giving any grains, since they’re so difficult to digest.  When we do, I’ll start with kasha (buckwheat – we eat a lot of this) and quinoa, which aren’t technically grains but they look like they are so I think of them in the same category.

Fruits and vegetables – I recently saw the suggestion to give six vegetables daily and started making his vegetable mixes with more veggies (used to use three or less).  My first mixture was onions, carrots, kohlrabi, apples and zucchini can’t remember the sixth thing but there was something else) – he loved it!  The blends aren’t based on any recipes, just whatever six things I have in the house that seem to go together.  I don’t consider potatoes a vegetable when making this.   I make a potful, then freeze what Yimiyahu won’t eat within a couple of days in containers and defrost them as needed.  Sometimes I add extra virgin olive oil to this mix after it’s cooked.

I also give him small bits of raw fruits like apple, guava, banana,  mango and avocado.

Coconut oil – I try to give him some coconut oil every day.  Since until recently he wasn’t eating solids, I couldn’t mix it into his food.  I added it to his bottles (when they didn’t have cod liver oil added) but recently tried giving it to him on a spoon when it was slightly solidified and he liked this.  Nice to have one less thing to add to the bottle!

Proteins – he eats chicken, turkey, eggs and lentils (I made him some salmon a couple of days ago but his older siblings found it and ate it first:)).  I usually don’t have to make something special for him; he has some of what we’re having.

I feel like I’m forgetting something but I can’t think what it could be, so I guess that’s it!

Avivah

Today is Day 17 of 31 for 21.

 
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Last week I did something really courageous, something I’m so proud of myself for.

I told Yirmiyahu’s new physical therapist that i won’t be coming more often than every six weeks.

Courage comes in all kinds of ways and while this might not seem like a very big deal, it wasn’t easy for me.  I’ve been questioning the value of traditional early intervention therapies for about a year now.  This has been a hard thing to do, since everyone ‘knows’ how good therapies are.  I’ve had to let go of wanting validation from outside sources for my choices and look to myself to act in integrity with what I really believe to be in Yirmiyahu’s best interest, despite the criticisms and hurtful assumptions that may be made about my commitment to him.   You have to pat your own back and sometimes that’s hard when you’re doing something different from everyone else and are worried you’re making a mistake that your child will pay for.

When I began feeling unsure about traditional therapies, it was just my feeling and I didn’t give much credence to that since I thought I must be wrong since therapy is good and therapists are all going to know more and do better than I could.  Then I read an incredibly powerful paradigm shifting book that deserves its own post, Disability is Natural that more than validated my feeling; it got me thinking deeply about disability and how our culture views it, and how do I want to participate in that culture.  This wasn’t something theoretical or exclusive to the philosophical realm.  I found that after therapy I always had an inadequate and negative feeling about myself as a mother and looked at Yirmiyahu’s development with anxiety,  They seemed to be looking for delays and if he wasn’t delayed, rather than say something positive about how well he was doing, the message was instead about how hard we should work so he wouldn’t become delayed.

As I read about the experience of adults with disabilities who spent years in therapy and the negative self-image that developed as a result of absorbing the unspoken message that there was something inherently wrong with them, I thought how difficult these messages are to combat.  The negative self-image it leaves a person with may be more disabling than the disability itself.  A person with a disability is living in a world where he’s surrounded by the meta message that he’s not enough as he is.  You’re only okay if you’re ‘normal’ (whatever normal means).  We read about how important it is to convey to our kids that we love them unconditionally, but when it comes to kids with disabilities all of a sudden acceptance goes out the window and fixing them takes priority.  The fine line between encouraging Yirmiyahu and accepting him as he is now can be a challenge to balance but I hope I’m getting the hang of it.

 I decided that I wanted to quit therapy but I had some fear around that.  Fear of being seen as a neglectful mother (I had way more than my share of that when Yirmiyahu was in the pediatric intensive care unit), fear of doing something different than everyone else, fear of burning my bridges.

I tried to quit but – surprise, surprise! – my ambivalence came through and I ended up making another appointment instead, after being told how important therapy is for him, with the implication that what kind of mother can’t find time in her schedule for something as critical to her child as this.

Last week I finally summoned my inner clarity and firmly told the therapist that if we couldn’t come every six weeks for a check-in visit, then we wouldn’t be coming at all.  I had asked about this option before and been told it was impossible.  But this time when she saw that I really wasn’t going to come again, she made an appointment for six more weeks.  She said she’ll see about when to schedule the next appointment after that.  I told her I’m not interested in discussing it at every visit; six weeks is what we want right now.  In the past I’ve allowed myself to get sucked into discussions that have no productive purpose since their goal isn’t to listen to me and understand my concerns but to get me to buy into their way of doing things without questioning them.  Yirmiyahu has an inner schedule like every child and with support he’s going to learn to do what is important for him to learn when he’s ready.  We can support him but we can’t make things happen.  He’s the one who will make it happen, not the professionals.  That trust in your child is where I see things very differently from the therapists and while it sounds like a small difference, it affects every aspect of how we see him and how we approach interventions.

When Yirmiyahu was younger, I advocated very hard for more services, which were then allotted to him.  At least verbally.  In reality that never happened.  I didn’t push it because by then I wasn’t sure that’s really what I wanted any more.  The reason I chose to continue with periodic therapy rather than quit altogether is that I’m not trying to do everything on my own; I value the experience of therapists and know that there are things I can learn from them.   I also wanted to leave the channels open in case we want services in the future.

Switching to a six week schedule gives me such a sense of freedom.  The summer break from therapy was wonderful – I was able to enjoy Yirmiyahu without constantly pulled back to an unproductive way of thinking about him and about myself.  It was also when he learned to crawl and to stand, all without official therapeutic interventions but with lots of support from us.  (The therapist was very surprised and impressed with how good his form was.)  During the first year, my feeling was, I’ll do whatever Yirmiyahu needs.  Imbalance is normal for many of us in the first year after the diagnosis.  But imbalance isn’t an ideal and you can’t live in that state forever. You have to find balance for the sake of every member of your family, and that means finding ways to live a normal life.  Weekly therapy stopped feeling like part of the solution and started feeling like part of our imbalance.

Not going to official therapy doesn’t mean that we won’t be doing anything to encourage Yirmiyahu’s development.  Of course we will.  It’s more an issue of looking for ways to provide him with a normal life while finding ways to integrate support naturally.  I have the books Gross Motor Skills for Children with Down Syndrome, Fine Motor Skills for Children with Down Syndrome (each of these books was written by therapists with extensive experience working with kids with T21 and are professional and detailed guides), Yoga for the Special Needs Child and a couple of books by Glenn Doman espousing a neurodevelopmental position- in addition to online reading these provide a pretty solid foundation of technical guidelines and alternative ideas to support him.

He’s a lucky baby to have siblings who play with him all the time – I think our kids really are the best therapists!  They involve him in their games, do fingerplays and sing songs with him, swing him on swings, play in the sand and go down slides at the park, and give him rides on his push car.  Today ds7 ran to get him from me so he could play with him in the ball pit at the park.  They put mattresses on the floor and put toys just out of his reach to encourage him to crawl.  They show him how to play with toys and give him lots of positive feedback.  Love is a positive motivator, and there’s no doubt that Yirmiyahu extends himself in order to interact with them more than he would for a therapist that he doesn’t have much of a relationship with.

And to be clear – I’m not against therapy; I’m open to increasing therapy visits in the future if I see that’s what will be most supportive of Yirmiyahu’s needs at that time.  But now it’s not and sometimes having the courage to support your child looks like this.

Avivah

Today is Day 10 of 31 for 21, a blogging effort to raise awareness of Trisomy 21.
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I feel like this has been a heavy week with my posting thanks to the accident, so today I thought I’d share something a little lighter to bring a smile to your face.

Here’s a two minute video starring our little bundle of sunshine during bath time when we first transferred him to this baby bath from our previous set up two months ago. Okay, so it takes me a while to get these technical things done, what can you do?

We don’t usually follow our kids around with a camera taking pictures or videos but Yirmiyahu was having so much fun that we wanted to capture it! Even though he got startled every time he splashed his face, he had a great time, and so did we watching him!

Bath time. You’ll see at the end that he pulls to stand twice and plops right back down- at that time he was just learning to stand up.

Avivah

It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by since I participated in the 31 for 21 2012 blogging effort to raise awareness of Trisomy 21, more commonly known as Down syndrome.  There are 31 days in October, and Trisomy 21 occurs when the 21st chromosome is triplicated – hence the name – and for this month bloggers across the blogosphere are joining in.  During this month I won’t be posting only about Trisomy 21, though there will probably be more posts on the topic than usual.  But I will be mentioning my participation at the beginning of each post.

My general perspective on parenting is that every child has his growth curve (physically and emotionally) and we need to have patience and trust the individual’s process.  Sometimes there are things you see in your child that cause you to worry because he doesn’t doesn’t seem to be getting it as quickly as most other kids his age.  This could be academic, behavioral, psychological – and you have to let go of your fear and shift your thinking to believe in him so that you can reflect that back to him.

That’s why one of my favorite children’s picture books is Leo the Late Bloomer.  Leo is a lion cub that can’t do anything right.  All his friends pass him in all areas of development, and while his father tries not to show how worried he is, he keeps seeing Leo failing in all the areas that his friends are succeeding in.  Reading, writing, speaking, drawing, eating.  Time passes and no improvements, until suddenly, one day Leo ‘blooms’ – he seemingly overnight acquired proficiency in all these areas.

I’ve often thought how true this is of child development, and how important a parent’s trust in a child is to the process. And yet I sometimes feel I’m mentally groping to find the right balance in this area when it comes to Yirmiyahu (now fifteen months).

There have been two developmental milestones that I’ve been concerned about in recent months: eating and crawling.  Yirmiyahu hardly eats any solids and that’s not for lack of effort on my part.  And though Yirmiyahu started to army crawl a tiny bit when he was thirteen months, he prefers to sit and actively resists being put down on his stomach.   My question for myself – how much to trust his internal timetable, and how much to push him?  It’s not one or the other, but sometimes doing too much on one side of the equation leads to too little on the other.

All of this wondering about these two concerns came to a quick conclusion recently.  Two weeks ago Yirmiyahu got his first two teeth which were rapidly followed by another three.  Five teeth in two weeks!  Sometime in this same period, Yirmiyahu’s eating suddenly dramatically changed.  For months he rarely ate more than a teaspoon of food a day no matter what I tried – suddenly he’s eating several teaspoons of food at each meal!  My naturopath told me that until the teeth come in, a child is physiologically unable to digest starches.  Perhaps his body is finally able to tolerate solids foods and that’s why he’s suddenly eating?  I don’t know but it’s amazing how these two issues resolved themselves literally overnight without any intervention on my part.

As far as the crawling?  After almost two months of being physically able to crawl but resisting any efforts to be on his tummy, in the last week he’s suddenly decided he wants to crawl!  Not huge distances yet, but he’s doing it himself because he wants to.  We didn’t change anything we were doing, but it’s as if the internal sensor told him he’s ready to do this now.

Seeing these noticeable changes in such a short time has helped me find some inner balance and regain my trust in his individual process.  It’s helping me to let go of some of the worries about developmental steps being too delayed if I don’t push harder.  It’s challenging enough with a typical child to trust his inherent growth process when faced with issues that don’t match what is considered the norm, but it’s an extremely prevalent way of thinking about T21 so you have to really choose the paradigm you want your mind to spend time in!

Trusting in his inner time frame doesn’t mean we don’t provide him with a stimulating environment – it means while we do whatever we feel is in his best interest, we let go of the inner tension that tells us we have to make something happen or else.   Letting go makes it so much easier to enjoy the process of watching him grow up rather than worrying about things not happening fast enough.  While we’ll continue to read, talk, play with him – I don’t want to get hung up on the timetable; I don’t want to worry that I’m not enough because he’s not hitting those milestones by a given time.  Yirmiyahu is showing me that with our support and love, he’ll continue to do things when he’s ready.

Avivah