Paige always wows her audience!

Yesterday we had a follow up appointment at CHEO - Paige now had a big bar between the legs of her cast for stability. Now, I have to come up with some creative ways to get pants on her!

Anyway, in the afternoon, Wayne's mom came to visit us. She is in her mid-70's. She was so excited when Dakotah was born - the baby girl she never had. She doted on her, and spoiled her and was so proud of her she about burst at the seams.

When Paige came along, there was a bit of adjustment that she needed to do. She was older, had never really known anyone with Down syndrome, and came from a time when families didn't really talk about such things.

She never loved her less, or fussed over her less than she did Dakotah, but there has always been an air of ...sadness, I guess. A little tug of pity in her heart when she thinks about Paige, and mulls over what she thinks "could have been."

And, I'm sure she has had a hard time with lots of her relatives - trying to figure out what to say and how to approach the fact that her granddaughter has T21. To be honest, she isn't very well educated on it, and still probably holds out many myths and theories about why Paige has T21.

When she got here yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on the floor with Paige, working on her alphabet, some letters, and a few words.

You could have blown Wayne's mother over with a feather. Time and time again, Paige identified letters and words, put the right letter combinations together to form words, and answered most of the questions I asked her successfully. Not too shabby considering Paige's spoken vocabulary is probably less than 10 words.

She beamed with such pride at Paige, and fawned over her, telling her over and over again how smart she was.

I'm pretty sure she doesn't know that most children with T21 read. In fact, I'm pretty sure she left our house thinking Paige was the ONLY child EVER with T21 to read, lol - you know, because it IS her granddaughter after all.

It was a very cute, funny moment to see -