#arlo redding

Five Awesome Things About Arlo at 2 years, 11 months. 

1. You are the most affectionate kid. Over and over all day long you love to say, "Mommy, I love you" or "You the best mommy!" and you tell daddy and Everly the same thing too. You will stop playing, run over and hug us, and then hurry back to whatever you were doing. 

2. You have become completely obsessed with super heroes. After a solid year of a cars and trucks love affair, you've traded them all for action figures.  You love Iron Man the most, followed by Spider Man, The Incredible Hulk and Bat Man. You just discovered Captain America so there has been a lot of talk about him lately too. You can't get enough and love watching the young superheros shows on Netflix or running around our house in a cape, fighting crime and saving us all from bad guys. Daddy reads you superhero comics from the library and you sit there, enthralled with all of the details of each character. 

3. I find this hilarious, but you can not stand for your hands to be dirty. Your face can be covered in food but you will ask for a napkin almost immediately when we start eating and insist on wiping your hands whenever you get anything on them. I find you in the bathroom all of the time, standing on the toilet lid, playing in the water. You will often look up when caught and say, "I washin' my hands!". You literally could be covered head to toe in mud, but as long as your hands are clean, you are good to go. 

4. You are really into singing Old MacDonald right now. Except you like to freestyle and come up with new lyrics. According to you, Old MacDonald had some friend, had to poop, and ate a chicken on his farm recently. You love to laugh hysterically at your silly lyrics. 

5. A few months ago, you went through a stage where you were stuttering a lot. You would get really frustrated when you were hung up on the first word in a sentence. I called your pediatrician and she suspected that you were just working through a big verbal milestone. Sure enough, a few weeks later your stuttering lessened significantly and you started using bigger words and sharing more complex ideas with us. I have really loved watching you develop your language skills, Arlo. It hasn't always come easy to you but you work so hard and always wow us with your determination.

 5 Awesome Things about Everly at 4 years, 3 months

1. You are the best dancer ever. I am not saying that because I am your mother, even though I fully admit to being biased. You just move in this incredibly weird, amazing, soulful way. I could sit and watch you move to music for hours and I often do. We have you in ballet right now, but I don't care if you ever decide you want to go the classically trained route. I just hope you never ever stop listening to whatever it is inside you that takes over when you are dancing. It is so pure and true and wonderful. 

2. You are growing into such a wonderful companion. We spend a lot of time together each week just running errands and bopping around town. You are so easy to be with and I love having you along because you listen well and behave yourself. You are four years old and to this day, I can say that you have never had a public tantrum. Never once. You've definitely had some monster meltdowns in the car or at home, but bless your heart, you've spared me in public. I never hesitate to bring you along because I always enjoy having you there with me. 

3. You are really absorbing so much around you. We have intentionally waited to start any kind of formal education with you and have focused on exposing you to creative, free play as long as possible. Despite that, you've learned to write your name, your brothers name, and many letters and words on your own. You love to use words like "similar" and "hilarious" when you describe things. Last week you asked me a question and I answered with "potentially". You asked what that meant and I explained. That night I asked you to please join us for dinner and you responded, "I will potentially be there after I'm done playing with my babies." I had a good laugh, even if I didn't like your answer. 

4. You are obsessed with your birthday. It's a joke between your father and I now, because you bring it up several times a day. Usually you like to tell us what your next birthday party is going to be like, but sometimes you tell us who you want us to invite or what kind of cake you plan to have. You always know whose birthday is coming next in our family and you remind them for weeks leading up to it. 

The smallest Jordan turned two and a half on Sunday. It's become a tradition to make a little to-do of the occasion. A cupcake, a present, and all of us singing Happy Birthday on repeat! 

After church and lunch with Brent's mom, we dug out a few party hats and presented him with his treat.

If you ask him how old he is, he will tell you, "TWO NANDA HAFF!"

We gave him a little Calico Critter's toy that I got on sale several months ago and had stashed away. It's a little badger couple with a motorcycle and side car. They even have tiny goggles, helmets and scarves. He's obsessed with motorcycles and spends half of his waking hours wearing a too-big motorcycle helmet his grandfather gave him. Needless to say, he loves putting the tiny helmets on his new critters and taking them for a drive.

Happy half to the boy who has stolen my heart. Every day, month and year that we get to watch Arlo Redding grow up is worth celebrating!

Love,

I've been bragging on my boy all weekend. After many months of weekly sessions, Arlo's speech therapist said on Friday that she's going to recommend discontinuing all services after the holidays. She feels that he is completely caught up and on par with his peers.

Our experience with early intervention services has been so wonderful. We've had the great fortune of getting to know and saying goodbye to both a vision and speech therapist over the past two years. There is nothing quite as wonderful as hearing them say, "Your son no longer needs us."

Now excuse me, while I pick this boy up and do a celebratory dance around our living room to Katie Perry's "Roar".

Love,

Yesterday Arlo has his yearly check-up at Duke Pediatric Eye Center. Last year, when he was a little over a year old, we learned through genetic testing that Arlo had Oculocutaneous Albinism type 2 and that his visual acuity was very good for someone with the condition. But they also told us we would need to wait until he was old enough to actually tell us what he could see in order to understand the full scope of how his condition was impacting his vision. In the meantime, we have continued to watch Arlo’s vision improve and have been eager for an update from his Opthamologist.

The first specialist that we saw projected a series of black and white shapes on a screen across the room: symbols such as a house, a car, a hand and a duck. She asked Arlo to identify them outloud. He is shy and usually takes a little while to warm up to new people, but he responded to her requests - quietly saying “hand" or “house" as she asked him what he saw on the screen.

When she covered one eye with a little hand held spoon, we watched as his nystagmus (an involuntary side to side movement of the eyes) began to go crazy. Arlo controls his nystagmus really well, so it was really interesting to watch his eyes react as he adjusted to using vision only out of one eye. I actually think his nystagmus makes him so uniquely beautiful because I notice it most when he is really happy. When he really loves something, his eyes will flutter back and forth like a character in a classic cartoon when they fall in love. It’s such a stunning, visible reaction to joy. It’s as if he always wears his heart on his sleeve, or in this case, his eyes.

The next specialist checked his eyes for a null point. A null point is a corrective measure that people with nystagmus learn to do to control their eye movements. They often find a place in their vision where their eyes will stay still and hold their eyes there in order to see more clearly. Sometimes this also means they have to compensate by holding their head to the side or looking out of the side of their eyes a lot (or up or down, depending on where their null point might be). If it the compensation is significant, sometimes a null point has to be corrected with surgery. Last year, they noticed a small null point in Arlo’s vision when he looked to the left, but this year, it was no longer there. The specialist commented that Arlo has fantastic control over his nystagmus and is able to hold his eyes still, looking straight ahead, when he wants to focus on something. She also checked him for any potential strabismus, which is when one or both of the eyes turn out or inward involuntarily. This is a common challenge with albinism and can often be corrected by patching the strong eye and forcing the weak eye to realign. Fortunately, Arlo has never had any strabismus.

Arlo’s last stop of the day was Dr. Buckley’s chair. Dr. Buckley is a renowned pediatric opthamologist who specializes in eye conditions like nystagmus and albinism. Whereas Arlo had been a little shy and insisted on sitting on Brent’s lap through the first two meetings of our morning, he happily climbed up into Dr. Buckley’s chair on his own. Dr. Buckley did another series of eye exams and gave us the great news that Arlo’s vision is 20/30 in one eye and 20/40 in the other. This is completely average vision for a two year old child as their eyes are still continuing to grow and do not usually reach perfect vision until late childhood. Every website that I have found on albinism states that people with albinism have vision ranging from 20/40 to 20/400. Arlo is already seeing better than the best case scenario for his condition! There is potential at this point, that as his vision continues to improve through adolescents, Arlo could have 20/20 or 20/30 vision. That’s better than MY vision! It feels miraculous to me, honestly.

Dr.Buckley also stated he was really impressed with Arlo’s ability to identify all of the shapes on the first eye test at 2 years old, as they usually have to wait until children are 3 or 4 years old to get a definitive reading on their visual acuity.

Considering that Arlo also had a speech delay of 9 months in comparison to his peers at 19 months old, this is an even greater feat for our little guy! His speech therapy has made huge strides in his verbal communication and has caught him back up to within just a month or two of his peers.

Dr. Buckley told us he has no major concerns for Arlo’s vision at this time. His chance of wearing glasses as he grows up are the same as any other child. Essentially, besides his photophobia (extreme sensitivity to sun light) his albinism is not having any major impact on his vision.

This is truly God’s work. I don’t know any other way to explain it.

I think back to the post I wrote after Arlo had first been diagnosed. I had no idea what an albinism diagnosis would mean for our son’s future. As the years have passed and I’ve met other families and immersed myself in the albinism community, I’ve learned that albinism is nothing to have grieved over like I did in those early days - The fact has always remained that his condition will never stop him from doing anything he sets his heart to do, regardless of how well he can or can not see. But I can’t deny that it is amazing to be where we are right now, with such an incredible prognosis for his vision.

Love,

Oh, for the love of this little boy. With blonde curls that render my heart useless. Whose best friends are a stuffed monkey, a yellow dump truck and his big sister.  Who lives life to his own tune both literally and figuratively. Who possesses a natural affection for animals. Who thinks nothing of scraped knees and bug bites. Who can go from serious to hysterically laughing with only a few well timed, funny noises made by his mother.

Arlo, you are my skinny legged, blue eyed, happiness.

Love,

They warm my heart through and through.

Song: Households by Sleeping At Last

Love,