Settling in at the Fort

Paw Paw has spent a lot of time pulling Micah in the wagon and playing with him.

The hat and shirt were a gift from a friend in SF...thanks Cheryl!
Nana rocking with Gabriel.
Paw Paw talking with Gabriel.
Kim, Thomas, Harrison, and Benjamin with Gabriel. Not a chance of getting Micah in the picture with them.
Micah reluctantly joins Nana and Paw Paw for a photo.

We have been in Arkansas since the 4th of this month. It’s been a little crazy with taking care of two kids and trying to unpack. Thankfully, my parents have been here and have helped tremendously and we have enjoyed them being here. My sister and her family were here to visit for a few days and it was great to see them. I have found it hard to make time to sit down and concentrate enough to send an email or update this blog, but maybe I can be a little more consistent.

We are enjoying our new place and are still unpacking and trying to settle in. Wayne’s job is going well and he is enjoying it. U of AR Fort Smith is a beautiful campus and much bigger than I imagined. We are slowly exploring the town when we have a chance. We have visited two churches now and will visit one or two more and will likely go back to the first one we visited to check it out a little deeper. I have to say Sundays are a little weird because we aren’t going to FBCSF. There is just no place like it. Sure, we miss the bay area as a whole, but our church and the folks there was one of our favorite things.

One disappointing thing that we’ve found out is that the public school programs for preschoolers with special needs is not the best. They only offer a 2 hour per day Mon- Thurs. option and any services (PT, OT, and speech) would be included in that time. So, we are exploring other options. We’ve found that there are two organizations here in Fort Smith that have all day preschool programs for kids with special needs. I am going to meet with the director of one this week. It’s called Kids First and they have a M-Fri, 8-3 program which includes any therapy a child needs. There are only 9-10 kids per classroom with 2 full time staff in each and the school has 2 full time nurses and one pediatrician. It is through the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and is supposed to be a top notch program. Micah will have to be approved to be enrolled, meeting the requirements (which means being developmentally delayed enough, and he is) and being referred by a physician among other things. The lady I spoke to said that it sometimes takes a month before a child can be enrolled, but that sometimes there are exceptions. We’ll find out more about it this week.

Micah is still having a really hard time with Gabriel, with maybe a slight improvement. He got close enough to touch him last night but didn’t even realize Gabriel was in my lap until he touched him. He then got a really scared look on his face and ran back to his room. Gabriel is doing well, but he is spitting up a good portion of almost every feeding in the last week or so.
We will update again soon. Thanks for continuing to pray for Micah.