Gotta love Albert!

Check out this press release about the new clinic for ADULTS with Down syndrome soon to be opened at St. Luke’s Hospital in Chesterfield

I’ve known about this project for a while since my sister works for St. Luke’s, but it’s new news that Albert Pujols has signed on in cooperation with this new clinic.  That is exciting!

Many of you may know that Albert has a daughter with DS, and he has a foundation here in the St. Louis area, the Pujols Family Foundation, that does alot of things for people with DS and their families. They are very popular among the DS community in these parts!

How exciting is it to have an ADULT clinic designated for people with DS?!?  So many of us cherish our DS Centers for our kids, and it’s great to see a need noticed to focus on their health after they’ve “aged out” of the pediatric practice system.  Yay St. Luke’s!  Yay Albert!  Go Cards!

Two Playdates Set!

Wednesday, August 26, we’ll be meeting at Mid Rivers Mall at the play area near Borders.  We’ll meet at 9:30 am, before most stores open, so it’s nice and quiet in there.  But not for long when our kiddos arrive!!

And Saturday, September 12, at 10:30 am we’ll be meeting at a home of one of our families in St. Charles.  We’ll not publish info here for privacy sake, but if you can make it to this one, please email DownSyndromeStC@gmail.com and we’ll be sure you have directions!  So far, this seems to be a popular date, so we hope to have a great group that day!

We’ll be setting up another weekday playdate in September, so watch for that info soon.

Make it a great day out there! :)

Preschool playgroup!!

We’ll be scheduling one or two dates for our preschool playgroup in the next few days.  If you’re interested in getting together, please leave a comment here or email DownSyndromeStC@gmail.com so that we can be sure to let you know in a timely manner when we get these dates.

We sometimes meet at a house, or at the mall play area, or at a park.  But the kids ALWAYS have fun!  And I think the parents do too! We’ve got quite a few in this age range now, so we’d love to have our kids getting to know each other and enjoying new play buddies!

There is also a preschool playgroup that meets at the Kirkwood Early Childhood Center Discovery Room (100 N. Sappinton Rd, 63122) on these upcoming dates Monday September 14th 9:30-11:00, Friday October 9th 4:30-6:00 (afternoon time), and Friday November 13th from 9:30-11:00.  The contact for that group is Julie Missey and you can email her at jsmissey@sbcglobal.net or call her at 314-909-9895.  Those might be an opportunity as well for your little ones to have a fun time!

For those of you with kids older than this, it would be great to set up another kind of play event too, maybe a park or something as well, so don’t hesitate to comment if you’d like to get that together.  We can never go wrong with too many playtimes, right?!?

StC Superstar Parade #4

Here’s a couple more handsome little guys to show off!  It’s like toddler GQ!

Gabriel is 14 months old.
 

Anthony is 22 months old.

Let’s have some pics! Send them in so we can feature your superstar!!  If you know kiddos that you haven’t yet seen here, let their parents know that we’d love to get the chance to show them off.

StC Superstar Parade #3

Here’s a couple of our adorable 2-year-old boys… Stephen, showing off his superstar smile, and Blake, taking his new birthday ride for a spin.  Doesn’t our future look SO bright!!

If you haven’t sent pictures yet, please do!!  And if you get new great shots you want to show off, send them on over to DownSyndromeStC@gmail.com .

Webmaster revealed and blog list is up!

Ok, so maybe "revealed" is a bit too dramatic! As a means of explanation, let me say that the webmaster term is just a generic word to mean the person that's handling and managing the website, or in this case, the blog. My name is Randa-Kay, RK to many, and I have a 2 1/2-year-old daughter named Braska who has Down syndrome. We've been involved with the St. Charles group of the DSAGSL since returning to St. Charles in May of 2008, moving back here from Champaign, IL. So when you email the DownSyndromeStC@gmail.com with pictures or content ideas or when you make a comment here on the blog, it's coming to me. Now you know!

Our fearless leader, Adrienne, is also right along side me in this little venture, of course!

We've added the beginnings of a Blogroll, a list of family blogs done by the families in our group. The link list is in the right margin, so be sure to check out what's going on with these families as another way of getting to know each other.

So far, the feedback we're getting by email and via the polls in the margin here on the blog tells us that the families in our group would really like to connect more with each other, getting to know the children and parents more than what generally happens at meetings, especially since so many aren't able to regularly attend the meetings. This is what we're working toward, and if there are other things we can provide or help with, PLEASE let us know!

Some things in the works for our group include fun family outings, great relevant topics for the meetings, and playgroup opportunities for our younger kids. Keep watching for more details!

StC Superstar Parade #2

We’re getting some great pictures!  Please keep sending them.  We’ll be putting together a great montage soon.

Miss Hannah (6) is a little beauty in her lovely hat.


Russell (11) and two of his biggest fans, his sisters!


Parker (3) loves a good book, especially a DOG book!


And here’s Patrick (6) the next pro on the links.