Matthew Sumida: Christmas 2008

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas 2008

It has been a busy few days so I am combining Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and today all in one post. I did not get as many photos as I had planned but we had a good few days. We went to Keiko’s house for Christmas eve and had a great time. Mark and I were able to visit and snack while Andrew and Zach kept an eye on Matthew. My little guy has really bonded with the boys and it makes me so happy to see him engage with them, it is a far cry from last year We had a really enjoyable evening.

Andrew and Zach giving thanks for the dinner

We spent Christmas day with Mark’s family. Matthew has a big soft spot for his Grandparents and loves to go to their house and feels at home there. He always gets upset when it is time to go and never wants to leave. It was a nice, relaxing Christmas day.

Matthew and Grandpa Sumida

We came home and Matthew played with his favorite Christmas present, his Thomas train track.

Now for today, everyone the past few days has been telling us that Matthew needed a haircut (he did) so I braved it and took him. The first 3 minutes we broke out in a sweat holding down flailing arms as he was screaming but he calmed down quickly and did well after, and boy does he look handsome. That face melts my heart!

After putting Matthew to sleep last night Mark and I marveled at how different this Christmas is and how grateful we are for the changes this year has bought to our son. Watching Matthew’s progress is the greatest gift we could possibly receive and a continual reminder that recovery is possible.

3 comments:

Ms. to u said...: He looks adorable. His haircut is so cute and he looks so grown up. XOXOXO to our little friend!; December 26, 2008 at 11:24 PM
Anonymous said...: Cute family photo. Matthew is getting so big, what a handsome boy.
Hope you guys are having a good holiday!
T; December 27, 2008 at 10:17 PM
Roxy said...: Sylvia, found your blog though a post you did in facebook. I am also an avid blogger. We probably blog for some reasons: reminder of how blessed we are, yes there is progress and baby step progress is ok we are still proud of them and last but not least it may help someone else facing same challenges. Our adoption journey turned out to have challenges, my child came home with so much pain from neglect and abuse but love never fails and we have made great progress. Stop by and visit.; January 21, 2009 at 6:13 PM

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Matthew Dean

We started this blog because we wanted to be able to keep our loved ones up to date on Matthew and the wonderful progress he is making. It has been a crazy time since receiving Matthew's diagnosis of moderate to severe Autism in February 2007.
Autism is classified by the World Health Organization and American Psychological Association as a developmental disability resulting from a disorder of the human central nervous system. It is considered to be a neurodevelopmental disorder. It typically begins before 3 and is lifelong. It is characterized by varying degrees of impairment in verbal & non verbal communication skills, social interactions, and restricted, repetitive & stereotyped patterns of behavior. Children w/autism often fail to respond to their name, are unable to speak or have delayed speech and often avoid eye contact. They tend to engage in repetitive movements like rocking, spinning, hand flapping and in self-abusive behavior such as biting or head-banging. All behaviors that Matthew was exhibiting regularly. At the time we sent letters to our loved ones, we described what autism was and that there was no cure for autism. Well...... that is not the case. You can recover from autism and to that end we are pursuing a combination of therapies. Matthew is in an intense intervention program consisting of ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis), Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy. He is in this program for between 6-8 hours daily. He is also on a gluten-free and casein-free diet which he has been on since February 2007. We began biomedical intervention in June 2007 as well and homeopathy in April 2008. We read stories all of the time about these parents who start the diet, biomed or other modalities and see a miracle before their eyes. We have not had that experience but with each added intervention we see improvement..... 10% here, 8% there. We know that we will reach that 100% mark and that day will be the second best day of our lives, the first being when our little angel was born! We will update this as often as possible to that you can celebrate Matthew's success with us.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas 2008

3 comments:

Matthew Dean

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