He's My Son

Hopefully, you've all noticed the link at the top of my sidebar. It's to a post about the Kraft Peanut Butter contest and how we hope to win it in order to send Jairus for some specialized therapy. Well, now there's something else happening. The ladies in my mom's quilting group at church were all talking last month about Jairus and the money it costs to send him to his therapies. My mom admitted that it was expensive. This is when they came up with the idea.
They wanted to hold a fundraiser and the ideas started flowing.  A garage sale.  A bake sale.  An auction (with, of course, a quilt). A BBQ.  Plans came flying thick and fast.  And now it's all in place.

On September 24th, from 8am to 2pm, all these things will be happening at my church, Mountain Citadel Salvation Army, in order to raise funds for Jairus to get his Tomatis Listening therapy.  A little about the therapy.

I first learned of Tomatis a number of years ago from a friend whom I would connect with every once in a while.  We both had children with special needs and would swap ideas about things we'd tried to help them in their development.  My friend had been especially impressed with the results her daughter showed after the Tomatis therapy.  I'm not expecting that Jairus will start spewing forth with words after this therapy, but it will strengthen and re-program his listening and focusing skills to better enable him to talk.  If you've read my blog for any length of time, you'll know that we're often looking out for therapies such as this.  For instance this past summer we tried some music therapy (why I waited so long is highly ironic and just plain weird, considering what I do).  He did fabulously with it.
The Tomatis therapy is offered at The Listening Centre in Toronto.  The program would take place over the span of 6 weeks: 2 weeks of active therapy involving 2-3 hour sessions daily, 2 weeks rest and then 2 weeks back in sessions again.  I would be driving Jairus in every day for the sessions.
I've recently been revamping Jairus' blog site, which was my original blog.  It's a little better organized now and if you would like to read more about what Jairus was born with and those early weeks of his life, read it here.
Finally, the quilting ladies asked me to make up a powerpoint presentation to show in church.  I put something together and James converted it to video.  Now you can see it too. :-)  Make sure your volume is up.