I am joining (last minute) the 31 for 21 blog effort. October is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month and to that end I and many others will blog about Down syndrome every day this month. (I’ll also continue posting about all the other zaniness that is my life.)

Because I am nearing the tail end of the first day, I’ll keep this brief.

Yesterday I had a rare few hours alone with Davey and so we ran some errands together. It was nice to be able to focus on just him. He really is a fun kid to be with. At Target, he kept reaching up from the seat in the cart to pull me close for a tight hug.

Then at Home Depot, as we were checking out a cashier from a few registers over darted over to us and said “Hi Davey!” At first I thought maybe we knew her. Someone from school perhaps? Nope, she’d just heard me use his name. She tried to engage him in chitchat (signs) for a few minutes but he was more focused on the bottle of water I’d just bought him. She did get a wave and “buh-buh” from him. Of course, as she explained, she’d worked with special needs kids in the past, which was evident both in the way she talked to him and in the fact that she’d gone out of her way to approach us when she noticed him.

Rock star. Seriously. They all are, these kids with Down syndrome. Once you know a person with Down syndrome you can’t help but be drawn to them. It’s an amazing phenomonon.