Should I keep blogging?

Or more accurately, should I resume blogging? I haven't been too good about updating the blog for the past few months, and I have been puzzling over whether to try again, or sort of give up for good. I know that some people rely on the blog for keeping up with what's going on with us, and for the sake of some of those people, and for the ways in which I can use it to advocate for my daughter, I am inclined to continue. However, even when I was posting more frequently, I got very few comments, and my visitor map seemed to indicate a number of people in countries I'm sure I don't know anyone. This led me to believe that many of my blog viewers are not people I know, and not people I wish to share the more private details of our life with. I readily admit that this is at least partially my fault. I have a bit of a chronic oversharing problem, and I think this is partially due to the fact that I am the stay-at-home mom to a non-verbal child, so I don't get as many opportunities for conversation as I would like, but I need to define some boundaries with regard to what is personal and what is public. I know that I could make the blog private, and by invitation only, and this would alleviate some of my concerns, but it would prevent me from reaching as many people as possible when I do wish to address issues that are more public.

I have decided, for now, to keep the blog public, and to be more discreet about what I publish here.

The biggest news that I do wish to share is that in February we finally obtained a diagnosis for Alexa. She has a form of Cerebral Palsy called Worster Drought Syndrome, or WDS from here on out. There is a nice pdf document at the WDS support group page that will detail it for you if you want to know more, but it is basically a form of CP that most strongly affects the tongue, lips and jaw muscles.

The doctors in the clinic at Doernboecher recommended focusing on her AAC device for speech, since it is unlikely she will ever have much intelligible verbal language, and signing is somewhat difficult due to her limited fine motor skills. We do continue to us a lot of sign language, but it takes someone familiar with Alexa's particular way of signing to understand her easily.

We are trying to encourage her to use her talker as much as possible, and particularly out in public places. This is someone hard to do because she has relied on high 5s for so long that she defaults to that, and unless asked to, or waited on, she doesn't always use the talker.

It would be great if those if you who see us in person would limit yourself to one high five and then ask her a question or let her ask you one. How are you? What are you doing this summer? How old are you now? etc...and if you think of something you would like to ask and she doesn't seem to understand or have it in her talker, please let me know, and I will add it in. Her talker is on her wrist now, and is loud enough for a quiet area, I will try to have the bluetooth speaker with us more frequently to allow communication in a more noisy environment.

I would love to hear your viewpoint on the issue of privacy with regard to blogging, and if you do regularly read the blog, please consider letting me know with a comment now and then.