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If Santa had a theme park, this would be it!

Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Festival of Trees is right around the corner! The 23rd annual holiday event will be held November 23-25 at the Maryland State Fairgrounds Cow Palace in Timonium. Festival of Trees is a winter wonderland, featuring more than 600 spectacular holiday trees, wreaths, and gingerbread houses created by local designers.

John Manison is an 18-year-old freshman at Ashland University in Ohio. He is dedicated to his rehabilitation at Kennedy Krieger’s International Center for Spinal Cord Injury and focused on achieving therapy goals en route to living his life without a wheelchair.

Experts agree that early intervention in children with autism can lead to better outcomes later in life. Typically, autism is not diagnosed until age three or four, when delays in speech and social interaction become evident. New research by Dr. Joanne Flanagan and Dr. Rebecca Landa, director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, has identified a simple test that can raise a red flag for autism as early as six months.

When Chris and Crystal Ditch delivered their baby boy, Mason, they burst into tears of joy. It had taken them four years to get pregnant, and they finally held the baby they had awaited for so long. But two hours before Crystal and Mason were scheduled to be discharged, doctors told them that Mason had tumors in his tiny heart.

Tell a kid to do three repetitions of 15 pushups or 25 leg lifts or any of the other myriad exercises that physical therapists assign during a regular session, and the automatic response might be a roll of the eyes and a groan before relenting—only to tucker out and lose focus or motivation before it’s over.

Many of the children admitted to the inpatient rehabilitation unit at Kennedy Krieger have experienced a trauma or illness that resulted in needing a procedure called a tracheostomy. The procedure involves placing a tube in a patient’s neck to help with breathing, but the downside is that it robs the patient of the ability to speak.

In rural Africa, where 3-year-old Fabian Ndungu Githinji was born, his mother Maureen could feel the eyes of her neighbors on her when she held Fabian, and hear their whispers behind her back. It was obvious that Fabian was different, with his abnormally large head and delayed development. In her culture, many still believed that children with developmental disabilities were a bad omen or a curse.