Pushing updates from server

I have an app that uses web sockets to push updates from the server side.

I'm thinking that on receiving an update notification on a record for instance, the client side reloads the associated stores and updates the view accordingly.

But, I was wondering about an approach in which I send the updated record via push, and the client makes local changes to that record without actually reloading the associated stores. But, now when I call a sync() on these stores, they'll redundantly push these changes to the server. Is there a way to make these changes client-side in such a way that after making these changes the stores and the models will be marked "clean" – i.e. it'll be just as if they had fresh data from the server?

Is there a suggested way to approach the problem?

Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!