Saturday, November 27, 2010

Thankful

We've been enjoying a great Thanksgiving holiday with our family. And even though we've been battling colds here, we have so much to be thankful for. This is our first Thanksgiving since Mia was born that we've actually been home and not at the hospital. The first year Mia was in the NICU, the second year she had heart surgery over Thanksgiving, and last year they took down her colostomy over Thanksgiving. It has been so nice to be home this year!

Mia has been enjoying playing with her cousins and eating, she keeps asking us for more food and has been eating quite well at meals, I hope it's a new habit that is here to stay. I think it just might be all of Grandma's good cooking.

We hope that you had a blessed Thanksgiving too!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

3 Months!

Today Calvin is 3 months, where has the time gone? In the past couple of days he has become so much more alert and a much happier child. We get lots of smiles from him and his giggle is great. He's getting stronger, much better at holding his head up, just not completely there on his own yet. And he weighed in at 12 pounds 9 ounces today. The other major milestone is that he now consistently sleeps from 7pm ish...to 2am ish...and if I go to sleep around 8pm (totally not unusual), I can get a good 6 hours of sleep, yippy! :) He's still not a great napper, but we are instituting some routine things and hoping that he'll get the hang of that and become a better napper. Here are some new photos of the little man.




Saturday, November 20, 2010

MARE

So we finally got a chance to make it out to an appointment for Mia to get started in the MARE program. It isn't official where they are going to put her, she will be evaluated by their OT next week, but if she qualifies she will be put in one of their hippotherapy classes. We would love for that class because it is 2 kids to 1 teacher while the general classes are 6 kids to 1 teacher. We will find out more next Tuesday.

We didn't know how Mia would react to a real live horse. She loves animals, but there is a big difference in a tiny, stuffed animal and actual size one. She was slightly tentative at first, but within no time at all she lost any fear she had. In a way that is good, but also not, but there is alot of training to respect the animal as part of the classes, so I think she will learn how to be careful around these animals.

Needless to say, she did not want to leave. :) I kind of didn't want to leave either, horses are such neat creatures.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Time Flies

So, I wanted to blog on Thursday and then before I knew it, it was Friday. Then I wanted to blog on Friday and now it's Saturday...when did it almost become Thanksgiving???? I love the cooler weather, I especially love a cup of hot cocoa during this time. Time has been going so quickly, but I still feel like I'm in survival mode most of the time. I haven't completely adjusted to having two kids and I feel kind of inadequate at times. I feel like I should have adjusted by now, but I haven't. I guess that's why I haven't noticed it's almost Thanksgiving, because I'm just trying to make it through each day. One of these days it will get easier, in fact, it already has...one of these days, I will feel like I have adjusted. I'm looking forward to that day.

So, what have we been doing? Thursday we were supposed to go out to MARE to have Mia evaluated for their hippo therapy (horse therapy) program, but the gal who was evaluating her had an emergency and had to cancel. We were really disappointed because Brad had the day off and we were looking forward to him being able to partake in the adventure too. So, we are waiting to hear back from them to reschedule her evaluation.

Then, yesterday we went to a local pediatric opthamologist. A friend recommended him and I thought we'd try it out because I'd rather not drive to LA if I don't have too...I liked him alot, he noticed Mia's lazy left eye immediately and said that we can first try to patch her right eye to force her to use her left eye and see if that helps, and if it doesn't, then the second thing would be a surgery to loosen the muscle to allow her eye to turn inward normally. He recommended we still go see our LA opthamologist and get a second opinion from them and then decide what to do. So, we'll be patching her eye for the next few months and PRAYING that it makes a difference because we don't want her to have another surgery if she doesn't need one. So, we'd love any other prayers for her too.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A Photo Shoot






This hat was hand made by a dear friend's family member. How cute is it?!?!

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

No news is good news, right? Well, that's how things have been at our house...we've been plugging along. We did get some trees planted in our backyard, finally...we've only lived here 4 years now...maybe by spring time will have grass??? Calvin will be sad because I know it is a boy's dream to have a dirt backyard. Speaking of Calvin, he is now 12 pounds 3 ounces! Halfway to Mia. He'll probably catch her by the time he is 1. Any day now he can start sleeping through the night, I won't complain if it happens...somehow though, I think it might still take us awhile. Brad prayed that I'd get 8 hours of sleep last night, he forgot to ask that they be consecutive hours. :)

Mia has finally learned how to sit herself down on a stool. It's really cute how she'll slowly back up until her legs hit the bench and then she'll sit down. We take for granted that these things happen naturally with a child, Mia is a constant reminder to me of God's grace and His miracles...she also reminds me that everything happens in God's time and we just need to be patient.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

November already?!

I can't believe it's November...and it's been November for several days now, but it just hit me today that in a few short weeks it will be Thanksgiving. Wow. We have been super busy as always. Mia is adjusting to her new school and loves it. I admit I had some Mommy worries before starting her there and I almost didn't want her to go because I didn't know how she would do, but I am so glad that she is there. Her teacher is wonderful, a perfect fit for Mia. First off, she signs. That's huge for us because so much of Mia's communication is through signs. Her teacher told me today that she has been signing the songs during circle time and she sees how Mia watches her so intently and is trying to do the signs herself. Her teacher doesn't have to do it, but does it for Mia. I'm just so grateful that she's in this particular class with this particular teacher!

We saw a different pediatric neurologist last week and he observed Mia for a short time and diagnosed her as having Encephalopathy with Disorganization. The short of it is that she has brain damage with non-fluid movements. She doesn't move smoothly like we do. He also called it Clumsy Child Syndrome. We felt like he was spot on with his observations of Mia. He said that kids like Mia will do really well with as much early therapy intervention as possible. He also said that kids like Mia relate much better to animals then people and that any kind of animal therapy we can do for her will do wonders. So, we have an appointment next Thursday to go out to a local program called Mare and have them evaluate her for their horse therapy program. I've wanted to do this for some time, but have held back because we have such a busy schedule, but it sounds like this will be worth the amount of time we invest in it, so we're going to see what happens. You can be praying for our evaluation, she may or may not qualify for the therapy program, I'm hoping she does. If she doesn't qualify, then she can still be involved in another program, it just wouldn't have an occupational therapist working with them. We'll see what happens.

How's Calvin? A trooper...poor little guy gets carted everywhere, but he seems to be doing ok with it...and one of these days he'll get on a schedule...