So we've had quite a busy week. Mia is now going to school 4 days a week, so our Monday morning therapies are now Wednesday afternoon. It keeps us hopping since there isn't alot of down time. But we've seen such good improvement that we want to push her as much as is realistic. On Tuesday at horse therapy, they commented how she's moving her tongue more when she tries to say "n", which is great! We continue to get excited as she makes more progress with speech. I love how she will now sign some things and say the word at the same time. We plan on keeping up with the signs too because it would be so neat for her to have that as she gets older.

Calvin will now push up on his tummy and he can get out of being on his tummy on his own now. He can almost sit unassisted, he loves to play with toys while someone helps him sit. I noticed he's getting another tooth, on the bottom, so he gnaws on anything he can get his hands on.

Happy Half Birthday Calvin!

Six months today! Oh my! Calvin weighed in at 15 pounds 12 ounces, he's officially twice his birth weight. He just keeps getting bigger. Calvin has also tried his first food this past week. Some banana and a "surf board" rice cracker. The banana gave him a "surprised" look when he tasted it...the rice cracker was a big hit. He likes to gnaw on that. I had read somewhere about the idea of waiting until a child was "ready" for food and then giving them whole foods rather than mush, I liked that concept, so we decided to give it a try. The point is that this is a time for them to explore food and that they are still getting their nourishment from breast milk or formula. It's been fun to watch him get to eat.



Mia has shown quite the interest in musical instruments since birth really, but more recently has started strumming imaginary guitars and playing imaginary violins...it's adorable. The amazing thing is she'll usually pick the correct instrument type for whatever music is playing. So, we got Mia a red ukulele, we call it a guitar...she loves it. Here's a picture of her with it.

Oh week, where did you go? Time seems to be speeding up lately, funny how that happens when you get older.

Mia's cough is back. We started her on the breathing treatments again last night and we'll keep doing them. I plan on calling her pediatrician on Tuesday and getting some info on what they think. We were off the breathing treatments for 1 week and now her cough is back, so I'm not sure what that means or how we should approach it.

We saw Mia's GI doctor this past week and he's concerned because she stopped gaining weight. So, we are keeping a food journal and adding the cream back into her milk. He also wants to run some tests to see how much she recognizes sensation for stooling, that's as nice as I could think of saying it. One of our big fears is that she won't be able to manage her bowel movements, so please be praying for us as we find more answers.

Mia's continues to speak more, Praise God! Now we are understanding how things are going to get more difficult before it gets easier as she gets frustrated when we don't understand what she's saying. Continue to pray for improved speech for our little girl.

Happy Valentine's Day!

More Pictures

I meant to put these up earlier this week, but time has gotten away from me again. I can't believe Calvin will be 6 months real soon! When did that happen? Anyway, these pictures are from MARE, Mia loves it. She can't get enough of it and is always so sad when she has to leave. They work on different activities with her that involve lots of speech. She is pretty much talking the whole time and then the activities also strengthen her muscles. In one of these pictures you'll notice her standing up and stretching to get the ring on the correct pole. That's fantastic for her little body!




This final picture was taken a day ago, I walked away to get something and came back to find Mia feeding Calvin her toy bottle. He was trying to suck on it which was super amusing. She was very proud of herself. We'll have to keep an eye on her to make sure nothing too little or too real goes in his mouth yet.

More on Breathing Treatments

So, we've been doing the breathing treatments for about a week and half and they've been working. By recommendation from a nursing friend, I've been doing the treatments before dinner and it seems to be helping to keep her from being too hyper before bed. Her coughing has gotten so much better. She doesn't cough at all during the night and even during nap time. The plan is to continue until Friday (that will be 2 weeks) and then try to ween her off the treatments to see if she does ok without them.

Today Mia got her new glasses. These glasses have a prism in the left lens to shift her center of vision. This should help her with her balance. She's to wear these glasses for a few hours a day and then her regular glasses at other times. The hope is that she'll then retrain her brain to focus in the right spot. We'll see how she does with these glasses over the next few weeks.

We decided to go with a different frame this time around, these are her big girl glasses. So far she's been doing just fine with them.

Pictures!

Groundhog's Day

The day has barely begun, but I'd like to redo it. We had a rough night last night, to say the least. It all began with Calvin wetting himself around midnight and I having to change his jammies. He was hungry and screaming and I couldn't do it fast enough for him. Well, in the process it must have woken Mia up because after I was almost finished nursing him I heard her fussing in her room next door. Sometimes this will happen and Daddy will go in and lay with her for a little bit and she'll go right back to sleep. Well, not last night, she was wide awake and slightly hyper again. She was up for about 3 hours...which meant we were up for about 3 hours. Eventually she did fall asleep, but it was very difficult. So you can be praying because we think this is related to the breathing treatments and aren't exactly sure what to do next. I did call the pediatrician this morning and I'm waiting to hear back from them.

Breathing Treatments

So we've been doing Mia's breathing treatments for 3 days now. We started on Saturday evening and she did not want to wear the pediatric mask that goes with the treatment. Well, I remember when we were in the PICU and she had some albuterol (spelling?) treatments for her pneumonia that they just sprayed it in her mouth and nose region and said that she breathes in enough for them to be happy with, so we did that on Saturday evening. She actually didn't cough all night, so on Sunday evening we tried decorating her mask and again she didn't want to use it, so we just sprayed the treatment in her face region and again, no coughing. Well, last night Daddy got to her to put the mouthpiece in her mouth for her treatment and we were excited because that was a step in the right direction we thought...until Daddy went to read her two books before bed and she was so hyper! She started crying when he was ready to leave and I went in there and laid with her for an hour while she calmed down, she was really jittery, poor thing! That was too much treatment!! Since it was working the other way and she wasn't hyper like this, we are going back to the old way. Of course now I have all these questions because it is working, like how long do we do it for, etc. I don't want to medicate my child if it isn't necessary, I guess it will be a trial and error thing to sort out how much and when she needs it. But, it is working.