Walking, ER, and Speech

We officially have a walker! Johnathan is now all over the place, walking all the way across the room and now attempting the linoleum (worries mommy just a tad). He's doing great! He's definitely gotten a lot more precise with his walking, stopping and standing still for a bit to rebalance if needed. We are SO very proud of him! Johnathan also mastered drinking from the straw today! We decided this was the day, we weren't going to give him his bottle anymore. He didn't drink at snacktime but sure enough, come lunch he was ready to try the straw and he did great!

Mady has also taken off in the last week or so! She is pushing the ride-on cars all around and playing so well both by herself and with Johnathan. She's also started actually riding the cars on the linoleum, our PT said this is great for developing her ankle muscles. We are also working on getting her to lead off with her left foot when climbing stairs to help strengthen that foot. She will go on March 11 to get casted for her orthotics, looks like we'll be going to Stride Rite for new shoes then!

Annabel has started feeding herself a few more snacks again and we're working on her holding her bottle and will go to the straw once we're sure she's back up in weight. She's been enjoying her brushing and rolling and keeps working on sitting, I really can't wait to get her going on the aqua therapy! It is amazing to me how much this little girl LOVES music, dancing, and singing and how it makes her SO happy!

All 3 kids are teething, Annabel popped thru 2 molars recently, Mady another, and Johnathan's working on one. It has been interesting to see how this affects each of them, seems like one of them is a touch grumpy quite a bit lately!

We ended up with another ER visit this week. Beginning last weekend Annabel started getting a little fussy with her bottle, not terrible but enough to have us concerned. Thursday morning my mom called me at work to tell me that Annabel had woke up vomiting clear, thick stuff. So I took her to the pediatrician to be checked out, thinking maybe ear infection? Everything was fine. That morning she did drink 6 ozs pediasure and ate some yogurt and held it in until about 12:30 she was in her swing and vomited everywhere. We knew it wasn't flu symptoms and she was actually quite a bit more tired and fussy so when you have a child with a shunt you have to take them in to be checked. They did the full shunt course and everything came back fine, if anything her ventricles were slightly decreased from the CT after her shunt revision. She is acting fine again today, eating and drinking normally and very happy and playful so that is a relief! The other two never got sick at all so if she goes thru a spell like this again we'll take her down again, it could mean her shunt is intermittantly failing again. Dr. Maher did say he was 90% sure that nothing was wrong with the shunt Thursday but you can never be fully sure, as we know from her past. He also said that we know she can tell us if something is wrong so we just need to watch her carefully. He also said that there is scientific data that the fewer shunt surgeries you have, the higher IQ you have so they error on the side of caution at the U and don't go in unless they're 99% sure they'll find a problem. And of course, the chance of developing an infection also goes up with each surgery which infections can cause further brain damage. So needless to say we like they're approach.

Friday morning I took Annabel to her speech eval. She did okay but was still a little fussy. The therapist has totaled up Johnathan's results and after evaluating Annabel she is mostly in the 3-6 month range and Johnathan 6-9, so quite delayed. Granted, most of this is based off of questions she asked me (which she will update results as we go) and it's hard to know the answer to everything they ask (you know what I mean if you've ever been thru one). So, the therapist thinks we should have Early On speech coming once a week so I need to look in to this and the plan is to have Johnathan see the therapist at the U every other Thursday, sometimes possibly bringing Annabel isntead. We will certainly use all of the things we learn with all three kids so they will all benefit. As I've heard before and the therapist said, kids can only really focus on developing one thing at a time so for Annabel especially we don't want to throw too much speech at her when she still has a lot of developing to do physically. So for now we'll try to get extra Early On and go from there. She did say that both Annabel and Johnathan will be delayed with speech but that it will come, which in the end is all that matters.

This week is aqua therapy Tuesday, Early On Friday, and mommy gets to go to a scrapbooking overnight Friday-Saturday -yeah!!