Uneventful Week

This past week was overall quite uneventful (perfectly fine by me). Annabel's hippotherapy has been cancelled the last two weeks because it is so cold here, it is cancelled if it's under 20degrees but hopefully she'll be riding again this next weekend! Tuesday Annabel was evaluated for her stroller to ride the bus in the fall. We ordered her the Cruiser in purple, it's the most basic of all the strollers approved for bussing and it folds up small yet still has heavy duty tires. Hopefully insurance will approve it and we will receive it before the start of the school year. We also discussed other options for walkers for her and will be trying a new one in a couple weeks. Apparently insurance only approves for one type of equipment for a child, either one that provides mobility (such as a walker) or one that provides weight-bearing to allow them to be upright (such as a stander) so we are at the point of needing to decide which approach we will take with Annabel and once we figure out which is best for her we will be ordering a walker of some sorts as she is able to weight-bear on her own and it is believed that she will walk one day. Annabel also received her Special Tomato highchair so now both her and Johnathan have one. Eventually Mady should get one too but it will take a few more months to run thru insurance. These chairs are very good for posture, fine motor skills, eating, etc., even doing homework down the road as they're rated up to 150lbs.

Wednesday Annabel had speech and had a very good session with a lot of sounds and responses and not a whole ton of mouthing the toys so that was good! Thursday we had therapies at DMC and she responded very well to the E-STIM again, doing some excellent weight-bearing on her left hand with her palm open! Johnathan and Madelyn also had good sessions on Thursday with Mady doing this obstacle course all on her own - I was very impressed with her balance! Johnathan did some great talking in speech, combining quite a few 2 and 3 word phrases. He has also mastered saying "Please", so now he says "More, xxx (whatever he wants), Please" - I love it! Mady on the other hand is being a buggering saying Please, we know she can just refuses. She is doing really well with her ABC's though and is almost singing the whole song! We have this stackable toy that her and Johnathan do that has different colored shapes, starting with 1 up thru 5. They have amazed me with starting to know and say their colors thru this. Annabel continues to feed herself most solid foods unless she decides to be lazy, then she'll let us know that we need to feed her at that time by throwing whatever it is on the floor - she can be quite the stinker! This past year has been so exciting with all three of their developments, I can't wait to see what all they'll do this year!

Tomorrow the trio start a 4 week session of 45 minutes every Monday (SMILE program) where it will be a mock preschool scenerio with their Early On therapists. This will give the therapists a good idea as to how they're doing following commands, etc. to enable us to place each of them in the appropriate program for their level. I am curious to see how they'll all do! I am a bit worried that this alone might be what tells us that Annabel will need to do the intensive 5 day program but that's okay, we'll just make it one of her goals to get her to be able to participate in a scenario like that. Only time will tell though, who knows where she'll be in 6 months?

Today we took Chloe and Hershey to the vet for their annual check-ups and the doctor gave them a good bill of health, stating that they look excellent for 6 year olds! They both lost a good 8lbs from a year ago so that was very good news! Hershey is now at her ideal weight (62), while Chloe could still lose a bit more (she is 67 but could drop to 60/62). This time of year is hard though, we just don't get out for walks since it's too cold to take the kids out.

Praying for another uneventful week...