Updates: Post-Surgery & Therapies

It has been a while since I updated my journal, so I thought I should take a minute to do just that. Right now, life is moving along pretty well, with a few glitches thrown in here and there just for fun.

Mom/Granny is still down visiting and is enjoying her time with the girls. Ron and I had a great time on our vacation in Las Vegas, but I was anxious to get back to the kids. Peyton and Moira did very well while we were gone. Mom got a taste of what it is like to be "us" for a while. Hopefully she'll come back and visit us again after she leaves on Sunday!

Peyton's feeding has improved tremendously in the past few weeks. Ron and I were never able to feed her jarred baby foods. However, now I am able to. She is doing well in her high chair for feedings. I do have to hold her face to get her to open her mouth to get the spoon in. When the food goes in, there's often a grimace from Peyton (not always though), and she will swallow her food. So far, she really seems to enjoy carrots and bananas. She likes the peaches and the jarred rice cereal with applesauce mixed in. This is a huge breakthrough for us, because at almost 16 months, she's still mainly on formula. If we can move her over to more jarred foods, I'll feel much better about the nutrition she is getting.

In another turn of events, we have also removed Peyton from her physical and occupational therapy services provided by the Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) program. She has had evaluations for both with a private therapy provider and will start her actual therapy next week. She goes from 4x/month with ECI for PT to 2x/week with the new place. She goes from 2x/month with ECI to 1 to 2x/week with the new place. The new therapists put her at between 3-6 months developmentally in terms of her motor skills. We need pretty intensive therapy to get her back on track. We've noticed particularly lately that her improvement was not as good as we'd like to see because she just wasn't getting the amount of therapy she was supposed to be getting.

If anyone knows of a way to clone me, please let me know. I have NO clue how this is all supposed to play out, as her PT was done mostly at the daycare provider's home without us having to be there. Now, I am happy to be directly involved now, but it's definitely a strain our our schedules. Necessary, but I have NO clue how to handle this.

Peyton seems to have recovered well from all her recent surgeries. She will follow up with the Neurosurgeon and the ENT doctors next week. The one negative from the post-surgical improvements we noticed is that she now needs to be on her oxygen at night once again. Not sure why it improved and now is back to where it was before.

Aside from all this, we're doing well. Overwhelmed, stressed, and clueless at how to handle the overloaded schedule Peyton has, but we are surprisingly well! (At least I think we are!) I'll keep you posted on how her follow up appointments go and how her new therapists are working out.