Friday, March 11, 2011

March 2011

On to a new year Katie is 13 months old! We celebrated her first birthday with a big party, lots of balloons, friends and family!! She has never ceased to amaze us! First we will start with what has happened since last update. She has now become a proficient bottom scooter and army crawling has become a thing of the past. This is good for independent mobility, but not so much for developing muscles and necessary skills to crawl and walk. She will need to continue to work on shoulder strength and hip and leg strength. She has mixed tone in her left extremities, we want normal tone by age two. This requires the brain continuing to rewire itself and repair or make new connections. It requires lots of stretching and movement of entire left arm, shoulder and hand and left leg, knee and toes. She is 17lbs and 28 1/2 inches. She was referred to a GI specialist to make sure nothing is abnormal with her slow weight gain. The neurologist was happy with her progress and continues to tell us to play with her two million times per day. Katie has been reevaluated by all her therapists. She is still delayed but overall doing great!
Katie is scooting quite fast all over the place. Katie has learned to blow kisses and can wave hi and bye and say it too! She can say "all done, hi, bye, dog, nana, dada, mama, down and mine." Dada and mama are there, but not always directed at appropriate person. Mine is her new word and she can say it with conviction. :) She repeats well, and Casey will swear she said Casey. She is likes to talk on the phone to daddy. Katie learned to pull to stand this week. Katie pulls to stand everywhere now- on Mommy's leg, couch, laundry basket, crib, fireplace, bathtub and shopping cart. She is a non stop little busy body. Katie is always on the move and has a lot to say! She is a loud chatter box, who can smile sweetly with the head tilt and softly talk to you or can yell and growl. She has the cutest, saddest boo boo lip.
Katie is wonderful and beautiful, but on her visit with the GI doctor this week we got a new view on her progress. Her GI specialist didn't seem concerned from the first moment she saw Katie. She continued to ask questions and was trying to figure out why she had the shunt. She talked with me and then she took a minute to review Katie's chart and look over her birth history. After reading about her stroke, the bleed, cysts and the extensive brain damage that resulted; the doctor looked at Katie and with a truly astonished look said, "Wow!" She couldn't believe how high functioning Katie is with the amount of brain damage she had at birth. It made me recheck my expectations and made me extremely grateful for where she is. Katie could be an entirely different child if not for the grace and healing hand of our Lord. Thank you God for my baby girl!! Thank you everybody for your prayers!! Thank you!! That one "WOW" has changed the way I look at my baby girl!! I am blessed!!! We are blessed!!! Thank you God!!