The Short Version
Charlotte is doing great - lots of therapy, crawling, sitting by herself, talking up a storm. My classes are good. I'm all done with my Computer course and only a few weeks left of Anatomy. I love dissecting dead people. Brian is good. He's been working hard to make his end-of-year budget and he was sad when it got cold cuz that means no more motorcycle rides until the Spring.
The Long Version - And I Mean LONG
(Disclaimer - if I forget anyone's birth, wedding, or any other major event that has occured over the past few months, I apologize. My brain is not what it used to be. And that was NOT an open invitation for jokes!)
First, let me just say that Charlotte is doing AMAZING! It seemed for awhile that she had started to plateau and we felt that we weren't seeing the physical gains that we had hoped we would achieve from all the therapy she was receiving. I'm not saying the therapy was bad, it was just that I felt she could have been further along then she was. Well, I don't know what exactly has happened, but in the last few months she has been hitting milestone after milestone. Charlotte can now sit by herself on the floor (which helps A LOT when I need her to play by herself for a bit), she can crawl around on all fours, she can talk in mini-sentences, she knows her colors, sings her ABCs and even knows her left from her right! I know some adults that can't even get that down! In the last few months she has really gone from being a little baby to being a little toddler (yep, she's still on the small side, but I'll get to that later).In late-Aug/early-Sept we had to say good-bye to some therapists that had been with Charlotte for quite awhile. We lost Jen, her speech therapist at Child's Voice, and Michelle, her physical therapist since March '07. We were sad to see them go, but they're going on to new chapters in their lives and we wish them well. As the saying goes - when one door closes, another one opens - and that was true in this case. We have been very lucky to find Charlotte's new individual PT, Laura. Laura is not afraid to challenge Charlotte and push her just that little bit more. I really think that having Laura's fresh, new perspective on Charlotte's abilities and potential is a huge part of the recipe to Char's recent successes. Oh, we also lost Char's pool PT therapist, but that was due to the pool therapy building burning down. A little ironic, I know, but thankfully no one was hurt. There's not a lot of places around here that have pools warm enough to do PT, but some new friends we have made are building a new house nearby and they're putting in their own therapy pool for their son, so fingers-crossed that we get invited over for some playdates!
Char also gained a new teacher at Child's Voice, Miss Brandi. In Sept. Char joined the toddler group at Child's Voice, which meets 2 mornings a week for 3.5 hrs of intensive speech therapy and auditory training. There are 3 other toddlers in her class and she is doing awesome! I can already tell that she's saying certain sounds much clearer and her vocabulary is increasing exponentially. She's even made friends with the other kids in class - especially Jeffrey. As soon as we get to school she says, "Where's Jeffrey?" She's already becoming a little flirt. That's my girl!We decided that the Center for Independence, where Char went to Summer Camp this past summer, was such a great program that we enrolled her for their school year program as well. So, two mornings a week (alternating with Child's Voice) Char goes to the Center for 2.5 hrs of PT, OT and DT in a classroom with 4 other little girls with CP. I really like the fact that she gets the experience of being around kids that are like her at the Center, but she also gets to be around "normal" kids at Child's Voice. Yes, the kids at Child's Voice have hearing impairments, but they can all walk, run, climb, etc. I think that balance we have created for her is going to benefit her and the other kids in the end.
Now, about that thing called eating .... with the help of a new speech therapist at Easter Seals we have gained a minute bit of ground in that area. Char can now chew VERY SMALL bits of graham crackers or other easily-dissolvable foods, as long as the food is placed directly on her back teeth. I think this is the part that people have a hard time understanding. And to be honest, we have a hard time grasping and dealing with it ourselves. She still mainly eats purees, she's still on the special, super-expensive casein and soy-free formula, and she still gags a lot of the time. But this new speech therapist is taking a different approach than what we've tried in the past and we're going back to the basics - breathing. Through massage therapy and PT work we're all (and by all, I mean ever single therapist she has in on board with this focus) we're working to expand and strengthen her rib cage to allow her to breathe properly. The thought is that if you can't breathe, how are you going to be able to do anything else, including eating. And, thankfully, I've already seen changes. A few weeks ago Charlotte's ribs had no spaces between them and she took very shallow breaths. Feel your own ribs - you have spaces (muscles) in between each rib. Now, imagine that there's no muscles there and your ribs are stacked on top of each other. It would be pretty hard to breathe, right? Well, a few weeks later I can clearly see that Char's rib cage is expanding and she's taking deeper breaths, which means she's taking on more O2 and her trunk is stonger, which means she can do EVERYTHING better. As soon as we feel the rib cage is where it should be we're going to start focusing on teaching her to chew. I always thought that chewing just came naturally, but that's not so. I'm very interested to see how THAT goes!
So, in some respects, our lives over the past few months have revolved around taking Charlotte to and from therapy sessions. I'm my own version of a "soccer mom". Four mornings a week Char is at "school", then we come home, have lunch, nap and then we have 1 or 2 individual sessions in the afternoon. Fridays are Charlotte's day off. Absolutely no therapy on Fridays. I think it keeps us both sane and it gives her time to goof off and just be a kid.
Actually, our lives haven't been all therapy. In Sept. Brian and I took part in the Great Urban Race. It's just like the Amazing Race, but on a smaller scale. And for those of you who don't know what the Amazing Race is - it's a scavenger hunt where teams of two compete to be the fastest to solve clues and perform certain tasks. It was one of the best experiences of my life! I have been wanting to take part in the Amazing Race since it started and this may well have been the closest I'm going to get. There were about 200 teams that started and we were given a list of 12 clues. We were allowed to skip 1 of the clues, but if you skipped more than 1 then you were a given a 30 minute penalty when you reached the finish line. For example, one of the clues was that there were 2 guys dressed up as the Blues Brothers walking around a four-square block area in downtown Chicago and you had to find them and get someone to take your picture with them. Most of the tasks involved taking a picture as proof, but there were a couple occasions where we had to find a physical item, like a sparkler. That damn sparkler proved to be our downfall. Unbeknowst to us, the city of Chicago banned the sale of sparklers a few weeks before the race and we wasted time trying to find one, never did find it and then had to take a 30 minute penalty cuz we didn't have one. Oh, we will vindicate the name of Team Hellyer next year and we're determined to be in the top 25 (we came in around 150, ouch)! I'll let you y'all know when they've picked the date for next year and hopefully we can recruit some more people to race against!In Sept. I also helped organize the 1st annual Blanchan Ave. Block Party! And wouldn't you know it, after a very dry summer we had a monsoon that weekend. No bouncy castle, no firetrucks, and no Officer McHottie with his don't do drugs or crap like that for the kids (I put in a special request for him). But we put forth a valiant group effort and gathered in a neighbor's garage for great food and even better sangria. We never had block parties on my block growing up and I was so excited about it, so next year the bouncy castle is on me!
In Oct. Charlotte went to stay with Yia-Yia and Papa and had her 1st weekend away from mom and dad. Or should I say, mom and dad had their 1st weekend away from Charlotte. So, what did we do with all that free time? For some god-awful reason we were up at 7am, so I cleaned the house and and Brian winterized the outside. We also managed to fit in a nice sushi dinner, a movie and my 15-year high school reunion. I think we all felt a little refreshed after that weekend and luckily Yia-Yia and Papa have offered their services again in the future. Next time - Peru.
I'd like to take this opportunity say welcome to baby Samantha, my friends Mel and Sean's daughter, who was born in August, and baby Kennedy, my friends Chris and Ed's daughter, who was born in September. I get a lot of joy watching Charlotte get all excited about seeing the "BABY!!!!!". What she doesn't know is that in a few months these kids are going to weigh more than she does. I guess some of us are just destined to be petite.
October also brought Charlotte's 2nd birthday! Up until then I could always just tell people that Charlotte was 1 when they asked, but now when I tell people she's 2 they give me a weird look. She's still pretty small, and she just broke the 20 pound mark. Basically she's the average size of an 11-month old. It's always funny to see the looks on people's faces when we're in a store and they start coo-ing at her like she's a baby and then she talks to them. I've had a couple people say, " Your baby can talk?!" "She's 2". Blank stare. But back to the birthday. Char got lots of presents and had a nice evening with her parents and grandparents. One of her highlights was getting her first baby-doll. Truth be told, I'm looking forward to the parties when all the little girlfriends come. I'm all about the themes and the games.I am truly grateful that I took Charlotte down to Florida to meet my grandmother in August. Almost 2 weeks after my grandmother's 90th birthday in Oct. she passed away. My grandmother was a huge role model in my life and taught me how to be a stong, independent woman. Something that I strive to pass along to my daughter. Gram never wanted to be in a nursing home and once she was there it seemed that she decided it was time to go. But I have tons of memories to pass on to Charlotte about time I spent with my Gram - like the time she let me have sugar cookies and cheese slices for breakfast, or the time we stayed up late debating topics like abortion and euthanasia (and crazy enough, she changed my mind), or the Christmas I went down to visit her and we went through all her old photos together. When I was younger I was her granddaughter, but as I got older my Gram treated me like a friend. I will miss her.
I'm almost done with the fall semester. I finished all the coursework for my computer class last week and I'm pretty sure I ended up with a 99% in the class. There's a couple more weeks left to my Anatomy class and I CAN'T WAIT until it's over. I've loved learning anatomy, and I've loved the cadaver section of class, especially dissecting (believe me, I'm more surprised than you are), but my teacher doesn't teach and she keeps changing the way she tests us, grades us, everything. In some respects I would have been better off taking this class online cuz I've ended up teaching everything to myself. Everyone in my class is frustrated and worried about their grades, and unfortunately this is one of the classes that nursing schools really look at, so I really have to get an A. I just have to make it through 2 more tests, finish my dissection and then it's over.
I can't forget a quick "in Mandi's mind" politics update. As you all know I was definitely a Hillary fan, but when she lost the Democratic nomination I whole-heartedly put my support behind Obama. And as I watched the election results on Nov. 4th, while on the phone with my good friend Kari in New York, I had never felt so proud to be an American. Yeah, it's cheesy, but I really feel that now when I tell my special-needs daughter that she can do whatever she wants to do, I feel that I can really mean it. We all have so far to go in respect of tolerance and equal-opportunity, but now there's that much more of a sense of knowing that if you work hard enough you CAN achieve your dreams. And my dream is to get a full 8 hours of sleep.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
Miles to go in 2008: 20
Days in Office Bush : 55
