She has begun to mimic movements. If we slap the table she slaps the table, if we take a toy up and down she moves a toy up and down. It is amazing to see her brain working as she figures out all these new skills. Our hearts are light with giddiness and anticipation at what she will be doing next.
On a more somber note, I asked Nicole (our PT) this week the question I had been avoiding asking for months- will Elin walk? She is 14 months old now and just sitting up- crawling is a ways off and walking seems like it might not be something we should hope for. But we still have hope and Nicole cautiously answered my question. She thinks Elin will walk with assistance most likely. This means she will have leg braces and a walker or other such devices. She isn't sure if Elin will ever walk without the help of some sort of device. BUT she said she isn't sure one way or the other. So basically we work on her PT religiously and have made it our goal to do everything in our power to get the girl to walk someday. This is our mission and it helps motivate us to push her through her exercises and spend all our time on the floor.
Her babbling is coming along. We hear ba and ga more frequently. We are still waiting for her first word but I think it's coming. We have been testing her response to the Ling Sounds - (m, ah, ee, oo, sh, s) We play a game where someone is behind her and makes the noise and the person in front tries to decide when Elin hears the sound. Some are easier then others. Moo for example- we can tell she hears that right away because her eyes steady and she smiles now because she knows her favorite soft cow toy is going to be handed to her mooing all the way. Other quieter sounds like sh and s are much harder to tell if Elin hears them or not. She still doesn't turn toward the sound so I think she has a hard time localizing where it is coming from.On October 3rd we have our first appointment with the CI (Cochlear Implant) team and we are luckily meeting with the head of Audiology at Children's Dr Norton. We will find out a bunch more about whether Elin is a candidate for a CI and perhaps try some more behavioral hearing tests. This is good and bad news. Good because if Elin's hearing loss is so severe the hearing aids aren't helping this will indeed help her hear. Bad because it is a major surgery and she has to have something implanted in her brain. I would prefer not to mess with her brain given her other issues as I'm sure you can understand.
Why is Elin progressing all of a sudden? Perhaps it is simply development, but I believe it is a combination of a reduction in medicine, her vision improving, and her hearing aids being turned up. She has undergone a lot of change in the past few months and now that her seizures are under control (thank god!!!!!) we can focus on her daily activities and get more PT and OT work in through out the day.
Anya has started preschool at Pilgrim Lutheran in Enatai a stone's throw form my parents (yes this was by design). She is happy being back in a steady routine and her Pre-K class seems to be the right fit for her. Elin and I get to spend some alone time together during Anya's mornings away and we either go home so she can take a nap, run errands, or have appointments. It has been lovely.
Other exciting news is our upcoming trip to Hawaii. We had planned a trip last March but had to cancel because Elin's seizures started one week prior to our vacation. So we were fortunate enough to be able to reschedule and we are headed off for two weeks in the middle of October. I can't express how much we all NEED this vacation and how insanely excited we are to be able to go for 2 whole weeks. Our first week there we are meeting our friends from Australia with their son Harry and the second week the Piskels (the Northshore house owners and our good friends) come with their daughter Lucy. So Anya will have two weeks with two of her closest friends and so will we. It will be amazing.
