5,000

I am amazed by how many of you continue to come back each week and read my updates about Abby. I started this blog as a way to keep my family and friends updated without having to spend hours on the phone or typing up emails. But each week these updates are viewed about 200 times and the total number of views has now reached over 5,000. That is crazy! Five thousand views in just 6 months. Wow. Thank you for being interested in Abby and our little family, and thank you for sharing her story with others that you know.

Abby was sick again this week, so we didn't do much. But I am getting very excited for her upcoming swallow study. It is scheduled in two weeks and I think we will find great improvement and hopefully be able to introduce different textures. The other day she ate an entire individual container of applesauce. That is the most she has eaten by mouth in 10 months! I was so excited. She is swallowing quicker and more efficiently and is able to handle larger spoonfuls. We originally had the study scheduled a couple weeks ago, but her feeding therapist and I decided it would be better to give her a little extra time before the test because she just wasn't interested in eating anything for some reason (and these tests are only done every 4-6 months, so we didn't want to 'waste' the test, if that makes sense). At that time I was not looking forward to the results we may have gotten from the study. It is very possible to regress and have to go back a step, and I was afraid that would be the case. But it turns out Abby was just being picky. Go figure! She's always been a picky eater. I tried to get creative and find new things I could blend up for her and different ways to season the foods I was already giving her. That was all she needed. She was just tired of eating the same stuff all the time, and now she is back to eating well again. She will eat 2-3 ounces of puree along with some sort of soft, mushy solid (like banana pieces or very steamed carrots) at each meal. That is huge improvement! When she first came home from the hospital she would only be interested in about 6 or 7 bites of puree. She has come a long way. I know we still have a long road before we can eliminate the tube feedings, but every step forward is a big one.

Here's a few pictures I got this week of the kids playing in various containers. Why are kids drawn to laundry baskets? One day Abby and Spencer were actually fighting over it. I definitely didn't expect that! One of them would grab it, then the other would yank it away, and so on. It was funny and somewhat refreshing to watch. When they weren't fighting over it, they enjoyed sitting in it.

I had the kids 'help' me unload boxes of diapers and wipes from Costco a few days ago and they were both eager to climb in again.

Actually, this kid just likes to sit in things. Even if there is already stuff inside - like legos...

Abby is getting so much better at standing and pulling up to a stand. She can now stand up to her kitchen without pulling it down on top of her. Before she would rely mostly on her upper body strength to pull herself up, and if she was not assisted the kitchen would just topple over. But now she is using her legs to actually push herself up into a stand and not just pulling with her arms. This is how we found her after she had been playing in her room by herself for a few minutes. No crashes!

She got herself into this position completely on her own. I guess it looked like a good place to rest. Super cute!

 

I was very proud of her the other day when she was able to get the lid off the Puffs container. I told her if she got the lid off she could stick her hand inside and pull out a puff. To my surprise she got it off with hardly any effort. I let her put her arm in and she just scooped out about half the container.... So I put the lid back on, and made sure it was on tight. Then I gave it back and told her if she got it open again she could put her hand in, but this time when she pulled out puffs she had to put them into a bowl (great OT exercise, right?). Again she got the lid off with ease, and took the puffs out of the container and put them into a bowl. We wasted a lot of them, but I had already told her she could do it, so I had to let her have her fun for a while.