Progress

I think it's time for a progress update.

First of all, we have finally begun to wean Abby off her last remaining medication - the one for seizures. A few months ago Abby had an EEG done to check on her brain activity. Her neurologist liked what he saw and said it looked like she would be fine without the medication. We were supposed to start weaning at the beginning of April, but Abby was sick. And while we were waiting for her to get healthy again, she got a UTI, which took two rounds of antibiotics to clear up. Now that she is healthy and infection free, it is safe to start altering her doses. Yay! It will take 6 weeks before she is completely done with the medication but we are so excited to finally be able to start the process. I can't wait for her to be medicine free!!

Abby has been eating everything by mouth for quite some time now, but we haven't been able to get her to drink anything, so we still have to use her feeding tube to administer her fluids. But in the last few weeks she has started to take interest in smoothies. She will only drink it from a spoon, but I am ok with that - especially since she will drink an entire 8 ounces that way. Eight ounces! Needless to say, we've been making a lot of smoothies. I love it because if she drinks the whole thing, then I can omit one of her water doses. Awesome. Sometimes she will drink the leftover milk from her cereal that way too. But only sometimes. We've tried to spoon feed water and juice, but so far we haven't had any luck. We are very excited about the smoothie situation though.

And now, on to my favorite update. Abby has been using the toilet. She was potty trained before all of this happened, so I know that the idea is still in her head. We just haven't found a good method yet for her to tell us when she needs to go. For the last several months we have been putting her on the toilet every once in a while and sometimes she will go. She always uses the toilet to go #2 though. She hasn't gone in her diaper in months. When we see her pushing we take her in to the bathroom and she usually has enough control to stop pushing until she is seated on the toilet. Awesomeness. However, last week she crawled over to the bathroom door at school - something she hadn't done there before. Her teacher took her in and sat her on the toilet....and she went! And she has been using the toilet at school every day since. Awesome! At home we are still hit and miss. But for the last two days she has gone in the morning when we are getting ready for school. So nice! I have no desire to potty train Spencer. I'm just not up for that yet. But if we can get Abby using the toilet more frequently that would be so much better. Some days I feel like all I do is change diapers. So we will see where this leads. Maybe I will get Abby some pull-ups to wear instead of diapers. I think she would like that.