Learning.

Every day, Gracie shows us she is learning. Today, I asked her if she wanted a bottle and she shook her head "yes". After I took a shower, she brought me the hair dryer because she watches me use it everyday! We play a game where I point it in her direction and she runs away shrieking with her giggle laugh!. If she doesn't have a nap, she crashes by 7pm. Tonight she was mad because it was raining AGAIN and she couldn't go out and swing AGAIN. So I brought out the headset for her Listening Program and she gave me a huge smile!!!
She is giving me more and more of those huge smiles!
She is using cognitive thinking because , though I told her No she couldn't go out, she went and got her shoes to try and persuade me because she knows I always make her put on her shoes before we go out!!! She learned that because there were several times when she didn't like that I made her wait until we put her shoes on until we went out. I see the little brain working!
It sometimes bugs me when I see younger kids who are on track developmentally only because she wasn't given that chance but we are going to do everything we can to make up for lost time!

Such a big difference.

Today I had my happy girl back. She was running around as she normally does. She did relatively well at therapy before we had to go for a dental checkup. She wasn't so happy there, though. SHe tried to run off with another man in the lobby again- climbed right up onto his lap. I don't know what it is but she really likes men. I guess she figures women are always the ones who torture her (including mom), After the dentist we did a grocery tour with a balloon pickup on the side, then home.
She came over to me to take me to the back door to swing, but I sat down on the floor with her instead and we sat down and watched the rain and talked for about 15 minutes. This will make Carey Anne happy( but I didn't talk about the squirrel like you did that one day!) Then we sat on the sofa for another 20 minutes just snuggling . Her eye contact has gotten sooo much better. I can tell she really looks AT me and sees me. She makes the goofiest faces most of the time! I wish I had away to memorize the moment because she just sat with me and let me rub her feet and look at her hands and tickle her toes. There is so much to appreciate if we can just take a few minutes to do so and I am blessed to be able to have this time with her now.
Now I just have to talk daddy into getting a swing for inside (because we've traded place with Seattle, it seems!)

Meltdown.

I don't know what happened today but my girl had a meltdown at therapy and could not be consoled. THe fact that she had a long nap yesterday and then could not sleep last night didn't help the situation but it wasn't typical of Gracie at all. Things started off ok. Her little friend Leah was there today. Then when we went into the kitchen to eat, literally all HELL broke loose. They asked Leah's mom to sit in the foyer so therefore we tried it with me out of the room too. Both girls were crying at the top of their voices so they actually had to break it up after what seemed like an eternity. IT seemed they were feeding fear off of each other. I could not get Gracie to calm down. We went downstairs to swing and THAT didn't even work. So we had one more feeding separately and we decided to call it a day because there was nothing I or Trisch could do to calm her down.
So we went home and for 2 hours till Joy came home, Gracie tried to get me to take her to the outdoor swing, in the rain. I tried to distract her with videos on youtube which worked for a little while. Then we get in the car to pick Joy up and she falls asleep!
But not for long. Tried a bottle. Tried a bath. Brought out one of sister's loud toys. NOTHING WORKED.
In desperation I texted Carey Anne, our speech and feeding therapist, begging to use the listening program ( on a night we weren't scheduled to use it). Thankfully, she said yes. So Gracie sat on my lap for 15 minutes and when she told me we were done, there was a silly smile on her face. Amazing.
Then about an hour later...... we finally had a stinky diaper( well, two exactly). And now my girl is giggling and playing again.
AMEN.
Tomorrow starts daily prune juice and cod liver oil hopefully!!!! Lesson learned. ;)

Photo Book

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Daughters. and Mothers.

Today Gracie told me that her favorite toy needed batteries. I am not kidding. She told me to put her in her crib , then she pointed to her favorite toy, a musical waterfall that hangs on her crib, and told me to take it off. Silly me, I thought she just wanted to slam untie it so she could bang it around. Stupid mom, it's time to change the batteries. She insisted I turn it on and listen to it and sure enoug it made that wah-wah flat sound that meant it was tim to change the batteries, So I took it off ( like she originally told me to) and fixed it. She is too smart.


We had a small birthday party for Gracie yesterday. Just grandparents and fairy godmothers. I thought something small would be best because she still gets out of sorts with lots of people. Poor peanut, by cake time she was all discombobulated and wanted nothing to do with the small cupcake we gave her. She still has no idea what to do with presents (although she did take some interest in the gift, but not in opening them) and she looked at the cake with candles like it was something from another planet. She only wanted to go on her swing, nothing else.
It just boggles my mind what she must think now and what she must have gone through in the orphanage. She is 3 in years but not in development. She is just really celebrating her first birthday and she has no idea how truly special this day is. So we will have a BIG party for her in September for her Gotcha Day, which to me, is her real birthday.
I found out at therapy that although we got her in September, her real sense of permanency could only be considered to have started in January, AFTER she had her surgery. Evidently, only after we stuck with her during and after her surgery could it have started to stick in her mind that we weren't going anywhere.

Later on, we watched the 25th year anniversary concert of Les Miserables with Joy Lin because she is getting interested in musical theatre (because we watch GLEE together.) She actually sat through the entire show, which I didn't think she would( I think it helped that Nick Jonas , of the Jonas Brothers was in it.!). That was the last show on Broadway that I saw with my mother many years ago and I still cannot get through the song, "Bring Him Home", without bawling like a baby. She was fighting breast cancer at the time .Listening to the words of the songs after losing her makes me wonder what was going through her mind at that time. She was too protective of my sister and I through her illness and we were too immature to really grasp the seriousness of our situation at the time. We were in denial.
And now, however many years later, I was to embarrassed to tell Joy why I was sitting there and crying my eyes out. I intend to talk to her about it today.I hope that I will be able to share many joys with both of them and give them alot of things that my mother wasn't able to give me. I hope also that she'd be proud.

Better today.

Therapy today went much better for Gracie / She wasn't upset like she was yesterday. Everytime we go, we try to find the best path to take to get to the result we want, which is eventually to get food in the mouth, and today we actually got ( a little ) food in the mouth!!!!
We began with Carey Anne making oatmeal for breakfast. Smells are very important along with taste. Then she followed Gracie's cuse to make it as pleasant as possible for her. She found out that Gracie makes great eye contact when she is given the spoon to feed Carey Anne. She watches intently when she does this and even started to grasp the spoon. This was big, really big so we decided to follow through with this as a focus.
Later, after swinging!, we sat her down at the table with her listening program. I brought the bag with the headphones in and she followed me. We weren't planning on doing at the table, but she followed me into the kitchen. It was cool to watch her as she made up her mind. She stood outside the playroom while I went into the kitchen with the bag. You could actually see her think about what she wanted to do. " Do I stay here and play or do I go in there with the food and listen?" She chose the kitchen. Which was HUGE. So as she was listening, she sat at the table with food. Carey Anne went by turns, having Gracie "feed" her and feeding Gracie by putting applesauce on her thumb. Well, the thumb actually made it into the mouth 5 or 6 times WITH APPLESAUCE on it.! She wiped it off part of her thumb but was distracted enough by the program to leave some of it on and she seemed to like it!
So today was a good day.
So we went home afterwards and went on the swing and she LAUGHED. She makes this great face on the swing. Her eyes get huge and her mouth stays open and it's just too funny. I will have to get a picture of it!

Tough Day.

Sometimes it is so us to watch as Gracie goes through this feeding therapy. We are supposed to make to attempts to get something into Gracie's mouth at every meal time. Chris is really good at this. It annoys her but not so much that she gets mad. Well, we tried it at therapy and she got really MAD. She gets really LOUD when she gets really MAD. She lets us ( and anyone else in the building) know she is mad. And the tears spurt out of her eyes. I was sitting across from her and she kept giving me these "help me" looks and just got madder because I couldn't help her. So then we went down to swing. They have these cool swings set up inside and she loves to swing. So she calmed down. Then we went back to the table and the drama and the spurting started again. You could just tell by looking at her that she was exhausted. She didn't even want to bounce in the moonbounce outside.

It's so hard to know what to do. Do we just keep doing what we have been doing or do we try something drastic? Chris has no patience and so we discussed and in patient program at a hospital. Well, she would have to live at the hospital for 6 weeks and they would more than likely "force feed" her by pressing her to accept the spoon until they finally break her. ( OK , it's late, i may be blending details and exaggerating but you get my point). My view is she has already been traumatized to not like food- do we want to make her HATE it? I think we should take the slower road and continue on the path we are on.

You just don't realize how truly important it is that children get that contact and input and love when they are little. They are truly like flowers. The more sunlight they get the faster they bloom but if they are denied that sunlight when they are seedlings , it's so much harder to break through the soil and blossom.

New Friends.

Therapy was different today. First , our OT, Miss Trisch, had car troubles wasn't able to get there till late. But we also had new kids to play with. There was a girl and boy, both 19 months old, both too cute! It was different watching Gracie with kids in her age group. They played in the same room but not together,which is normal at that age, I guess. She is a little stubborn about coming over to be where they are and some possessive signs showed up with her favorite toy but overall she did good. It was NOT a good feeding day. I don't know if it was the fact that we were in the kitchen( she seems to do better in the dining room) or that she was sitting with her new friends but she was not happy, especially the second time around. She also seems to like sitting in one certain chair and I think I will have to ask that she sit there when we are there.
I guess the hardest thing for me was seeing the difference between Gracie, who will be 3! THIS SUNDAY!! and the younger kids. The little boy was eating really well. The little girl was saying words. My girl has so much to learn just to catch up and it doesn't seem fair. But she will be great, I know. She's a one-of-a-kind.
They also want me to encourage her to be independent with dressing and eating so I am supposed to gradually get away from sitting with her with the bottle( which I am not sure I want to do yet ;( ) but we will do what is best for Gracie. It just bites that we have so much to make up and don't have time to enjoy the special babyness ? that she still has.

Whenever I put her on the swing, she looks up at the sky and smiles and laughs, the wind blowing through her fine hair. I wish I could know what she was thinking. But I am so happy that we have been able to give her that happiness! She deserves it.!