January 8, 2011

Hope is snuggling with her baby.
The play clothes box was more of a place to sit than it was storage.

Happy New Year!

Another year has come and gone, way too fast I must say. It has been a couple of months since I posted last. Time has flown by so quickly with the busyness and excitement of the holidays.

With the cold weather, we've spend most of our days inside, but the girls have enjoyed a few new things this year. One of their new adventures this year was going to look at the Christmas lights. They really seemed to enjoy them, and whenever we came to new lights, they would shout from the backseat, "lights!" This year is the first year that they've been old enough to really enjoy some of the things that the the holidays bring like opening presents, Christmas lights, and snow. Present opening was fun as well. Peyton, especially, became quite energized throughout the day as she unwrapped more and more toys. To help us have fun inside, their Grandma and Grandpa Knight bought them a little tent with a tunnel to crawl through. They LOVE it and love playing inside of it.

Another thing we started last month was story time at the library. It's been nice to have something to go to that gets us all out of the house. It's funny to watch their personalities when they are in a group. Peyton is a little more shy and reserved. She observes, and then decides what she wants to do. Hope just jumps in and visits or plays.

As far as development and milestones go, both girls are still learning more and more words every day. Peyton uses mostly two word sentences, but has several three word sentences and she even added in a 5 words sentence the other day, "I don't want that sweater." Haha. She used to love all clothes, but now she likes to pick out her clothes and often doesn't want to wear her "sweater." This poses a challenge for me when we are in public and in the cold weather. :)

Hope has many new words and is developing nicely with her OT and PT therapy. She is working on puzzles now and is progressing with her walking. She has just started to leave the couch to walk to something a short distance a way without being prompted. She's done this a handful of times, so hopefully she'll be walking soon!! Her doctor thinks that she may need a brace/shoe insert to help her stabilize more. She noticed that she is having a hard time keeping everything aligned where it should be and that a brace may help her to have an easier time walking. When we see her PT next week we will look into it.

Hope's Dr. is also concerned about her growth. She has really slowed down this year and is still very small, especially in length and head growth. I would LOVE prayers for this. It could be just a nutrition issue since she has spent much of the last year throwing up a lot of her food. We have this under control MUCH more now with the help of one of her doctors, but she has also been referred to an endocrine doctor to make sure that she doesn't have any problems that could be helped now. So we will see about that later.

Hope has continued with the feeding program for her eating. She has made a couple more baby steps. Our next biggest challenge is to get her to chew on something like licorice that she can't bite off so that she can learn to chew.

I have been introduced to a highly successful feeding program that is based out of Graz, Austria. They do Net-Coaching to help babies wean off of the G-Tube. Their philosophies are somewhat different from those we hold in America, but I have talked to several parents whose children had no eating skills whatsoever and were weaned off of the G-tube. Some to liquids like a normal baby, and some to pureed foods or even regular food. I have been in contact with other parents who have done the program as well as the Graz team, and we are hoping to do their Net-Coaching program next month. I am praying a lot about this because I want to make sure it's the right thing for Hope. So far, Hope's doctors and therapists are on board. More to come on that!

God has been so incredibly great to us these past couple of months and He is building my faith daily. I am very excited for 2011 as we will be going through a lot of changes with having two walkers, we will be moving (locally), my husband will have a new job, the girls will start preschool, turn three, etc. All by God's grace, these will be exciting new memories that we will be able to make this year!