Results in!

Surprise! The results came in already, and everything is totally normal---no brain abnormalities!

Hooray :) And Happy Thanksgiving :)

MRI Done

Thanks for all of the thoughts, prayers, and well wishes. The MRI is done, the stuffing is in the oven, and we're looking forward to Thanksgiving :)

We got to the hospital a little before 7:30am, and Maya (who had not eaten or drank since 7:30pm last night) was miraculously not cranky. Dave played with her while I filled out paperwork and then we broke out his laptop and played "Signing Times" (her sign language dvd). She watched it until it was time to go in. Dave took her back while they put her under, and then we went downstairs and read in the cafe for a bit. 40 minutes later we went upstairs just as she was waking up. She whined/cried a little, but was mostly just tired. Drank a bottle, filled out another form, and we were on our way home (a little after 10).

She's been fine, slightly sleepy but really no big deal. The nurses commented that she was very easy---some kids really scream I guess.

So that's it---I'm not expecting to hear anything from the doctor before next week.

MRI tomorrow

I know, I need to update more. Having said that . . . (that's a nod to this week's Curb Your Enthusiasm, if you watched it)

Tomorrow Maya has an MRI in the city in the morning. It's scheduled for 8:30am, requires an hour or two of sedation (with no eating/drinking beforehand, sigh), and is a little stressful. If you remember back to her adenoid surgery, coming out of the anesthesia was rough . . . we're hoping that things will be easier this time around.

Keep us in your thoughts tomorrow. I'll update when we're home.

I'm working on an update, but my time gets stolen away really easily. One week of not updating and there's so much to add that it becomes too big of a job, so I procrastinate and it gets bigger, etc etc. I just uploaded a bunch of pictures, so now I need to sort and organize them and then I can update with pics.

I had Maya's IFSP meeting this week (where we look at her progress and determine her thearpies for the next 6 months). We're increasing everything, so now we'll get PT for 120 mins a week (up from 60), OT for 120 mins (up from 90), Speech & Feeding for 120 mins (up from 60), and we'll get evaluated by a special instructor (who I think will work on things like pointing, reading, clapping, etc). I'm sure she'll qualify for that too. I'm working on the new schedule but it's hard to coordinate the schedules of 3 therapists and us, too. And Maya seems to be switching from 2 naps per day to 1, so I'm not sure how that will factor in as well.

For now, I'll leave you with the best picture that I think I've taken this month. This was at the park----Maya was holding a coin for the piggy bank and I asked her to give it to me (which she did). Then I put the coin in the bank, instead of handing it back to her, and this is what happened:

MOMMY! I can NOT BELIEVE that you just fed my coin to the PIGGY instead of giving it back to ME! I am so MAD! MAD! MAD! MAD! I'm just going to sit here and cry :(

Things I do, 2 awesome updates

My life in pictures:

I'm a great eater of baby foods :) This is one week's worth of jars (M-Sun), plus I eat a lot of yogurt and mashed potatoes! I'm struggling to progress to thicker textures, but we're working on it.

I go to the park! At the park, we do physical therapy-ish exercises, crawl around, climb on stuff, and swing!
My pants get super dirty from crawling around. Everyone else at the playground can walk, so I look ridiculous in my constantly blackened pants. Mommy wonders if people think that she doesn't wash my clothes.I'm figuring out how to climb and chase the big kids!

A few times a week, I go swimming :)

And when I wake up from my nap, I like to turn on the mobile and gather my book, baby, and bunny all together:

I like to sit in my giant egg. Ok, just kidding, these are from a trip to Central Park Zoo that I took with Mom & Grandma. I love the penguins and the petting zoo!





And every day ends with a fun bath with my daddy. He's the best bath giver in the world. Then I get all wrapped up like a little flower.

And . . . . DRUMROLL, please . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 giant milestones this week! On Thursday, I babbled my first consonant babbles. I now say "Mamamamamamama" whenever I'm tired or agitated :) It's super cute and mom & dad are psyched that I'm making more noises.

AND this morning I stood up----all by myself!!! All of a sudden mom & dad looked over and saw this:

I'm getting big & strong :)

Amazing gym cushions!

So when my sister saw my amazing taped-together platform it apparently caused her to research real toddler gym cushions, as if my taped creation was somehow inferior (jk, Lisa :) ). But for real, she sent me some links to toddler gym stuff, which is really cool and really expensive. I decided to look for used stuff, and in a crazy twist of fate (or divine intervention) someone had actually posted 3 cushions for sale earlier that day! Last night after Maya was asleep I drove downtown to pick them up, and today Maya got to play with one of them (we got 3). Big shoutout from Maya to my parents, who bought them for her!

(Still in her pjs) Mom! What's this?!

I can play with it like THIS:

I can play with it like THIS:

Get out of my way!

I can even play with it like this (although it didn't seem like that much fun today):

PS: If you notice, in pictures 1,2 & 4 she is carrying around 3 little rings hookecd together. I don't know why, but she didn't want to put them down this morning. Really cute :)

PPS: Although it looks like she's rocking out, I actually can only leave her unattended when it's shaped like a tunnel (pics 3 & 4) because if she has to climb down from it (like pic 1 &2) she kind of face plants.

PPPS: It's so much more fun to think about our Mommy & Maya physical therapy-ish time now that we have great tools to make it easier! (And you guys haven't even seen the other 2 cushions yet!)

Non apple picking

Today we went apple picking. However, we didn't pick any apples because the line was huge to get on the hayride to get up to the trees:

So instead, we played in the pumpkin patch:

And they had a petting zoo, where Maya enjoyed giggling at many animals:

While we were there, a chicken was cooking at home in the crockpot. For those interested in the prolific chicken recipes, I'm going to talk chicken . . . if you don't care about chicken, skip ahead. Anyway, I left it cooking all day and then separated the meat tonight. I have the bones, skin, etc still cooking now to make chicken broth overnight.

Broth: Chicken carcass, including a lot of skin, all of the juices that cooked out of the chicken during the day, 2 small onions, a few cloves of garlic, 2 or 3 carrots, 2 or 3 stalks of celery, 2 or 3 bay leaves, 8ish cups of water and 4 boullion cubes (maybe it's cheating but I like the saltiness). I let it cook for a long time, if it's too watery I add more spices, or if it's too salty I add more water.). Tomorrow I'll strain out the solids, throw away skin & bones, and I blend the veggies in a food processor and pour it back into the broth to add depth.

In other news, Maya hasn't been sleeping well lately so we've asked her to move out:

Fast food, and a table

Today's milestone: Maya's first meal outside of a high chair! Feeding her outside somehwere has been on my to-try list for a while, so when we decided to run errands today we brought along a jar of food. Here she is (in the shopping cart at Costco):



The re-designing of the play area continues, and today we brought in the table that I was creating the other day. It was a success, although I think I may need to add a mat or something to the top so that toys don't slip as easily.

Not interested yet:


Hey, what's this?

Perfect height for standing play:

Brilliant ideas, a shopping spree, and a table

It's a lot easier to update this with pictures that I take on my phone, just overlook the lousy quality :)

After physical therapy today we went on a shopping spree. Here's the loot:


(Since tooth #6 came through this week, Maya hasn't been eating well, so we needed to pick up some of her favorite baby food, Apple-Turkey-Cranberry. Three stores later we finally found it, so we bought 21 jars. Plus a bunch of other food. Yum.)

We need to redesign her play area. Problems are: there are no steps or different heights that she can climb on, none of her toys are tall enough that she is motivated to stand and play, and she has too many toys available, so it's hard to get her to focus on anything. Today I came up with some crafty solutions!

I broke apart her old alphabet mat and stacked the sections, then taped them together to create a foam platform. Maya helped by un-stacking them and ripping off tape:



Finished project:


Then I took some plastic drawers, taped the doors shut and taped the stack together. This will be the perfect height for a table:



Then Maya & I went to KIPP's happy hour. As we were leaving, I noticed that someone was throwing away this table outside of our building. Then (I swear) they had the SAME table at the bar. So I took this picture when we got home to text back to my friends who were still at the bar. Dave points out that the picture isn't that funny by itself, since I didn't take a picture of the one at the bar, but it still cracks me up.

Maya Gump

Maya's splints were finished today. (ignore the fact that she's wearing a giraffe shirt, strawberry pants, and pink socks. She's just such a diva, insisting on her own wardrobe selections already. Or we just don't have many pants that fit right now, since she crawls like an animal at the playground and everything is filthy.) Here they are:

She doesn't seem to mind them at all, although she only wore them for 2 15-min periods today. She crawled down the hall and as they hit the ground with a tap-tap-tap it sounded like she was wearing heels. Ran out tonight to buy her a pair of shoes so that tomorrow we can start working on standing.