As Neal mentioned in his post yesterday, Anna has just started crawling. She’s doesn’t move far, nor is it very graceful, but she’s trying and that is key. The simple fact that she is getting herself on her hands and knees is amazing considering the fact that her left arm is not that strong. Here’s a movie (7.5MB about 1 minute or so) of Anna that I took just this afternoon.
Anna’s cousin Henry is quite the dancer. Recently he’s started groovin’ to music of any kind. Here’s a short clip of him dancing to one of Anna’s toys.
January 26th, 2007
Tara called me this morning at work to tell me that we’ve passed two major milestones in one day:
1. Anna sat up all on her own! (This is the first time either of us have actually seen her do it).
2. Anna actually crawled. On all fours. Not far. Not fast. But she crawled. And then she did it again for our therapist.
I’m at work, and swamped, but I had to share. I’m so incredibly happy! I think any parent understands the emotions we’re feeling, but this milestone in particular has become so much more important for us because of Anna’s CP.
Ms. Anna: You are truly amazing.
January 25th, 2007
As I’ve mentioned in past posts, we’re working on getting Anna to sit up from being on her tummy. Yesterday morning I put Anna in her crib for a nap. About an hour later I went in to get her because I could hear her playing and chatting away. I walked in and was pleasantly surprised to see Ms. Anna sitting up in her crib waving at me! Now that she knows she CAN do it, I’m hoping we’ll be seeing more and more of her sitting up.
I took this opportunity to work on a little child-proofing. Since I KNOW Anna can pull herself to standing if she’s in a sitting position I thought it would be a good idea to lower the mattress in her crib. I’ve also been installing covers on all the electrical outlets. She’s very interested in drawers and cabinets lately, so I’m going to be installing some of those cabinet/drawer lock-thingies soon.
January 23rd, 2007
We’re supposed to get another 3-5 inches today. I’m getting a little tired of it snowing every weekend for the last 5 weeks. I’m tired of shoveling. I’m tired of driving my Honda. I’m tired of tracking in gloppy black snow stuff on my boots. Not to mention the fact that it’s COLD!
January 21st, 2007
The title pretty much sums up the time since our last post.
We spent Christmas in Kansas this year. This was Anna’s first Christmas, which was actually a lot of fun. She had no idea what she was doing, but she enjoyed ripping paper off. Not so that she could see what was under the paper, but so that she could eat the paper. We had to keep a pretty close eye on her with all that paper laying around. We had a great time visiting with all the grandparents, aunts/uncles and cousins!
Due to the snow storm in Colorado and Kansas over the weekend of the New Years holiday, we stayed in Kansas a couple of days longer than anticipated. We had a room booked at the Burlington High School gymnasium, but thankfully we didn’t need to use it! We returned to Longmont on Monday night to find that our driveway was completely shoveled! Thank you Andy and Barbara (our next door neighbors). However, the plows finally came though on our street and deposited a large mound of icy snow in front of our driveway. After an 11 hour drive we had to dig ourselves out of the mound so that we could pull the car into the driveway. Not something you want to do at 11pm. Especially considering we all had to return to work the very next day!
Anna made it to daycare on Tuesday and Wednesday that week and by the weekend she was sick AGAIN! On Saturday she had a very high fever and on Sunday she had labored breathing. We interrupted our Christmas with Neal’s parents and cousin Sandra to take Anna to the urgent care clinic on the advice of our on-call doctor. The on-call doc said that we should begin to be concerned when her respirations per minute reached 40-50; Anna’s were 80 when we left the house and 96 when we reached urgent care! While there they had her do a breathing treatment, which is a lot of fun with an infant (NOT). They also tested her for RSV and influenza. Unfortunately she tested positive for RSV. If you haven’t had a child recently, you may not know that RSV is a potentially very dangerous respiratory virus for babies. It manifests itself as a cold for adults and older children, but it wreaks havoc on the ability of infants to get enough oxygen. It is also highly contagious, so no daycare for at least a week.
Anna was KO’d for that entire week. She didn’t begin to feel better until the following Friday. Even then she was still not her usual jovial self! The fever continued throughout the week. She developed two ear infections. And breathing remained an issue. Every night for a week we gave her a breathing treatment using a home nebulizer (again, a lot of fun). And then the cough started. It was just a terribly horrible week. Anna slept with me because the doctors wanted us to monitor her breathing; Neal slept on the couch. In sum, no one slept very well. On Monday we went back to the doctor to see if she would be cleared for daycare starting this last Tuesday. Unfortunately, she was still wheezing and rattling so we were told to wait for a couple of days. To top off that fabulous time, Anna gave me her virus. So now I’m coughing all night!
Last but not least, Anna is cutting more teeth! She now has 3 on the bottom, her two front teeth on top are coming in nicely, and she’s started to cut one of her first year molars. Needless to say, she is a drooling queen and has been quite fussy lately. It’s hard to tell whether she is fussy because of her sickness or because of the teeth. Maybe it’s a combination of both.
I posted some new pictures as well. I want to upload some new movies, but I need to use Neal’s desktop to do that. I’ll try to do that sometime this weekend. We have a couple of really good ones.
Oh, and on the therapy front, Anna is cruising around on the furniture now. We still aren’t hands-and-knees crawling, but we are continuing to work on that. I’m of the opinion now that she will walk before she crawls (on her hands and knees). She’s also doing a great job pulling to stand on her own. Now, if we could just get her to sit up from commando crawling, we’d be in business. Her OT today was absolutely amazed with Anna’s use of her left arm. She had expected a bit of a regression given the fact that Anna was out of commission for more than a week, but she was pleasantly suprised to find that Anna had actually gained skills. Baby girl truly is amazing. We’ve got some interesting therapy news on the horizon. I won’t elaborate now because it is still in the works, but I’ll be sure to share when we know more.
January 18th, 2007
