Archive for April, 2007
Tara just posted a whole bunch of new photos, including some from Easter. Ms. Anna looks especially cute in her Easter dress. (Thanks Granny!)
Anna’s been doing really well lately. We’re seeing her use her left hand more and more each day, and the girl is really starting to think about walking. She can already stand by herself for as much as 10 seconds at a time! Her growing vocabulary includes such favorites as dog (“dahg”), cat (“at”), ball (“ba”), balloon (“ba”), up (“bap”), mom (“mama”) and dad (“ba”). (Context is key here, obviously).
Most importantly, she’s been generally healthy (knock on wood!) and happy. Or as happy as anyone cutting as many new teeth as she is can be.
Note: I’ve changed the way the photos on the sidebar work. First, there are more of them, and clicking on them should now take you directly to our Flickr site where you can view all our photos in different galleries and sizes. Whee!
April 16th, 2007
Today was the last day of Anna’s intensive therapy round. We drove down to Children’s today and met with her OT and the hand specialist who did Anna’s initial evaluation. Both were very pleased with Anna’s progress! When we started this on March 19th, Anna was not able to pick up anything with her left hand. Now she is able to pick up cheerios and puffs with her thumb and index finger! It is truly amazing what she has learned in such a short period of time.
Anna’s final day of wearing the cast was actually Saturday. Yesterday was a super-crazy day (Easter) so we ditched the cast and her OT wanted to see her without her cast today. As was expected, Anna reverted back to a lot of her old patterns when the cast was removed. She continues to play mostly with her right hand, but is using her left hand as a “helper hand” more and more. If food is placed on her tray, Anna will use her right hand to pick it up; however, if you present food to her left (i.e. hand it to her) – she will reach for it with her left every time. Remarkably, she still uses only her left hand to self feed with a spoon or fork. I guess we’ve never really given her right hand a chance to eat with a spoon or fork.
What’s next? Well, we aren’t rid of the cast yet. The OT recommended wearing the cast a minimum of 2 days per week for the full day. She also thought it would be a good idea to constrain Anna’s right hand/arm during one mealtime each day. So…we’ll be donning the cast on Fridays and Sundays and putting on the ski glove/sock for dinner each night. And much to Anna’s chagrin, we have already scheduled a 3-month follow-up evaluation and have signed up for another round of intensive therapy/casting to begin in October down at Children’s. The fun never ends! But we’ve seen how much progress Anna has made with this therapy and we are wiling to make the most of it!
We have some great pictures to download and post, but I left the camera in Anna’s room. She’s asleep now and we do not dare go in for fear of waking her. I’ll have post them later. Speaking of sleep…I think I’ll head that way myself. I figured it up yesterday, Anna and I made 14 trips either to Denver or Fort Collins in the last 3 weeks. That’s 45 minutes each way. Needless to say, we’re a little sick of driving.
Almost forgot to mention a couple of other milestones. Anna has almost cut all of her first year molars. The top left one is still not quite through yet. She now has 4 on bottom front, 3 plus the start of another on the top front and her first year molars. She’s missing her canines on top and bottom, though. Anna has also found a couple of new words: ball, dog and bye bye. Today at therapy she wouldn’t stop saying “ball” (there are a lot of big exercise balls in the therapy gym). For the past week or so, Anna has been standing on her own for a few seconds at a time. She’s getting braver and braver with each passing day. Walking here we come. Note to self…better get moving on that childproofing you’ve been putting off.
April 9th, 2007
We’re in the home stretch now! We have 6 more days of casting left in this round of intensive, constraint-induced therapy. It has been a tough couple of weeks for all of us, but I must say Anna is such a trooper! She’s done amazingly well with the cast and has shown a remarkable amount of patience for a one-year-old. She’s put up with a number of different people poking, prodding, and stretching her, not to mention tolerating a cast on her right arm, a new brace-thingy on her left hand/arm, and a whole bunch of kinesiotape on her shoulder and back. With all equipment and tape we’ve been jokingly calling Anna the bionic baby.
But it’s working!! All the hassle, discomfort and frustration for Miss Anna is paying off. Today I watched her eat grape (cut into quarters, of course) after grape after grape with her left hand with only minimal help from Neal and me. We were so very pleased. And Anna seems to realize that she is doing something great because she has such a look of pride on her face. It is truly a joy to watch! Anna has made so much progress during this period of casting that we are already signing up for another round at Children’s in about six months.
April 3rd, 2007
The Enssle-Hess household will be joining millions of people across the country who support the March of Dimes by participating in the WalkAmerica campaign. With baby backpack and stroller in tow, we’ll be navigating the streets of downtown Denver on a 10k walk! We need your help, though, so we’d ask you to visit our webpage and sponsor Team “Miss Anna” and our walk for healthy babies!
http://www.walkamerica.org/s_team_page.asp?SeId=395902&si=
If you’d like to join our team and walk with us, you can sign up from our webpage. The walk is on Saturday, April 28th in downtown Denver.
April 3rd, 2007
