Alex is doing great in middle school. I love the classroom that she is in, how they challenge her and more importantly, how they believe in her. Her teacher sends me pictures through out the day - pictures of her using switches to communicate, to turn pages on a computer based book. Here she's learning about Abraham Lincoln.
Once a month a group of therapy dogs come to the school to visit her classroom. It was such a nice treat to get these while I was at work and seeing her clearly enjoying herself.
She has homework that she has to complete most nights as well. She's never had homework before now so I'm trying to mirror some of the ways she is communicating at school at home, especially with homework. We use voice output switches to give her a voice. It amazes me how much she knows. We SO don't give her enough credit.
We also started working with a new speech therapist. It's a bit of a hike and they don't accept insurance, but Alex REALLY responds to her and she has given us a lot of tools to work with. She is patient with Alex and she explains every reasoning behind what she's asking Alex to do and that's been very educational for me. I find myself watching in a bit of amazement at how well she listens and carries out what's being asked of her. Closing her mouth is a huge obstacle and working on less drooling is definitely on everyone's Top 10 list. Has been for a while. But look at the lip closure here!
She's doing exciting things and I really feel like her new teacher and her new therapist are just the combination that we need to tap into her world.
This past Saturday was a crazy busy day for us. We started early with Zach being in the Glen Allen Day parade. He was on his swim team's float.
Once the parade was over we had to high tail it over to Alex's football game. She LOVES running around the football field. I know her two buddies are getting in a pretty intense cardio workout! Everyone is always smiling, the kids are clearly having a great time - it really does something to your soul to watch them and the great people who come out to buddy up with the kids.
Once her game was over we headed back over to Glen Allen Day.
Two of the causes near and dear to my heart had booths set-up. Jacob's Chance, which is the group Alex plays football and all of her other sports through.
The second was We Heart Harlie and Friends. Lynda did a great job setting up the booth - I think I own every color of the t-shirts she was selling, they are by far the most comfortable!
Friday, October 10th We HAUNT Harlie and Friends will be hosting a Halloween themed party at the Children's Museum. I love the logo she created for the event.
Click here for more information or to sign-up! I know Lynda has a lot of great things planned for that night!
A few nights ago Alex had a seizure - it was 4:20 in the morning and, unfortunately, it was the most intense that it's been in a while. She has seizure pads all around her bed but she managed to hit a part of her bed that wasn't padded while she was seizing and her toes were hitting a wooden part as she was convulsing. A few days later her big toe was extremely hot and swollen. It was really red and you could see an infection was starting to settle in. I wanted to soak her toes so I set her up her own little pedicure station. When I turned the bubbles on the awe on her face was priceless. If I could guess I would say she was looking at me like "And why have we not done this before now?!?"
Her poor toes get so beaten and battered. Since she really only seizes when she sleeps, she's usually convulsing a bit before I get in to her room, and this last time she was so rigid I couldn't get her body position to change so I had to just put my hand in between the bed and her toes. Her toe still wasn't looking so hot when she went to therapy and she wasn't able to wear her braces so we had to set up a visit to her pediatrician.
The pediatrician had to lance it so it could drain, so now we have matching band-aids! Well, actually, her's is Daffy Duck - much cooler than mine :)
Zach's had a spot right below his knee for a few months - I messed with it a bit and it actually got a little worse. Looked like a wart. Zach's been complaining that it hurts lately so this morning he was back to see his dermatologist. The dermatologist said that normally she would just freeze things like that off, but given Zach's history with his ear now, she wanted to cut it out and send it to pathology, just to be on the safe side. And so another 2 week clock begins.
Never a dull at the Hayes house, never a dull!
No comments:
Post a Comment