18 Months?!?

Guys. Where has the time gone?? For real. Abby is 18 months old today and I can't handle it. She's grown up so much, has developed quite the personality, and feels like she's been in our family for forever now.

This girl loves flowers to no end. She loves to smell and share with others.

It also feels like it's been just as long since I last wrote a blog post. A couple of people have mentioned that Abby isn't in her braces anymore, etc. So I thought I'd hop on here to give a quick update. There hasn't been a whole lot going on since I posted last, which was on her birthday. In this world, no news is good news.

I've never seen such a daddy's girl. She gets SO excited when he comes in the door from work. Not to mention his cool badges. She hugs the picture of him.

Abby has started becoming quite sensitive to the medical world. When we go to a doctor she is usually pretty clingy and cries easily. Any tips to overcoming this? Send them my way. In August we visited the Spina Bifida Clinic for the first time since her last big visit, MRI, etc. Overall everyone was really impressed with how she has been doing.

The occupational therapist (not my favorite part of clinic) was a little concerned about her language development. At the time she was only saying a couple of words, so she recommended that we get her into a speech therapist for an evaluation. Well, I'm stubborn...and so is Abby. After that, she really picked up her progress a now has several more words (owl, hi, and home being some of her favorites) and LOTS of animal noises. Not only that, her speech reception is really great. Let's just say that she's a bright little girl and I think we'll have some trouble in the future when she can outwit us. She always knows what we're saying and for the most part is really obedient and follows directions. Often she only needs a disapproving look and word from her father in order to stop being naughty (we'll see how long that lasts).

Neurosurgery and neurology were pleased with how she looked. The dietitian was also happy. Nothing has changed with her in the urology world. When we go in next she'll have another CMG and bladder/renal ultrasound to make sure nothing has changed.

Next up, the clinic physical therapist. He is awesome. At the time, Abby was wearing her AFO's during the day, all day every day. He asked if we had received a supreme mandate from Shriners to do so. We had just assumed that's what was required and he suggested (strongly) that we only put her in her braces during nap time, when she's in the car, etc. Times when she's not going to be moving around. The hope was to create a better environment for her to learn how to move on her own. We agreed with this suggestion and wow, we've seen HUGE progress since then. Abby can now get to and from a sitting position, army crawls for a few feet, and has gotten on her hands and knees a few times. This is major progress and we could not be more excited!! We are working on standing still, which she can do in her braces, supported by us, for a couple minutes at a time. I'm just pumped that we've made it this far. Her PT also mentioned that her left leg twists in a little bit. This is something we assumed was associated with the club foot. However, it sounds like she'll eventually need surgery to break and realign her lower leg bones to straighten them out. But that'll be years down the road.

After getting home, we realized that we had a tendon release scheduled for September 7 at Shriners. Yes, this is a repeat of the one she had done at the end of her casting, but her heel bone is still not where it needs to be. We hope to do that again to make sure she's aligned appropriately. Our only concern was that she is making such huge progress and to put her in a full leg cast for 6+ weeks would reverse what she's done. So we talked to the clinic director and we got in to the clinic a couple weeks later to see the orthopaedic surgeon and the PT again. We all got on the same page as far as her milestones progress and the urgency of releasing the achilles tendon. We've since postponed that surgery, probably until next year.

Physical therapy has been going well here at home. Early intervention visits have dropped to once a month, where she's just in a practice period. I think we'll bump that up in the next couple months to bi-monthly again. We still do outpatient PT twice-three times a month. That's where Abby works the hardest. It's a tiring 50 minutes but her stamina and enthusiasm has made it to about a 40 minute level. That's much better than the 20-30 minutes she was doing before. Her therapist really knows how to push her and I've been really pleased with our visits. She's been getting really fast in her wheelchair as well. She has yet to learn how to steer, but knows how push the wheels and get where she wants.

Be still my heart. An empty school was the perfect place for wheelchair practice.

Other than that, Abby is doing just as well as ever! She's turned into a bit of a girly-girl, where she wants to pick her own shoes (still wearing 3-9 month shoes...tiny feet!!), have her hair done, wear jewelry, and take care of a baby doll. But she LOVES to play outside in the dirt and grass, watch for airplanes, color, read, go on walks, and see (not touch) animals. We love her so much and have been so blessed for the last 18+ months to get to know her.

Terrified of the animals at a petting zoo. We're working on that fear...