A Heartwarming Week

Just wanted to share a praise that we've been having a REALLY good week this week. Here's the "CliffsNotes" prologue:

May '06 - Emily, was born in Kazakhstan
Jan/Feb '07 - we officially became her parents and brought her home to Ohio
Fast forward a year and a half and we celebrated her 2nd birthday
Aug '08 - Emily was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy (spastic diplegia) and Botox treatment was prescribed

Fast forward again to this past week...

Praise 1.) Emily had an appointment with the neurologists at Children's Hospital on Wednesday to get a second opinion about a possible apraxia of speech diagnosis. I got to see her MRIs from last year for the first time and had them explained in layman's terms to me. She has does have global/overall scarring on her brain from her premature birth and apparently her brain didn't grow/develop as fully as it should have... but overall, the doc felt she would have some mild developmental delays but didn't see any major areas that would be affected. He didn't feel she has apraxia of speech. Woohoo!

Praise 2.) This is the one that really has my heart melting this week... our daughter is 28 mos. old today and just this week started calling me, "Mom". We've been doing sign language with her for quite a while now and she has been signing "mom", but it seems she's just now finding her voice. On Monday alone, she began saying: Mom and momma, Da and Dad-da, RyRy (for Ryan). On Tuesday, she added Papa (in a really cute whisper) to the mix and on Wednesday she started saying Nana. While she's been able to communicate her needs to us using sign language, I didn't realize how badly I wanted to hear her voice and to hear her say my name. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.... My God and this kid never cease to amaze me!


Emily continues to go to speech therapy on a weekly basis and we have almost run out of physical therapy visits per our insurance limitations so we are banking one visit for after Em's botox treatment or until we know if we are eligible for BCMH funding to help provide more physical therapy. This week at speech therapy, while Em was playing/working with Audrey, I spent some time compiling a list of the words/sentences that Em says and signs. I was amazed at the length of the list. It seems odd to me that Em says things like, "What is this?.... What is that?... That's nasty.... and Are you ready?" but she's just now learning to say our names.

Stay tuned... I'm hoping to post a video of Em's new words in the next couple of days!