Developmental Pediatrician

Today we had an appointment with a developmental pediatrician.  It typically takes 3-4 months to get an appointment but luckily for us they had a cancellation and we got right in.  She confirmed a lot of what we already know about Annabelle, due to the PMG, she has hypotonia, low muscle tone in her upper body including her face, and that she's cute a a button (doctors quote not mine, although I agree :-)).  Annabelle did great during the two hour appointment.  She was all smiles, showed off all of her skills, did her little dance for them, and played with some new toys.  The appointment happened to fall right at Annabelle's most playful time of the day, early afternoon, so they got a great idea of her little personality and skills.

Some things we learned today is that cognitively Annabelle is a typical 13 month old, which was wonderful to hear!  The doctor said Annabelle understands the concepts that a 13 month old would typically understand like cause & effect and she "communicates" with Brian and I wonderfully even though she is non-verbal at this point.  She is concerned with her lack of fine motor skills, although this was our first appointment and Annabelle has come so far in the past two months that hopefully her concern will lower at our next appointment when she can gauge progress.  She said that Annabelle might always have problems with coordination with her hands, but that we can deal with.  We were much more concerned with her brain function and how she will learn. 

All & all we were very pleased with this initial visit.  Not only for what they had to say but also with the information & honesty the doctor had with us.  We are going to follow up in 4 months so she can see Annabelle's progress unless something happens in the mean time that concerns us. 

Christmas, New Years, 13 months, etc

I thought cutting back on the blog would make it easier but it seems like now I have a ton to write about.  Christmas was great, we spent most of the day opening and playing with Annabelle's toys with a 2 hour nap in the middle of all the excitement.  It was nice that we didn't have anywhere to be so we could just take our time and enjoy each present before moving on to the next one.  We finally finished opening around 4:00pm, just in time to start getting dinner ready. 

For New Years Eve we spent it with some good friends who live near by.  The babies all went down for bed around 9:00 (each in their pack and plays upstairs) then around 2 we got Annabelle into her car seat and home in bed before she knew what was going on.  It was a fantastic night with great food and lots of laughs.  The perfect way to ring in 2012!

Instead of having professional pictures taken for her first birthday we decided to have a photo shoot and my friend Michelle took the pictures at her house.  I couldn't have asked for a better shoot, she took almost 650 pictures in under 2 hours and there were about 70 that turned out GREAT!! 

Annabelle has been keeping us busy lately.  She has started rolling around like crazy to get to where she wants, which is usually where she shouldn't be.  At first she enjoyed rolling to the TV and kicking the DVR or DVD players.  After putting the gate up so she couldn't get to it she decided to roll over to the vertical blinds and play with them.  We are so thrilled with her new found mobility that we don't mind the constant activity.  She is now sitting up straight and playing without falling for up to 30 minutes at a time.  Before she was either falling or would lean forward into a pancake.  She still can't get into a sitting position but it's something we are working on.

In the past couple weeks she has started signing "more" to us after months of me signing to her.  She uses "more" for just about everything, wants milk - more, eat - more, diaper needs changed - more.  Each time she signs more I show her the sign for what she is asking for and she recognizes it and gets excited so it's only a matter of time before she starts using those signs as well.  She also uses the sign while eating to tell me she actually wants more.  She sometimes is signing "all done" when she's full but that one is only on occasion.

Other than that we have been keeping very busy with music class, library story time, and lots of fun play dates at our friend's houses! 

This Wednesday Annabelle will be 13 months!  I've decided to keep taking her monthly bear pictures and using those on her 2nd year calendar to track all her milestones and progress.  Enjoy the pictures, it was difficult to pick out the "cutest" ones, I love them all :-)