Annabelle's Blog: Busy Summer

This summer has just been flying by! We have been enjoying our days with stories in the park, play dates, the zoo, music class and lots of other fun outings.

Annabelle is still attending school two days a week at CP Rochester through the summer in their Early Intervention program and loves it! She will be starting September 3rd in the preschool program 5 days a week. She met her new teacher last week and they seemed to hit it off right away. Apparently all the teachers were asking which class she was moving into because they were hoping it was theirs :).

All of her therapies are going well, we added two new ones to the mix, feeding and horse therapy. The feeding is going well but she really loves the Hippo-therapy! She had her first one last week and rode Prince Charming, a beautiful white pony. This session goes till the end of the month then I think we are going to enroll her into the fall session as well. Riding the horse will help with her balance, walking, strength, and many other aspects of development. We are hoping this is what will give her the extra help to walk soon! The only down side is that it's not covered under any program so we have to pay out of pocket and ponies are not cheap!

A couple weeks ago Annabelle had a Swallow Study done at Strong Hospital to make sure that she is not aspirating at all when swallowing different foods / liquids. They mix different things with Barium in it so they can xray her esophagus and see what's happening. The test was a success and all her foods & liquids were going straight to her stomach as they should be. They did say we should keep with blended foods and stay away from hard things, like pretzels, that she could choke on because of her immature tongue movement and chewing.

This past Saturday we went to a very cool place called Hidden Valley Animal Adventure. They had a trolly you ride through the park and get to feed all kinds of wild animals. We saw yaks, bison, water buffalo, zebras, a camel named Randy, ostridge, cows, pigs, and so many others. Annabelle had so much fun! After the trolly ride we went to the petting zoo, she wanted to pet every animal that came up to us. It was such a wonderful day & the weather was perfect!

Yesterday after doing some shopping at the local farm market Annabelle pointed that she wanted to play in her playroom (she's getting good at communicating what she wants). I told her I had to clean some fruits & veggies so I was going up to the kitchen. She nodded letting me know it was ok so I went up and started putting things away, all the while having her up on the playroom webcam on my iPad. Typically she would sit in one spot and just look around or start scooting out of the playroom to find me. I couldn't believe that she played independently for over 30 minutes! She pulled toys off the shelf and moved all around playing with different things. It probably doesn't seem like much for some, but for me this was the first time she actively explored in another room without me having to be there prompting her. I was so proud of her and happy I got to watch it on the webcam too :).

Pics are in kind of random order, need to figure out how to post them by date but for now this works!