Wow - my daughter is amazing!

Sorry for my delays in posting as of late. With my March of Dimes commitments, being super busy with new Real Estate clients and Listings, Kaitlyn’s sickness for 3 weeks last month I’ve been up to midnight every night trying to get work done - blogging just fell off my urgent to-do list.

OH and by the way, I may have mentioned it in the past, but I’ve been worried about Quinn’s lack of a lot of things, and he is now officially 3 months (12 weeks) delayed. He was only 6 weeks early, so he is quite delayed. Sigh. He’s not eating solids well. Sigh. Will have to update more on that later. He’s doing what 6 month old babies are doing (just learning to sit-up for example). Thankfully he finally is sleeping through the night!!!

But on to an up-beat post -

Kaitlyn has been thriving lately! I can honestly say that the alternative therapy that we’ve been doing for her is really, really working. I have an amazing, wonderful little girl on my hands, and to be honest, for the first time EVER I feel like she is emerging from the strange little world that she was living in and coming out to be this wonderful, intelligent, and amazing girl.

There have been so many times that I’ve teared up, just watching her. Here are some examples:

I caught her playing with her dollhouse one day. She put one of the dolls on a bed and covered it up with a rug (that she was using as a blanket). She said “good-night” to the doll and then started talking as if the dolls were talking. I stood there absolutely enraptured by this. She’s never done anything like this before. “mommy wants you to go to bed now” “here’s a blanket to tuck you in” Oh my goodness, tears sprang to my eyes. I was holding Quinn at the moment, and just stood and stared and was taken over by the most amazing emotion. Do all parents feel this way?

For me it was elation that she is finally starting to pretend play (at age 3.5 which is very delayed). It was so dang cute.

Another example, she is eating up a storm and she’s up to 28+ pounds!! Yippee! Here it took almost a year to go from 26 to 27 pounds. She lost that pound in 3 days when she was sick and quickly gained it back and then some and weights over 28 pounds now. It was practically overnight! Kaitlyn loves spoonfuls of sour cream, straight butter, broccoli “trees” loaded with sour cream, It’s SUCH a joy to watch her.

Some days Brian and I watch her while we are eating a “family dinner” together and we say quietly, “oh my god” while we watch her scooping up food and feeding herself. Now some days, she won’t eat much at all, but other days she makes up for it (finally like a regular toddler).

My strategy of stopping the “pushing” has finally paid off. I has also reinstated Periactin (which is an antihistamine with a side-effect of increasing appetite). Before we loved the drug as it was finally what made Kaitlyn stop vomiting. I stopped it awhile ago when we realized finally she stopped vomiting with out drugs. But I do now cycle her on and off it which I do believe enhances her appetite.

She smiles all the time now. My mom commented when she was just up for the March of Dimes walk that she’s never seen Kaitlyn happy before. Maybe with a 2 day visit she’d smile a few times. But now she smiles, giggles, laughs and makes little jokes all the time. She has quite a sense of humor that’s come out.

Her talking has also increased. Before she used to repeat a lot of what she’s heard, sort of verbatim. Now she says random things on her own. For Example, when we were coloring Easter eggs, she said: “Wow, this is a really beautiful egg.” Brian and I smiled at each other as this was such a new statement from her. She now speaks in complete sentences most of the time (where before it was a lot of one word sentences). She says some of the cutest, most amazing things. It makes me smile all the time.

Sometimes I even see advancements in her from week-to-week.

Some other things I’ve noticed:
-Kaitlyn doesn’t fall down as much. She isn’t as awkward when she runs. She doesn’t always have to have a thing in each of her hands.

Our Therapist (Boutaina Rosen) in the Svetlanta Mustgova method started giving Kaitlyn treatments 2x a week and that’s when things really took off. Before I wasn’t really sure I could attribute the changes in her to seeing this therapist. After we started 2 x a week, it was like a light bulb went off in side Kaitlyn.

And once I started realizing how different she was, I for the first time since she was born way too early starting feeling some relief. That she really is going to be ok.

I know some of my readers have felt that I’m negative. That I worry too much.

All I know is that my gut instinct has always told me that something just wasn’t right with Kaitlyn. I hated this feeling that I got all the time. And the worry that went along with it. For me, it was this feeling that has continued to make me reach out to try to find ways to help her.

For the first time since the twins were born I’ve become filled with the joy of being a mother to an amazing wonderful joyfull little girl. I hate that it’s taken me so long to not feel the constant worry about her future. I know that readers have commented on my negativity. But there’s a reason she is in Special Education 5 days aweek. Her teachers noticed her differences also.

Of course I still get doses of that we not out of the woods yet so to say.

I enrolled Kaitlyn in a 30 minute ballet class, and her first day was yesterday. Kaitlyn was the only one that was running around the room in circles (with a HUGE grin on her face) while all the other girls were following directions. She also spent time crawling on the floor on all fours and flopping around the floor. So the worry crept right back again. But at least you could certainly tell that she was absolutely joy-filled at her ballet class. I took some cute video that I hope to get around to processing and posting.