School is around the corner!!

What a week this has been at our house. It started out with us heading off to the neurologist and an EEG which did not give us great news. The current meds that she is on is no longer controlling the seizures and even though we aren't seeing her typical seizure activity there is some going on. That means closer monitoring and a change of medication. Not a great time for this to happen but here we are. Unfortunately for Annika, the new meds mean that she will need to go back to having the routine blood draws to keep tabs on the level of her meds and watching for the potential side effects from the meds.

Today we had a quick meeting with her special education staff and regular teachers to make sure we have everything in place for her to start school. We got to meet the 2 paras that will be working with her this year and they got a chance to do a listening check for her. She was a little nervous with everyone looking at her and having different staff doing this with her so lets hope it gets better as she gets used to the new staff.

After the meeting it was open house at the elementary school. She had a great time visiting her new classroom and playing in there was her favorite part. Big surprise but her teacher has done a great job in putting some thought into where her locker is and the like.

Tomorrow it is off to get the results from the gait lab analysis. I am a little nervous with what recommendations will come back from them. It may take me a little while to post the results as we have our first football game of the season tomorrow night and then it is the annual Red Rooster Days so that means parades, garage sales and activities for everyone over the next few days.

I will attach the picture I received from the pics that were taken a few weeks ago in Mankato. These are the pictures taken for her brother's senior pics but of course we got shots of the "little princess". Just to give you an idea of how important she is around here; I asked my son (who is the senior) what he thought of his pictures and he said "ok" and then said "I like the pic of Annika". Yes he will miss her greatly next year when he is off.

At the Corn Carnival

Last week we attended the annual Cokato Corn Carnival. The week started out a little wet. We watched the parade in the rain. We found cover for most of the parade under a great big elm tree but the leaves could only hold so much water. After the rain started to fall through the tree, we decided to watch the remainder of the parade in the car. We had a great view and Annika was able to stay dry then.

The biggest part of the Corn Carnival is the all you can eat corn on the cob. And for Annika the carnival rides. So Tuesday and Wednesday we spent the evening at the Corn Carnival riding rides and eating corn. Tuesday night is also the competion for Miss Cokato. Annika loved that as she could "watch all the princesses". Of course the corn kept her entertained because she has no front teeth so eating corn on the cob is not the easiest. It took her about an hour to eat one cob but she had a great time doing it.

My favorite part of the carnival was watching Annika ride the pirate boat. This ride swings back and forth and gains speed. She had a blast on it and it was her favorite ride. But what really was great to watch was her interacting with the girls in the seat with her. The two girls were talking and she noticed Annika's implants. So she asked her about it. She was telling her about her implant an it was so neat to see Annika just explain it all. My little girl is growning up and is just able to advocate for herself. Just makes a mom proud and I know that we have done all we can to prepare her and gave her the confidence to be proud of who she is.

More updates

Back to my updates, let's see. We covered the gait lab and NV alumni day. I guess the next appointment was her bi-annual mapping session at the U of MN for her implants. First of all, I want to say that I get amazed almost daily on how she is picking up the incidental language and using it in her conversations. We walked into the audiology/ENT area and Annika looked at me and said, "let's go punch in". I looked at her and asked, "don't you mean check in?" "No, I said punch in". Well, I guess she has been listening to me when I leave in the morning because on the hectic mornings I am running out the door saying, "I have to hurry or I will be late punching in". She gets what I meant and now think she should "punch in" for her appointments instead of "check in". A little work there but it is so cute that I will leave it alone for now.

Her mapping session went great. I think what hits me is how much she is really becoming such a "girl" now not a little kid. She is silly and loves to laugh. We keep her entertained during the boring parts by just being silly. Though really I remember struggling to do some of the boring parts with her just a year ago and she really did well.

She thought the "sentence" test was very silly so there were times when we would lose her in the testing because she would just have to laugh at the sentences instead of repeating them. She also showed us that she would rather have both of her implants versus the two. We were testing the last side with the words and somewhere along the way she put the second implant back on. We didn't see her do it but realized it when it was all done and we went to have her put both implants on. She just would smile and laugh when she got caught!! Watch out for her in school, she is going to have fun playing with her teachers. I can just see it now. It is so fun to see that she is just being a "typical" 6 year old. So many days I just shake my head and say if I had only known that we would be this far 4 years ago I would have relaxed so much more. But hindsight is 20/20 every time.

All in all she is doing just great with her implants. We did some testing with what she can her in noise and really when she was not being silly she did just great. There may be a day in the future when she won't need to use the FM system at school and that to me is just unbelievable. For now, she likes the FM system and we want to make sure she doesn't miss anything at this point. That also means that really we don't need to look into getting one for home. We have talked about it and really thought we would get one some day but now I am thinking more down the line of just getting her a t-mic for her implants and see how that goes and just leave it at that.

Well gotta run. It is time to get everyone moving around this house. My next update will cover the Cokato Corn Carnival which was last week.

Busy day

What a day!! I was up early as I needed to pack the whole family up as it was senior picture day for Annika's big brother. We were also going to do family pictures so that meant outfits for everyone in the van. To add to the eventful day, it was media day for our D/C football team (2 of her brothers are on the team) at 9 a.m. and we had to leave straight from there for more pictures.
Annika had a blast out on the football field. For the first time she was able to run all around on the field and didn't have to worry about the "big bad" football players. We got a picture of her and the 2 older boys on the field. A request from her brother.
We went to do pictures in Sibley Park in Mankato. This is a little over an hour and a half from the school. I got some much needed rest on the way down there. Annika just kept talking; even though it was only Dad to hear her. She kept calling to the boys and then it was "okay, you sleep now" when they did not answer her or even start to fire her.
Annika loved the park as she had a playground to play on where ever we were in the park. She even got to try to climb some of the trees there. I even watched her try to balance and walk on the cement stops in the parking lot. She must be watching the gymnasts in the olympics when we have it on. Of course, she ended up faling down but got right back up to try again. If we didn't still need to do pictures, I would have let her keep trying. But our luck she would have fallen down and hurt herself worse the next time. Scrapped up knees or black and blue marks were not the look we were going for in the pictures.
I will try to share some of the pictures on here once we get them back from the photographer. But for now I will share the one I took on the football field of her and her brothers.
Gotta run for tonight. Still have more things to share from the past few weeks but I am too tired to write about them tonight.

Summer goes by fast

Wow!! I can't believe how fast the weeks are flying by. School is just around the corner and I still have some issues to put together. Where does the time go!!!!

That being said we have had very busy weeks in Annika's life so I will probably take a couple of postings to write it all down or it will be too long to read. I am well known to "write a book" in just emails so just sit back and relax.

First of all, Annika went down to Gillette at the end of July for Gait & Motion Analysis. It was really neat to see all of the technology that they use there. We even came home with a CD copy of the video they taped of her walking. That was the nicest part because then Allen could see it since he was not able to attend the session with us.

So for those who are not familiar with this testing I will describe it the best I can. The first thing that they do is have her walk up and down there line and they have two cameras (one from the back/frond and one from the side) taping her as she walks up and down this line. She even is given the chance to "run". After all of that data is done, Annika is weighed and measured. Then it is off to lay down on a table as they do more measurements and test how well her muscles move in every imaginable muscle. This is all done for information and also so they can create the computer image of her. Then we get to hook her up to patches, light sensors and cables. Basically the same technology that was used on Polar Express to create the characters is what we are using. After she is all "hooked up" it is back into the room to do more walking so they can create this computer image of her walking. I did get to see her on the computer and it sure did look like her on the computer. When that is all done, she gets to remove all the equipment and get ready to do the oxygen test. So the best news of this test is that she gets to sit down and rest for 10 minutes while watching a movie so they can test how much oxygen she uses at rest. Then it is up for a 6-7 minute walk. The whole time she has a oxygen mask on that is connected to a machine that tests how much oxygen she is using. Annika was a trooper and did such a great job. For me the worst part is that we have to wait another 2 weeks before we get to hear the results. It will be very interesting to see what recommendations the gait team will come up with.

After we are done with the testing, we head over to Northern Voices for Alumni Day. Annika is back in her element now and her friend, Alec, gets a big hug (much to his dismay!!) when she sees him. We spend the rest of the day just hanging out with the kids, teachers and other parents at Northern Voices. All in all it was a very eventful day and Annika crashed in the car on the way home.