The Weekend!!

Oh, we are so glad that it is the weekend at our house. The big news was yesterday Annika was able to find out what teacher she is going to have for 1st grade. She has Mrs. Silverberg. She also has a few friends from last year in her class. But then there are other kids that she knew from preschool but didn't have in her class in Kindergarten. She is now asking me when do I go to school? She has her backpack packed and ready to go. It is still two weeks away!! Hopefully it goes fast.

Daniel had picture day at football this morning so we got a few pictures of her with Daniel. It was funny to watch her. She listened to what the coach had told the kids to do with their uniforms when pictures were done. So off she went after Daniel, "Daniel, you have to go put your uniform away-put your pants away and hang up your shirt." Obviously she didn't think he listened well enough.

Then we now know that Annika is starting to realize that her dad is gone. At least maybe it would be better stated that he is not coming back. When we were at football today, she was telling people, "my dad is gone." The good part is that she didn't sound sad about it-just stated it like it was a matter of fact. Hopefully that means she is starting to come to terms with what is going on in her life. Hard as it is we have to move on and go forward. School coming up quickly will help out a lot. We will be busy the next few weeks too and that helps too.

Lost a tooth!!!

Annika was eating supper last night-we were enjoying the first sweet corn out of our garden. After a few bites she looked at her corn and then said, "look blood". She was pointing to her corn on the cob. Sure enough she took out her tooth with a bite of corn. And for the first time she didn't swallow the tooth!!! We actually had a tooth to put out for the tooth fairy!!!

She was so excited. I lost a tooth and it didn't hurt!!! She just kept telling me "see I can feel it" as she ran her tongue in the empty space.

Audiologist yesterday

Okay, just a quick note to update from the past blog. Annika only had to wear her cast for one week. The doctor wanted her range to increase to 15 degrees and in one week she was at 18 degrees. Talk about my little overacheiver!!! Now we have to fight with her to wear her AFO at night. She complains because she says the brace hurts her leg. Well, unfortunately that is true but that is the purpose. She gets to have her muscle stretched every night while she sleeps. Thank goodness for tylenol!!!

Yesterday Annika had a busy day. She was off to see the orthodics guy to get her new school shoes inserted with the lift she needs. She was a little sad as she had to leave her brand new school shoes with Dave and couldn't wear them home!! Then it was off to her first counseling appointment. She was very pleased that her couselor had the game UNO which is now her new favorite game to play (unfortunately we don't have it so that is on my list to purchase). Then we had to grab a quick lunch and then it was off to the twin cities to see her audiologist. My goodness what a difference 6 months can make. She did just awesome. There was a little setback on her single word test but the sounds she was off were just one sound off so not really big mistakes. But then she got 100% on her sentences in quiet. Wow!! It used to be that she could nail the single words but because she has the audiotory memory issue the sentences were a little difficult. Not anymore. She did then do the test in the noise and that proved to be a little more of a struggle so yes we see the need for the FM system and yet both her audiologist and I were impressed on how well she did because this was her first time in doing the noise sentence test (previous times she was done by the time we got to that portion so we quit). The not so fun news is that she had impacted wax in her ear canal so we had to run over to Dr. Rimmel's side of the office and have her wax removed. Our appointment went from 1 hour to 2 1/2 hours. UGH!! But in the end we got new ear molds poured and she is going to be sporting blue and pink ear molds to school this year!!! According to her it will match her outfits (she wears a lot of pink), her glasses which have a blue eye glass holder, and her new blue school shoes!! Way to color coordinate. She was so funny about this on the way in to see Barb. I had asked her what color she wanted for her earmolds and she would just tell me "you will have to wait and see"!!!

Appointments

Yesterday's appointments went very well. First before we had to see the doctors we got a little school shopping done. Annika has her backpack for school now and there are some of her supplies in the bag. She is so excited. Tonight I will try to get her to sit down and write her name on all of it and then we can put the bag in my closet until school starts. Otherwise she will be using all her supplies now!! She already had to "test" her box of crayons out in the car!!!

First doctor appointment was with the neurologist. He was glad that she has done well on the current combination of medications that we have her on now. No side effects which is a good thing. And I told him that the sleep issue resolved with the Keppra also so we no longer give her the melatonin before bed. I can't say whether this was helping the problem or no so for now we will just leave it alone. I told him I was disappointed that his current prescription did work (only in this way, it is great to have an answer) because I never got to tell him that he didn't know what he was doing. We were joking around at her last appointment and he always says that there is no true science to this so if it doesn't work or if it makes it worse I had every right to call him and tell him that he doesn't know what he is doing. He just laughed at me. Of course we did both say that we are glad that it seems to be working out well.
Then it was off to our next appointment. We had to drive through Wendy's on our way by in order to get something to eat. Annika was excited because she got a computer game in her kid's meal. I am sure we are going to have to try this game out some time soon.
The next appointment was with the rehab physician. He did agree that we should try to do the serial casting before doing the Botox. This way we can either prolong the time between injections and very possibly not have to do the injections at all. We are thinking that she would get about the same results either way and there were times that she would get the injection first and then still have to do the serial casting. So Annika has a blue cast on her left leg. She gets to pick out the color of her cast. Ryan wanted her to get an orange cast so we could put red racing stripes on it but she told him that she would do that next time. So if she has to get another cast put on next week it will be orange. Ryan will be in charge of putting the red flames on it because I am not the artist.
It is not the best time to have a cast on because it is now going to be the warmest we have had it all summer the next week or so. Also it is Cokato Corn Carnival next week and of course that means she gets to go on rides. Well, she will go cast and all if I know her. It took her a little bit of time yesterday to get used to walking with that cast again. But she got lots of practice because we spent the evening at the park in Cokato as that is where Youth Group was. So we packaged up her cast as best we could and let her play. She is supposed to avoid playgrounds because the wood chips or rocks can get under the cast and cause irritation. She wore out pretty quickly on the equipment and then sat on the swing or watched the big kids play volleyball. It was such a great night to be outside that I couldn't make her stay in. Now just to keep her out of the lake!!!

Please pinch me!!!

I will post this on the blog for those of you who follow this and do not have connection with me on Facebook. Last night Annika came home from the zoo and sat down to eat her supper. She was way too busy to eat while at the zoo so she had 2 plates of hotdish. I left her eating her second plate and went back to get a few things done. After a little bit I went back out to the kitchen to check on whether she was done or not. Here she was at the sink with her dishes. She was filling up the sink with water and adding the dish soap. She looked up at me and said, "I'm washing my dishes, okay?" Okay?!?!?!?! That's wonderful!!! I helped her finish getting the sink ready to wash the dishes and she looked at me and said, "I will dry them when I'm done, okay?" She has always loved to wash her play dishes in my sink but now she has moved over to helping out with her own dishes. What a kid!!!

Today we head off to the neurologist and the rehab physician. I will post later on what they decide to do or if we are just fine. I am thinking she will come home with a cast on her leg so I have started to prepare her for this. Last night when she heard this she headed off to her room to find her old cast. I don't know if she thought maybe I could put that one on and then I don't need a new one or what. We couldn't find it so I have no idea what she would have done with it.

Northern Voices picnic and a very busy week

Last Thursday we made the trip into the cities (and driving this again makes me very thankful that we don't make the daily trip anymore) to attend the Northern Voices Alumni picnic. It was a great time. Annika had a great time seeing her classmates and having a chance to play and dance. We had a band there at the park that played for over an hour. They had a tractor pulling cars behind it so they had train rides. We even were able to see her previous audiologist so it was great catching up on things!!! Her friend Joe was ready to leave and then Annika came up to him and asked him if he would play with her. Of course Joe's mom couldn't leave then. He was able to stay a few more minutes so they could play some more. Thanks Amy!!!

This week is going to be a very busy week for Annika. Last night she packed her suitcase and headed off to Cassie's house. They are going to the Como Zoo today. She was so excited!!! Tomorrow we will make our trip to the cities and see both the neurologist and then her Botox doctor. I don't believe that we will be doing Botox tomorrow and that is the good news. The bad news is that we are going to do the serial casting on her instead of the Botox. Sure, now when the forecast is that it is going to start to warm up she will not be able to go swimming. Hopefully we will be able to get the cast off quickly because we were invited to over her NV teacher's house to go swimming and I was going to try to set this up but I will have to wait for the cast to come off. Then Annika will finish off her week with all the appointments that we have to fit in because she is basically off for the next 2 days.

July Update

It has been a very busy month for Annika. After she said good-bye to Marcus, it was time for summer school to start for her. Now she has an appointment or school every day except for Monday. The weather hasn't cooperated very much, according to Annika, because she has not been able to go swimming very much.

Last week on top of everything else, it was VBS at the church. Annika had a great time but it was bittersweet for her. It is hard when your life has changed so much in such a short time. The highlight of the week for most of the kids was the inflatable jumping frog that was there on the last night. Annika had a great time in there. Most of the time she would just sit on her knees and bounce along while everyone else did the jumping for her.

This past weekend we went up to Winger to visit my parents. This also meant a trip up to Roseau to see my Grandma (Annika's great-grandma). We had lunch with great-grandma and then all our family that was up there gathered to throw Mom (me) a surprise birthday party. Annika was able to met cousins that she had not met before (except when they were really little). Peyton, who is 7 also, gave her a big hug and played UNO with all of us. Colby, who is 4, didn't want anything to do with the hugging of a girl and then when it was time to leave, he said to Annika, "Would you go home already?" Both Mom's got a laugh out of this. Leave it to the 4 year old to say it how he feels.

The next day we took a trip to the lake with Grandma and Grandpa after church. The water was a little cool for Annika so she spent her time walking in the lake and then playing on the beach only to do the same pattern all over again. Dan and Jon decided to tan themselves while texting on their phones after they had a dip in the lake. Leave it to the teenagers!!!!

I will try to keep you posted as the month of August is going to be full of appointments for Annika. Also we will find out who her 1st grade teacher will be by the end of the month!! Annika can't wait for school to start.

Annika says good bye

Yesterday we took Annika's brother Marcus to the twin cities and dropped him off at the motel. He leaves today for basic training in Fort Leonardwood MO. They had a great time together. We spent most of the afternoon at Mall of America. We shopped at Barnes and Noble, ate at the Rainforest Cafe, went to Marcus's favorite stores just to look, let them play the boat game at the park, had fun at Legoland and just spent time together. Even though Marcus knew he had to go, he really just wanted to stay with us as long as he could. Annika thinks that Marcus should come home on Sunday when her other brothers do. It is going to be a long 5 months!!! We are putting together a calendar for her to be able to count down the days until he comes home. We will all miss him!!!

I took Annika into American Doll store yesterday. Big mistake!!! She is now going to be saving up all her money in order to be able to buy herself a doll now. I might be able to talk her into buying the cheaper version at Target and then we can get clothes from American Doll but I won't count on that.

Happy 4th of July

Well, I can't believe it. The 4th of July is over with already. Where is the summer going? Annika was able to spend some time with her cousins yesterday for the 4th of July. Our original plans were changed and all in all it worked out for the best. We weren't planning to watch fireworks with our first plan and we went over to Waconia for fireworks last night with the cousins and the kids had a great time. Today was a little harder to handle because we were a little over tired but all in all was good. We went over to my sister in law's for a BBQ for supper and then off to fireworks by 9 p.m. The fireworks were short but that being said we won't complain because then the bugs didn't get much of a chance to find us. Today Annika said good-bye to two of her brothers for a week. That was a little hard for her and even she told us that she didn't want Jon to leave and he is the one that says she doesn't love him. Well, he now knows that she does really care for him and will miss him. It is just that those two have this love hate relationship. It will be a rough week for Annika because then on Tuesday evening she will need to say good bye to Marcus as he leaves for Missouri to start his military career.

Camping

Annika did go camping over the weekend. She doesn't have much to say about it but smiles and says that she had a "great" time. It did storm over the weekend so I asked her if she had a storm. She says, "yes, and my chair was wet in the morning". So neat for this child to say in the same breathe there was a storm and her chair was wet and that was more of the problem instead of being scared of the storm.
Annika is having a really rough time right now so the camping trip could not have been planned better. She is going through some anxiety issues and changes. Hopefully this will get better with time.
Tomorrow she will head to her weekly speech session at the hospital. We have now moved into the new building so she will get to see Angie in her "new" room. Annika loved the room when we visited it before because it had a sink in the room that was just her size. It will be fun to hear how her session goes tomorrow.

Annika is going camping

This has been a real rough past week for Annika. All I care to share is that there are family issues going on so those that believe in prayer please just pray for our family. That being said, Annika is so excited. She is going camping with her Aunt Cassie. They have done this every year (except for last year where it didn't work out) for the past 3 years. Cassie's family does an annual family camp out so there is other kids for her to enjoy and of course there is campfires, biking, swimming, and all that goes with the camping experience. I can't wait to here the stories she has to tell once she comes back.

On that note, Annika got into trouble with her mother yesterday. When I came home from work, she was watching "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" so I do understand that she was doing something she enjoyed. But anyway, I came home and tol d her that she needed to get ready to go because we were heading over to work on our community garden plot. She wasn't very thrilled with this idea but I told her that she needed to get ready. She looked at me and then said "I know, I know just chill out Mom!" Okay, I don't let my teenagers talk to me that way so her is little miss princess and she just says it how it is. Part of me wanted to laugh because she picked this up from her brothers or someone on TV and yet I knew that if I didn't give out some type of reprimand for this I would be getting a phone call from school because of disrespect. When we spoke about this again later in the evening, she did say yes she got into trouble but then had her sly little grin on her face so there is more coming from this little girl!!!!
Oh my, I am so looking forward to her teenage years!!!!!!

Finally swimming

We took Annika swimming at the lake finally. It has been so cold here in Minnesota that it is taking the lakes a long time to warm up. The lake wasn't very warm even yet but she had fun anyway. She then was able to do some dock fishing, playing outside, blowing bubbles, and then of course we tried s'mores with the kids. The adults ate the s'mores, the little kids just wanted to eat the chocolate.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon hanging out at our friend's farm. Annika loved the baby kittens they had. Oh we could have left with our choice of the kittens but since we have 2 naughty cats at home already I was not convinced that this is something we need to do.

This week she will be able to be the "teacher". Annika's PCA has her grandkids this week and they are 2 years old and 3 years old. So Lisa has told Annika that she can teach the kids this week. We will see what happens but it will be a good week for Annika to have some time playing with other kids and just enjoying her summer.

Como Town

Sorry it took me so long to post the update on the trip to Como Town. I had misplaced my camera and just found it last night. The kids had a great time at the amusement park, even though they were only able to ride 3 rides in 3 hours (also add about 20 minutes of playing in the "park" there) as the lines were incredibly long. Annika got very tired during the wait on the last ride but all in all the kids were great. The good news is that we did come home with the same children we went there with. This was a joke between my friend, my son and I. Marcus came along with me to help out with the kids and such. I told him that he just needed to help us make sure that we bring home the same number of kids that we went there with. Marcus just smartly told me that okay, at the end of the night I will just grab 3 kids and we will leave. We told this to Denise and so we had a laugh about this. Rose really wants us to take her back there sometime when the lines aren't so long so she can ride the rollercoaster. She says, I have never rode a rollercoaster and the line was way too long to wait for that ride!!!

Annika is excited for today

All Annika talked about last night was that she was going to go today to ride rides. I am taking her, her cousin, Rose and her friend, Noah down to Como Town tonight to ride on the rides. We were sitting at supper and she just kept talking about it. Though we thought it was pretty funny when she said, "I will get on the yellow bus and go there". We went to the Como Zoo on a class field trip a few weeks ago and we were not able to ride the rides when we were there for that. I promised her that we would go back down there another day to ride the rides. So Annika just thought that she would get on the bus again and that is how we would get down there to ride the rides. Hopefully I will have some pictures posted from tonight in a couple of days. It should be an interesting trip. I am taking a 8 year old, a 7 year old and a 6 year old down to an amusement park with the only other adult with me is my 18 year old son. He is really good with the kids and they are all old enough to stay together but there should be very interesting stories tonight.

The past few months

I decided that I would add one more post this morning so I wouldn't be overwhelmed tonight with all that I need to post. Part of the reason that it has been difficult for me to keep up with Annika's blog is that she has had a rough past few months. It all started probably back in late February when she had her first seizure at school. The staff was great and they handled it very well. So that really didn't seem like a "big" deal-we increased the medication and went on with life. In March, she was supposed to go in and get her quarterly Botox injections and that appointment was postponed due to conflict with the doctor's schedule. So it was almost mid-April by the time we got her in to do the Botox. Lisa went with us and basically told the doctor that if he was going to serial cast her this time she was going to take her and run. He thought this was pretty good and decided to inject her with Botox in two areas. Well, let's just say that Lisa changed her mind after watching Annika go through the procedure. Thankfully, Annika does not remember anything about the injections due to the sedation she is given before the procedure. It is hard for those there to watch or to participate in but the benefit of it outweighs the guilt of putting your child through this. That being said, we believe that we will do serial casting in one of the areas over the botox injection just to see if we get better results or not. Well, shortly after the botox Annika had two grand mal seizures at school. Two days in a row (1 on one day and then 1 on the next). This whole activity sent her into a tailspin. Now Annika was tired, lost skills, and just basically was not Annika for several weeks. We have spent the past 2 months doing additional testing (including a 24 hour EEG), changing up medications, and just praying that Annika would gain back her skills and just become the "Annika" we knew. I think we are finally getting there. We had to add an additional seizure medication to her routine and this is not something that Annika is very thrilled about. Taking 5 different medications every day is not the desire of anyone!!! I just wish that we could "open" up her brain and just find what is going on in there and just fix it. Unfortunately, that is not a possibility so we play this "game" of waiting and then trial and error with different medications. Her neurologist thinks that we have figured out what to do but he did tell me that if it didn't help that I could call him and basically tell him that he had no idea what he is doing. It is great when you have a doctor who can show that he is human and he is not "always" right. Unfortunately or fortunately (however you want to take it), it doesn't look like I get to tell him this now. She is really starting to come out of her "fog". Or at least the best we can tell since where you would notice it the most is at school and the frustration she would have when it just took her so long to process the work or she couldn't remember things that she knew previously. That being said we are still working with her at home on "school" work and we are seeing some good changes. The biggest one is that she even wants to try to do her "table" work. She is so close to learning how to read that I would be so proud of her if she really learned how to read this summer. This may be a very "high" goal but if anyone can do it, it would be Annika.

Where does the time go

Wow, I can't believe it has been over 4 months since I posted!! Everyone would tell me that I needed to update this but I just never had the time. Anyway, what has been happening around here with the princess. Well, the big news is that school is out and she is ready for the summer!! Well, maybe. She is not very thrilled that she is done with Kindergarten and all her older "friends" graduated on Sunday, including her big brother Marcus. She cried almost as many tears as Mom as we got ready on graduation Monday. She just keeps telling them "I will see you at school tomorrow." She does realize that she won't but I think she keeps hoping that she will. Now it is summer and that means, as soon as it warms up around here, she is going to enjoy time out at the lake. Lisa and Annika intend to spend as much time as possible at the lake and enjoying the water, fishing, and of course the wonderful sunshine. Like I said as soon as it starts here. We have not had it over 70 degrees for almost a week now. Today it is supposed to start to warm up so we are looking forward to this!!! I will post more later on today as I have pictures to post and more blogs to enter but for now I have to get ready for work.

Last Day of School

Today is Annika's last day of school. She is really going to miss Kindergarten and the teachers that she leaves behind today. She even had a little bit of an attitude this morning that we were not prepared for. When she finally told us what was bothering her she said that she didn't want to go to school today. She thought that if she didn't go to school today it would not be her last day of Kindergarten. I took her to school and we took pictures with her teachers. They assured her that all her friends would be moving on to first grade with her so that made things a little better. When she came home, she proudly told us that she had fun at school today. All I can say about this year is that I could not have asked for a better year and I can definitely say that this has a lot to do with the teachers that she had and the hard work they put in. I can only pray that next year will go as well as this year has. Some of her teachers will still be with her next year and that will help out a great deal. She will also still see her kindergarten teachers as they are in the same building and she is happy about that. Goodbye to Kindergarten-watch out first grade!!!!

Annika has a party at MOA

Last Friday, Annika had the chance to meet two of her friends at Mall of America park to ride some rides and celebrate her birthday. We arrived there around 10 a.m. and we stayed until after 3 p.m. The kids had a blast riding all the different rides. My little daredevil was very disappointed when we left because she wasn't able to ride the "big" roller coaster. Jon was there and he did take her on the swings but he was not interested in trying to keep her safe on a rollercoaster. I think in some ways he was afraid that she would get upset on the ride and he didn't want that. She wouldn't though because she just loves it all.
Anyway, her present from her friend Noah was a Volcano cake at the Rainforest cafe. She loved it. She kept trying to blow out the sparkler that they had on the cake!!! Also just checking out all the different animations inside the cafe kept her busy. She hardly had time to eat her cake. Of course, Noah was glad to help her out and so none of the cake went to waste.
It was great being at the park and being able to just stand and watch the kids ride. The last time I was there we had to ride the rides with them because they were too small to ride without a chaperone. Now Annika would tell me to that she wanted to "ride all by herself". Denise, Noah's mom, was going to ride along on the merry go round but Annika told her that she couldn't do that. She needed to go stand and watch. Where did my little girl go?

Annika's birthday and anniversary of her implants

Well, my little princess is now 7 years old. I can't believe it. What's even more amazing is that she has had her implants for 5 years now. We actually had her birthday party yesterday on her CI anniversary date. She has been on a virtual high since her birthday on Friday.

She had me write a note to the teachers (I had to write an excuse slip for one of her brothers) and she dictated to me what to write. It said "Annika is bringing cupcakes to school today for her birthday. Please give her a high five for her birthday today." I sent it and everyone got a laugh from it. It was special as Allen and I both dropped her off for school on her birthday so we were able to say goodbye to her on her birthday in her classroom. She had therapy sessions in the afternoon at the local hospital and from the session that I observed she did not get much accomplished. She was just too excited to do any work. Oh to be young again and excited for her birthday.

She had her birthday party yesterday and she had a blast. She had a house full of company and let's just say that the "queen" was holding her court. She helped me put together her treat bags to send home with the kids. She made each bag special for each child. It was neat to watch her.

Now I am sending her to school today. Hopefully things will settle down and she can get back to normal and settle down. She has had a bad couple of weeks because of illness and seizure activity so we are hoping that this week will be better for her. We know that she is definitely feeling better. We just have to wait to hear from the school audiologist to see if the fluid behind her ears settles down or we will have to take her back to see the ENT.

Hope you had a great 7th birtday Annika!!!

Wrestling is almost over

Annika went to see her big brother, Marcus, wrestle for the last time last night. She brought a poster cheering on her brothers (I will get a picture posted later) to the match last night. Too bad the boys' team lost and because Marcus is only an alternate on varsity he will not be wrestling at the individual tournament. So his senior year ends now. We are so proud of Marcus and all that he has done with wrestling over the past 11 years.
Annika has been fighting off a bad sinus infection over the past week. She started with a cold over 2 weeks ago but it never went away. Well, the next thing we know Annika has impetigo from the cold and then was diagnosed with a bad sinus infection. Unfortunately it didn't end there, she didn't handle the antibiotic she was put on so she spent at least one day with stomach cramps and all that goes with that. Thankfully we were able to change the medication quickly so by Thursday this week she started to turn the corner and feel better.
Also this week she went for her bi annual audiology appointment. All went well and there was a little fine tuning that needed to be done. The bad news was that there was fluid behind the ear on the left side-not surprising since she was fighting the sinus infection. We will have to keep an eye on this and if that doesn't resolve it will be another trip back to the ENT. We haven't seen him for over a year so lets hope that we don't have to see him now. No offense to him but we would much rather not have to deal with her ears anymore.
Annika is very excited as her birthday is now less than a week away. I can't believe that she will be 7 years old in 6 days. She is growing up way too fast.

Annika's cool car

No really that is not Annika's car but she thinks it is. Annika's PCA has a Ford Mustang Convertible and Annika loves to ride in it and go fast!! She will sit in the car and yell for Lisa to go faster!!!

Today I had to write down the news from her. This morning Annika was going over the list of kids and teachers that she will see for the day. She has a teacher whose name is Ms Fischer. All of a sudden Annika picked up her teddy bear that Mrs. Fisher (from Northern Voices) gave her and said "Fisher gave me this bear. The other Ms Fisher." She started to talk about how she went on rides with the other Fisher. I was just shocked. Annika received that bear from Fisher 4 years ago and we haven't talked about who gave it to her for such a long time. And yet out of the blue she starts talking about something that happened when she was 2 years old (almost 3 but still). It is just amazing at all the things that is in that little head of hers and yet we have no idea. Memory is always an issue for Annika so you can't even begin to know how proud I am of her today.

Of course then this little girl who just made my day this morning ended up having a bad day at school and was even told that she did not have appropriate behavior for a kindergartener. Of course the tears started to flow after that. School was just so shocked because they have never seen this side of Annika. Well, at least we know the honeymoon is over. It at least lasted 5 out of the 9 months of school!!!

Finally a post

I was informed by Annika's brother today that I hadn't posted anything lately. He is great at reminding me that I need to get back to blogging!! Our house is a little crazy during wrestling season. On top of that Annika's annual IEP comes due at the beginning of February.
Let's see what stories can I tell about Annika lately. Hhmmm. I think the best one that I can think of is the one from last week and it goes to show you what a little trooper she is and how she is just as determined to make progress as the rest of us are. She has started back at doing weekly speech sessions at the local hospital. Last week when she showed up for her weekly session (mind you she had just spent a full day at school and I followed her schedule one day and I was tired after just 1/2 a day), the therapist asked her if she wanted to work or play. Annika looked at her and said, "I came here to work". Okay how many 6 year olds out there chose work over play. This goes to show how great of a job that all her teachers and therapists have done with her. She knows that she has "fun" even though she has to work. What a little trooper!!
I think we had some ups and downs when it came to her annual review but all in all there is some great things happening. Her actual articulation test showed that she did not make a years' worth of progress but when the SLP pulled it all apart there were parts that she erred on the test that was not typical for her. We also did the test right after Christmas break when I had noticed that she got a little sloppy on the articulation. Nothing major but enough that you could notice and then show less progress on a test. Otherwise all her progress looked very good. Concepts she is about right there with her peers (now understand that in this test we are comparing her with other kindergarteners so there is at least a year delay for her but this is who we expect her to keep up with).
Like I said it is wrestling season so Annika has been spending days supporting her brothers at tournaments. She was so cute on Saturday because she insisted that she give her brother, Daniel, a hug before their second match. At least he was still warming up with the team so we were able to bring her down to mat side and call him over. The boys are great with her and she is really going to miss them as they leave one by one now.
We just got back today from spending the weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's house. The boys had a wrestling match up near their home so we opted for a house versus a motel room for the weekend. It was better for Annika to be able to sleep in a bed that she was used to. Though Grandma found her up in the middle of the night one night-cleaning up the living room. She was sleeping in the living room so let's at least say that she was trying to clean up the place where she was sleeping. It makes me want to put a camera in her room to see what she does at home.
Well, I had better close for now as I need to get up for work tomorrow and the a.m. comes very soon.

Wow time just flies

I can't believe how fast time just flew by during Christmas. Lots of updates to write about but right now I am trying to post a video on this blog. Everytime I try I get an error. I will be working on this hopefully tonight and then get it posted if I have sucess. Stay tuned.