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.