Stepping Stones

“I am not worried, Harry,” said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. “I am with you.”

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The weeks are just evaporating on us, can you believe it’s the end of January this week? Then it will be February, actually February is one of my favourite months (because its such a short sweet addition to the calendar year). Flowers are beginning to blossom around our home, things feel like they are coming alive again and it marks a big step up in progress for Ariella. Now that we have more sequencing going on, the process of being able to understand self and see that one thing can connect with another we are seeing far less dumping of toys. She still throws things but her fine motor skills have improved ten fold, playing with the toy train blocks has jumped from just three blocks that she liked to try to move (with hit and miss success) to now taking off -every- block and manipulating the block, inspecting the block. This is such a big change and applies to every toy which has opened up a world of more interesting play. For the first time I opened the kitchen cupboards to show her all the pots and pans and Ariella took them all out, this probably sounds very simple but that level of interest and inspection of the world around her really hasn’t shown itself much until now.

Monday evening I missed a call from Ariella’s paediatrician, I had chased up her blood test results and genetic testing that we had arranged back in October 2016 on the weekend. She apologised for taking so long to get back to us and the results were ready, she would call us Tuesday afternoon to discuss. At least it was only one evening to wait for the results and it passed quite quickly, before long she was on the phone telling me all the results. Ariella’s basic genetic testing came back normal, so we are being referred to a genetic specialist for more in-depth testing – it was described to be as checking for errors in characters rather than blocks which is what we have had done so far. There are some trials which have started for children with developmental delay of which we suggested Ariella could benefit from. Her blood tests need to be repeated due to a couple of flags with her liver however those could be a red herring we’ve been told and may have been due to a virus at the time. We have to go back to do bloods and urine again in a week or so, not something I’m looking forward to as Ariella is terrified of doctors at the moment and getting a urine sample from a toddler is no mean feat.

With this jump in development we have been having lots of fun with paints, pens, chalk, books, shape sorting, her iPad games. Everything has a new interest, even eating is starting to improve – for some time Ariella would eat nothing but cereal at every meal. We were quite worried about what was going on, she was being sick at meal a lot and I took her to see the doctor last week. We’ve been given some infant Gaviscon to try and ease the gagging/vomit and if that doesn’t help it will be looked into further. Before her trip to the doctor (which invoked a massive melt down from her – she hates the doctor’s office now) we had a little play date to attend. As Ariella has been doing so well with her hand holding walking I thought it was time to scale down her bag with essentials and also get her to wear it. This leaves my hands free to hold her, I’m tall so bending over all the time is quite a strain on my back, but without the bag it’s not so bad.

Last week marked the turning point for Ariella and her relationship with her new scooter, finally after weeks of disliking even the thought of being seated on it she found courage with her mini monkey to ride on it for the first time. As the days rolled by she has been requesting the scooter, she can’t get onto it herself yet but she does like having a little go with us keeping her from falling off. We are many steps away from her whizzing down the corridors riding it but it’s pleasant progress. We are literally moving in the right direction which is great.

On Friday we took a trip back to Richmond, old stomping ground – my dentist is still there so I travel back every now and then. We were able to combine the trip to catch up with one of Ariella’s very first little friends and my first mummy friend! It’s amazing how quickly time seem to just vanish on us, with such large gaps between visits now our children are changing dramatically. It’s always lovely to catch up though!

The week ended with a weekend visit from Uncle James and his girlfriend Deni, who agreed very kindly to cook us all curry in the evening. Meanwhile Ariella was fast asleep after having her own children’s version of curry earlier, we had nothing to do but sit back and wait.

Ariella had a trip to the local park and on Sunday we took her swimming again, I do hope that all the water time is helping with her muscles. Each week Ariella’s water walking is improving and she is growing in confidence. We are still trying to walk her where we can, she walked better than last week to the park for longer distances.

Next on my radar is Ariella’s Ophthalmology appointment this week, I’ll let you know how that goes!

Comments

comments