Holy moly what a crazy week it has been. There's so much going on right now that I don't know where to start. I have blog posts running around in my head all day, but no time to write!
First off, I spent the early part of the weekend in the ER in terrible, excruciating, stabyourselfrepeatedlyinthekidney, pain. I have a kidney stone. It's been going on since Friday, and still hasn't budged. The pain is off and on, and I have spent the better part of the past 5 days hopped up on Vicodan. The drug certainly works to dull the pain, but it makes me so groggy and tired that I have a hard time taking care of business around the house. It seems like the afternoons and evenings are okay, but I wake up frequently in the middle of the night in crazy pain. Poor John, between the three of us girls moaning and crying, he can't get any sleep!
H and E are doing really well. Holland has learned quite a few baby signs, including more, eat, book, all done, and baby. The only problem is, that "more" can mean anything. It means I want more books, more food, more videos, or just "I want something different than what you're doing right now." She is definitely at that age where she can't quite vocalize what she wants, but she certainly KNOWS what she wants, and it can make her pretty frustrated. She is super sweet and affectionate most of the time, but she throws her fair share of tantrums, complete with screaming, kicking, and throwing herself backward. It's actually quite amusing most of the time.
I wanted to keep track, so I made a list of the words that Holland can say. She is up to 19, including mama, dada, baba, baby, bye-bye, cracker, baaa, quack, hi, stop, go, dog, zippo, sissy, kisses, hop, grape, up, and clap. I am sure I have left out a few others. She seems to learn something new everyday!
Physical therapy is coming along good for Holland. She is working on climbing, and is getting really good at it. We have big Tumbleforms steps and a slide in our family room. Holly can go up the three stairs, turn around, and slide down on her belly, all by herself. She is still working on cruising along the furniture and pushing her carts. She has always had a slight weakness or lag on her left side, with her hand and the tilt of her head, that is now it is affecting her foot. We are working on getting her some shoe inserts that will help correct it while she is learning to walk. I think she still has quite a way to go before she is walking well. Maybe by her second birthday...we'll see.
Eden is continuing to make progress too. She had an audiogram done last Monday that was just incredible. Normal hearing is between 0-20 decibles. Normal with a cochlear implant is between 20-40db. Eden's hearing loss before implant was 90-110db. Her most recent audiogram shows her hearing at between 25-30db!!!!!!!!!!!!! This means that she is able to hear ALL of the sounds necessary for normal speech development. This just never ceases to amaze me. Every single time I say her name, and she looks up at me, I am utterly amazed. Imagine, she is going to be talking someday!
Eden is slowly making progress in PT also. It is still very difficult for her to sit up, and hold her head up for long periods of time. She sits best when she is focused and calm, like when she is watching tv. However, whenever she tries to play and use her hands, she isn't able to maintain her sitting posture. She ends up playing with her head laying to the side.
The biggest progress with Eden lately is with her crawling. She is pretty excited and obsessed with practicing her little military/scooting on her belly crawl. She thinks rolling is for babies. Crawling is the wave of the future. All the cool kids are doing it. So, she practices all day screeching and laughing at her progress. It is super cute. Knowing her, with her super strong-willed determined personality, she'll be crawling with the best of them in no time. Maybe she'll be crawling by her second birthday.
A little detail on the pictures... Up top the girl's are responding to the big question..."Where's Holland?..."Where's Eden?" They've been doing this for a while now. Eden used to do it to imitate us. Now all we have to do is ask!
The next two pics are of the girls finally being successful with a sippy cup. Someone asked before about how we were progressing...well the truth is, we really weren't. So, I finally just went out and bought a bunch of different kinds of cups and we finally experienced some success! This is a Nuby cup with a flip up straw made of soft silicone. The good things about it are that you don't have to tip it up, and the straw is very soft. Also, you can suck a little bit of juice up in the straw, and when they put it in their mouths, they can taste the juice and want to suck. All of these things were problems with the other cups we have tried. The girls are still drinking 3 bottles of formula a day. I know, I know,...they should be close to off the bottle by now, but we really aren't close. I'm not going to push it until they seem a little more ready. We take our time growing up around here. Not that I really have a choice!
In the last pic you can see Eden finishing off her very first bottle all by herself. For a while now, she will drink the first half of her bottle, but we have to help her finish it with a great deal of coaxing and distraction. On this day, however, she did it, with only the distraction of some Baby Songs. We LOVE Baby Songs!
Finally, YAY!!!! We met our original WalkAmerica goal, and are well on our way to DOUBLING it!!! I think we can all agree that 2 is better than 1, and 2,000 is better than 1,000:)
http://www.walkamerica.org/HollandEdenVery special thanks to
Miss Zoot and the folks over there who really stepped up to help us out from all across the US! Your support is greatly appreciated:)
Our WalkAmerica fundraising effort was a huge success! Thanks to everyone who so generously donated, we were able to raise $2,613.00 for the March of Dimes to help in the fight against prematurity.
The girls participated in their very first Easter Egg hunt on Saturday at Grandma Gladys' house. The weather was perfect and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Eden LOVED the basket, and wanted to carry it herself the whole time. You couldn't pry that basket out of her fingers. I would pick up each egg and she would take it in her other hand and put it in the basket. She was very serious about her job of putting eggs in the basket. Holland was more interested in discovering what was inside the eggs, and chewed on each piece of candy with the wrapper still on. They were very cute.
We welcomed another cousin into the world! Kate Isabel was born on April 20th at 12:27am, weighing 7 pounds 6 ounces, 20 inches long. That brings the grand total to 9 grandkids for my parents. I say the more the merrier, but don't look at me for number 10!
Have you checked out how much we have raised so far for WalkAmerica? 
Before that, she just had the basics, like mama, dada, zippo, and kisses. Eden gets speech twice a week, and we do a LOT of talking in our house to help with Eden's language development, so I am sure that Holland has picked up on that. I honestly think that it has more to do with her than with anything special we are doing. Every child develops at their own pace, and the range of "normal" is huge. Some kids say their first word at 6 months while others don't talk at all until age three. Of course, even though I know all of this, I admit that I am very glad Holly is doing so well and I don't have to worry too much about her language development. At least there is one thing I don't have to worry about.
stacking and sorting, but her motor skills aren't quite good enough for her to stack blocks. We thought the Mega Blocks would be good for her because they stack easily. They were a HUGE hit. Holland lost interest kind of quickly, but Eden worked on building with those blocks for a good half hour, with intense concentration. The Aquadoodle Mat was fun too, but they are still a little bit young. A couple more months and I am sure they will love it.
Holy moly what a crazy week it has been. There's so much going on right now that I don't know where to start. I have blog posts running around in my head all day, but no time to write!
H and E are doing really well. Holland has learned quite a few baby signs, including more, eat, book, all done, and baby. The only problem is, that "more" can mean anything. It means I want more books, more food, more videos, or just "I want something different than what you're doing right now." She is definitely at that age where she can't quite vocalize what she wants, but she certainly KNOWS what she wants, and it can make her pretty frustrated. She is super sweet and affectionate most of the time, but she throws her fair share of tantrums, complete with screaming, kicking, and throwing herself backward. It's actually quite amusing most of the time.
Eden is continuing to make progress too. She had an audiogram done last Monday that was just incredible. Normal hearing is between 0-20 decibles. Normal with a cochlear implant is between 20-40db. Eden's hearing loss before implant was 90-110db. Her most recent audiogram shows her hearing at between 25-30db!!!!!!!!!!!!! This means that she is able to hear ALL of the sounds necessary for normal speech development. This just never ceases to amaze me. Every single time I say her name, and she looks up at me, I am utterly amazed. Imagine, she is going to be talking someday!
Eden is slowly making progress in PT also. It is still very difficult for her to sit up, and hold her head up for long periods of time. She sits best when she is focused and calm, like when she is watching tv. However, whenever she tries to play and use her hands, she isn't able to maintain her sitting posture. She ends up playing with her head laying to the side.
A little detail on the pictures... Up top the girl's are responding to the big question..."Where's Holland?..."Where's Eden?" They've been doing this for a while now. Eden used to do it to imitate us. Now all we have to do is ask!
There are a few things I wanted to write updates about. First, we are all healthy! Eden's virus turned into an ear infection, and she is about halfway through a course of antibiotics. She is finally getting back to her silly self. Yesterday we noticed how funny she thinks she is. She will do all sorts of tricks to make everyone laugh at her, then she just smiles the biggest cheesiest smiles. It is too cute.
