It’s been a little while since my last post. The holidays this time of year have a way of letting time get away from you. After we finished up with Halloween, it seemed it was time to prepare for Thanksgiving. After recovering from Thanksgiving, it was already time to get set for Christmas.
With the end of the year quickly approaching, it marks a huge transition for Bella. Since she’ll be turning three in February, she’ll begin attending classes for the 3-5 program right after the holiday break. This will be a huge change, not only for her, but for us as well. While we are very excited for her to begin this new chapter in her life, we are also a little apprehensive as to how she’ll adjust to such a huge change in her schedule and routine. She’ll be going from two half days a week to five full days. She’ll be getting five days of speech as well as an increase in her physical and occupational therapies. She’s made such progress with her current schedule that she can only go to improve when she begins to attend more days per week.
Unfortunately, Bella tends to regress when on extended breaks from her routine. With the two week break coming up, we’re worried that it may take her a little longer than normal to adjust to going back to school and being in a brand new classroom, with new teachers and new classmates.
While, like always, Bella continues to improve, it’s slow going on most fronts. Bella still doesn't use many words on her own and still mimics and repeats a lot of what she says. She has, however, excelled at counting and can now count to fifty, mostly on her own. She’s mastered zipping her own coat, brushing her teeth (on her own) and, after getting her new shoes with Velcro straps, can put on her own shoes! We've managed to work with her occupational therapist in getting her to stop running so much, so outside ventures have been much safer and a lot more fun.
We've also managed to implement a way for her to communicate her needs and wants with us. It used to be that she would just cry (out of frustration) as we continued to guess what she wanted, getting it wrong, most of the time. Now, she’ll grab our hand and lead us right to what she wants. It’s limited the amount of frustration we all feel and in turn has reduced the amount of meltdowns we've experienced.
We’re very happy with her overall improvement but still struggle with a couple of issues that none of her therapies seem to be able to help. Sleeping and eating are two issues that just never seem to improve. The medication she was put on for her sleep issues seems to have no effect anymore and she’s gone from being, what we’d call a picky eater, to downright refusing to eat anything that isn't the consistency of baby food. Unfortunately, a growing, almost three year old, can not live on yogurt and mashed potatoes. She’s on a strict daily regimen of vitamins and supplements to keep her healthy until we can figure all that out. As for the sleeping problem; well, we’re still working on that.
Overall, we’re very happy with the progress that Bella has made this year. As the new year starts, and so begins her new program, we have high hopes that even more progress will be made. Slow moving or not, progress is progress. Working closely with her teachers and therapist, we hope to integrate what she’s doing at school, to what we’re doing at home.
Bella is growing up fast and she’s turning into a truly beautiful, loving child. With so many people around who love and care for her, I have no concerns that she’s getting the best help and care that she can be getting right now.
She impresses us more and more everyday.
