Nature girl

So much for teaching Annie about nature, she's a natural! She can't get enough of the grass, dirt, leaves, anything she can find to explore. We've spent quite a bit of time outdoors the past few days - and enjoyed every bit of it.

Ernie's celebrity status & Annie's recent play date...

Annie thought her new Ernie pal was pretty cool...

THEN...we borrowed one of Ernie's movies from the library, now she knows he's a celebrity!

Annie & Ava spent some quality time together.

Annie and Ava watching "Your Baby Can Read"

Play date at the park with Maddy, Grant & Annie

No E.I. for us...for now....

Well, life has been handing us some excitement lately. Some blog worthy, some not so blog appropriate -- today's big news: Annie doesn't need "early intervention".

We've recently gone through a series of meetings and evaluations with the county to assess Annie's developments thus far. After meeting with our coordinator, a speech therapist, a developmental therapist and a nutritionist -- it has been determined that our kid is "normal". As a mater of fact, if it weren't for galactosemia (which automatically qualifies her for such intervention) we wouldn't qualify for "assistance".

We've been given a novel on Annie's assessment, but here's a snippet of the summary, and I quote:

"Clinical Narrative of Developmental Domains Evaluated (Summary):
Annabelle is a happy girl who is using babbling, laughing, whining, crying and single words to communicate her needs and wants. Her strengths are that she is a happy child, she appears to like adult and child interactions and displays age appropriate oral motor skills. She displays age appropriate receptive (hearing/understanding), expressive speaking/talking) language and phonological/articulation skills at this time.

Further assessments recommended: None at this time."

I'm not sure how this makes me feel. Part of me is thrilled to hear "happy girl" and "displays age appropriate..." -- and yet, a part of me reads this and thinks...wow - we needed a team of strangers to come into our home and tell us this? (Which by the way, all the of the "strangers" were very kind and very helpful.) But THIS is a complication of galactosemia not covered in the guide book. The complication of distrust in ourselves as parents and raising our children under medical and developmental microscopes.

I'm relieved that "at this time", we don't need to add a developmental therapist, speech therapist and nutritionist to Annie's pediatrician, geneticist, dietitian, genetic counselor, pediatric opthomologist (and additional geneticist and dietitian we intend to start seeing in Boston come October). One less appointment on our calendar sounds good to me. And although it's sad that I needed this evaluation to feel comfortable about Annie's progress - it's great to have someone from the outside come in and say "no, really, your kid is fine." So as ashamed as I am, for not knowing, with confidence, these things myself....I'll have her re-evaluated in 6 months, with hopes of the same reassurance.

But for now, we can coast....and just enjoy the ride for a while. :)

13 months and the new toy box...

Annie officially has the first year underway - hard to believe this time last year I could set her on the dining room table and know she wasn't going anywhere. Yesterday I caught her with a mouthful of cat food (it was just a matter of time, I spend most of my day saying "Annie, NO, leave kitty's food alone"... and she laughs at me -- so time to think of a new arrangement for feeding the cats).

Daddy has made Annie a huge, beautiful new toy box that she is sure to love for years to come. She's already told us there seems to be more room for toys in there...

Annie is keeping me too busy to keep up with the blog these days -- here are a few of the weeks highlights:

Unraveling toilet paper rolls....

I'd rather smell my foot than eat this carrot...

...no, really, I would...

I love Ava!

...been busy parallel parking.

The Giant Rubber Duck

Talk about little things putting a smile on your face (or I guess in this case, big things...) We found this giant rubber ducky at the zoo this weekend. I can't help but giggle every time I see it.