On Friday night we were lucky enough to have front row seats at the Circus (thanks Howard)! Here's a pic of Natalie with her Uncle David posing during intermission. Natalie really paid attention during the first half and got so excited, especially over the animals! It was so much fun that she threw up all over herself and her new booster seat on the car ride home (yes, that was a lot of fun to clean up).
Carter and Ronan - goofballs!
Natalie enjoying her new toy.
I don't think any of us got a picture of all the kids together. You can see Kiernan in this one though.
I hope my mom doesn't mind this post. When we were over for dinner tonight I decided to give Natalie her bath over there so she could go straight to bed when we got home. Just before I snapped this pic Cook was also eating an ice cream bar while drying Natalie's hair (and wearing those cute bunny ears). What talent!
Natalie has made amazing progress in the 2 months that she's had her communication device (we refer to it as her "talker"). She is getting good at putting together full sentences with some prompting as she goes. Without prompting she can ask for an item she wants by saying it's name and then please (it took only a week or so of prompting the "please" before she got to use it consistently). It is amazing how quickly she's picking it up! She can now say hello and goodbye, tell jokes, read stories stored on the device, ask for what she wants to eat, and tell you what TV show she wants to watch and that's just what I can think of off the top of my head. Her speech therapist said last week that she knew that she was smart and would do well with it but she is still amazed by how quickly she is learning to use it. In a few weeks I will be attending a training session that the company that makes her device (Prentke Romich) is having to learn more about how to program and use it. I will try to update about her progress regularly. It's so exciting to see her learning and communicating with words.
***By the way, in the video she just meant to say "I want cookie please". She accidentally hit an area on the device after cookie that said "dough". This is part of the device's word prediction feature which will be helpful as she learns to make more complex sentences.
The Easter Bunny brought Natalie some candy (mostly dark choc m&ms) and a Barbie convertible. I thought she would be really excited about the car but I was wrong. She was pushing it aside before I could even open the box in favor of more M&Ms. Can't say I blame her - chocolate is better than a car, right?
I am mom to Natalie Elizabeth, a strong and feisty 8 year old born, along with her twin brother Andrew John, nearly 17 weeks early on 9/2/06. Andrew passed away on 9/4/06 and Natalie spent 110 days in the NICU. As a result of her premature birth she has Cerebral Palsy. Despite her challenges, she is constantly doing new and amazing things and surprising everyone!
