Arianna Update

I've been negligent about posting here and I'm sorry for that.

Yesterday Arianna was released by another specialist - Gastroenterology. She hasn't been on Prevacid since just before March and at this appointment, although she hadn't put on any weight (still just under 23 lbs.), she grew 3" in height! Wow! Her feet grew 3 sizes in that time too, so we're finally doing some growing. I have noticed that her pants no longer drag on the ground, which is good!

We've become much more lax with her lack of weight gain lately. She eats really well - almost anything you put in front of her. I'm very guilty of not making enough veggies for her to eat during dinners - but I'm such the anti-stereotypical pregnant woman right now - housecleaning and cooking are the FURTHEST things from my mind... I could totally care less about that stuff. But she's also very active and spends a large part of her days outside at the home-daycare and at home. We've been slowly accumulating more and more outdoor items for her to play with/on. So even though she's still in the 1-2% on her actual chart for weight, we're not too concerned because she still looks good and eats fine. There has been some research pointing to problems with glucose regulation in preemies that put on a large majority of weight in their 2nd year, so I won't push calorie intake any more than she wants. Even her nutritionist tells us to take cues from her - she's doing really well otherwise so don't push it or she'll develop bad habits.

Tomorrow EI comes back to the house for another PT evaluation. Arianna is doing much much better with her gross motor but is obviously very behind other kids her age. She's very clumsy running and very slow doing anything that requires a lot of muscle coordination (walking up stairs for example). But she'll climb up the metal slide at daycare and climb up the little plastic obstacle course they have there - things she would never do without the intervention of other children. I doubt she'll qualify for extra services but I seriously doubt that she will be dismissed from EI either. We're getting a lot of help from nutrition and its obvious she's still gross motor delayed.

On other fronts her fine motor skills are really coming along great! We've been working on coloring much more the past few weeks and she's come very far - she'll actually color in the general area of a picture that I direct her to color (color Big Bird's beak) and pretty much stay in that area. We're still working on colors right now - this week is the color red which she has yet to identify when I ask her what color the crayon/marker/object is etc. She's counting really well now. We work on counting nearly every day and she's doing wonderfully with that - counts up to 20 with help but to 13 without any help at all. She actually corrects the other kids at daycare when they get it wrong. She knows all her letters in uppercase and we're working on lower case letters too - she's so cute when I ask her what the letters are too "oh, that's Big A and lil' A Mama!". She'll even sing the "ABCs song" all the way through now! She's got a wierd love of nursery rhymes right now and asks us to sing them all the time - so we finally got some CDs from the library because we got sick of singing them all the time. A car ride without one of these CDs is NOT fun! "TD (aka CD) Mama. Three Blind Mice peeze! Bus... Mama... play bus peeze!" (Bus is "The wheels on the bus" song).

She's unbelievable fun now and its making my pregnancy really fun. Sounds odd huh? If Arianna was still in her 'whiny, annoying, sick baby' phase I would be dreading a lot of my pregnancy and the pending 'bundle of joy'. But she is really an amazing joy to be around now - she's so smart and funny. She makes me laugh every day. Although the memories of her early days haunt me I am very encouraged by the amazing, fun little lady she has become. I'm very excited for the fall when I'm home with her because of all the bonding experiences we can have. She's a giggle machine right now and its the one thing that is sure to bring a smile to my face during the day!