News in the New Year

It's official...we have a WALKER in our house! New Years Day, Elle just decided that it was her time to start walking. She had been walking from sofa to chair to kitchen cabinet to wall for a long time but over the weekend she really started to walk more independently....standing up in the middle of the room and walking into her room or to the front door or to her new kitchen. We are so excited about this new milestone! After 8 months of crawling, physical therapy twice a week, and going to gym class once a week she is walking more than crawling! Whooo hooo!! Her PT was super impressed when we saw her the first week in January. Actually, everyone at TCH was. I didn't carry Elle back to therapy, I let her walk. She had to pass next to the nurses station and all of the nurses were standing there watching and cheering as Elle walked passed the nurses station and down the therapy hall towards the gym. What a little super trooper!

Elle and Lee playing in her room

Our New Years resolution this year is to do one home improvement project a month. It doesn't have to be big...it can be to hang up the pictures that have been sitting in our study for almost two years now....so....the first project of 2011 was to hang this bad boy above our fireplace. Our other tv was starting to develop a bad picture and it was going cost just as much to fix it as to buy a new television...so we took the plunge and bought a new (larger) tv. Anyone interested in a 50" tv with a not so perfect picture?

The cables from the old tv need to be moved and then I will be able to put more pictures up on the shelves on the left side. Elle likes the new tv...can you spot her staring up at Mickey?

Here's the before...there was a mirror hanging above our fireplace before it was replaced by the new tv

Elle is continuing to make strides. Her eating is still terrible but we do continually work on it. I'm hoping that one day she will just wake up and want to eat orally and not by the feeding tube. She has started to cringe a little when I put her backpack on her so I know she must get annoyed carrying around her feeding tube in her backpack 4x a day. Maybe that is what will be the straw that breaks the camels back...no more backpack if she starts to eat orally!

I promise she did get SOME food in her mouth

This is pretty much the progression of how this happens...I'm usually telling her "no - don't rub your face" and then she goes and does it...oh well...I'm glad to say that she doesn't seem to have any food aversions....now we just need her to eat enough to get some form of nutritional value

One of the things that has improved drastically are Elle's coloring abilities. Just this past week I found evidence that she is just as good on the tile in the kitchen as she is on paper. Good thing it's washable!