Week 3

For you bottomliners, here the skinny for this week:
-- I'm currently doing Hannah's exercises by myself and she is cooperating minus a few silly moments.
-- As of this post, Hannah is taking 14 capsules, 2 doses of fish oil, and 2 doses of B-complex daily. We are working up to 28 capsules, fish oil, b-complex, and one dose of 3 other powdered supplements daily.
-- She is using more and more language everyday.
-- She is not as fearful of the essential oils and other strong fragrances that we are trying to get her to smell (ultimately closing her left nostril and smelling through her right)and in fact picked up one of the cotton balls and smelled it herself.
-- She is being very playful with Abby and the past couple of days Abby has actually helped with some of her exercises and did some with her.
-- She is calmer when go out to eat and other places where there is lots of noise and people.
-- She is consistently mimicking our facial expressions.
-- Overall, she is still Hannah but a much happier and more socially engaged Hannah

And for the rest of us:
Monday was hard but it always is. I woke up with the immediate low after the high I felt when she told me she loved me.

Wednesday, Steven told me that he really wanted me to try the exercises by myself to give him some piece of mind because he was leaving on Monday, the 28th and we didn't have anyone to consistently help me with them. I did them by myself that morning. She did awesome...so compliant...so relaxed...just letting me do my thing. We were amazed and comforted. She is doing Pretzel by herself most of the time now. That's a hard one for her!

I knew giving her supplements would be hard but I tried not to think about it and they have been sitting on my fridge staring at me long enough. I knew I had to start somewhere. Tuesday night I tried to give her the powdered version of amino acids mixed with water. She gagged and it all came up. I was so discouraged; it happened just like I had anticipated; however, in the middle of the night, when I sometimes do my best thinking, I realized that instead of chewing she had started swallowing the jelly beans that we had given her earlier in the week. If she could do that I could probably switch to the capsule version of two of the supplements. So we took a couple of days off of the aminos and multi-vit so I could talk to the nutritionist about it.

Friday I saw the nutritionist at BB to go over Hannah's blood/urine test. I was so depressed when I left there that I went home and took my first nap since I've been here. It was only about 30 minutes but it was nice. There was something different about that depression than the depression that I've struggled with for years; it wasn't really depression that comes with wondering how to find the balance between hope and fighting for my child's future and accepting God's providence in our lives. God has brought us so far in our faith/trust in Him since this trial began. He has brought us so far just in the last 3 months! I woke up from my nap believing that God was going to help us get 28 tablets, fish oil, b-complex liquid, and 3 other powdered mixes in Hannah's body at the right times everyday. In fact, if Hannah could stop gagging then we could switch to the powdered version of 2 supplements and cut the tablets down to 1/day. That would be our goal. We will just work into it. She fights and wines and acts like any kid that is fearful of something, but eventually, she picks the tablet up and puts it in her mouth and swallows it. She gags but it goes down.

Hannah continues to surprise us day after day. After I had my melodramatic (I use this term because my depression seems unwarranted in hindsight) meltdown on Friday, Hannah completely takes Steven and I off guard Saturday night. She apparently wanted a nectarine very badly because when I laid four capsules on the table and told her that if she took them (she had already taken 10 by coercion plus fish oil plus b-complex liquid earlier) that I would give her that nectarine. She went right over to the table and downed them one at a time like any typical child would down four M&Ms. Steven and I are still laughing about it and wishing that we had this on video.

Today we went to Wildside Exotic Pets and Hannah pet a large lizard and seemed to be in heaven with all the creepy animals in there. The owner was very friendly toward children and there was a nice lady in there that had a baby bunny in her pocket. Hannah and Abby were mesmerized. Abby wants a lizard, bunny, terantula, and everything she saw...God help us. Here's a couple of pics:


Steven is leaving Monday. I don't know when he will be back. He's my partner, my encourager, my sounding-board, my lover, my best friend. In one sense it will be easier when he's gone from a laundry, meals, mess stand-point. He and Abby won't be butting heads. In another sense the nights will be lonely and he and Abby won't be butting heads! lol What a perfect time to be away from each other with Facetime and Skype and Facebook and the like. Maybe we will fall in love all over again...from a distance is how it happened before!