Daddy's not home yet

Contrary to previous posts, Manolis is not here yet. There have been a couple of last-minute bureaucratic snafus that have delayed things. We still expect him to be here within the next couple of weeks. However, it's quite likely he'll miss her first birthday after all.

Other than that, things are pretty quiet on the Maria front. She's making rapid progress on learning to drink from an open cup. We gave up on the bottle long ago, and Cathy and I were both pretty frustrated with the sippy cup. It was too hard to tell how much milk was going into her mouth, and it was a pretty passive process: pour milk in her mouth then wait for her to either swallow or spit it out. However, she's an active participant in drinking from the open cup, sucking the liquid in and even trying to hold the cup. She spits out very little. The feeding therapist on Thursday was astonished at how well she was doing. It's still a slow process (takes about a half hour to get 2 oz in) but as she learns the skills she needs it should go more quickly. So we continue to hope we can get the accursed NG tube out someday.

Now that we have hearing aids that work we are trying to figure out if they actually do anything. From what I've seen, she does react differently to sounds when they are in, though I can't tell if she's hearing better or just differently. She already seems to be outgrowing her ear molds, so we are getting more feedback from the hearing aids. Cathy's trying to schedule another BAER (Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response) test, which is a test where they actually test ear and brainstem function to see where the hearing problem lies. We are both convinced that her brainstem response (which was basically zero on the last one) should be much better this time. Since the audiology people don't believe anything we say, we are hoping for another "take that!" moment :)

We are going to take Maria swimming again this afternoon. Cathy's friends have a pool and Maria's gone in a couple of times. She often has fun, though she gets a little scared when her body doesn't move like she's expecting. We have pictures of the last two times that I'll get around to posting someday.

I don't think anything too exciting is scheduled in the near future. She has her one-year checkup next week, her usual many therapies, and that's about it.