Still doing well

Maria's therapists are all thrilled at her rolling over trick. They've also noticed that she is suddenly using her body much better. She moves her trunk more carefully and maturely rather than just flopping her big ol' head around and letting her body get dragged along. She can roll from back to tummy with just a little guidance. She also has started getting into that knees-and-elbows pre-crawling position and will take weight on her legs if we hold her in a standing position. I've also noticed that her vision seems to be improving lately, which is good because it had gotten quite poor for a while. It's like the vision improvement and the sudden burst of motor skills development are related, though it's hard to tell which affects which. I had assumed improved vision was giving her incentive to move. However one of the therapists pointed out that recent studies show that body positioning affects brain function which in her case would affect vision, so maybe this new body movement is triggering an improvement to her vision.

She's had some kind of weird intermittent diarrhea this week. She's fine in the morning but as the day progresses her poopies get softer and more liquid until they get pretty disgusting. It sounds like a food reaction, but we haven't narrowed it down. Yesterday we kept her on the BRAT diet (Bananas, Rice cereal, Apples, and Toast, though she doesn't eat toast yet) which is supposed to be good for diarrhea, and she didn't have any problems. Yesterday was also a bad drinking day for her which we would normally have shrugged off, but with the diarrhea she needs to be sure and get her liquids. She drank best for Papa (6 oz in one sitting) while Cathy and I and even the speech therapist couldn't get her to take more than 2-3 oz at a time.

There are a few more pictures on the website.