Maria sucks! But in a good way.

Maria's off visiting her Aunt Rose right now and gets back tonight. She went through something yucky last weekend and they had to cancel the craniosacral appointment.

Last Thursday I took her on a walk down to Starbucks. I brought the straw sippy cup since she's been getting better at that. I filled it up and handed it to her. She grabbed it, shoved the straw in her mouth, and started gulping down. She got nine ounces from that cup while before she's never gotten more than two! It was very exciting. I honestly wonder if she might get completely off the bottle soon. The sippy cup is easier for her to handle and she seems to like it.

She's gotten better at back-and-forth babbling with me which is an important milestone. I think she MIGHT have made the milk sign the other day so maybe she's starting to get the hang of this communication thing. It's just so hard to tell sometimes.

The PT gave us some tips on getting her to sit that seem to be working. She sits better when she has something to lean on like a table. We have this little lap table that is the perfect height for her when she sits on the floor and she can sit at it for long periods when she wants to. We give her stuff to play with to keep her amused and she can manipulate things while keeping herself supported with her elbows.

We are concerned with some things that have been going on here in Arizona. We had been thinking about sending Maria to the Foundation for Blind Children for preschool this fall, which is a private charity. Well, there may not be a preschool program. The Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, which is a state agency that gives money to FBC, recommended to the legislature that they cut off funcing for the FBC and the legislature agreed. I'm still baffled why a state school for the blind would be sabotaging a charity for the blind and there is apparently all kinds of internal politics at work here. The news stories have been a little confusing. The legislature has cut their funding and it's too late to get it back, but they are saying they can still get funding from the school system. However that would be on a per-child basis rather than a large sum for several children, which is likely to make it harder for them to plan their preschool program. It's all a mess.

Honestly, I feel sorrier for the employees than the kids. The kids can go into the public school system, but the FBC employees may be really screwed. Since they were being funded by the state they were getting state benefits, but not any more. People who've been working there twenty years just saw their state pensions go up on smoke a matter of months before retirement. Yikes!

Cathy had already been leaning toward putting Maria into public school rather than FBC anyhow, since her school district prefers getting the special needs kids early so they can better evaluate their needs by the time they hit kindergarten. So either way, this probably won't affect us much, but it's still a bummer for a lot of other people.