Birthday and more

Kelly turned 3 on Sept. 21st. Wow, where did the year go? This time last year she was still recovering from surgery and still settling in. The difference a year makes!! Actually her birthday is long past, just been too busy to post, as usual. Kelly has the busiest schedule in the house: Pre-school 2x a week, 1/2 which she LOVES...gets to get messy with paint, glue and sand, runs wild with other kids her age and even gets juice. See, Mom won't give her juice at home, so school is pretty cool. She has Speech Therapy 5 times a week: 2 one hour appt. with a private SLP and 3 half hour appts. thru the school district. Then swim lessons now only once a week to keep up her "gills". She took to swimming with great joy and is a good little fish now, can swim across the pool. Her technique leaves a lot to be desired, she looks pretty much like she's drowning, but she makes it to where she wants to go, so it's all good! Then there's all the car rides with Mom to take Jamie to and fro. Busy days.
Kelly is finally really improving on her speech. While most people don't know what her words are, she is using them, in 3 word sentences most often and gets her point across nicely. Still very delayed, but it's great to see progress.
Kelly continues to travel well, we flew to Kauai, and drove up to Berkeley and back twice since Kauai. Each trip was long, but very do-able with her, thank goodness. The trips to Berkeley were to first drop big sister Cory off at the U.C. and second to visit. Cory is loving Cal, and is very happy, and VERY busy there. She is coxswain for the Women's Crew team and it's serious stuff there, they are ranked #2 in the Nation, NCAA Div. I, so practice takes up lots of her time.
Jamie is a Soph. in High School now, rows for the NAC and is very busy with Crew and school too. She gets her drivers license in Dec. so Mom's carpool driving will come to an end for a couple of year's (yeah!) till Kelly is at it.
Today is a great day, as Cory is visiting and while Halloween is a week away they are all going to carve pumpkins, should be messy good fun!

It's "Kelly Day" or "Gotcha Anniversary" or whatever you want to call it!! One year today we met our Kelly, and fell in love. The small, scared, silent (except for crying) and scratchy little girl is now a bigger, happy, gigglie and beautiful little one. She has blended in, transitioned wonderfully, and definately has blossomed and thrived. We are so lucky and blessed.
Our family is celebrating a Grandma's birthday today, with family in from out of state, but we will celebrate with Kelly too. Next Sunday we are off to Kauai for a much anticipated family vacation for a week, then back to spend a last few weeks with Cory before she leaves to start school at UC Berkeley in Aug. I am confident that Kelly will do great on the plane and in Kauai; she is a real trooper when it comes to things like that. We've had both Ron and I and the girls gone for up to a week at a time and while Kelly asks about whoever is gone, she is happy to hear they are coming back and waits patiently. Travels well too, as we did an eight hr. car ride with her in May, up to Sacramento to watch the older girls row in the Regional Championships.
Life is good here, and very busy. We survived Cory and Jamie's end of year events: Cory with Graduation, Jamie with rowing in the Youth National Championships in Ohio (took 4th in the Nation!!!). Those were just the latest in a busy year were we saw Kelly grow so much in so very many ways. We have much to celebrate today, with our strong, sweet, beautiful Kelly.

April is here and Easter has come and gone. What fun. Lots of family, and eggs! Our annual, massive Easter Egg Hunt was a hit, Kelly really got into it, and had a great time. She's figured out that those foil wrapped eggs are pretty good, and if you can unwrap them really fast, you can cram them into your mouth before Mommy can stop you! The Easter Bunny is her hero now....

Before Easter, we had Winter Formal, which both Cory and Jamie went to and had lots of fun at, those are the pictures you see of them all dressed up. Usually those two are in work out clothes, as Crew takes up most of their time. Jamie is the only Freshman on the Varstiy team, she rows Lightweight and is amazingly strong and focased. Loves it. Cory is till the Varsity A coxswain and all her years of hard work have paid off: she was recruited by many schools, but her top pick has always been U.C. Berkeley, and she just accepted their offer. Hard to believe she'll be off to Cal this summer!

Kelly continues with Speech and is making steady, but slow progress. She is also taking swim lessons which she loves...part fish that one. Hopefully by summer's end she'll be pool safe, but for now she just puts her head in, moves her arms and legs a lot but doesnt' really go anywhere! It will come and soon she'll sprout gills with all the time she spends in the water.

It Feb already??

Somehow I seem to have missed the chance to sit down and post since November! The holidays came and went and I am finally coming up for air. We had wonderful holidays, just very very busy. Thanksgiving here, wtih the family, Christmas here too, with not only my brother and his family, and the grandparents, but also Ron's sisters and families made it out too, to meet Kelly and spend time with us all....Very fun.

Kelly is proving to be quiet the party girl, she loves it when people are over, the house rocking! She came thru all the visitors and festivities with flying colors, only a few melt downs, but many more smiles. While Thanksgiving is still a mystery, New Years just a loud night, Christmas means sitting on Santa's lap and saying " ooh, ooh, ooh" . Too cute. We traveled to Irvine Reagional park to see the man with the beard and with the help of her big sisters, she sat on Santa's lap after riding the train through the park at night. Big stuff for a 2 yr. old. Christmas also means being spoiled by her Aunties and Uncles and cousins...which she saw a plenty, and now she can't understand why the M&M's aren't being handed to her on an hourly basis!

Jan started with the much anticipated beginning of Speech Therapy. Yippee! Kelly goes 2 x week for an hour each appt. and will probably be adding more days per week, and be doing this for several years. The great news is she is LOVING it (to her it's just play time) and is co operating with the therapist, who seems great. We have already seen some tiny improvements after each appt. and are encouraged to be patient on this looonnnngg journey to speech. Her receptive language, or what she hears and understands, is excellent, which will help a lot. There's just a lof of mechanics for her to learn before she can even start to put the words together in actul speech. Thankfully her signing is great, saving us some of the communication frustration inherant in this whole process.

Ok, I'll shut up now and try to post some pictures...they won't be in much order, but I figure people just want to see her!

Beth

Well, Oct. has come and gone and Nov. is half way through! Seeing as my last post was early Oct. you should come to the conclusion that we are really...really busy, which is a good thing. Kelly is "done" healing from her surgery, and on any and all foods now. The disappointing news is that while the surgery was mostly successful, there is still a small hole in her palate, which will need to be closed by surgery again, at some point, but not for a least a year. We were so hoping that this would be the only one to close her palate, but at least it is far and away better than it was. It does mean that there is still no way for her to create a suction, but we'll deal with that as it comes. The good news is she can eat and feed herself and she is a happy camper now. Even put on a little weight! Her hair is filling in, her motor skills are improving very rapidly and she is even doing a little babbling. She still does not talk, and while that is frustrating for us all, she is using her mouth and voice more and more...shouldn't be too terribly long before we have actual language!! I've been doing battle with the powers that be to get her into Speech Therapy and we are finally approved for Calif. Child Services, just need to get the right referral to the right place. Gotta love State run programs (not!!)
We had a great Halloween, and look forward to a fun Thanksgiving with family. I can't find the pictures of her Halloween outfit at the moment, but will post those when I can. The moment I have now is one where I can find some random pictures of Kelly (Jamie and friend Taylor are in the picts too) helping to wash Cory's car. The one of Kelly eating is when she was able to finally eat with utensils...double handed, like she did when we first brought her home.