The Library Corner

Sheena is being good here sharing books with her little bro, but she is not too keen on sharing much with him at the moment. She regularly snatches the one block Roy is playing with, despite there being another 10 blocks within reach. She is being quite territorial most of the time. Then on another occasion, she'll decide to be gracious and take a toy over the Roy and place it in his hand. I think she does this so purposefully, because after playing with other children with disabilities in early intervention (some with more physical limitations that Sheena) she does not assume that Roy can reach out and grab a toy.

We've had big success since starting to use a nasal spray to improve Sheena's sleep apnoea. She is having only a few sleep-disturbances, and her day time naps are reducing to 1 hour on some days. She has very narrow nasal passages, so this is helping open up the airways.

We are having zero luck with the play-glasses that I bought to help Sheena get used to wearing prescription glasses. I baulk at paying $300 for glasses knowing that we can't get her to put any frames on for even 3 seconds, if at all...

Best Foot Forward

So Sheena has worked out how to put shoes on. Helps if they are Dad's shoes though - a lot more room to work with!

Big Bed

Sheena is progressing into her own bed - well at least we are taking steps in that direction. The bed is set up in her room with a safety rail ready to go, but hubby and far from confident in pushing this step. Her sleep apnoea is scary. Although it has settled down from when she had a very heavy virus, (she's now just got a mild virus) she regularly sits up while still dead asleep, and then can topple over in any direction. That is the better scenario. In the evening, she'll often sit-up, then cry-out while still in a sleep-state, and need resettling. I'd rather her topple-over and stay quiet while not bothering the rest of us about it. We're extreamely used to it, but it would take some explaining to any babysitters.

We've started private speech pathology sessions again. She has them early Friday mornings, which is working well, because she is fresh and raring to go. I no longer stay in the room with Sheena and the therapist. Instead, I sit in the waiting room and play with Roy - or read a magazine while he plays about. It is much better. We decided to do this after the 1st session when Sheena was wanting to sit on my knee whenever she was fed-up with an activity. Not productive enough for $68 for a half hour session! I can still hear everything from the waiting area, so I know exactly what she is up to in the sessions. Her speech is really delayed. I think she's got speech apraxia with no thanks to her infantile spasms. We've noticed definite improvement since she started these sessions. She will at least make an attempt to say a word. She gets an A for babbling and can do lots of animal sounds, but that is where she's been stuck at for quite a while.