Happy Birthday Adela!

Someone in the Broughton household turned three today…care to take a guess who?  We didn’t have a party today since some of Ali’s family is out of town and Steven’s family is in New Bern and we didn’t want to drive out this weekend (since we just got back a few days ago from a vacation to Michigan).  We had a little bit of chocolate cake, opened a few presents, and had a visit from “Auntie” Amy, but not much else.  She’s feeling a bit under the weather — we think she has a little stomach virus or something similar that we picked up on the way back from vacation.  Nana and Grandaddy are visiting this weekend, so hopefully that will help her feel better.

Both Ali and I have been lax in updating the site with the latest news from Adela, however that’s changing.  We’ll be updating the blog more often to keep family and friends informed.

So, to catch up on the last two months…

Overall, Adela is doing well.  From a health perspective, she’s still on her special formula, however at a lower amount.  The formula has helped her gain a good amount of weight — to the point that one of her pediatricians is recommending that we cut back some.  We’re still working on getting her to willingly eat the healthy variety of foods that she needs — it’s a work in progress.  The last few checkups related to her hospitalization have all been good with no concerns from the doctors about any of her bloodwork.

We did have a little fall a few weeks ago.  Adela was playing in the living room and tripped and fell when her foot hit her little blue chair.  Ali and I are still not quite sure how she managed to do this, but when she fell, she fractured one of the bones in her right leg (actually, they call it a green stick fracture — it’s not as bad as a normal fracture).  It wasn’t serious enough for a cast, however it was serious enough that she needed to stay off of it while it healed.  And this was (of course), just a few days before we were leaving for vacation.  Well, that was almost four weeks ago and she is still not walking, although Ali and I (and her physical therapist) think it’s probably all in her head at this point.  However, before we really push her, we have a follow-up appointment to get more x-rays taken of her leg to make sure that it’s still not fractured — we don’t want to push her if it still really does hurt.

We have a new communication device called a Vantage.  It’s basically a touch-screen computer with icons representing various words.  Adela can, depending on the sequence of icons pushed, create sentences and communicate.  However, we’re still learning how to really use it — it’s quite detailed.  While she’s making steady progress at learning to say new words (the most recent ones are “again”, “me”, and “tent”), we recognize that she will need some additional help in communicating with people outside the immediate family.  She still uses some of her sign language, however, she still has the same problem of needing to communicate with people outside the immediate family (that don’t know her signs).

We just got back from a very nice vacation to Michigan with some of Ali’s family.  We took two and a half weeks and went by way of Knoxville (so we could stop at the Knoxville Zoo) and came back through Toledo (so we could stop at the Toledo Zoo).  Ali and I like zoos.  So does Adela.  At the Knoxville Zoo, she was very excited to ride both the carousel (once with mommy and once with daddy) and then ride a camel with daddy.  At the Toledo Zoo, she liked the elephant, but was just about as excited when some ducks came waddling over to her stroller.  While the zoos were nice ways to break up the road trip, the actual destination of the cabin was even better.  Ali and I always look forward to visiting just because it’s so relaxing (although this year I had to “telecommute” some from up there).  The cabin is on the shores of Whitefish Bay off Lake Superior.  It’s at the very top of Michigan — right across the bay is Canada.  The weather was mixed while we were there.  Some cold days and a few warmer days, but we liked the cold weather.  While it was in the 90’s here at home, it was in the 60’s at the cabin.  The only downside about the cold weather is that it wasn’t great for getting Adela down to the beach to play.  But we got in some beach time while we were there.  Adela loved playing in the sand.  We actually bought some sand today for her to play with this weekend in her makeshift sandbox.  Some of the pictures are up on her Shutterfly site, so check it out — http://adelaandfriends.shutterfly.com

Well, I’m sure I’m leaving something important out, however I”ll post about it next time.

Thanks for everyone’s continued well-wishes, support, prayers, and the like while Adela continues to grow.