Following Our Calling One Day at a Time: One month

Claudia has now been home for a full month! It does not seem like it has been that long, yet it seems like she has been here all along.

She has come so far in the 9 weeks we have known her and continues to progress regularly. We are excited to get her into therapies so that she can do even better. We really need to work on strengthening her legs. She gets soo tired when we make her walk. She does not like to do it much so we try to make a game out of it. We make up a lot of games to play. Claudia still does not quite get how to play with toys. There are a few she will interact with but mostly she just wants to thrown them. Including the heavy, hard plastic ones.

Here are some tid-bits on Claudia:

She LOVES eggs, and potatoes (in any form but especially french fries and chips ugh!) When she eats these she is ravenous! She also really enjoys rice and grilled cheese. She will eat almost anything in soup. We are working on how to use a spoon but there are still many messes to be had in that area (pictures later). I think her favorite part of the day is meal times. She loves food.

Claudia thinks our dog Bazooka is a ride-on toy. She enjoys climbing over him, again and again and again... He is such a gentle giant and likes to just hang out with her, even if she does occasionally pull on his ears or tail. We are still working on "be gentle." We have a long ways to go before she really gets it I think (ideas welcome). Claudia also likes to pretend to give the dogs food. I don't think they get it yet that she really does not have anything!

When we first got her, we had trouble getting Claudia to sleep. Then she got better and it was little trouble at all. Now we are somewhere in between. Some nights she goes down easily and others it takes a while and some effort on our part. She trys to make herself stay awake by playing with her hands or talking to herself. Many times I will play with her hair to help her settle down, yesterday she started grabbing my hand and putting it on her head lol! She can be demanding :) Her PJ's say it best "Still hanging on."