Callie at 3

I can't believe our baby girl turned 3 this past month.  Like I did 6 months ago, I thought it would be good to recap where she is in different areas.  

Stats: Callie is now just over 35 inches tall (10%) and weighs 28 pounds (25%).  Her BMI is 50%, which really great.

Gross motor skills: As you know, Callie started walking this past summer!!  I think about this all of the time and have sworn not to take this skill for granted.  We feel so blessed that she is independently mobile.  She can actually get around pretty quickly when she wants to (walks very fast when chasing or being chased by her big brother!), although her gait remains abnormal.  Her legs still hyper-extend when she does not have her AFOs on.  She has pretty much outgrown her current pink pair and we pick up her new purple pair next week.  The new pair will have hinges at the ankle which will allow her more flexibility while still preventing the hyper-extension.  We look forward to getting them and seeing how they work for her.  Dr. Im, Callie's physiatrist, still thinks she has a good chance of eventually developing a typical gait.  Only time will tell.  I also wanted to mention that she is still hitting milestones in this category... In October she started standing independently from the middle of the floor.  Until then she would crawl over and pull up on a piece of furniture.  

Fine motor skills: Her fine motor skills are improving.  She can kind of draw a circle now, albeit a bit sloppy and lopsided.  Her biggest accomplishment has been the block tower I recently posted.  She loves playing with old spice jars (plastic McCormick containers).  She likes screwing and unscrewing the tops, sometimes putting things into the container.  She is also helping when it comes to getting dressed, like pulling up her pants.  Such a big girl.  

Speech skills: This continues to be our our biggest area of weakness.  She still has limited sounds and no words except "mama", "baba", and sometimes "up-a" for up and "ba" for ball.  It still takes a lot of effort to form these words and she will only say them if you prompt her and wait.  It's official... Callie is very apraxic.  I am going to post a separate more detailed entry about our game plan for dealing with this speech disorder.  

Feeding skills: This goes along with speech and remains an area of great delay, but again she is making progress.  She is eating more during the day and we have started cutting back on her formula at night.  She is starting to be able to eat more challenging textures like very small pieces of chicken or steak, but still can not chew harder things like raw fruits or veggies.  We received great news on the EoE front this past month.  After trialing nearly all foods except dairy, nuts and shellfish, she had a clear endoscopy!  This means the advice we received from Hopkins and CHOP was correct... It was beneficial to be more aggressive with food trials and we only have a few more to go.  We are currently trialing dairy and Callie will be scoped again at the beginning of January.  We are really praying she is again clear because she loves homemade macaroni & cheese!  She also tried mozzerella sticks recently and loved them.  It would be so wonderful if she could have dairy!  We haven't noticed any symptoms indicating the food is not agreeing with her, so we are very hopeful.  

Social & Cognitive skills:  These are still her strongest areas.  She continues to be very social and is loving preschool.  And she seems to have a little boyfriend!  Her teacher sends daily notes home in a notebook in her backpack.  Recently a note stated Callie and her little friend kissed in class!  We had a playdate recently with this little 2 year old cutie and sure enough, they hugged and kissed when saying goodbye.  It was too cute.  Cognitively she seems pretty sharp and it's hard to get things by her.  She really does not miss much.

We continue to be encouraged by Callie's progress.  Slowly but surely she is getting there.  And most importantly she continues to be happy.  We love her so much.  When I asked her "Who is Mommy's sweetheart?".  She pointed to herself. :)