Where she's at

Kaitlyn's had a busy past few weeks. We saw her infectious disease doctor towards the beginning on May, he is going to keep her on the valganciclovir until she is 1. After we stop that, we will be able to stop the shots (THANK GOODNESS!). She is doing great, we don't go back until July.

We went to audiology. They put Kaitlyn in The Booth (a sound booth) for the first time. It was quite a simple process. I held Kaitlyn on my lap in a room with one audiologist, while another audiologist went into an adjourning room. She (the one in the other room) would play a sound and Kaitlyn was supposed to look at a group of boxes when she heard the sound. If she looked, she was "rewarded" with flashing lights and moving animals and silly sounds. The sound doesn't really come from the boxes, so they had to teach her to look to the boxes, not the source of the sound. The audiologist in the room with us served to distract Kaitlyn between noises (she tended to just look at the boxes the whole time to see if something was going on) and to do the initial "teaching" and getting her to look in the right direction. I wasn't so sure Kaitlyn was going to be able to do it when they explained the process to me. It was pretty involved and required fast learning. But she totally got it! I was so proud of her. Well, she mostly got it. She kept looking at the audiologist in our room, trying to figure out if she was the one making the sounds, especially when the sound coming into our room was a voice. They said that was good though, it shows she knows that language comes from people, and it showed that she was hearing. She heard every decibel level they checked, using both ears. Her left is compensating well for the loss in her right. We go back in August, we also see our ENT doctor at that time.

Kaitlyn also had a language evaluation. She is right were she should be for reception, understanding, communicating needs, ect.; but is still quite behind in expression (babbling). She has made progress though, and I hope that it will pick up soon.

Physically, Kaitlyn has nearly caught up with fine motor skills. Our PT thinks she is at about a 9 month level. Gross motor, she is probably at a 6 month level. Again, progress, just slow progress.

Eating is sort of a stand-still. She is doing great with baby food, but wont take any table food. We are going to do a feeding evaluation and possibly start her on speech/feeding therapy soon.

She loves Kinsey. My parents had Kinsey at the beach with them for a week and Kaitlyn was like a different baby while she was away. She would cry every time I left and the room and she was clingy--she is not normally like this AT ALL. Usually Kinsey is in the room with her, and evidently she feels very secure with her there. It is nice to have Kinsey at home to keep Kaitlyn happy!


That's about all! She is seriously awesome and we love having her (and her silly faces) in our home :)