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Well it has been a long time since my last update on Olivia.  It has been 17 months and here is what has happened in the life of Olivia Grace

*She turned one May 24 th.  A few weeks after turning one, she started having seizures.  That has been the worst summer of my life.  We had prepared ourselves with the fact that she would have seizures, but you can never prepare yourself for the helplessness you feel as your child’s body is racket with these horrid things.  She started on a lose dose of Keppra, which made her zonked out.  I lowered that dose unable to get an appointment with the neurologist.  By the time we did, he said that the lose dose of Keppra was so low that it probably wasn’t doing anything.  She just didn’t have any more in that time frame.  Then she had another one that lasted more than two hours.  We tried numerous drugs, finally landing on Sabril for her infantile spasms, and Onfi (general for colazasomething).  She was seizure free for almost eight months.  We ended up in the hospital this past July. Her medicine was increased and she is okay for now.

*Developmentally she is at the age of a 5 month old.  Some things Olivia can do:

• roll all over the place.  She actually rolls more onto her stomach now.
• push up on her elbows and arch back
• get out of her bumbo seat (although not recommended, she is purposefully using muscles)
• play with her feet, sometimes actually looking at them and putting them into her mouth
• sit assisted for a short period of time (been working on this far too long it seems)
• stand assisted and much support for a very short moment
• she communicates through babbles, yells, laughs, screams, cries, pouts
• she loves the pool and is very active in it
• she is very people oriented and wants to be where the people are, if she is left alone she will voice herself until someone gets her

*Eating has always been some what of a struggle.  She continues to be fed Stage 2 baby food by spoon.  She had started to eat mashed food, such as avocado, banana, star pasta, mashed potatoes, etc.  However, these were hard to calculate the number of calories.  She lost three pounds and so I decided to stop all mashed food and feed her just puree til her weight came back up.  She is currently weighing in around 21 pounds.  She has started to take mashed food slowly again and speech is working on her tolerance of different textures in mouth.

*She currently receives OT, PT, and speech once a week.  We are working on Aqua therapy during OT and have looked into Hippo therapy which she will get when she turns three.

*She became a big sister in January.  With the birth of Sophia, Olivia started to do more things.  She often watches her sister and if near her with kick her, affectionately I hope.

*She turned two in May.  When everyone sang happy birthday to her she laughed and looked at me to say Hey mom, I know they are singing to me