Busy Girl

McKenna has a new schedule that we will try to maintain through the summer until First Steps turns McKenna over to the school district in August.

Monday 8:30 to 9:15-(in home) Occupational Therapy and Sensory Integration
Tuesday 1:45 to 2:45-(in home) Speech Therapy
Wednesday 8:30 to 9:30 (in home) Speech Therapy
Friday 8:30 to 9:15 (at Children's Mercy) Speech Therapy

These pictures are all from Christmas!

McKenna's best friend is her brother Cole.



McKenna loves her Ma! (my mom)

McKenna loves her Pa! (my dad)






I've had to write her schedule on our calendar that hangs on the wall so I can keep it straight. This will be our 1st week to do all of it. We are going to be watching her closely to make sure it's not too much. I don't anticipate it overwhelming her though. She has such an eager attitude most of the time.

Her 2nd session of OT was yesterday. Ms.C. had her make cookies. She made her touch and smell all the ingredients. McKenna did fine with ingredients that she is use to. I make cookies with her often, but only 1 recipe and I don't encourage her hands to be in the ingredients. I will now... The ingredients that she had never seen before she would literally scream and dive for me, bury her face in my shirt and refuse to touch it or smell it. She was fairly agitated and uncomfortable the whole time, but she did mostly hold it together and participate. Ms. C. is allowing Cole to participate as long as he cooperates and models good things. Cole has suspected sensory issues himself so I'm hoping some of this therapy will rub off on him. (-:

McKenna really loves her speech therapy with Ms. T. lately. She is so excited when she pulls in the driveway. She dives right in and works hard for the whole hour. Today she didn't pull away and run to me even once. She is consistently putting 3 words together and with relative ease if they are well established words. There were a few words today that gave her trouble. "Banana, Giraffe, Elephant, Gorilla.." Those are hard words though! She even said a 4 word sentence twice. "Hippo in the boat" . . . (-:

McKenna sits in what the OT calls the "w" sit. Her knees together and feet out on either side. Her OT Ms. C. does not want her to sit like that. She'd rather her sit cross legged. Today Ms. T. and I reminded her throughout the whole session. We'd say, "McKenna fix your legs please." She would say, "Oh taaay" . . . in her cute low little voice and then she would always fix her right leg and was unable to fix her left. Every time we had to pick her left leg up with our hands and turn it out so she was sitting properly. We probably did this 10 times or more throughout the hour long speech therapy session. She was very good natured about it today though so that's an improvement.

McKenna had her first appointment Friday at Children's Mercy for Speech Therapy. She met her new therapist. We will call her "Ms. A". She had McKenna trying to blow bubbles. McKenna was unable to purse her lips. We've known since before Christmas that she has reduced motion orally, but I had not really experimented much to see what she can and cannot do. Well 1 for the "cannot do" column . . . "Can't purse lips" . . . *sigh*

McKenna has been reading books to herself lately. It's cute, but a little sad. All she says page after page is ," tuma oh tuma uh" . . . Every once in a while she'll say an actual word she knows, but I've only heard her do that a few times. It sounds like, "tuma oh tuma uh night night.." or "tuma oh tuma uh hosey (horsey).

Anyway... Over all we are moving forward- slowly, but surely . . .

Amber