Enssle Family

It’s been too long

January 20th, 2008

October? That’s the last time we’ve posted anything here. Seriously? Isn’t that a bit too long? Our bad. Boy howdy is it going to be hard to catch up, since so much has happened. November happened. December happened. January is in full swing. But here goes!

November

November was hard. Anna took part in her second casting session at Children’s Hospital in Denver. Which meant lots of miles and lots of hours in the new car for Tara and the girl. Three times a week Anna met with physical therapists at the hospital for “play time”. And then of course there was the cast she wore for all her waking hours for 20 straight days. The good doctors at Children’s also decided to try some Botox in Anna’s left forearm, in the hopes that it would help her work on turning her hand over palm-side up.

During this time it’s hard to say any of us were especially happy, for reasons that are probably obvious. And the results of all her therapy, while positive (she is able to turn her hand over more, she’s doing more with both hands, she’s way more dexterous with her left hand when casted, etc.), were far less dramatic than we’d seen the first time we participated in the therapy program. Progress, it seems, is now being measured in feet rather than miles.

It was a struggle and a great relief to make it through to Thanksgiving. Finally the damn cast came off! And while the airplane trip out and back as just as interesting and challenging as you’d expect it to be with a 21-month old, we did have a wonderful vacation out in Kansas. Anna loves her family there, and still talks daily about some of the fun she had.

December

December’s always crazy. But we managed to get our (fake) tree up, some lights on the house, and the Christmas music playlist rolling early this year. Anna started to make the kinds of Christmas associations that will probably turn her into a crazed, present-hungry, darling little monster between ages 3 and 12. Santa is “Ho Ho”, the ornaments on the tree remained fascinating for weeks, and candy canes, she discovered, are just about delicious. Cookies seem more available and more easily accessible for someone her age during this time of year, and lots of her toys and books got an update.

My brother made it out for the holiday, and it was great to spend some time with him and my folks. Also fantastic to see our Denver relative a couple of times — for whatever reason we’re not seeing them enough these days.

I have no idea how Tara managed it, but we did end up getting a holiday card out the door to folks on a few days after Christmas. Go team!

January

Recovery mode. Trying to catch up on some alone time with just ourselves. Trying to get back into the swing of things at work.

Anna’s doing just great. She’s “talking” up a storm. Mostly a lot of babbling, but in our experience that stuff usually precedes breakthroughs. She’s improving her pronunciation and speaking individual words much more clearly now, and she’s started doing an occasional two-word sentence (e.g. “Momma sit”, “Daddy move”, etc.). Anna’s increasingly more interested in the whole potty-training thing (also a big focus at daycare), and she’s making some progress there too! The girl has also been fairly healthy of late (knock on wood), which we attribute in large part to a switch from cow’s milk to soy milk for most of her daily milk consumption.
Tara’s working an extra half day now, which is a Good Thing since it means she’s less stressed about finding time in the late evenings to complete her “half time plus” assignment. This means Ms. Rose is spending a bit more time in daycare, but honestly she’s loving it. They’ve moved her up to a new room (somewhat ahead of schedule, I’ll add), and she seems to be happy as a clam with the bigger kids and all the new activities and toys and games. Last Wednesday was a bit of a milestone: The girl seemed somewhat reluctant to leave daycare and the plastic milk carton she and her friends were playing with at the time.

We’re also now starting to seriously look ahead to the Alabama trip in February. Notice I said look “ahead”, not look “forward”. For those of you not up-to-speed: We’ll be moving to Birmingham for four full weeks, during which time Anna will participate in an intensive constraint therapy program. “Intensive” means three full weeks of 24/7 full-arm casting, with therapy 6 hours a day for 6 days a week.

Frankly, I think we’re both a bit terrified about all that entails. (Anna, bless her heart, has no idea yet what’s in store…). But the flights are booked and we’ve confirmed we have a place to stay. Some good news: Tara’s mom will be coming out in the third week to help out while I return for a few days to put in some face time at work (thanks Debbie!).

Whew. That’s all for now. I know we’ve got pictures to post, but hopefully we’ll try to be more regular about those kinds of things in the near future.

How have you been?

Entry Filed under: Family, Health, Holidays