Ella had another amazing day while the snow fell outside. Kelly reported that she ate a jar and a half of baby food! And this is just after a few days of concentrated effort. Yesterday, Ella would not take the spoon when eating. Today, she tolerated the spoon too!

Along with the feeding of food, Kelly has to spend lots of time doing exercises that the OT gave her to help Ella with her oral aversion. One tool that was kind of pricey, but the OT swore by it, is a tool called a Z-Vibe. The Z-Vibe is a vibrating tool for oral-motor stimulation and sensory input, designed by a speech-language pathologist. The gentle vibrations stimulate the gums, palate, and tongue. It can also be used outside the mouth on the cheeks and lips. We purchased one and Kelly has been using it over the past few days. Again, the whole purpose of the Z-Vibe which has different tips and can vibrate is to help kids overcome oral aversion. I’d say that Ella is getting a decent start.

Wow, I can’t believe it. It is so good to hear about this progress. Eating a jar of baby food each day is more along the lines of what Ella was doing back in Gainesville when she was only 9-10 months old. It just makes me happy.

Speaking of happy, Ella was so smiley this evening. She was vocalizing a lot, kicking and laughing. I just loved it. I was doing my infamous trick of trying to kiss her over and over really fast on her face and neck…she was giggling. Such music to my ears.

I cannot believe that Christmas is next week. Wow. And I have pretty much only purchased one gift so far…a puppy. The little canine is going to be rescued tomorrow evening. I’m really excited to go pick her up and love on her.

I’m going to keep her for a couple of days before handing her over to Grandpa. This way, I can get a sense of how she is doing and what she responds to. Plus, I want to get some puppy love myself!

Ella has PT tomorrow. I’m hoping that she responds better than she did on Tuesday. If I didn’t mention before, the PT sessions have been a bit off schedule while the therapist works through the red tape of being reimbursed from our insurance policy. Because she was not getting paid and the sessions were piling up, she has only been coming once per week (been this way since Thanksgiving; we still get guaranteed one session per week as it is not billed through insurance but through a federal and state funded program). She didn’t come all last week at all, so this week we have 2 sessions. I just hope that the process can be expedited. Ella was on such a good track to do well and now, the progress has been slowed considerably.

I’m looking forward to Friday and the weekend…and hoping that Ella has another amazing day of progress with Kelly.