Wednesday, January 17, 2007


The last three days have been wonderful :)


Isla is progressing SO well, we're all thrilled with how she's doing developmentally.


So many words and sentences now, Dorothy, Kath, Hannah, Michael, Claire are the new favourite words! Isla has gone drawing crazy, and constantly asks for her "papey & draw" for paper & crayons! Too cute!


Isla managed to take 2 unaided steps on Monday and Tuesday night - it was absolutely amazing! Her standing is improving too, she's a lot more balanced than ever, I think it's partly the new shoes - they give her great stability and fit the orthotics perfectly! We're going to look for a basketball hoop for Isla, seems she only wants to stand/walk if there's a ball involved!


Still seeing Michael, our physio, he's very happy with her progress, he's hoping to have her on the treadmill next week! Would have been last week but it wasn't working. We're still going to OT too, but Isla has taken a disliking to Mel and does nothing but cry until she leaves the room - then cracks up! Not sure how much benefit it will be in all honesty. Mel said that it's really for her schooling days so that she has the co-ordination to do up buttons and use scissors etc - so I guess it is important to have that mirroring under control.


Botox Clinic is the 28th of March - very nervous leading up to this, I know she'll benefit a great deal from the injections, it's just having them done that's the hard part, but still there's lots of little ones much worse off than our little poppet, I guess you still have to count your blessings - right?


Nothing much else is happening around here at the moment. Ian is giving up smoking, so he's been going to bed around 8pm! The house is very quiet when the two of them are in dreamland!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006


So much has happened and I haven't had the chance to come in here and update.


We were so incredibly lucky to have a very special and beautiful person, Erin, organise a Charity Golf Day to raise funds for Isla. Erin is, without question, the most wonderful and selfless person on the face of this Earth. She put in so much hard work and so many hours which culminated in an amazing day, all for our little Isla.


We flew up to Brisbane on Thursday Nov 2nd, the Golf day was on the 3rd. It was incredible... :)


While in BrisVegas, we met the gorgeous Rel & Gabs!! Was definitely a highlight of our trip! Little Gabby is such an inspiration to us, she is almost 3 and has Ataxic Cerebral Palsy. Her improvements in the past 6 or so months have been absolutely mindblowing!!!

Hmmm what else has been going on....

Isla has lots of new words, too many to name, about 70 - 80 all up :) She has her gorgeous new AFO's too, no longer cries when they're being put on, but starts to pull on her shoe laces to take them off once she's had enough of them! She wears them for anywhere between 8-12 hours a day depending on when she wakes up! They are definitely making a difference though. Even though she rarely stands up in them, once they're off she can stand completely flat footed and cruises most of the time :)


The entry above is what we were given today at the PAHU - the assessment report from the Multidisc. screeing...


We had our first appointment with our speechie Kate, and our OT Melinda who are both really lovely!! Isla did pretty well until she cracked it when Ian took the playdough off her!


They're stoked with her fine motor skills, they're bang on where they should be :D Her gross motor skills are being looked after by Michael but they're improving ever so slightly every single day :)


Speechie is over the moon with little Missy's language skills since the screening! We're still going to see her just to get some tips on how we can best encourage her language, but they're stoked with what we've been doing with her.


OT is concerned about her associated tone/mirroring. She tried to show us some exercises to do today but Isla wasn't playing the game! Basically, we need to make the two halves of her brain function separately. To do this, we have to make her reach across her body for objects by holding down one side and putting toys etc on the other side...seems easy enough...in theory...we'll see both Kate & Mel every two weeks.