I know I have been awful about keeping up with the blog. Computer time has been one of the things to go for me. I am going to try to do better as we have ordered a laptop that I will be using upstairs. Part of my problem is that our computer room is in the basement and although there are LOTS of toys down there, when I am on the computer neither Ainsley or Ellie want to play with toys. Especially Ellie finds the computer oh so fascinating and "helps" me by sticking her hand in to type and play with the mouse. It gets old quickly when I have to start over so I just have not had a whole lot of time the last few months to really be on the computer. By the day's end, I have all I can do to keep my eyes open longer than 10 minutes before I drop off to lala land.
Ellie continues to make improvements. It seems slow to us but I remember where she was over 2 months ago and I am blown away. She is saying about 7-8 words and signing about the same amount. She seems to be on the verge of saying more words and has started doing more babbling lately. She will play with toys though would MUCH rather have one of us holding her or chasing after her. She seems to LOVE to run/walk away from us when we are out in public and take our eyes off her for say half a millisecond! It is amazing for a child that was so slow to develop gross motor skills in the orphanage how quick she is here! The speech therapist is happy as is the physical therapist. We have yet another speech eval this week for the Boone County Preschool program. I think it is a complete waste of time, but then what do I really know. So we will go to that on Wed while Ainsley is at preschool and Mackenzie is at school. I am sure she's made it in but it is just a matter of whether they can accommodate me by getting her in morning preschool, otherwise it is a no-go. She won't make it without a nap that many days in a row. We meet to discuss all of our options for Ellie on Feb 6th I think.
Other than that, things are going well and busy as usual. I have dropped a few things for the time being to help Ainsley have some time with mommy as she has been struggling a bit in the last few months. I can see baby steps in her progress. She continues to do well in preschool and ballet. Mackenzie is doing well in school and ballet also. I just found out recently from her teacher that she apparently reads somewhere around 250 words per minute, which is pretty amazing. But she loves to read so I guess that makes sense. She has started a Sat program, called Explore More, that will continue for the next five weeks. It is for students who want some challenges academically and she is loving it. She is doing a class called "Fantasy in Literature" and they talked about Peter Pan this past week. She is looking forward to it which is great.
Thanks to my friend Kim Crawford for the help on video posting. I think we finally go it...we very much appreciate the help!
