Progress

We had such a great Christmas break!  It's amazing how fast 2 weeks goes when you are on vacation :) As great as it was...it was a struggle for Kamiree.  We went to Thermopolis for a lot of it and Kamiree just struggled with not having a routine.  We love not having a schedule, sleeping in, staying up late...but Kamiree did not.  She had a lot of breakdowns and was always ready for a fight.  Chris and I had decided she was doing so good (before all the breakdowns) that we let her have a little gluten.  We have actually never got her tested for gluten intolerance we just noticed that she seemed to act out when she had it so we made the decision to have her have a gluten free died.  Let me tell you it was horrible!  Within an hour is when she went crazy.  Bad plan for us and we immediately went back to no gluten but she then was sneaking it and had no control left.  After the first 5 days of being in Wyoming she had totally lost her mind and we had to do everything she wanted or she went crazy.  Our lives were back to what they were 6 months ago...maybe even worse!
We did do speech almost every night with her, and she did change a major sentence she has been having a hard time with.  She often says "Please help you" and now she can say "Please help me." :)  It's the little things right?!?

Kamiree with the twins Teagan and Taetum

We have been back in Colorado for 2 weeks now and things have settled down a lot.  Routine is best for Kamiree and boy do we have one this semester.  She has 3 days of speech, 1 day of horse therapeutic riding, and 1 day of gymnastics.  The busier we keep her though, the more progress we see in her.  She only struggles with speech because it is hard for her, but the other things she loves.  I am going to try to get her in to get some OT soon and maybe meet with a behaviorist that can help us with some of the issues we are having.  One of the biggest in the last 2 months is being scared.  It's not a normal child being scared, but terrified to go to the bathroom alone, or really pretty much anywhere alone.  She has even been grabbing Tenley (who is almost 2 ) to protect her.  She won't sleep in her own bed.  And by that I mean she won't sleep!  Chris and I took turns and sat in there for 3 hours and she actually goes crazy where she is screaming and keeping the whole house up.  It's not a normal scream either, a high pitched making people in the neighborhood aware kind of scream.  So we now have a 6 year old that goes to sleep in our bed at 8:30 and has become tolerable for the next day because she has sleep!  I need help at helping her!
BUT...all this being said :)  We got her report card in the mail yesterday.  Colorado does this grading system from 1 to 4.  1 being not progressing as fast as we would like basically, 2 almost proficient, 3 proficient, 4 advanced.   The first quarter she had all 1's and 2's.  I will tell you as a parent of Kamiree, I was excited she had any 2's at this time.  I have this fear that she will never be able to catch up to her grade level because she has so much going against her.  This quarter she had no 1's (Yay!!) and some 3's :)  That means our baby girl is proficient in her age for some things!!  Math concepts is one of them and she really struggled with them last quarter.  All her IEP goals had progress on them and no regression!  For someone with Landau-Kleffner Syndrome this is rare and exciting!  I don't want to put pressure on her to be "normal" because she's not, I just want her to do her best and now I can see she can excel and catch up.  The most exciting part for me is that in language concepts she is now proficient with ASL.  That means when someone signs to my daughter she understands them 100 percent of the time and can sign back!  That is amazing to me and another reason why Chris and I need to learn sign and am signed up for a class starting in 2 weeks.
I'm sorry this was a long one, but so much has happened it seems :)  I have to just share that I have been begging God to show himself to me these past 3 months because I have struggled with Kamiree's problems, our financial situation, and everything that seems to keep going "wrong" in our lives....and He did show me Him in so many ways.  It's not just the huge amounts of money (all relative) that came in so we could give our children a Christmas and buy tires for our car, but knowing He has us in the right place.  I need proof, I need to get over that, but God knows what I need and showed me He loves us and cares for us and He is watching over us everyday, every minute, every second, He is there.  I needed to know that and feel that this Christmas break, and He understood that.
If you are praying for us please specifically pray for Kamiree's EEG that happens on Tuesday to Wednesday please.  She gets to do an ambulatory one (which means she gets to come home after they put the electrodes on) which is much better then staying in the hospital!  This is to see how the new medication is doing with the electrical activity!  Thanks everybody!