My Big 5 Year Old Girl!

A lot has been going on around the Turrell/Anderson house lately. We got the results back from Lu's last endoscopy and while she did have a few eos (1 in one screen, 2 in another and 4 in another) our GI doc says that anything under 15 per screen is considered to be within normal limits so Lu has been cleared to continue eating eggs and move on to a new test food. We decided to go for one of the big guns: dairy. I was pretty excited to be able to give her back dairy for her birthday. Of course the doctor warned us that if she has a strong reaction it could ruin her birthday, so we eased into it by starting with chocolate pediasure (which includes a modified version of cow's milk for the lactose intolerant). This used to be about half Lu's daily diet back before her diagnosis, and if she is able to drink this by mouth again it could take us a long ways towards getting her off of the tube eventually. Was she happy to have her choc-milk back? Oh my goodness was she! And she seems to suddenly be a little bit more interested in eating other foods too. Here she is eating the miso soup with tofu that she used to eat a lot but hasn't wanted in ages. She requested it while she was already doing a feed and ate quite a lot.

Here she is at her Birthday Party drinking chocolate pediasure while taking a break from the pool and the trampoline.

I'm so glad that it is finally warm enough for the kids to be able to go in the pool in the back yard. Both kids absolutely love it and would stay in there all day and all night if we would let them.

One of the most exciting things about Lu's 5th Birthday party is that for the very first time since before her regression and diagnosis she spent an entire party out with the gang and never once retreated to the bedroom to give herself a break. She greeted people as they came when we prompted and said good bye as each guest left, she seemed happy to have other kids in the pool with her, eating with her at her table and jumping on the trampoline with her. It was fantastic! I really hope that being 5 is going to usher in a new era of Lu's heightened sociability.

When she got tired and needed to rest for a bit she just curled up in her little lounger and watched everyone for awhile. We didn't even have to use a tv or iPad to convince her to stay in the same area as everyone else, which we usually have to do if we want her to sit down and hang out with a group of people. She just seemed so casual and so comfortable. I don't think she got upset even once.

Tallulah's cousin Danica has always been one of her favorite people on the planet. Even through Lu's most anti-social times she has almost always had at least one hug for Danica when they saw each other, and usually a lot more than that. On this day she couldn't seem to get enough Danica time in.

For a moment I was a little sad that she didn't want anything to do with any of the amazing allergen adjusted cake and ice cream that we were able to get from the bakery at our local health food store, but hey, you can't have everything. And the truth was that she was too busy jumping and hanging out in the pool that she didn't want to take a break even for cake and ice cream. Whatever. She had fun. And that's all that counts. And right around 6:30pm the awesome day was rounded out by a solar eclipse. Awesome! 

We didn't go crazy with gifts this year, mainly because in a few short weeks, on June 8th, Lu will be getting her Autism Service Dog. Thank you so much again to all of the wonderful people who donated and helped pass on the word about our fundraising project. We raised the money faster than we could ever have hoped and Lu and her dog will definitely be ready to go to school together in the fall. This is the best Birthday present we could ever have hoped for her and it's all thanks to our wonderful family and friends. 

Stew and I have finally decided to join the 21st century by making a real honest to goodness mailing list through Mail Chimp instead of always trolling through our hotmail and yahoo contacts list trying to remember, was this someone who bought a cd once? Or someone we met at that autism conference? Most of you will probably be getting a first mailing from us very soon if we have your email address from dog donations or music and etsy mail orders. If you want to make sure that you are on the mailing list you can subscribe below and expect periodic updates on Boot Camp with the dog, any new music projects in the future, and whatever else we get up to. Don't worry, we won't be filling your inbox with emails every day or anything. We mainly just want to make sure that everyone who donated $25 or more gets the Thank You cd Stew made and that we can update you on progress. Thanks for reading. Thanks for supporting us and the kids.

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Another Endoscopy and Another Dog

What? May already? Where did April go? April was Autism Awareness month, and while I was really aware of it and helped organize the Northern Arizona Conference on Autism Spectrum Disorders and had Lu's Transition to Kindergarden IEP and Myffy's Transition to pre-school IFSP meetings, and lots of other things going on, I never did manage to blog about any of it. Sometimes doing gets in the way of writing and thinking and it's probably a good thing some of the time. So anyway, yesterday the girls and I were in Phoenix for Lu to at long last have another endoscopy with biopsies to determine whether or not eggs have been causing her EE reactions (should have the results some time next week) and while we were there Lu met another awesome Service Dog! The lovely young lady dog posing in these photos with Lu is Dohanna. 

Early morning at the hospital was rough, but Lu had an awesome day after she woke up from her endoscopy. We went back to the hotel room like we usually do and I hooked her up for a small feed of pedialyte to help hydrate her. I expected her to fall asleep during the feed and then throw up the way she usually does after having all of those tubes put down her throat, but instead she stayed awake, perked up and wanted some chips. And then some cookie. And then some pizza! We found a Picazzo's that makes gluten and dairy free pizza and even had gluten and dairy free brownies and ice cream, so we went. It was the first time Lu had hung out in a restaurant for a very long time. She never did eat the pizza, but she had a little brownie and ice cream and only got up and ran around a couple of times. It was really encouraging.

Afterwards we went back to the hotel and met up with Brian from Arizona Goldens who brought over Dohanna for Lu to meet. Dohanna is lovely, pale golden, very quiet, attentive and still. Lu asked to walk dog as soon as they came into the hotel room and considering how long Lu had been up and how much she had gone through that morning at the hospital I was incredibly impressed with how well she did. Just look at the pictures of these two hanging out and interacting!