We now have eleven days of Delia’s “Neuro” program under our belts.  There are a few positive things we think we are seeing, as well as a few negative things that we definitely are.  I am comforted by remembering there were negative behaviors that emerged after she came off of the medications she was on in Bulgaria, too, and that that was a natural side affect of her brain awakening and beginning to reorganize itself.  Here’s to lots more of that!

So, although we have seen some regressions (some wild behavior, periods of tearfulness and a couple of uncharacteristic potty accidents), we are encouraged that good things are happening, too.  I believe Delia is using her eyes better already.  We see this in an increase in eye contact, a greater ability to look at books, and even a bit more adventurousness on the playground.  She climbed a curved ladder on a play area yesterday that I don’t believe I’d ever seen her attempt before, and she was very pleased with herself.

Delia has never had what I considered to be major food issues, but she did have an aversion to drier foods like bread and crackers.  One of her sensory exercises uses an electric toothbrush to brush her gums and teeth and tongue.  Already she is cooperating better with her normal toothbrushing, and she ate four crackers at lunch today (!)  This exercise is hopefully also giving her a better sensory awareness of the parts of her mouth to open things up for more talking.

And we have seen an increase in attempts at talking!  The words aren’t perfect, and they are still usually mimicked, but there are more of them.  She attempts to repeat some of the words I say in her flash card exercises, and she also repeats some of the words I say while doing other exercises, such as “pat, pat, pat” and “medium”.  Again, this isn’t qualitatively new for her.  She has always been able to mimic words on her own terms, but these exercises seem to be drawing more of them out of her.

Her program is time-consuming, so I am very thankful that she is still very up for it and rarely fights me on anything. I am also thankful for seven other kids who have been super helpful and unusually low maintenance while we’ve been getting up to full speed with Delia’s program.  We have designated next week as a school catch-up week, but I think, in theory, it will all fit in on a week-to-week basis once everyone knows the drill.

Our other news is that our I800 immigration application was finally approved early this week.  This means that we should very shortly be able to submit the final, online step of the immigration process, the DS260.  We’re still on track to have Lewis home for Christmas as long as everything else goes smoothly.  And that’s a very good thing, because I am beginning to feel very ready to finally meet this little guy!