Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a great start to 2008! We had a pretty good day. Our family had breakfast at McD's this morning, then headed to Grandma and Paw-Paw's to celebrate with black-eyed peas and cabbage for lunch. Thanks to Grandma for all the good fixin's. Lydia's routine has remained the same...eating 4 oz. consistently, still sleeping a lot. She had one spasm this evening. Martin thinks that they appear to be getting more intense...he says he notices her eyes to bulge each time she does it. I haven't really noticed that. She did also have a little odd behavior later. I noticed that she had a little steady tremble for a brief time...then that she was sluggish to open her left eye for a few seconds. It looked like she was winking, but that her left eye-lid was very heavy. It reminded me of something Dr Superneau asked us about at our visit. He asked if we had ever noticed that she stopped using one side of her body...temporarily...sort of like effects of a stroke. A characteristic of one of the syndromes that he is considering is stroke-like symptoms without a stroke...losing movement in one side of the body temporarily. I'm not sure if what I saw is exactly what Dr Superneau described, but I'll mention it to him when we see him again anyway (in 2 months).

Lydia has an OT appt with Terry at Neurotherapy tomorrow morning...we'll be sure to bundle up tight. If anyone knows somebody who has an exercise ball that they could loan us for a little while, please let us know. At our last visit, Terry had Lydia on the exercise ball practicing picking up her head. She said that the incline (reduced gravity) and the rocking motion help Lydia to pick her head up. Martin had borrowed one from his school's weight room a while back when Elise was using it for her therapy, but he brought it back..and, now that the school is under construction, he has no idea where to find it. Just let me know if you have one to loan. Thanks!

A funny story:
I was trying to explain the EEG to Audrey yesterday. I told her that we went for a test on Lydia's brain. I said, "It measures Lydia's brain waves." She so innocently and seriously asked, "Lydia's brain waves at people??" I laughed loud enough to startle the neighbors. Oh, how kids can always bring humor to difficult situation!