It's been awhile since I posted on here, and am trying to recall what I last wrote... The latest news is about Tianna. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, Tianna has made huge gains this past year with her speech-- she speaks quite a lot and has no trouble trying to express her opinions. We can usually understand her invdividual words, though still hypernasal, but sentences are harder to understand (again, being familiar listeners to her we can usually decipher what she's saying, but some people less familiar with her don't understand that much or the whole content of what she is saying. We mentioned this at her last check-up with her plastic surgeon, and said that her hypernasality is the only thing that's of great concern to us at this point (at least in terms of what would affect him and what he does!!! :)). We had asked about a surgical procedure that is supposed to help correct this-- a previous speech therapist had given the impression that part of Tianna's speech issues would be corrected with surgry. Her plastic surgeon hadn't thought she sounded that impaired from the little bit that he heard... anyway, this week Tianna was supposed to have a nasometry and a nasendoscopy exam to get concrete measures of air flow and palate closure. Well, the nasometer was broken so that couldn't be measured, so the speech therapists worked on some testing procedures so they could get their own speech sample and also to prepare Tianna for words she'd have to say for her nasendoscopy. At the nasendoscopy Tianna had to sniff up some local anesthetic and then a fiberoptic tube that has a camera inside was inserted into her nostril (on the side where she did not have a cleft). She was about as good of a sport as a 2.5 year old could be-- Carl had to pin her down and I helped hold her head in place. Once she stopped crying, she actually did give some word samples of words that would particularly show areas that challenges could exist-- enough for them to get a recording of her. The results were mixed-- Tianna was able to close the openning between her mouth and nose for one word, but other words showed only partial closure, which means she is able to close that area off, but is very inconsistent with this ability. It seems the problem occurs more in the context of sentences than individual words. Her plastic surgeon said that Tianna's still young to be doing a pharyngeal flap surgery, but that with how severe her cleft was and based on these findings she probably will be a candidate for this surgery. In another 6 months we will redo the nasendoscopy and see what, if any, changes have occured over this time frame. If not much, she'll likely have the pharyngeal flap. As I have been doing research on this, I guess I just want prayer that we will know what is right for our little girl. She definately needs to improve her speech intelligability, but there are risks for this procedure- including obstructive sleep apnea (and with Tianna already sometimes being a snorer, I guess I wonder if she's already at risk for that-- and sleep apnea can get pretty signficantly worse with this procedure) as well as the possibility of developing hyponasal speech (so she'd be unable to make nasal sounds-- sounding like she had a cold alll the time-- and this could be problematic for her with trying to speak any portuguese!). I certainly want her to be able to make sounds clearly and not be self-conscious about her speech. I know if the risks were huge the procedure wouldn't be done... I guess I just don't want other problems to develop when correcting another problem! So I ask for prayers-- that the right decision for Tianna will be made when the time is right.
Other news in our family: Carl is actually working day shift (really early day shift 5AM-1:30) at hsi job and is working at a location closer to home. So, amazingly enough we're all home at night time! I think Carl and I are both still worn out from the life we've been leading of working opposite hours for so long that we're both pretty out of it and not always taking advantage of the time we have now. Hopefully we'll both begin to feel more rested and energized.
Kjersten started pre-school but we pulled her out of that program as it seemed to not be a healthy fit for our daughter who is normally a social butterfly. :) She is now going to a pre-school program one day a week with Tianna, Nathaniel and I through Minneapolis public schools, and will hopefully begin a two mornings a week preschool through Fraser, which is the organization that I work for. Nathaniel is able to sit up now and now has two teeth. He scoots around on his tummy, though I keep expecting him to crawl as he's been rocking on all fours for a few weeks now. He's slowly starting to eat solids. It's been a little hard to figure out what to feed him because he doesn't like baby foods and only wants what he sees us eating. The problem being that if I am making sandwiches, he doesn't have the ability to manage that kind of food at this point. We ate lasagna a couple weeks back and he loved that sauce quite a bit, and likes cookies. I've fed him vegetable soup and mashed bananas or mashed canned peaches or mashed avacado... he seems to almost consistently like bananas, but otherwise will eat stuff one time and then refuse to open his mouth the next time. So the food intake isn't changing very quickly.
I began selling Party Lite candles as a fun side job about a montha go and am enjoying it so far. If you're at all interested in seeing their products, I've made a link to my business website as one of the links on this web page.