Saturday, April 30, 2011

We're going to Canada!

Annabelle 15 months old




We are off to Toronto, Canada tomorrow morning,  just me and Annabelle the photos above are from when we were there last when Annabelle was 15 months old. We went to do an intensive therapy session for 2 weeks and on the first day Annabelle was standing and walking in Simona's hands, the therapy is call CME short for Cuevas Medek Exercise and we saw an amazing therapist called Simona DeMarchi at Blue Balloon health services she is the most qualified therapist under Ramon Cuevas the inventor of the therapy.


We haven't focused on this therapy as much as the other ones we do with Annabelle but we feel that she is stronger now her body seems to be recovering from the mould toxicity, she is eating better, she now can pull herself up to tall kneeling, she can hold onto a bar and stand for a few seconds by herself she can crawl on all fours ( not just commando crawling), So she has been doing amazing things in the last few months and we feel that re-introducing this therapy again will help her development along.

The realization that we need to go back to alternative therapies came when one night I sat crying because I was confused. Do I take the easy road and just go with traditional (which we have not done any traditional therapy since last year June) or the hard road alternative? We have come to England and everything is great here the system supports parents and children with special needs, and you could not ask for a better system everybody is very positive and people bend over backwards to help us out, but when the PT started to mention standers and AFO braces and Annabelle having to get casts put on her legs to get these. Everything we have been working towards the last 2 years with ABR and other alternative therapies. Traditional therapy just goes against the grain of what I believe is possible for my child. To be strapped into a stander half an hour a day OR do exercises that builds pathways in the brain to enable the child to stand on their own??
I think I choose the later, so we will have a week of intensive therapy with Simona and hopefully will come back with lots of new exercises for Annabelle to do.

Annabelle Crawling on all fours

Love this!

Love Katy's blog this post is one of her best in my humble opinion. Follow this link.

All I Ask

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Trip to the Zoo


The Carroll children center sponsored families with special needs children to go to Marwell Zoo for the day. So we thought we would join in on the fun, and considering the Zoo is only 15 minutes drive from our house it was a fantastic day out.



In the middle is this beautiful stately home, Martin and I loved it especially after taking it in turns pushing the wheel chair around the 3km zoo or holding Annabelle up so that she can see the animals we were both shattered and just wanted to have a nap on the grass.


Matthew was in charge of the map and finding the animals.







We found giraffes these were Annabelle's favourites!



We found some sleeping camels, and a lots of sleeping animals that we didn't take pictures of!



We even found some fish.

 But the favourite thing we found was this swinging monkey.



Lets zoom in, no its Annabelle, she loved this swing.


And after a hard morning playing in the park and finding animals theres nothing like using my sisters wheelchair to rest on and eat my snack!


The whole family enjoyed a well deserved day out!