Jenelle had her first session with the Physical Therapist today who met us at home to work with Jenelle. After a few minutes of working with Jenelle, she began to become fussy and show that she was upset. The therapist said that is normal because you are basically forcing the baby to start doing things they don't normally do. She worked with Jenelle until she wouldn't stop crying, which indicated that Jenelle had had enough. Most of the therapy involved stretching muscles, and working with her hands and feet to improve her sense of feel with different textures. Our short term goal is to make Jenelle more aware of her body (and I thought girls didn't become self-conscious about their body until they hit puberty!) and to begin to grab and hold things. We are also trying to strengthen her trunk muscles so that she can hold her self up a little better. This therapist will continue to come to our home once a week until we have our next evaluation with Regional Center in November.

We have an appointment with the Pediatric Opthamologist for July 8. They wanted to wait until after Jenelle's MRI because they will need to see it to help determine a diagnosis. In the last month, we've started to notice that Jenelle has an eye that points inward, similar to what Brett had as a baby. We hear things like that can be corrected with patches, glasses, and sometimes even surgery. We'll know more on the 8th.

Brett and I are seeing improvements, Brett thinks in some areas she is starting to act like a 4 month old. On June 22, Jenelle finally rolled over from her tummy to her back, and is also getting her butt in the air a little more while on her tummy. Its like she wants to crawl, but the upper body strength is pretty non-existent. Also last week, Jenelle was lying tummy down on my chest and grabbed at my shirt to put it in her mouth to chew on (she is teething). I've never been happier to wear a shirt wet with drool as this was a first for Jenelle. She also is making more efforts to put a hand on her bottle, and even pushed it out of her mouth recently when she was full. These are huge improvements!

We met with Regional Center today to discuss Jenelle's ongoing Physical Therapy plan (Her Individual Family Service Plan, or IFSP). Jenelle will receive Physical Therapy for a hour a week, hopefully starting as soon as next week. Regional Center has been wonderful, but we have to "jump through hoops" in the way they process things, so it does take some time. The Physical Therapy will be in home, and will involve us working with her throughout the week. Our long term goals over the next 6 months include getting Jenelle to "sit up" unassisted, feed herself a cracker, show anxiety when not around familiar faces and to play with her toes.

At this point, we are starting to see some improvement in Jenelle since her 6 month check up last April. She is now bearing weight on her legs (especially after we have been working with her on this) and does grasp at the rings we've hung on her infant carrier. We also got the referral to the opthamologist, but when we contacted them about an appointment, they said it would be best to wait until after her MRI, as the opthamologist would want to see those results as well. We also scheduled Jenelle's MRI for July 1, 2003, which is the soonest appointment they had available.