Ressurecting the blog to write about Stella

There are so many changes with our family and with Stella, I thought I'd start really blogging to let everyone know what's going on.

The months July, August, and now September have been about getting through a lot of medical appointments and evaluations. As you all know, we started suspecting in early July that Stella's lack of progress in communication and social skills might mean she had an autism spectrum disorder. During the last two months, Stella has been subjected to a lot of bloodwork (2½ year olds hate needles), a sedated MRI, EEG and numerous appointments. Her blood work and radiology work all came back normal. So did her metabolic tests, and chromosomal studies showed no abnormalities.

We saw a pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital in the Detroit area, and he confirmed that he thought Stella had ASD. But he made positive comments to the effect that at least Stella doesn't show severe autism. She developed some language even though putting words together in sentence form is difficult and even impossible for her mostly. He noticed what an anxious child she is and put her on an anti-anxiety medicine called Buspar that she takes twice a day. I crush up the pill and put it in her eggs or yogurt.

At the same time, Stella was evaluated by Calhoun Intermediate School District and they found that she had an ASD label and that she would benefit from a special ed class dedicated to using ABA therapy. ABA means Applied Behavioral Analysis and is supposed to be effective at helping children with this disorder develop communication skills. Stella will ride the bus to school and will be in a class with mostly 4-year-olds, some of whom are completely nonverbal.

We will be spending a lot of time in Ann Arbor next week also. Stella will be evaluated at the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorders Center which is supposed to be good for giving parents detailed evaluations. This consists of 3 different 3 hour appointments -- 9 hours total over one week. It sounds grueling to me, but hopefully it will be beneficial to us and her teachers.

She's still our cutie, and we love her as much as ever. She's learned some new words lately and we're working hard on her not to forget them. She goes to a daycare twice a week to help her get used to other kids and to survive without her mommy! She's shown a lot of adaptability and we're proud of her:



She's going to miss summer, though, and the backyard which she loves. But next year, she'll become a big sister, and we hope that one day, she won't look so lonely playing in the backyard. I think she'll like that:



Keep reading this blog; I'm going to try to keep up on it so everyone knows what's happening.