The Reason Why

Some may wonder why I do not update on Aviana very much. The lack of updates is because this process follows a familiar pattern.....


Work your tail off.

Wake, and do the same exact thing over and over again.

Receive very, very small rewards.


This has been a difficult lesson for me to learn. In so many cases, when you work your butt off, you reap great benefits.

For most of the month, I feel good, upbeat, optimistic, hopeful, happy and such, but for a very small window....I feel like nothing is enough, or will ever be enough!!

So, what has Aviana accomplished lately?

Her eating by mouth has been somewhat sporadic. Sometimes she does extremely well, but other times she doesn't at all.   I feed her 1 full meal and 2 snacks per day, by mouth.

Her awareness has improved greatly.  She seems to be constantly paying attention to everything around her. She is more interested in her friends, and all of her surroundings.

When we pick her up, she puts her arms around us.

She is starting to pay more attention to Kama again.

She would not pattern one day, so Dave told her, "ok, if you don't feel like patterning, you have to crawl on the floor." He put her down, and to our great amazement, she was moving in semi-circles and then back again. She then moved backwards for about 5 feet.  She was more bound and determined than I had ever seen before.

This went on forever, as she did not want to stop. We finally picked her up, because we feared she was getting so tired, she might drop her beautiful face hard onto the floor.

She is crawling down the full 9 feet of inclined floor, and is doing far better than she ever has.

The other day she was on the couch, and I went and got her stuffed elephant.  I was holding it up to her, and asking her if she wanted it, to my surprise, she slowly opened her right arm so I could put it against her.

In the past two weeks, she has decided to exercise her powers as a pint sized four year old. She has more attitude than ever. It is so nice to see, but is sometimes very difficult for therapy.  She even pouted a few times when having to do something she didn't want.

Her attitude toward me almost caused me to drop kick her out the window yesterday.  That feeling hasn't appeared since prior to the accident.

She is also making more and more sounds. When we ask her a question, sometimes she will make a noise like she is responding. We can tell she wants to talk, but just can't.

She is extremely healthy, and her weight continues to decrease. Can you believe she was all the way up to 43 pounds at one point?? She is now down to 34.4. We are still on our way to her fighting weight of 32.2.

She has a choice board that we use at least 10 times a day. We have YES and NO divided on a piece of paper and ask her questions. We hold her hand up, and she guides it down to her answer. I used to be a skeptic on this, but after the Institute pushed me to continue, I now see how much it really works. She loves making her choices be known.

I asked her if she wanted to try her costume on, and she said YES. I put it on her, and went in the back to the full length mirror. I stood her up, but her head was down. I said, "Aviana, if you want to see your costume, you have to lift your head." It was hard work, but she did it!

Aviana was sitting on my lap with her head down and facing away from the hallway.  Dave came home from work and when she heard his voice, she lifted her head and turned it around toward him.

We do an exercise called patterning, which requires three people, plus Aviana.  Now, if one of us happen to make a mistake, Avi will call us out on it. In a BIG way. She screams and cries out. She is clearly very angry.

Michelle says she pushes the buttons on one of her toys to make it go.

Our new nurse, Lesya, left her with her toy necklace around her, and when she came back, Aviana had somehow taken it off.

There you have it, Aviana in a nutshell.