Graduation

Today Shayna graduated from the Early Childhood Intervention physical therapy program as she has met all her goals and then some.  Post-transplant she went from being 13-months with the gross motor skill of a 9-month-old to 19-months with "advanced" gross motor skills (don't know what the "advanced" exactly means but I sure enjoyed hearing it from professionals about my daughter today).  The whole experience has been wonderful thanks to our great physical therapist Lynn who actually started with Shayna a couple months before transplant.  We will miss Lynn's visits a lot.  Shayna really enjoyed their play time and especially showing off how good she'd gotten with the tricks and games Lynn had previously taught her.

Shayna is also graduating to a toddler bed.  She did great at nap time yesterday and today but fell out of bed at 11pm both of the last 2 nights.  I finally have things pillowed properly to keep her from rolling out but allow her to climb out on her own should she choose to.  Yesterday's nap was the big deal for Shayna as I removed the side of her crib from her room totally so she couldn'y ask for it to be put back on anymore.  She asked about  it, "side, side?"  I told her it was gone because she was a big girl and didn't need it.  She was concerned about this but went along with it.  After Becca read her the last book in bed, we watched the monitor with baited breath.  While she tossed both monkey and lamby out, she never climbed out herself.  She did do a lot a talking about the situation before she finally drifted off.  "side, side," while shaking her head then, "big," etc  We're very proud of her.

Shayan likes to talk about her friends a lot these days.  She tells me that Lana (3-years) swims and plays with Shayna's ball that Shayna shares. ("Lana," "swim," "ball," "share.")  Hannah (also 3) ran around our house yelling. ("aaahhhh" while running then turns to me, "Hannah.")  Shayna took a bath with when his parents watched Shayna and swims with Sawyer.  ("bath," "Sawyer, Sawyer," while nodding her head, and "swim.")  There's a lot more to the conversations than that with my full sentences and talking about what we did or will do and Shayna repeating things.

We had a wonderful time at the Sinkland Farm's Pumpkin Festival this last Saturday with Sawyer, Serena, and their respective families.  I forgot my camera but luckily Sital has a great camera phone and got these shots of us.

Shayna loved the animals and even showed off her amazing strength by climbing the fencing you see, while I spotted her of course.  We saw horses, a cow, goats, turkeys, rabbits (which she reached through to pet), pygmy goats, grown chickens, and best of all baby ducks and chickens.

A much happier than last year Serena and Shayna posing in the same spot with the pumpkins.

Shayna and Nahum enjoy ice cream for lunch.

A year ago Nahum had just completed his living donor evaluation.  We revel each day in how far we've come.

Here are some of Shayna's latest activity videos: video1, video2, and video3.